Posts for InputEvelution


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InputEvelution
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Yes, upon getting to the end of the map the screen fades to black and you are sent back to the main menu. There is also a separate trigger nearby able to be activated by the player that sends them back to the main menu immediately.
InputEvelution
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Would TASes of the Hazard Course from Half-Life 1 (which is completely separated from the main game, and primarily acts as a means of teaching the player various game mechanics) be acceptable for submission?
InputEvelution
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For the past two years or so I've been doing a bit of TASing stuff with Wii Party. There are currently two TASes I am working on for the game; One is an "All Minigames" Playaround TAS, which aims to be as interesting or entertaining as possible to the viewer for all 79 playable minigames, and the other is a "Party Games" speed-focused TAS, which aims to complete all of the five main gamemodes under the said category as fast as possible primarily through luck manipulation (Board Game Island, Globe Trot, Mii of a Kind, Spin-Off and Bingo). Both of these TASes utilise all four players for maximum control over both the game and the entertainment being provided, and the latter-most one is currently on hold until the former is completed (although this may change in the future). I've previously posted WIP videos in the TASVideos discord as I've slowly produced them over time, however I thought that it might be better to make a proper forum page to post them so that people can more easily track previous WIPs, as well as have a better sense of the overall TAS progress. Links to the existing WIP videos for each TAS so far can be found down below; however, note that the All Minigames Playaround TAS was restarted after WIP 4 (prior to which the goal was speed rather than entertainment), and as such the entertainment provided will likely be quite different to the later installments. More detailed information detailing the decisions made in producing the TAS and the reasoning behind those decisions can be found in each WIP's description from WIP 5 onwards. Party Games TAS WIPs: Link to video All Minigames Playaround TAS WIPs: Link to video Link to video Link to video Link to video Link to video Link to video Link to video Link to video
InputEvelution
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Co-authorship and improving upon other people's work is never a bad thing. TASing is more about collaboratively working together to reach the fastest possible time than competing against one another to get credit. Your efforts are not going to be invalidated by other people trying to help, and make small improvements to optimisation - you should be happy for their help.
InputEvelution
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That's the thing - none of these gamemodes appear in the standard minigame rotation, because it's in these gamemodes that the minigames are typically meant to appear. In fact, all of the Party and Pair gamemodes utilise minigames to some extent, and in most cases playing through them is mandatory (Bingo and Match-Up being exceptions to the rule). I'll have a summary below of the basic structure of all the main gamemodes, and how minigames are employed in each one, as a way of extending the conversation from Ask A Judge. Board Game Island features an unfixed number of rounds in which players roll dice to try and get to the end of the board as quickly as possible. Every round is preceded by a randomly selected 4-Player minigame, the results of which determine the value of the dice that the player can roll, as well as the order in which they play. When one player is close enough to the end of the board, the player in last is able to choose the minigame that is played between three randomly-selected ones. Certain squares of the board will also trigger a 1 vs 3 minigame to occur. If the "1" player who lands on the square wins, they are able to move further along the board than they would normally. Globe Trot also precedes each round with a random 4-Player minigame, which determines the number of coins the player is given at the start of their turn, as well as the order they play. This affects which cards they are able to purchase (with the main purpose of moving around the board), and is also critical to being able to purchase Hot Spot souvenirs, which are the main collectable that players hope to obtain to win the game (similar to Stars in Mario Party). The number of rounds here is semi-fixed, however; regardless of any events that occur, the players must go through 10 rounds before the game is able to end (which can still be sped up a substantial amount in a TAS, as careful RNG manipulation can be used to force players to skip all their turns in a round multiple times). Past these 10 rounds, the game will finish upon entering a Hot Spot, and a similar "Last Player chooses minigame" setup to Board Game Island is used; if this does not happen after 10 more rounds, the game forcibly ends. Mii Of A Kind assigns all 4 players 6 random