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So, after Cheetahmen 1, the consumers just said, "Don't tease us! Where's part 2???" I've never heard of anything like this before - worse than all the worst games?
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I couldn't exactly tell you what I didn't like about it, but I honestly think it's the game - not you. Something about it is just odd. The visuals and the sounds are just warped and it ends very abruptly. Again, I couldn't put into words what's not good about it, but I didn't care for it.
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Dr. Morbis wrote:
As a final note, when I watch a SMB time attack, I like to know how it compares to the real world record on Twin Galaxies. If it blows that away, I'm more impressed. How on earth can I make that comparison if one time is for 'touching the axe' and the other time is for 'least frames used for input' or 'movie stop' time? I think all videos on the site should have the REAL completion time listed.
Well, in a game such as SMB, sure, but remember, even something as popular as SMB is a completely different game - comparing them isn't too fair. You're right that one is touching the axe, one isn't, but also one uses alternate pipes, solid object walking, and wall jumping, and one doesn't. The ending point is probably the smallest variation. And just about every video here that incorporates the slightest glitch will be different from Twin Galaxies in that regard.
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I'll go for yes - not every movie can be Rygar to watch, but I liked this. And I don't see much room for improvement.
Oh, and it seems like every submission has a no vote automatically lately. Is there someone out there who just joined the board to vote no for every movie?
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I fell down ledges when there was a bone underneath me to collect, and I'm not aware of any strange pauses - only 4 hits per stage and dying takes a butt-ton of time, so sometimes I had to wait out an enemy for a split second, but I attacked as often as possible.
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First, I would recommend to the mods to not edit this post - he makes some valid points.
Second, you can insult us all you want, but you can't envy us at the same time.
Over and over you talk about the only impact we have on the community is damaging, yet you say there is nothing threatening about the videos. People will believe whatever they want to - that's not the issue. Morimoto's video was certainly the starting point of everything, making the truth ambiguous to the viewer, but to say that nothing good has ever come of these videos or nothing has been discovered as a result is simply asinine.
I've been playing Punch Out since its inception and the common goal is to defeat the opponents as fast as possible. I never could get Super Macho Man under 1:15, but after watching Phil's video, I can take him out flawlessly close to the 1:00 mark every time and I'm closer every time to sub 1:00 - on a console.
Nobody on this board holds the weight to the videos you're telling us we do. Why then are legitimate players getting upset that we, in basic terms, think we're better than you are? There's a reason "author" is before every game title and not "player."
Besides, and here's something you may not have noticed, but getting a video for A Boy And His Blob isn't the easiest thing to do. I was huge into Punch Out (again) about a year ago and wanted to see how I rated up with other players - a short list of times really doesn't help as they can be falsified, and even if they're all legitimate, if a player can beat me by 5 minutes, I'd like to know how. After hours and hours of searching, I came up with one simple site with 4 (4!!!) videos on it - and they weren't that good. Somehow, I tossed and turned around the search engines until I ended up here, where I found over 100 videos of classic games. Legit time players don't seem to want to waste their time posting a video for A Nightmare on Elm Street, but, as you can see, it can be in high demand.
You can say all day long that anyone watching a video is mislead into believing it's real, but it's not like real-time players were filling up my hard drive with classic NES videos. It's just too much trouble with a VCR for anyone to bother. The only videos you'll find out there for anything classic are going to be emulated, and with emulation comes tool-assisted - best you get used to that idea.
Oh, and thanks for the "fuckstick." Really touched up your fanboy argument. You forgot to throw in something about rubber and glue.
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I noticed in the recent "I'm writing an article about you guys" thread that everyone seems to agree that real time players have certain issues with tool-assisted movies, be it nervousness, unchecked aggression, or just plain jealousy. I've been pondering this and I think they're backing off a bit. There doesn't seem to be as much animosity as there used to be surrounding emulated movies and I think they're starting to be accepted as a valuable asset to the gaming community. Some examples:
Mr. Kelly R Flewin has an account here and posts often. Yesterday I shot him a PM over at Twin Galaxies noting that he should probably consider banning the thru-wall technique used in the latest SMB vids. He basically responded with, "I know - I saw. The time-attackers help me notice many things I never would have gotten on my own or from anyone at TG."
