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KusogeMan wrote:
Samsara, Coolhandmike do not TAS fighting games
#5027: Samsara's N64 Fighters Destiny in 01:44.43#8426: CoolHandMike's Arcade Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters "Rescue Roll!, 2 players" in 03:09.36#8848: CoolHandMike's Arcade Metamoqester "2 players" in 03:31.54
...That being said, I don't even understand why this is an argument in the first place. I could be wrong, but I feel like it's meant to be an accusation of the community having a bias against fighting games because most people don't TAS them, but I think it's actually proving the opposite, in that the outliers are pushing for something that only benefits fighting games despite the fact that the majority of the community doesn't TAS them.
TASVideos is a general purpose site, and we're running it that way because for our purposes it's the neatest, most efficient, and easiest way to do it for the most people involved. It's easier for staff to manage, it's easier for the current community to support, and it's easier for brand new members to understand and learn how to contribute to. As far as I'm concerned, the less opportunities there are for people to misinterpret our current general purpose ruleset, the better, and allowing some sort of special clause for a certain genre only is going to be one of those things that gets misinterpreted as one of the general purpose rules we've been promoting for years now. We've already had misinterpretations of the rules lead to massive public incidents before, and I can easily see it happening again here.
I've more or less been in charge of the rules for a few years now. When I rewrote them, my philosophy at the time was to remove as much extraneous information as possible. The old rules prior to the rewrite had subcategories and examples for all of these weird little edge cases that may or may not have actually existed on the site, and most of them were just unnecessary, confusing, and ultimately served to do nothing more than restrict content in advance.
That's what the "SRAM obsoletion for fighting games only" proposal feels like to me. It feels unnecessary, in that I can't see any particular benefit to us implementing it. It feels confusing, in that I feel it will only lead to people assuming we'd allow it for all genres and not just fighting games. Lastly, it ultimately serves to do nothing more than restrict content in advance, because that's quite literally what the proposal is: It's telling people that they're not allowed to TAS fighting games in a certain way. If there's a super overpowered unlockable character that can end rounds seconds faster than any other, that has to be the character you use, no questions asked, deal with it.
Let me put that a different way. This would literally be restricting the only thing we have universally allowed since the site's inception: Clean save file speedruns from power-on.
At best, I think that wildly goes against the current principles of the site and the direction we're taking it in, both as staff and as a community. At worst, it sets a precedent so dangerous that the entire site could fall into disrepair if we fail to implement it properly, and even if we do implement it properly, there's a good chance that people will miss it or misinterpret it anyway. Even if everyone gets it and understands it and accepts it, who's to say that another discussion like this won't happen again in the future with a different genre of game? What if the RPG TASing community wants their baseline runs to all be New Game+? All they'd have to do is point to fighting games and we wouldn't have an argument against it, because we've already allowed it in that one case so it wouldn't be reasonable to tell anyone else who wants it for their communities to hit the road.
After years of me refusing to let the rules get more complicated and opening up so many discussion threads for us to be able to allow more on the site, I can't in good conscience sign off on a rule like this that actively goes against everything I've fought for. It's a rules complication and a special case, like the myriad flaws I found in the old rules. It's content restriction, like what I've fought against through threads like the one we're posting in right now. It doesn't match the wishes of the majority of the community, and I promised TASVideos that no major changes would go through without community support.
At the end of the day, the way TASVideos is right now just can't support this. There's always a possibility that we shift to a different system down the line where genre-specific rules or even game-specific rules make more sense for us, but I don't see that happening any time soon just from pure logistics. It'd be nice, I'd even support that kind of shift in the future, but we'd need a lot more support and direct help for it to be feasible.
I guess one last quick point: I haven't really been active in this thread due to some major personal issues taking the majority of my day-to-day energy, but I want to stress something important for me. The reason I said I was on the fence is because I think both sides are valid, here. Both sides make sense to me from their individual perspectives and both sides have their pros and cons. Unfortunately, that means no matter what we do, it can't be done perfectly clean, and I'll be the first to admit that and to say I'm not exactly thrilled about it.
