and I don't expect emulation issues to be fixed anytime soon given the history of the Bizhawk development team.
This is probably one of the rudest things you can possibly say to a team of people that write a program for you on their own free time, demanding nothing from you at all that you clearly use regularly.
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
This means that someone can now TAS Frantic Freddie!
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 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 have managed to solve the problem now. All my videos are working as they should. I will not need to ask again about encoding the PSX BIOS screen. This thread can be locked.
It's common courtesy on the internet where, if you ask a bunch of people for help and then solve the problem, you post the solution you came up with to that forum so that future users searching for a solution to a similar problem don't have to ask the same question that you did.
With that out of the way, I'm glad that you solved the issue.
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 ... do that, convert it to the desired resolution, and add it in where movie_2 currently is? Is that even a thing you can do?
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 there's something wrong with trying to change the resolution of that one file.
What is its current resolution?
Can you run the command on just it to resize it and it alone, and then work the resultant file into your encode?
I would like to note that I am not an encoder, just a programmer trying to debug a user issue.
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
This is probably going to eat up some time, but bear with me.
According to your directory listing, movie_4.avi is the shortest video file you have there. I want you to try, in order, running the script with /ONLY/ movie_4 and each of the other eight files, one at a time, to see if they run.
That is, I want you to do:
movie.avi and movie_4.avi
movie_1.avi and movie_4.avi
movie_2.avi and movie_4.avi
movie_3.avi and movie_4.avi
movie_4.avi and movie_5.avi
movie_4.avi and movie_6.avi
movie_4.avi and movie_7.avi
movie_4.avi and movie_8.avi
At least one of those should fail with "splice: video formats do not match", and you will know at least one of the files that is not working in your script.
This might mean you have to start the entire process over, if something is wrong with one of the files and you can't fix it, but you will know which part is wrong. (And if it turns out to be movie_4 that's causing the problem, well, that's just funny.)
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
1) That image is huge.
2) That image includes a "movie_1.avi" that is not in your list of files to encode.
3) Spikestuff really wants you to answer his questions.
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 really don't want to be "that guy", but could you go to a DOS prompt, Sam, go to the directory where your files are stored, type "dir /p *.avi" and screen-cap the result?
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 finding it difficult to resolve, "Resetting and powering off the game is bad because it's not gameplay," and "Might and Magic 6 is alright even though its RNG manipulations might require the game being turned off for a while" as a coherent worldview.
If resetting or powering off is bad, then turning the game off to do something else while you wait for that ideal RNG cycle is bad.
If getting favourable RNG is good, then a run which power cycles to reset RNG to a favourable state is permissible, and thus the practice is not a bad thing.
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
Except that the biggest thing that you are arguing against, ACE, is triggered /by gameplay/. Which suggests that gameplay issues are something that you have a problem with.
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
Based on the points brought up on the "worrying" side, I can only conclude that the "trends" in question are those which lead players to not play the game that the developers intended, full of its exploits and glitches and bugs that get ignored because they are not the pre-designed route that some team came up with, routes which were rigorously tested to be safe and beatable. The trends, therefore, seem to be anything which breaks this sequence of point-to-point events, skipping cutscenes and story in favour of reaching the endpoint in a shorter time.
These 'trends' seem to be things which the majority of speedrunners and TASers have embraced, welcoming ways to get out of auto-scrolling stages or long, boring cutscenes, and in some larger cases, skipping entire sections of the game. These 'trends' are becoming the face of the speedrunning community, worrying or not, and the people that are worrying might have to turn to (or join) the let's play or longplay communities to get their gaming fixes.
With that said, branches and categories still exist - "100% glitchless" is a thing that exists - and you might find things to be less worrisome over there.
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 main point in my modding comparison was not that the game was modified, but that the game was not actually played. There was no "speedrun". It simply shows the end credits by bypassing the actual game code, and that's it. That doesn't feel like you completed the game by playing the game, but by other means.
Tompa wrote:
Because a modified version of game X will instead be game Y. Making it not a legit completition of game X because it doesn't exist anymore. Which is also why modded games are disallowed in default. But yes, it's a legit completion of game Y.
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
Perhaps not, but ACE has been called out as a worrying trend in speedruns, and people are willing to debate that.
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
Over the years [...] and separate personal opinions from facts.
Yet, it seems, no matter what I do, some people will still manage to turn it against me. Now the very fact that I make extremely clear that this is my personal opinion is somehow used as a weapon against me.