Phil and Genisto's Punch Out vid has been the talk of the town for the last 2 months over at the Gamefaqs MTPO!! board. At first, it was met with serious hostility, but taking some fighters 20+ seconds faster than ever thought possible opened up a whole new world of strategies. Now Phil and Genisto's movie is looked at as a valuable tool for discovering new console methods.
Metroid2002.com is the home of Red Scarlet, who patented the 2-item run, and everyone there seems very pleased with the fact that it was taken 1 item further. Now not only are people thinking of the possibility that it might be pulled off on a console, seeing the boldness of the 1-item run is making many of them actually attempt the 2-item run on a console - a feat never considered before.
Someone out there is going to work Phil's "jump backwards to gain maximum speed" technique in SMB to get a faster console run - even if they can't time it right at the beginning of the stages, it is still easy coming out of the pipes. I'm sure we can all expect a new world record soon.
I'm sure there are many more examples, but this is just what one single casual player noticed.
We all started on a console, some of us still play on them, but emulation has certainly opened up a whole new world of gaming and I think the die hard consolers are going to have to accept the fact that at 1% speed with re-records, you notice things. I think the best real-time players either already use or will eventually use these tools to clean up and maximize their real time runs and the only closed minded people crying about the purity of the NES aren't solid players or are threatened that their world records may be beaten by someone discovering something they couldn't.
Just food for thought.
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I have one question regarding the movie and the trajectory of Mario's jumps, but bear with me - this may take a second.
Before the warp zone in 4-2, after collecting the last set of coins, you take a baby jump landing you close to the bottom of the steps (the 2nd I think, and you take 3 jumps) - you can jump from there and land much closer to the top (the 4th step) and only jump once to climb the steps. I assume this is because a huge jump would actually slow you down somehow.
Yet, at the end of every stage, you take huge leaps to get to the 5000 point mark on the flag. Can a tiny jump landing you at the bottom of the pole each time actually take off frames or does this have something to do with falling slowly? If so, why the huge drop before the warp zone at 4-2?
Just nit-picking, I know, but I'm curious.
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I don't know about "losers," but I basically agree. It goes something like this:
Player 1: I beat this game in 13 minutes!
Player 2: Wait, you can shave off 0:30 by stopping it here!
Player 1: Really? Well, lemme change it real quick...UPDATE 12:30 minutes!
Frankly, I don't see what the issue is. The movie's faster, the fcm is faster, where it stops just over the axe can't possibly be 1 second faster, 13 people so far have voted yes, the only no vote isn't speaking up...what's the problem?
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Gigafrost wrote:
Anywho, one potential problem I see with option B is that, if we're going to be measuring game completion time, it might not make as much sense to measure it from reset as opposed to when the game actually starts since that is how game time in general is measured.
A solid point, and worth considering. If the only thing that matters is the time you're actually playing, then the opening title sequences for every game shouldn't be counted either. But, as Bisqwit pointed out, they're out of our hands - the ending point isn't.
TNSe wrote:
Common sense for SMB is that it ends when you hit the last hammer. Common sense for Monopoly is when computer accepts going bankrupt. Zelda when you touch the princess. Metroids when you touch the final lift.
Isn't it just easier to say, "end all your movies as early as possible" than to layout a stopping point for each game? That way everyone's competing on the same level and working with the same set of guidelines.
Again, movies are the goal. Monopoly says "0:35, but actually 0:53" in the description, and, for special circumstances such as these, I think that basically covers all the bases.
Any frequent visitor understands the times listed don't correllate with the actual movies, as the endings aren't counted, so I see one of two options:
-Change the time in the descriptions of each movie from the keystroke file's definition to the actual movie time. This will cause problems with the endings, as a SMB time in 5:14 doesn't sound too impressive.
-Define the starting and ending points of every game submitted. This is a serious amount of legwork that I wouldn't imagine anyone wants to get involved in.
Obviously, there are varying opinions on the subject, but I'd still recommend going with the standard for every movie - stop when no more user input is required.
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I would imagine there are many games that can be paused to stop the movie. If I'm not mistaken, you can pause in Metroid once the movie is stopped.
Oh, and yes.
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What if a glitch was discovered like, for example, land on Bowser's head and you're teleported to the axe? The movie would be stopped there, correct? Everyone would go for that.
