TASVideos

Posted: 9/3/2021 7:26 AM

Post subject: Re: #7207: letcreate123's Linux Super Win The Game in 06:43.65

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

I must say I really liked the minimalistic design of the first game, and this sequel just falls flat to me, both in its lacklustre graphics and in trying too hard to reference (or directly copy) famous old games. That said, the run is good, and the game is notable enough to be published; I just don't find this very entertaining. Voting meh.

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Posted: 9/1/2021 5:51 PM

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Overall it's a clean and friendly design, and looking much more modern than the retro-nineties-aesthetic of the current site. I've got a background in user interface and user experience (although I'm by no means an expert on that), so I'll write my impressions and reactions. My browser is Chrome 92.0.4515.159 for Windows. In the header "We have videos of all the popular franchises: from Super Mario Bros." etc, I'd expect the franchise names and genre names to be clickable and lead me to these movies. At top of the screen, I'm surprised that "TAS videos" stands for (T)ool (A)ssisted (G)ame movies. Wasn't it (S)uperplay? The menu on the top of the page is too dark to easily make out, and I'm confused why the leftmost button (home) is actually a pulldown when the rest aren't. In the box "TASVideos News", if I right-click on an article and select "open in new tab" then that doesn't work. If I click on the bottommost news item, then the news does appear but I have to scroll down to read it; it should scroll down automatically. Seeing the date for a news item is good; seeing the time (5:18 PM?) strikes me as overkill. Latest publications don't show time-of-day either. In the box with the featured run, I'd expect the title ("N64 Super Mario 64 "1 key"") to be clickable and lead me to the run's info page. I'd expect clicking on the screenshot to play the movie. I'm not sure that the blue box "featured" adds anything, it looks a bit off-key. In the box with latest publications, I'd expect the publication title ("Donkey Kong 64") to be clickable and lead me to the run's info page, which does work in the Newest Submissions box. Latest publications is also missing the branch name. Newest Submissions should have the same column order as latest publications, so date/game/time/by instead of title (not "game"?) / branch / time / author (not "by"?) / date. Under "Newest User Files", the "More WIPs" is a purple button, whereas in earlier sections it is simpy a text reading ("more..."). On the front page of the site, the acronym "WIP" should probably be spelled out, as it has numerous meanings. Movies page, Hovering over the lightning bolt icon gives me a popup what the icon means, but hovering over the star icon does not. I'd expect clicking on a movie's screenshot to play that movie. There are two buttons "A/V file via bittorrent" and "A/V file via bittorrent compatibility". These are, respectively, an MKV file and an MP4 file; so clearer to label the buttons "MKV movie via bittorrent" and "MP4 movie via bittorrent". Although I understand the term "A/V file", I've not encountered if before. On a page with a list of movies (e.g. https://tasvideos.mistflux.net/Movies-DOS-DOOM-Stars ) clicking on any movie's "publication" button just shows you the same screen with that movie again; this button seems not useful on the list page. The list page is missing the "discuss" button. Welp, I'll shut up for now. HTH :)

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Posted: 8/30/2021 11:08 AM

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

It's clearly a quality TAS, but I've found this fairly boring and repetitive to watch. Voting no on entertainment.

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Posted: 8/23/2021 10:14 PM

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

Radiant wrote:

What an odd version of the game. The level layouts look familiar, but on other systems the graphics are more tall rectangular tiles (instead of square ones) so it fits on one screen and doesn't require horizontal scrolling. The game strikes me as much harder if part of the level is off-screen all the time. Except in a TAS, of course. Also, yes vote.

That still applies.

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Posted: 8/22/2021 9:53 AM
(Edited: 6/18/2022 11:55 AM)

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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That's a good question, I'm a bit surprised that there are no runs yet for games with an internal level editor, where the run is for a custom level set. I'm sure this will come up more in the future, so what's the precedent? ...thinking about it, I'd say that using level editor to make a custom levelset is pretty close to romhacking, because most romhacks are also editing the levels using a third-party tool or hexediting or something. Both with a romhack and with custom levels, you are tied to the existing game engine, physics, enemy types, and so forth; whereas a homebrew game has to create everything from scratch and can be literally anything. Also, any game with a level editor tends to have TONS AND TONS of custom levels; so it sounds like a good constraint to get only custom levels that "features unique gameplay or brand new content". I believe that for this particular levelset, if it had a run without a major skip glitch, it would look too similar to the VVVVVV main levelset, and would not be very entertaining for most people. $.02

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Posted: 8/19/2021 2:00 PM

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

I'm just noticing that there are eleven tags for genre (action, adventure, fighting, platform, puzzle, racing, rpg, shooter, sport, storybook, strategy) and yet there's a manually kept page for Metroidvanias. Perhaps there should be a genre tag for it? "Genre: Metroidvania" or some similar term. I mean it's not a big deal or anything but it should be very easy to implement. For that matter, it may be interesting to have a genre tag for "beat-em-up" (as in Streets of Rage, because that's pretty distinct from e.g. Street Fighter 2); as well as for "first-person shooter" (as in DOOM, because that's pretty distinct from e.g. Gradius).

