While I really respect Nach's careful consideration in judging this rung, I'm afraid I agree almost entirely with Saturn's rebuttal in the submission comments.
It's true that this run makes compromises that make it not /really/ a 100% run. However, there's no feasible way not to make any compromises, and it makes them with coming as close as possible to 100% in mind - no other label can really describe what this run is trying to do without opening the door to really silly obsoletions.
I would like to see the branch name changed back.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Voting yes for publication and obsoletion. This is faster and better.
Which does not diminish the enormous respect I have for the original, but time goes on.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Exception: People have been known to TAS unreleased versions of a game in the case where the game was never released.
I guess "Made available" is a better term than "released" since it also covers ROM hacks like Super Demo World?
"Made available" is exactly what released means.
Don't really agree.. if a beta tester leaks an early build of a game, I wouldn't call that a release.
It's an interesting question whether such a leak should be a candidate for TASing, especially if it gives rise to a more entertaining and faster route, or if it was the de facto standard version in the game's community for some time due to lack of an official release...
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
This is an amazing idea and I hope it makes it into mainline BizHawk ASAP.
One thing I don't quite understand is if playback works out of the box: if I take the .hist you describe and run it in snes9x, do I get to watch the full TAS process? It seems unlikely - I don't really know what the "FEFF as input for player one" thing is doing, but it doesn't sound like something that snes9x would play back in the desired manner. So while all the input could be recovered by a dedicated researcher, it seems like there would be some more dev work needed to make it truly awesome for the everyday-TASer/viewer, no?
One really great thing that I can see coming from this is behind-the-scenes reels - edited encodes of the history file showing highlights of particularly frustrating sections that tried many times, or neat strats that almost worked, or humorous accidents/glitches that didn't make it into the final run. That sort of thing could add a lot of value to a TAS.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
It's neat that the challenge was open ended enough that literally everyone had a different route.
It would be kinda neat to iterate one of these challenges, to see if anyone can find something better than the previous winning run.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Every release of a game is a different game, and each one deserves a TAS as much as any other. However, since there is little reason to host many videos of nearly identical games, a newer, much better run in the same category on a different version than the accepted one should be able to obsolete it, regardless of time difference.
That is, let's say run A in 5:00 on version 1 is accepted. Now run B in 5:03 on version 1.1 is submitted. The judges should first judge the overall quality (optimization+entertainment) of the runs. If B is found to be significantly superior, it should be accepted, and obsolete A. In most cases, B could not be found significantly superior unless the time difference is explicable by version differences.
Run C in 5:01 on version 1 should be immediately rejected for being worse than an obsoleted movie. Run D in 4:57 on version 1.1 should be immediately accepted for being and improvement on a published movie. Run E in 4:58 on version 1, however, would be a publication candidate: it's not strictly slower than any previously accepted run of the same version, and, perhaps due to newly discovered tricks on version 1, might now be the superior TAS, despite being slower than the currently accepted run. This shouldn't be thought of as "accepting a slower run", but should be thought of in the same way we might currently let a slower English-language run obsolete a Japanese language one if it is also of generally higher quality and most of the time difference comes from text boxes.
In the case of VVVVVV, it seems like 2.0 is the best suited to any%, and 2.1 is the best suited to 100%. But if someone later finds an awesome 2.1-only sequence break that still leaves the run slower than this one due to the lack of death abuse, perhaps an argument could be made that the sequence break is awesomer than the death abuse, and that, assuming the new run is well-optimized with respect to its version, it should obsolete this one.
All of this would come up basically never. Popular (& judge) opinion of the quality of a run will, in nearly every case, be strongly correlated with how fast it is. But this system would allow for those weird cases where everyone agrees that a new run on a different version is better despite being slower to get through without a huge hassle.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
As long as the original is there for verification, I'm all for separate videos made more friendly for the viewing audience in any way possible - camhacks, input overlays, commentary, cutscene removal, bookmarks, whatever.
So what exactly is the point of the TAS anymore if the video is not legit?
I feel like you are not actually reading my posts. First you thought I was saying this movie qualified to be in the Vault when I was explicitly saying the opposite, and now you think I'm advocating accepting "illegitimate" runs when I explicitly talked about the importance of the unedited run -- and was pretty much only advocating movie features that we already publish on a regular basis.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
While we are at it, why don't we just throw all the principles of TASing out of the window and start outright editing the videos?
Okay! I've always been a huge fan of cutsceneless encodes of Zelda games.
