Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
c-square wrote:
That was fun. Yes vote, though I have a question: Do you have to get all the treasures? If not, does this become an "all treasures" run if someone submits a run that just exits the dragon's room as soon as possible?
You have to get all the treasures, otherwise you can't leave the room.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
p4wn3r wrote:
Then, why are movies that were canceled before the Vault existed did not qualify to become Vault publications?
Technically, if you got rights on it, you could publish it even after cancellation, no? Or you added that claim on submissions only recently?
Technically that would be possible, but there is such a thing as agency. If a user cancels their own movie, thereby positing that they do not want their movie to be judged or published, we respect their agency. Therefore, I and other judges do not uncancel any user-cancelled submissions out of principle.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
[20:48:14] <TASVideoAgent> Edit privilege for submission 5832S assigned to Rejecting by feos
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Does anybody else have an opinion to post about this movie? I'm noticing a disparity between votes and comments so far.
I'm personally not really sold on this movie being Moons material. For its goal in showing off all minigames, it still doesn't really play any of them, since the goal in all of them is fastest death. No minigame makes any progress, and the play goes straight back to the guessing game that makes the minigames optional to begin with. And while fastest death for all minigames seems fun in concept, in practice I find it to look rather boring overall, and not really superplay-y. Especially the fireman game, which is just waiting out the time bar while the player does effectively nothing. Personally, I vote no.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
klmz wrote:
EDIT: Disambiguated.
MovieRules wrote:
Cheats, debugging codes, and arcade continues are not allowed
This includes any input sequences such as the Konami Code, as well as immediately accessible hidden menus. Note that, if the button sequence is mentioned in the manual as a normal means of playing, such as level restart shortcuts in the Legend of Zelda or Metroid, it is usually allowed.
What about:
* Debug features that are not immediately accessible? An example is the whole debug menu in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, which is normally inaccessible but can still be accessed with memory corruption glitches.
* The bytes of the cheating/debugging code that are not executed as intended e.g. read out-of-range and (mis-)interpreted as data instead of machine code? No concrete examples yet but in theory possible.
I suppose the answers are "fobidden" to the first question and "allowed" to the second.
* Debug features that are not immediately accessible and can only be accessed through glitches are allowed. See e.g. EarthBound.
* Reading machine code as data is not considered using a cheat or debug code, so it would be allowed.
klmz wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
Requiring a TASer to "see" or "acquire" a password before allowing it comes with a lot of its own issues. How do you determine when a password is "seen"? Must it be visible on screen, or be somewhere in memory? If it must be on screen, how do you determine when it is sufficiently visible on screen when e.g. the password screen fades in from black? What if in-game graphics are glitched or parts of the password are (yet) obscured? In the end, there is not really a sane and consistent way to define visibility of a password. It also contradicts many other concepts of TASing, like the idea that the user is prescient and can predict future events before seeing them, or could just know or engineer the password before seeing it.
And obviously, without a requirement to "see" or "acquire" it, it would just be plain password usage, which most definitely is against the rules.
I think there is a situation where a password can be considered clearly "acquired for usage": if the game has automatically inputted the "last acquired" password for the player, and the player just needs to confirm to use it. Therefore by the time the player confirms to use it, the password must have been undoubtedly acquired from the game itself, otherwise the usage should fail. Anyways such "only confirm to use" cases could be justified since the player doesn't even need to know the content of the password to use it.
This was addressed in my reply to FatRatKnight in this post:
Mothrayas wrote:
Since the user never has to enter anything for the password, I don't count it as entering a password. So, I would consider this legitimate for the Vault.
Another way to look at this: when the game is reset after death, it is not in the same state as on startup: it is on startup state, but with your current progress saved (in the form of the password), and by pressing continue (without any other changes) you just load up that saved progress. In that sense, it is much like loading a savefile - it's just in the format of a password. You are technically given tools to edit your "save file", but making any such edits would count as using cheats, much like regular password entering.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
donnaken15 wrote:
Because jumping over enemies in a compressed space/height like 3 blocks tall is impossible.
