Posts for Samsara


Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Please try to only bring up ROM hacks that significantly change the game. Hacks that do nothing but change the graphics or make things harder aren't acceptable. They need to be notable and drastically different from the base game in multiple ways.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
andypanther wrote:
To go back to the topic of timed sports games: Imagine if someone manages to make an optimal speed TAS of a Madden game, using complex AI, lag and luck manipulation, a clearly superhuman and very technical TAS. Why should such a run not deserve publication, while any simple platformer is acceptable?
The problem is in the timer itself. The introduction of a mandatory timer that has to run out before the game is finished just removes all the elements of a speedrun: There's no sense of going fast at all since you're confined to a single field. Score has to be minimized in order to keep the clock running. Strategies end up becoming trivial very fast, where every single game for a sport ends up having exactly the same strategy for fastest completion, barring the introduction of a glitch or exploit that makes one game stand out from the rest.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
goldenband wrote:
So you can see why exclusionary criteria based on "entertainment" are, for me, an unwelcome obstacle: I don't want anyone else deciding for me what I get to see based on their notions of "entertainment", which may (and often do) wholly differ from mine.
But you still get to see the run, if it's made. You frequent this site, you watch submissions as they come in. In a sense, a run that's submitted is still permanently housed on the site. It's just not put out to the public and requires a little bit more work to find. You have to consider that our rules should never be preventing people from making the runs they want to make. If someone wants to make 11 Madden runs, they're more than welcome to. We may not publish any of them, but they can still be shown on the forums or put on YouTube for anyone interested to see, and anyone interested in these runs can find them as long as they're being made. But as I've said a million times before, our community is the TAS community, not the sports game community or the Super Metroid community. As far as I'm concerned, the Venn diagram of the TAS community and the sports game community is the number 8, and we need a more outspoken majority (and some solid proof) to really consider changing the rule.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
goldenband wrote:
I don't particularly agree: for me, what sets TAS apart is the quest for perfection, not entertainment. I've seen plenty of human-powered speedruns that also entertain me by design, i.e. by choosing the more entertaining option between two otherwise-equal alternatives. So the only thing that TAS offers beyond that, in terms of entertainment, is entertainment that requires skills not possessed by humans.
The quest for perfection is the epitome of human speedruns. We generally have a much easier time with attaining perfection, in that we have the perk of not having any limits to our reflexes, and thus we have to go the extra mile to set ourselves apart. Entertainment and optimization/speed are equal to us. I may have accidentally implied that we cared far more about entertainment, whoops. The Vault's introduction is what sealed the deal for us treating things more equally, though I expect that when people come to see TASes, they come to see something that's superhuman. Like Invariel said, humans can fail, and there's excitement and entertainment in watching a human player speed through something without any fear of danger, knowing they could fail at any time. TASes don't fail. They will always get to the end of the game every time. This means we have to make up for that lack of danger in other ways, either by creating art or doing the impossible. This is why entertainment is so important to us as a general rule.
I think more people than you might suspect agree with me. And -- in case I sound like some inhuman omnivore, indifferent to fun -- I say this as someone whose single favorite run on the site is probably the famous "Own goal?!" SNES soccer TAS!
A lot of people love that starred, award-winning run with an 8.7 average rating. But this is about the Vault.
Anyway, I think the biggest thing is that no one should be claiming that different games in a series don't have substantial differences unless they've actually played those games. Experience has taught me that a lot of what's written about sports games is superficial nonsense, so I wouldn't trust Wikipedia, casual reviews, or "conventional wisdom" to offer up accurate information about the differences between series entries.
