As a former active user, I think the site could benefit from fostering a stronger sense of community while keeping its status on being an archive. It would be great to see a shift away from a more confrontational or judgmental atmosphere, and instead create a welcoming environment that encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing
While I haven't been an active TASer on tasvideos.org, for a while now, I have been trying to make the tools to make Minecraft viable as a game that can be accepted by tasvideos. And since we have non-viable tools already (only savestates and slowdown/frame advance), there has already been some development in the Minecraft TAS community, which I believe is one of the communities dwango talked about.
Now imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this topic saying that the amount of submissions is overwhelming the judges, because I think creating tools accepted by tasvideos for the most sold game of all time is not gonna help this situation.
Our community would immensely benefit from a speedrun.com style community/category system, where we control the categories ourselves, hence why unknowing people asked me before, why we didn't put the runs up on speedrun.com in the first place...
I would gladly check the submissions beforehand or, if the community system is not chosen for this site, at least apply for a judge (or reviewer) to handle Minecraft related submissions to take the load of the judges and I am positive that others in our community would do the same.
I also held off from creating detailed tutorials and setup guides, as doing that for the current tools would outdate them. I have been hosting some of it on https://minecrafttas.com.
Still not satisfied with this solution, so having our own wiki section on this site would also benefit us, before we are forced to host our own service and scatter our resources to different sites...
Me and others in our community are hoping that the tools will be accepted by tasvideos, it would be a huge honor to see a Minecraft TAS on here, but I feel like this issue has to be resolved first before accepting our and frankly other games as well...
I know I haven't been accustomed to this site, the rules and the processes, something that you probably learn when submitting, so hopefully this feedback is still useful in some way.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Scribble wrote:
I also held off from creating detailed tutorials and setup guides, as doing that for the current tools would outdate them. I have been hosting some of it on https://minecrafttas.com.
Still not satisfied with this solution, so having our own wiki section on this site would also benefit us, before we are forced to host our own service and scatter our resources to different sites...
Join our Discord and we can discuss giving you (and others) privs to edit pages under Wiki: GameResources (if there's already stuff to put there). Also if you want you can have a thread for your tool to talk to users and to announce things, like Bizhawk and libTAS have. And also a wiki page for your tool docs like Wiki: EmulatorResources/LibTAS.
Basic guide on implementing TAS features is here Wiki: LawsOfTAS but it doesn't have to be followed to the letter.
Scribble wrote:
Me and others in our community are hoping that the tools will be accepted by tasvideos, it would be a huge honor to see a Minecraft TAS on here, but I feel like this issue has to be resolved first before accepting our and frankly other games as well...
Given the crazy amount of site code changes required for a reform like this, it'd be wiser to go through with Minecraft TASing first, and handle the rest later.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I can see that it is rather unsustainable, especially with the deluge of flash submissions for judging.
I do not know a good solution. Abolishing judging completely will likely result in even more spam (like SMB runs, repeatedly).
dwangoAC wrote:
I feel strongly, and have felt for a long time, that we need ways for communities to be self-regulating with their own community categories that meet their needs, such as the fighting game folks or individual communities like Celeste. If we give them a home similar to a speedrun.com page where they can make categories and hash though their own requirements, they'll do a lot of the hard work without requiring a huge amount of staff oversight. Encoders would continue and expand as needed, publishers would continue to handle descriptions and other aspects of promoted runs, and judges would primarily move into curator roles focused on highlighting runs with far less frequent adjudication.
Reading this makes me immensely envious of speedrunning communities of popular games. I TAS a range of games, and I actually join the discord servers listed in the game's speedrun.net page if possible.
Almost all the time, due to sheer luck, it appears there's almost no activity anymore (because almost everything has been discovered, somewhere hidden in the discord server, so runs basically become stale), or there's like 1 other person who just also happens to be interested in the game that I am.
I really wish there was a way to have a community page that isn't just 1 guy uploading everything, but that's just my luck I guess. I do not know how to solve this; it seems great for more active game communities, but for niche-ish games, I'm not sure how that helps.
I would like a way to document stuff easier though. I'm guilty of posting everything on Discord as notes, then when I need to actually write down what I did I go "uh I can't find anything rip".
Let me clarify, that I do like the idea of game communities go handle their own stuff, but at the same time, the focus on communities seems to forget the fact most games do not have a community. In fact, it's likely that the TAS, or that 1 playthrough on youtube is the only thing you get for most games. That should be taken into account.
Dimon12321 wrote:
To add to what DrD2k9 said, I'm worried about the future submissions too.
In the last couple of years the forum audience has shrinked in 2-3 times. It's already common to see a TAS discussion thread where the first post is "This movie has been published". So concerns the polls too, like nobody is interested is what you have done! Veterans are gone. Most of active players visit the site just to submit TASes and respond to posts in their discussion threads.