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Posted: 8/19/2021 1:37 PM

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Radiant

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Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

Samsara wrote:

Gruefood Delight is just a wiki page anyone can edit with whatever they want. It was never meant to be an official thing: Heck, it can't even be a tag since nothing in it has been published.

I may be missing something here, but Gruefood Delight starts with a link to its curator thread , and I do not have the privilege to edit it (and I infer that neither do most users). I'll grant that it's clearly more of a joke than an official thing, but it certainly looks like a curated list. The same goes for Obsoletely Fabulous, and "Alden's Exhibitions". And for that matter, Notable Improvements. I do see that for technical reasons, NI is a tag and OF/GD are wiki pages. This is all from the "special categories" tab on the movies page.

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Posted: 8/18/2021 8:16 AM

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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moozooh wrote:

Right, rather than parametric categories to search by, they are curated lists for which runs are selected manually.

mklip2001 wrote:

Solid movie. I find this a lot easier to understand than the original NES game, though the difficulty seems a bit too easy for most of it.

Oh, this game is much harder than Ninespaces makes it look. Many of those jumps and especially jump/wand/wand combos are just not feasible in realtime conditions, and many levels are frustratingly complex to do otherwise. I used to play this for hours as a kid and it was very challenging. Yes vote.

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Posted: 6/29/2021 7:48 PM

Post subject: Re: #7154: adelikat's NES Lode Runner in 18:15.2

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

What an odd version of the game. The level layouts look familiar, but on other systems the graphics are more tall rectangular tiles (instead of square ones) so it fits on one screen and doesn't require horizontal scrolling. The game strikes me as much harder if part of the level is off-screen all the time. Except in a TAS, of course. Also, yes vote.

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Posted: 6/4/2021 1:00 PM

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

Wow. Yes vote.

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Posted: 5/31/2021 12:41 PM

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

FractalFusion wrote:

Radiant wrote:
"least A button by framecount"
Except that's not what this submission does.

Hm, that's a good point. In that case my opinion is to reject this as an arbitrary goal. "Never press button <x> for more than <y> frames" sounds pretty random to me.

feos wrote:

Why is it a valid branch and why should it obsolete?

Because I thought it was the same goal as the other branch, but by a slightly different metric. But as Fractal points out, this is actually not the case.

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Posted: 5/31/2021 9:03 AM

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Radiant

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Joined: 8/29/2011
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Fair is fair, if [4444] NES Super Mario Bros. "minimum jumps" by HappyLee, Kriller37, DaSmileKat, Kosmic & periwinkle in 10:24.39 is a valid branch then so is this one; it's "least A button counted by state changes" vs "least A button by framecount". Although arguably this submission should obsolete that one.

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Posted: 5/7/2021 7:34 PM
(Edited: 7/11/2022 4:09 PM)

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

feos wrote:

What about other things mentioned in Post #505613? So far it looks like this run is indeed true glitchless!

This run uses airwalking, crouches to avoid damage, and one-shots Jafar; which are under discussion on the previous page and might be considered glitches. Conversely, this run avoids jumping past guards, which arguably is not a glitch, based on how hesitant the guard AI is overall. Also, the top post mentions "fall damage crouch cancel" which we haven't discussed; I'm not sure whether it's relevant. I say "might" and "arguably" because we're still discussing it and of course it's ultimately not my opinion that counts.

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Posted: 5/7/2021 3:43 PM
(Edited: 7/11/2022 4:09 PM)

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Radiant

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Joined: 8/29/2011
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Location: Amsterdam

Nach wrote:

there's an explicit check in the code above to see if the character is in the crouched position before processing the crushing/killing sequence.

The explicit check is after processing crushing killing, same as in the SDLPoP source:

 lda #1
 jsr decstr       <= Decrease strength, i.e. hit points
 beq :kill        <= kill player at 0 hp

 lda CharPosn
 cmp #109         <= then here's the check for crouching.
 beq ]rts

So the idea of the code is to force the player into crouching animation when hit, unless he was already crouching.

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Posted: 5/7/2021 1:31 PM
(Edited: 7/11/2022 4:09 PM)

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Radiant

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

GMP wrote:

Regarding the first one, yeah it's really simple. I am willing to bet you can do it in your copy of the game pretty easily right now.

Yes, I can confirm that; I got about 60% success rate with zero practice. Interestingly, the sequel Prince of Persia 2 appears to run on the same engine, and does not allow the walking-on-air trick. I get the impression that they've deliberately removed it.

Nach wrote:

I recall seeing this in a manual for one of the ports. The explanation was that if the tile hits you in the head it hurts, but not if you're ducking for cover.

Huh. My headcanon is now that that's a bug and they covered for it by adding it to the manual, because of how little sense it makes. Still, the fact that it is in the manual makes it fair game for any glitchless run.

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