I'm speaking as someone who used to play a lot of sports games as a kid, and I know from experience that the most major differences between games in a series comes from the jump to a new platform. You can't expect everyone who visits this site and votes on runs to play every game in a series to determine whether or not they're worth publishing alongside each other. Hell, you can't expect people here to actually play any sports game in the first place, save for adelikat maybe (give us those A2600 sports games submissions once you're done with DW4). We'll let this rule come up when people actually start submitting sports games runs, but bear in mind that across 12 years of site history, this new rule brought forth only 5 unrejections, two of which were submitted this year. The rest of the runs we looked at were ineligible under one new rule or another. I don't even think we had any cancelled sports game runs that were eligible, so the 5 that made it back into rotation are the only ones. I'd be legitimately shocked if the one game per series per console rule ever actually comes into play. And remember, this is for the Vault. The Vault, inherently, doesn't allow extraneous publications. If every game in a series gets an entertaining playaround, they can all be published alongside, even if it's a series of basketball games or some other trivial sport. These rules don't apply to entertaining games. For you to truly argue that games in the same series on the same console deserve publication alongside each other, you're going to have to actually provide proof of this. Not just proof that the games are different, but proof that the TASes will be different as well. To recap: * The series has to be of a sport that follows our other rules * The games have to be substantially different, not just graphics and roster updates but entire engine overhauls * The TASes have to look substantially different as well: I'd personally say the solutions have to be different across both runs but that's not an official metric * Both TASes have to stand proudly on their own merits and be equally technically impressive, if there's a clearly better choice then that's the one we'll always go with If you or anyone else provides ample proof of that, then yeah we can absolutely make an exception. There may be one or two series' out there that fulfill those criteria, but I am completely convinced there are nowhere near enough of those series' to make us remove or change the rule.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
goldenband wrote:
I can't speak to Madden, but I can tell you that there would certainly be meaningful differences in execution between these games: Bases Loaded 1, II, III, IV
Baseball. "Timed" sport, trivial solution, ineligible.
Pete Sampras Tennis / Sampras Tennis '96
Tennis. Trivial solution, ineligible unless made non-trivial.
HardBall series
Sounds like baseball again, so ineligible.
It just seems like this is driven by a desire to keep the site focused on certain kinds of games and not others.
You mean focused on unique games instead of the exact same ones over and over again?
But then, I personally would like to see every released game have its own TAS, and entertainment treated as a secondary, not primary concern.
I don't necessarily disagree with you on that first point, but entertainment has always been a primary concern for us, and it always will be. The Vault was implemented 8 years into the site's existence, before that there were far more limitations on everything, and that's because the site was founded on entertainment as a principle, because entertainment value is what sets us (and TASes in general) apart from normal speedruns. We create art wherever we can in our runs, things that can only be done with superhuman timing and precision. Otherwise, we'd just be a more optimized speedrun.com/SDA. We can't just remove entertainment as a focus because of that. I still don't understand why this is the most divisive rule, especially when most sports that have a series of games attached to them are already banned under the rules for being timed/trivial. If you can find me a game series that not only fits every other rule we have, but also has at least two completely distinctive, drastically different playing games in it, then perhaps we can make an exception. But I just don't see that happening ever.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
theruseman wrote:
I'm running into an issue where it is extremely choppy for some segments.
Do you mean in the actual dumped video, or are you talking about Dolphin itself while dumping video? If it's the latter, then that shouldn't have any effect on the actual video file.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Will do. Are you testing to see if the other warps work or is this the final version?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: Re: Vault rule change (sports games)
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
goldenband wrote:
Kind of a funny double bind, that: if it's the same as others in the series, it gets cut; if it's different, it also gets cut (unless it's the best). I assume we'll be cutting two of the Donkey Kong Country games, then?
Your analogy's off in this case. We're talking about Vault here. I would say that this is more akin to how we don't allow non-standard categories in Vault: For a particularly crap game, every category ends up looking the same with minor differences. But even if it's a huge difference, it's still a crap game, and we reject the category. The same thing goes for a sports series: Even if they're different, they're never different enough to warrant separate publications to Vault. You could also compare it to how we handle ports in Vault: We generally take the most technically superior port of a game, regardless of the console it's on. If it's entertaining enough, we can publish it alongside in Moons. If Madden '91 gets a ridiculous playaround that makes it to Moons, then we can still publish Madden '92 in Vault alongside it, but having both in Vault just doesn't make sense when they're almost exactly the same game. I don't think the rule limits nearly as many things as people seem to be complaining about, but then again when has this site ever not found a way to complain about positive change?
andypanther wrote:
What if someone found a non-trivial way to speed up a game that normally runs on a timer? Shouldn't the game be accepted in such a case?
Speeding up the timer is still unacceptable (as far as I'm concerned at least). A lot of older sports games run on faster/shorter timers anyway, and a lot of them also give you the ability to change the timer. More than that, though, a timer-based sport inherently means it's not a speedrun, as there's no way to make it faster other than by changing the length of the timer. Even if you can change the timer non-arbitrarily, it's still there, and as such anyone who could do that would be able to beat the game in the exact same amount of time.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Tony Hawk games are also all Moons, which means they don't apply at all to these Vault rules.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: Re: Vault rule change (sports games)
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Warp wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
Sports games in the Vault are restricted to one game per series per platform.