As long as the original is there for verification, I'm all for separate videos made more friendly for the viewing audience in any way possible - camhacks, input overlays, commentary, cutscene removal, bookmarks, whatever.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Warp, I sincerely hope that someday you embrace the forbidden time manipulation powers granted to you by video progress bars...
As a practical consideration, it would be neat if it were common for movie descriptions to contain links to timecodes within the youtube encodes (or other encodes if the feature is available) at which the run becomes more generally palatable.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
I think you have a typo in your description. Step 2 is on frame 498, while step 3 is on 461. Unless there is some crazy reverse causality going on here, I think one of those numbers might be wrong :)
Curious to see an encode.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Unfortunately, it does matter for non-vaultable runs like this one. If the tiers are to remain unchanged, I would want this to be a moon, but I don't think that's a great outcome. I would much rather have a Demo category like the one Brandon proposed.
So, we should throw crap into a new "Demo" category instead?
No, we should throw interesting demos that get community approval into a new "Demo" category. I happen to think that this movie qualifies; if you don't, you are free to vote no and express your opinion in the comments, and a judge will hopefully take both of our positions into account when making a decision.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
It's because we have a new, tiered movie system, which you can read about here. This run has been accepted into the Vault, rather than another tier.
It's not clear to me exactly why this has been accepted into the Vault, though. It is neither an any% nor a 100% run and does not have a clearly defined goal.
I'm not opposed to this movie being published, but I don't think it can exist in Vault as it is currently defined...
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Luckily, this argument mostly doesn't matter anymore, since boring TASes can go in the Vault.
Are we now accepting anything that anybody submits? There are no minimum standards? I mean, like, completing the game or something.
If I submit the fastest run that makes Link perform the Chicken Dance, it goes automatically to the Vault? The fastest run that makes him stare at a recently painted wall to dry?
We no longer consider game choice as a reason for rejection, but surely we still consider goal choice? There has to be some rational limit to what's accepted.
(My point is that if a non-game-completion goal results in a 5-minute run where 90% of the run is boring and causes people to skip it, I think that's rather telling about whether we should accept it or not.)
I think you missed part of what I wrote. I explicitly pointed out that the Vault has nothing to do with this particular movie:
Personman wrote:
Unfortunately, it does matter for non-vaultable runs like this one. If the tiers are to remain unchanged, I would want this to be a moon, but I don't think that's a great outcome. I would much rather have a Demo category like the one Brandon proposed.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
In seriousness, I've never understood this complaint. If part of a run is boring, SKIP IT. No one is sitting there forcing you to watch 100% of a TAS.
If you have to start skipping in order to not get bored (especially if you have to skip something like 90% of the TAS), that's a quite strong indication that there's something wrong with the entertainment value of the TAS.
Dwedit raises a very valid point about this particular case, but I disagree with you fundamentally.
It is not up to a TAS author which portions of a game are entertaining to watch. I don't think we should give stars to TASes that have a few entertaining parts and a lot of boring parts, but there is nothing fundamentally /wrong/ with those TASes. I guess for you personally, clicking on a progress bar a few times is a total dealbreaker, but for me, I would much rather watch five extremely entertaining minutes in the middle of an otherwise worthless hour-long TAS than watch an hour of a TAS that is moderately amusing throughout.
Luckily, this argument mostly doesn't matter anymore, since boring TASes can go in the Vault.
Unfortunately, it does matter for non-vaultable runs like this one. If the tiers are to remain unchanged, I would want this to be a moon, but I don't think that's a great outcome. I would much rather have a Demo category like the one Brandon proposed.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Strongly disagree with "TAS skill" condition on Vault games.
I am interested in how quickly games can be completed, not how hard it is to TAS games well.
It's neat that some games are very tricky to TAS and that we have skilled TASers who rise to the challenge. Of course that is great. But not every game demands that level of dedication; some may even have "obvious" perfect solutions that render the author irrelevant. But that's fine! I still want to see what the game looks like when played perfectly.
So I obviously think this belongs in the Vault.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Did all of the people complaining about the "long wait" actually sit through the first five minutes of the video?
There is a magical h4XX0r bug cheat exploit in youtube videos where if you click in just the right place, you can instantly skip ANY AMOUNT of the video. I guess it might be a little advanced for you guys though.
In seriousness, I've never understood this complaint. If part of a run is boring, SKIP IT. No one is sitting there forcing you to watch 100% of a TAS.
As for this run, it obviously won't get published right now, but it's in a category that many of us appreciate, and as others have indicated, it would be great if there were some way for this site to recognize or at least catalog runs like this, as arbitrary and stupid as they may seem to a sizable portion of the audience. Again, NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO WATCH IT.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
