The thing about using that argument, " the game does mark these map tiles though, so there is visual confirmation" is that secret areas aren't marked on the map by default. Not even from map rooms (if I am remembering correctly), so (while this isn't likely because the game code has been heavily scrutinized) if there was a room attached to the game that nobody had found, no amount of visual confirmation would say that the map has been 100% visited.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
And your thoughts are appreciated, please make no mistake. You're defending the submission in the forum thread, which is exactly the right thing to do and in the right place to do it. You're asking questions which (hopefully) are being answered by others here; it's a discussion. This is the point of communication, especially when dissenting opinions meet.
I want to correct one particular point of contention in your post, though. One that I think is echoed by nymx and some others: You say,
Schmeman wrote:
and whether or not the TAS (in this case) is especially arbitrary, which I think it isn't.
The TAS itself is not arbitrary. It's the goal choice that we are calling arbitrary.
In runs that aim for fastest time, we have a clear marker for comparison: we time runs from power on until the last input. This framecount determines time. (With some modifying factor based on language differences, and calculating the difference between NTSC and PAL.)
In runs that aim for fastest in-game time, we have a clear marker for comparison: we time runs based on the number that shows up in the final screens.
In runs that aim for lowest item percentage, we have a clear marker for comparison: we judge runs based on the number that shows up in the final screens.
In runs that aim for 100% of items collected, we have a clear marker for comparison: does the number that shows up in the final screens say 100%?
These metrics, in combinations, are used to determine whether one particular run beats another.
With 100% Map Completion, there is no (known) in-game way to verify that every map square has been visited, unlike (for example) CastleVania: Symphony of the Night, which tracks and displays exactly this number. This lack of in-game verification is what makes this particular goal arbitrary.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
29 publications (not submissions) over 12 years across seven branches. Those branches are "game end glitch", "100%", "low% Speedbooster", "low% Ice Beam", "reverse boss order", "ingame time", and "any%".
To my knowledge, seven branches is more branches than we have for any other game, and this run, on its own merits, obsoletes none of them. Most obviously, any% and game end glitch are much faster (38:41 and 7:14 respectively), but even 100% items finishes in 1:08:15, and that's sitting through the item chime for every item in the game.
You're not causing an uproar, don't worry. I think a lot of the frustration from the people who don't find this entertaining comes from the fact that this same category was submitted roughly a year ago by the same person, and opinions haven't changed very much.
Samsara's thesis is still valid though -- this run is a TAS, whether it is published here or not. nymx completed it, used tools, sped through the game, it's a valid TAS. It doesn't need the site's stamp of approval to be a TAS, it doesn't need the site's stamp of approval to be a VOD through nymx's Twitch stream or placed on his YouTube channel.
I guess the site's question back to you is, "Why do you think that this category is worth publishing on this site?"
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Welcome back to the site, Schmeman. You should hang out more, watch some TASes, comment on them.
I'm so glad that you mentioned goal choice, because it's not something that has been discussed much in this particular submission.
The site (currently) has two categories: the Vault, and Moons.
The Vault wrote:
Goal choice is limited to fastest completion time (any%), or full-completion (such as 100% or best ending).
Exception: for games with separate, independent level sets (modes, episodes) officially available from start, each level set can have its TAS in Vault.
Other goal choices are not eligible for this category.
Goal choice criteria must be clear and non-controversial (a clear consensus on what constitutes full-completion or when a game is completed).
Easter eggs are not expected to be a requirement for full-completion
Because the run does not do 100% of the things, nor does it aim for fastest completion, I (if I were the judge) would argue that it would be ineligible to publish under the Vault's rules.
Edited to add: It does achieve the best ending, by virtue of clocking in at under three hours, but (to my recollection) every run published on this site manages that, and many of them do so faster than this submission, so it would be pre-obsoleted in the "best ending" category.
Moons wrote:
Goal choice is not too important in this tier: esoteric and unorthodox goals are acceptable as long as they make for entertaining movies.
However the goal choices should be clear, so it's understood what needs to be accomplished in order to obsolete it.
Arbitrary goal choices need to offer new TAS material to be accepted. Choices which have no goal other than to create a new game branch are rejected.
It's up to the judge (Samsara, in this case, Mothrayas in the previous submission's case) to determine whether the goal choice in this case is sufficiently esoteric, and if the choice of goal offers enough TAS material to be accepted. It's up to the audience (by way of voting) to determine whether or not the movie is entertaining.
To your point about movement, that may be the case, certainly, but:
AranJaeger wrote:
However, I have to admit that there are (even if the same route is kept) movement optimization mistakes throughout the run that some former Super Metroid TASers could aswell notice without much effort.
nymx wrote:
For the Ceres run, Taco has performed that after I finished the early parts of my TAS. As you know...TASing Super Metroid is not an easy task, in regards to going back and correcting stuff. It basically invalidates the rest and requires rescripting (RNG and various things change).