Is there a reason for this? If the games are different enough from each other, why not...
Games in the same series on the same console are pretty much all the same game/engine, just with roster/team/stat updates across the board. If they're different from each other, that means that one game has to be superior to the rest, which is the one we would want published most of all. For the most part, the biggest differences in a series come from jumping from one console generation to the next, i.e SNES to N64, and the rules allow games in the same series as long as they're on different consoles. I more or less treat this rule the same way as our ROM hack rules: We allow the "best" of the group and limit the rest so we're not flooded with low-quality hacks/sports games. Granted, I doubt people are going to be submitting sports games often enough for this to be an issue, but I personally think having that small limit in place will be better in the long run.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Never said you were going off topic, I just said to stay on topic. It's fine to ask for a reason, but the insults are going too far. Just keep things civil, please.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Stay on topic, don't call each other slurs, don't throw out wild accusations and keep the petty arguments to an extreme minimum... Preferably non-existent. This is directed at everyone. We don't need another gigantic derailing shitstorm in this thread, and we don't need another one in general so soon after the last one.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: temp encode
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
There have been allusions to a much faster way of entering the moat door, though I'm not sure if it was confirmed working or if it was just speculation they were attempting, or if I'm even remembering this correctly in the first place.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Link to video If you're attentive, you can see literally 2 frames of the room I wanted to get into. I suppose I should give a progress report with this. I'm trying to at least get up through the end of the game as a test. Once I finish that, I'll go back through everything in S6 and optimize it to the best of my ability. Due to the zip glitch being active (it literally never goes away, even if you die) and the huge skips in S5 and S6 removing power-up routing ability, there are going to be some seconds lost compared to the published run in the common rooms/fights. I'm estimating the final time to be around 4:25.
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 (2121)
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Gave it a quick test, no unpauses and a quick input file test synced fine.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Schmeman wrote:
Yeah it's no joke that the Ridley and Mother Brain fights are rather boring in low%, especially considering there will be no ice, so it's a good 300 shots (on MB) and nearly that many on Ridley (considering you can use missiles/supers/pbs on ridley). I agree that it might be worth considering overflow if not to eliminate the tedium of these fights, but I'm not sure.
I feel like that's enough to push it over the edge for me and say it'd be better to use overflow for a low% run, having it remove heavy amounts of tedium on two boss fights would do wonders for the entertainment level and I'm still firmly in the camp that the general audience would love to see the glitch anyway. Whether or not it is or isn't a "major glitch" is all a personal matter. It seems like it saves a lot of time in the long run without skipping areas, though, and I think that counts more for the "spirit of low%" than anything else. It's just like how we have "warpless" runs that skip stages in other ways: As long as no in-game warps are used, it's still a warpless run. So in my mind, even with overflow it'd still be a low% run since you're getting those missiles through other, unconventional means that don't add to completion percentage. I'd honestly recommend doing theory TASes with and without overflow and post them here for us to decide which one ends up the fastest/most entertaining. It may be a lot of effort, but it'll pay off far more in the end.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Speaking personally, I don't think the overflow glitch should be barred as a "major glitch" on the same level as something like the game end glitch or x-ray climbing, but I understand and accept if the community wants to leave it out of the low% run. Generally we listen to the game community's definition of each category instead of making our own rules for them. It's only the number of categories we publish that's in our control, not what they contain. I get the funny feeling I've overexaggerated that point for some reason, not sure why. I would like to see the glitch in one published run, it doesn't necessarily have to be low% but if it saves time in any other category then I really feel like it should be used. Low% can get away with leaving it behind in favor of a more exciting, technically impressive run, but use it wherever else it saves time.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Schmeman wrote:
By repeating yourself over and over you're ignoring underlying questions and concerns.
Then please bring these underlying questions and concerns to the forefront so that I may address them. All I have personally seen in this thread is concerns and criticisms over our methods of categorizing movies. Obviously I've missed something in the ongoing storm of this thread.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Overfiendvip wrote:
Whether they say so here or not, most from the "SM community" that I have seen comment think that Samsara in particular has come off as unnecessarily aggressive towards the game('s community), and feel it is further exacerbated by their lack of knowledge regarding the game, which is where the "why are you in this thread" thoughts are produced.
