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It is true that the goal choice here is not as immediately intuitive as "no running", "no sword", or "no killing / pacifist", but it is still clearly defined. However, the fact that there are more than 1000 z presses all across the run does somewhat undermine this in particular for a bit compared to those that actually completely forego using a specific button during the entire movie or having them only at a few specific spots.
That being said, even though the concept isn't novel enough to grant entertainment by itself, the end product is entertaining nonetheless. This movie is very different from a standard Genocide run and the uses of the glitches and sequence breaks not seen elsewhere are amazing. Easy Yes vote. :D
One question regarding routing: is it possible to get Worn Dagger before facing Undying and head back to Watefall without setting the redemption flag? If yes, would that save z presses?
For a TAS optimized for time, GPC is currently not worth it, mainly because it's 1.0-exclusive and thus can't take advantage of the shorter Japanese text in newer versions of the game.
But what if the text lengths are disregarded? Would it have saved time in a regular Genocide run or some other categories?
Copy this file into the "Undertale v1.0 Linux" folder. This file is the "runner" file, essentially the Linux version of the UNDERTALE.exe file found on the Windows version. It executes the code found in the data.win (or game.unx) file.
I think the verification process should be done via files exclusively from official GameMaker and Undertale releases instead of relying on an upload like this.
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https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/12519?CurrentPage=81&Highlight=510672#510672
I'm not sure about the other games but the MAME set for VS. Castlevania includes a .u7 file and a .pal file, with the .u7 file being the headerless rom recorded in the Bizhawk gamedb; although it can't be run at the moment due to issues, the runnable .nes file I found is just that rom with a header.
Bizhawk saves the VS settings in SyncSettings.json, while FCEUX doesn't seem to have a place to configure that at all or even emulate the sound for VS Castlevania in particular correctly. Unless I missed something, VS games should be required to be done on Bizhawk for submission and a parser for VS should be possible if it can read from SyncSettings.json.
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This came back to my mind.
https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/14293
If "demo tier" is added, maybe we can move Saturn's Chrono Trigger completionist movie there after a movie with a more clearly defined goal (all quests mentioned by Gaspar, for example) is published.
Regarding the idea of "demo tier" itself, I think it is better to have it as a separate class. One good way to draw the line between the Moon class and "demo tier" if that approach is taken is to make the Moon class still require completing the game as required in Standard. The same can be applied to other more "unconventional" factors, but starting with allowing the game to be not completed as conventionally defined is a good place to start.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/76571532676876639
Half a decade later, I finally got to do this thanks to the works done on Bizhawk.
Link to video
It seems the second loop has noticeable differences, so I'll do that as well before I submit a movie when MAMEHawk is considered stable.
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Samsara wrote:
This is one of those runs that triggers my feeling of "If we reject this, then that's a failure on our part and not the author's".
But why would it imply a failure on either side in the first place?
Oak's words echoed... There's a time and place for everything. If someone "submits" something completely unrelated and gets rejected, does it mean there is a failure on the part of the person regarding the making of the contents itself? Of course not. A rejection simply means the two (or more) sides don't fit due to factors, and that's perfectly fine.
Regarding future rule changes, I actually think this arguably qualifies for Standard if the requirement of clean SRAM is removed, but until that happens, there is no reason for the current rules to not apply. It wouldn't hurt to wait until then to re-judge it, and/or set this one to Delayed if the change in question that can reach such result is expected to happen very soon.
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First, for reference, this movie does beat what seems to be the fastest TAS with the same goal choice on Nicovideo.
Link to video
That being said, as entertaining as this movie is by itself, it definitely doesn't differ from the Simon movie that much during the boss fights themselves.
Now, a Maxim boss rush movie might look a bit more different from either of these (the one on Nicovideo seems to be deleted for some reason and is no longer available), but then we already have [3126] GBA Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance "Maxim, all bosses" by gstick in 05:47.68 and the one additional boss that isn't fought in normal gameplay for Maxim (Dracula Wrath phase 1) probably doesn't make it worth it either.
So yeah, having one Simon movie for the boss rush mode of this game probably suffices.
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http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=477159#477159
SmashManiac brought up the discussion regarding the ending sequence of certain Final Fantasy 6 movies in this submission. The staff response addressed why the SM64DS submission was acceptable but didn't comment on the FF6 example.
That being said, if ending sequence disruption is permitted for games where the ending doesn't even update the save file, shall [2725] SNES Final Fantasy VI by keylie & KadMony in 3:11:39.46 be moved to be branchless with the current branchless movie rebranched to be "glitchless" or something similar if applicable?
