I have been following the development of Bisqwit's site from the very beginning when he only had less than ten runs up. All of those runs were extremely well played and really looked like they were superhuman. I am sad to say that this is not the case anymore. The quality of the videos has come down greatly. People are simply making new runs and submitting them without even thinking the game through. The runs are not polished at all before submitting and some movies have such blunt and obvious mistakes that it just makes you want to cry. The amount of runs DOES NOT make up for their poor quality.
So, I would like to say to everyone making or planning on making a run: The runs are not supposed to show just you playing through the game with mistakes corrected. They should be entertaining and awesome displays of impossible or near-impossible things.
Here are some things that seem to have been forgotten when making a run:
-Menu screens and the like should all be dealt with as fast as possible. Slowdown is exactly for this. You can scroll through menus with the greatest speed and accuracy possible and it requires only minimal effort but looks very cool and professional. Stupid mistakes like these that would've been easy to correct often give an amateurish image of the run. DO NOT settle for anything less than the fastest character switching or level selecting or whatever. Do it with 1% speed if you have to.
-At some points it is easy to see that you are not doing something as fast as possible. These points should be eliminated. Let's take a Rockman game for example: When you shoot a boss, it starts flashing. For the rest of the fight, make sure that you shoot at it as soon as it stops flashing. If the flashing stops at some point, it means you could've done it faster. If you don't do this, it looks really bad.
-Do not miss shots. You have the tools to undo missed shots. Why not use them? Missing shots gives a really lazy and sloppy image of the player.
-In a sidescrolling game, don't go back. It also shows that something could've been done faster. Stopping is not a good idea either, not unless it's absolutely necessary.
-Make precise jumps. Even if it doesn't improve your overall time, it looks very cool to always jump with the utmost precision. Just look at morimoto's Rockman and Rockman 2 vids.
-Don't be afraid of rerecords. If you have something like 300 rerecords in a 20 minute game, it usually just tells that you have been sloppy. Use as many rerecords as you need to achieve the exact result you are looking for. Never settle for less.
-Always remember to watch your run after you have completed a level. Correct your mistakes. DO NOT think that "oh well that only cost me .1 seconds, I won't bother with it". The goal here is PERFECTION, nothing less. If you will not put a 100% effort into the movie, it will probably look bad. And that's exactly the opposite of what we're trying to achieve here.
These are just some additions I feel need to be said and I really hope that you put more thought into making your run after reading this. Watch Genisto's and Morimoto's runs. See their utter perfection in everything. mfried's SMB run and Bisqwit's Rockman run are fine examples, too. Learn from them and make your run. After finishing it, watch it 10 times and correct all your mistakes. This is all I ask.
I agree completely with Kyrsimys.
When the submissions were fewer, I used to watch the submissions very carefully and complain to the author personally in constructive spirit of any signs of the "oh well, I don't care" attitude in the movie.
Now I don't have enough time to do that for everyone - especially if I don't know the games beforehand.
I just hope people would take the guidelines SERIOUSLY.
do you think there should be a category of users qualified as judges? They could be people who are each specialized and educated about certain games and could really help ease the work load. That way only quality runs that pass the judges' approval would be passed on to and encoded by the movie publishers. Just an idea.
do you think there should be a category of users qualified as judges? They could be people who are each specialized games and would really ease the work load. That way only quality runs that pass the judges' approval would be passed on to and encoded by the movie publishers. Just an idea.
Phil also suggested a voting system for the submissions.
Something like a mixture of these two ideas could be useful.
The idea of different judges for different genres sounds really good. As has been said, it's difficult to say anything about a movie of a game that one has never played or knows nothing about. I wonder if it would be difficult to find enough active and proficient people though.
While I haven't posting for long and only have been paying attention to time attacks since morimoto's SMB3 became widely popular, I've seen about 95% of the ones on this site and I feel that I can agree that some are just way worse than others, and I don't think I'm alone in that I can see where certain authors are just far more dedicated in achieving perfection, while at the same time keeping surprises coming. I don't think my "favorite" players are any different from the common ones, and they are clearly deserving of this.
Part of the problem is also game choice. walkerboh you just mentioned that astyanax was not a very exciting game to watch, but I think that could have been somewhat premeditated ahead of time. To me, one of the most well chosen games recently was bucky o'hare, which along with super c is my favorite time attack in the past few weeks. Fast-paced, lots of variation with 4 unique characters, entertaining even in the areas where the speed of progression is fixed, and from what I remember mighty close to perfect. The only thing it was missing was familiarity, the thing that really pushed morimoto's mario 3 video to be so amazing at first.
