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Schmeman wrote:
As far as I know, Low% All Bosses, doesn't use any memory corruption or anything of the like, but instead just uses out of room strategies in order to skip key items that would otherwise be unskipable (such as bombs), and to reach rooms that would otherwise be unreachable without ice or speed (such as the room behind Botwoon).
I can't get behind this category purely because of the usage of OoB. The appeal of the low% categories is that they achieve their low percentages without the usage of OoB glitches or massive skips. The routes show off interesting ways of dealing with each area when severely limited in terms of your movement ability and your arsenal. Adding "all bosses" ruins the point of low% way more than the overflow glitch would, considering you'd have to collect more items than necessary so you could actually deal with said bosses. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first glitched run used OoB and got something like 6% item completion, so this proposed 12% run is twice the (currently known) minimum of what you could get with the same glitches. It just makes the "all bosses" modifier feel arbitrary as a sub-goal in the context of this site.
When the 14% ice beam run was submitted, it was initially submitted as "glitchless", and I honestly think that's how the category should remain on the site, though I can get behind minor glitches that push the percentage down lower in unique ways instead of just x-raying yourself straight to Mother Brain.
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molerat wrote:
Edit, watched the file and I'm getting a desync somewhere around the skip n 4-1.
You do that thing grabbing the powerup and skip to the sub-boss, kill boss and then at about frame 15344 you die, and again two more times quickly thereafter, and stay at the game over screen with input continuing.
Using fceux 2.2.2, never used for anything but watching so settings as set by default and how its in the movie file.
I'd assume everything from that point on just hasn't been resynced yet, so it'll be fixed and working by the time the proper submission comes in.
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Fog wrote:
EDIT: I would also like to know what kind of speed/entertainment tradeoffs are being made. The submission notes do not specify anything other than the fact that there are tradeoffs.
I mentioned one thing just before the Probe Droid bossfight, where we trade off a second or two of time in order to show off that graphical glitch a little more. It's possible to keep the chunk of ice you slide on all the way to the boss, but not keeping it allowed us to fire the glitched up blaster without losing too much time.
That's the only one I know about, if random chose to do anything else he'd be the one to tell you that.
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Invariel wrote:
I don't see a problem with there being a fastest 13% without overflow, and a 13% with overflow.
I do, because it's still the exact same goal.
If under/over flow isn't received well by the audience, we will reject it in favor of a non-over/under flow run, and then from there we will only accept the fastest route from those. If under/over/hustle and flow ends up being well-liked by the audience, then it just becomes part of the same system: Everything else is just a route in comparison, the fastest one will obsolete it and we won't publish any slower ones alongside.
Discounting a time-saving technique because it's "not in the spirit of the game" is grounds for rejection, by the way, especially if you're using other glitches alongside it. If whateverflow is the fastest, work on and submit that one first. See what the audience decides, and then go from there.
Just, for the love of God, have some common sense.
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That's called routing, though. If an SMW TASer redoing 96-exits found that it was faster to use a fire flower in Chocolate Secret instead of using the cape, they would consider that an improvement, not a new category. No loopholes there: It changes the movement drastically throughout the level, which is the same as what getting a different item in SM would be.
A category is determined by its end goal, not the means of getting there. Even if the routes for Super Metroid change one aspect of the gameplay, that doesn't mean it's worth showcasing them on the site. Imagine if there were 5 or 6 different ways of achieving 13% item completion. Do we need all of them published? No. We don't even need two of them published, because all of them are going to achieve the same goal in the end, and the majority of the audience wants to see the fastest/most entertaining one.
Leave the niche runs in the niche, just give us the best and that's it.
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Entirely not the point I was trying to make, but thanks for misunderstanding anyway.
My point was that the 16 star run actually shows off different routing and glitches compared to the other published runs. In a sense, it could be considered unique enough to publish. And we rejected it. So why would we accept multiple derivative runs of the same category?
Also:
lxx4xNx6xxl wrote:
If there is a game that has as dynamic amount of ways to beat it glitch, not glitch, multiple low%, Any%, ACE, 100% Glitched, 100% not Glitched, RBO, 100% Map and 100% Map and Item. I will happily side beside them and hope they get the categories they deserve as well.
lxx4xNx6xxl wrote:
Saying that is like we are saying we want to keep 14%, we don't.