I'm in this thread because I'm site staff, and this is an issue that directly concerns site matters. I belong wherever staff intervention is needed. This is not just about Super Metroid. The discussion about categories applies to literally every game we have a published run for. EDIT: Striking this entire post while I rewrite it.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
But that's exactly what our side of the discussion has been all along. The first 100% Map Completion submission was one huge string of misunderstandings, where we were arguing that the category's not suitable for us and you were arguing that the category is suitable for you. The low% category discussion was the same thing, where we were arguing that we can't publish the same run twice and you were arguing that you guys treat them as different categories, and thus that's how we should do it as well. My concerns are for the site, not the game. That's what my concerns have been for all along. We understand how categories work for you guys, we understand what they mean and what you all decide for them. We understand how the game works, in fact I would argue that some of the people in our community are far more understanding of the game than some of the people in your community, even, and I mean that less as "we're better than you" and more "we have long-time members that have TASed the hell out of this game and know what's up". The thing that doesn't seem to be getting through is what categories actually mean in our respective communities, because there is a clear divide on what you guys treat as categories and what we treat as categories. That's where we're reaching a misunderstanding, and that misunderstanding is what's been fueling this fire for so long. We don't need to understand how the game works, you all need to understand how the site works, and the only way that can happen is if you all stick around and actually make an effort to understand the way that we personally run things. A category to us is a unique goal, something that shows off a wide variety of things that other runs don't show off. Our baseline criteria for a run is any% and 100%, because they're the most drastically different/unique categories for a game. Fastest completion, full completion. One shows off the game in full, the other speeds through with reckless abandon. When we have separate branches, they're there because the audience agrees that they should be published, and this is usually due to the amount of different content they provide. Playarounds are a really good example of this: They can show off a huge variety of glitches and weird quirks about the game that would never have been shown off in a fastest completion run. Things like "all bosses" are good examples as well, especially when any% runs end up skipping them to save time. And we have to limit these categories on our site because each one sets a precedent for the others. Each "glitchless any%" publication opens up a new avenue for another "glitchless any%" run of a different, more boring game, and that opens up complaints where we'll accept one but not another. We have to avoid extraneous publications as an all-around site, or else we'd have to accept every weird, esoteric category that comes our way because we allowed a couple strange ones to get through and people started complaining that we're being inconsistent. A category to you guys, and I mean no offense by this, is "let's come up with a new way to beat Super Metroid". And that's okay for your community, because you're a Super Metroid community, and finding new ways to beat Super Metroid is something that you guys do. You don't host thousands of runs for hundreds of games. That's where the difference comes in. You guys don't have to have rules on what you allow to be done there. You can have a speedrun record for Super Metroid "no hands, only feet" and no one would bat an eyelash at how esoteric of a goal it is, but we can't have things like that. When we discuss categories here, we discuss them on our terms, not yours, so telling us that we need to learn your terms is ultimately a pointless argument. Arguing that there's no difference between our categories and your categories is doing us a complete disservice as well, it almost shows that you see no point in learning how we do things while simultaneously asking us to learn about how you do things, when the latter is obvious and the former actually needs some more work put into it. Yes, I've been fairly harsh this entire thread, and I apologize for any offense anyone has taken from my words, but I just really need to get the point across that we operate differently than you all think we do, or even want us to from the looks of things. From my perspective (specifically mine, I'm not at all claiming to speak for the site in general), and this is admittedly an exaggerated and harsh perspective, you're all a bunch of starry-eyed fanboys who treat Super Metroid as a godlike video game, and any dissenters are just flat-out wrong no matter how they present their opinions. And it looks like from your perspective, we're the opposite: People so filled with hate for Super Metroid that we refuse to let it on our site, actively shutting down every Super Metroid-related avenue with harsh words and drawn-out arguments. Obviously, neither side is like that in reality, so how about we stop proving our misconstrued opinions of each other right and start learning to accept what the other side thinks? On those words: We won't automatically reject EVERY run that falls outside of the 5 categories I mentioned in a previous post, and that's been true since the beginning. But in return, we at least expect your community to understand what runs we wouldn't accept and more importantly why we wouldn't accept them. I'd love to lay this category business to rest, so hopefully we can all come to a mutual understanding sooner rather than later.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Overfiendvip wrote:
I would encourage people who are actively participating in this thread to educate themselves on categories, what they entail, et cetera before forming opinions. I hope that doesn't come off as condescending, because I truly would enjoy seeing more people educating themselves about the game, since there's so much that can be learned. There's a reason for the complexity, and it's not because Super Metroid is randomly a special snowflake amongst a sea of 2D platformers.
