Also, movement can be optimized to a ridiculous level everywhere in OoT, with all the twisty sidehops you're expected to do, so even nominally boring stuff becomes tedious.
And if you want TASes that are 'easier' to beat, you can see lists of published TASes by year at http://tasvideos.org/Movies-Y2005.html
(for 2006, 2007, 2008, etc. just replace the year in the URL)
For 2005 there's a bit of a survivor bias, in that there's an on-going project to obsolete every 2005 TAS so the remaining ones are the hardest to do, but 2006 to like 2010 should have less of this bias.
EDIT: Or if you want to TAS a game that has a speedrun but no TAS yet, check out http://tasvideos.org/SDARunsWithoutAPublishedTAS.html
But what is the "conservative route?" Taking one (or two) specific strings of RAM and declaring them to be the "legitimate ones" (even though we have no idea whether or not they are actually valid)?
In the absense of information about what RAM configurations are more statistically likely than others, it is acceptable to pick a RAM configuration that is not particularly absurd and does not particularly favour any particular game or TAS above another (should allow for as many games that rely on uninitialized RAM to function as possible, for example).
Almost all TASes on TASVideos are based on emulator specific quirks that might not exist on the hardware (even stuff as subtle as an instruction taking the wrong number of cycles). This is a necessary evil to allow TASes to be published. If all TASes were unpublished except console verified ones, the site would be very bare indeed!
Can someone please explain the barrier skip "history" to a non-zelda runner like me? The clips make it seem far easier than I imagined. Like, what was the main difficulty in doing so, and what caused it to suddenly work after all these years? Sorry to sound naive or anything, just don't exactly follow it very closely.
.
The Barrier Skip used in TWWHD requires a speed higher than any achievable (with known tech) in original TWW.
Getting said speed in turn required a glitch called Item Slide, which was discovered around June/July 2016. (TWWHD itself came out Sept 20 2013.) (The reason why Item Slide took so long to discover seems to be because the inputs for it are so unlike any used in casual play and speedrunning.)
Then, after that, you have to Item Slide with specific speed (too slow and too fast don't work) in a specific position and with a specific angle in a very small range of angles. Given that absolutely anything short of getting all 3 at once does nothing, even if you mess around with Item Slide in the barrier for hours, you may just get bored and figure there's no application here. Even after it was done once, it was not reproduced for many months. Finally when it was reproduced using tools that show Link's input and angle, it was possible to reproduce additional times, study and create a setup for. (It was also confirmed possible in original TWW, if you hack in the speed required.)
Also, the 'gap' in the barrier that can be Item Slided through has no visual cue or any other kind of cue. It's not like Ocarina of Time's Temple of Time skip, where there's a gap in the door that you can see if you orient the camera right.
Many other possibilities to skip the barrier were studied over original TWW's speedrunning career, and none were found to be viable. It's ridiculously tall both upwards and downwards. Zombie hovering doesn't work. You can't bring a superswim or door storage to it. And so on.
No skipping to the end with a password
The point is to beat the full game, skipping major sections of the game with a password defeats the purpose. Exceptions may be granted under special considerations (such as the game being too long and repetitive); consult with a judge first.
This TAS isn't any% - it's basically a demonstration goal. Getting a TKO in the first round on Mike Tyson is the fastest way to defeat Mike Tyson. But downing Mike Tyson without needing a TKO is harder and uses a different strategy. This TAS attempts to KO Mike Tyson as fast as possible. I don't think it's acceptable, but it's not inherently redundant.
EDIT: To clarify, I agree that it won't be accepted, because it's more showing something off rather than doing a standard completion of a game.
It remains the case that YouTube, as well as your desktop video player of choice, offer "seek" functionality that allows you to avoid watching sections of a movie you know are repetitive if you do not wish to.
I really don't get how people seriously talk about stuff like this as if it diminishes the value of the run. Why watch a boring thing and then complain, when you could just.. not watch the boring thing?
Sometimes it can be a problem, if you don't have a good way to know which parts of the run are boring and which parts aren't.
Doesn't really apply to this run, though.
http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources.html says that it is deprecated, but it ISN'T on the 'not accepted at all' list. As long as no emulator issues are exploited, it should be ok.
The reason left+right is banned on most speedrunning sites is not that it's impossible, but that doing it tends to cause physical damage to the controller (making it break eventually). It's unfair to make someone keep buying new controllers to be able to speedrun.
I never heard this reasoning before. And it's so pragmatic too!
Do you know if this reasoning is listed anywhere on, for example, a www.speedrun.com page?
Devil's advocate to the devil's advocate: If we ban the expansion port because it uses custom hardware/is impossible by a human player, shouldn't we also ban L+R* and 30Hz mashing, which are also impossible by a human player without custom hardware or controller modification?
*I've seen a few speedruns that rely upon a human hitting L+R, most notably a category in Yoshi's Island. I'm not sure how this is done, but it seems to be difficult.
EDIT: Like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uV3RGBe5vo
Or like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj6w_CIpYSg
So then the question is, why do sites like speedrun.com ban L+R? The rationale seems to be that you need a broken or modified controller to do L+R. I don't know any further than this.
Still, even if you allow L+R to be done by a human, 30Hz done by a human is definitely impossible. (Human mashing speed can't exceed 20Hz.)
