Go for in game time.
1) It's used for every RTA and TAS run thus far
2) If you go for real time, any time you finish a level in under 30 seconds you are obliged to wait until you have 30 seconds in game time before hitting the signpost to minimize the time to count down the bonus. Which is dumb. Which is why sonic goes for game time :)
I would also think that when you go for in game time clock stopping glitches are disallowed.
The main category I'd be interested in watching for this would be "fastest 9999999" for each planet where it's possible in a reasonable amount of time. The game does a good job at making the strategies different for different planets, and it would be interesting to watch. (Hevendor is, of course, humanly impossible, but depending on how the timing scales it may be TASly possible, although it would probably take years).
Sadly, that category would probably be long and boring for everyone else.
Agreed that this would be the best category, it would show off fast scoring on every planet.
FWIW, I think if you use MrGrunz' input until after bottle collection is done, he should be listed as a co-author. But I'd be willing to go either way on this one.
I found this entertaining, so I voted yes.
To those wondering about the category: Yes, it did become a category when the any% route changed from warping straight to the credits to doing ganondoor. (In particular, the old any% route did a lot of RBA, got farore's wind on B and did a wrong warp from dodongo's cavern to the credits. You can also see this in RTA "All Medallions" and I think the modern RTA "Ganonless" still does this.) But this TAS Ganonless route uses many tricks that are in 0 other TAS and RTA categories - I have never seen this dodongo's cavern hover or this strat for going eyeball frog -> fire temple -> wrong warp to credits before in any run. It's arbitrary, sure, but it is not 'obsolete' or 'shows nothing new' and certainly isn't comparable to 'publishing 16 star when we have 0 star' because the requirement is so different.
I think starting from SRAM to get the faster unit movement will cause the run to be rejected. It's sad that you won't be able to get sub-hour because of it, but that's the way it is.
You're allowed to start from a memory card state in SotN to get a faster time - why not in FE too? As long as you have a verification movie to prove your SRAM state is reachable.
Score attack on Megadom:
Link to video
Apparently you can keep a x99 combo even when your big screen spanning rocket refreshes - by making a smaller detached rocket, the combo is kept by the new small rocket and transferred to the next combo!
There have been lots of Kirby's Air Ride IL TASes posted on nicovideo lately, such as this one which shows off some techniques that remind me of F-Zero GX tech:
Link to video
How much do we need to pay Warepire so he can quit his job and work full time on Hourglass for a month or two? ;)
(Or better yet, how can we resurrect nitsuja from the dead? Anyone?)
Would "no buffer overflows" work for the less-glitched Pokémon Blue movie? All the faster-completion glitches I know of work by overflowing a buffer somewhere (including the save corruption glitches).
That's not really a defining feature of the category, though. Remember that MrWint's first TAS obsoleted a TAS that used ZZAZZ, which is a huge buffer overflow.
I don't think having made the previous TAS alone is enough to be listed as a co-author. But it is enough to be listed in 'Special thanks' if it inspired/motivated you to make your TAS :)
Similarly, finding or demonstrating a glitch is definitely worthy of 'Special thanks' and being given credit for the glitch wherever it is listed on TAS description or game resource page, but unless you added input to the TAS or did routing/advice/testing for the TAS I don't think you should be listed as co-author. (But I do think getting attribution for glitches and tricks you discover is your right - glitchhunters deserve thanks from all of us)
That is, there is a difference between co-authorship and merely inspiring/laying the groundwork for the run to exist. They are both useful and awesome, but one is one and the other is the other. Not being listed as a co-author doesn't mean you did nothing, it's just a categorization of specific kinds of contribution of which there are many.
@WST: You don't need to apologize when other people get mad at you if it is unprovoked by you. 'Trying to appease everyone will end up with no one being appeased'. Definitely try to explain conflicts, misunderstandings and misgivings (because problems that can be resolved easily should be resolved easily) but there's no sense in taking blame for things you didn't do :)
To me it seems morally equivalent to playing the TAS until you get a password for just before the final boss, noting what it is, starting the TAS from the beginning and immediately entering that password.
Episode 5 added in Tyrian 2000, on the highest difficulty levels, is some of the hardest stuff in the game. So a case could be made that 'Plays on hardest difficulty' should include playing on Tyrian 2000.
Quick noob question: what's the rationale for going for in-game time rather than real time?
Like with most games where in-game time is given priority (c.f. Sonic, Super Metroid), the reason is that there's a community of non-TAS racers for this game, and it's good to be able to compare the TAS results to what those racers get.
Another reason is if in-game time leads to more interesting, varied strategies that would be slower in real-time.
Tis calculated at the NES' frame rate of ~60.098814 fps (or more likely a less precise number).
Ye of little faith.
For NES, the site uses 60.098813897440515532 for NTSC and 50.006977968268290849 for PAL
How did you calculate it that exact? Did you look at it and say it was about 60.098813897440515532 fps?
In all seriousness how did they calculate that?
The NES CPU has an exact Hz and there's an exact number of cycles between each frame on the NES CPU. (Some more knowledgeable in the field than me could provide the numbers, I'd check nesdev for example)
The reason why the same TAS can be different speeds when converted to different emulators is because they emulate lag and loading times differently - not because of (or not necessarily because of) differing FPSes.
Also, the reason why SM64 TASes sync so well on console is because the N64 only polls during input frames, so you can program your bot to only send input when it polls - then it doesn't matter how lag emulation differs from the real thing!
