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JosJuice wrote:
I don't really see how using a cheat code could be considered more legitimate than just uploading a save file with no verification movie. Everything that can be done by editing a save file manually can be done using Gecko codes. So if you're going to allow Gecko codes as long as the end result is the same as from legitimate play, you could also allow hacked save files as long as the end result is the same as from legitimate play.
I'm fine with this. I just think verification movies with cheats would be far more common than hacked save files.
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Fortranm wrote:
Is it normally possible to have that number for currency in this case?
If you were to grind for long enough, yes. But like I said, the upgrades are all purchased already so the number doesn't actually matter anymore and no longer has an effect on gameplay.
Fortanm wrote:
But how do we know it has no "unintended" effects? What if some codes have unintended effects when it's used on, say, a portion of the game different from when it's meant to be used?
This sort of circles back to the "end result" thing I mentioned. The actual journey to having the save file isn't super important, just the save file itself. Even if some unintended effects happen during the creation of the save file, as long as the game plays as intended when the cheats are disabled and the game is restarted, it's fine.
Fortanm wrote:
If one were to resort to not having a verification movie file for some reason, editing the save file directly with a proof of the data structure would be a much better approach than using cheat codes in a verification movie IMO as the former would actually pin point the values that need to be changed for whatever reason with much lower possibility to unintentionally affect something else.
That is very, very optimistic of you. I'd consider paying you if you could edit a save file of Spider-Man 2 (or any other third party GC/Wii game for that matter) in a way that benefits the player and doesn't just result in the save failing to load/crashing. The Spider-Man community has been trying to do that for literal years. Anyone would be a legend in the SM community if they did it.
Fortamn wrote:
Of course, either of these only seems justifiable in extreme cases. Even the "10 hours" argument seems reasonable only because this is a game emulated by Dolphin, which isn't quite the most sync friendly. If it is some game from older platforms without much emulation syncing issue, the number of hours of required gameplay in a verification movie would need to be much higher for practices like this to be justifiable IMO.
What's the harm in allowing it? If it does get abused and an effect slips into the real movie despite cheats being disabled, either A.) no one cares enough to test it or B.) someone does care enough, gives their proof, and the movie is disqualified. Or maybe it should be required to test for any verification movie that uses external cheats (but that's just more work for the judges, oops).
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When speedrunning Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (Wii, PC, X360, PS3), it's standard to use a NG+ file with every single upgrade unlocked. If I want to publish a movie on this website that starts from a saved game, I'm required to make a verification movie.
Do you know how long it takes to unlock every upgrade in SM: Shattered Dimensions? Around 10 hours. That includes beating the game, completing every challenge, and grinding in-game currency to be able to unlock and purchase the upgrades.
That would mean making a 10 hour verification movie of getting the game to 100% completion for a 1 hour and 20 minute TAS (somewhere around there, anyway).
Or... we could use external cheats. At the moment, using external cheats in a verification movie is not allowed. Using gecko/AR codes to unlock everything from the get-go and have infinite currency would mean the verification movie would probably be under 5 minutes long. No cheats would be used in the movie that starts from the save file. The only way you could tell cheats were used is by the currency saying "999999999" or whatever, but the effect is the same as having any other number - all the upgrades are purchased already; the number means nothing.
I was told that using a patched version of the game that starts you with everything (instead of a cheat) would be okay - however, not every game can have the same number of resources that melee or brawl do, so having a patched version only really applies to first party/extremely popular games or old games where patches are plausible to create.
My proposal is to allow external cheats to be used in verification movies as long as the end result could also be achieved by simply playing the game, and retains no lasting, unintended effects (like if infinite health somehow stayed on even after the code was disabled and the game was restarted, or if you got a debug item that can't be acquired in normal gameplay and it wasn't discarded before the save file was created, etc - those types of things). Think of it as a shortcut.
A judge had told me this could be abused, but also said that a movie could be disqualified if sufficient proof of abuse was provided. Meaning it would be done after a movie has been submitted.
Any codes in question should be provided in the notes of the verification movie for testing (for if questions about the code's legitimacy rise). Dolphin already has the option to download gecko codes from the internet (not sure where it gets them, admittedly). For any other codes, I'd say their source should be mentioned as well (but not required).
This is a wall preventing more save-anchored movies that I think could reasonably be knocked down.
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As copied from my message on discord, requested from feos...
"in the snes puyo puyo 2 movie, whenever you see this (left), it's an all clear. basically if you get an all clear, your next puyo pop will have 5 rows of nuisance puyo added to it
margin time doesn't really apply here - after 30/60/99/etc seconds, all nuisance puyos sent between players will be increased
180 flipping puyos doesn't really apply either, since the TASer tends to favor a low board as opposed to making tall columns
nuisance puyo countering happens a few times in the movie - basically, if there's nuisance puyo waiting to fall into your board, you can create a chain to mitigate or even counter it completely. sometimes the AI is able to make a 1-chain just before the nuisance puyo falls in, cancelling about 1 or less nuisance puyo from the TASer (needless to say, not enough to prevent being defeated). 1:29 is an example of this"
Additionally, in the kirby's avalanche encode, at 2:22, you can see that the opposing AI clears puyo while they have nuisance puyo waiting to fall. The cleared puyo go to the TASer instead of cancelling any of the waiting nuisance puyo.
