A Moon would be every movie nominated for an award. [...] But Moon would have a completely clear and objective meaning.
What meaning would it have exactly? Just that a single person decided to say "I nominate <movie>"? because that's all it takes to nominate movies for awards.
I've read (can't remember the post or Discord discussion) about some people wondering how to restyle the site for this. Here is my idea, how does it look?
I'm all for having it show the console verification flag. While I am biased, I do feel that console verification is an important thing to recognize. If anything, including the commentary flag is probably the most important one to show. Even though not many publications have commentary, I feel it adds a lot for the casual viewer, so they can better understand what's happening while they watch.
I'm not sure Fastest Completion is necessary, at least not right away. Perhaps as more categories are published, this will become a more notable flag. Of the 106 non-obsoleted movies published this year, 67% of them have this flag.
Styling-wise, displaying all these extra flags might make the list feel a little cluttered though.
[2] Moons would just be a tag in the same vein as Console Verified or Commentary, denoting that the run is "non-standard" and was voted on by the audience to be a part of the site.
Arc wrote:
The logical continuation of this thought is that Moons could be every movie that gets (legitimately) nominated for an award in any category.
Arc wrote:
Using Awards nominations only
...
The suggestion to incorporate Moons into the Awards via nominations would fulfill both [1] making the former Vault the default, biggest 'tier' and [2] granting the audience the power to elevate certain well-received 'default' movies up to Moons.
Basing it solely on whether it was nominated or not, doesn't seem like much of a vote to me. Looking back at this past year's award nominations, people didn't even have to justify their nominations. Simply listing out movies in a post was enough.
Additionally, I don't like this idea because newly published movies would have to wait potentially a whole year, to have a chance of being recognized for Moons.
Is #1 saying that categories like any% wouldn't have any chance of having the Moons flag?
Since it wouldn't be tiers anymore, but 2 independent concepts, there's no negative connotations in "not having player imposed goals".
So say there was an any% submission, that was acceptable and had feedback that showed it was a very enjoyable movie, would there be any flags available to recognize that it had high entertainment value?
feos wrote:
but 2 independent concepts
Wait, I think I'm a bit lost, which independent concepts are you referring to?
Is #1 saying that categories like any% wouldn't have any chance of having the Moons flag?
feos wrote:
4. Turn submission polls into a 0-10 scale
5. Change the poll question back to "Should this be published?"
I like the idea of #4, but does a scale really fit the question "Should this be published?" As in, would people be likely to primarily use 0 and 10 in place of no and yes? Additionally, if these results were to carry over as publication ratings, does that question also fit with what ratings are supposed to represent?
Perhaps more importantly, would judges prefer having a "Should this be published?" metric or an entertainment/enjoyment metric (like we have now, but as a scale)?
This is a change I've been hoping for, for a long time. The stigma I've seen around Vault movies has become really annoying. Just because it didn't happen to be entertaining to the people who watched it at the time of submission, doesn't mean it's a waste of time to watch and appreciate. You could have an extremely technical TAS, on a game that's inherently very boring to watch (maybe there's slow movement, or a lot of walking/waiting, long transitions, etc).
It's always seemed to me that people generally regard Vault as more of a dumping ground for boring movies that are still acceptable for technical reasons. A sentiment akin to "This is so boring, just put it over there with the others, out of the way." I recall coming across this movie where the focus on entertainment was so strong, someone argued that it shouldn't have been made at all.
As I understand it, and believe, besides superplays, TASes are supposed to be about making the perfect/fastest speedrun for any given game/goal. There have been numerous movies that did just that, but then are ignored or overwhelmingly-criticized because it wasn't also entertaining. Consider, that the shorted TAS accepted on this site, is in the Vault, solely because it was not entertaining enough. (hard to be entertaining when the run is less than 1 second long, and yet it got 63 yes votes)
Unfortunately still doesn't verify, at least from reset. But over all 6 attempts, it's failing consistently. Around frame 935ish, it fails to grapple properly, and falls instead.
The streemerz runs now desync on dev build, which is promising, but I don't yet have a dev cart to try them on console, so moving on to DMC testing for now.
Where can I get this dev build? (nevermind, tikevin got me a link)
I can try dumping and test on console.
Donkey Kong, Nightshade, Roger Rabbit all sync on console through full runs.
Was it necessary to resync these TASes in order to verify them? If so, do you have the resynced movie files available somewhere?
Alyosha wrote:
I've also made some other small updates to how input is polled so that games like Bionic Commando which hit some edge cases now console verify as well. this game always gave trouble before, but the emulation was never wrong, only the communication between emulator and console.
What do you mean by the communication between the emulator and console? Also, if small updates had to be made, how was the emulator never wrong? Isn't input polling, a part of the emulation?
