Pardon my asking, but I can't find an answer... what kind of codecs do I need to view the .avi encodes? Opening the file right now just gets me a 10 minutes of mute black nothingness. :(
Agreed, and I don't understand why there is such resistance to the idea of "playaround" TASes. Then again I haven't been here for years and years, maybe this idea has been hashed and rehashed and the community decided that playarounds can go to youtube instead.
In any case, I usually enjoy watching videos with "speed/entertainment tradeoffs" more than the ones that just blow through things without thought or care about how boring the methods used might be. Certainly beating a game as fast as technically possible is impressive, but that doesn't make it more impressive than beating it as amazingly as possible. (See the published Smash Bros. run vs. the speed ones if you feel that could never possibly be the case.)
Actually Alucard would only be backdashing until wolf dash/bat dash became options, then it'd be interesting by sheer virtue of "whoa look how fast he goes."
Anyway I agree a straight-up glitchless run would be less interesting. If someone decides to do this they need to put additional criteria like "only uses weapon X" or "only uses special attack Y" or something. And I don't see that kind of run actually being done/being published as anything besides a demonstration.
I'm sad that the first real PSX TAS thread has so much pointless bickering. Why does it even matter again? Can't we just enjoy a good video instead of worrying about the fine print?
Whatever, I voted awesome/awesome, because this is awesome.
I agree that it does look pretty bad on YouTube. I don't blame you for not wanting to put out the SMV yet, though.
You're TASing a beast of a game, I'm just glad I get to watch.
Watched it, loved it, can't really add much more.
If you get bored, it would be cool to see a "let's solve levels in ridiculous, obscure, and almost impossible ways" kind of demo, and not worry about time.
I am so psyched to watch this. I played this game as a kid and loved it so much. Will be all over it when I get off work.
You know the console port had a multiplayer mode? Good times.
I think adding the SunSoft levels to the main submission is the way to go, by the way. A seperate movie isn't a bad idea, but five more levels aren't going to make this run "too boring" either. Anyone who won't enjoy that addition will probably have already shut off the run halfway through. Lemmings, like most puzzle games, is love-or-hate.
If you're not wearing any suits, you can glitch the game into going into the "baby metroid" part of the fight without being forced to kneel, as long as you have a certain amount of health. IIRC you have to stay off the ground during the part where you would be kneeling normally. Haven't done it in a while, can't say for sure. Easier to just go test it out.
I would just do one run for now and see if it's publishable; Smash Bros. gets a lot of attempts that don't work out. I highly recommend going for entertainment with speed as a secondary priority; the only published run is the run that had these goals. There are a few people around who really love a speed run, but the majority seems to agree that this game is rather dull when the same move is used over and over. (Maybe you already know all this, but it can't hurt to tell you anyway.)
Pikachu would be a good choice because he has a variety of very impressive one-on-one KOs (look at antdgar's videos for some ideas). Kirby can do a lot of damage, but he might end up being somewhat repetitive unless you use his copy ability prolificly. Fox, I think, is the least entertaining character, because he has one or two really neat ways to kill people and that's about it (I'm thinking of laser and reflector). None of his melee-type attacks are particularly memorable, and they mostly lack knockback. Feel free to prove me wrong, though!
Yes, please don't obsessively barrel roll, it's cool on occasion but it gets boring quick. Tilting the ship at various angles, random shooting, boosting/breaking are all possible variations I'm sure you've already considered but I'll say it anyway just to make sure you don't barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel
Any time I read one of Saturn's "this is impossible" sentences, I just mentally add "unless new tricks are found" and it all makes perfect sense. I'm a fan of never saying never, myself.
Anyway, that's besides the point, this is an excellent run and I don't see any reason to fault you for neglecting optimization considering it's not a publishable category. Good work.
I never did play the GBA version. Cool to hear that they had an easy way around that, getting Mog Water Rondo was always such a chore.
I agree with you though, it'd be a dull run for EVERYthing. Maybe it'd be fun to watch a run that "completes all sidequests" instead. Your idea of showing off every character's low-level strength sounds really fun as well. "Sacrifices speed for entertainment" would be a must for this game, since Setzer completely breaks it on a pure speed run. I hope someone picks this up... and if no one does it in the next year or so, maybe I'd take a shot when my life is less hectic.
FF6's Dances wouldn't necessarily be hard, but it'd be very time-consuming. You can only get Water Rondo in the World of Balance, which means an extra trip to Narshe to get Mog early (not a big deal), but it also requires you to fight in water, which is only possible in two places: the rapids past the Returner Hideout and the trench at the end of Sabin's branch. Both of these paths are one-way trips, so even after you have the airship, you have to go through the entire rafting-> Doma continent-> waterfall-> Veldt-> trench-> Nikea boat ride sequence again. It'd add on at least 10 minutes for one dance, and as far as I know there wouldn't be any other sidequests to do on that path (unless you wanted to mess around on the Veldt, I guess, but there's no point in a visit there before the World of Ruin even if you're going to master every Rage).