I hope this doesn't come off as condescending either, but I have to say for the fifteenth time this week that your categories are not our categories, and any "education" done on your categories is specifically going to be for your community and not ours. Both communities have entirely different guidelines for categories: The SM community is absolutely allowed to be relaxed with what categories people run, since it's a community based around one particular game. We can't do that. What we allow as a published category weighs on every other published category in return. We need rules to limit categories because we're not just based around Super Metroid, we're based around anything and everything that can be TASed. At no point have we ever said that your categories are not legitimate categories. We've said they're not suitable for publication on our site. That's it. That's all this discussion has been about, because this discussion is happening on our site. As long as we can get over that hurdle, everything will be fine. The SM community is free to do and decide whatever it wants in regards to speedruns, TASes, categories, glitches, et cetera, but when it comes to submitting things to our site and discussing what's allowed on oursite, all I ask is that you give our rules at least half the amount of respect you give to Super Metroid itself.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Regarding categories in general, there was some IRC discussion about it, and I think I can get behind something like this: 1. "any%" as the sole no major glitches (i.e, no OoB or GEG or GT Code or GTX1080ti or AMD Radeon SoundBlaster GPUVPN UNIVAC Atari 7200 or whatever) fastest completion run, likely being the most popular/watched run of the game that we have. 2. "game end glitch" as the fastest possible completion, which always gets a separate category since it can't directly compete with a more standard any% run. 3. "100%" as himself, co-starring Malcolm Jamal-Warner. Directed by Steven Spielberg. 4. "low%" as one of the two entertainment-based, routing-heavy runs that show off a ton of unique routes and strategies that you wouldn't normally see in any other run. This would still be a single category, most likely the non-overflow run that everyone seems to be getting behind. 5. "RBO" as the other of these two runs, though Total proposed a new heavily glitched route that I'd be quite fond of seeing. This could serve as the sort of glitch exhibition run where ridiculous, unexpected things are done in order to heavily break the game, as it stands now it kinda feels similar (but not TOO similar) to the low% run in terms of it being based on tight routing and interesting strategies and the site could really benefit from a heavily glitched run that doesn't just skip straight to the ending. I think that's how things should stay for now. As for my reasoning on the other two currently published runs: 6. I think I've made it clear that we don't need two low% runs published simultaneously, and it seems like more people are starting to agree with me on that. "low%" is a goal, and the 5-ish potential categories that were proposed are just routes; This is something Anty-Lemon stated beautifully earlier on in the discussion. It doesn't make sense for us as a site to publish alternate routes that reach the exact same goal choice, in much the same way as it wouldn't make sense to publish another Super Mario Bros any% run that uses different warp zones alongside the current run. There's a definitive fastest route, and that's what we want first and foremost, with the subgoal of it being the most entertaining run possible. 7. And on that same note, we get to the in-game time run, which I've been opposed to long before I even became active in the community. It made sense a long, long time ago, when speedrunning was far more of a niche thing and in-game timers were the norm, but a lot of recent things have permanently obsoleted it in my mind. The two most prominent to me are thus: It can be easily tricked with constant pausing for one thing, giving you a theoretically hours-long run that gives a ridiculously low IGT. There's also the matter of what I said in the previous paragraph, how it's just the any% run with a different route, not even that much different from the realtime any% run as far as I'm aware. We should be publishing goals as categories, not routes, so I think it's safe to say (with a lot of agreement from other people in both the TASing community and the SM community) that the next any% run is going to knock this category out of the site for good. That's about it, really. Perhaps in the future there will be another heavily unique category that we can publish alongside everything, but for the most part I'd like to keep it at those first five.
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 (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
RGamma wrote:
FerretWarlord | Who do you think I am, scrimpy?
I read this line first and for a moment I got really excited that scrimpy came back to IRC. scrimpy pls come back to IRC we miss you :c
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.