By not having a big audience on the site, the role of subjectiveness and ignorance becomes very significant. If I got your suggestions rights, publishers will basically become "gods" since they will decide which synced runs to publish. That's a freaking wonderful perspective! I looked through my submissions and, seeing how little feedback I had got for various works, it would be no wonder if some of them would end up being just "synced". I've been spending months to make a TAS, frame advance all the time, replaying sections in case of discovered improvements, and all I would get is "Synced"? That's not what I was striving for, and I think people will agree with this.
Right now, I completely get it. I really fucking hate how all feedback is on Discord, and the forums, the one place you can still search for shit, is like a ghost town. It's demoralizing as hell, but at the same time I'm not sure how to fix it. I really don't want the site to die, since there's no place else that I can upload input files that I know for certain will sync back and replay. I really fucking hate how other speedrun communities just post glitches on discord, linking to a dead twitch link, with literally 0 information on how to reproduce. That really kills me even more than 0 feedback. I had to spend hours, sometimes months replicating things others already found, because the only information of it was on Discord/Twitch.
And even on said discord/twitch, I get 0 feedback anyways. I got burnt out from TASing multiple times like this, yet every single time I eventually come back because I really want to see a run of a game I like, and there's no where to share input files that others can reproduce.
alexheights1 wrote:
If each game has a wiki page that the community can freely edit, then lots of problems are solved. Random featured articles should be on the front page, like Minecraft/Terraria/Doom TAS pages where the community will improve the article over the decades to incorporate literally everything that is known about the game and its TAS history. I think information would be more easy to find if each game page looked like a regular Wikipedia article.
Another idea: The front page might be good if it had an alphabetical list of all games immediately available. People often know what they are looking for so just give an alphabetical list of links to all games at once. Only add links to the list when a published TAS has been made for the game.
Wiki is a powerful tool for collaborative optimization challenges, one amazing example being the Busy Beaver challenge which is forever ongoing and very TAS-like: https://wiki.bbchallenge.org/wiki/Main_Page
Have a nice day!
That's the problem. We do have a wiki. It's just that posting on Discord is super easy and convenient. Me, and many other speedrunners, just post their stream of conscious thoughts directly there. The problem is that gathering that back into 1 coherent documentation is extremely painful.
https://x.com/LukeCorreiaVA/status/1475220844456652802
the discordization of the internet is fucking brutal i hate trying to find information about any remotely niche topic only to discover its hidden somewhere within a discord server with 80 channels at 50k posts per second
This makes glitch documentation completely impossible, especially if the only time it was recorded was during some 5 hour livestream clip, and no one else preserved it.
Even in the "lucky" times I do find an active community, I end up having to refind basically everything. And that's when there's a community. If not, unless wiki editing has some magic AI that converts your discord posts into a coherent glitch description, I don't expect people to do that.
I'm probably just rambling now, but reading some of the posts here makes me go like "damn you guys all participate in popular game communities that have tons of activity in other livelier sites, while my experience here is that every site, discord included, is a ghost town. It's so miserable at times everywhere.
Sorry about that.
Edit: Just curious, is there any off site discussion on this? Like on Discord or similar? I'm very curious for more perspectives on this, since right now it seems I'm like the only one here who keeps getting into mostly one man communities. The current site situation is rather depressing, but at the same time, I'm having a hard time thinking how some of these changes would benefit TASing for games in general, and not just a select few popular games with active communities, while everything else gets 0 feedback.
I mentioned at start about having no submission queue will result in a deluge of runs. For active communities, this is absolutely not a problem; they can moderate it themselves like speedrun.net. For niche games, it basically floods the site with potentially spam, making it harder to find an actual improvement, and not some run where it's input file doesn't even work, or uses some outdated emulator version. This isn't even some "theoretical" thing; every april fools, the site gets a bunch of joke submissions that get rejected. It is entirely possible some obscure game around that time suddenly becomes viral, causing a deluge of spam.
I think there are some interesting points here:
TASvideos needs the curated approach because people spam low quality stuff
I believe Self-Regulating communities or maybe Mods/Judges for specific games could be implemented to alleviate work from judges, and for dead game communities we still need the general judges even though. As more TASers of a specific game appear, you can make the judging faster by making former TASers or maybe speedrunners participate in the judging process. Let's invite the players of these communities to judge in solidarity maybe?
Right now, I completely get it. I really fucking hate how all feedback is on Discord, and the forums, the one place you can still search for shit, is like a ghost town. It's demoralizing as hell, but at the same time I'm not sure how to fix it. I really don't want the site to die, since there's no place else that I can upload input files that I know for certain will sync back and replay. I really fucking hate how other speedrun communities just post glitches on discord, linking to a dead twitch link, with literally 0 information on how to reproduce. That really kills me even more than 0 feedback. I had to spend hours, sometimes months replicating things others already found, because the only information of it was on Discord/Twitch.
