Posts for Samsara


Samsara
She/They
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TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Nominating: OceanBagel ikuyo
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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oh gosh thats a lot of support ._. Thanks for all the kind words, everyone c:
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
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Hello, and welcome to the new TASVideos! With a new site comes a new thread for reporting bugs and requesting features. The new TASVideos is much more receptive to change than the old one, so don't hold back! We can actually fix and add things easily, now! It's highly recommended you also post to the Github issues page for easier tracking: https://github.com/TASVideos/tasvideos/issues
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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OnehundredthCoin wrote:
I'm genuinely impressed that there was time to save, and the five digit rerecord count is some next level comedy.
The rerecord count actually isn't a joke ._. Given that a lot of walking optimization in this game is just "randomly, out of the blue, releasing L or R for a frame will save time" and "randomly, out of the blue, pressing D for a frame will save time", the only thing I could really do was sit there and delete/insert frames until I noticed my X position going in the right direction. TAStudio + Auto-Restore + Genesis core being fast was a blessing to be able to get this out quickly. I promise I'll write actual information on the run when I wake up.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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zst wrote:
So I'm just wondering why there is no movie in 1 player mode? Is it simply because I've missed something, or the game itself is not so technical or entertaining?
I took another look, and it seems to me the only reason we don't have a 1 player movie is because no one ever created or submitted one. There's nothing holding one back from being submitted, accepted, or published, so if you have one, feel free to submit!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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We got there! \o/
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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I, uh, I've got a lot to say about the rookies this year, and a lot of nominations that I genuinely believe in because of it. The only reason I'm not nominating literally all of the candidates is because I'm explicitly forcing myself not to in order to keep the nomination process simple. This was honestly an incredible rookie year, anyone could win and I would fully believe they deserve it. I've divided my still very many nominations into a few different categories. The names are in no particular order, and names are only listed once even though individuals may qualify for multiple lists: Dedication Natetheman223 eien86 DyllonStej naruko OnehundredthCoin Reseren DJ Incendration Putting in tons of time and effort into their craft and into their interests, continuing forth in spite of adversities on many different levels, and always coming back and improving themselves in sometimes even unexpected ways. This really has been an amazing year, not just for the advancement of many different games and series, but for the art of TASing in general. Contribution Randomno PracticalTAS ikuyo OceanBagel weils Was a bit hard to think of a category name to describe how I view this group, but this is essentially people who went above and beyond to provide things for the site. Not even just their TASes, but their community engagement and contributions to helping the site itself. Keeping TASvideos alive matters a LOT to me in rookie nominations, and once again, we've had an incredible field of people doing that. Potential Darkman425 DarkShamilKhan Katistrofic2 mxlenny94 Riyan I'm terminally around TASvideos, I admit. I take note of nearly everyone who comes into the site and I sorta watch what they all do from the shadows, except it isn't as creepy as I'm making it sound. What I see from this group is, of course, pure potential. That's not to say they need to improve, of course, but I see a lot coming from them in the coming weeks, months, and hopefully years of the site. Some may have been around for a while, some may have just joined, but I see the exact same thing in them all, and that's a healthy future on this site, whether as contributors or active community members.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
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Reading the submission text for the current Luigi's Mansion submission made me realize that the way we handle branchless publications is pretty inconsistent. It's so inconsistent that I can't actually explain how we currently do it, since it seems to vary wildly from game to game. I'll use Luigi's Mansion as the first example: [2587] GC Luigi's Mansion "Hidden Mansion" by solarplex in 10:11.85 [3090] GC Luigi's Mansion "Hidden Mansion, in bounds" by Malleoz in 54:21.70 The run currently labeled as "chest glitch" was branchless prior to the publication of the run that is now branchless. Reading the submission thread for the branchless run, it seems the discussion of this choice was all of two posts, and it led to something that doesn't quite make sense with how we handle other, similar situations. EDIT: I updated the branches here, this example no longer applies. There's also the fun situation that has been Aria of Sorrow branching: [1129] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "warp glitch" by klmz in 06:46.20 [1024] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "warp glitch" by zggzdydp in 12:06.73 [1478] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Kriole in 20:58.62 [456] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Atma in 27:45.57 This is not a single obsoletion chain, but as of me writing this post, it sure looks like one. The branches for AoS have been inconsistent since the start, and even right now it's tough to say exactly how it should be handled, as the "warp glitch" category now stands with a "game end glitch" run due to a new way of calling the ending without defeating the final boss. My proposal here is to consistently apply branchless in the same way we do for EarthBound: [4361] SNES EarthBound by illayaya in 57:17.02 [3769] SNES EarthBound "in bounds" by tutelarfiber7 in 3:10:11.57 The branchless run for EarthBound heavily uses out-of-bounds glitching, much like "chest glitch" Luigi's Mansion, while the much longer run that avoids OoB is explicitly labeled as such. This makes a lot more sense to me. Branchless, in my opinion, should be comparable to any%, no "game end glitch". That is, if a run lacks a branch, it should be assumed to be the fastest completion of a game under circumstances that do not involve an unnatural calling of a game's ending. With this, the new Luigi's Mansion submission and the current "chest glitch" publication would have their branches removed (let's not get into the Hidden Mansion discourse here), and the run that avoids OoB would be labeled as "inbounds" or something similar. Aria of Sorrow would still be tricky, but we could easily make a judgement call here and say that the current 20 minute publication can remain branchless, as we wouldn't necessarily accept a fastest no-GEG run (as far as I can tell, it would look the exact same as the GEG run, just with fighting the final boss). I suppose this is also a call for branches like "warps" and "1 key" to be removed as well, as I feel they're just redundant tags for any% when branchless should be handling their jobs. If we want to keep having explicitly assigned branches for any% movies, it honestly makes more sense to me to not have any movie be branchless at all, and just start universally using "any%" as a branch. God, this site's complicated sometimes, innit?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Following some discussion, we have decided to correct a grievous error of mine unobsolete this movie! The branch has been updated to reflect its zipless nature.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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feos wrote:
Samsara wrote:
Correct. There's a bit more to talk about with AoS branching, but I'll bring that up in the relevant thread.
Should I wait with unobsoletion and rebranching then?
What I want to talk about only affects the "warp glitch" obsoletion chain, so these are safe to touch. I'd like to be the one to un-obsolete all souls inbounds, though, since I was the one that decided to obsolete it in the first place, and I like symbolism and accountability.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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feos wrote:
Samsara wrote:
[1478] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Kriole in 20:58.62 also avoids OoB glitches. I feel like if we revive all souls, this run should similarly be branched as "inbounds".
So only those 2 branches would be inbounds, and all the runs they obsolete?
Correct. There's a bit more to talk about with AoS branching, but I'll bring that up in the relevant thread.
Samsara wrote:
"warp glitch" should also be rebranched to GEG, but that's not relevant to the discussion.
Done!
Thank you!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Fortranm wrote:
Samsara wrote:
This is one of those runs that triggers my feeling of "If we reject this, then that's a failure on our part and not the author's".
But why would it imply a failure on either side in the first place?
Maybe "failure" is too strong of a word, but it's definitely not a success. Like I said, there is no logical reason for us to reject this. The goal choice makes perfect sense, there's a high level of optimization, and people find the run very entertaining. Anything outside of that should not matter. The only reason it matters right now is because we're waiting on the opportunity and the feedback to be able to change.
If someone "submits" something completely unrelated and gets rejected, does it mean there is a failure on the part of the person regarding the making of the contents itself? Of course not. A rejection simply means the two (or more) sides don't fit due to factors, and that's perfectly fine.
In cases of things like unfixable sync issues and poor optimization, yes, rejection is perfectly fine, but for a movie where the only thing """wrong""" is that we don't currently account for the goal choice, it's unacceptable to me to outright reject it. A rejection in this case can only send a negative message: "You did great, people love your run, and there's nothing wrong with your category, but we still can't accept it. Tough luck." I've always made it a point with rejections like these in the past to say that the rules can and likely will change to be able to account for these movies, but the fact of the matter remains that these rejections just shouldn't be happening in the first place. I've said it before: If we reject a movie, everybody involved should understand the reasoning. Not just us, but the author and the audience as well.