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notes to self for next time (or next person to make a TAS of this game):
- get a different token during the chapter 13 cat "chase" to save like 5 seconds
- keep swinging south after collecting the secret token in chapter 14 to make the load screen like 5 seconds faster
Non-official games are allowed for submission. However, they go through more scrutiny than other games. This is because the game itself also becomes subject to judgment, so it must meet a minimum standard of quality or notability to be eligible for publication. We look for games that can be played and completed, have some recognition or popularity, or are notable in some other ways as decided by the judge and the audience.
I personally don't feel it meets those standards.
I feel that there's only so much to be expected from a prototype - especially since, if I remember correctly, that rule also states that the game must NOT have an official version. There are games that are basically complete that were cancelled last minute and could nearly count as a real game; this is a prototype that actually FEELS like a prototype in my opinion. Even the fact that it exists is the result of a leak.
Plus, I plan on redoing the Spider-Man 3 TAS at some point, and I think it could be nice to have the full Tobey Maguire Trilogy and then this as a bonus.
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Memory wrote:
Good TAS for the most part. I bought this game a couple years back while I was at AGDQ 2020 and it was fun until I got unavoidable disc read errors about halfway through the game.
I have one complaint really. I think towards the end of a Cat chase section you just sat still for a bit. I wonder if that's really necessary or if you could do some playaround during downtime. Some acrobatics, a glitch or maybe like shoot webs to the music I dunno.
Back when I had this as a kid, my disc was scratched, so during timed missions, the game would randomly freeze, but the mission timer would continue. I would have to pause the game to let the area load in until it was time to move again.
Cat chase bad. Unfortunately there aren't many glitches you can just do out of the blue, and I couldn't really sync webs to the music because I was using dolphin's cached interpreter engine, which runs so slow that the music and sound are too distorted to understand while TASing.
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Dimon12321 wrote:
Black Cat missions are still there? Oh brother!
Yeah, unfortunate, but I felt like I tried everything to skip them. Maybe someday there will be a way to get around them, but until more people are running/TASing this game and experimenting, that day won't come.
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I actually did commentary for this run some time ago at a marathon, along with a friend of mine. If it could be added to the publication along with the commentary tag, I'd appreciate it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qy5JQlywv8
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Zinfidel wrote:
Oh man, and I thought Maguire phoned in his performance on the last game!
Yeah, generally a common complaint among the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy is that the voice acting is pretty meh, but at least we have some pretty iconic lines.
I definitely noticed that a lot of Tobey's lines literally sound like they came from a recorded phone call - not because of what he said, but from the compression applied on the lines. Usually it's hard to notice because of the music or other actions, but you can really hear it if you listen to the lines in isolation.
Overall I'm glad you liked the TAS!
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It should just require a singular, formatted, USA memory card.
If it desyncs in the first level, try closing Dolphin and reopening it.
Or maybe the problem is bigger - one time, Dolphin just flat out stopped syncing every movie I had, even though they had synced previously. I had to reset Dolphin fully by deleting the Dolphin Emulator folder in my documents, which fixed it.
EDIT: I swapped my graphics adapter to my NVIDIA card and it desynced. I guess the solution is to not use it as the adapter? When I have it set to my Vega 8 graphics it syncs fine.
EDIT 2: This happens sometimes if you have more than one version of Dolphin on your computer, since settings from the newer version can add/overwrite those on 5.0. So yeah, you may have to full reset dolphin.
EDIT 3: Lovely, it's not syncing for me anymore, even after I reset all my settings.
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Zinfidel wrote:
The last stage with the Green Goblin is pretty boring though. I don't know what you could have done here since it seems like you really are just resigned to chasing him around, but the fact remains.
The chase is actually somewhat bearable on Super Hero difficulty since Goblin goes extremely fast - so fast that turbo swinging isn't enough to stay in range; you have to cut him off around buildings or else you literally won't be able to keep up.
Just something to add for if I ever do a Super Hero TAS of this game.
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andypanther wrote:
Now from what you described, this game could be one of those examples where it actually is more entertaining to play on easy. But the decision of what difficulty should be used in an any% publication for this game would ultimately come down to the judges.
It would not be very entertaining to watch Spider-Man clumsily have to pick up numerous web cartridges in certain levels because he spends his entire web meter after firing 5 web balls (yes, it's really like that on the hardest difficulty). Not to mention Vulture is 3 cycles on Super Hero, Oscorp's Ultimate Weapon would easily be twice as long, and Corralled would lose what tiny bit of charm it has left. Boss fights would be even longer, and less interesting than they already are.