Good point about Brinstar. I'll have to revisit that idea on my 3rd version. Sometimes things never work out as planned and I have to use an alternate strategy. But it will definitely be reconsidered.
The Norfair situation was a bit different. I didn't have wave beam and was unable to shoot the farming pit that you are referring to. The angle of my shot was not steep enough. However, you are correct that a rearrangement of visitation could speed up things.
The movement needs work.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
That's done because entering that room the first time doesn't mark it as visited.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
In trying to give this run a fair shake, I jumped to a random part of the video. That part turned out to be 45:42, collecting the Wave Beam and cleaning up Norfair. Here are my thoughts:
46:09: Kills an enemy, fires a super missile to open the door, uses the grapple beam to cross the chasm. It looks like the grapple beam is fastest for crossing the chasm, but the dismount makes it look much slower than just jumping across using Space Jump.
46:45 - 46:48: You re-enter this vertical room and fall on the left side of the platforms, when you are entering a door on the right side of the screen. You don't manage shinespark speed for the next room, so there must be a hidden reason to spend time running across that floor. Enlighten me?
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
You're correct; I misspoke -- if map visitation wasn't tracked, then the map wouldn't change colour when you visit those squares. What I meant to type is that map visitation (as a fraction of completion) isn't expressed to the player at any point, as you said.
If the 100% map completion community agrees that the in-bounds OOB tile is OOB and thus doesn't count, then this TAS shouldn't seek to touch it.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Regarding Ceres, you can still try it and see if the rest syncs. Or try it and mark it as a known improvement of X frames for a future attempt.
Regarding Norfair, the Wave Beam doesn't enter into anything. You shoot the pit (as you do in the current attempt), and then turn left and go down. You don't need the Wave Beam. On your way back up, you shoot the pit and collect health, run right into the save room, turn around and exit up-right as you do in the current attempt. There's no Wave Beam involved.
Regarding the Lua script, I honestly don't care that you have an outside piece of code that confirms your work. It's not something that is measured in-game, and on top of it, you've got a controversy around a tile that may or may not exist (which, by the way, invalidates all existing 100% map runs if the tile is determined to be a real thing), which makes runs of this category that much more arbitrary.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I'm going to echo what scrimpeh said about this looking better and feeling a lot more like a TAS than your previous submission, where you tried to make a realtime run but with tools. I also applaud your decision to not name any of these shinesparks "Nymx originals".
I offer the following three potential improvements to your run, in the hopes that they help your time:
1) Ceres
[2913] SNES Super Metroid "game end glitch" by Taco, Sniq, total in 07:14.75, at roughly 3:30, demonstrates what you could probably do around frame 12900 of your movie.
2) Brinstar
At frame ~36000, you enter a room and jump, which puts you into a really nice position for getting thrown across the room (and down), and it looks very pretty. However, when you revisit the room, you have to slow down considerably in order to hit the tile you neglect with your long jump. It /might/ be faster to simply run down and nail that knockback, which would mean that your revisit can maintain speed and just space jump across the top into the power bomb area and the beginning of the game.
3) Norfair
At frame ~57500, after defeating Crocomire and collecting the Power Bomb, you drop down, kill a stack of enemies for health, and then run into the save room to the lower right. You probably would save time by turning around right away and going on to collect the Grapple Beam, hitting that save room on the way back. I had to watch again, because there was the possibility that you collected health on the way out of the save room which would invalidate this comment, but you don't, so I think I'm good here. You would definitely travel less, which is why I think it would be a time saver.
With all of that said, until more information is provided, my answer to the 'entertainment' question is a weak 'meh' leaning toward 'no'. I find very little interesting about colouring the map when there is no visible metric to prove that it has been done, and I see no reason to visit the entire map if you have no intention of collecting all of the items hidden therein. I don't think that this category is suitable for this particular site, but I do think that your skills as a TASer have improved in the last year.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
When did this thread become, "Do Warp's Math Homework?"
Or, more generally, "Do Warp's Googling?" Nested Radicals, Ramanujan Style.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Hi, and welcome to the fora. I fixed up the thread title for you (just the game name, nothing else), and while I don't have answers for you about the game's RNG, I can point you toward [1829] PSX Castlevania Chronicles by zggzdydp in 26:28.38 and [2633] PSX Castlevania Chronicles by scrimpeh in 24:58.72 for our published TASes of the game, which may provide you more insight.
scrimpeh's submission comments include some helpful RAM addresses (though nothing for the RNG), and a bunch of tricks that you can track down the specific inputs for, to see what needs to be done to perform those tricks in realtime. He can also possibly be reached by private message; if he remembers the game and isn't too busy, he might be willing to help you out. (No promises, of course.)