Miis at the start of a set, with the goal being to get all of your Miis wearing the same colour top. Each round is once again preceded by a random 4-Player minigame to determine the order of play, which involves swapping one of your existing Miis with one of another four randomly selected Miis in the centre of the board (In rare cases, you may be able to swap with another player's Mii, or choose the colour of the Mii you pick). Generally the colour is irrelevant, although getting all of your Miis to wear Platinum awards more points, as they are rarer than the other 5 colours (they are also not an option in cases where you can choose the colour of the Mii you swap in). Once a player gets 6 of the same colour, the set ends, and other players are awarded based on how close they were to obtaining six themselves. You may notice that I talk in terms of "sets", rather than "games": The process described is repeated either 3 or 5 times depending on whether the player chooses "3 sets" or "5 sets" when selecting the game. Nothing carries over from one set to the next - although it would likely be regarded as more complete for TASVideos purposes, there is nothing different about the gameplay in "5 sets" as opposed to "3 sets", only that it lasts longer. This is also perhaps an issue that should be addressed. Spin-Off lessens the focus on minigames from the previous gamemodes mentioned, and indeed, it would likely be slower to play through them more than necessary - however, as implied by the previous sentence, playing through at least one minigame is mandatory for the game to end. Spin-Off follows a similar "Game cannot end in the first 10 rounds" and "Extra Time" format to Globe Trot, however in this case it is landing on a 4-Player or 1 vs 3 minigame which triggers the end of the game to occur. Players go through each round by spinning a large wheel, which can either increase money in the bank, give money in the bank to the player, or take money from the player to the bank. Landing on the 4-Player or 1 vs 3 minigames gives all the money to the winning player (in the case of 1 vs 3, it is distributed equally among the three). 1 vs 1 minigames can also appear, with the player who lands on them aiming to steal half of another player's money by winning the minigame. Bingo has players assigned random Bingo cards with Mii faces on them, with the aim being to complete a line on the Bingo card as quickly as possible as balls roll out from the machine. "Minigame" balls can also roll out from the machine, which leads to a randomly selected 4-Player minigame. The player who wins can then choose any Mii to be crossed off of their Bingo card (although doing so will also cross it off the respective Mii from the cards of other players). Friend Connection has two players asked 5 random multiple choice questions to see how well their interests line up with one another, and then a single "Pair" minigame where they try to work together to achieve a certain score, or a certain time, as quickly as possible with teamwork. This is ultimately used to determine a "friendship score", although since the outcome in this case is purely collaborative, one cannot "lose" Friend Connection. Another collaborative pair game is Balance Boat, which has two sub-modes to it. In one, the two players play through a random Pair minigame at the beginning of each round, the performance of which determines how convenient/inconvenient the weights of the two Miis given to the players will be. These Miis then have to be placed on the boat such that it can still remain upright, the success of which allows the players to move on to the next round. There are 10 rounds in total (and thus 20 Miis), and as such the goal is obviously to successfully reach the end of the game without the Miis toppling off. The other sub-mode is time attack, which gets rid of the minigame element altogether and simply asks that players attempt to stack the 20 random Miis on the boat while keeping it upright as fast as possible. In both of these cases there are three difficulty modes, of which only "Easy" is unlocked to start with, and the next difficulty must be unlocked by completing the previous one (which also unlocks Time Attack). This is also an issue that needs to be considered in the context of a TAS on the site. Higher difficulty modes introduce more limitations in regards to where Miis can be placed, making poor results in the minigames have a much greater impact on the complexity of keeping the boat upright. The last one is Match-Up, which is what we have already discussed somewhat here. Only some rounds begin with a 1 vs 1 minigame, and as noted, a turn can only finish once a player makes an error in pairing up Miis (the 1 vs 1 minigame gives the winner an extra heart, meaning they must instead make two errors to finish their turn). As all players can be matched up in a single turn easily in the context of a TAS, the minigames never get an opportunity to appear.
InputEvelution
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That's something being discussed currently. I'm yet to get back to feos on this topic, as I haven't had the time to go through the 79 minigames and determine which classifications each falls into.