Which is why you get a mushroom and fire flower. See my testrun, which I linked in my previous post.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
I have a testrun of this game from a few years ago, which is about a minute and a half faster than this movie, and plays on the hardest difficulty.
It only enters 2 more pipes than your movie (most pipes are not worth the time entering), and that's definitely not where the time difference comes from. The biggest time difference appears to be that you don't collect a fire flower at all in the movie, and only get a mushroom at the part where it's required. This is most obvious in stage 3, where you spend multiple seconds waiting for a Koopa that you can't easily bypass without a mushroom/fire flower.
This movie definitely could be improved by a lot of time, even without counting the unnecessary "pipeless" goal.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
warmCabin wrote:
I have high hopes that people will consider it a video game if we don't skip the video game parts!
If you do this, your run no longer is eligible for the Vault. And in any case, the game genre classification is determined by what the game offers as a whole, not just what one run does with it. So, the game was deemed to be of an unsuitable genre for the Vault, so your best bet for this game is to have a movie that's sufficiently entertaining to qualify for Moons (if possible).
warmCabin wrote:
Btw, how do submissions work here? Do I sbumit things for vault or moons, or do I just hit submit and let the judges decide where it should (or shouldn't) go?
You hit submit and the judge decides where it goes.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
It's suggestive for sure, but nothing reject-worthy, and definitely worse things have been published on the site. I say it's fine.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
jlun2 wrote:
It doesn't skip any stages; just that the items are scattered all over the place in the final stage, so you have to walk all over the stage just to grab them all.
Right, I meant to say skipping collecting items in those stages. Wrong wording on my part.
jlun2 wrote:
I think the only other question I would like to ask is about 100% is about is it allowed for glitches that allow obtaining/beating things not as intended. The examples I can think of now is Paper Mario (obtaining stars/badges/etc out of order, but still obtaining them), and Wario Land 2 (some stage exit doors are OoB, but at the same time, you cannot "beat" other stages outside the ones you're in; see any%). It doesn't corrupt memory I think; just that for some rooms, the stage exit is out of bounds, so entering them counts as beating that stage.
Edit: Oh, and there's also that OoB trick used in Monster House GBA that allows obtaining items out of order, including beating things out of order, but I literally have no idea even how to get 100% there, so there's that.
Yes, those are allowed. There are no requirements on order of completion, just that every individual element is completed/collected in the end. And as long as each stage is individually started, completing them through unintended exits is allowed (as long as the game still follows the normal procedure afterwards for flagging the stage as completed).
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
If a progress counter is filled by collecting a set of items or fulfilling a set of flags, all individual components of this set must be collected or fulfilled. Collecting or fulfilling the same component multiple times to inflate the progress counter is not counted towards full completion.
You can clip into the wall here. While it may look useless, turns out if you were to grab 10 picks over here, then use this trick to retrigger the food fight, not only will it count as obtaining 100% on the next guitar, but also resets all of the red picks you've obtained. So, given how incredibly out of way some of the later stages are for 100%, this may actually save time. :)
Edit2: Seems to save ~3,000 frames over doing it normally. :)
Movie of the entire thing for what I mean: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/32505686992981034
So is this ok or not?
Edit: Just to note: I don't think it's memory corruption, nor ACE. The full run would be like an hour long, and this saves like 1 minute, due to the fact the repeated minigame takes a while, so only the very last stage actually benefits. All other completionist requirements are done "legit" since it is faster (the items are not far away, so less backtrack)
It sounds like this does violate the quoted rule. If you can skip visiting certain stages for 100% because you instead get the percentage points from repeatedly duplicating/collecting the same subset of items, it is in violation of this rule. You are supposed to fully complete the game from getting each individual pickup that counts towards the percentage counter.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
p4wn3r wrote:
Here no one was complaining that the rule is messed up
This post asked for clarification on how the rules should deal with this movie, and if the rules should be modified. I then replied to that post with my interpretation/stance, which was the driving force of the discussion for the rest of the topic.