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One thing everyone should be looking at is that the point of this site is movies, not the keystroke files. The files easily tell us how long they are so we don't have to time it or watch the avi closely to get the exact time. Most visitors to the site only know the movies, so a special circumstance should be warranted here. One could argue that the Metroid movie doesn't technically end until Samus is up the elevator and the screen changes, but all the runs save probably 1 second by stopping the movie as soon as up is pressed. 1 second doesn't make all the difference in the world, so the time noted in the file is basically accurate. This is a smaller scale version of Monopoly - hit the button and the computer does the rest of the work. The only way to know which movie is truly faster is to stop one of them where the other stopped and compare.
Kyrsimys wrote:
I think the biggest issue is that the game isn't really completed in the reported time. Currently we say for example "NES Monopoly completed in 00:35 Acmlm", but this isn't really true since the game is not completed until the computer is bankrupt, which doesn't happen for another 18 seconds.
If we follow this logic, there are a bunch of movies with inaccurately reported times. Many movies end when no more user input is required and the computer does the rest of the work to get to the ending.
What is the end of a movie? When you fire the bullet to hit Red Falcon, when the bullet hits Red Falcon, or when Red Falcon explodes, the screen collapses and switches to the ending sequence. And what if you got that final shot in on Red Falcon and had to jump into a hole to escape. Would you wait to land in the hole or would you simply stop after jumping? Part of the fastest completion competition is stopping a movie as early as possible.
And, I agree with Phil in this respect - the viewers are not the players. If a movie ends right where no more user input is required, but the player can press start to pause indefinitely, I don't think it would be rejected (Metroid?).
In my opinion, if the Monopoly file ends at 0:36, but the movie ends at 0:57, and someone submits a movie with a file time of 0:54 and the movie ends at 0:54, it should take precedence. Similarly, if Phil and Genisto's movie is longer when hitting the axe than Mana's, it should be rejected.
The movies should count more than the time in the file, and once a movie is published, a player should look at stopping his movie at the same point the previous author did. But, in this circumstance, the current movie is faster than the published one using a new method to stop the movie, and currently the rules (understood or written?) state "no more user input required." I think Mana should change his movie and put it up against this recent submission, but as Phil noted, it wouldn't affect the time units, so I don't think it would be faster.
It's either this or the rules should be changed from "no more user input required" to "the user can no longer affect the outcome of the movie." But this wouldn't even help the Monopoly situation, as there can be no more user input.
No easy answers here, but remember when someone is downloading the torrent or fcm for Monopoly, right in their face is "This movie aims for the fastest time to get the CPU player bankrupt. It accomplishes it in 53 seconds in which only the first 35 seconds require player's input (to heavily manipulate the luck)." I think that basically covers it.
Now, for SMB, it would be silly to put 5:00 (Movie actually finished in 5:01). I think the standard of "no more user input required" is a solid one and if anyone out there is saying, "My run beats this but I stopped it later than he did" then he should go back and stop it sooner - no problems then.
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Should be a reasonable man thing, right? I mean, it's not like the goal of the run is to collect coins or score points, so first, time should be judged, then style. I don't think "I collected 2 more coins" should be an issue when dealing with this movie unless the goal is to collect the most coins. I voted yes because it's 1 second faster than the published movie.
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I suppose the only real way to know if this is faster than Mana's is to stop Mana's movie at the same spot and compare frames. A search of the rules turned up nothing opposed to this method, but I could be not looking in the right places, but I did find a pretty good quote from the SMB2j discussion:
bisqwit wrote:
The only requirement I've had is that the movie must contain a sequence that leads to the ending without user input required.
I'd also prefer if the movie is ended so that when the "Movie end" text is displayed, the user who watches the movie can't control the game so that the end isn't reached. I'm not certain whether this is true in my video (can you kill Mario by pressing LEFT when the movie ends?), but there are already some published movies (such as Phil's Castlevania 3 movie) where this is not true.
I mentioned the Monopoly, but there is no possible way to input anything after the movie is stopped, so that wouldn't be the same thing. Is this a rule already or just a preference? Perhaps "Stop your movie when the last possible user input is required" should read "Stop your movie when you no longer can affect the outcome of the game."
Nevertheless, I'm guessing there's a point above the axe before hitting it where nobody could affect the outcome. Might save a couple of frames there.
