Frankly the only real answer is to accept as improvement to the previous TAS
I think the NTSC version is way too valuable to do that.
What problem, exactly, do you have with having both of them at the same time? Are we going to run out of categories or something?
I'm sure we can, but some people are still debating on whether it should obsolete the NTSC version or not.
Personally I don't really understand why. The site is not going to go down the drain if we have an NTSC and a PAL version of the game at the same time. There is merit to have both, with this particular game.
(If somebody wants to have the same thing happen with some other game, they can make a post presenting their argument why.)
And I fail to see why PAL has been so horribly mistreated on this site. If this was JPN and not PAL and the improvements were the same we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?
Frankly the only real answer is to accept as improvement to the previous TAS, which goes in Obsoletely Famous, and change the site's stance to be accepting of all regions (like it should have been in the first place!) with a preference for NTSC in cases where it's fastest/tied for fastest (excluding language change differences, ofc) and be done with it. Use whatever version is fastest for whatever reason, not this inane "can't use PAL unless you justify it really well" we have now. Accept as improvement, set the precedent, and be done with it.
The only real argument being presented against PAL here is that it's PAL and therefore is automatically a "crappy port" when as has been said and proven multiple times in this thread, it's not (nor is it a port, since it's still the same effective console, but I digress). Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only argument I'm seeing against it is "It's PAL".
/shrug
We don't want all PAL versions to be acceptable alongside NTSC versions. If you consider different region versions different games globally, you can't limit the acceptability of PAL (or other regions). We want the movie base that looks as good as we can achieve, quality, not quantity. But we don't want to limit the quantity if quality is high enough.
To me, the only way to sanely change the PAL rule is to allow it on the case-by-case basis. Sometimes it will obsolete NTSC, sometimes it will be a new branch, sometimes it will be rejected. Various factors should be weighed in: internal gameplay differences, difference in the TAS content, entertainment value, technical value, audience opinion, maybe some more.
I think the only sane way to change the PAL rule is to just treat it as a normal platform. Some might be faster. Some might be slower. Some might be unique enough to warrant a publication alongside NTSC. Just like different consoles might be different publications, different regions might also prove the same. If you disagree, why?
Watched until The Deep Forest. Even thought the levels looks better than in the RTA, your fight with the first boss takes 3 seconds more than in the RTA.
We can't publish runs that fail to beat unassisted records.
Is there an explainable reason for not beating RTA? I have not watched either a run or the TAS and I have zero familiarity with the game so I don't know.
If anything, I hope the judging process on this submission helps clarify the rules on PAL vs. NTSC and not complicate them further by creating yet another exception (because Nach loves SMB or w/e other reason). If exceptions come easy, or requested often, it typically indicates there might be something wrong with the rule
The rule says (emphasis mine): "Due to this, PAL versions of ROMs are generally not allowed"
I don't think any rule should be totalitarian. Any rule, no matter which, ought to allow for exceptions if there are good reasons for it. When rules are applied in a completely rigid totalitarian manner, it only causes problems. Rules should be flexible and be ready to accommodate the immense amount of variation in highly subjective situations.
Secondly, the current rule, even as currently written, already does allow for exceptions. That's what the word "generally" above means.
But if this causes clarifications and expansions to the current NTSC vs PAL rules, it's probably only a good thing.
And btw, personally I heavily oppose the idea of this submission obsoleting the NTSC version. The NTSC version ought to exist as an official publication because of its importance.
Regarding the emphasized part, sure. You're right in that it does not explictly ban PAL versions. But the difference between stating that PAL is generally not allowed and "use fastest version, NTSC preferred when tied" is rather large. In the former case, I have to argue that PAL is accpetable when it's identical to NTSC. In the latter, I can use whatever I prefer because I don't have to argue that PAL is okay, it's already implied. Ultimately, stating that X is generally not allowed means that X doesn't get used because you don't want a rejection coming down to "X shouldn't have been used here". Under the wording I proposed, X would not get rejected for simply being used since you don't have to argue that it should be.
As a final kicker- we have several pages of posts debating both the use of PAL and if it would obsolete NTSC. Under the proposed wording, there would be zero argument if PAL should have been used, only a debate if we obsolete NTSC or not, which would likely fall the way of obsoletion with NTSC being added to Obsoletely Famous due to its pedigree.
But even with the current rules, I highly doubt that anyone is going to reject, for example, a Twilight Princess TAS using the nearly identical PAL version to save a few seconds with the German language.
Interesting you bring this up since the TP TAS is, in fact, being done in German. Though this was likely intentional. To bring up a more interesting point, by TASVideos standards, USA 1.0 is actually the fastest version of Skyward Sword, though JP is faster RTA, since the text speed is that much different.