I don't want anything I've said here to come across as "No, your point sucks and it's wrong and I hate it and it's dumb", because that's not what it is at all. It's simply "I absolutely see your point and even think it's valid in a lot of ways, but you need to see it from the site's perspective and understand why it's not feasible for us right now". I completely respect the disagreements, both what they are and having the courage to step forward and address them in the first place.
Keeping a balance between what the overall community wants to see and what the TASers want to make is difficult, because there are always going to be cases like this where those things may not align or might even be in direct opposition of each other. I talked about how not wanting to restrict content meant that I disagreed with the proposal further since it inherently restricts content, but if us disagreeing with the proposal causes the TASers to leave the site, causing their runs to not be submitted in the first place, doesn't that mean we're still technically restricting content?
Given how often we've cut out entire communities based on decisions we've made or standards we follow (Super Mario 64 and Celeste come to mind immediately), the last thing I want is for that to happen again, so I guess the best question I can ask right now is this: Is there a breaking point? Is there something we are doing or have talked about doing that actually goes too far? Are we going to actively lose TASers and/or runs by sticking to separation? I can absolutely understand and accept disappointment and disagreement, but I refuse to cause explicit divides anymore.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
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Version with the BIOS screen and trimmed input: User movie #638492501793591035
No input changes were needed other than the added wait to account for the BIOS.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
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InputEvelution wrote:
I've been bringing up examples of movies that might warrant the addition of an epilepsy warning to their publication text for a while now, but I wanted somewhere more formal to post about it.
Thank you for doing this! Also, if you want the Editor role so you can add these warnings yourself, let me know and it's yours.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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We're definitely aware (I believe I was the one who suggested OceanBagel post here), the problem is just that the judging team doesn't have much time to dedicate to rejudging runs right now. The workbench has been packed the past couple years and isn't showing signs of slowing down going forward.
Thinking about it, there should be room on the site for other alternate forms of judging. Reviewers didn't quite work out how I wanted them to, but I think the idea's still solid enough to rework into a different form of community-based judging. I'll workshop it. Might take a bit of time, but it's definitely a priority for me.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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On the other side of legality, I've removed the project page links from the OP since it offers downloads of several unofficial conversions of commercial ZXS releases. I'll admit this is a strange edge case, and my research didn't turn up a whole lot of relevant information, but I'd much rather err on the side of caution here.
As for the actual usage of it for TASing, my immediate reaction is to classify it under the same rules we use for language choice and emulation improvements: Using it is fine to decrease loading times, but deceased loading times won't count as improvements by themselves. Note that this is personal opinion only and not an official statement or ruling from the site as of yet.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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The TAS of 2023 is...
[5405] Wii Super Smash Bros. Brawl "The Subspace Emissary, 100%, 1 player" by DyllonStej in 1:19:22.20!Voting for the TAS of 2023 is now open! Please vote for the choices in the poll above. If an eligible option is missing from this list, please let us know and we will correct it as soon as possible.
Voting will be open until, at earliest, 23:59 UTC on January 21st, 2024. Should anything delay this time, the delay will be announced and a new end time will be provided.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Nominating:
Darkman425 - My primary criteria for TASer of the Year is variety in game choice, and Darkman has absolutely exemplified that this year.
nymx, LogansGamingRoom - Of course, sheer output can also be a defining factor. It's not easy to average a quality TAS every 5 days, after all, and two people accomplishing that in a single year is insane.
Cephla - Cephla's a solid middle ground between Darkman's sheer variety and nymx/LGR's sheer output. I've always loved the homebrew representation and I'm hoping it continues into the new year.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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What an insane year for rookies, wow.
Tossing in some well-earned nominations to those who haven't been nominated/seconded yet:
Mikewillplays
alexheights1
JHolleworth
RetroEdit
keithPlayzStuff
ZoroarkGX
Dimon12321 wrote:
OtakuTAS
Banned users cannot be nominated.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
