i'm not sure it's possible with two. the dashes/bunny hopping/whatever would probably require a ton of precision, which might limit your ability to shoot crates and pick up refills. but we could always try.
I'm willing to try. I'll see if I can't get Dolphin working tonight. I'm no sparky or Miles, but I've completed a 22% run and broken 1:40 in my real-time playthroughs. That was a long time ago, but I like to think I have at least a passing grip on the mechanics. I always did well in secret worlds especially; too bad those aren't at all useful in VMR.
Edit: Silly me, of course I can't torrent on my school network. Well, soon's I can get a version 1.00 ISO, I'll get to work.
The PC run that is about to be submitted is 7:58. However, there is no emulator that can do FF8 pc, so we are stuck with the one we have. It would be impossible to determine the amount of time lost due to loading, but it would be substantially different.
Note, PSXjin emulates CD load times, with an internal constant. This constant can be changed to be equivalent to the PS2's fast-load speed (24x instead of 2x). I am 100% sure that change would lead to a 16 page thread flame war about whether or not we should allow fast-disc speed emulation, for a PSX emulator. (Not a ps2 emulator). This would affect every single psx run on the site.
Thus, I haven't even broached this topic until now.
I would say that a run done more optimally than yours, using a PC when the tools are available, could eventually obsolete this one, assuming same category. And, when making a TAS, if multiple platforms are an option at the time, then the best one should be used.
Until then, it would be absurd to turn down a well-done run because a run can theoretically be done better years down the road, when tools for TASing eventually are created for a different platform. That's just bad precedent. It'd be like turning down an NES run because the game was ported to the 3DS in some mega-collection, and it loaded slightly faster on that device. (Obviously that example wouldn't actually happen because the NES doesn't use discs, but you get the point.)
TheAxeMan wrote:
The game designers clearly had a goal of showing really cool settings with character development being secondary. Not a bad idea when the main point of the game is to have a lot of really cool video clips and 3D demoscene pans.
When I first played this game I was having serious trouble with depression and I still thought Squall was over-the-top emo.
FF8 is definitely different from pretty much the whole series. The only other game that kind of reminds me of its overall design is FFX-2; it's clear in both games that writing interesting plot and characters with depth wasn't the goal. I think FF8 does it better than X-2.
I do know that a lot of my friends who are girls favor FF8 over the rest of the series. Squall is the Lord Byron of Squaresoft protagonists. They also like FF12's Vaan, who annoys me equally but in different ways. I think it's safe to say some games clearly had the female demographic in mind.
I haven't watched this movie yet, but if there's a 7 hour movie on SDA that was done on a PC, I think maybe this is not the best choice of platform for this game.
Okay, after rewatching sparky's run I realize I was mixing up my % attempts. Obviously the plasma wallcrawl was for 21%, so silly me.
While the puffer type enemies in Magmoor can drop ultras, that's only on the PAL version IIRC, and obviously there are too many limitations to that version to make it worthwhile.
One thing I would be curious about is the bare minimum e-tanks needed to get Artifact of Newborn without the phazon suit. I suspect it would still be too high a number to make it useful to get it in an any%, but it'd be something to test.
My idea of skipping Varia is obviously far-fetched. The only way I see it possible is if it can be done with two e-tanks. I think this COULD be feasible with the ridiculous amount of speed we can gain from perfect scan dashes of pretty much everything. There are a decent amount of supply crates along the path, as well; manipulating them to all drop the highest possible health refills (30s, I think) could seal that deal. Seal deal. Deal with seals. I'm about 10% confident it's actually feasible, but we have to grasp at straws because anything that sounded remotely insane has been done by the very hardcore community around this game.
afaik, there's nothing tas only and sparky's run is probably the fastest route. i definitely wouldn't mind seeing a prime tas even if it had the same route. but i do think a lot of testing needs to be done, especially if we can access the in-game timer.
At the very least I have to wonder how getting plasma without using SWs isn't better. Wasn't it proven that it could be done with just space jump and bombs? It's just that it's not humanly possible to do so.
I'm going to rewatch the 1:01 and see if I can notice anything that looks TASable in it. I'll come back with any homework I have. If anyone has successfully gotten this game to run in emulation and can recommend settings please share and I'll see if it runs on my laptop. I need a break from Super Metroid hacking. : P
A TAS would be able to move through SWs significantly faster than a realtime run, and for much longer stretches of time. If you watch sparky's 1:01 run on SDA, in segment 14 he does a series of extremely breathtaking wallclimbs that he said took "as long as the rest of the run" and the segment is only 7 minutes long.
