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I noticed that the recent run of Anarchy was published as (Europe) C64 instead of just C64 like all the other current publications. I'm assuming it was given this label because it's a PAL run. However, some other C64 publications also use PAL mode but aren't labeled this way.
So, it made me wonder which of the following methods should be the appropriate way of labeling C64 runs?
1) Labeled as (Europe), (USA), etc.
2) Labeled as (NTSC), (PAL)
3) Not Labeled with anything other than just the system C64 (like all other current runs besides Anarchy).
The reason I ask is due to how the site handles games that run equally well in both NTSC and PAL modes:
We currently (and appropriately so, in my opinion) accept a run to be made in either mode--regardless of where the game was made/released--as long as it works, without introducing glitches. Runs are accepted this way because the real software/cartridges of such games will work on the real hardware of either region--unlike consoles (NES, Genesis, etc.) where it's typically not possible to play cartridge releases from one region on the opposite region system without physically modifying the system.
Because of this policy, I contend that (if a label is even necessary in the frist place) option 2 above (PAL/NTSC) would be better than using location notation (USA/Europe).
I am curious to hear other's thougts on such labeling.
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Masterjun wrote:
I count 948 moves in this submission. Heh, my TAS attempt finished the game in 881 moves.
But I want to see someone manage to manipulate RNG enough to get the minimum, 519 moves.
I've been messing around with the game a bit (mostly out of curiosity). While RNG can easily be manipulated to get a new tile spawn WHERE you want it, I have yet to determine exactly how the game decides WHAT value to give to the newly spawned tile. Thus far, when a 4 spawns appears to be based more on the number of moves than it does which moves are taken or when they are performed. For example, waiting a frame or two will change where a new tile spawns, but it will not change what value that newly spawned tile has. Even delaying moves earlier than the one prior to the new spawn doesn't seem to change the value of the tile; at least in my testing. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a simple move counter of any type in RAM that determines 4 spawns.
I tried to look into the source code to see how new tiles were determined, but I'm not a programmer and couldn't figure it out. Perhaps someone with more coding experience can.
Having a tracelogger would likely help in determining how the game decides on 4's or 2's.
For what it's worth, freezing the 4-byte value at RAM address 0x109 with a value of 0x56E509FE will always produce a 4 on the next spawned tile. If any one of the 4 bytes isn't frozen, new spawns may have a 2. Having this value frozen at the beginning of the game does not yield two 4s. One of the original spawned tiles will still be a 2.
Regarding other RAM addresses (in case anyone decides to investigate things further), the value of the individual squares on the board are stored in 2-byte RAM addresses from 0x0A54 through 0x0A72. The sequence of addresses goes from 0x0A54 in the upper left corner, then downward in the column, then top down in the next column, and so forth with 0x0A72 in the bottom right corner.
TL:DR Unfortunately, I don't forsee a way to manipulate enough newly spawned tiles to be a value of 4 in order to make that 519-minimum-move run even possible.
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Here is an updated .bk2 for this run. Would someone with the power, please update the submission file.
Overall 1235 frames were saved over the original run. These resulted from a combination of more efficient movement, different routes, and variations in RNG manipulation. I'll update the preview video and submission notes with slightly more detailed info as soon as I'm able. Updated.
This submission is now ready for judging again.
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feos wrote:
Thoughts about optimality.
If submissions that fail to beat a published movie are just sent to playground, there's zero incentive to make better movies, and it can be flooded with low effort stuff that's basically the same. Even tho I don't see the need for obsoletion in playground, I think we should only send there movies that are better than whatever already exists in playground. If it's slower than that or a published movie of the same goal, it doesn't allow us to showcase any niche goals better, and it's better to just reject.
I mostly agree with this. There's no reason to have 10 different people with Playground runs of the same category doing roughly the same thing. I'd rather see the Playground be more a variety of unique content for a given game than soething that ammounts to little more than a congested leaderboard of similar runs having slightly different times.
However, if two runs that would otherwise be in the same niche category for a game manage to achieve that goal using significantly differing methods (or the slower of the two contains an interesting techinique that isn't seen in other runs in the Playground), it may be wise to keep both runs in order to archive the differing/interesting techniques.
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Unfortunately this probably depends on the specific game and its community more than a generality.
I would expect that death skips would probably more favorably looked upon here than in general game commnuities or their associated speedrun commnuities. But that doesn't mean that those communities would be against death skips. It's just going to be a subjective situation for each individual game.
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Yes. I had read the OP.
I guess i just misunderstood how things would be curated in the Playground. If anyone can set a submission status to be a Playground run, how is the list curated?
Without some means of "rejecting" or removing runs that shouldn't be present, the list has no effective limits.
I'm just trying to understand how this will be handled.