InputEvelution
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While Match-Up is admittedly not a particularly entertaining game mode to see TASed on its own, and I imagine would've been unlikely to get accepted anyway, this is a gamemode rather than a minigame like the previous submission. Are you just trying to say that only an "All Pair Games" category or something similar would be acceptable on TASVideos, or has there been a misunderstanding?
InputEvelution
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Party Games, Pair Games and House Party are considered the "mainline" gamemodes of Wii Party, and the minigames are considered a "subset" or sub-mode to that; Minigames are typically played via random rotation in the main gamemodes, and the "Free Play" option simply allows one to play any minigame they desire of the 79 available. However, there are other minigame-focused sub-modes alongside Free Play. There is a "Battle" mode, where players compete to win a set number of minigames first (either 3 or 5), a "Solo" mode, where a single player ventures through several rounds of minigames (with the option to make A/B choices as to what minigame they will play next at lower difficulty levels), with the number of rounds increasing with difficulty; a "Challenge" mode, which features more in-depth minigames primarily intended for either solo or co-operative play not available elsewhere (some are altered versions of existing minigames, however, and must be unlocked by playing the regular version once first); finally, there is "Rule Reversal" (or "Spot the Sneak"), where a select number of random minigames are played, and each time a randomly selected player is granted "cheating" abilities. Success in Rule Reversal is balanced between skill from winning the minigames, and accuracy in guessing who the cheater is (or success in hiding it from other players). This is admittedly quite a selection of content that I failed to mention, perhaps because substantially less attention is drawn to them by the game itself. However, I will say that I do not think that most of these modes offer much entertainment value over the main gamemodes or Free Play, as many of them are simply RNG dependent minigame selection, and are thus likely to repeatedly cycle through the fastest minigames available in a similar fashion to the main gamemodes. Most of the "Challenge" modes that can be speedrunned or have potential for uncapped score attack could potentially be interesting to see in a TAS (besides Shifty Gifts); apart from that, there is no other content that I know of in the game.
InputEvelution
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2:23, from the looks of things.
InputEvelution
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Since Wipeout has decided to submit a Match-Up TAS regardless, I figure I should address the previous response; It is true that some of the minigames and modes don't make sense to speedrun. In addition to the "Party Games" and "Pair Games" set of modes, there is also a "House Party" category, which features games that mainly revolve around what happens outside it (such as Hide and Seek for the WiiMotes), which I don't believe anyone has interest in TASing. I would also say that at least half of the minigames available do not work particularly well in a TAS, at least where the primary goal is speed. However, there is a situation in which playing through the minigames could potentially prove to be a viable branch (since only going through specific ones would, according to what I know, be too arbitrary a goal for typical TASVideos standards). If all minigames were to be played, but instead as a Playaround TAS mainly focused on entertainment, then I imagine that it would be much more interesting to watch, and have a much higher chance of getting in. One of such a nature has been in development on and off for several months. The issue with grouping this in directly with the Party and Pair Games is that in contrast to the minigames, every main gamemodes beside House Party (in my opinion) primarily works well as a speedrun, with lots of interesting strategies, routing and RNG manipulation that can prove quite engaging to viewers. But since this conflicts with the goal for the minigames of entertainment, it presents a need to separate the minigames and main gamemodes into separate branches. I could still understand combining all the Party Games and Pair Games into a single branch, but at that point I don't really see how it would benefit matters much. The main question that Wipeout's TAS presents is "Is it okay to do one of these main gamemodes on their own, and not in combination with other ones under the same category?" While this does inevitably present too many branches, I feel like the answer to this could be "Yes"; after all, the same issue exists with Sonic Adventure DX, where seven branches are currently necessary just to cover the full Any% campaign, the expectation being that an "All Stories" TAS will eventually come to be when it becomes a necessary step for other gamemodes to get on the site. I'm not a judge, though, so I can't say how this might be treated differently.
InputEvelution
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No.