On the other hand, a decent TAS of this is going to be scan-dashing EVERYthing, so in terms of fastest travel I think generally SWs will not be optimal there. SWs will be used for situations where there's no possible way to get to the next destination without going out-of-bounds (edit: and also some points where the route is just way faster than the in-bounds ones available to us, like IBBF).
One other thing that could possibly bear exploring is another visit at the X-Ray Visor skip. Currently it's only needed because it's not possible to damage Omega Pirate otherwise. I don't have a lot of confidence that it'd be any more plausible to do so in a TAS, but the potential for time saved is pretty nice. Of course we lose out on some time later with the second Metroid Prime fight, since IIRC you can't target him with hyperbeam if you can't see him.
Another route possibility that might open up (but not one I see any use for an in any%) is early Magmoor. In a realtime run I believe you have access to 5 e-tanks and you need at least 4 to get through it without Varia. In a TAS it may be possible to manipulate item drops and move fast enough to get through with less--at least two e-tanks are retrievable without a huge time loss at that point. Unfortunately I think you'd still need at least 3 due to the distance from elevator to elevator. The theoretical advantage would be that you could go straight to Phendrana after bombs and come back much later to gather the Artifact of Wild with Phazon Suit equipped (I seem to remember having a suit upgrade and entering Flahgraa's room automatically put the room in state 2 and you would skip the boss fight there, but I may be mistaken).
This TAS is like a practical joke on the viewer. The punchline is the time I wasted watching it.
As someone who likes irony I can appreciate what you've done here, but I assume you do not seriously believe this should be published. If you do, my head hurts and I need to lie down.
In other words, no vote for poor and uninteresting choice of title, due to the lack of any real action, obscurity of the game, and because it's just not interesting in any way to watch, for anybody, ever, unless they drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, wear plaid shirts, and read Proust.
As a major Metroid fan, I'm surprised that this game isn't more talked about with the many Metroid fans already here. I'm almost finished with my major TAS project, and I was wanting a new game to TAS (aside from my other 2 PSX TAS's), unfortunately by the sounds of it, Dolphin won't run very pretty on my crappy computer... But I guess I'll try later.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's a little disappointed every time I see that this forum gets a post, only to find when I check in here that it's about SpongeBob or ports of MegaMan.
I suppose I'd be interested in messing around with this when I get back in the states and have free time. I am not at all familiar with Dolphin, but I have a powerful machine; if I can get it working, while I don't think I'd be doing a publish-worthy run, I would probably be able to put something together that was 1:00 or maybe less if the emulator is up to snuff. Unfortunately from what I've read of Dolphin it looks like I may have some serious trouble setting up the damn thing.
I do think it'd be a good idea to discuss ways a TAS would vary in route or planning from a regular run. I have to rewatch the 1:01 because I can't remember the exact route structure, but I'm sure a lot of time is saved by being able to bomb-jump to plasma early. I wonder what else can be done.
http://speeddemosarchive.com/kb/Metroid_Prime
Always a good reference as well for anyone not familiar with the game.
Ahhh, I didn't think of all that; I was thinking mainly in terms of the card game not the extra boss battle. I think really using that strategy you could get away with only having one of the party be invulnerable since you only need to use on person's limits to finish off the rest of the fight but still, with the extra boss fight in the castle it's a dead-end.
You'd want two people alive at least so that the RNG could be manipulated while the other character's limit is being used. Really, you'd probably need three, because I'm pretty sure anyone dead for more than a few seconds in the last boss fight gets "absorbed into the time stream" and wastes more time.
It's both appropriate and annoying that Shockwave Pulsar is so powerful at any level. I guess that makes it one of the better final boss fights in the series, compared to some of the faceroll-fests we get in other FFs.
I don't remember if I ever kept track of who I 250'd with, but probably a good number of them. The fastest I've recorded myself button pressing is 16 per second (but it hurts a LOT).
Please designate your hands as things that you will donate to science, that future civilizations can study their unique muscle structure and trigger power.
Pfft, I could get up to 250 on several, Eden is slow enough to reach 250, lose it and get back up there... multiple times. I'd like to remember I managed 250 on every GF but Quetzalcoatl, but it's been a long time since I played the game :P.
Clearly you have the hands of a god if you hit 250 on Shiva/Ifrit. I think my highest was maaaaaaybe 200ish on those guys, and that was with great luck and furious fingers.