This is assuming the ending sequence of FF6 on SNES isn't meant to have effects. I don't know enough about this game to tell if that's the case.
feos wrote:
My first question is, are "warp glitch", "out of bounds", and "zips", the same thing?
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feos wrote:
How many of those games are actually identical between Arcade and NES?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_VS._System#List_of_games
Some of them have more differences than others, but all of them have a NES counterpart. It is likely safe to assume most people looking for movies of these games would check the NES page if they aren't seeing them on the Arcade page. Also, if we give them a VS label, they can be listed on both pages, right?
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feos wrote:
then they can be linked from the NES version runs.
But what if the 2 versions end up obsoleting each other and there is no "active" NES movie left?
It definitely will be messy to "label each arcade machine differently", but there are only so many that are based directly on a home console that is well-emulated enough so it will be far from doing it for each arcade engine. Moreover, as most of the games, at least in the case of VS. (and PlayChoice-10), are directly based on games from the corresponding home console, it is much more likely for one who looks for movies of those games to check the home console movie list page first.
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Having watched both runs, I find this more amusing and think the VS version and the home console version of this game should be able to obsolete each other.
As for the publication, imo it makes the most sense to label it as "VS." and put it on the NES page, similar to what is done for FDS runs. If appropriate and feasible, maybe it can be listed on the Arcade page at the same time.
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[1208] SNES Chrono Trigger "newgame+" by inichi in 06:42.77
This Chrono Trigger movie from 2008 has the "corrupts save data" label. As a New Game+ run, its setup utilizes save corruption, but from what I understand, no actual SRAM corruption is done during the movie itself.
A similar case I can think of is Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Memory corruption can grant the player access to some "souls", the moves used by characters in Julius mode, that are not accessible in normal gameplay. Starting a New Game+ session from a save file with those will keep them, allowing the player to utilize them without performing any glitches in the new game at all.
New Game+ is a common feature in games. Should a NG+ movie be considered as corrupting RAM/SRAM if the preparation requires it, or should it only be considered as such when the movie itself does it?
I have and my point of stands. A lot of RTA categories don't even make much sense once the real time factors are removed and vice versa.
It is true that a popular category in RTA tend to have more people trying to improve the routing and the findings can improve a TAS with a similar goal choice in some cases. Even then, this is more of a case where two things effectively have correlation in results, not that a popular RTA category automatically makes a reasonable TAS category and vice versa.
Moreover, even this potential benefit is hindered when we are talking about using an old "route" as the goal in of itself, as that is already a major handicap on routing improvement. The very concept of using an old route for the sake of it seems to be against major changes to a great extent.
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I used to be able to run a VS. Castlevania rom with SHA1:16348D4AD47E4DF366FB88A88AE8CDE927947D5E on NESHawk in 2020 and earlier, but now it gets stuck at a green screen and the actual game never starts.
I see that this rom isn't in the gamedb, and the "best" version in gamedb seems to be:
sha1:9EB3B75E7B45DF51B8BCD29DF84689A7E8557F4F U VS. Castlevania (VS) NES board=NES-UNROM_VS;system=VS;palette=2C04-2;
I found a rom with this sha1 value named mds-cv.u7 from within a MAME set, but Bizhawk shows "Multiple cores fail to load the rom" when it's opened.
This was on Bizhawk 2.7. The rom not included in gamedb can actually be run in the dev build, but the supposedly best dump included in gamedb still gives the same result for some reason.
The .u7 file appears to be headerless, so inclusion, the file with header is not identified despite running while the headerless file with the sha1 value from gamedb can't be run.
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This discussion can (and maybe should) be extended to Arcade engines based on home consoles in general.
IMO the VS system should be listed on the NES page with a different tag similar to what's done for FDS. The same can apply to cases like Gamecube and Triforce.
Obsoletion should probably be done on a case-by-case basis. If different versions of the games and the resulted movies are similar enough, it's reasonable for them to be able to obsolete each other.
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ikuyo wrote:
And, ultimately, regarding SM64, if anything, I'd like input from the SM64 TASing community. Doesn't it strike people as odd that SM64 TASers, one of the largest TASing communities, which holds competitions and activities yearly to this day, has minimal overlap with this community? Isn't it strange that one of the largest active TASing collectives is not here to say this themselves and people who literally have only one submission have to say it? Shouldn't that be read as a failure of this website?
