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I feel that the current UI doesn't make it quite obvious enough how to contribute movie ratings yourself - it took me a while looking at the publication layout to figure out the "Rating:" was a hyperlink. I feel that perhaps instead having an explicit (Rate this movie) hyperlink following the rating data itself would be more clear to users, and also that such a link ought to be placed on the page for viewing existing ratings too.
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There are two problems with the nomination approach. Firstly, anyone can nominate any TAS regardless of its entertainment value, so there's not actually any assurance here that you're going to end up with a set of TASes that are consistently of a certain entertainment quality - probably more along the lines of "TASes that frequently belong to popular franchises". Secondly, Stars already exists as a category for the "beautiful, entertaining" movies, so it's not like there's not going to be any encouragement to try and make something super entertaining and interesting to watch.
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Doesn't making Moons a category for "the good movies" only continue the problem of Vault being perceived as a bad classification, which is part of what the proposed changes are trying to deal with?
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So there's an interesting borderline case in regards to "in-game defined goals" I'd like to bring up, particularly in regards to low% categories.
Taking a look at the Portal series, it's reasonable to argue that "Least Portals" is an internal goal in both games. Portal has a "Challenges" mode where players explicitly attempt to reduce their completion time, portal count or step count in chambers, and Portal 2 adds online leaderboards to increase competition over these metrics (though step count is dropped).
In this case, would Least Portal runs of the main campaigns in these games be considered applicable for the Vault/"objective goals tier" under the proposed changes?
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Arc, if you were writing an essay and you used a source on the internet to gather some of the information for it, would you be satisfied crediting them in the bibliography, or would it be necessary to attach their authorship to the essay as well?
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RetroEdit wrote:
Signing up with a team of (in alphabetical order):
- CasualPokePlayer
- InputEvelution
- psx
- RetroEdit (myself)
My other team members will probably make posts confirming this at some point.
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So this game works on a basis of the player playing matches against CPU opponents, who have their own assigned skill levels, and are selected from an array of potential opponents depending on the player's skill level. Depending on how the player's skill level compares to that of their opponent/s, and how overwhelmingly they're considered to have won or lost, the player's skill level is either increased or decreased.
Eventually the game runs out of more difficult CPU opponents to supply the player with, which in turn means that even if the player were to win to the most overwhelming extent every time, the increases in skill level will grow increasingly smaller and begin to approach an asymptote, marking a limit to how far their skill level can be increased. As already noted, the game displays this skill level and its increases/decreases as integers, but behind the scenes it instead operates as a float.
This subsequently means that beyond what appears to be the maximum achievable skill level, the skill level can be increased further towards the asymptote in the tiniest of increments until eventually the increases are too small to move it from one floating point value to the next highest floating point value. This naturally involves yet more playing against the exact same CPU opponents in order to reach this point, with no noticeable differences in the actual gameplay at this point, and nothing to indicate to the average viewer that anything's actually happening anymore, even if the saved skill level is still increasing in the tiniest of fractions.
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Say I wanted to make a "max skill level" TAS in a game where the player's skill level is displayed as an integer, but it's stored as a float in the game's data, meaning it can still technically be increased beyond what appears to be its "max" (with this approach adding considerably to the run's final time). In such a case, should the skill level be only increased up to the highest integer, or its highest total value?
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I didn't expect this run to be particularly enjoyable to watch, given the gameplay and tricks shown in the existing branches of SMB1 and SMB2J are pretty similar to one another and tend to bore me a lot. I was pleasantly surprised to find the run was far more diverse in its contents than that, even if it comes at the expense of several lengthy waits. Certainly, it was far more entertaining than the run that Spike linked, which to me ends up coming off more as a slow warps run despite its goals.
I was kind of on the fence about whether I should vote Meh or Yes on this - however, considering that I would readily vote Yes for SM64's equivalent, even with the waiting times known to be required in an any% run, I think it's perfectly reasonable I should vote Yes on this.
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You could have used the time you spent writing that rather lengthy paragraph about why you can't write an all-encompassing submission text to provide detail about sync settings and some of the basic tricks used. Even better, you could have copy and pasted the trick info listed in Spike's reply for even less effort and even less time.
Wouldn't have thought that such a "straightforward" run would require too much intricate detail to begin with.
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YaLTeR wrote:
An any% TAS of HL1 would take considerable effort to make, and an any% TAS without variable FPS would not look that much different from an any% TAS with variable FPS, so spending 2 times the effort to create both is not really justified. But as I said, any% TAS with variable FPS is more interesting to make and to watch due to technical quality.
I'd like to back this statement up with an additional note in relation to the beginning of the run. There is a 5-minute unskippable tram ride at the start of the game that is typically ignored in RTA speedruns due to its incredibly long length. The player is able to clip out of the tram by lowering the fps and hit all of the relevant changelevel triggers, but due to certain elements such as doors opening being tied to the tram's position only a few seconds can be shaved over the ride itself, and an extra 40 seconds of waiting for the security guard to walk over to the tram and back again at the end of the ride.
However, there is a major difference in entertainment value between the two. Opportunities for glitch showcases and interesting movement are practically non-existent inside the tram, whereas opportunities are plentiful outside the tram. There is unfortunately little to be showcased on the last of the tram maps, but fortunately the 40 second timesave helps compensate with this issue. While the time difference is still relatively minor over the course of a full TAS, variable fps makes a huge difference to entertainment value over the first 20% of the run, which may be worth noting.
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So this is about something that I don't believe is currently possible with the tools available from what I understand, but I'm nonetheless curious as to how submittable it would be in theory.