Any% on Easy only has to pick up 2 upgrades since enemies are weak enough that you don't need the stronger combos. Any% on Super Hero would still have to pick up numerous upgrades to deal with the damage sponge enemies that CAN LITERALLY TANK THE STRONGEST COMBOS IN THE GAME.
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KusogeMan wrote:
how would any% differ?
In any%, you play on Easy, so...
- enemies/bosses have half as much health as hard
- "Corralled" level only has 10 spiders
- the mechs in "OsCorp's Gambit" only take one swing kick to destroy
- You do not have to pick up any combos (but the player should pick up "Advanced Web Gloves" and "Sting" anyway)
- It is possible to defeat Vulture in 1 cycle (by using advanced web gloves)
- It is possible to defeat goblin before he gets back on his glider in "The Offer" (by using advanced web gloves and sting)
- The generators in "OsCorp's Ultimate Weapon" only take one web ball to destroy
- It is possible to defeat goblin before he even gets off his glider in the final level
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InfamousKnight wrote:
I do suggest canceling this submission. If you can find a way to get past those emulation issues, it might be worth restarting. I totally understand how that can be a pain. Or wait until psp tasing is implemented into bizhawk so you can use rewind and much more comfortable to tas.
This TAS isn't nearly as bad as I make it out to be - it's probably my lack of describing what exactly is going on. Because, to someone who hasn't played the game, it probably looks very slow. Which, to be fair, it IS a little slow by TAS standards, but miles faster than the world record.
Wait for PSP TASing to come to bizhawk? I'd rather not wait 50 years only to make a TAS of the worse version of the game, so I'll probably be redoing this at some point.
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InfamousKnight wrote:
While I can understand that the issues with the emulator may decrease motivation to make it more optimal, there's mistakes everywhere. I even see times when you utilize faster strategies later as if this is some test speedrun. Climbing on the wall to zip later seems to be very fast and should be utilized much more. The missed punches are totally unacceptable. Looks like rta in that way. Some of the battle strategies look unoptimized. Like using a ground pound seems to be very slow.
Good start, but I would like to see better.
A lot of missed punches are actually intentional - if you're referring to the final fight where every other punch was a miss, this was completely intentional. In the red suit, the fifth hit of a combo does a ton of damage in comparison to the rest of the combo. When venom has hyper armor, he'll attack you out of your combos, hence why I start the combo and miss most punches, because only the fifth hit of the combo matters.
I use the ground pounds to gain adrenaline in the black suit. It is, by far, the highest adrenaline-gaining move which is why I use it so often. It is much faster than just punching enemies for adrenaline.
Yes, I could definitely do more wall-sprint jumps. My bad.
I wouldn't necessarily call this a "test" speedrun. I hold the world record for the RTA speedrun of this game, so I think I know what's fast and what isn't - but you're right, this TAS is obviously not the most optimized.
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deuxhero wrote:
Briefly wondered why a TAS of an alternate character was done before the main game. Keyword being briefly. Reminds me of Albus mode TAS with even crazier movement (but sadly, no repeated but accurate "you can't touch me").
I really do think that the Spider-Man TAS playthrough is more interesting despite being slower, and I do have a full TAS of it on my YT, but I no longer have the dtm file. It needs to be redone at some point anyway.
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CoolKirby wrote:
Three GameCube TASes in four days? What did we do to deserve this awesomeness?
I really liked the fast movement and clever tricks you used to traverse the indoor levels and boss fights. Wall clips were a nice surprise when they happened, as was the dancing around when you could. How did you avoid those lasers in Chemical Chaos, by the way? Are their hitboxes really small?
Every other question I had was answered by your helpful submission text, so thanks for that. Impressive run of a good speedgame, voting Yes!
How did I avoid the lasers in chemical chaos? It's simple - I didn't. Those lasers only raise the alarm and do not damage you. Thanks for watching!
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Dimon12321 wrote:
I didn't expect to see so many posts here. I've watched the whole TAS and now I have mixed feelings. The game seems to be restricted at times or else I see a lot of tiny possible time savers. For example, at the beginning when the game tells you how to climb up the wall, you keep moving left even after crossing the gap. Could you jump down earlier? IIRC, Catwoman can jump down towards the direction she was moving, but you jump straight down.
Yeah, this game is extremely restricted.
Catwoman can jump directionally off walls, but not all of them, but she can't choose a direction when simply dropping off the wall. Not to mention that a lot of the time the game seems to force you to take the slow way for everything.
It looks like there's a lot of potential, but in practice, the game seems to actively try to slow you down. Some other walls actually just flat out don't let you directional jump off of them.
Additionally, in the kirby's avalanche encode, at 2:22, you can see that the opposing AI clears puyo while they have nuisance puyo waiting to fall. The cleared puyo go to the TASer instead of cancelling any of the waiting nuisance puyo.