Everyone else, sure. I want video evidence of Ifrit's ~12 seconds of boosting time (assuming almost no penalty showing up) being sufficient time for you to land 170 taps. That's about 14 taps of a button in each second. I just can't even wrap my head around that.
I don't know exactly where the cards are located in the game but if you could somehow get a hold of either Gilgamesh or Laguna's card then you could refine them into heros or holy wars respectively, is that a viable way of cutting out Invincible Moon?
Edit: Just done a quick check, Gilgamesh's card is at the end of the CC Group sidequest so that's out but Ellone has Laguna's card when you meet her on the space station, I don't know if the time saving would be worth it but I think it's at least worth thinking about.
You'd have to play a card game (and generally late-game card players take much longer to take turns). You'd also have to use three heroes instead of just one Limit, AND he'd have to fight an extra boss to unlock the Item command in the final dungeon.
Not a bad idea, but timewise it's a loss.
Do you seriously not understand the "This game makes for a boring TAS" argument? It's the reason we don't have a TAS for Duck Hunt and Jeopardy.
To be fair, a TAS of Duck Hunt would probably get published due to its popularity, but, like many old-school arcade-style games, there's no end, simply one round repeated ad nauseam. Jeopardy is an example of a game that isn't particularly popular nor interesting to watch. The idea here is that games that have a high viewer demand for runs will likely get published if TASes of said games are optimal. Your analogy doesn't address that.
If I didn't enjoy it, I must honestly vote no. And if I vote no, I must explain why.
Why is this not end of discussion?
The breakdown in my mind of your logic is "didn't enjoy it" = "no vote." That isn't the question. Nowhere in the question of "should this be published?" nor in the mission statement do I see where those two things are the same. Now if you insist on voting based only on your personal pleasure and not whether a game belongs here, I respect your right to do so, but I think you are effectively shooting your own vote in the foot. I just don't see how it helps anybody if you vote based purely on taste. I am positive you are in the minority on this one; most people who do not like a certain game for TASing generally decline to vote at all.
tl;dr--your tastes should not be the end-all answer to the question "should this be published?" If you are voting just to express yourself, maybe not voting would speak with more meaning and make your no votes based on more than personal preference have actual weight behind them.
That's all I'll say; this poor dead horse needs to rest, I think.
I'd argue that some people possess the ability to watch only certain portions of an 8 hour movie and can already be pretty sure they couldn't find it any more entertaining to watch the whole thing. Why should they be forced to torture themselves, just so their opinion gets respected?
With RPGs, there might be people who have formed the general opinion that they should only be published if they contain major game-breaking glitches. Why should those people need to watch the whole movie to vote no? They'd only have to skim through the movie and the submission text to find out it's just another ordinary run of an RPG.
And how come people who generally like a certain genre are perfectly allowed to vote yes on decent runs, but if people dislike TASes of a certain genre their opinion is suddenly less valid? There are perfectly valid reasons for disliking TASes of RPGs in general.
I can see how people who vote yes should really first watch the whole thing (excluding cut scenes) though. There might be flaws in it that can be easily corrected before publication.
A "no" vote is a beast quite different from "yes."
People often see the yes/maybe/no vote system as a sheer "do you like this" question. That's not what it is; it says "do you think this run should be published?" Now in this case, the voter explained why he does not think it should be published. At this point I am okay with his "no" vote because it does adequately represent his belief: "this run is boring and too long; it doesn't do anything for me, so I don't think it should be published."
Now I say "okay" with his vote. I don't think it's really a valuable vote, though. He has cast his opinion in the hat, but not really weighed the variables here. Similarly, if I voted no on every run I didn't like because it "didn't do it for me," I weaken my own voice.
I am not in the habit of voting on most submissions. I tend to focus on games I favor; ones I am not familiar with I sometimes watch, but it varies on my mood, the game, etc. Now of course not everyone should vote like me, but I like to think my opinion is more meaningful when I give it stronger weight than such broad arguments as "it's too long" or "I don't like this game."
I think it's important to remember that the focal point here is to give the judges a reference point for how the audience likes it. Certainly I doubt they would object to someone saying no if that person's reasoning is sound, but I think some "no" votes pollute the pool, like the SM64 runs that get no votes just because there's been too many submissions and optimizations. It should be a question of what's best for the site, and I don't think anyone can truly argue that turning down optimized runs of the most popular games is good for the site in any way.