I fail to see how this is a sign of failure by itself. It doesn’t sound surprising for a group that cares more about one game in particular and one that cares more about TASing in general to not have much overlap as the focuses and interests can be very different, especially when either side has enough size, and that’s perfectly fine.
Samsara wrote:
By that logic, we shouldn't carry any% runs of any game at all, because everything in any% would also be in 100%, just with the same "static" character.
Except that’s often not the case, and any% and 100% are there for all eligible games to serve the purpose of archiving, which is not the topic of discussion here.
Samsara wrote:
You should've just stopped here, because this is all that should matter. If you claim to enjoy 16 star runs, why can't we have them published alongside the other movies? Why exactly do you come to TASvideos if not to watch entertaining content? That's been the goal of the site since the very beginning, and it's going to remain a goal going forward, so why argue against content that people, including yourself, find entertaining?
How, exactly, would you "appreciate" it? Are you actually sitting there thinking "Boy howdy, am I sure glad TASvideos didn't publish a 16 star run of Super Mario 64"? And what makes you think other people would appreciate it? Surely there are people coming here specifically looking for a 16 star TAS, because the concept of a highly optimized 16 star run is appealing to them, and a site literally called "TASvideos" must surely have a TAS from arguably the most popular speedgame of all time, right? Would those newcomers appreciate the fact that we do not in fact have one, and haven't had one since 2007?
I most likely wouldn’t have watched the runs if not for the purpose of this discussion, and my expectation wasn’t betrayed. I said they are enjoyable “by themselves”, and guess what? That is the equivalence of the assumption of ideal environment in physics.
Yes it is wrong to say the results are completely impractical but this is just a meme and it's good enough to help illustrate the point here.
The entertainment value of a thing more often than not exists in relation to the external world. If there really are 121 categories with one for each quantity of stars, one might still find each of them entertaining by themselves, but does that mean the same person in question is likely to enjoy watching all of them? Is it a good idea to include all 121 of them after all to account for the possibility of someone looking for each of them?
If uniqueness as a factor is ignored completely, we will immediately run into a paradox where a slight alteration of a highly entertaining movie is still entertaining, and the smaller the alteration is, the more “equally” entertaining they are! In fact, if we publish the current "1 key" movie again completely unchanged under the label “0 stars / low%”, it will double the amount of entertainment this site has to offer from that one movie file!
Or does it?
Samsara wrote:
You're literally saying a goal choice is "unreasonable", and that is the absolute last thing we should be telling people, especially newcomers to the site. In my opinion, there's merit to every category existing, in both RTA and TAS. New categories means new ways of thinking about a game, new strategies for dealing with the differences, potentially things that could make it into bigger categories, revolutionizing the game and the speedrun for years to come. There is nothing unreasonable about innovation.
Then what is stopping us from have 121 categories for this game? And why is the 16 stars category being discussed specifically?
Part of what I said is in response to your argument of it being a good example with being “incredibly popular in RTA” as one of the reasons. There are plenty of games with RTA categories involving playing a game up to a certain point with the result being identical to a partial any% for most part, and again, in a lot, if not most, of these cases the factors that make the category exist for RTA in first place rely on the fact that things are done in real-time. Being “incredibly popular in RTA” is bad argument for accepting a branch for a TAS. Period.
Samsara wrote:
You've pretty much proven my point here. Your posting here has been nothing but you trying to speak for the community and forcing everyone else to want what you want.
I can’t speak for an entire group of people. Of course I can’t. However, the whole point of discussion is to share reasoning with each other, and there is nothing stopping people who think otherwise from sharing theirs. As subjective as perception is, stuff like uniqueness is something that can be quantified in a relatively objective manner. Moreover, how am I, and others who provide feedback like this, not part of the “community”, whatever that refers to? While one can’t speak for everyone, there are mechanisms like polling to show quantified feedback from a pool…
Oh wait.
Samsara wrote:
It doesn't surprise me that the previous 16 star TAS was rejected with a slight majority of No votes, because TASvideos was never going to accept it in the first place. Our rules did not account for it back then, those rules reflected on the community, and the community turned against the run as a result. ...Nach was gaslighting the staff into thinking that his views were the site's views, and that the site needed to stay that way or else it would die, that bounced around within the staff and only furthered a highly negative culture within itself, which once again reflected on the community.
Trying to reason is trying to speak for the community and forcing everyone else to want what I want, according to you, but when there are mechanisms for feedback, those still don’t count because, for some reason, they must be a simple reflection of the rules at the time and have little to no value? If those aren’t meaningful in showing consensus, then what is?