And if I've missed something in the various pages of posts or discord discussions that answered this already, please forgive my lack of memory for everything that has occurred in these discussions and just point me to the answer instead of questioning whether or not I've been paying attention simply because i misunderstood one aspect of the entire concept.
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I feel we need to consider the concept of unpublication in regards to the Playground.
Currently, we don't unpublish any currently published runs. Instead we try (or hope) to obsolete them with a new run that corrects the reason that a run was erroneously published to begin with.
Should we consider having the ability to outright unpublish/delete runs from the Playground if a situation arises where something shouldn't have been allowed in there to begin with? If so, would this be part of the community curation our would it need to be main site staff?
Hopefully there's never a situation where something would need removed, but it's worth considering--just in case.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
When I use posts since last visit search, it's sorting in chronological order, rather than reverse chronological order as it was in the previous iteration of the site. Furthermore, it's returning in terms of posts rather than topics. Also because my session is apparently infinite, I now have 50 pages of unread posts, going back 23 days, despite having visited the site several times since early January.
I'm sure there's something I'm doing wrong, but I have no idea what.
I also have had these problems, and i similarly would like the "most recent" list be topics instead of posts. Granted, i haven't spent much time exploring on the new site to see if there are settings to change this presentation.
But the fact that the site doesn't seem to recognize when i actually last visited (and only show posts since then) is rather annoying.
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I don't really have a problem with the name "Playground."
But for the sake of ideas. We could consider something simple simple like "Open Class."
Other ideas:
-Freeform/Freedom
-Whiteboard/Chalkboard
-Independent Class
-Carte Blanche
-Unrestrained
-Emancipated
-Autonomous
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Just a comment on my poll vote: I chose Indifferent, and want to explain why. I actual lean more in favor of having the Playground than not.
I'm good with the playground existing, because I believe it will offer significant potential for content exposure and centralized strategy documentation that would otherwise be scattered across the internet (if publicly documented at all).
However, I don't want the Playground to introduce any additional stress to the main site staff (beyond it's initial creation) for normal daily function. Essentially, once created/implemented, I feel that the Playground should be completely user sustained (or perhaps via game-specific mods similar to speedrun.com), and the staff should not have to worry about that area of the site at all--except in extreme cases such as removing content that is already considered unacceptable on the site (ROM links, pornographgy, etc.).
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I'm not overly familiar with SMB tasing, but there's an apparent time loss at 2:00 into the encode. Mario bonks into the elevator platform in 4-2. Had you taken a slightly different route prior to that bonk, you wouldn't have been slowed by it.
There is also a brief slowdown in 8-3 around 4:04 in the encode where you slow down to kill a hammer bros.
I know there are frame rules involved with SMB, so i don't know if either of these slowdowns cause loss of a frame rule. It does look sloppy and suboptimal though.
Also, regarding entertainment, I'm personally annoyed by all the constant unnecessary jumping in so many SMB TASes (this one included). This is simply a personal preference and not a complaint per se, but i figured I'd leave it here anyway.
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I think we need to be careful about picking a new name that unintentionally sounds 'better' than "Standard."
Though entertainment is still a requirement for Moon publication, the purpose of this class is publishing non-standard goals; not to specifically publish runs more entertaining than those available in the Standard class.
While it does sound more exciting than "moon," using "showcase" could unfortunately make it sound like the movies published in that class are better (or deemed more worthy of watching by the site itself) than runs published into the Standard class. This could unfortunately lead some to believe that the "Standard" designation is for runs that the site/community is less concerned about people watching.
In a hypothetical situation where I didn't have any foreknowledge about the site, I'd personally be more drawn to watch something labeled as a "showcase" than something just labeled as "standard."
TL:DR We need to pick a name that identifies the class as non-standard goals, but that name needs to be such that it doesn't make the class sound like a higher tier. We need to be careful that the Standard class doesn't get looked at negatively (or less positively) because of what we choose to rename the current Moon class.
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I threw my vote in for 7 days.
While I believe our judges are perfectly capable of making an appropriate judgement in less time, I also see no necessary reason for rapid judgements. Even runs with blatantly obvious suboptimal play don't NEED rejected rapidly; waiting a longer period before declaring judgement on these type runs won't hurt, nor will it change the ultimate outcome. Runs ready to be rejected before the 3 day period rarely 'clog up' the workbench to a problematic degree; I can't imagine extending the time to 7 days would amplify this into a greater problem.
Given that our judges can claim submissions for judgment even before the judgment delay period has passed (and thus already begin their judging process itself), a week delay gives the community a bit more time to evaluate and offer perspectives. As has been mentioned already, many of us are busy with other daily life stuff (work, family, etc.). Offering a bit more time for community participation would likely be appreciated by those members who are not able to be as consistently engaged/connected as others who can be on more frequently.