And even on said discord/twitch, I get 0 feedback anyways. I got burnt out from TASing multiple times like this, yet every single time I eventually come back because I really want to see a run of a game I like, and there's no where to share input files that others can reproduce.
This is basically my experience with almost everything i TASed and it's aggravated by the verification movie debacle and bizarre rulesets which tell me what is and isn't valid in the dead game I put my time into. Nowadays i want to help Judges get through the stuff faster but I don't want be part of the Staff because you prioritize site rules to the game's communities rules and judgements. All accomodations are RULE BREAKING and will effectively stop people from publishing pikmin 2, mario kart TASes and so on.
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
i'm gonna make some suggestions in this post about how we could move towards dwangoac's proposal with the infrastructure we already have, without suggesting overly big changes
dwangoAC wrote:
I feel strongly, and have felt for a long time, that we need ways for communities to be self-regulating with their own community categories that meet their needs, such as the fighting game folks or individual communities like Celeste. If we give them a home similar to a speedrun.com page where they can make categories and hash though their own requirements, they'll do a lot of the hard work without requiring a huge amount of staff oversight. Encoders would continue and expand as needed, publishers would continue to handle descriptions and other aspects of promoted runs, and judges would primarily move into curator roles focused on highlighting runs with far less frequent adjudication.
[... description of submission system ...]
i really like the submission proposal of dwangoac post the most in this thread.
especially the promotion system going from hidden > visible > synced > published
going further on it why not make visible userfiles and sync files use the same infrastructure we have?
just like we do today when submitting a text, we make a youtube encode already, and write a descrption about the run .
let's use what tasers already make and use it more prominently. they already mostly do it anyways
when someone searches up a "synced" userfile it would put this on their screen (just make it clear its not published)
-----------------------
please make game wiki pages editable by anyone
no one wants to make an account to edit a page if this is their first interaction with the site
------------------------
i feel like game pages are very useless
i dont like that only admins can make game pages, what if i have a new game but didnt finish a tas yet/no tas tools? the game page literally cannot exist at the time it could be the most useful, in the exploration phase of a game
https://miraheze.org/ lets anyone create a wiki for a thing, lets do the same for the game page, and lets let anyone who wantcreate game page, wiki pages, subpages pages and let them do stuff
This is basically my experience with almost everything i TASed and it's aggravated by the verification movie debacle and bizarre rulesets which tell me what is and isn't valid in the dead game I put my time into. Nowadays i want to help Judges get through the stuff faster but I don't want be part of the Staff because you prioritize site rules to the game's communities rules and judgements. All accomodations are RULE BREAKING and will effectively stop people from publishing pikmin 2, mario kart TASes and so on.
hard agree
EDIT: removed the rest of this post, its offtopic and dont like how it came off
please make wiki pages editable by anyone
no one wants to make an account to edit a page if this is their first interaction with the site
Even if we moved to a MediaWiki-styled site, making pages editable by anyone is a recipe for abuse and spam. Plenty of wikis require an account for edits for that precise reason. Besides, making a TASVideos account is extremely easy. If that is the reason someone doesn't want to edit a page, then I'd be very concerned about the quality of their potential contributions.
xy2_ wrote:
i dont like that only admins can make game pages, what if i have a new game but didnt finish a tas yet/no tas tools? the game page literally cannot exist at the time it could be the most useful, in the exploration phase of a game
Have you tried asking for such a page? In all likelihood, the page would be created and permission given for you to contribute. Ideally what you'd be adding is content that you know to be true or that would be beneficial for others.
xy2_ wrote:
https://miraheze.org/ lets anyone create a wiki for a thing, lets do the same for the game page, and lets let anyone who wantcreate game page, wiki pages, subpages pages and let them do stuff
I have created two wikis using that service. One of which is the n64brew wiki used by the homebrew and emulation communities for documenting the ins and outs of the N64. As nice as the host is, they aren't nearly as reliable as TASVideos.org, and there have been quite a few sketchy moments in recent years where it wasn't clear if the host would even continue existing. You're also extremely limited in what extensions you can add (you must request new extensions via Phorge, and they usually need to be popular enough to warrant making available across the entire farm). Making your own backups of the site is also difficult, and you simply cannot backup or transfer user accounts what-so-ever.