I hope you aren’t implying that opinions of any sort only count when they align with yours.
Samsara wrote:
Let me get this straight. You're not okay with Super Mario 64 "16 stars", a run that accomplishes a clear goal using a different, but slower route to other published runs, but you would be okay with multiple Super Metroid "low%" runs that accomplish the same clear goal using different, but slower routes? And you're also okay with both Aria of Sorrow 100% runs being published alongside each other, despite the fact that they accomplish the same clear goal but one uses a different and slower route to the other? How does this make any sense? Is there a key difference here aside from the goal choices? Why should the goal choice matter at all when you're perfectly fine with the concept in general?
Be honest with me: Your entire argument here is based off the fact that you don't like Super Mario 64, isn't it?
I don’t dislike this game for sure, but I don’t like it enough to want to watch a 16 stars movie, in the shapes it can be at this point that is, when I have or can watch a 120 stars movie. But I did mention that I see more point in having “120 stars, no BLJ” than that if allowing more categories is what we are talking about. The point is that using “old route” as the very definition of a branch is not a good idea, and the examples provided aren’t even good for this purpose either.
I listed those as examples of having more branches, not using a “route” as a goal in of itself. As I said, a route is the path from a starting point to a destination, and “forging a set of mechanisms consistently throughout the run” is part of the goal. I even said more than once that there can possibly be more clearly defined goals that end up having the “16 stars” route as the optimal path; it’s just that the other things about the result, from what we know as of now, make it not a good choice for a published branch at least in my opinion.
Samsara wrote:
Clearly you don't, given that you are literally calling them unreasonable and saying that you wouldn't support them despite how much you enjoy watching them.
The idea that I’m not supportive of having more categories because I think “them”, assuming you mean the the ones you listed, are unreasonable is a false dichotomy. The ones you listed aren’t the only choices for more branches to have, right?
FYI, I point out fallacies because I spot them. The link to Wikipedia is for the convenience of whoever gets to read this. :D
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Sorry if this has been discussed before, but does the credit warp really count as beating the game in this case?
Apparently, there is no save file generated from this run because the credit sequence itself does not change game progression. The memory address 0x7917 (and 0x793D) seems to be the progression counter that gets incremented by 1 every time a level is complete or a big button is pressed. The counter progression for the final stage happens around the time the full moon gets turned into a crescent after the final boss fight with the save file being updated at the same time. The player can reset at this point without losing progress, and if all big buttons have been pressed by then, the Extra Game mode would be unlocked as well.
So... yeah. This movie basically ends with triggering a sequence that doesn't change the game progression whatsoever. Given the precedents of movies triggering the credits in a similar fashion not being accepted as beating the game (#3903: Masterjun & FractalFusion's GBC Pokémon: Red/Green/Blue/Yellow Version "glitched" in 01:10.47 and probably more), should this movie (and the other ones in this obsoletion chain so far) really be considered to have achieved game completion?
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Is maxing out the visible score counter considered a valid "maximum score" goal for a game with no clear ending point? If the answer is no, maybe it's better to explicitly state this in the rules as that can seem ambiguous.
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ikuyo wrote:
I agree with you that yes, it is arbitrary. But I believe that to some degree _all_ routes and categories are arbitrary, be it RTA or TAS. I think there is no really a rule that allows us to clearly define with no ambiguity what is possible or not acceptable as a route for a movie submission in terms that won't clash with something that already exists or might exist in the future. As such, I think trying to rule that is pointless.
With all due respect this is just nirvana fallacy. All goals are determined by humans and ultimately subjective/arbitrary to an extent in a technical sense, yes. But can we at least all agree that "beating a game" is less arbitrary than "beating a game without utilizing this mechanism", which is in turn less arbitrary than "beating a game without utilizing this mechanism at this specific place while using it elsewhere"? Everything being technically "arbitrary" doesn't mean there can't be a line being drawn somewhere.
Samsara wrote:
The way I'm looking at it from now on is whether or not the site has anything positive to gain from our rules and standards. As it stands, we're only gaining negativity and a decreasing reputation from our Vince McMahon-like tendency to go out there and tell our audience what they want. Rule changes, whether it's adding new rules, rewording existing rules, or removing rules entirely, should always be done with the future of the site and the voice of the community in mind.
