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Let's take another look at the core of the disagreement, and consider warps and cheat codes.
Warps are a normal part of gameplay. If a game contains warps, then a TAS is expected to use them (assuming they save time). A run with time-saving warps can go in the vault if it's fast enough, regardless of how entertaining it is. Conversely, a "warpless" run is a special case that has to be labeled as such. The warpless run needs to prove that it's unique enough for a separate branch, and entertaining enough for moon tier.
Cheat codes are not a normal part of gameplay. If a game contains cheat codes, then a TAS is expected to avoid them even if they save time. A run in the vault can not use cheat codes, regardless of how fast it is. Conversely, a run "using a cheat code" is a special case that has to be labeled as such. The cheat code run needs to prove that it's unique enough for a separate branch, and entertaining enough for moon tier.
That should be pretty straightforward to any regulars on the site. Now we get to the actual issue, which is about End Game Glitches (i.e. any glitch that can be used to instantly end the game, such as the recent VVVVVV run, or the 1:39 SMW run).
Some people (e.g. Warp, if I understand him correctly) think End Game Glitches are like warps, i.e. TASes are expected to use them where they exist. A TAS that uses an End Game Glitch is the default branch and go in the vault. A TAS that foregoes an End Game Glitch is a special case that has to be labeled, and has to prove that it's unique enough for a separate branch, and entertaining enough for moon tier.
Other people (e.g. Feos, if I understand him correctly) think End Game Glitches are like cheat codes, i.e. TASes are expected to avoid them. A TAS that foregoes an End Game Glitch is the default branch and can go in the vault. A TAS that does use an End Game Glitch is a special case that has to be labeled, and has to prove that it's unique enough for a separate branch, and entertaining enough for moon tier.
There we go.
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feos wrote:
Funally!
(b) Bahemete's run should be unlabeled and Masterun's run should note that it uses the credits glitch "game end glitch".
The 13:30 VVVVVV run should be unlabeled and the 0:47 run should note that it uses the text storage glitch "game end glitch".
That's good. The term "end game glitch", as in a glitch that ends the game immediately, is actually an objectively defined term we can use (unlike the term "glitched" which already has five different meanings suggested in this thread).
[quote="feos"
adelikat wrote:
So I hear you answering the question as "We know it is a contradiction and dont' care, it is the lesser of two evils".
feos wrote:
"None of the first 2 options in the poll is perfect. Each leaves a huge room for contradictions and arguments. So here's something different from both."
adelikat wrote:
So you don't agree that it is a contradiction?
[/quote]
What I think Adelikat means is that "any%" has a specific definition (i.e. "the fastest run") and we should not use that term if we mean something else (e.g. "an entertaining run that shows off a lot of the game but isn't the fastest"). There's nothing wrong with entertaining runs that show off a lot of the game, but just don't call them "any%". Use a different term.
feos wrote:
One may answer: "Well, it was traditionally there and all was ok". There are counter-arguments to that.
Glitched branch was also traditionally there, but people think it's not ok (and I proved it's not ok anymore as it was, so it needs some tweak, but not removal).
It's not so much about what is traditional, but about what is objective. Although I should repeat that the "gltiched" branch was never in common usage, as there were only 16 or so movies with that name out of 2400+ on the site.
That said...
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I think this discussion would benefit from some concrete examples.
Looking at Super Mario World, the question is how we distinguish Masterjun's 1:39 run from Bahamete et al's 9:57 run. If we can't make this distinction, then they would be the same branch, and one should obsolete the other. However, making the distinction is straightforward: the former run uses what's know as the "credits glitch", and the latter does not. Of course, both runs also use a number of other glitches, but this is the main difference from a technical perspective.
So the debate is really whether
(a) Masterjun's run should be unlabeled and Bahamete's run should note that it avoids the credits glitch, or
(b) Bahemete's run should be unlabeled and Masterun's run should note that it uses the credits glitch, or
(c) both should be called something else.
How exactly we note that (and where, in the title or the description) is up for debate. By the way, the recently rejected submission also uses the credits glitch, but it is slower than the 1:39 run mentioned above.
The exact same thing applies to VVVVVV, with the recently discovered "text storage glitch". Either the 0:47 run should be unlabeled and the 13:30 run should note that it avoids the text storage glitch, or the 13:30 run should be unlabeled and the 0:47 run should note that it uses the text storage glitch. Or, of course, both should be called something else.
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scrimpeh wrote:
I would also say the SM64 run is not considered "glitched" because it still keeps some of the game's structure, namely doing the Bowser levels and fighting him the regular way, unlike ALttP, which just skips straight to the ending sequence three minutes in.