After my interpretation/clarification post, nobody disagreed with said clarification. So I applied it to the rules, after getting a consensus with all staff members involved in the discussion.
p4wn3r wrote:
and it gets changed with no mention to any discussion at all in the first decision
The decision explicitly mentions the "discussion surrounding this movie". That encompasses both this forum topic, and the talks about it on IRC.
That said, I don't even see what the issue is here. I should have rejected this movie first for unclear/bad reasons, before updating the rule and accepting this movie?
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
p4wn3r wrote:
I have abstained from commenting on this submission, as I do for most controversial movies, but there's one aspect of the verdict that I find a bit troubling.
It looks like the rules for the Vault were updated before accepting the movie. Not commenting on the merit of the movie, it seems disturbing at an institutional level that the person in charge of judging something is capable of unilaterally changing the rules that determine how the judging should be done.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to retract this decision and create the discussion about rule changes to the Vault to see what people think of this? The way it was done it's hard to escape the conclusion that the rules were changed to legitimize the acceptance of this movie, which hampers the credibility of the judging process.
I've stated my view on the publishability of this movie in this thread, and left it open for discussion for a few days. Nobody voiced any disagreement on it. It was also discussed on IRC prior to my judgment, both among staff and in public, and got no contradictory statements there either, and updated the rules with full approval from every staff member that commented on it (including multiple judges/site admins). It was far from unilateral.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
£e Nécroyeur wrote:
Memory wrote:
Now while I don't disagree with this, for devil's advocate purposes, what if I were to take what the site would currently consider a hack and release it in a cartridge format? Would it then be eligible for vault?
Mothrayas wrote:
I think it's important to consider here what the primary method of distribution would be for the work in question. For bootleg/unlicensed games, they are mass-produced on cartridges and in game boxes and are released that way. For this hypothetical hack scenario, it is released as a downloadable, often a patch to be applied on the base game, and if one were to release it on a cartridge it would in all likelihood not be its primary method of distribution.
So the bootleg, primarily distributed on cartridge, would follow unlicensed game rules, while the hack, still primarily distributed as a downloadable/patch, would still follow hack rules
I will play devil's advocate as well. Must the cartridge be "mass-produced?" Does "mass production" in this case refer to production method or production volume? There are services which will create a cartridge (complete with artwork and box) from a custom ROM, for a reasonable cost. These services will create multiple copies of a cartridge, but each is still hand-made--not mass production method, strictly speaking. If one were to have such a cartridge created, would it satisfy the "homebrew" criterion, even if only 1 such cartridge had been created, and created solely to satisfy this criterion?
I don't see how the same answer doesn't apply here. If a hack primarily distributed by download/patch has a (single) cartridge created, it is still primarily distributed by download/patch so is still classified as a hack. Bootleg unlicensed games are still primarily distributed by cartridge, with no formal downloadable release.
The definition of "mass" production doesn't really matter here, and it is impossible to know the scale of a lot of bootleg game releases. That's why bootleg/unlicensed games still have notability requirements.
feos wrote:
But f you never ever distribute your rom-hack of SMB, and then release a single cartridge, then it's arguably a homebrew. But no one does it simply to mess with tasvideos, people release hacks and homebrews independently of us, so we have solid chance to know for sure what it is primarily.
If your rom-hack does not consist in any published format and only a single cartridge of it exists, it would have a very hard time passing notability requirements. Just because this makes it a "homebrew" doesn't actually make it acceptable by default.
EDIT: Vault rule pages have now been updated to clarify the hack definition.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Memory wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
I think for these purposes it's more relevant to consider the nature of the game release (this being a bootleg with cartridge releases in a number of countries), than of what the code makeup inside happens to be like.
Now while I don't disagree with this, for devil's advocate purposes, what if I were to take what the site would currently consider a hack and release it in a cartridge format? Would it then be eligible for vault?
I think it's important to consider here what the primary method of distribution would be for the work in question. For bootleg/unlicensed games, they are mass-produced on cartridges and in game boxes and are released that way. For this hypothetical hack scenario, it is released as a downloadable, often a patch to be applied on the base game, and if one were to release it on a cartridge it would in all likelihood not be its primary method of distribution.