The overall length of a TAS should never lead you to believe it takes more time commitment to make compared to other TASes. One potential way this could be done is no_of_frames*no_of_rerecords. Sadly, that method is rough at best. Anyway, overall effort put into a run is much more important than the overall time that was committed towards a run.
I can't speak for the entire FF series, but judging by the rerecord rate only 9 rerecords are used for every 10 seconds of gameplay when 213 would normally be expected. This could mean the author was lazy, which should be entirely ruled out, or the game has a lot of text/cutscenes that can be turboed and fast forwarded through. While battle scenes are trivial to test.
A good point and one I wouldn't argue with. I do think that, in RPGs, an optimal TAS is going to end up being more dialogue and trivial optimizations (running from point A to point B, no reason to manipulate RNG most of the time in towns or once you have a "no encounters" ability, and menu navigation) than actual difficult improvement. So I'm not sure the formula is the best one for this kind of game, because there's very little practice of things like physics abuse or interactive mechanic exploitations (like, for example, OoT or SM64).
In other words, in an RPG, optimization becomes more about cerebral thinking ("what kind of advantage do I get later on if I get this item or fight this boss?") versus hard practice ("Can I make this jump? Can I make it in fewer frames? How many fewer frames? How many different ways can I approach it? What if I got here later and this enemy moved? Can I make that enemy move by manipulating the RNG? What's the best way to do that?"). In JRPGs, enemies are usually very easy to manipulate (in TAS and sometimes in real-time), paths are usually straightforward, and the optimal way to kill something is always to use the most easily accessible, most damaging, or fastest attack (and it's usually not hard to know which one that will be).
That's not to say a SM64 runner doesn't make very hard, calculated, decisions. Actually, he has to figure out quite a bit more at times, because there's so many ways to do it: physics at work. Final fantasy games have comparatively simple physics engines (all three PSX games are characters imposed on pre-set walkable paths, put up against background screens to make it look like they move through the environment, always at the same pace and without any jumping or sliding type moves). Thus I'm not sure rerecords + time necessarily indicate room for improvement, though they're certainly still a factor.
Of course, you acknowledge all this in your second paragraph; I'm simply adding to that, I suppose.
Jungon wrote:
Saw the disc 2 part .... and sorry, but I saw a major flaw now, you'll have to redo the run from the beginning of this disc =P
You know the we, saving the moombas in prison, they give you something in return, it's not just the quickest way, it's the quickest shortcuts for 3 floors, those plates between stair up and stair down can be removed.. and the actual run means about 2 to 3 minutes of spinning around the floors ... that could be taken away, meaning less random encounters in this part..
It would probably save about 40 seconds to talk to the Moombas and open a path, but isn't there something else that has to be done to get them to talk to you? I seem to remember you have to do something extra to get them on your side...
Heisanevilgenius wrote:
What? Is there something hypocritical about me saying that?
Saying that someone should be IP banned because they have a different opinion is pretty immature and ridiculous.
I voted no because I don't think this game is well-suited to a TAS. And it's not well-suited to a TAS because it's loaded with cutscenes that slow the game to a constant crawl. Unless you're a huge Final Fantasy fan, it's not entertaining.
You know, there were a lot of posts here complaining that the last no voter wouldn't explain why. I explained why. Nice to know that you have the same attitude to people who actually give their opinion than people who just click a button and move on.
Your explanation is much appreciated, at least on my part, despite my sarcastic words earlier.
In all honesty, though, turning down an FF TAS is just not a reasonable idea (assuming it is optimized). Some games are not very well suited to a TAS, and JRPGs fit that bill, but realistically, the series is a staple of many gamers' libraries. It isn't a niche game or a sleeper hit. Compare this, to, say, Vagrant Story, which is one of my personal all time favorite games but is not something I would ever think would deserve to be published.
Like it or not, the popularity of a game is a deciding factor in its publication. The collection of runs on this site has felt incomplete ever since PSX TASing became an option, in large part because some of its most popular and best-selling games have not gotten much love. Again, I appreciate your point about the game being long and hard to watch for some viewers, but I just think turning it down would be a bad move--it is an optimized run of a game that I am positive many people would want to watch.
Entertainment has always been the reason this site exists, right? Whether it's to watch the fastest possible run or to see a game broken to its limits, we're here to watch our favorite games played as no human can. This run does that, even if it isn't immediately obvious to people who don't like or care for the game itself; moreover, there's enough people who do care that it justifies its place in our annals.
