For (almost) all speedruns of Dead Cells, timing stops on entering the fountain in the Throne Room level after the boss fight with the Hand of the King.
In an RTA speedrun, we usually have the option “Skip cut scenes” enabled, since for a Fresh File speedrun, there are up to 6 places (depending on the game version) that this option saves 50 frames per skipped cutscene (saving up to 5 seconds). But one of these cutscenes is also the credits sequence that plays after killing the King and prior to entering the fountain...
Personally, I want to have the credits play at the end of the TAS rather than have it be skipped. If the credits played after entering the fountain (which would happen for an any% NG+ run), then there wouldn’t be any issues. However, for a Fresh File speedrun, credits play after killing the King and before entering the fountain, meaning we would lose about 40 seconds to the credits (on top of the up to 5 seconds lost throughout the run to other cutscenes that are skipped manually instead of automatically).
Here are two encodes that displays the scenario with the credits as well as the movement that plays after the credits:
Does not play credits, skips all cutscenes elsewhere in the run
https://youtu.be/yqoPXEgKW8g
Plays credits, does not skip any cutscenes elsewhere in the run
https://youtu.be/XuPtzwQy9H8
One final note is that we still skip a portion of the credits in the second encode; after the "Special Thanks" section, the game procedurally generates fake credits until the player holds B to continue.
This leads to a few questions:
1) Would having credits play out like this be a valid speed/entertainment tradeoff? Or would it be best to skip all cutscenes to save the 45 seconds? (I’m not concerned about Moons/Vault tiering, since I’m working off of the assumption that the end TAS will be entertaining enough to warrant a speed/entertainment tradeoff like this, but I’d be fine if that assumption is wrong.)
2) What would count as the final input for TAS timing for a Fresh File TAS? The moment we kill the King? or do we default to entering the fountain as the final input as we would for an RTA run? Can we count the movement after the credits as “post-completion input”? The relevant portion of the rules suggests that “Extra input does not change the resulting ending”, which is true, but it also suggests that “Extra input is trivial to execute for anyone replaying the movie”. Is holding B to leave the credits, holding right, pressing A once, and pressing R1 to enter the fountain sufficiently trivial?
...you do NOT have to have [much] TASing experience to sign up!
Well, I certainly fit into that category and I finally have enough free time to take part now that it's summer. (And it'll give me a chance to to expand my TASing knowledge beyond knowing how to help people with libTAS setup.)
Toss me into the signup list, though if anyone else joins within the next few hours and makes it hard to make even teams, I'd be fine with them getting priority over me.
If a PC game stores options in a configuration file (such as a .json or a .cfg) that is not tied to a specific save file and some of these options would impact movie synchronization, would it be preferred for the settings file to be provided as part of a submission or for those settings to be set at the beginning of the movie? The closest movie guideline to this case I can find is this one: http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#AnyImportantSettingsNotSavedInTheMovieFileMustBeStatedInTheSubmissionText
As a specific example: in Dead Cells, there are a few options that need to be enabled for an optimal time (such as "Deactivate lore rooms" and "Skip cut scenes") but other options could be enabled or disabled for an encode that should not impact synchronization, but would lose a few frames to enable as part of the movie file (such as disabling "Enable bright flashes" or enabling "Show milliseconds" for the in-game timer). I have no issues about losing time to change in-game options, but I'd like there to be an option for encoders/publishers to be able to decide on settings that don't impact synchronization, especially for accessibility settings, that doesn't require resyncing the movie.
But do have an option of creating those 10 verification movies to be run every day?
What makes that difficult is the way that the randomness works for the dailies. Here are two example level maps from the daily challenges from 22-Apr-2019 and 23-Apr-2019. The goal in a daily challenge is to get from the start of the level down to the boss fight room, which is the room marked in red at the bottom of both maps. Since these maps are randomly generated, there's no way to know what the level will look like before the daily starts each day at midnight, UTC+1.
