Posts for Jarlyk

Posted: 10/15/2023 1:39 PM
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Jarlyk
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/15/2023
Posts: 3
feos wrote:
If the game can run on a machine like this (or anything else PCem/86Box supports) running Windows XP or Debian 12, that might eliminate all of the verification/encoding problems.
Given that HK encodes at about 1/20th real speed using libTAS, which is executing natively with hooks to control reported time rather than via emulation, I imagine the encoding time on an emulator would be abysmal. It could be interesting for someone to try, since the biggest likely culprit for our nondeterminism issues is multithreading, but I'm not particularly hopeful that it would work well. HK is just not a very well-optimized game. (:
Posted: 10/15/2023 1:26 PM
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Jarlyk
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/15/2023
Posts: 3
One option that would open things up a lot would be a way to list unverified/unverifiable videos (with a clear label as such), Because, I agree, I wouldn't want to subject verifiers to having to try to sync my movie files even if I cared about the stamp of approval; it's just too time-consuming and painful of an ordeal to ask volunteers to undertake. That said, I think there are some folks in the HK TAS community who'd be more interested in getting verified in some way, but I definitely don't think the traditional method of TAS verification would work for HK without fundamentally new PC TASing technology (even if it were more reliably deterministic, the slow encode speed is still quite onerous.) Another option would be something akin to 'rta verified', i.e. verified in accordance with the standards normally applied at speedrun.com for rta runs of equivalent categories. Most of the 'serious' HK TASers are following rta rulesets (with the obvious exception of using tool assistance) and so the only form of verification that's really applicable is whether it's following those rules. Which, of course, is game-specific, thus why every game on SRC has its own set of moderators/verifiers. Fundamentally I think the issue is that there's no way to create a single unified ruleset that makes sense for TASes in all types of games, especially when complicated PC games are in the mix.
Posted: 10/15/2023 12:06 PM
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Jarlyk
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/15/2023
Posts: 3
dwangoAC stopped by the Hollow Knight TAS Discord and encouraged us to take part in the discussion regarding TASVideos submissions, so I figured I'd add my two cents. I'd first like to clarify that I don't speak for our entire community; there are a lot of different HK TASers and we all have different goals and priorities. For me, at least, the fundamental thing that's dissuaded me from attempting to submit to TASVideos is more philosophical than technical. HK's long encode times and need to deal with nondeterministic desyncs as a fact of life definitely offer technical barriers to any sort of verification, but, more than that, I've just never been particularly enamored with the 'serious' side of speedrunning and the idea of applying that semi-competitive flavor to TASing especially doesn't appeal to me. I appreciate TASVideos as a resource for discoverability, but the idea of having a centralized authority make my TAS 'verified' based on some standardized set of rules that are a very awkward fit for HK isn't something I'd care to pursue. To be clear, I have no objection to those who want to do the whole 'serious business: speedrunning' thing, but if that's the dominating and centrally enforced atmosphere for TASVideos in particular, then it's not someplace I feel welcome. And that's fine, if that's what your community values, but if you are interested in being inclusive to folks like myself, then I figured it's worth letting you know the current vibe I perceive when looking through the submission rules. As a further aside, I will say that most of my TASes could in principle be replicated by others from the movie files given compatible hardware and using modified game code for some of the gimmicks (hacking in a starting charm loadout, giving lantern for better viewing, tracking grounded frames based on game state, etc.), and enough time and patience. Times on the order of 20+ hours to encode an ~1 hour TAS, usually a few times to recover from desyncs (with fast forward to the desync point, so not having to reencode the entire thing in one go), then splice together the resulting videos. Some of my TASes are so unstable though that even I couldn't replicate them again from the original movie files; my Sundered game TAS was so desync-prone that the only way I was able to complete the video was to just never close libTAS and encode it over 19 segments as I went, using savestates to keep things going and praying that libTAS didn't crash before I was done. That TAS will never be able to be replicated again and the final video is the only resulting artifact of the hundred hours or so that went into making it. A lot of more complicated PC games are like this and reliable determinism is a luxury we're not afforded.