Isn't this hypocrisy? 16 star is like 70 star with different stars. Why is that not acceptable to you? It's a dynamic way to beat the game, isn't it? So why is it not acceptable? Why is 14% not acceptable when it's another way to beat Super Metroid? Can I submit a Super Mario Bros run that goes over some platforms instead of under them and have it be published as a new route? Can I collect coin 15 in 3-3 instead of coin 14 and have it be published as a new route?
Or do we, y'know, need to set limits on these things in order to make sure each category is unique and entertaining in its own way?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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Quantity is not quality.
Keep the number of different branches per game minimal. A run for a proposed new branch for a game should offer compelling differences relative to previously published runs of that game.
There are no special games, and we should not give anything special treatment. There's nothing fair about that. We already put limits on a ton of other games, there are games that won't ever make it to Moons or even anywhere close to that. We reject games outright in some cases just because of what they are. Under no circumstance should we have the utter contempt for our audience to say "We have to reject every run of this game because it's not suited for the site. However, we're going to accept 10 Super Metroid runs at the same time."
You also fail to realize that Super Metroid is the ONLY GAME we have ever given this kind of special treatment toward, something I tried to make clear in my last post. While discussing things on IRC, Spikestuff mentioned this SM64 submission, specifically the judgement notes, that plays into this topic really well. Along those same lines, I'd like to mention my own judgement of Aria of Sorrow "all souls", in which the majority of the audience wanted it to obsolete the previous glitchless run. There were arguments, for sure, and there were a ton of fans of the previous run (myself included), but in the end we all still decided that it was time to hand things off.
The key thing with "all souls" is that, even though the runs are vastly different in terms of routing and execution, the general audience still decided it was time for obsoletion. While we could have theoretically had both published alongside each other due to them being unique, we still chose not to do that. Same with SM64: 16 stars is a different route, different glitches are used in different areas, it could technically exist alongside the other runs. But with all of that being said... In regards to Super Metroid, how much is different between realtime and in-game time, apart from very minor route changes? What's the major difference between the two low% runs apart from the single item and thus maybe a slightly different strategy/routing change somewhere? The underlying game is almost exactly the same every time. You escape from Ceres Station, you go through similar-looking levels flailing your arms about like an inflatable tube-woman, sometimes you turn into a ball and occasionally you fire missiles into things.
Why would we accept two or three runs of the exact same category when we have turned down or obsoleted incredible runs of different categories? Even if the communities around the games are just as big, if not bigger, than Super Metroid's? Why would we reject an optimized 16 star run, then turn around and accept the third low% branch for Super Metroid? Why have we, in the past, rejected/warned people against making realtime-oriented Sonic the Hedgehog runs, but we don't have that limitation with Super Metroid?
How many times do I have to say we don't cater to specific communities? We allow all communities here, but we can't run our site based off of the demands of specific communities. We have game threads specifically so people of these communities can come together and discuss strategies, people can make runs and share them without the scrutiny that comes from a submission. There are absolutely no limits outside of the submission process. But there are when it comes to publication.
Like I've said a thousand times, you have every right to make these runs and support these runs, you have every right to share them here and discuss how to make them faster or better. You have every right to adapt strategies from these runs into other categories. But when you submit the run, you don't have the right to argue with what the community at large decides. You don't have the right to fight with us when we bring up specific rules about limiting categories. Most of all, you don't have the right to say that a Super Metroid run should be published just because it's Super Metroid, or that a run of any other game should be published just because it's that particular game. That's absolutely appalling. If we ran our site like that, it would be suicide.
One low% category. That's it.
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We're not having two separate categories for low%, because this isn't SuperMetroidVideos. We're not a site that caters to one community and lets the others rot in obscurity. We have rules and standards, something that I and multiple other people spent an entire recent submission trying to explain. Rules and standards that are supposed to prevent us from having a thousand categories that are ultimately similar and not worth watching if you've seen the fifteen other runs.
We've already given way too much special attention to Super Metroid: It's the only game on the site that has both a real-time oriented run and an in-game time oriented run. It's the only game on the site with a non-standard category that has two separate published runs detailing extremely minor route changes. It's always had the most published runs out of every game on the site. That's not a precedent we want to be setting, in fact I'd go as far as to say I'm disgusted by the idea that people might actually think it IS a precedent.
You can work on whatever thirty derivative TASes you all want to work on, but just keep in mind that we're not going to publish all of them. Post them here, flood this thread with theory TASes and new route ideas and whatnot, post them in other Super Metroid community forums for the people who actually want to watch twenty thousand similar runs, but just remember that if they're submitted, most of them won't make it to publication. The SM community doesn't get to decide what runs get to be published; We do.