So the bootleg, primarily distributed on cartridge, would follow unlicensed game rules, while the hack, still primarily distributed as a downloadable/patch, would still follow hack rules.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
I called it a bootleg (unlicensed game) in the judging comment, and judged it as such. I think for these purposes it's more relevant to consider the nature of the game release (this being a bootleg with cartridge releases in a number of countries), than of what the code makeup inside happens to be like. Otherwise you could also, say, ban Mega Man 2 from the Vault, because internally it really just is a hack of Mega Man 1.
That said, I do think the hack definition in the Vault rules should be made more clear and worded better.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
FatRatKnight wrote:
Among the password games, there is one example that restart back to a password screen, Deadly Towers.
When you start the game, you go through the password screen, whether you want to start a new game or not. When you die, you are kicked back into the title screen, and pressing start takes you back to the password screen with a new password already put in for you.
However, while the player does go back to a functioning password screen after death, the game inserts the password of its state for you with zero input from the player. All the TASer has to do is confirm the password after restarting. Aside from the password, which could have been attained sooner by inputting it there and then as opposed to making progress then dying a humiliating death, there are no other practical differences.
In this particular case, the TASer does not need to somehow demonstrate acquired knowledge of the password. So, ignoring all the controls of the password screen other than "confirm password" is a perfectly acceptable means of restarting the game from a "save file" of sorts, I take it? This is the closest possible case I can recall where a "password save" is used in an active password screen.
So, I would suggest that Deadly Towers is much closer to this line than a lot of other games. If judged by today's Vault standards, is this Deadly Towers TAS on the side of acceptance or rejection of this line?
Since the user never has to enter anything for the password, I don't count it as entering a password. So, I would consider this legitimate for the Vault.
Another way to look at this: when the game is reset after death, it is not in the same state as on startup: it is on startup state, but with your current progress saved (in the form of the password), and by pressing continue (without any other changes) you just load up that saved progress. In that sense, it is much like loading a savefile - it's just in the format of a password. You are technically given tools to edit your "save file", but making any such edits would count as using cheats, much like regular password entering.
Kurabupengin wrote:
Based on my reading of the speedrun.com topic and guide, this looks like a debug code, not a glitch, considering its specific requirement of entering one password (which happens to match up with a Japanese name), and its specific effect being the ability to skip stages just by pressing start and select.
Even if this weren't to be a debug code and is a glitch, it still looks like an enhancement specifically granted by entering the password, which is not accepted (see Mega Man X3)
And finally, even if this were a glitch caused by effects unrelated to the password routine, it would be acceptable only as a demonstration (see Mega Man X), and I doubt a ten-second long skipfest would be acceptable as a demonstration.
So in short, no, this would not be accepted.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Fortranm wrote:
Would it be acceptable to die in a game with password system and then input the acquired password for death warp?
I've discussed with a few other judges about this, and ultimately, our conclusion is that no, this would not be accepted. The rationale for this is: when you quit a game and enter a password, you are not resuming from a previous game save, but instead are starting a new game with a custom starting state. Anything that happened prior to the password is effectively irrelevant to the progression of the movie, other than the concept of having "seen" or "acquired" the password.
Requiring a TASer to "see" or "acquire" a password before allowing it comes with a lot of its own issues. How do you determine when a password is "seen"? Must it be visible on screen, or be somewhere in memory? If it must be on screen, how do you determine when it is sufficiently visible on screen when e.g. the password screen fades in from black? What if in-game graphics are glitched or parts of the password are (yet) obscured? In the end, there is not really a sane and consistent way to define visibility of a password. It also contradicts many other concepts of TASing, like the idea that the user is prescient and can predict future events before seeing them, or could just know or engineer the password before seeing it.
And obviously, without a requirement to "see" or "acquire" it, it would just be plain password usage, which most definitely is against the rules.
Grincevent wrote:
I'm not a judge, so I'll use a question to share what I think about the password thing.
If the game displays said password during the run, would resetting afterwards and then entering it be considered like something close to a "save and quit" strategy?
