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I'd like to make a quick note about this run's judgement. Normally, in the case of the author being banned, we would immediately cancel the run with a short explanation and leave it at that. However, I feel this situation warrants a much more carefully crafted judgement summarizing the events in the thread, addressing and clarifying the accusations lobbied at myself and the rest of staff. This may take another day or two to write, proofread, rewrite, and have it signed off by other staff members involved.
In the meantime, if there are any questions surrounding the non-acceptability of this run or the current state of our rules, I will be happy to answer them here and further address them in the upcoming judgement.
Thank you all for your understanding.
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This is the final edit I am making to the rule:
I don't think there's any further way this can be misinterpreted without bending it to a near impossible degree.
This has been an enforced, yet unstated rule on the site for two decades. We have never felt the need to state this rule outright as it should be obvious to anyone that this kind of level selection is not a legitimate time saving technique. There are an infinite number of things the rules do not explicitly say that we would not allow. Listing all of them would be tedious and completely unnecessary. The site does not operate on Air Bud rules. Just because the rules don't say something outright doesn't mean we explicitly allow it.
If you continue intentionally ignoring the repeated times we have told you this is not a new rule, this thread will be locked and action may be taken against your account for disruptive posting.
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You're still ignoring the fact that using that kind of level select system is not allowed. There is no distinction between systems that use passwords and systems that don't, they are all level select systems. The lack of distinction is what makes this such a serious concern for us.
Consider what an average viewer would see if we allowed this to obsolete the published run: A run that uses level select to bypass seven worlds has completely obsoleted a run that plays all eight worlds. What this tells people is that they are allowed to use level selects to skip to the final levels of games. Nobody is going to try and make any distinction there, because it's unreasonable to assume that there would be a distinction. If we then start rejecting runs for using password systems, that makes us look like hypocrites. Why would we allow one level select but not any other? Nothing about that makes sense, it would make us look terrible. At worst, it would look like we are intentionally bending the rules purely to benefit you specifically.
Accountability note: The above was written before the quote below was posted.
Genuine question: Do you truly believe that all warp zones and methods of skipping levels are considered level select features? My goal here is for the rule to be as simply worded as possible while still conveying the exact meaning it needs to. I will admit the wording of the rule doesn't quite work for SMB and SMB3 warp zones as they do in fact allow you to select what level you warp to, but the thing is, those "level selects" are just subfunctions of warp zones that we already allow. Arguing that the rules now ban those feels like nothing more than a pure bad faith argument.
So I ask again, are you genuinely trying to argue that warp zones are level selects because you believe it to be true? Does there actually need to be a distinction between them in the rules to prevent further misunderstanding?
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This is irrelevant, as I have said many times before. It doesn't have to be a password or a cheat, and it doesn't have to be hidden in the game for people to find on their own. It is still a level select feature.
Once again, this is irrelevant. Any game with a level select feature "allows" starting from whatever world you want to get to the ending. That doesn't mean we would allow that universally.
Until now, there has never been a reason to list that rule, as it is obvious to anyone in any speedrunning community that it is in bad faith to try and pass this off as a valid form of full game completion. That being said, I have edited that rule in now, as a way of clarifying the rule that we have always had and enforced.
Okay, so why don't they do that for the explicit Second Quest category?
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Alright, then.
This is a rule clarification, not a rule change. The rule has always existed. At no point in the site's history have we ever explicitly allowed users to do this. The few times we have allowed this were special exceptions we made, knowing the runs were breaking our rules. See: [802] SNES Biker Mice from Mars "final round" by Baxter in 05:12.62
That being said:
This has been here since I rewrote the rules over a year ago, and it was an update and clarification from the old rules:
This is a single world run. Even if we had allowed it in a special circumstance, it would be obsoleted by a run of the full game. Biker Mice from Mars would be obsoleted by a full game run as well. Considering the full run already exists and is currently published, we cannot even make an exception for this run.
Here's the given example from the rules:
[3740] A2600 Private Eye "Case 5" by ViGadeomes in 14:53.28[3762] A2600 Private Eye by ViGadeomes in 29:52.99
And here's another fun example:
[113] SNES Top Gear "one track" by Phil in 03:51.17[3876] SNES Top Gear "2 players" by jmosx36 in 1:27:34.66
Phil's movie should have never been published in the first place. The judgement and publication of it was purely an abuse of power on his part:
This is not up for debate. Allowing this movie would be setting an incredibly dangerous precedent. It would mean any game with a level select system, whether it be a password or pressing a button at the title screen, could have its any% run obsoleted through usage of that level select. No speedrunning community, TAS or RTA, should be allowing this universally. We never have, we most likely never will.
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It is still a level select, regardless of how it is performed, and once again it does not matter if the creator or the game mentions it. The point starts and ends with the fact that we do not allow runs to freely skip levels like this.
The rule can be reworded to make it more clear this is the case, of course.
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Yeah, this is effectively a level select password. It doesn't matter if the dev or even the game itself tells you that you can do it, it is still explicitly barred by our rules.