Edit:
xy2_ wrote:
the rules have become so obtuse (to no ones fault to be fair, they have kind of evolved that way over the years and we also have the site legacy)
but more importantly BLOCK TASES FROM HAVING A PLACE ON THE SITE WHEN THEY ARE REJECTED BECAUSE REJECTIONS ARE EFFECTIVELY UNSEARCHABLE (playground is a good step in this direction btw but lets take it further see dwangoac proposal)
Rejected submissions are just as searchable as any other submission, including playground. While the search function in general may still need some improvements, such changes take time for the few people that actually contribute to the site's code. You can also filter submissions by rejected or playground. Alternatively, when viewing a game page, you can click on the Submissions link, and further refine the list from there.
on the editable by anyone: yeah i see your point now. that is abusable and requiring an account is probs a good idea
about creating game pages: i know i can ask someone who has authority to do that, and unfortunately what if the person is not there? what if i'm new and don't know who's in charge? i feel like that adds a lot of friction. i'd like to be able to just do it
about miraheze: i agree. that's why i want to host stuff on tasvideos too especially with the miraheze outages and uncertainty. and we are taking it from a power user perspective, the wiki is definitely not as easy to use from a casual user perspective and i feel like that limits stuff a lot
for the rejected submission part: thats why i like dwango's thing, it could reuse a lot of infrastructure. while i can search for a rejection on the site and on google, it very much feels like a second class citizen with only a forum thread
This is basically my experience with almost everything i TASed and it's aggravated by the verification movie debacle and bizarre rulesets which tell me what is and isn't valid in the dead game I put my time into. Nowadays i want to help Judges get through the stuff faster but I don't want be part of the Staff because you prioritize site rules to the game's communities rules and judgements. All accomodations are RULE BREAKING and will effectively stop people from publishing pikmin 2, mario kart TASes and so on.
the rules have become so obtuse (to no ones fault to be fair, they have kind of evolved that way over the years and we also have the site legacy)
but more importantly BLOCK TASES FROM HAVING A PLACE ON THE SITE WHEN THEY ARE REJECTED BECAUSE REJECTIONS ARE EFFECTIVELY UNSEARCHABLE (playground is a good step in this direction btw but lets take it further see dwangoac proposal)
I rambled a bit on discord, so posting here: Let's find out what genres of games a game specific community(ish) approach would make sense, and what may be their categories:
Fighting games
Fighting (Different characters/game mode)
Racing (Different tracks, first lap only, different vehicles, different modes)
Platformer (Every stage it's own run, like SM64)
Adventure (Hard to describe, but I had zelda individual dungeons TASes in mind)
Puzzle (depends on the game)
Shooter (depends on game, likely challenge modes)
Misc. (Games that by itself won't make sense, but have modes that can have runs themselves, like Pikmin challenges)
The generic categories I could think of that can apply for all are:
Any%
Glitched, varies by game
100%
Glitched 100%, varies by game
Game specific objectives that only apply to 1 game (for instance, master sword%, 16 stars in SM64, in game time vs. real time, high score, minigames, etc)
Right now, these types of runs are either Youtube/Twitch exclusive, with no input file provided (so for highly optimized/technical runs, it is almost impossible to beat, or even replicate the glitches at all), or posted only Discord as some offhand thing (Discord links expire; this is also very hard if not impossible to search; if server owner nukes server rip all info).
This means one of the greatest values the site has currently that others don't provide are searchable forums, and input file hosting. A number of runs I mentioned (individual stages/characters/etc) do not follow movie rules whatsoever. At the same time, they are rather "small" for a full blown Playground entry (Wario Land 2 for instance has 50 stages. Glitches take several seconds per stage potentially. This would immediately be 200 playground submissions if I submitted each one individually, each starting from savestate, with ideal RNG that wont make sense in any%/100%).
Right now, we have userfiles. But this is not suitable for the types of runs I mentioned above. For starters, if I uploaded say, a run that gets all coins in a stage, userfiles won't be able to compare a run of the same category if there was an improvement, or a slower submission. If there was some system where you can make a game sub site like speedrun.net that you can (somewhat easily) upload input files, that immediately gets listed into some leaderboard with different categories, that would be great. They don't need to explicitly have a thread for each entry. Just a list of input files, and their times, would be satisfactory.
A problem with this is moderation. For more active communities, these effectively self regulate. I am not sure who should be responsible for handling disputes for some niche game category disagreement, or some other drama regarding what should be in what category. Similarly applies if a troll uploads an input file that doesn't do what it says it does (for instance, time says it beats the WR, but the input file itself is literally idling in the menu for the entire time, or any april fools joke submissions).
I am not saying we should abolish judging. For the vast majority of games, the current system is fine. But for certain cases, it would be nice if there was both a "lightly, community(ish) moderated subsite that allows basically whatever they want (like literally upload input file, it immediately appears there, let community(ish) judge if it's valid, no thread is created at all unlike playground), while at the same time having the current system for the usual submissions (any%/100%/glitched(ish)/etc). This would allow more runs to appear on the site, since TASing a single stage/mode/whatever is both relevant to the site, and small enough to actually have a run, rather than spend months on it just for it to be rejected because it was slower for a handful of stages. If anyone ever makes a full run, it can be "upgraded" to a normal submission as well.