I decided to watch both the 16 stars SM64 TAS submitted in 2011 and the current WR of the category, and you know what? I came to the conclusion that this is also a very bad example, possibly even worse than the Chrono Trigger one in some regards.
From what I understand - and please correct me if I’m wrong - the status of the player character in this game is, for the lack of better words, static, for most part. The acquisition of those 16 stars and the traverse inside Bowser stages, aka the absolute majority of this movie, are seemingly identical to their counterparts in a run 120 stars run (from what I vaguely remember) and simply arranged in a different order to my untrained eyes because of how “static” the player character is. In other words, it hardly provides anything not in an any% movie or an 120 star movie.
Do I find these 16 stars runs enjoyable by themselves? I do, but that doesn’t mean I would be eager to watch them knowing how it they don’t add much of anything over any% and 100% movies in this game. If I’m a newcomer, I definitely would appreciate the fact that there isn’t a 16 star movie listed along the other ones. I don’t see how there is a tendency of “tell our audience what they want”, especially when that submission from 2011 has 36 No votes against 31 Yes votes.
There are merits in this category existing for RTA because, for obvious reasons, doing a 16 stars run is very different from doing a 120 stars run for a player. However, when the real time factor is removed, that simply doesn’t seem to be the case. “Incredibly popular in RTA” doesn’t make it a reasonable TAS goal choice. As much as RTA and TASing overlaps, they are still very different things. “This category is well-accepted for RTA” is a bad argument in general for this very reason.
ikuyo wrote:
If anything, we have seen increases of more and more arbitrary challenges rising to be some of the most well known types of playthroughs or Tool Assisted runs of certain games (from Pokémon solo run challenges to the SM64 ABC, probably the currently most well known TAS challenge of any videogame).
I would say beating a Pokemon game with a mon that otherwise wouldn’t be used is very similar in concept to [3640] NES Super Mario Bros. 2 "warps, princess only" by mtvf1 & chatterbox in 08:20.83 and [2015] NES Final Fantasy "White Mage" by TheAxeMan in 1:16:37.56. There is an entire category dedicated to stuff like that, in fact. There is also [3822] DS Super Mario 64 DS "jumpless" by Adeal in 55:05.13. Both of these goals are much more reasonable and well-defined than “it was the optimal route at one point”.
A route is the path between a starting point and a goal. Using a route as a goal by itself is mistakening the means for the end. As I said earlier, I can see the rule set for 16 stars category in SM64 being rephrased to make it better-defined, but given what I mentioned earlier, I probably wouldn’t support the inclusion of this specific category regardless, unless the result looks much different after the mechanisms that can be used to skip that door is consistently forgone throughout the run if they aren’t already.
With all these said, I do agree that we can be open to more categories, and I even have some examples in mind. For one, there are good reasons to have [3216] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "all souls" by Fz-Last, klmz, Pike in 17:06.41 and [1759] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "all souls, inbounds" by Kriole in 24:56.10 published alongside each other. Super Metroid was brought up earlier, and if there are multiple possible combinations of items for low%, some of them might look different enough to warrant different categories. Heck, I can even see a point in having a “120 stars, no BLJ” category for SM64.
DarkKobold wrote:
Why Super Mario 64 got special treatment is beyond me
With all due respect, why such a bad example of all things was chosen to prove a point is beyond me.
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ikuyo wrote:
Going by the SRC SM64 16 Star Ruleset:
* SBLJ is banned
* Any method of skipping the 30 star door other than MIPS clip is banned.
Source
I have seen that. That's why I'm asking "What are the other techniques/glitches that can be used to skip that door? Are they consistently forgone throughout the run?"
A route should be a means to an end, not the end in of itself. It is much better when the end has a set of rules consistently applied through out the game play so that the means in question is actually the optimal path.
Yes it is wrong to say the results are completely impractical but this is just a meme and it's good enough to help illustrate the point here.
The entertainment value of a thing more often than not exists in relation to the external world. If there really are 121 categories with one for each quantity of stars, one might still find each of them entertaining by themselves, but does that mean the same person in question is likely to enjoy watching all of them? Is it a good idea to include all 121 of them after all to account for the possibility of someone looking for each of them?
If uniqueness as a factor is ignored completely, we will immediately run into a paradox where a slight alteration of a highly entertaining movie is still entertaining, and the smaller the alteration is, the more “equally” entertaining they are! In fact, if we publish the current "1 key" movie again completely unchanged under the label “0 stars / low%”, it will double the amount of entertainment this site has to offer from that one movie file!
Or does it?