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Kagero: Deception II is the second game in Tecmo's Deception series, which are in the Home Alone genre of games, mainly revolving around placing traps to stop and/or kill invaders.
Continuing with an old theme of mine, that being "games that really only have a Japanese audience", I'm starting up a thread and compiling some information for a potential TAS. No word on whether or not I'll ever get to it myself, but maybe someone else will be inspired enough.
RTA run in 1:39:15, from 2019: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm35099224
Playaround(?) TAS, from 2011: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16093143
Some notes:
The (J) version seems to run a lot smoother and faster than the (U) version, but comparing the TAS and RTA runs above I'm not quite sure if this is a legit performance increase or something weird with the emulation, since the RTA run appears to run at the same speed, possibly even slower, than (U) on BizHawk/Nymashock.
The game has 4 endings and NewGame+ functionality. Ending 2 appears to be the fastest, having one less chapter than the other three. Each ending unlocks a new trap for successive playthroughs, and getting all 4 endings unlocks one last trap, meaning an NG+ branch would definitely be viable. Each ending could also get its own branch, as they all have fairly unique requirements.
Early route theorycrafting:
The RTA route should be used as a baseline. I haven't watched it all the way through yet, as I want to rewatch from the beginning and transcribe the route as I go (trap placement, making, Ark management, etc), but it is definitely focused on speed. However, I do think the TAS has some merit with what it does. The TAS is able to combo enemies so effectively that tens of thousands of Ark are gained off of single enemies even without a wide selection of traps. It could be faster in the long run to set up a very early high Ark combo or two and make the traps we need for the run in advance instead of following the RTA route directly. Having access to more traps early on could significantly change the strategies in the first half of the run or so, making up for the time taken to combo.
Generally, runs should start with the name easter egg (Astarte in the US version, Yuri in the JP version) for the free 2800 Ark. This is essentially nothing - the max you can get per stage is 65535 through a good combo - but it should speed up the very early game, especially if it turns out to be faster to combo out all of the needed Ark early, as you can pick up a couple traps before Chapter 1 and extend your combo options.
More information coming whenever I have the motivation.
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I definitely don't have the FM3 anymore, it's been over 6 years since this was submitted and the PC I made it on has been out of commission for 3 of them. The best you're going to be able to do here is take the publication FM2 and load it in TAS Editor.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
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Due to the heavy storms in California combined with our god-awful electric company, I've had two power outages over the past 4 days, the first of which having lasted nearly 24 hours. Due to this, I'm going to play it safe and warn that there may be a further delay on awards due to weather/god-awful electric company BS. This current batch of storms is expected to last through the weekend, though today was apparently the worst of it and I'm currently sitting here with working electricity (after it was out for a couple hours in the morning, granted), so it may not be an issue, but I want to make sure there's fair warning just in case.
Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience, even though any further delays inherently mean that I am suffering a much greater inconvenience than one or two extra days of voting could ever cause.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
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For future submissions, instead of resubmitting changes to input files, please upload them as Userfiles and post them in the original submission thread. We can replace input files so new submissions aren't needed.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
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I looked into it and I think I understand what happened here: The publication is starting from a soft reset after changing the difficulty. This wasn't mentioned in the submission text, likely wasn't picked up by the site parser at the time (the run was made on FCEU.0.98.26, and the FCM format can't be trusted to report whether or not the movie is starting from a quicksave or a reset), and was almost certainly overlooked in the original judgement, which caused it to be overlooked again when it was unrejected for Vault. This shouldn't have been published, but I can see why it was and I feel like anyone would have made the same mistake in that position.
Are you planning on improving it? If so, just start from Power On and change the difficulty from the options menu. The time lost doing that won't count, in fact it will ensure that the new run is proven legitimate. In the meantime, staff will figure out what to do with the publication with this knowledge.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
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A day Right On Time and a dollar Right On Money on the news post, sorry about that!
At the end of a completely normal week of nominations and nominations, it is time to vote for those many, many, many options for site awards! Registered users may vote for nominees in the threads linked in this post. Please keep in mind that multiple votes are both allowed and encouraged, and that a movie or TASer must receive at least a majority of votes in order to win. Also, maybe don't vote for your own movies, but honestly I don't really think I can stop you this time!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
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Due to a scheduling conflict on my part, the upcoming voting period will last one extra day, as I will be busy on the 14th with an important personal engagement and will be unable to update the threads on that day. The schedule as of right now should be as follows, barring any unforeseen circumstances or my complete inability to sleep normally:
The nomination period will end and voting will open as normal on January 7th, 23:59 UTC.
The voting period will now last 8 days, ending on January 15th, 23:59 UTC.
TAS of 2023 voting will still last one week, ending on January 22nd, 23:59 UTC.
My apologies for any inconvenience.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
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It's a bit buried in the Github issues, but: https://github.com/TASVideos/tasvideos/issues/878
To restate the answer though, they would have needed to be remade completely from scratch, and we figured it was too much of a burden for us. Of course, that being said, the site's open source now so if anyone wants to contribute rewritten password generators, they're more than welcome to.
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