The only time i can imagine a week delay being a huge issue is if a known improvement run is submitted near the end of the year, and the author (or even judges) are hoping to have it published before the year end. In this hypothetical rare case, i feel an exception to the delay timeframe could be considered on a case-by-case basis.
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Context:
I recently submitted this run of NES Pinball.
In the discussion thread, I mentioned that I couldn't beat the time of the submission when using the VS Pinball ROM with the standard DIP Switch settings.
£e Nécroyeur suggested that I relook into the VS ROM with different DIP switch settings, because the default setting is slow ball movement. I investigated the DIP switch settings and changed the proper one to allow fast ball movement instead of slow. TASing with this setting did allow me to beat the time of the sumbission linked above.
As ThunderAxe31 had claimed the submission for judging, I privately asked his opinion on what to do regarding the submission and the new faster run that used the VS ROM. This was what I sent:
My question is three-part:
1) Are the VS game ROMs for NES games considered Arcade or NES for site publication? If they aren't considered arcade, we may need to consider that they should be (since that's the 'system' they were intended to be).
2) If VS games are considered Arcade, could I make an additional submission of that version and potentially have both published; one on each 'system'.
3) If VS games are only considered NES platform and not arcade, should i cancel the current submission and make a new one (since the ROM also changes); or should i just provide a userfile to update the current submission? In the latter case, I'd also update the temp encode and submission notes.
ThunderAxe31 informed me that he believes this may be a new situation that has never been discussed before. Thus I've created this thread.
What I believe needs Discussed:
1) What system do we want to consider these VS Nintendo ROMs?
While the VS game ROMs (at least this one) run on BizHawk under NES emulation, their purpose was for Arcade cabinet use. I feel that the site needs to make a definitive decision on which system to consider these VS ROMs.
My personal stance would be to consider them as Arcade as that's the 'system' they were intended for even though BizHawk runs them under NES emulation.
2) Should VS ROMs be able to obsolete runs of other system/region?
This is a multi-part issue.
If it's decided that VS ROMs are to be considered Arcade and not NES system, then we'd be looking at the question of whether or not to have one system potentially obsolete a different system. I think this may have already happened in the past, but I don't know for sure.
If it's decided that VS ROMs are to be considered NES system--just a different 'region' ROM--then it's an issue of one region ROM obsoleting a different region; I know there's already precedent for this (due to one of my own US region runs being obsoleted by a JP region run of the same game).
My personal stance on this one is to lean toward more inclusivity and less obsoletion regardless of what 'system' the VS ROMs are ultimately decided to be considered. I'm one who feels that, even if a game/TAS is identical between two different systems, there's value in having a publication of both systems--if for no other reason than the possibility that some viewers may only look for a particular game on one system and not another system, because they may not know the game was ported to multiple systems.I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on how to handle the VS ROMs.
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I'm guessing each disk image you have is a separate file. You may be able to use BizHawk's multi-disc bundler tool to allow disk swapping during emulation.
Tools > Multi-Disk Bundler
I've not had much experience with this tool though, so I don't know that I can help much beyond that suggestion.
Another thing to consider trying is swapping PAL vs NTSC sync settings. Some games will only work in one region or the other. (Though you'll still likely need to use the multi-disk tool.)
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Impressive. How did you optimize it? Trial and error, botting, or something else?
Just trial and error.
This is the fastest way into the bonus room.
Once in there, this submission was actually the result of my first attempt at saving the maiden.
I tried numerous other variations inside that room; but by dumb luck, my first attempt was the fastest solution i encountered.
Something I didn't try however (because i just thought of it) is whether or not entring the bonus room at a later time caused the ball's initial trajectory to vary. That might allow for a faster solve.
I may play around a bit more on this theory, but for now, I'm content with this run being judged as-is.
EDIT: FWIW, I did a run of the VS Pinball ROM with the default dip switch settings, but it was slower than this one. I'm not very familiar with changing dip switch options for VS NES ROMs though, so there may be settings which could be changed to result in a faster run than this submission.
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Here are a couple thoughts, some of which I've already brought up on discord but am adding here for the record.
Regarding Game Genie/Action Replay type codes: The number of codes allowed on runs could be either unlimited or limited to what was available on the originial hardware the code is intended for.
Examples: the NES Game Genie only allowed for 3 codes at any one time. Other Systems allowed for more than three. From what I can find, newer versions of some such ROM modifying systems may have been effectively unlimited themselves (or limited to some degree of memory, but no set numerical value). I wouldn't be able to make a justification for any number limit other than either original or unlimited, as I see any other numerical limitation as arbitrary.
Another consideration is the fact that, with enough codes, a game could potentially be rewritten completely into a wholly different game. Not that I forsee somebody wanting to go to that extreme; but I bring it up as an example of how extensively such codes can be used to impact a base game.
Regarding increased content & work load: As much potential interesting content that having a showcase/demo class may yield for the site, I have some concerns regarding an influx of new showcase/demo content.