Regarding future rule changes, I actually think this might qualify for Standard if the requirement of clean SRAM is removed, but until that happens, there is no reason for the current rules to not apply. It wouldn't hurt to wait until then to re-judge it, and/or set this one to Delayed if the change in question that can reach such result is expected to happen very soon.
I'm in the process of drafting up a proposal for allowing SRAM-anchored movies as standard, as it's something that I've seen people asking for, and a change I want to happen myself. I just don't think a movie should have to remain unjudged on the workbench for potentially weeks or months because a change is waiting for community feedback and consensus that might not be coming in immediately. I do agree that I'd much rather see this delayed than rejected, but ideally it shouldn't have to come to either.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Fortranm wrote:
First, for reference, this movie does beat what seems to be the fastest TAS with the same goal choice on Nicovideo.
To be fair, that's an old run from the same author. This submission is also on Nico, for the record. This is one of those runs that triggers my feeling of "If we reject this, then that's a failure on our part and not the author's". It's a solid record and it's entertaining, there's pretty much no reason to reject it. The site really shouldn't need to be about "unique content" and "difference" anymore as long as the goal makes sense, which it does to me. I'd argue the same for Maxim boss rush as well if that ever gets submitted. We shouldn't feel like we have to wait for a rule change or a new class to be able to accept something that might not perfectly fit what we currently have in place. If we're going to be making those changes in the future anyway, why not bend the rules now? It's not like we're going to make these kinds of runs less acceptable.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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feos wrote:
Sounds like we want to resurrect it as "all souls, inbounds", with that label, so it's clear that it's a special limitation? Are there other branches avoiding OOB? And how does the warp glitch compare to those 2 other glitches?
[1478] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Kriole in 20:58.62 also avoids OoB glitches. I feel like if we revive all souls, this run should similarly be branched as "inbounds". "warp glitch" should also be rebranched to GEG, but that's not relevant to the discussion. The death glitch is the warp glitch, my apologies for not being clearer about that. Prior to that glitch being discovered and used, the glitched Aria of Sorrow publication only used zipping, and was branchless. Holy hell did we really have two branchless runs of AoS published at the same time at one point, what is with this game ._.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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feos wrote:
My first question is, are "warp glitch", "out of bounds", and "zips", the same thing?
They're all related, but different enough to warrant the usage of separate categories in my opinion. Both zipping and the death glitch allow you to go out of bounds, but death glitch allows for a lot more freedom in where you can go. Basically, loading certain "rooms" out of bounds will crash the game, which limits how powerful zipping is as you're always going through room transitions. Death glitch completely disables room transitions, allowing for essentially unimpeded map traversal, including through OoB areas that would otherwise crash the game since they're not being loaded. Death glitch and zipping are both used in the published "all souls" movie, where Kriole's movie avoids them completely, and the routes differ drastically between the two runs.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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I'm with feos on this one. I'm not necessarily against the idea of someone hacking away at SRAM or a savestate to start their showcase run from, but we shouldn't be accepting anything that is completely unverified. I think at the very least, we need a written record of what was modified and a set of reproduction steps that anyone on their own can follow to be able to generate the same files (or at least something similar enough) that the author used. Ideally, though, these kinds of things are accomplished with Game Genie/Action Replay, or even something like a Lua script that runs alongside the movie and pokes/freezes RAM at the right spots. Consider it futureproofing: If someone 10 years down the line wants to improve such a run, they're not going to be using the same emulator or the same tools. Providing just a savestate or just SRAM is going to be meaningless to them. Written records of repro steps, or more universal things like Game Genie and Lua, are going to stay useful essentially forever.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Any updates on the improvement file? No rush if it isn't done, just wanted to make sure I didn't miss some sort of resolution.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
feos wrote:
Haven't read the thread, only the OP. How about this: Any user can make a submission and set it to a certain status (not just New or Canceled) that would mean the same as sending it to the Showcase class. After that it won't have to be judged, but would still have its own dedicated discussion thread (you can't even subscribe to userfile comments right now), properly working submission page with all the usual stats, etc. In the relevant game related page like http://tasvideos.org/Game/nes-battletoads.html such submissions would show up in their own tab. I think it would be fitting to call this tab User Playground. Or just Playground. And different branches would need to be grouped together somehow. Yeah I suggest calling this hole concept Playground, and make it fully managed by users.