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Aran Jaeger wrote:
So one could split low% (without OoB) into 2 branches
No. Work on and submit the fastest low% run, let it obsolete the currently published runs, and that's it. It's absurd that we have two low% runs published already, there's literally no good reason to keep upholding this "tradition".
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TASeditor wrote:
Are you aware that there's infinite jump glitch and mid-air slide glitch?
Is it Luke only or can it be done with other characters? Does this work in other SSW games?
EDIT: Luke only, no other games, Final Destination. Just clarifying that for the sake of the thread.
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Schmeman wrote:
Anyway, I don't understand why the site would not want to have this TAS. Do whatever you decide, but the concept of denying this TAS is baffling to me. No disrespect meant, just confusion on my side. It's a good TAS and would only serve to better the site.
Hi, welcome back.
I'd like to start off with a simple, blunt statement: You don't understand how we operate. We don't have the same standards as other sites that will just accept anything. In fact, we have much higher standards than most other sites. From what I've read in the thread, most people just see no point to this category. Some people say it should be combined with a normal 100% run, other people say there's just no entertainment in entering rooms only to immediately leave them right afterward. Some people have said this category offers nothing that the fifteen or three hundred other categories we have published don't already do, and I have to agree with those people.
What we don't want is extraneous, unnecessary publications. All we are doing is rejecting TASes from site publication. That means next to nothing in the long run. Site publication, to me, is nothing more than an ascended privilege anyway. I know a lot of people (and my own staff position) disagree with me on that, but I feel it's the truth. Our goal as a site is to host a repository of TASes: The Vault was created so we could host normal speed records, but the rest of the TASes on the site have met a high entertainment quota, one that we strive to push further and further with every new publication, and because of this we can't allow every single run we get to be published.
I believe I brought up an example last time around, though my memory is hazy as if I'm trying to repress it, of a Donkey Kong Country TAS that only collects O, N, and G out of the KONG letters in every level. This does exist somewhere, on Nicovideo I believe. But that's a prime example of a run that, even if it's ridiculously optimized, serves no purpose in being published here. Our standards don't allow arbitrary goals such as that. And I mean arbitrary as in our site standards: Arbitrary, to us, means a category that just doesn't make sense to publish. It's unnecessary, it's niche, it's extraneous, and it's not going to further our site in any way by publishing it. In fact, something like this could turn away the community if we publish it. "Why would you accept this but not that?" "Ugh, another Super Metroid publication, really?" Just a couple examples off the top of my head that I could definitely see happening were we to publish this after its current reception.
We cater to a community as a whole, being a TAS repository, we don't cater to each individual subcommunity. We listen to and respect what our community wants from us, and in return our community blesses us by following the rules and standards that we set. Had the community given us a much more positive response to this run, we would accept it, but in its current state with the voting and the thread feedback, I can't see that happening now, and going against the community would be disastrous.
I've said a million times that I will never discourage anyone from making any TAS they want. The fact that this TAS exists is absolutely fine. People will enjoy it, that's great. I just don't see what the big deal is about publication. As I said, this could have been easily posted in the Super Metroid game thread, this could have been shared on DeerTier or any other site, and it would still have the same effect. A run like this can still "better the site" and contribute greatly to other TASes by just being posted here and shared elsewhere. But as I said, publication is nothing more than a privilege. I could understand the sentiment of publication being important if we were much bigger of a site than we currently are, but we're still a tiny niche in an already niche subculture.
As for having "too many" Super Metroid runs: We already have too many. At least three of the currently published runs are extraneous in my mind and that's me being generous. I personally (emphasis on personally) believe we shouldn't be biased toward one game or another, we shouldn't have people loving runs just because they're of certain games or hating runs because they're not other games. I feel like we've always been biased toward Super Metroid, allowing damn near every run we get to be published, and we've only recently realized that we may have gone too far back then.
What we really need are runs that showcase different content, runs that are unique and show off incredible things, not 7 derivative runs: Why do we need an in-game time run? Why do we need multiple low% categories? What incredible things do they show off that aren't in every other run? Who is going to be interested in these runs apart from the Super Metroid sub-community? Would the general public care about a run that enters different doors to get a lower in-game time? These are all things you have to consider when you're in my situation, and they're all things you have to consider when you're trying to argue for the millionth new Super Metroid category as an outsider as well.