It's not being used as a weapon against you, it's the subject of the thread -- YOUR opinions about speedrunning, and why YOU don't like them. These are not worrying trends to many other participants in this thread, and the discussion is trying to center around, "Warp, why do you feel this way," and "Others have accepted these trends as not worrying things and, in fact, have embraced them."
Warp wrote:
Can we please just discuss the subject and not turn it personal?
We ... are discussing the subject. The only reason it is personal is because you, in the original post, made it about the things /you/ see as worrying.
Warp wrote:
Invariel wrote:
And, as arandomgameTASer pointed out to you, the two scenarios are not comparable at all because ACE is different than modding or cheating.
And you, too, miss my point entirely.
No, I didn't miss your point at all. You are conflating two separate entities, and arandomgameTASer (and I) are trying to point out that they are separate things, one involving external tools (which, I would agree with you, is not legitimate), and one involving internal exploits which have to be worked toward, and can take place within the context of the game. The console-verified ACEd runs are running on original hardware, and nothing more than button inputs are being used to generate the outcome. That is as /within the game/ as possible. Errors in the programming made getting to ACE possible, ACE doesn't generate those programming errors.
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
Considering that this thread started as, "I, Warp, find the following speedrunning techniques distasteful," the only real place for the thread to go is to a discussion about which techniques used in speedrunning Warp finds offensive, and why other people find them to be valid. It looks like people are attacking Warp, sure, but that is because Warp is the focus of this thread.
With that out of the way,
Warp wrote:
Because they feed controller input to the game, which is running as exactly as possible compared to the actual console? All TASes could ostensibly be hardware-verified.
If that was the case, emulators wouldn't be releasing better or improved versions.
If that was the case, the technical parts of this article would hold no relevance, notably the "Why accuracy matters" portion of page 1.
Warp wrote:
Would you consider a game that was modded to simply show the end credits a legit completion of said game? (Note emphasis.) If not, then think about the reasons why not. Why would you not consider it a legit completion?
And, as arandomgameTASer pointed out to you, the two scenarios are not comparable at all because ACE is different than modding or cheating. ACE requires finding problems with the game's code /from inside the game/ that enable code to be written by controller input that results in something unintuitive happening. Modding requires external tools and changes to the ROM before the game starts running. The two scenarios are not equivalent, they require entirely different circumstances.
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 reason I keep trying to figure out what Warp's criteria are for a speedrun to be valid is because the game itself has no notion of completion - that's a player-invented concept.
The game is programmed to, after X, do Y, and if the playerbase decides that witnessing event Z is "game completion", then as long as Z happens, the game is "completed". Arguing anything else is contrary to logic.
If strategies are developed to avoid a bunch of steps in the progression toward Z, that is called "speedrunning", and as long as those strategies aren't changing the ROM of the game, anything that results should be considered a legitimate speedrun.
These strategies, as games have become larger and buggier, or older and more understood (and, in some cases, decompiled), have included removing more and more steps, but still ultimately trigger Z, what the playerbase has decided is the end of the game.
(Some might argue, "But what about 'opening New Game +'? That's the game clearly knowing that the game has been beaten." No, that's just a line of code that runs after Z that gives you more options.)
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, to summarize, what you are looking for in a speedrun is that the game's unmodified code be running for 100% of the run. Is that correct?
Edit: To that, I ask this: what about runs which reset the game (instead of powering off or crashing the system)? Are those runs invalid in your mind?
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 could easily equate "entering console commands" to "entering cheats", and "deleting the save file from the menu" to "deleting the save file from the menu". The first is obviously forbidden, the second is a set of intended subroutines.
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 similarly don't run Half-Life 2, and I don't think Warp was saying specifically, "Bleh, Half-Life 2 runs have really gone downhill," just that it was a prominent example.
And the save system is an important part of the game, because it shows what the programming re-zeroes on load, and that's a valid part of the code, particularly if it gets executed before being properly (re)initialized.
Also, the Pokémon runs (in the earlier generations, at least) involve corrupting your save game right at the start. The save system is simply another attack vector for speedrunning in the current environment.
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 question of "normalcy" is thrown out the window when actually trying to speedrun a game. Clipping through walls is a "valid" technique but it is not "normal" to the game's play. Phasing through bricks is not "normal", but it is a recognized speedrunning tactic too.
I have admitted that I recognize Warp's point of view, and to some extent agree with it, but that the people making the speedruns disagree, and it's their opinions that ultimately matter as they are the ones competing over records.
I think we can all agree that not modifying the ROM code is a rule that we shouldn't break, a line that shouldn't be crossed, but I feel strongly that interacting with the programming in ways that it was never expected to deal with is par for this particular course.
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