Alyosha wrote:
Console verification. This uses the most recent movie posted on this thread. While I used the FCEUX version to dump with, as I noted previously, the converted bizhawk version is identical once dumped for verification. For the time listed, I don't know which version is the more accurate frame count, so for now I went with FCEUX's 5,800 frames.
Link to video
Console verification. This used the movie included in the submission. If the submission is accepted, and if FractalFusion's edit that includes music is used instead, I'll re-verify/record with music as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OPQ8BzmjY8
Edit: This has been obsoleted :P
Plagiarism is passing off another person's ideas as your own without attribution;
In #4937: Arc & Alyosha's NES Ghosts 'n Goblins in 08:18.03 you note in stage 3, "I spent a long time looking for the best way until Alyosha suggested using the left-right move" which saved a few seconds.
Then in #5158: Arc & Koh1fds's NES Ghosts 'n Goblins in 08:07.55 you note that stages 1-4 are the same, and the same left-right movement gets used (encode times: 04:08 vs 04:04 respectively). Yet you no longer listed Alyosha as a co-author, nor did you make an explicit note that you used Alyosha's idea. Instead you just gave a thanks for "creative assistance".
So, according to your arguments presented in this thread, did you commit plagiarism too? Or is just saying a generic thank you, enough credit for using someone else's idea? If yes to the latter question, where do you draw the line for co-authorship?
I'm interested in knowing why FCEUX has these 2 frames and bizhawk doesn't.
Spikestuff wrote:
- Free frame cause Hawk (which we don't talk about).
That doesn't explain anything. Plus I talked with Spike on discord after my post. He thought it was related to some kind of extra polling done by FCEUX, once on startup, and once again after the reset. However, as far as I can tell from the console, there aren't any extraneous input polls at those points; plus FCEUX reports those frames as lag frames.
While I don't have a FF cartridge, so I can't test the first frame after boot, I have verified other TASes on real carts from boot, from FCEUX. Extra input frames not seen by the emulator would very likely cause desyncs on console. However, I can see from resets that there's no apparent extra inputs.
FCEUX may interpret something as an extra lag frame, but even if that's the case, perhaps that is actually the more accurate emulation. I don't know.
Edit: Transcript from Discord:
Spikestaff: @Bigbass FCEUX takes an extra frame to poll.
Spikestaff: And then since there's a reset, a secondary frame.
Bigbass: But they are lag frames, there's no input polling happening.
Spikestaff: oh that's how I understood it.
Spikestaff: Cause it was always on boot.
Spikestaff: And a reset just did a second frame to it.
Spikestaff: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Spikestaff: (And before anyone asks I have it listed as a 3 way on my end; since this is entirely Umi's input which then has the improvements I made on character naming, which then the bus was picked up and moved around by DJ.)
Bigbass: I could probably check the console to see what's happening, but as far as the emulator is concerned at least the first 10 frames are lag frames (I don't remember the exact number). And I don't think the reset that happens a few frames into the movie, is related at all. The two extra frames FCEUX has are before the soft reset, not after.
Spikestaff: Oh
Spikestaff: cause wait need to double check.
Spikestaff: Nope nevermind.
Spikestaff: When I've done a TAS (which never got released) I actually just removed a frame and it'd poll correctly, so the 2nd frame is weird to me.
Bigbass: Ok so I checked the console polling. The soft reset makes this a little more confusing to explain but here's what I've found.
Even though the soft reset occurs during a lag frame (in the emulator) it still needs to be accounted for on console. In this case, the first "input" the replay device needs to perform, is the soft reset. Thus, the reset will occur on the first input poll.
This is a bit weird because from the TAS editor perspective, the first poll should be the 'A' press. Nonetheless, it still works out anyways. After the reset, the console polls again, and now we give it the first 'A' press. Then a blank frame, then another 'A', and so on.
And just to note, other TASes, including for other games, that contain resets, have been verified using the same dump script.
Bigbass: In other words, what I said above is true: The two frames that bizhawk doesn't have, but FCEUX does, are not input polls.
I'm unable to tell you from this data however, which emulator is more accurate regarding these two lag frames. I am able to count lag frames between input polls, but not between power-on/reset and the first poll.
Someone with NES assembly experience could probably go through FCEUX's debugger and check that way.
While I know the framecount of a movie is based on the movie as played back in emulator, I did want to mention something. To console verify a TAS, the inputs of all non-lag frames must be dumped from the movie. This is done using a Lua script that runs while playing back the movie in the emulator.
I dumped the converted movie from spikestuff, and the original from DJ, and they produce identical dumps. So, as far as the real console is concerned, these movies are identical. Looking at the movies, it is clear that the 2 frame difference is just that bizhawk has 2 less frames at the very beginning of the TAS. I'm interested in knowing why FCEUX has these 2 frames and bizhawk doesn't.