* Community(ish) since I am aware most games, the TASer is the entire community.
A concern I have with people wanting a speedrun.com style system ("community curation") is simply that it would really only work as a way to significantly lighten the judge's load if you just allow self-judgements, something that has been disallowed on the site with our current system (if mainly due to the wild west days of TASVideos having such rife with abuse). It would also need to come with the removable of publications (and subsequently downsizing whatever role judges/site staff have anymore).
Many many games which are TASed here (if not the vast majority) simply don't have some wide TASing community available, many not even having any active RTA community. Many TASers here end up being the sole TASer (i.e. the entire "community") of a game, typically just doing a single "Any%" run then never looking back at the game. Some more regular TASers even do so with many many different games, at which point they themself become multiple "communities" of different games.
If self-judgements are fundementally disallowed, then a regular judge (or fundementally someone from the site staff team) would be in charge of handling the submission and deciding if it can be published. This would then comprise the bulk of the work for judges, leaving us ultimately back to square one.
If self-judgements are allowed, then practically many TASes would just be approved by the same person who created them. Which also fundementally goes against needing to sync with another person (besides the TAS author) in order to be accepted. Although granted, that somewhat is implicit with the publisher syncing the submission, but if the publisher can't sync it... the submission normally has to come under more scrutiny to figure out how to sync it, something normally best done by a judge (or literally anyone else) and not of course by the TAS author themself, leading back to work for site staff.
speedrun.com ends up having self-verification allowed (although sometimes game communities disallow such). This doesn't particularly matter so much for them, as being "accepted" onto there just means a place on a community leaderboard with maybe a video from your own youtube channel attached. For TASVideos, the only parallel this even has is with the playground status, which a vast majority of TASes would not arrive at, rather they would just be published and thus go up on TVC. In a system where publication is still present, there would still need to be some curation by site staff to decide what to publish and what not to publish, and so there can't be some self-verification in such a case.
Of course too, having some community curation would mean a ton of work for the site devs, which will need a ton of time to even implement any kind of system like that. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean it is not worthwhile to implement such a system, as TASing subcommunities could do some curation of a new host of runs (many perhaps going to playground), but I do not believe it would fundementally reduce the load of judges and such unless you proceed to make drastic changes along with that like allowing self-judgement and the removal of publications.
If self-judgements are fundementally disallowed, then a regular judge (or fundementally someone from the site staff team) would be in charge of handling the submission and deciding if it can be published. This would then comprise the bulk of the work for judges, leaving us ultimately back to square one.
If self-judgements are allowed, then practically many TASes would just be approved by the same person who created them. Which also fundementally goes against needing to sync with another person (besides the TAS author) in order to be accepted. Although granted, that somewhat is implicit with the publisher syncing the submission, but if the publisher can't sync it... the submission normally has to come under more scrutiny to figure out how to sync it, something normally best done by a judge (or literally anyone else) and not of course by the TAS author themself, leading back to work for site staff.
Maybe rather than everything self judged, you have a improved userfiles that would allow a leader board like system for self made categories, while the main standard categories and playarounds can get the current system.
A way to frictionlessly upload input files for "easy" comparison for a similar category for "small(ish)" runs (game modes, single stage/lap/whatever, alt goals) that basically is like current userfiles but has some ranking system. They don't need a playground thread, nor a publication video, just like current userfiles. They can be as serious/official as they want. It sounds kinda easy to abuse given 0 checks, but at the same time this already kinda occurs in speedrun.net, with record holders of niche runs that are deadlinks. The example I linked for instance, has 3 runs, and 2 of them are dead links. That 1 remaining video is literally the only thing encode of the glitch anywhere online. I assume a lot of speedrun links would be similar.
Even in the case of just 1 TASer interested in the game, it still has a use. For instance, it can act as a personal best leaderboard for individual level runs, with input files included. So even if the 1 person interested in the game quits before they make a full game run, there's still something to show of, in a nice list (rather than the current userfiles, where you can't exactly go search "runs of stage X). A full blown playground thread for every single submission for individual stage would be overkill. For instance, if I did that for the current game I'm working on (Wario Land 2), that would be 200 threads (50 stages, any/100 gltich/less). Dumping them on userfiles would
1. Make me run out of space, just for 1 single game
2. No way to compare improvements easily.
Newbies can also submit their mario runs there I guess, instead of the over 100 submissions that get rejected. Like you can treat it as "good job, here's how you did in comparison to the rest", rather than "your run doesn't beat the WR, rejecting". They don't need a thread, nor a publication. Just a entry on a list as record keeping. If they do beat all records, they can "upgrade" it to an actual submission that gets published.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Somehow I didn't discover this topic until earlier today (it was posted right when I was in a period of not having the time or means to catch up with the site, but it's also an indictment of how involved I am with site affairs these days lol). ikuyo makes lots of good points about how the climate of TASing today, and the growth of TASVideos, and the expansion of its ruleset, has grown into an untenable position for its staff. I agree that the current framework is unsustainable.