That said, my vote now goes to Yes, and Obsolete NTSC. It's not a port, it's SMB. That it has different glitches due to being adapted to PAL standards rather than NTSC standards is what makes it faster. Not text speed. Not "bad porting" - ESPECIALLY since it's not a port at all. Different, and better, glitches. And regarding the rule about using NTSC over other versions, it should be changed to:
"Use the fastest version of the game available as an official release. In the event that, excluding any potential text speed (from language change) differences, multiple versions are identical, NTSC is preferred but not required. Note that time gained or lost due to text speed (from language change) alone is not considered when comparing versions unless the majority of the run is text based and should not be factored in when choosing the 'fastest version' of a game."
Assuming this is a different *version* of the game, it should obsolete the NTSC release, due to being faster. If this is a *port* of the game it gets fuzzy, and if this is anything beyond a port then it should not obsolete NTSC.
That out of the way, this deserves to be accepted assuming it checks out (I believe there was a question about the ROM version earlier in the thread, though I might be mistaken). I'm going to sleep on this before I cast my vote for tier.
I suppose in that case MrCheeze's post has merit. If it's its own independent executable that does not need to be run inside a separate emulator, it could be seen as a different version of the game on its own right.
Of course then we have the other interesting question: At least in the past the idea of having TASes of (essentially) the same game for different systems has not gotten a very warm welcome. Usually only one version of the game has been accepted (although there might well be exceptions).
Given this, would we want separate TASes of the N64 version and a Wii VC version of Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time?
(Personally I wouldn't have a problem, if they are distinct enough to merit it, but there may be other opinions.)
As far as this is concerned if they are distinct enough to be separated then they can be side by side. If not, I'd say whichever is faster. Which may change based on category.
The default should be Any% and anything that isn't should tell you what it is. Note that this does not mean all of these are vaultable, what is vaultable and what is not is not the discussion here.
Any% and full completion are the only things that are vaultable, how can they not mean a run is vaultable?
I meant this to say that I am not discussing what is or is not vaultable- that aspect is unchanged and I'm not even going there. In other words, this entire discussion has nothing to do with what can go in vault and what should go in vault is not something I will be commenting on in this. In short: Vault/Moons/Stars is NOT what I am concerned with here as they aren't changing.
feos wrote:
Habreno wrote:
100% should be a tag that includes both 100% categories directly and categories that don't follow the % formula directly but still imply a full completion (120 Stars comes to mind as an example). I also feel that "obtain all pokemon" should fall under this category, though there may be a reason it does not.
100% is a "full completion" in that you get everything that generally matters. And I have another comment regarding 100% later, on the All Levels reply.
feos wrote:
Habreno wrote:
Low% should be a tag for runs that complete the game with a minimum % of items or minimum amount of items, where this is slower than just beating the game normally (as failing this it would just be Any%). This should be applied. If more than one Low% is possible, you can use descriptions to differentiate the TASes.
I'm aware it is. This is a list of tags to show where the Special Goal tag would fit in with the other ones we already have on the site.
feos wrote:
Habreno wrote:
All Levels should be a tag for runs that complete all of the levels/dungeons/worlds/etc. that exist in the standard game in cases where this is not the 100% requirement and where skipping worlds/levels is a valid option. Note that this would not apply when you skip levels within a world but avoid skipping worlds, but *would* apply if you do all the worlds, but out of order (i.e. a warpless run for Mario would not be All Levels, but a run that beats all the levels, even if it does so out of order would be All Levels). As stated before, this also doesn't apply where skipping levels is not an option at all.
We combine this with 100%, as they are both full completion.
Except an "All Dungeons" TAS of a game may not be 100% and may not be Any% and yet still may be a valid TAS that does not fit in either Any% or 100%. In other words, All Levels does not necessarily have to be a full completion of the game, so for this reason should not be combined with 100%. It certainly would be a less used tag but it could have its uses.
feos wrote:
Habreno wrote:
Playaround has been discussed prior, but should be more applied to TASes that don't aim for speed but instead show off technical capabilities of the game or console itself.
Max Score is a 100% alternative for games based on score and not a completion level, and should be the highest score obtainable in the game. This should not be used in cases where 100% is possible (i.e. Max Score and 100% should be mutually exclusive for a given game), even if score is different from 100%.
Best Ending, and its counterpart, Worst Ending, should be completion alternatives where the fastest ending is neither the best nor worst, assuming there are multiple endings. It's not necessary for this to be mutually exclusive with 100% or Max Score, but odds are it will be.
Once again, as stated on Low%, I'm already aware these exist and was including them for description purposes, so as to better show where Special Goal would fit with what already exists.
feos wrote:
Habreno wrote:
Special Goal should be for cases that do not fit under the above tags nor Any%, and could include esoteric goals (such as max coins) that are still optimized for speed (this being a key difference between playaround and special goal).
