TL;DR: I made a TAS that uses a few mods, primarily to control RNG and some Unity quirkiness, and I'm considering submitting it to TASVideos, so I wanted to inquire on whether this'd be okay before doing so.
Hi, I made a full-game TAS of Cuphead (
https://youtu.be/YYuafcehOSE ). I was considering submitting it to TASVideos but there's a few things with it that make me unsure it'd be eligible.
First of all, this was done on libTAS on an unofficial build the game, since there is no official Linux release of the game. This also includes a few minor mods to the game's code, viewable here -
https://github.com/DemoJameson/Cuphead.macOStoLinux
I believe this and of itself has precedent from this:
https://tasvideos.org/7822S
But moreover, I implemented a few more mods into this TAS to make working on it easier.
First, I edited the game's loading routine to allow the game to flawlessly sync through loading screens. (changing an async to a synchronous call basically).
Secondly, I applied a sort-of-determinism fix to the Lobber EX move, the special explody purple attack. This is a bit simplified, but basically this is a move that when aimed in-between an enemy and a floor has a 50% chance to deal either 2x or 3x the normal amount of damage, depending on which collisions Unity processes first. This seems entirely random and I don't know the root reason for sure.
While libTAS *is* deterministic in this, this means that using this move on different frames and different game state would result in different outcomes, so since this move is used quite a lot throughout the game, I added this mod to make working on it a lot easier.
Thirdly, I forced a lot of perfect RNG through code edits. Cuphead is extremely high in RNG, with the odds of a perfect run estimated to be somewhere around 1 in 10^68. Some RNG is seeded on level entry, and some is generated on the fly during the level. While some on-the-fly RNG manips are possible by doing stuff like shooting bullets and spawning dust particles (which I did do here and there in places where code edits were too complex), I felt like relying on modding as the primary way to control luck was the way to go in order to avoid adding hundreds of extra hours onto the project or settling with suboptimal RNG (especially considering there's a few pieces of RNG that are something like "This boss delays his attack between 18 and 42 frames and I need it to be a very specific value 5 times in a row").
Finally, this technically prints debug information far out of bounds, and draws fully-transparent hitbox outlines. I used this stuff to help create the TAS, but realized a little too late that removing these mods caused desyncs related to other hitbox-processing-order shenanigans, so I found this solution that kept sync. This technically kept the mods running while not having any visible effects on screen.
I am aware that ROM Hacks are allowed on the website (
https://tasvideos.org/Movierules#RomHacks ), but I'm not sure if this kind of "convenience modding" is favored or has precedents. This TAS already took me about 200 hours to make as-is due to how complex this game is and how difficult working around Unity's quirks is, so I feel like if I hadn't made things easier to work on this TAS may not have been completed to the same level of quality. But, I completely understand if it wouldn't be accepted on the site, just figured I'd check in in regards to its eligibility. Thanks!
In Myst's case this seems like it does nothing, so this question is more in general to other titles.
Would exploiting the sound by using Windows itself be against the rules?
Since it's technically abusing a function within Windows and not the game itself.
Edit: For a comparison context that happened on Discord when I brought this up initially.
DrD2k9 believed that this would be related to Ruffle and no mouse bounds, however I don't believe in that correlation as with native Flash you're able to adjust the window sizing to click what was originally off-screen elements.