Additionally, the terms 0 star, 1 star, 16 star, and so on are well established in the SM64 speedrunning community, with all of them having a very specific route associated to them. This doesn't really apply to ALttP.
Question though, can you apply this definition to other games as well? Or will it lead to lots of debate on games that don't have an established speedrunning community?
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jlun2 wrote:
Currently, ""glitched" & any%" seems to be winning, so I'm wondering does that mean it'll be brought back even though noone has been able to define "game-breaking glitch"? :o
Presumably we'll vote on the definition next.
Although considering both sides of the issue are fairly large (and we have a significant amount of people voting for a third option), it would be a sensible approach to find a common middle ground.
andypanther wrote:
I was always thinking of "any%" as the definition of a "anything goes" run, the absolutely fastest way to beat the game, no matter what it takes. From there on, the communities can make different variations of any% that ban certain techniques ("any%, no X"). For me, that's what any% is about.
Therefore, if the fastest way to beat the game is not called any%, this contradicts the meaning of the term. If "glitched" is faster than any%, why is the latter even called any%? It's not a true any%, it's just another type of "any%, no X", so why don't we use this naming convention instead? This way, there won't be confusion regarding the term "glitched", just different types of any% that explain their restrictions in the title.
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I completely understand and agree with having movies that show off more gameplay than the fastest run. But here's the problem: for almost any speedrun on the site, it is possible to make an alternative run that shows off more of the gameplay. However, in many cases these would simply be (1) suboptimal and (2) arbitrary. So how does one distinguish a "non glitched" run from a "suboptimal" or "arbitrary" run? We need to be able to answer that to stay true to the site goals. Even in the few hours that this thread has run, it already has half a dozen different definitions; that doesn't help.
Warp wrote:
I think that the motivation between the branch naming change was that the role of branch names is not to describe a particular aspect of the run, but rather just identify the branch in an unambiguous manner. (If the branch name happens to be descriptive, all the better, but that's not its main role.)
Another motivation was that we wanted to make clearer which one of the several branches is the "official word-record TAS". This could have been a certain chosen branch name ("any%" probably being the de-facto name for such branches previously), but a consensus was reached that the only unnamed branch of the game serves this purpose well enough.
The role of describing distinguishing aspects of the run was relegated to the tags that can be applied to a publication. If, for example, a TAS abuses so many glitches that it deserves mention, then the correspondent tag is preferable to doing it in the branch name.
If the "glitched" TAS also happens to be the fastest completion of the game by any means, then that branch name would serve solely a descriptive purpose, which is really not the role of branch names. Moreover, it would be confusing because it wouldn't distinguish which one of the (possibly) several branches is the "official world record".
I'd say: Either have the official fastest completion unnamed, or give all of them the exact same branch name. Do not start giving different games different branch names for their main fastest WR completion branch, because that's only inconsistent and confusing. In the discussion that started the change it was the consensus that being unnamed is ok.
If this means that basically no run will receive a "glitched" branch name, is it really such a loss?
Btw, if a problem is that the category of a run is not clear enough, then perhaps we could come up with some kind of minor redesign that makes the tags of a run more prominent.
Perhaps there could be two types of tags: "Major" tags and "minor" tags. The major ones could even appear on the run's name line (ie. the one that appears as a link to the run's page, and which contains all the condensed info of the run in one line.) The minor ones could then just appear on the run's info box as normal.
However, we shouldn't start mixing branch names and tags.
I endorse this post. Finally, it is worth remembering that the category "glitched" was never common (it was used by about 16 runs out of 2400 on the site), and was never consistently applied in the first place.
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It's worth noting that VVVVVV's so-called "glitched" rundoesn't use memory corruption, arbitrary code execution, or anything of the sort; it instead exploits a straightforward bug in the code.
The advantage to the current system is that all branch labels are objective and clear. A run called "no warps" doesn't use warps; a run named "all gems" collects all gems in the game; and a run labeled "no breadcrumbs glitch" doesn't use the breadcrumbs glitch. This has worked fine for 99% of the 2500+ runs on the site.
The problem with "glitched" vs "non-glitched", and the reason why this was removed in the past, is that nobody so far has given an objective and non-arbitrary definition for it. For some people the distinction is about skipping the final boss, for some it means warping past most of the game, sometimes it's about wall zipping, etc, and this has led to a lot of debate. If we could all agree on a meaning (e.g. defining "glitched" to mean "memory corruption") then that would prevent a lot of future debate.
It strikes me that the underlying issue is not so much the terminology, but the fact that for a handful of games (notably Super Mario World and Super Metroid) there are many different branches, and it is not obvious how these varied goals interact with arbitrary code execution. I think it would be better to consider how to deal with many-branched games, than to vote on which term to use for one of them.