When I was senior staff/judge in the mid-10s, I kept a lot of the binds of the ruleset in place in part because this was an issue I saw coming (although it also helped that the site framework at the time was a lot more resistant to change in general). It didn't make everyone happy, but it kept the site mostly operational and sustainable. Of course, some time after I stopped being involved, the site got technologically overhauled, which allowed the site administration to more freely rewrite its rules and expand what TASes are considered suitable for publication. From this, the site surged in popularity and submission counts reached historic levels, so I can't say that this was a wrong decision. However, more submissions was always going to weigh on the limited workforce of judges and publishers, and so it seems we now have reached the point where the bubble is about to burst.
Around the time I stopped being senior staff (before the broader administration change), since I anticipated that the current publication system wouldn't really suit the current internet age for TASing (with speedrunning in the mainstream, srcom, YouTube, and all that), I started thinking about alternative ways that a TAS site could operate. (These would never have been able to apply to TASVideos, as in my head it would've made too far a departure from what TASVideos is). I only ever vaguely talked about it with a few people, so nothing ever came of it.
It never left the idea phase, and I also never really wrote any of it down, but the crux of my ideas at the time was:
* People could submit TASes, but there would be no such thing as a publication system. Instead, community members could provide ratings on technical quality and entertainment quality, as well as flag them as verified syncing (and potentially add other flags to note potential irregularities in the movie, perhaps in the vein of Twitter's Community Notes)
* TAS encodes could be either author-provided, or provided by a trusted encoder or third party (verified by a trusted member)
* Any submission that was (sufficiently) flagged as verified synced (and maybe having an encode), and maybe passing a bar of technical quality rating, would be considered a "verified" submission. Verified (and optionally, highly rated) TASes could be featured on the front page, or more prominently displayed on per-game pages
* When multiple TASes of the same game and category exist, they are represented as a leaderboard (maybe an obsoletion chain)
* The idea was that pretty much every step of what makes a current TASVideos publication, could be provided as part of community efforts and curated through rating systems where highly rated and verified submissions could take precedence (be featured on the front page, etc), but no submission is rejected outright.
* Staff wouldn't exist in the form of judges or publishers, but there would be an elevated class of "verified"/trusted users who can more easily flag a movie as confirmed syncing, add encodes, etc
* Since the concept departs so far from what makes TASVideos TASVideos (at least at the time), I referred to the idea as "TAS Archive" instead, as the goal was to archive any TAS submission, regardless of if it would have traditional publication merits.
Perhaps these ideas are still useful. Perhaps they aren't, I have no way of knowing. But it looks to me that as the current TASVideos approach is becoming more and more untenable, something radically different is needed.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Maybe rather than everything self judged, you have a improved userfiles that would allow a leader board like system for self made categories, while the main standard categories and playarounds can get the current system.
One of my main points is just that most runs will just end up going to Standard. If the issue for site staff is sheer numbers for submissions, then by sheer numbers Standard runs would be bulk of their work.
This more means there's really 2 separate issues brought up by this thread.
1. Site staff are overworked.
2. The current rules still end up limiting TASers too much for interacting with the site.
Solving one doesn't necessarily solve the other. An improved userfiles with a leaderboard like system while keeping Standard over to the current system I would think at most helps "solve" 2, without actually addressing 1.
This more means there's really 2 separate issues brought up by this thread.
1. Site staff are overworked.
2. The current rules still end up limiting TASers too much for interacting with the site.
Solving one doesn't necessarily solve the other. An improved userfiles with a leaderboard like system while keeping Standard over to the current system I would think at most helps "solve" 2, without actually addressing 1.
This is a great Tl;Dr actually. Given how it seems some are still unaware of this thread, I think this should be brought up to the rest of the staff brainstorm more ideas. Maybe get some of the more active TASers on discord to post on this thread? I'm not sure who are they though.
Post #531746
What's the logic behind marking submissions as verified? Is it documented anywhere?
Should I become a reviewer or an editor in order to mark submissions myself? If someone else still has to verify the run on its own, then my impact on movie verifications doesn't make much sense
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Post #531746
What's the logic behind marking submissions as verified? Is it documented anywhere?
