I'm surprised this hasn't reached the forum yet... probably Bisqwit is being modest )
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1528811/20060417/index.jhtml
Not such a great article, IMO, but I suppose it's good publicity nonetheless. It could have talked a lot more about the process to create the videos. Tries to stir up controversy about TAS videos by interviewing regular speedrunners (like Radix and TSA).
Joined: 8/1/2004
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We have been discussing this in IRC. It seems that the article is bringing very little publicity. Furthermore, they make the claim that we used a hacked version of the game, which is both true and false.
Yes, Bisqwit, you modest bugger. Why didn't you tell us that we're all being noticed over here on this little corner of the internet, especially on something as big as MTV here?
I know it ain't the best of things, but still. It's still cool to know, yo.
because MTV doesnt really matter? just my input. im surprised TASing wasnt made out to be the great satan once more to start an uproar once more (though i believe everyone's beaten that dead horse enough by now for any argument to be laughable).
Joined: 11/22/2004
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Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
That was a pretty decent read, although there was one thing that bothered me: "My basic thought is 'don't like them, haven't made them, don't watch them,' " said Nolan Pflug, who oversees Speed Demos Archive, a Web site that houses traditional runs.
I just wish that people like Nolan, who lead large sites such as SDA, would be able to say something nice about tool-assisted speedrunning. They don't actively take part in the bad-mouthing, but they don't seem to dislike it either from what I can tell. Of course, it's possible that I'm completely wrong about this, and in that case, feel free to prove me wrong. And although he didn't really say anything bad about tool-assisted speedruns in that article, it would kind of be nice if he could for one time acknowledge that they're not evil but that he genuinely prefers the unassisted runs to them (instead of respectlessly saying "DON'T CARE").
But whatever, I don't mean to say anybody should start saying things they don't want to for political reasons, because that's nonsense. In the end, the article was a pretty good read.
We have been discussing this in IRC. It seems that the article is bringing very little publicity. Furthermore, they make the claim that we used a hacked version of the game, which is both true and false.
This is really the only problem I have with this article.
The claim is entirely false -- the games themselves are not modified. The environment in which they are running is.
"Hacked version of the game" would imply that the game code itself has been edited and changed, which is (hopefully, obviously) not true.
However, the rest of the article was acceptible. My congratulations to MTV for putting out something that didn't make me want to beat someone over the head.
I though the exact same, Xkeeper.
They really should have worded it more towards "Downloaded to a PC" similar, stating that the games are not altered any more than what is needed to get them onto a PC.
Good read, though. Also suprised on Pflugs views on us.
"We observe the behaviour of simple folk, and derive pleasure from their defects."
-Aristotle - Book of Humour
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
"I watched the TAS run and it was just at a level that can never be matched," he said. "For me, a speed run isn't about the end-time so much as it is about having impressive tricks in it. All the stuff in the TAS was just so crazy and inventive, and anything I did would pale in comparison. If I recorded a 17:43 run, I'd feel slow and stupid, and if I mastered a few of the new TAS tricks to squeeze out another 20 or 30 seconds, I'd feel like an unoriginal copycat tool."
That paragraph bothered me.
People need to take pride in what they do, not what the result looks like to everyone else.
I could imagine myself racing against this guy to the top of a really difficult to climb mountain. We're both way ahead of the world record about to reach the top, when Phil Cote grabs a jet pack and shoots up there and beats us by a good 30 seconds.
So we get to the top, and this guy would throw his hat down and cry about how Phil beat us; everyone can see him standing on top before we were.
I would agree Phil got their first, and that home video with the jetpack was cool and all, but I'd take great pride in conquering that mountain and beating the last record. Even if someone would beat me the next day with a normal wall climb I can see what a great accomplishment my hard climb was and still realize I'm one of the best out there.
I don't see mountain climbers quiting because they invented jetpacks. Whatever happened to doing something for the sake of the challenge?
Be all you can be!
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Perhaps not Jetpacks, but they had Helicoptors out for a while now.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
Actually, i can totally see his point, and you missed it, Nach. He didn't give up because of the time record. He gave up because he liked to make the speedruns in order to show the stunts mario can do. Which point was totally killed by the TAS.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
FODA: if the point is just showing what can be done, why not TAS it?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Yes, he quitted because he thinks he can't possibly invent anything new anymore that would be impressive while also meaningful.
> if the point is just showing what can be done, why not TAS it?
And become assimilated? ;)
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
It's not like you have to alter your religion or something to show off some moves in an emulator :P
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Well, that's his problem. I still firmly believe that speedrunners are sickeningly impressive in their own right.
It's just very difficult to compare the painstaking work of frame-advancing through a game and even programming a bot to play part of it for you in a certain way to the painstaking practice that these players have undergone. If Dennis Fong beats his opponent in the final match of a Quake 2 tournament with 56 to -1, then that is impressive. If Nal_rA decides to turn around a match by using a Corsairs and Dark Templar strategy against Mondragon's upgraded Zerglings and Ultralisks, which Mondragon cannot react to because his opponent also decided to go after his Overlords with his Corsairs, and wins the match even though he got more than half his base destroyed in a massive attack, then that is impressive. If gakousei's Sakura manages to take off more than 70% of evil's Sagat's health in a risky varicom while his health is at 1%, then that is impressive. And similarly, if someone manages to make a performance that's even slightly similar to some of the runs that are on this site, then that's impressive, too.
But it's not impressive because he was able to copy any tool-assisted run up to a certain degree of accuracy. It's impressive because he practiced hard to be that good and also manages to show that to us in a run he recorded.