Fans of the game have to approach it from an outsider's perspective, because the general public won't have the same sort of appreciation for a run. And, yes, I've repeated myself 20 times in this response already but it bears mentioning again, we cater to the general public more than anything else, thus we need to set these standards so we're not flooding people with a thousand runs they have no intention of ever watching. A recent example of this kind of behavior is our recent efforts to upload encodes of every run on the site, including obsoleted runs, to our official YouTube channel. This means we've had long strings of similar runs being processed and published to the general public, and the general public reacted with backlash at seeing the same games over and over again.
tl;dr - When we reject a TAS, that only means we reject it from site publication. We are not rejecting the TAS itself. Anyone can feel free to make whatever TAS they want and post it here, whether in userfiles or in the game's thread. It's just that when it's submitted to the site, it's subject to our high standards, and our high standards are different than other sites. If you don't understand our process or our standards, then join the community and learn them before coming in to a submission thread and complaining about us. We aim to host a variety of extremely entertaining runs that anyone can watch easily, as well as cutting down on repetition by limiting arbitrary categories so as to keep that variety without needing 10 publications to do so.
Phew.
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How long was this run in development? I noticed a lot of the recently discovered tricks weren't used, so I'm assuming the run's been worked on for quite some time.
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Part of the rejection message for the previous run (emphasis mine):
Mothrayas wrote:
However, that is not even the major issue - the actual reason I am rejecting this run is because, quite simply, viewer feedback to the category was poor. Many people in the submission discussion disagreed with the category choice not going for 100% items, making a large part of the run look like entering through rooms and 'oddly' leaving without picking up any visible items, or otherwise entering rooms without any purpose. Obviously it's a part of this category, but it still appears odd. We understand that this is a recognised category on Deer Tier, but here on TASVideos we can only publish the categories that we deem interesting and entertaining enough, and Super Metroid is already overflowing with categories on this site as is. Deer Tier is a community dedicated to Super Metroid and we are not, so we have different standards here. If Deer Tier wishes to host this TAS on their own site, then more power to them; but the category just doesn't click with the TASVideos audience here.
The lack of optimality, particularly compared to current Super Metroid publications on this site, and compounded with the relatively large 90 seconds of known improvements, didn't help viewer response either - but I don't believe that an optimized improvement would be enough to save the category.
We'll see where things go this time around, but I have to admit I don't see anything changing from the previous submission even with the improvements.
EDIT: Let's keep things civil, first off. Instead of criticizing the author or the community, criticize the run and category. The most important thing to me is how suitable/entertaining the category is for publication. Do the improvements save it, or is it still too arbitrary/non-entertaining?
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ALAKTORN wrote:
The TASVideosChannel upload’s description links to the obsolete SM64DS TAS. Should it be updated?
The publication was still linking to the obsoleted TAS as well, so I updated that. Not entirely sure about YouTube, it might update automatically at some point with the fixed description or it might not. Either way, I wouldn't worry about it. If someone on YT happens to read the description (already rare enough) and then follow the link, they can just follow it through to the current run.
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Dashjump wrote:
How would I go about freezing the camera in VBA? Doing a memory search in 00005900 yields null values. Or do the memory addresses differ when using different emulators?
I mean, if I were you I'd just redo everything in BizHawk... Accuracy counts for a lot and VBA isn't exactly great in that department.
But I guess if you're really dead set on using VBA... Yes, BizHawk and VBA handle memory search differently: VBA more or less crams all the domains together, while BizHawk separates by domain. In layman's terms, the domain is the first 2 digits of the address. The memory address doesn't change between emulators: You can take a set of VBA addresses and easily look them up in BizHawk and vice versa, so you're correct in continuing to look up 5900 as an address, you're just looking in the wrong domain. 00005900 is technically within the BIOS domain, which doesn't actually use any addresses above 00003FFF, so that's why it's returning null values.
Alyosha mentioned IWRAM, which corresponds to the first two digits of its addresses being 03. Therefore, the value you want to search in VBA is 03005900. Here's a list of GBA memory domains that's helped me out a ton when working with RAM Search (also shoutouts to Anty-Lemon for linking me to that in the first place).
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Continuances technically last forever. I'd say they're more for people who have put ridiculous amounts of time and effort into an input file already and would rather finish that run instead of spending the same amount of time and effort porting everything over. If I'd spent, say, a year or so running 30 minutes of a 60 minute game, I would most likely ask for a continuance. I wouldn't if I'd spent a couple weeks TASing 2 minutes of a 15 minute game.
In your case, you have a little over 7 months to figure it out, but if you're only able to work sporadically/slowly I'd honestly recommend holding out and porting it over to BH once you're able to do so.
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