Good luck with your quest.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Well, a TAS of Vegas Stakes (SNES) exists, so Vegas Dream sounds submittable based on that. And it can be entertaining to see the player win at roulette over and over again until they have infinity dollars. My suggestion is that you go for it.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
So I ask once again: Some professional mathematicians are ok with the concept (of divergent infinite sums having a finite value) while others are categorically against it. What would you call that other than different philosophies of mathematics?
Can you back up this claim that there are [living, or at least, modern] professional mathematicians who disagree with this concept before blazing forward and trying to start a debate about how math (specifically math and not numbers) works?
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Deleting this thread (or any thread) goes against site policy. The best way for it to be forgotten is to stop drawing attention to it by posting in it.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
First question: Did you install the Prereqs?
Second question: Are you running EmuHawk.exe from the place you extracted everything?
Third question (well, more of a statement): There's a lot of information about BizHawk on the site, including an FAQ.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I want to vote yes, but first I want to know why there's such a delay in the Giant Bat boss fight. It seems like the slowest point in the run, and I would love to know why, if the Bat is vulnerable earlier, there's such a long wait to kill him when he's drilling.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I would be ashamed of myself if this made it to Moons.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Instead of spinning a 10 from the free space in Snack Land and going into an action scene that you have to start + select out of three times, would it be faster to spin a 3 and do the quiz, then spin a 5 to land on the free space, then a 10 to land on the free space in Fruit Land, and then finish the game as normal?
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
You're the person who put together the rest of the input. You've routed the game and come up with strategies which, if played back on the actual game, would probably be TAS-worthy.
You have access to the input you used to make this run -- if you change all instances of fast weapon switching to be using the menus, you should have the same run except that it would be publishable on this site.
You've already done all of the hard work. Don't throw that away.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Since you insist on being as obtuse as humanly possible, let me deconstruct this entire situation for you once again, in terms that are simple, clear, and concise.
diggidoyo wrote:
It utilizes a gecko code created by Delroth and Darkeye which allows quick weapon switching similar to Mega Man 10.
Gecko OS is an application to allow the running of Import games and cheat codes.
Movie Rules wrote:
Cheats, debugging codes, and arcade continues are not allowed
Since Mega Man 9 Wii isn't an import game, it stands to reason that you are using Gecko here for the purposes of including code that isn't part of the game. You contend that it isn't a cheat code (because no "cheating" as you define it is happening), so instead, I point to this other rule:
Movie Rules wrote:
Tools that manipulate ROM or RAM (e.g. Game Genie codes) are not allowed
They count as hacked versions of the game if they touch ROM areas. Either convert it to a real hack or don't use it at all.
I already mentioned that one directly, and it's appropriate here -- your code is modifying the game code to enable functionality that does not exist in the raw game. It is affecting ROM or RAM, so this should outright not be published.
diggidoyo wrote:
Whether this code bars it from acceptance is to be seen.
The code is ONLY used to provide a smoother viewing experience.
But that's not what input files are for. That's what modified encodes are for. And those encodes tend to exist alongside encodes of the entire game, which, in this case, should include a bunch of pausing and menuing. Menuing which you claim detracts from the entertainment of the game, but accomplishes your goal of minimal realtime. Menuing which is a part of the game you are playing. Menuing which would be missing to anyone who is watching your speedrun after having played Mega Man 9 and wondering how to enable this fast weapon switching feature for themselves.
Furthermore, on the subject of whether or not this run includes cheats, in your own words,
diggidoyo wrote:
The term "cheat" has been incorrectly applied to my use of a tool, at least in the capacity with which I used it in this run.
I don't even need to add emphasis, because it's right there. The word "cheats", followed closely by the word "enabled". You cannot use them, the Movie Rules say that you cannot use them. You, yourself, say that you use them, and then you claim that you don't. DON'T USE CHEATS.
Finally,
diggidoyo wrote:
I find it perfectly acceptable to post in defense of my own submission
Sure, you can defend the quality and content of your submission all day. That's fine. What's being challenged here is your use of external, game-modifying code to arrive at the input file that you have submitted. Nobody has yet challenged your input file; it's the conditions under which that input file completes the game at are (to extend the 'defense' metaphor) under attack, and those are beyond defense.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
The part where you claim to be in favour of the rule is in stark contrast to "Frank"'s desire that the rule be revisited or changed.
Furthermore, it seems that you've conveniently skipped all of the parts that suggest that if you do the work that your inserted cheat does for you, your run has a chance at being published. What's also mentioned is that an encode that could be provided for such a run would be similar to what you have presented with the cheat, however the run itself would be in accordance with the site's rules (which you are in favour of at present).
As for what I am trying to do, it is this: putting to rest your strawman argument (FrankerZ) and reciting the same information from other sources that you have frequently neglected with regard to this submission.
My sincerest hope is that you take these other peoples' suggestions to heart and provide a publishable Mega Man 9 Wii run using unmodified code from that game, as you've clearly put a lot of work into it.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