I have a hard time believing that something as different as this (while still so similar, arguably) could ruin their party. If anything should be discouraging, it should be the unassisted speedruns, which have already been made for lots of games and are difficult to improve upon.
EDIT: like Nach said, it's about climbing the mountain. I do seem to believe in competition more than he does, but I definitely agree with everything he's said in his post.
Unless it's for very special personal reasons, which is usually not associated with a video game, people do not usually run games only to prove it to themselves. They do it for the shared enjoyment and reactions of others viewing their time, effort, and final product. Would you spend time running a game by hand over and over to the point of madness if nobody was going to see it?
That said, when there is a video of "perfect" play of a game floating around, it tends to discourage people from bothering to make their own run, especially if that video is popular. Since TAS runs are all about planning and glitches/tricks, all the fun of finding the nuances of the game is gone, and working so hard on something not many people will enjoy (outside of say, the SDA forums) is usually not worth it to most.
I enjoy watching TAS runs, I have to say. I like to see a game being demolished, and they appeal to me as a perfectionist. It's very fulfilling to watch one of your favorite games played to the point of ridiculousness. However, it helps that TAS runs are stuck in the realm of N64 and below. If I had seen a TAS run of HL2, I would have enjoyed it, but I would never have bothered making one. The idea just wouldn't have been appealing to me.
I am working on a "traditional" speedrun, so my opinion is biased. Max]I[muS-X might agree with me on this point: the fun is not in running the game, but finding all the tricks, glitches, sequence breaks, and shortcuts you can. Making the run is tedious, frustrating, sometimes boring, and often unappealing. When there is a video that already shows all the tricks to use which is "perfect", all that is left is the non-fun part.
If anything should be discouraging, it should be the unassisted speedruns, which have already been made for lots of games and are difficult to improve upon.
These are not discouraging, but encouraging. They give an example of an amazing run that is still possible to beat. If you beat something amazing, that makes your run amazing-er, and even though many (or all) of the tricks might already be used in the previous movie, it is still possible to improve, and you can still hope to find new tricks. The discouragement comes in with the TAS because it gives something "perfect" that for console runners are impossible to improve upon. It would make sense that we not worry about improving the TAS and only improve existing console runs, but the TAS will still be better than the new console run, so the runner might feel like they didn't "really" improve it, or didn't improve it "enough". I think this might be LeCoureur103's opinion. That and he doesn't get to find nifty tricks.
It's not like you have to alter your religion or something to show off some moves in an emulator :P
When you have shown off some moves on a console, doing the same thing on emulator may not be as satisfying because "anybody can do it." I'm not saying this is true for me, just that this is a possible line of thought for such a sentiment.
If a TAS with similar goals to the run I am working on had been created 6 months ago I likely would have thrown in the towel. I would have thought there was no reason to go on because I could never match what the TAS did. For me, if I watch a TAS before a speedrun with similar goals then the speedrun will be boring and slow. If I watch the speedrun before the TAS they will both be fast and enjoyable. So if a TAS of something I was trying to do were created before I finished, I would consider anything I do boring and slow, even though the entire concept for the two runs is different.
When I first posted at this site, I really didn't like the idea of TASing. It seemed "cheated and fake blah blah blah...", and I only came here because of Super Mario World (honestly, that's probably the only reason I still post here). I had been working with a friend to come up with many shortcuts for the game. I believe he was just helping and thought it was fun, but my original goal was to come up with enough shortcuts to beat the TAS on console. After much experimenting, I deemed most of the major tricks "impossible for console play" and left it at that. Then Fabian announced he was working on a new 96 exit run, so I asked several people if they thought they could perform some of my "impossible" tricks on console. All of them said no, but if any had said yes I would have done my best to keep all of them secret from anybody at this site and hoped that nobody here came up with them themselves. Most of the people I asked also thought it generally a good idea to keep the tricks to ourselves until we were sure we could not do them, and all agreed not to tell. But since they all said they could not do it, I decided to post them here and attempt to (at least in my mind) come up with more useful stuff. After deeming the tricks "impossible" I would never have considered beating the 1:31:30 96 exit run, so I told them here so my ideas could be seen, and hopefully included in a movie. This may seem selfish, but only because it is. If the situation ever arose where I was discovering major (or even minor) improvements in a game I would again try to let them be shown off in a console run before a TAS, but since my "serious" gaming experience is mostly limited to SMW, I don't think this will occur.
Just trying to give you an idea of what people who give up console running or just generally dislike TAS might be thinking.
As it turns out, it was a good thing I started posting here because JXQQ (honorary extra Q) showed me some tricks that would help in the run I am working on that I never would have come up with (SW4 ftw), or would have deemed "impossible until proven otherwise." Again with the selfishness.
This comment had something deep in it: "It's like tasting a bit of the dark side."
Nach wrote:
I don't see mountain climbers quiting because they invented jetpacks. Whatever happened to doing something for the sake of the challenge?
There's one prominent example of this: You can fly comfortably in a plane to the south pole. It's not even very expensive, if you are in eg. Australia. Yet there are people who walk to the south pole. Why would they walk there for months even at the risk of their lives when they could just jump onto a plane and fly there comfortably in a couple of hours?
Why indeed. The point is not getting there. The point is the journey, the achievement, the feat, the incredibly show of strenght and perseverance.
Do people flying to the south pole with a plane somehow lessen the achievement of someone who walked to the south pole?