I love OoT but to argue it's more optimized than SM64 is just fanboyishly silly. I don't think anyone who's TAS'd the game would disagree with me there.
If nothing else, you can always assume the game that's shorter can be more easily optimized, assuming it's equally popular. I just have to think you were making a joke without a punchline here.
Edit: to clarify, I'd bet my wallet that the next SM64 any% submission will be a single-digit frame improvement, while the next OoT run will probably be at LEAST two digits (likely three).
Abstaining a vote as there's no way I will be able to watch enough of this to have a valid opinion, but I just wanted to say that I think it's funny that "longest TAS" is a sought after record. I mean, I could finish SMB in 9 hours if you'd all like to watch that...
I think the key part of "longest TAS" is that it's still more or less optimized. Runs of JRPGs have always been slower to develop and less likely to be improved because the sheer time commitment they involve, not only in length but also complexity. For example, in this run, DarkKobold has to ask himself, should I draw this GF in disc 1? And then he has to calculate out the time it will save for the next 8 hours of gameplay.
Fortunately FF8 is probably one of the easier (relatively speaking) JRPGs because level-ups are really a bad thing and because the path to a quick run is pretty obviously going to involve GFs and card modding, as well as the lack of equippable items besides weaponry (mostly useless in this game for speedrunning), which means he doesn't have to spend as much time agonizing over minutiae. Compare that to, say, FF7, where the question of "how many bombs should I farm for throwable damage items" can't be adequately answered for another 5 hours.
The truth, though, is that any one of the games in this series is massively complex; look at how much even the first FF has been improved in subsequent submissions, and that game has a fraction of the complexity the newer entries in the series bears. For that reason, every minute of these eight hours is a fascinating sight to behold, and marks a sign of true skill on the part of the TASer if he has properly considered all his options.
Uhm, upon checking again, I realize I misread the "5%" of no votes as "5 no votes." The error here was found between computer and chair, I'm afraid. Carry on; sorry to hijack the thread.
Wouter Jansen wrote:
Off Topic, but;
Acheron86 wrote:
Assuming it's one of the people who think this game is "too long," well, that's your opinion, but the question is "should it be published" not "are you bored by long runs." Grr!
surely they would vote yes to the latter?
lol, further fail on my behalf. I'm sorry. I've literally just come through the worst two weeks of my life, so I think my brain is just fried. I will probably go back to quietly lurking for now.
That was intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I think, as always, that sarcasm collapses on the internet.
I do think anyone who votes no should voice why; it's not something that should just be cast. It's like a professor giving you an F on a paper but not explaining where you can improve. Why are you grading me if you have no intention of helping me do better?
But of course I would not actually punch anyone. : )
I don't think anyone is going to watch this... Who likes to spend a day on watching a TAS?
Me. And I disagree with games like this being unsuitable for TASing.
Second that sentiment.
Kitsune wrote:
Did someone seriously vote no on this?
Oh my god. People who vote no on games like this should just be outright IP Banned from the forums.
I plan to watch some of this shortly.
Also seconded. There is no way you watched it already, jerkoff. I would punch you in the face if I could. You are a terrible human being for voting no and not having the guts to say why.
Assuming it's one of the people who think this game is "too long," well, that's your opinion, but the question is "should it be published" not "are you bored by long runs." Grr!
---
Anyway, watching now. Will vote when done, though from what I saw in the FF8 thread I can't possibly imagine anything but a "yes" vote.
DarkKobold is quickly become one of my favorite runners.
Edit: Somewhat sad the T-Rexaur battle is avoided one hour in (after the dance, where Quistis forces a St-Atk-J tutorial on you). I was really hoping you'd use some status effects to color a dinosaur :(
Normally a number in hexadecimal would drop from 0 to F, and then reduce the previous number by one as well, just like normal math. Example: 00969400 -> 009683F0; or 0090300-> 008F2F0. Not sure if that helps you any here, but there you go.
Thank you for keeping us updated, antd. Very much appreciated. Don't spoil too much for us (unless you need feedback, of course). Take your time; we'll be waiting.
I can't believe how much progress you're making, considering all the revisits you've had to do as new breakthroughs arise. I figured we wouldn't see an FF PSX TAS done properly for a good five years, but with FF8 and FF9 now getting such great love it may yet happen within my twenties...
Keep it coming. There are many silent watchers like myself who may not say much but love every minute of what you do, like voyeurs or peeping toms. (And doesn't that analogy put your mind at ease?)