No - resetting and using a password are not equivalent to saving and quitting. When you restart a game after saving, the game is not in the same state as it was at the start. You can progress from where you left off because the game has retained that information. However, when you restart a game to use a password, the game is still in the same state as it was when it was first started up. The only difference now is that the player "knows" a password to skip the game to some state where he reset the game. Functionally, anything prior to using the password did not even need to be done at all. See also my reply to Fortranm.
andypanther wrote:
Reposting a question from the "Gotta catch 'em all" submission of Pokémon Blue: If someone submitted an Ocarina of Time 100% under the alternative ruleset, would it be considered legit?
Now that said "Gotta catch 'em all" submission has been judged and the Vault rules on full completion have been clarified, I can answer this. The Vault rules on full completion state that items must be collected through in-game methods (so memory corrupting to get items is not counted for full completion), and completing a set of items/flags must be done by collecting each individual component of the set (so e.g. duping Gold Skulltulas is not counted for full completion).
The rules you link to are vague enough that a movie following it is not necessarily illegitimate, but it does implicitly allow methods of obtaining full completion that would not be considered legitimate in the Vault ruleset on full completion.
MESHUGGAH wrote:
Nach wrote:
If the main goal is to actually collect them wherever they are, even if it means warping to them, and you did so, then you completed your objective. If you just put an item into your menu but did not actually collect them, then you did not complete your objective.
Errr... I could argue with that (NES Megaman TAS completing the game without flagged as completed).
(Regarding this movie): the game is handled as completed, just certain subsets (stages) of it are not. But this is not relevant to the present argument, which is defining full completion.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
andypanther wrote:
Just out of curiosity, Mothrayas: If someone submitted an Ocarina of Time 100% under the alternative ruleset, would you consider it legit?
I'm not going to answer this here. This question is not even remotely on topic, and there are much more relevant discussion points surrounding this submission that I rather want to have discussed.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Fortranm wrote:
Nach wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
So essentially, in a broader sense, I always consider ACE off-limits for any sort of full completion category, because once a run enters ACE, any sort of concept around completion is rendered trivial. Going to the ending is done in an instant, going to the ending with all completion flags set is done in an instant
This idea is key.
If you're doing ACE, obviously we want the best ACE possible, but ACE itself renders all other criteria moot. ACE is just ACE, it's not "ACE 100%", nor "ACE min%", nor "ACE unlocked Mew", nor "ACE I managed to rename the opponent into Nach and beat him 151 times in a row".
Not really related to this game, but how about the games in which ACE doesn't give you full control so that you might only be able to set part of the flags needed?
Any sort of completion flag modification (outside of the intended ways) is cheating itself out of performing a full completion, even if done only partially. This goes for any sort of memory corruption or partial-ACE trick, as I described in my previous post.
The requirement for full completion is to go through the motions of collecting items, setting completion flags and so on through in-game actions/mechanisms, and that goes for every item/object/flag that counts towards full completion. Skipping any of them ruins the point of full completion to begin with.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
EZGames69 wrote:
So in Mickey Mania for SNES, RTA runners will use Normal as the main difficulty setting. The only difference between easy and normal is the continues you start out with. In hard mode, the only difference is it removes checkpoints. and afaik, there's no useful death abuses that could save time. The checkpoints also dont slow down the run time in any way and the only reason it would be uses in RTA would be for safety.
My question is since the only difference between normal and hard is the absence of checkpoints, would it still be required that I set the movie to play on hard mode?
Edit: actually, Easy mode ends after a certain world, so it would be more ideal to do either normal or hard to show off the rest of the game.
Hard difficulty is always preferred unless there are definite gameplay reasons not to do it, so it would be best to go for that anyway. However, if the difficulty choice (between Normal and Hard) doesn't meaningfully impact the run, it won't be grounds for rejecting a movie either, so a Normal movie would still be publishable. Easy would not be accepted, as skipping levels is not considered a justification for using a lower difficulty setting.
