Okay, I did some testing on the end-of-scene timing, and Bestiajerule is right. Either the scene ends the minute you kill the last enemy, or it ends at a preset time after you kill the last enemy. In either case, where you stand makes no difference as far as I could tell (without having a TASing emulator with a frame counter handy).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Hmm...Aktanusa's encode has some sound issues. I tried both the mp4 and the mkv and somewhere around three and a half minutes in, the sound switches to a monotone buzz. Anyone else experiencing this issue?
What I saw looked nice, though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The problem with movie files is that about 20% to 95%+ of their input is either:
1) unoriginal (meaning similar or exact same input was discovered by somebody else, in many cases independently from each other, and/or incorporated in an earlier version of a movie if there was any), or
2) the only one possible (i.e., when an optimal solution for some problem has been found, with any deviation proved to be inferior). How exactly do you claim any kind of copyright in this case? How exactly do you defend the notion of everything in your movie being original content? And finally, if/when an improvement is made reusing the same input, how is it affected by copyright
You're getting into copyright issues that I don't think any of us are experts on. However, I'd like to point out that assuming that someone does not have copyright protection on their work is dangerous (in that, if they turn out to have copyright protection, they could rightfully file suit), while assuming that someone does have copyright protection is merely annoying (in that movies that could be published if they didn't, don't get published). So in cases of doubt, I'd prefer if the site err on the side of respecting copyright, at least until we can get an informed and authoritative response on whether or not movie files are copyrightable.
I suspect that the response you'd get, though, would be "It depends". There's no hard-and-fast rule for if a work is "creative" or not. In general, though, I suspect you'd find that all of the following qualify as creative work, and thus are eligible for copyright:
1) Figuring out the best path through a given area.
2) Figuring out how to manipulate input to minimize lag or re-synch a desynched level.
3) Actions taken during mandatory waiting periods.
4) Specific patterns of "null" input (e.g. buttons pressed that have no impact on the game)
It's very easy to get copyright protection. Any creative work gets it. Arguments like "Do you worry about copyright when you email images to your friends" don't hold when we're talking about an official organization like TASVideos. There's plenty of things we can choose as private individuals to do that TASVideos can't be seen to be doing. For example, TASVideos has an official anti-ROM-distribution stance, because if it didn't, it'd get sued into the ground (or, more likely, would have received a cease-and-desist letter as soon as it got big enough to attract notice).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I don't mind people submitting on the behalf of other people, but I do think that permission is vital. If there's a language barrier, we can find someone who's bilingual and get them to ask the TASer for permission. I really just don't feel like we have the right to publish someone's work for them, though.
Back when I was in college, I made a bunch of instruction sets for various chainmaille weaves. I put a lot of effort into them, and then put them online so that other people would have a decent way to learn the weaves instead of the "learn by inspection" approach I often had to use (the site is still online, if you want to see how I thought a website should be designed six years ago). Every once in awhile I had someone ask if they could use my work in some other context -- for example, they were going to be teaching a class and wanted some graphics to use. I always gave my permission. But you can bet your ass I'd've been pissed if someone just blithely assumed that it was OK for them to use my work. It's my work; I have all the rights for it, and anyone else who wants to do anything with it has to get my permission first; that's how these things work.
Maybe you can argue that input files aren't sufficiently creative to justify giving the author copyright (with the associated protections against other people distributing the work without their permission). In that situation, you might be able to make a plausible argument that you can simply appropriate someone's work and show it on the site. I don't think you'd get very far that way, though, since the barriers for what's considered a creative work can be pretty low. And if you don't have either copyright on the work, or permission from the copyright holder, then you can't distribute the work.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Thanks for the encode, Sgrunt!
Very nice run! You put all of Max's moves to use, including the rare ones like his back attack. I especially liked the tackling back and forth across the screen to get to enemies faster. It's clear you carefully managed your health (though there was a point in level 3 where you got jabbed by one of the bald goons for no reason I could make out...didn't matter healthwise but it did look weird).
Questions:
1) There were a couple of points where you killed all the enemies, then ran and got a health pickup, after which the game took over and slowly walked Max off the screen. One such example is in the first scene for level 4. Wouldn't it be faster to be standing as close to the edge as possible when the game takes over?
2) I assume the trick you used against Zamza to use the tackle on him without knocking him down doesn't work against Vulture (the Barbon refight in level 8)?
3) In the first fight against the wrestling boss, you used a mix of backbreakers and melee combos. In the refight in level 8, you just used backbreakers. Why the switch?
In any event, it's an undeniably significant improvement to the old movie. Voting yes.