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle has an option to download one of the Chao in your garden to one of three Sonic GBA titles (Sonic Advance, Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Pinball Party), in which you can interact with it in the Tiny Chao Garden. You're actually able to upgrade its stats in this setting by buying it fruit with the rings you've collected in those games, which helps for the Chao Races and Chao Karate, which you need to get a Chao through all of in order to get all 180 emblems and have reached 100% completion.
Phantasy Star Online happens to have an obscure easter egg where you're able to locate a Chao, and by completing some quest or mission (I'm not sure what the full specifics are) you're able to also unlock the Tiny Chao Garden and download it to one of the already mentioned GBA games. The difference is that in this setting you get a Tails Chao with the garden (otherwise inaccessible in SA2B), which already has a certain amount of stats towards various areas that become important during the races (and maybe higher grades that help with levelling up those stats too?).
This means that the fastest way to 100% SA2B in a TAS would theoretically be to start a TAS of Phantasy Star Online and one of the Sonic GBA games at the same time, with Phantasy Star Online working as fast as possible to unlock the Chao while rings are farmed for buying the necessary items for levelling up Chao in the GBA game, download Tiny Chao Garden with Tails to GBA, level it up while the SA2B TAS continues to move through with everything except the Chao stuff, move the Tails chao off the GBA and into SA2B, level it up further (if even necessary by this many hours), and continue from there.
If the necessary TAS tools for such a complex method of completion were to be added in the future, would it be acceptable for TASVideos? I suspect the precedent here would likely be that all 100% completion work has to be completed within the game the goal of 100% completion is for and that game alone, but I figured I might as well ask.
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Looking forward to watching the new TAS! However, I do think you should credit HappyLee and Mars608 as authors, given that you copy their inputs in various places.
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Evan0512 wrote:
I think the speedrun will come out by the end of 2020, I expect.
Hate to break it to you, but unless the TAS suddenly ramps up production speed seventy-fold that's not going to happen. I don't even know if it would be possible to optimise such a project properly while completing the remainder in that sort of timeframe.
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Under advice from feos, I've decided to put the All Minigames Playaround TAS on indefinite hiatus and instead start work on an All Pair Games TAS, first WIP can be found below;
Link to video
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feos wrote:
How and when does it end? Does it go through all minigames?
How long it takes to end depends on the difficulty level. Beginner has 5 minigames, Intermediate has 10, and Expert has 50. The minigames are selected randomly from the available 4-player, 1v1 and 1v3 minigames, of which there's 57 in total, so you'll never quite end up going through all minigames (never mind that there's also 22 Pair minigames not covered at all by this mode). It ends with you reaching the final rocket and flying off from the game board.
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feos wrote:
Would you mind turning this into some kind of a picture? This game is apparently so complicated that it'd be really hard to comprehend or explain to others with just pure text.
Good job on me for completely forgetting about this discussion for 10 months and only now getting back to it. I can see that my original post to try and explain the structure of this game was pretty needlessly overcomplicated, so I'll just post an image of the main menu here for ease of understanding.
https://imgur.com/a/ywNJMl3
The various gamemodes available to play are split into four categories here; Party Games, Pair Games, and House Party. House Party is probably the category of games that is least acceptable for TASVideos, for the reason that its gameplay doesn't even take place within Wii Party itself, but typically involves something such as hiding the WiiMotes around the room while the other players try to find them. There's no opportunity for superplay here.
Every single one of the Party Games and Pair Games are structured differently from one another. They all make use of the minigames, which are selected at random based on what type of minigame is needed. Obviously having a separate branch for every single one of these gamemodes would be far too many, so I feel that these could potentially be split into a simple "All Party Games" and "All Pair Games" branch. Worth noting is that Mii of a Kind has an option to select either a 3-round or 5-round game, and Balance Boat has unlockable levels of both hgiher difficulty (boats with more difficult configurations to place the Miis on that ultimately won't affect the TAS gameplay considerably) and "Time Attack" for each of these difficulties where players have to put randomly generated Miis on the boat as fast as possible without it toppling over. I am unsure of how these would be expected to be handled in such branches.
The minigames have their own sub-menu like House Party, with the options Free Play, Battle, Solo, Challenge and Rule Reversal. Once again these all operate on different rules, so I'll try and stick to a brief summary for each. Free Play allows one to play different minigames at their own leisure, Battle involves playing random minigames against each other until someone comes out victorious. Solo involves going through a long sequence of random minigames with a limited amount of health that can be lost through losing a minigame (with different difficulties). Challenge has some minigames which are like pre-determined "levels" of difficulty to try and push through either alone or in a pair, and others which are more like score attacks. Rule Reversal is like Battle, but with a random cheater selected that others have to try and spot.
Battle and Rule Reversal are probably the least interesting of the bunch because "battling it out in random minigames" is already something seen across the regular gamemodes. Solo and Challenge are ones that are somewhat more interesting, but I'm unsure how acceptable they would be considered for TASVideos. I have actually been working on and off on an "All Minigames Playaround" TAS that simply goes through all the minigames in Free Play while aiming to be as entertaining as possible, but I've recently become more concerned about the potential entertainment value of this, alongside very little audience feedback to go off of. I'd appreciate knowing whether this would actually be interesting enough to watch to make Moons tier so I can better consider how to move forward with the project.
Here's a playlist for the WIPs I've released so far (WIP 5 marks a complete restart of the project, so you're better off just starting there and not worrying about the previous ones).
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4e4GsHUROUXhWlILIbiabvsxgU8_XfsC