So I would recommend picking Hard, but Normal is also acceptable. Easy is not.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
andypanther wrote:
Since most viewers probably feel this way, I'm wondering if this run can even be published in the vault, given its arbitrary ruleset. I'm not exactly sure how the current rules for vault publications deal with games like this one, where we have clear definitions for both any% (reach the credits) and 100% (reach the credits while completing the Pokédex), but the any% just happens to also fulfill the 100% definition. Do the rules need to be modified for cases like this one, to allow for a single arbitrary restriction, just so that some form of 100% can be published in the vault? Even with such a rule in place, this particular TAS would most likely still be considered to have too many arbitrary restrictions. So at best, we could maybe have some other run published that uses any trick in the book minus save corruption.
I've always taken full completion (in the sense of 100% item completion, etc.) to mean having the movie going through the motions to collect each particular item, instead of just requiring that the relevant completion flags are set. For example, I could take a Super Metroid ACE movie, take some cycles to write in 100% for the completion counter, and submit it as an improvement to the 100% run - but that would not really satisfy anyone, would it?
So essentially, in a broader sense, I always consider ACE off-limits for any sort of full completion category, because once a run enters ACE, any sort of concept around completion is rendered trivial. Going to the ending is done in an instant, going to the ending with all completion flags set is done in an instant, even proceeding through the game with the normal route is rendered trivial. Likewise, memory corruption to set the completion flags (even if as a side effect) renders the actual collection objective moot, and I don't think anybody would be satisfied if I unobsoleted the previous SRAM glitch run as "full completion/catch-em-all".
So what that leaves for a full completion goal is to force the movie to go through the motions to collect all items or whatever and have them processed in more or less the intended way. Obviously, Pokémon runs already go all over the place catching Pokémon in unintended areas or normally-impossible methods, so I can't really ban getting Pokémon outside of their intended encounter areas etc. (not to mention catch-em-all is impossible that way without an extra player and excluding Mew), so I'd say the basic requirement of a run here is really just to obtain the Pokémon through any of the normal in-game methods (encounters, give-aways, trades, evolution, etc.) regardless of exactly where or how. The previous catch-em-all runs did exactly that, and this movie also does the same thing, it just takes it to its logical extreme. Memory corruption and glitches are used to eliminate plot and filler between encounters, and every Pokémon is basically put in a row and processed one at a time at optimal speed. Then the movie skips directly to the end-game sequence, because no part of the goal requires such things as plot or battles to be done.
Since the movie does not do the things that would invalidate it as full completion by above criteria (ACE, or memory-corrupting completion flags) and does fulfill its basic full completion goals (get all Pokémon and reach the ending) by obtaining its Pokémon through in-game encounter mechanisms (if highly glitched and optimized) using other methods of glitches available, I would consider this movie Vaultable.
EDIT: The submission mentions other forms of (arbitrary) memory corruption that were not used in this TAS - I think some of these (like arbitrary ROM execution) could be banned from full completion runs in the same vein as ACE, or be considered a part of it. This is where the distinctions (for eligibility purposes) get really messy, however.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Expert player
(4141)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
feos wrote:
Where can I read which pokemon games are considered the same game by tasvideos standards?
A Red run has obsoleted a Yellow run, so technically any of the Gen 1 games are fair game for obsoleting each other. It would depend on the category, though. A glitchless Red run obsoleting a glitchless Yellow run (or vice versa) would be silly.
That said, back when the first SRAM glitch run was published, it didn't obsolete the JPN door glitch run because it was considered "different enough to warrant a new category" (so not to obsolete the Green run), establishing that the Green run is no longer published as any%. The same SRAM glitch could be done on the Japanese versions - it's not exclusive to the newer releases.
Actually, considering its rating and our present-day publication structure, it probably should be retroactively obsoleted now.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
You can clip into the wall here. While it may look useless, turns out if you were to grab 10 picks over here, then use this trick to retrigger the food fight, not only will it count as obtaining 100% on the next guitar, but also resets all of the red picks you've obtained. So, given how incredibly out of way some of the later stages are for 100%, this may actually save time. :) Edit2: Seems to save ~3,000 frames over doing it normally. :)