Should I become a reviewer or an editor in order to mark submissions myself? If someone else still has to verify the run on its own, then my impact on movie verifications doesn't make much sense
A movie being marked as verified by someone other than the author means that it's reproducible by someone other than the author. This gives more validity to the TAS itself. Truly, all past site videos have been (or should have been) verified through the judging/publication process.
Specifically adding this functionality of having others (besides a judge) verify sync on a run offers a bit more flexibility to the judging staff. If a judge can't get a run to sync themselves, but others in the staff/community have been able to sync the run; then the judge is still free to make a decision on the run for acceptance/rejection based on the verified sync check, even if they haven't personally synced the run. Similarly, it allows a judge who may not have the current setup/knowledge/capability to run a TAS on a particular system/emulator (i.e. linux w/ libTAS) to still judge the run based on an encode and another's sync verification.
To mark a submission as sync verified yourself, you need the catalog permission, which requires at least the Editor role. The submission also need to be cataloged entirely before sync verification can be checked (UI won't allow such, this is of course due to needing to document the game version which syncs the movie)
I agree that coming up with a new method to publish runs is necessary, as the current system is in no way sustainable. All the work required for judging and publishing is done by volunteers out of passion and this system right now is causing them to burn out. But at the same time, the site also needs to let go of its overly curated and strict approach towards TASes, which has damaged its reputation and turned people away from it. As a result, many great TASes never even get submitted here in the first place.
These two things are in direct conflict. I absolutely want people to be able to get TASes published for each individual character of a fighting game, but I also want this system to be manageable. So maybe we really should just put everything about the current publication system up for debate.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
To mark a submission as sync verified yourself, you need the catalog permission, which requires at least the Editor role. The submission also need to be cataloged entirely before sync verification can be checked (UI won't allow such, this is of course due to needing to document the game version which syncs the movie)
I want to clarify that the Reviewer role allows calalogging pubs (subs, and games as well), and is intended for those who want to help sync verify submissions.
To say that this site has helped so many people discover and appreciate this wonderful subset of gaming culture, myself included, is an understatement. Not only did TASVideos show me how beautiful the world of tool-assisted runs could be, but it also allowed me to look into more niche communities that are more disconnected from TASVideos (the Mario Kart Wii TAS community, for example). However, to say that the site's original vision and still-to-this-day strict rules and processes on which runs can even be featured on this site are more and more becoming a major problem is also an understatement. I'm not saying that someone's first TAS of Super Mario Bros that's multiple seconds slower than HappyLee's TAS should be accepted (I have actually seen this exact sort of submission pop up before). There obviously has to be some sort of quality control. But the emphasis on entertainment and full-game runs at the detriment of individual level runs and runs strictly focused on time is the exact reason why the Mario Kart Wii TAS community is disconnected from this forum. It's the same reason why the Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark speedrunning community, AKA The-Elite, was disconnected from Speed Demos Archive. In fact, TASVideos is basically the TAS equivalent of SDA in its current state. Something definitely has to change, and it looks like we might be heading towards most of those needed changes. Being more of an archival site, preserving the history of the artform, allowing IL runs, reducing the bottleneck of the curation process. These changes are absolutely needed. However, more than anything, the strict enforcement of certain rules regarding what can even be published on the site has caused problems for multiple games and their TAS potential. As a basic example: Super Mario 64 has five major RTA speedrunning categories: 120 Star (100%), 70 Star (Any% NMG), 16 Star, 1 Star, and 0 Star (True Any%). However, two of those categories do not have equivalent TAS runs currently published on this site due to how publication rules are enforced. Now, I think we can all still live peacefully if 1 Star never gets a published run due to how similar it is to 0 Star. However, the lack of a published 16 Star run with modern optimization is very upsetting, as it's one of the most famous speedrunning categories in all of gaming. That being said, at the very least, Super Mario 64's optimization has never been held back by the rules of the site or the limitations of emulators. Unfortunately, that can't be said for every game. While some issues come down to emulator limitations (cartridge tilting, for example), there is one uniquely frustrating case where the sites rules have straight up prevented a category from using the most viable strategy, despite said strategy having similarities to what is actually used in the current published run.