So that's the only thing that we're completely lacking. But see, your definition of it already differs from Niamek's, who's nevertheless agreeing with you.
I differed on my opinion because I felt the definition was improvable, which is not a negative on the original idea- fleshing things out is a good thing.
feos wrote:
Habreno wrote:
This could include a completion that goes beyond 100% (such as All Permanent Flags, to use an example from Twilight Princess- in addition to 100% we aim to set every permanent flag in the game, which includes opening every chest as well as other things) as well as encompassing some rather obscure glitch categories that don't fall under the above tags.
This part perfectly describes full completion. If something has 101%, or additional tasks that add to completion, we still count these as full completion. You can't go for completion fuller than full, can you? You just have to define it.
If the game has a percentage counter and the game's community defines their 100% as some alternative percentage (like 101% or so) then that is the 100% for that game - whatever the percentage is, you got everything that mattered. A "beyond 100%" completion could, in addition to getting things that matter, also do things that don't matter but are still tracked. In other words, it gets what would be 100% and goes beyond that. As a different example, you can get 100% in Prime 3, but you can also dupe pickups and go beyond 100%, to 255% assuming my memory serves me right. Does this mean that a "100%" TAS of Prime 3 would have to get 255%? No, because the rules of 100% require getting all individual pickups, not simply setting the value to 100%. So 255% would not be a 100% completion, not an Any% completion, certainly not All Levels, absolutely not Low%, but yet could be a Special Goal, fitting into that category by being a completion that goes beyond 100%.
The default should be Any% and anything that isn't should tell you what it is. Note that this does not mean all of these are vaultable, what is vaultable and what is not is not the discussion here.
100% should be a tag that includes both 100% categories directly and categories that don't follow the % formula directly but still imply a full completion (120 Stars comes to mind as an example). I also feel that "obtain all pokemon" should fall under this category, though there may be a reason it does not.
Low% should be a tag for runs that complete the game with a minimum % of items or minimum amount of items, where this is slower than just beating the game normally (as failing this it would just be Any%). This should be applied. If more than one Low% is possible, you can use descriptions to differentiate the TASes.
All Levels should be a tag for runs that complete all of the levels/dungeons/worlds/etc. that exist in the standard game in cases where this is not the 100% requirement and where skipping worlds/levels is a valid option. Note that this would not apply when you skip levels within a world but avoid skipping worlds, but *would* apply if you do all the worlds, but out of order (i.e. a warpless run for Mario would not be All Levels, but a run that beats all the levels, even if it does so out of order would be All Levels). As stated before, this also doesn't apply where skipping levels is not an option at all.
Playaround has been discussed prior, but should be more applied to TASes that don't aim for speed but instead show off technical capabilities of the game or console itself.
Max Score is a 100% alternative for games based on score and not a completion level, and should be the highest score obtainable in the game. This should not be used in cases where 100% is possible (i.e. Max Score and 100% should be mutually exclusive for a given game), even if score is different from 100%.
Best Ending, and its counterpart, Worst Ending, should be completion alternatives where the fastest ending is neither the best nor worst, assuming there are multiple endings. It's not necessary for this to be mutually exclusive with 100% or Max Score, but odds are it will be.
Special Goal should be for cases that do not fit under the above tags nor Any%, and could include esoteric goals (such as max coins) that are still optimized for speed (this being a key difference between playaround and special goal). This could include a completion that goes beyond 100% (such as All Permanent Flags, to use an example from Twilight Princess- in addition to 100% we aim to set every permanent flag in the game, which includes opening every chest as well as other things) as well as encompassing some rather obscure glitch categories that don't fall under the above tags. As this tag is less explanatory than others, details should be part of the description.
To ask a slight aside question: What about Wii U Virtual Console? Is Wii U VC accurate to original releases or are there emulation quirks with this as well? I'm aware that, as of now, emulation of the Wii U is not up to TAS standards, but at some point it is likely to be, and the question will get raised eventually.
As a slight aside to that question, if Wii U VC of an original Wii game is identical, is it okay, for TASVideos standards, to take the game and TAS it in Dolphin and ignore the disc read speed limits imposed in Dolphin or would emulating the read of the game from source other than disc (I assume console hard drive, or however you would have the game stored on a Wii U) be not allowed for TASing it in Dolphin?
In short, since we don't have Wii U emulation, assuming the Wii U "emulates" the Wii identically for Wii games on Wii U VC, and since Dolphin is an acceptable Wii emulator, are we able to substitute Dolphin for a Wii U emulator for Wii U VC games that were Wii games, and use loading times other than disc since the game isn't technically on disc?