Despite what anonymous youtube poster guy says, I think the sound quality was fine. Youtube depresses me.
That was a very enjoyable ~3 minutes. I hope when you say "my MQ TAS" you mean that you're doing a full one... that would be a great watch.
Everything I'd say has been said already. Well-done, no camera complaints, nothing jumps out as being less than optimal to me. Definitely should be published.
I hate saying so little, but the run said so much.
I don't see how this is any different from entertainment. Bear with me, but if you see a clear mistake, won't you already penalize its entertainment vote? And if you've TASed the game and you know something could've been better that others didn't know, wouldn't you still penalize the entertainment vote? I'd think any time someone noticed a mistake they'd feel less entertained.
I'm one of those math nerds who would give something a 6.7 or a 4.5 or an 8.9 and feel like it was a more accurate assessment of my opinion than a single-digit number. That's not some quirk in human nature that only occurs because of the opportunity to change it (which seems to be what moozooh was concerned about), I already do this mentally when I vote.
While I'm on it, I think voting inflation doesn't really tie into the issue of decimals vs. no decimals. I'm convinced there's literally no cure to voting inflation, because the people voting are often anonymous viewers who will naturally feel like every TAS is a 9 or 10 because it's omg my favorite game being broken wowwsss. Actually, this is part of why I think a decimal or percentage system would be better, because we already know the votes will be top-heavy... why not just adjust our expectations accordingly? It hurts the mathematician in me, but I don't see any other solutions since they'd likely involve changing human nature. :|
Adding a decimal is basically allowing the voter to choose from 1 to 100, you know. Maybe it'd be less of an issue if we could rate something 0%-100%.
Anyway, moozooh, you're probably right about the difference between 8.7 and 8.8 not being significant, but the difference between 9.0 and 9.5 definitely is. I'd even say a 9.0 vs. a 9.3 is significantly different. And keep in mind, as you get closer to 10 ("perfection" presumably), the difference is more signifcant, so much so that 9.9 and 10.0 are still very different values. (Not that I'm sure anything should ever get a 10.0, but I'm also sure some people will vote 10.0).
Just finished watching. Typical SM64 improvement, looks good.
I think the published run has better camera work, but this one isn't as bad as some people made it seem. It's still entertaining if you don't know about the previous runs.
I'm interested to hear the authors' explanation. Was it to switch things up or was it necessary for some improvements?
Psychologically it'd be near impossible to convince people that 5 represents average when they watch videos of games they love being played in an amazing way. The votes of the judges at the Olympics are inherently critical, it's their job... the votes of the average TAS viewer is naturally going to come from a different perspective, one that will probably feel like the number 5 is far too low for a run of average quality.
Mathematically I absolutely agree with your point, but I don't think it would last long if it WAS the standard, then you'd have the guys in charge just constantly having to remind everyone to make their scores lower than it feels like they should be. Seems like an unnecessary chore for a semantic issue.
I'm still a bit confused as to what was so wrong with the original system. As long as there are forums, people will bicker about something, votes or no votes. How exactly does removing the voting system solve the problem?
People will still make posts saying "I liked this video, yay."
People will still make posts saying they didn't like it without saying why.
People will still argue over whether a movie should or shouldn't be liked, or published, etc.
I don't see how the voting system's removal avoids any of these problems... you've only taken away the helpfulness it provides to judges and the sense of meaningful contribution it provides to the viewers who felt like their opinion on a movie had some worth or merit here. It seems like you're basically saying that whether or not I enjoyed a video isn't really relevant if I can't write out an essay describing it.
So if there's a voting system, the judges will ignore our posts and only look at the numbers? Forgive my ignorance, but where has this been a problem?
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Eh, I don't think it's bad to try new things. It's basic human nature that it's always easier to convince people to keep doing the same thing than it is to convince them to try something different, so I see no harm in pulling it first and apologizing later. The TASes aren't going anywhere, after all.
And I'm not a judge or a runner, so maybe if it's the belief of the powers that be that my vote shouldn't be worth anything, I can respect that, I'm just lucky to be here. Still, I haven't seen any real rebuttal answering my above concerns. I'm all ears if anyone thinks there's good reasons, though.
Forgive my inquiry as I am unfamiliar with the particulars behind the judging process, but wouldn't any judge who reads the discussions catch that sort of nonsense right away? At least with this system, anyone who votes without voicing an opinion is immediately obvious. I agree some sort of signifier indicating how they made a lazy-way-out vote would be helpful, but either way, the people who do that sort of thing would be manipulating the system and be obvious about it, and if the staff wanted they could take administrative action at that point.
I'm only wondering--I'm far from an anybody here, so it's just a curiosity, not any sort of expectation on my part. Still, it seems a much better system than the prior one, at least to me...