Super Mario World, one of the greatest video games of all-time and a legendary speed-game in its own right. Now, unlike with SM64, all three of its major categories are accounted for in some capacity. 96-Exit is featured in its full glory, and Credits Warp is represented by the arbitrary code execution category, which focuses more on entertainment these days but has been speed-focused at certain points in time. That leaves the famous 11-Exit category, an iconic speedrunning category with a rich history in both RTA and TAS. Except...the TAS currently uses a strategy that, while it used to be the best known route, has since been made outdated in RTA. In the TAS, a detour is taken to YI1, where you take Yoshi all the way to the end, use Fire Mario to kill a plant, have Yoshi tongue the coin you get from killing said plant, and then collect the coin right as you load the Chuck into memory to trigger the Chuck-Eat Glitch, giving you the goal orb that's normally only found at the end of the Sunken Ghost Ship. This is then used to clear Iggy's Castle, and is faster than just going through the autoscroller and the cutscene after beating Iggy. However, as I said, this is not the current strategy in RTA. They instead do the Chuck-Eat Glitch in YI2, getting Lakitu's Cloud, and using it to skip a significant amount of waiting in the Bowser fight. So, why the hell isn't the YI2 Chuck-Eat used instead of the YI1 Chuck-Eat? Because the YI2 Chuck-Eat can be used to execute arbitrary code, and it's used in Credits Warp. TASVideos site rules dictate that ACE is its own category separate from regular Any%, meaning that an 11-Exit run using the Cloud Bowser strategy would be in the same category as the Credits Warp and automatically rejected for not meeting optimization standards. And making it even stupider, the YI1 Chuck-Eat is STILL allowed in non-ACE categories DESPITE being very similar to the YI2 Chuck-Eat. Has anyone ever even really tested if the YI1 Chuck-Eat could be used to execute arbitrary code in any way, or is there something about that type of Chuck that makes it okay for some reason? I know there was a huge debate about this trick years ago, but how extensively was the orb Chuck-Eat tested? If it's somehow found out that the YI1 Chuck-Eat also has ACE applications, it might straight up kill the 11-Exit TAS. You'd have to retroactively reject any run that used to orb glitch and go back to strategies so primitive that they haven't been used at the top level in RTA in OVER A DECADE! It's genuinely one of the stupidest and most glaring cases of TASVideos red tape becoming a major detriment to a category.
I think I've gotten my point across. Certain site policies have harmed the optimization and entertainment of some categories while straight up forbidding others from even existing. For Super Mario 64, that problem does have a simple solution: add a site rule where any major RTA categories for a game is eligible so long as they are significantly distinct from other categories; 16 Star would be my conservative example of how this rule should be applied. As for Super Mario World 11-Exit, that is not an easy fix in any way. A new rule making an exception for applications of ACE tricks that are useful in non-game-ending glitch categories would have too much of a grey area, so I believe that the current ACE rules would need to be completely overhauled, which would cause a major restructuring of the submission and publication process and the categorization of runs due to the red tape surrounding it. Even if all of the other structural issues the site has currently are resolved, the overly strict rules on what can be published are still big enough of an issue to potentially sink the site anyways, so I think this should be of similar urgent priority to the other issues already discussed in the main post of this thread.
For Super Mario 64, that problem does have a simple solution: add a site rule where any major RTA categories for a game is eligible so long as they are significantly distinct from other categories; 16 Star would be my conservative example of how this rule should be applied.
In the most recent news post, Samsara said this:
Samsara wrote:
Going forward, Alternative will expand to include many speed-based branches, regardless of their entertainment level. This is far more in line with our original vision for PG. Creativity no longer requires an audience, meaning you can create a run of the exact branch you want to see and we will showcase it the same as any other run.
Has anyone ever even really tested if the YI1 Chuck-Eat could be used to execute arbitrary code in any way, or is there something about that type of Chuck that makes it okay for some reason?
The orb glitch, although looks similar, happens entirely inside the game's ROM and is thus allowed.
Happening entirely within the ROM itself definitionally makes it not ACE. I would of course be assuming that the submitter didn't lie here and there was someone checking it (although of course, it's generally fairly trivial to even check this in emulators).
Keep in mind the rules are not prohibiting a glitch which can do ACE per se, but rather, does ACE per se (which can generally be defined as redirecting execution to some user controlled RAM; or any RAM not intended to be executed if you want a particularly broad ACE definition). If it's found out you can do ACE with this glitch, that doesn't prohibit the glitch entirely, that just prohibits usage of that glitch doing that ACE (which again, this could be checked fairly trivially in emulators).
The newer rules already in place do allow for slower categories to use ACE anyways, in Alternative. In this case however, since that category is a Standard run, it would just be prohibited within that obsoletion chain, instead forming a new obsoletion chain. Of course, if say you find a way to do the problematic glitch without invoking ACE per se, you would end up being able to use it within that obsoletion chain.
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please make game wiki pages editable by anyone
no one wants to make an account to edit a page if this is their first interaction with the site
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i feel like game pages are very useless
i dont like that only admins can make game pages, what if i have a new game but didnt finish a tas yet/no tas tools? the game page literally cannot exist at the time it could be the most useful, in the exploration phase of a game
https://miraheze.org/ lets anyone create a wiki for a thing, lets do the same for the game page, and lets let anyone who wantcreate game page, wiki pages, subpages pages and let them do stuff