Thus, while I could make a verification movie file for a given daily, that movie would only work as expected for that 24 hour window. So, let's say a user wanted to generate the needed save file, I would need to work with that user to get them verification movies for those ten dailies to unlock the weapon; there would be no way to put up a "one size fits all" set of verification movies that would work for everyone regardless of date.
I realize that this is somewhat of a unique situation without any similar examples on tasvideos to compare against... Considering a goal that would uses this weapon would not be eligible for the Vault tier, since it requires a save game, perhaps it is worth missing out on the potential time save that the weapon could provide to make the verification movie less of a hassle to make and use.
feos wrote:
I assume this means that verification movies to generate the anchored save also cannot utilize game modifications, which makes sense.
feos wrote:
Regarding save anchored runs, they need to be different enough from what is achieved with a fresh game, and also entertaining enough to be published in Moons as another branch. For "fresh any%", however, there's no such restriction.
Hopefully the Any% NG+ and Highest Difficulty goals would fit that criteria. I'm fairly confident that the goals are substantially different from a Fresh Any% goal, but hopefully the end products will be interesting enough to the audience. I suppose once libTAS is capable of TASing Dead Cells, it'll be helpful to ask folks for opinions on which goal would be the most interesting and focus on that one first.
Thank you for the rule clarifications and for giving me some additional stuff to think about!
For one of the games that I speedrun, Dead Cells, there were a number of glitches discovered earlier this year that significantly changed the run. There had been talk (both serious and in jest) for ages about trying to create a TAS for Dead Cells, but these new glitches gave me the inspiration to actually attempt it. However, due to a bug with libTAS involving /dev/urandom, I will need to wait for a libTAS update before I can start working on a Dead Cells TAS. Nonetheless, I've been doing some preparations with routing and researching site submission rules and guidelines.
Looking at the movie rules:
However, there are certain games with unlockable modes, second quests, or other things of interest that can only be accessed if a save file (or an otherwise "dirty" SRAM) is present. If you really wish to submit a movie made on such a mode, you will need a verification movie made and provided alongside it. Any input file that starts from power-on (for example, a previously submitted movie for that game) and creates the exact circumstances for your submission to sync will generally do.
For context, although Dead Cells is a roguelike/lite, there is some meta-progression. Over the course of multiple runs, a player unlocks equipment that can appear in-game in future runs, additional abilities such as wall running that opens alternate routes through the game, and higher difficulties, none of which are available on a fresh save file. Two potential goals I could TAS are analogous to the Any% and Hardest Difficulty categories on speedrun.com. Both of these goals would rely on having these meta-progression elements unlocked, and thus would require an anchored save. Since they are substantially different from a speedrun on a fresh save file, I believe this fits the requirement that the "unlocked mode provides meaningful content over a fresh game."
My main question however, is about creating the verification movie to generate the save file. The speedrun.com community uses a save file that has everything unlocked to help get people started with speedrunning the game, but it would not be sufficient under the tasvideos submission rules. Assuming that the randomness is properly handled when using libTAS, I should be more than capable of recording a movie file to create the save file. However, there is a weapon that is used in both Any% and Hardest Difficulty runs, the Meat Skewer, that is only unlockable through completing 10 unique daily runs. The main issue with daily runs is that they change every 24 hours and as far as we know, we cannot go back to previous dailies, even with manipulating the system time. Thus, I don't think I would be able to unlock this weapon through a "standard" verification movie.
This leaves me with a few potential options.
1) Although I'd prefer to create the TAS to the site's standards, an option is to just create the TAS with Meat Skewer and not worry about submitting.
2) I could accept a slight time loss and create the TAS without using Meat Skewer. The weapon has some neat movement options that could be useful, but it isn't vital to the run.
3) The speedrun.com save file was created partially using mods thanks to the game's Steam Workshop support. Thus, I could create a mod that unlocks Meat Skewer for the anchored save as part of the verification movie. This is similar to how we created the speedrun.com save file, and it would allow the anchored save to be created consistently, but I assume that this would be frowned upon, since it could be against the spirit of the submission rules.
Perhaps there is another option I haven't thought of, but I'd like to know what the best course of action would be here.
