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GarbiTheGlitcheress wrote:
For this run, I always reset to exit the course after the last level of the course has been completed. The only parts I skip are congratulations screens and such. My definition of 'all mazes' in the context of this tas is a time showing up on the screen that you get if you use the DATA password.
Right, so you play all the levels of the course, but the course ends with some cut scene or score screen and you skip that? Ok, then I have no issue with the "all levels" branch name.
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Fortranm wrote:
I think the state of the save file, for a game that is expected to modify it during the ending, is one of the least arbitrary factors possible in the legitimacy of game completion when visual disruption of an ending sequence is already a given.
However, quite a lot of games don't actually have save files. So is that really the best criterium?
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Fortranm wrote:
I think one easy way to resolve this is to consider whether the game unlocks anything after completion, the same criterion used for many other cases like this.
That's a good point actually. According to its wiki, the game unlocks New Game+ and Challenge Mode and Boss Rush upon first completion.
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TASes avoid or skip cutscenes whenever possible, so I'd say most movie viewers are watching for the gameplay (or distortions thereof) and not for the cutscenes. Having a brief 30 second ending scene after the climax is indeed a satisfying ending to a movie. But this game has about nine minutes of denouement, and having skipped all the earlier cutscenes, viewers will have no idea what it's denouing in the first place.
If a run would play, say, three seconds of ending and then hardlock, that would arguably be cause for rejection. But this run shows several minutes of ending, and that should be more than sufficient to satisfy viewers that it's complete. I suggest to end the encode when the deer ends up on the mountaintop, that feels like a natural endpoint.
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So if I understand correctly, these "playground" runs get their own threads in the forum but they don't get a publication page?
Given how many SMB submissions we get I think some grouping may be in order, but otherwise seems like a good proposal.
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If I press the search button and search for "super mario", I get a list of ten game results, but this list does not contain Super Mario Bros or Super Mario World or Super Mario 64. And that's probably what I'm looking for if I'm typing those search terms.
I think this would benefit from some "exact title match" feature, listing exact title matches first and then going on to text matches.
https://tasvideos.org/GameGroups/8 does not appear to be sorted by anything. It would make it easier to find things if this were alphabetical, and if official ROMs were either boldfaced or listed first.
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In the Ask A Judge thread, there was discussion on whether exiting a course early counts for an "all levels" run, but I see no mention of this in the submission text. I get the impression that if a course consits of multiple levels, and you end the course without playing all those levels, then it is an "all courses" run but not an "all levels" run. It's a quality run and I'm voting yes anyway, but this thread strikes me as a good place to discuss the label of the movie.
GarbiTheGlitcheress wrote:
I am running all levels, but it is possible to exit a course early and there is still internal data indicating all the levels of the course as being completed, but it doesn't save the progress toward getting the next password. Is it necessary to get the game to a state in which it will give me the password, and if so, is it necessary to have the password be shown on screen?
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I'd say this is not about time per se, but about giving the community a chance to respond. It is possible that some community member has crucial input, or facts that the judges are not aware of, that may impact whether or not a run is acceptable. It strikes me as rare, but given that (as a principle) runs are never unpublished, I don't think it hurts to keep threads on the workbench open a minimum of three days.
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adelikat wrote:
Given the cons and limited value of this value, it has been my conclusion for awhile now that this value should be removed, and leaving a single value that represents the overall impression by the user.
Good call.
I am reminded of dating site OkCupid, that used to have a feature where you could rate other users on appearance and personality. And after some time they checked their data, and it turned out that almost everybody used both ratings for "how much do I like this person". The two were almost 1:1 linearly correlated, so there was no point in having two separate axes for a single user; and so they removed it. The same principle applies here: it adds complexity for no practical benefit.
And I'm really glad that this site is willing to analyze its own "sacred cows" and (re)consider if they're worth keeping. Just because something "has always been done like that" doesn't automatically mean that we need to keep doing it that way in perpetuity.
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I note that right-clicking on "Movies" or "Articles" in the screen header, then clicking "open in new tab" opens a new tab with the same page as I'm currently on, and not with movies or articles respectively. That strikes me as a bug.
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Even if the full version wasn't free, I don't think that "I don't want to pay for games" is a good argument for using a partial/demo version of any game. There's plenty of famous freeware games available that can be fully TAS'ed: about 90% of all windows games on this site and almost half of all DOS games are freeware.
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ViGadeomes wrote:
A solution (atleast for the moment) for this movie would be to accept (a) TAS(es) of the most popular hack of each official game into Standard without taking into account its entertainement.
By what standard are you going to choose the "most popular hack"? And what if popularity changes, and some other hack becomes the most popular? What if popularity changes often?
This is not hypothetical, by the way. Romhacking.net lists about 450 romhacks of SMB, and about 60 for each Mega Man game and the NES/SNES Zelda games; the site for VVVVVV lists about 1000 homemade levelsets for that game. Which one of these is the most popular?
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scrimpeh wrote:
Alright I did not see the Pokémon Trainer battle coming.
Ok, that comment made me watch this :)
Well. It's clearly a quality and original hack. But most of the run is zipping around with the various glitches, and almost all boss fights are over before you can see what the boss is doing. So I didn't find this very entertaining. Meh vote.
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Please explain how "SMB in Super Mario AllStars" is meaningfully distinct from the standard SMB on the NES, aside from the graphics. Are there particular glitches or strategies that work on this ROM but not on the NES one?
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I don't find this entertaining: nothing original happens in the first half (compared to existing SMB movies) and nothing at all happens in the second half. Voting no.
I believe "fastest softlock" movies have been consistently rejected in the past as a poor goal choice; I'm aware that the site rules are being changed, but as far as I know "fastest softlock" movies are not being considered as a new standard goal for the site (except where such movies are highly entertaining). Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.
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There are literally hundreds of Super Mario romhacks, many of which are (to laymen) indistinguishable from the original. What makes this particular romhack notable enough to publish?
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There are literally hundreds of Super Mario romhacks, many of which are (to laymen) indistinguishable from the original. What makes this particular romhack notable enough to publish?
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EZGames69 wrote:
£e Nécroyeur wrote:
Agreed!
Did you read the explanation given by the author above as to why hard mode isn’t worth it?
Sure, but I don't agree with it. Extra enemies maybe easy to avoid... but that's still fun to watch in a run. And based on Serena's comments, it looks like the highest actual difficulty will also have a different route, so I'd be more interested in seeing a run of that, than a run of the "assist mode". $.02
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Looks pretty cool.
I'm curious why you're using the middle difficulty setting, instead of "relaxed" (which would be faster) or "harder" (the hardest difficulty available without a prior save)? Since the harder difficulty has more enemies, it may be more entertaining to watch?
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In the interest of clarity:
Looking at a random publication, it has download buttons for "A/V file" (which actually means "MKV") and "A/V file compatibility" (which actually means "MP4").
People know what an MP4 is. People don't know what "compatibility" means if you don't specify what it's compatible with. I've never seen the term "A/V file" used anywhere outside this site. I mean I get it, it means "audiovisual", but there is a common term for audiovisual files and that is "movie". I would strongly prefer to label these buttons "MP4 movie" and "MKV movie" instead of using unnecessary jargon.