InputEvelution
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A question about Wii Party TASes, following discussion with Wipeoutjack after his recent submission was rejected; The recommendation made was that an "All Minigames" TAS be submitted instead, in the hope of having a more complete branch. (Indeed, one has already been in development for a few months). However, one area of the game not addressed by this is the main gamemodes, which are much longer and could be considered more "Full Game"-like speedrun categories. There are 5 "Party Games" and 3 "Pair Games", and all of these differ significantly from each other in format, rather than simply being different boards of the same game. Would one of these gamemodes be submittable on their own, or would they instead be required to be submitted in packs (All Party Games, All Pair Games, etc.)? EDIT: A follow-up question, since it came to mind; In the case of one of the gamemodes (Balance Boat), there are multiple difficulty settings, and only Easy is available from a new save file. (You need to beat each difficulty to unlock the next one). Would it be desired that a TAS play through all difficulty modes rather than just the one that's available? I imagine that it might be, although there wouldn't be very much variation in the gameplay between each difficulty.
Post subject: Re: #6522: Wipeoutjack7's Wii Wii Party "Puzzle Pick-Up Minigame" in 01:16.52
InputEvelution
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Radiant wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
in regards to time, the minigame could be completed a bit faster with the use of multiple players.
Then why not do that?
This only saves time on the minigame within the context of the minigame itself. The extra time it takes to select a second player is not made up for by the frames it saves.
InputEvelution
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I think I would like to give my thoughts on this topic: First of all, I must say that I thoroughly disagree with the notion that this movie doesn't feature gameplay, and that movies on the site must be required to feature some amount of it to become acceptable on the site. As others have noted, the definition of "gameplay" is far too arbitrary to describe objectively (especially since many genres of games are not considered to have any "real gameplay"). As far as I know, the decision to time all movies from power-on was made because starting from gameplay was too arbitrary a rule, and so given that I would argue that any input from boot-up is gameplay. The argument that the TAS is not really playing the game is comparable to the same argument from YouTube commenters about using glitches. As for the classification of this movie into a Tier, it is very difficult to say; Entertainment indeed meets the "Vault" category without accompanying visuals, but I would argue the technical work and accomplishments behind this are Stars-tier. Obviously for one of these qualities to drag the whole movie up to a certain tier is rather ridiculous, but it's equally true for one of the qualities to bring the whole movie down. Rather than suggest "Moons" as a compromise, I would recommend that given such an unusual pairing of qualities, the community decides which side of the coin is more important, and how such factors of a submission should weigh against each other.
InputEvelution
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I meant to just say unlocking Tails. It wasn't really a question, just a response to the last paragraph of your post.
InputEvelution
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The existing Tails Story run of Sonic Adventure DX was submitted with the intention of unlocking Sonic not being counted in the final time - however, upon submission it was decided that unlocking Tails should be counted as part of the run.
InputEvelution
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I've recently been pondering the situation regarding TASes for Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, and Sonic Heroes on the site. Currently, playing through the full campaign of one of the characters/teams is considered to meet the necessary criteria to be accepted as a branch. This makes a certain amount of sense, as you either need to first unlock other character's campaigns playing through Sonic's (in the case of DX), or are given a choice of which campaign to play through at the start, and playing through any of these campaigns will give you a credits roll. Separate branches for each character is also how the classic games were handled. However, the Adventure games are different in that the player is not simply expected to play through a single campaign. In all of these games (as well as Shadow and Sonic 06), all of the campaigns surround a loose story arc. Only once you complete all of them do you unlock the final portion of the story which ties everything together, and only once you beat that are you considered to have beaten the game. This isn't simply a 100% completion bonus, either - all of these games have additional content on top of this which implies that you are meant to do this - even if it means watching the credits roll 7 times. This puts TASVideos in a difficult situation, especially given that they have already accepted 3 runs which each play through a single campaign. The simplest solution might at first appear to be to keep the branches as is - but this means that every single campaign has to be kept as a separate branch, which in the case of SADX means SEVEN Any% branches. To make matters worse, currently each of these unlockable branches requires all of the work required to unlock them be included as part of the run, meaning that the "Super Sonic Story" branch would include all of the content that was in the six other branches! It is clearly preferable to instead allow an "all stories" branch to instead take the place of an Any% run and obsolete all the old branches, but then how does that affect submission in the mean time? Are the existing runs removed, on the grounds that they don't properly encompass a full playthrough? Are future runs rejected, despite mirroring existing branches? When do we stop and say that a campaign playthrough is only acceptable as part of an "all stories" TAS?