I don't think the developers quite realized just how deep the shaft beneath the baseball diamond is...the segment lasts 70 seconds (from 12:19 to 13:29), and the elevator's speed increases steadily throughout as near as I can tell. By about 12:36 you can see the lights going by at about two per second, and they appear to be spaced about 10' apart (assuming Max is 6' tall; he's probably more like 7' given his build), so that's 20 feet per second. I'd guess that they're going by at 3 per second at 12:56 (very rough eyeballing here), which means that the elevator's accelerating at half a foot per second per second. That puts its total distance traveled over the length of the segment at 1225 feet, or almost a quarter of a mile straight down. And they put a wrestling cage at the bottom?
(Finally: Sgrunt's encode is 92.4MB and looks beautiful; the encode of SprintGod's 2004 run is 86.8MB and is a blurry mess. Yay improvements in encoding technique!)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
There's a big difference between putting your material online for people to view, and giving blanket permission for other people to distribute your work. What if veup hates TASVideos and doesn't want to be seen as endorsing the site? Stranger things have happened.
Showing something to the public is not the same thing as putting it into the public domain.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
My personal inclination is to not aim for speed as a goal at all in a Scribblenauts TAS. Instead, aim for creative solutions and unusual situations. Maybe your level solution requires swinging a soccer ball around on a vine, or a duel between Charles Darwin and a humpback whale. Above all, keep the viewer guessing. TASing in this case would not necessarily be required for all solutions, though efficient summoning and placement of objects would of course be a keystone.
How amenable is the game to hexing? If it can be hexed easily, then you could split up the game by level and have multiple contributors working in parallel to come up with lots of unusual approaches.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It's possible nobody else has tried. I suspect most people on these forums get their movies as soon as the game is published, if not before then, and from that point on don't bother to check the torrents. Sorry. :\
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Sorry for the double post, but this is new content. I put together a spell card list. The numbers are semi-randomly chosen; I don't even know yet how many hitpoints players will have. The "dx" in spell descriptions refers to the dice being used as counters: each player gets a d4, a d6, and a d8, and can use any counter on any spell (excepting some spells with the d4 since they require 5+ turns to cast). Specifically, a spell that does "dx+2 damage" deals 6 damage with a d4, 8 with a d6, and 10 with a d8. The only time dice are rolled is with Temporal Flux.
I'm hoping to get a test play in tonight with my gaming group. We'll see how it goes.
Incidentally, I generated the cards from a data file using a Perl script. The script takes entries that look like this:
The spell list wrote:
[Quicken Spell],[Blood Mana]|Spellcard|[0],[1]|Reduce the counter on the target spell by [1. Take 2 damage],[3. Take 8 damage].
I use | as a field delimiter (for the spell name, target area, casting time, and effect), and [] to indicate values for different levels of the spell. The regular expression that finds the options gave me some trouble for awhile, but I did eventually get it working:
/(?:\[([^\]]*?)\],?)/g
?: is a Perl construct that does grouping without capturing the content to a variable.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It looks like the Goomba Thwomping game is heavily random, so you should be able to manipulate it. A run that chain-stomped on golden goombas for the entire thing would be very impressive. :)
It's a shame about Beetle Mania; I always liked that one. But yeah, I don't really see how TASing would significantly improve it...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Amazon's merchant sellers should have plenty of used games for the Gamecube; you should also be able to find stuff on eBay though I'm not too fond of that site these days. For the Dreamcast, same deal, plus you might check importers and retro game stores.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Anyway, it seems like the continual-hit glitches at least would make two players useful. I don't know if the "two simultaneous hits" glitch would be as useful since it seems to lock the player for a while after it happens. Maybe just for end-of-scene kills. It seems likely that the best way to deal damage would be with two characters using aerial attacks, since those attacks should hit more quickly than standing melee strikes do.
This of course assumes that the attacks work on non-fat enemies.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Okay, so to be clear: you're suggesting having "Abuses some programming errors" and "Heavily abuses programming errors" (or words to that effect) as categories? Seems reasonable.
In general, we should just be making certain that the default, and thus implicit unless stated otherwise, category is the one that most runs "use". If most runs don't abuse glitches, then we should have categories for abusing glitches. If most runs don't use passwords, then we should have categories for using passwords. And so on.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I think you have a good point with luck manipulation, but if we're going to make "abuses programming errors" into "abuses programming errors heavily", then we'll actually need that "does not abuse programming errors" tag, since there's plenty of viewers who specifically want glitch-free runs, and making the "default" setting for a run be "abuses some programming errors" will make it hard for those viewers to find glitch-free movies.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I'm not aware of a thread to discuss this, actually; you might consider making one in the Sites forum. However, the rules are pretty explicit and I doubt you'll get much support unless your arguments are really overwhelmingly convincing.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl8J8mhXsVQ&feature=related
Has some more detail on multi-hit combos. Plus some...very disturbing shots of Axel's jumping attacks in the second part. It's a pity the third glitch, with the chained backbreakers, doesn't actually seem to deal damage.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