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Spikestuff wrote:
Hmm... I think I can use this to drop the branch bomb by keeping only 3 (glitched/any%/100%).
The issue here is clarity.
Let's take Crash Bandicoot 2 as an example. We have two runs on the site; one is the world speed record with no restrictions, and the other is a "minimum requirement" run which doesn't use the box glitch, and consequently is slower than the world speed record.
This is immediately apparent from the current branch names. So I'm not following why you want to rename the branches to make this less clear. I don't see how that would help anyone.
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Patashu wrote:
In Cave Story it's not the worst ending (escape on the dragon) or the intermediate ending (kill the Undead Core) but the best ending (kill Balos).
We don't currently have an any% run of Cave Story, I'm not sure what you're getting at.
So already any% can mean two or three different things depending on the game.
Nothing arbitrary here, it simply means the fastest ending, and is consistently used as such. You know, if there are over 2500 movies on the site, then listing two or three corner cases isn't significant. It's possible that these two or three movies should have their branch renamed, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the system.
On the other hand, we've had several lengthy definitions of "glitched" and nobody has so far been able to give a definition for that which (a) isn't arbitrary and (b) is meaningfully distinct from "any%".
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FractalFusion wrote:
Radiant wrote:
Since the site is now steadily getting more runs in some of the newer categories, on this index page, I think it would be helpful if the line for "computer" was split into three lines for DOS, MSX, and Windows separately (they are three separate categories/tags in the database, after all); and several more categories now have enough movies that it makes sense to link to the stars and moons only, and have a second button for 'all' movies (the way is done for NES/SNES movies as well), e.g. the MSX, Arcade, and DOS categories.
Thank you for your time!
I have now split the computer category into DOS, MSX, and Windows separately.
Thanks. I note that on the "other movies" tab of any movie publication screen (e.g. this one) they're still listed as a single category; perhaps that could also be split?
This same list is also missing the categories for Gamecube, Atari 2600, Atari Lynx, and Colecovision; and it lists Virtualboy on the line with NES instead of the line with Gameboy. I suppose it's a bit outdated :)
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Spikestuff wrote:
at "use elevator" you can just have "up" and going "down"
You can even use u/d/e/w as commands.
I don't usually believe in "bad game choice", but in this case a TAS isn't noticeably different from a non-tool-assisted playthrough. I mean, there's only three rooms and most of the time you just have to type in a one-letter command and press enter, that's it. Typing a few milliseconds faster than is possible in real life is not a superplay.
No vote.
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I can see how this may be a different branch than the currently published run, but once the 100%-run is complete it may be worth considering whether that should obsolete the current run. Because in terms of showing off most of the gameplay, the 100%-run will (probably) do that better than the current run.
That is, should we ultimately have two branches of this game (any% and 100%, i.e. this one and the one being worked on), or three (any%, 100%, and any%-with-no-quitting).
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ais523 wrote:
What concerns me here is that so far, nobody claims that they don't understand the system; and yet, the votes we actually get on submissions often don't match the poll questions. Which implies to me that either a) people are lying on this poll, b) the people who don't understand the system didn't look at this thread at all; or c) people fully understand the system but intentionally subvert it because they disagree with the way it works.
Or d) people think they fully understand the system but are mistaken about that. It is not uncommon to see posts in the workbench like "this should definitely be in the vault: yes vote". That's clearly someone who thinks he understands the system, but actually doesn't.
After all, it's not obvious where to find an explanation of how the system works, and it's also changed at least once in the past years.
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I love the idea of using pictures in the poll!
And I think a good addition would be to put a link called e.g. 'explanation' in the poll header, that goes to the wiki page on how the judging process works. That's useful for new users, and people who already know this probably aren't bothered by one li'l hyperlink.
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It's important to note that this run got rejected over poor viewer response (since that disqualifies it for moon tier, and the movie goal is not eligible for vault tier). So it's not necessary for the branch to exclude this run.
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I was browing through GFD and I found that on hacks/homebrews, the video for NES Hard Relay Mario no longer exists. Perhaps someone still has a movie on his hard drive that could be re-uploaded?
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Very nice work, and hilariously fast.
I think this should obsolete the current run as Any%, and it would be great to have a separate branch for a 100% run (as in, collects all trinkets). Note that the existing run is already several glitches "behind" even if you discount this one.
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Precisely. So the other goals (branches) for this game should either ban ACE directly, or ban the glitch required to obtain ACE. That solves the issue.
What would also solve the issue is if this run doesn't get enough votes to get to moon tier, since it already doesn't qualify for vault tier. Either way, nothing the site rules can't already handle.
