As far as I can tell there's not really a precedent on how roguelite TASes should be handled regarding savefiles. While most movies tend to start from a "clean slate", roguelites as a genre fundamentally work differently from most other games, since unlocks from one run affect future runs of the game by adding more content such as new items or even new levels and endings. The usual state most roguelikes are played in is a fully completed savefile. Both in regular play and RTA speedruns these games are most often played with all unlocks available.
As it stands right now, creating a TAS that follows this convention is pretty unfeasible, since save-anchored movies require a verification movie. Creating a full 100% movie of a roguelike game, even if unoptimized, is a monumental task due to the time investment required. These games tend to have a lot of content that takes tens of hours to get through to unlock everything.
As far as I can tell I'm the only person to have submitted any roguelite TASes to the site recently, and my approach to them has been... mixed
[5153] Windows The Binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb "Sheol" by rythin in 01:50.67 - starts from a clean file
[5729] Linux Nuclear Throne by rythin in 02:43.80 - starts from a partially completed savefile with a verification movie
#9478: rythin's Windows Balatro "Tutorial" in 02:28.30 - starts from a clean file, though this one requires it
There's also
[2650] Windows Spelunky by Tseralith in 01:54.03 which technically starts from a savefile, though I don't believe it's mentioned anywhere and is easy to not realise if one is not familiar with the game (there's usually a forced tutorial at the start, but entering it once marks it as completed. Someone running the movie could just assume the movie desynced when the first level layout doesn't match, run it again and now with the tutorial completed it appears to sync fine)
Now working on a roguelite movie that does require a fair bit of unlock progress, I'm running into a dilemma of how I should handle this. Should I:
a) simply create the TAS on a 100%ed file of the game to follow the usual convention the game is played in
b) create the TAS from a fresh file and include the unlock process in the movie.
c) create a verification movie that unlocks just enough progress to reach my goal in one run
I believe option a) to be the best as it most aligns with how these games are experienced in other forms of gameplay, but applying it would require changes to the rules regarding save-anchored movies.
I think option b) is also fine, and it can be applied without any changes to the rules, though it will result in movies created this way to deviate significantly from what might be expected for a TAS of a certain game to look like.
I find option c) to be the worst of the three. Depending on the game a verification movie for a certain goal might be unreasonably tedious to create, and playing on a partially completed savefile personally just feels arbitrary when the completion is only limited by how much of the unlocks the author felt like doing in the verification movie.
As far as I understand it the requirement for a verification movie stems from the fact that the savefile a movie starts from must be legitimately creatable from within the game. This is a fair rule, but with how TASVideos in general seems to be moving in the direction of becoming less strict on many aspects of getting a TAS accepted, maybe this could be another area to look at in that regard?
Would love some guidance here primarily of what to do with my current project, but also to start a conversation on the ruling mentioned, as it does feel a little outdated.