If one wants to be one of the names that's mentioned along with people like genisto and morimoto, they have to work for it.
Excellent thread here!
One thing I can say...submitting movies to Bisqwit is the easiest way of allowing people to see them. Hell, I would've done that with my horrible first version of Castle of Dragon if the site accepted FCE Ultra.
How about we make a thread listing sites where people are willing to host works in progress? That way, everyone can upload their movies to these places and most easily receive feedback.
Thanks,
Josh.
but then you take my 75 perchance chance of winning, if we was to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds ch...percents...i got a 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
I think a good, simple solution would be to add a "Publish This Run" flag to the submission form. If the submitter thinks his video is suitably perfected, he may check it. The mods then examine the run and uncheck or publish at their discretion. That way, people who just want somewhere to upload their test runs have space for it, and people who want to show their work to the world at large may do that to, all the while keeping admin overhead nice and tiny.
Good timing Kyrsimys, I was just about to make a thread about the entertainment level not being as high as it used to be.
As in, Morimoto's original mario 3 run was very entertaining, awesome jumps and the 99 lives thing as well. Enjoyable to watch. Fast and entertaining.
Now, most of the runs are aiming to be just fast (and as has been pointed, sloppy even in that) and not entertaining at all. Some sort of quality control would definitely be needed.
That said, I think it was good to bring this up.
In addition to just telling people to make better runs, the judges also have to be more careful not to accept runs that aren't good. The bad runs that were already mistakenly accepted should be removed.
should we start choosing judges then? It wouldn't be too difficult, for example the users already involved in ALttP planning would be ideal judges for that game, same goes for the users in the SMW thread etc.
One thing...
To me, speed is primarily what this is about. I don't know about anyone else, but I view this work in the same way that the Doom speedrunning community does; that is, that the primary purpose is to show what the theoretical best possible time for each game is. I have no problem doing cool stuff if it fits within that goal, but I am not a fan of sacrificing speed for anything.
Just my .02,
Josh.
but then you take my 75 perchance chance of winning, if we was to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds ch...percents...i got a 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice
I agree. My way of looking at it is that tool-assisted runs should serve the speedrun player, but Bisqwit's site is also founded on the principle that tool-assisted runs should be entertaining. Be as entertaining as possible, as fast as possible.
But you don't have to avoid being fancy to just to be fast. Some of the movies seem so focused on being fast, that they don't pull any stunts, even though they could.
The only stunts that should be pulled off are stunts that don't waste time, unless it's supposed to be a tricks video. For example, in my SMB video I did a cool looking stunt at the end of 8-3 that didn't waste time because I had to slow down anyway to avoid the fireworks. I also did some fancy enemy stomping, but that was ok since I was always running to the right at full speed the whole time.
exactly right. there just need be two priorities:
1. Speed
2. Entertainment
Speed is the most important, and if anything can be added to the movie without taking away from the speed, it should be done because it is possible.
I think the speed is the major thing that makes the movie entertaining, so you should never slow down just to be fancy.
But does a boring game done as fast as possible make a great video? No, IMO, and that to me is the biggest problem with most of the new videos coming out. The games themselves don't allow for any creative or extraordinary play.
Game choice is probably the most important factor in making an entertaining video but many people just pick crap games that very few people are interested in. People aren't trying to make great movies, they're just trying to get movies on the site.
I think the speed is the major thing that makes the movie entertaining, so you should never slow down just to be fancy.
When I make movies and when I watch movies, I tend to forgive a slowness of a few frames if you get a cool stunt in the exchange.
However when I compare competing entries in the submission list, I don't have time to watch all of them, so I only compare the time and do the decision based on that.
Game choice is probably the most important factor in making an entertaining video but many people just pick crap games that very few people are interested in. People aren't trying to make great movies, they're just trying to get movies on the site.
mmh... you may have a point here (thinking of "pearls" like Dragon's Lair, though the new run with the japanese version is much better, even though I think it's just famtasia running too fast - the sound seems faster too), but then again: Have you seen the Bucky o'Hare run? The game certainly isn't that well-known (though I remember really much wanting it for christmas or so back then when I was a kid), but the run was very entertaining none-the less. Very fast and some stunts here and there. Nice.
So while the game choice indeed is a factor, the thing about quality and speed the others talked about is still the major factor.
I for myself, if I may state my oppinion prefer watching stunts and stuff instead of pure speed, but watching the movies is always fun. It's just that I'd have more fun watching a long movie full of crazy looking stunts than a very short movie where the player just runs through the game.
Philip