InputEvelution
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It is fine if you want to use other people's work as part of your TASes, but you must include them as a co-author at the very least, as they have directly played a role in making your movie as fast as it is. I would understand only mentioning HappyLee in the description if he had simply suggested or discovered a new strategy which you then optimised, but given that he has worked on a decent chunk of input in the final movie you should list him as a co-author.
InputEvelution
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It seems strange to me to offer such a bounty, given that this is for finding a skip that may or may not exist, and there is a requirement that it must not be a TAS-only trick. If anything, this seems like a way to drum up interest in the RTA community for the game.
InputEvelution
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InputEvelution
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A couple of minutes, if I recall correctly. But if it were required, those couple of minutes would have to be at the beginning of every Wii Sports Resort TAS, even if it didn't include skydiving at all. It's not so much "Newgame+" as it is "annoying first boot-up sequence".
InputEvelution
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I have two questions relating to potential Wii Sports Resort TASes: Golf has 21 courses, but you can only play 18 in one game - the "Special" holes are isolated from the others. Would it be better to have a "Golf, 18-hole game" and "Golf, Special course" category, or to slam them both into a larger category? When first booting up the game, you're usually forced to play through an altered version of the Skydiving game mode before you can do anything else. The game doesn't even count it towards your progress - in an All Sports TAS, you would still have to play through it again later. Given the inconvenience of this, would it be acceptable to just have a verification movie attached for some TASes so that they don't have to do this?
InputEvelution
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It is still better to post your attempts in the forum than to submit them knowing they will be rejected. You may believe that the attention you get from it will help make it more popular, but the attention you attract will most likely be incredibly negative due to it being a sub-optimal movie. I would advise you simply stick to posting in the forum and only submit once you succeed in beating a time.
InputEvelution
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HappyLee wrote:
As an admin, you should see, that there are already lots of hate, prejudice, and disrespect towards our work (from rating, voting, comments, etc.).
If you care so much about hate and disrespect towards TASes, why did you complain for days on end about MrWint's TAS when he submitted it for not being made "the right way"? And if bringing up that matter is beating a dead horse, why are you still bringing this up?
HappyLee wrote:
I did say "Objectively speaking, our TAS follows every guidelines on how to be entertaining." in my deleted post. By the way, purely saying that "MrWint's movie is more entertaining" is also a matter of opinion.
So you say your TAS is objectively better for entertainment, yet liking MrWint's TAS for the same reason is a subjective opinion. If saying preferring your TAS is objectively a correct opinion isn't narcissism, I don't know what is. Your TAS got more than double the votes that MrWint's TASes got. At this point, you are complaining that people voted for a movie other than yours at all, calling it "disrespectful" and calling for a ban on being able to vote for it at all - something that doesn't matter in the first place given that neither of you won. If you are genuinely upset enough about people having different tastes to yourself, and not praising your work to heaven and back, that you want to prevent people from being able to express the opinion at all - something you clearly don't mind - maybe you should ask yourself if maybe these hateful and prejudiced people are the way they are because of a lack of self-conduct from yourself. EDIT: Since I just noticed it, I might as well point out HappyLee's signature in addition to what I've said: "Haters like Spikestuff deliberately ruined our hard work (SMB warpless TAS) by bad votes & spiteful comments, yet the moderators did nothing but locking the thread. The truth will be remembered." It speaks for itself.
InputEvelution
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