Isn't it possible to get to that save without waking up crateria? (the missile collection is what does it)
I believe (according to previous submissions) that awakened planet is required for some of the OOB to be the way it is, though I'm not certain. Your answer is almost certainly in previous submission texts for this category.
To give my input on this: If the category shown here is run by the community and it's not considered a "meme" category (aka the community actually cares about it), then I would presume that we should not reject just for using the debug code/whatever it's called. That said, you now get into the question of judging the category itself, since it's not technically Any% but is a different category. I have no input on this matter (nor the movie itself)
Watched the encode with CS and I can certainly say that they don't really detract much. I'll go over the CS-less encode tonight and might change my opinion, but the CS weren't that bad.
EDIT: If it wasn't obvious, yes vote.
EDIT2: The CS actually add to the run, IMO.
I'm aware my opinion is likely to be drowned out in this thread, but I fail to see the issue with allowing underflow in anything EXCEPT low% (will get to low% in a moment). Aren't we supposed to be using any glitch we can to go faster? What's with this "oh, let's not do X just because it makes the game trivial". If we followed that mantra, we'd never get anywhere new with glitches. And that irks me. Side note: I'm aware that there's different categories and each bans certain things; when I refer to "any glitch" I really should be saying "any glitch not banned by the category rules".
One can argue that skipping Botwoon by clipping into a door is also against the spirit of SM running (and thus, by extension, TASing) since it clips. However, FWIR, it doesn't go OOB, merely clips into the wall and then into a transition (as far as if this is OOB, not my argument to make or get involved in, simply mentioning it). But yet, despite the fact that this is actually more controversial of a decision (considering one of the rules of SM's basic Any% is *no OOB*, because allowing OOB completely changes the run), basically NOBODY has argued this point. Wow guys.
So ultimately, if the TASer feels that using underflow will make a non-Low% TAS faster, then I think they should be allowed to. I fail to see why we should split SM non-Low% categories by underflow and non-underflow, and none of the arguments against it in this thread are even remotely close to convincing me otherwise, because, frankly, they're dumb arguments (we shouldn't do underflow because the previous TAS didn't. Really? REALLY?.
Now to Low%, even though this is not the category this TAS exists in. I would be much more willing to consider a no-underflow branch for Low% (alongside an underflow branch), as one of the rules of Low% is least items possible, and breaking ammo restrictions is slightly less... desirable... for the category's philosophy. However, it would strongly depend on both TASes and I would not be able to say definitively until I would watch both an underflow TAS and a non-underflow TAS.
I'm not an SM expert but I figure that this can be another opinion the judges can take into account. For the record, I voted Yes on this TAS.
Are the credits possible to trigger via the code regardless of game progress, or is achieving a "game beaten" state a requirement to view the credits? If it's the former than I have serious doubts about this being a legitimate completion; the latter I question the same for different reasons.
If triggering the credits happens at any time then what exactly *proves* the game state given is a legitimate "game beaten" state? I don't know the game, so I don't know the answer. Alternatively, if using the code only works after achieving a "game beaten" state, is this a *legitimate* game beaten state, or merely one that is able to show the credits? Yes, there is a difference, as has been proven in the past with Pokemon runs on the site.
TL;DR I have issues with the "ending" and there's not enough detail in the submission text to answer my questions.
I understand the technical definition may be an overflow, but if you ask someone watching to describe going from 1 to 0 to 65535 they're going to say the value was underflowed, not overflowed. (numbers themselves may not be representative of what actually happens, but they make an example). Can debate actual definitions all you want, in the end the semantics don't really matter. The glitch is referred to as an underflow, because it, to a layperson, describes what they think happens.
Not with these votes. I thought I told you to not force anyone to find this entertaining.
I fail to see how he's trying to force anyone to find it entertaining. He's saying he feels it deserves a star. Anyway.
I voted yes. It's low%, which, while it may not be as entertaining from a casual standpoint, is very entertaining from a perspective of trying to cut out as much as possible. That said, there was a comment above on charge beam. I am not a SM TASer, nor do I speedrun the game, but it would be nice to have some clarity on where charge beam is explictly required.
What if, instead of putting the four extra bits in the ABXY buttons, you had the four seperately, say, above the START/SELECT buttons? Yes, this would require modifying the controller shell, but it may end up being easier to visualize then.
You could then center the ABXY LEDs and it would probably look better; those ABXY buttons look rather cramped.
The shoulder buttons look really nifty, though. How fragile are they? (AKA could you possibly put these inside the controller shell instead of just outside them)?
If the Nico TAS isn't submitted, is it possible for this to at least be linked in the currently accepted TAS's comments or would that not be a viable option?
EDIT: This was added to Gruefood Delight, so I suppose adding a link to the currently accepted submission might be a bit much.