1) If there isn't at least some method of curation or limitation of what's acceptable for this class of movies, the potential exists for the sheer mass of such content to potentially overwhelm the main site publications.
2) If curation/limitation does exist, who performs this? Given the potential freedom of goals within such a movie class, it's feasible that submission numbers could dramatically increase to a point that would majorly overtax the current site staff/judges if it becomes added to their current responsibilities.
3) Back to the idea of limiting what's acceptable. Even if this aspect of the site could be maintained discretely enough from the main site that the main site publications aren't overshadowed by what's presented in the showcase/demo class, I would still have concerns over total quantity of content.
If I understand things properly, the whole reason for wanting a showcase/demo tier is to be able to show runs that unfortunately don't adhere to the main site ruleset, yet are nonetheless interesting, highly entertaining, hold some historical significace, or provide an interesting TASing experience that is simply not publishable under current rules.
I don't want to see such a movie class be so overloaded with uninteresting content that the actually interesting/entertaining/historical runs get lost in the pile.
Unfortunately, I don't really have any good suggestions on how things should be implemented. I am rather curious to see how this plays out.
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zaphod77 wrote:
5) i still disagree on the decision that running a game that was not released in ntsc territory in ntsc is a valid choice. It's not a valid choice because real people don't have that option. their real tvs back in the day can only handle their own video standards. This is also to provide parity with console releases, where PAL versions must be tased on PAL emulation, admn NTSC versions must be tased on ntsc emulations. If we are allowed to tas pal released c64 games on NTSC settings, we would also allowed to tas pal NES game son NTSC settings. The fact that many games run on both is not a valid argument.
The bolded aspect of this statement is untrue (bolding added by me). Real people had the option/ability to play a PAL released games on a NTSC C64 system (and vice-versa) with no special requirements/modifications.
I had an NTSC C64 growing up. I also had games which were only officially released in PAL territories. These games worked just fine on my NTSC system.
It's true that we shouldn't allow emulation of a PAL system at the 60hz framerate. However, while a PAL system wouldn't function with a 60hz NTSC monitor/tv, PAL software itself often runs perfectly well on the NTSC system making it playable on a 60hz tv/monitor. This was not only possible but frequently done by real people.
Parity with console releases doesn't need to be considered. Consoles often have some form of region locking mechanisms in place that prevent play of a PAL cartridge/software on the NTSC system. It's therefore impossible to play such releases on an out-of-region system without modifying the hardware/cartridge to allow it.
The C64 does not have this type of region-locking restriction, and no modification of the hardware is necessary to load out-of-region software onto the system for execution.
EDIT:
If a game was specially coded to work with a specific regions frame timing, one of three things will happen when played on an out-of-region system.
1) The game will play normally aside from slightly increased/decreased speed.
2) The game will run, but glitches will be introduced due to the out of sync code/system refresh rate.
3) The game won't run at all.
Options 2 & 3 would be the only thing preventing someone in real life from playing an out-of-region game on their own system.
EDIT 2:
The above three possibilities still occur with properly emulated systems (BizHawk included). From my play/testing, BizHawk appears to perform the same as real systems would when presented with out-of-region software.
An example is Monty On the Run; the game appears to play fine other than a glitched end-game when played in NTSC mode. It was this glitch that required the TAS to be completed in PAL settings.
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
I'm getting a desync in 1-3 trying to playback the winning run. Is anyone else seeing this?
Specifically: just after saving the victim, I'm guessing the player is supposed to clip north through the wall, but he doesn't.
The movie syncs fine for me. You're using 2.6.2 with the BSNES core right?
Yep correct version of hawk and correct core. Currently testing 2nd place, I'll update this post if it works or not.
EDIT: 2nd place run desynced in 3-4 for me. I found it odd that both would desync. I double checked everything I could think of including: player settings, core, cheats, etc. Nothing seemed out of place. I decided to completely close and re-open bizhawk and try again. After this restart, both runs synced fine. I have no idea what the original issue was that caused the desyncs and I can't find anything different looking at settings/etc. this time around.
TL:DR Though I can't explain why they didn't before, both of the top runs now sync fine on my system.
Congrats to the winners!
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I'm getting a desync in 1-3 trying to playback the winning run. Is anyone else seeing this?
Specifically: just after saving the victim, I'm guessing the player is supposed to clip north through the wall, but he doesn't.
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I briefly skimmed through various pages on the demo site.
I was impressed by the overall speed improvement. Pages loaded dramatically faster than they do from the current site.
I like that access to one's forum profile stuff and private message inbox are directly available from the menu atop the main page.
I like that within a profile, the submission stats now show: Published, Cancelled, and Rejected instead of Accepted, Waiting, and Gruefood.
I expect there will be other features that I will find I like as well, but don't have time to continue looking around now.