I've added this to the OP for a little more exposure. This feels very strong to me, with my only concerns being similarities to current Moons and the nature of user judgement as a whole, though those aren't huge concerns and they should be able to be rooted out fairly easily. How does this sound to everyone else?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2120)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Fortranm wrote:
I have and my point of stands. A lot of RTA categories don't even make much sense once the real time factors are removed and vice versa. It is true that a popular category in RTA tend to have more people trying to improve the routing and the findings can improve a TAS with a similar goal choice in some cases. Even then, this is more of a case where two things effectively have correlation in results, not that a popular RTA category automatically makes a reasonable TAS category and vice versa. Moreover, even this potential benefit is hindered when we are talking about using an old "route" as the goal in of itself, as that is already a major handicap on routing improvement. The very concept of using an old route for the sake of it seems to be against major changes to a great extent.
I never necessarily wanted "popular in RTA" to be the sole reason we accept a category, but when you really think about it, doesn't "popular in RTA" imply that a large community consensus has been reached about that goal making sense? In that regard, it would never actually be the sole reason for a category's existence. There's almost always going to be entirely reasonable factors for why RTA runners gravitate towards certain categories, and the ones that don't seem to make sense are usually fairly obvious as to why that is. Even then, I don't want to stop people from TASing whatever they want. Ultimately, nobody on TASvideos should be policing what gets submitted to us before it even gets submitted to us, especially if their reasoning is "Your category is unreasonable to TAS": Not only does it heavily stifle TASers' personal freedom, but it actively drives them away and serves to further the belief that we're nothing but elitists who make terrible decisions. We're not like that anymore, we're explicitly trying to move away from our past elitism as fast as we possibly can. As feos said, there's nice synergy between TAS and RTA now, and we need to support it as much as we can. We're long past the days where we had to try and stand out from RTA. We want both communities to co-exist happily and constantly benefit each other going forward. I want someone from an RTA community to come here, submit a TAS of a category they run, and not immediately be told that what they did was "unreasonable". There is no such thing as an "unreasonable" TAS. Period. If we reject that theoretical TAS, it has to be with sound, agreeable reasoning that the author agrees with as much as we do.
ikuyo wrote:
I think this problem ultimately solves itself because it has to be justified in video submissions. As in "you can submit whatever you want, just be prepared to explain it and make it interesting for judges".
I agree with this, though I'd personally word it slightly differently. The way I see it, if it makes sense to the author to make and submit, it should make sense to us as well. If it doesn't make sense to us, we need to figure out why that's the case, and I think the key piece of that process is asking ourselves why it doesn't make sense instead of making the author justify it. People generally submit in good faith, hardly anyone intends to cause a kerfuffle with a submission. Most importantly to me, no newcomer is coming here expecting to have to justify what they did like they're being interrogated by the police, so I don't really think we should be making them do that.
FitterSpace wrote:
I guess what I mean is that there should be rules for how things are organized but I think it's okay to bend the rules if a submissions comes around that challenges it. You're right that workbench submissions don't always get a lot of feedback, and that feedback can change based on who happened to post at the time, so that can't be the only way publications are decided.
This ties in to my point as well. The rules we have in place should universally make sense to everyone, but those rules shouldn't always be universally applied to every submission, and people should be allowed to challenge them at will, whether it be through discussion or submission. All of our "hard rules" for rejection - low optimization, unfixable desyncs, poor emulation, et cetera - involve things outside of the actual game or category. Any other rule can and should be bent and shaped to accommodate new submissions if these "softer" rules are the only things """""wrong""""" with those submissions.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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User movie #76340540518472326 I found a 6 frame improvement at the very end while taking a look at the run. Don't worry, it's not going to impact the fate of the submission as the rest of it is very very clean, but I'd recommend taking another quick look at the full run just to make sure there's nothing else left to improve. I can replace the file with my improvement or any other improvement you might come across, just let me know and it'll be done. EDIT: I've gone ahead and replaced the submission with my userfile at the author's request. Since it's a very small improvement with hardly any impact on the look of the run, I've elected not to take co-authorship credit.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.