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£e Nécroyeur wrote:
megajohnman was directed by the author to create an account and post a positive comment. One cannot expect him to be familiar with the rules and procedure of this site. This is not uncommon. Some authors feel a need to employ shills, or to rate their own movies, in an attempt to improve the reception of a movie or the author. It is contrary to the rules of the site, and otherwise quite gauche, but these things happen.
Yeah, people always try to get their friends to comment on their guaranteed-to-be-published submissions and say they have no entertainment value. That's definitely something that happens all the time. It's not at all bullshit you're making up for no reason.
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Beed28 wrote:
But now I have a new dilemma. I want to change the video size (like HD), but regardless of the method I use, it ends up being "lossy" afterwards. Anything I'm not getting?
EDIT: Regarding codecs, it seems to hate Lagarith Lossless Codec, so that one is out of the question.
EDIT 2: Okay, I don't know how, but I seem to have permanently broken the ability to use the AVI writer. BizHawk crashes every single time I try to record with it now, regardless of the codec. And it turns out that Avidemux hates anything captured with the FFmpeg writer. I am having such a fun time. >_<
Let me just say I'm still biased towards Avisynth and AvsPmod so a lot of this advice is going to sum up to "learn those".
1. It depends on how you're resizing it. I'm not familiar with Avidemux at all, but in Avisynth there are a few different ways to resize a video. For sprite-based games (most of the content on the site), PointResize is the best. If there are different resize filters in Avidemux, you might wanna try one of those.
Also, it's much better to resize within the native aspect ratio. x2 or x4 native aspect ratio will work better than just resizing straight to, say, 1920x1080.
2. There are other lossless codecs out there, or you could just use uncompressed. Avisynth should be able to take everything, though, assuming you can get Bizhawk to work again.
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NitroGenesis wrote:
I've tried TASing this game before but it puts me to sleep. How much frames have you saved over Diman's published run? When I tried I think I got around 40-something frames before the sewer level where I just threw my hands up and declared defeat.
I haven't actually checked. I think at this very early point there's not much difference between the two runs, if any at all. I'll try to finish the first stage and see how much time I'm gaining from there. It shouldn't be hard to compare the two: Diman's run syncs fine when converted to FM2.
There's actually another run someone started from a couple years ago, and I'll admit I only remember it existing because I'd started my own run shortly before seeing this on the Userfiles. It syncs on Bizhawk 1.4.1 if you wanna watch something more up to date than the published run.
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Three whole threads for this game! Let's revive the earliest and most sensibly titled one.
Link to videoUser movie #23466553175470218
Most of this was actually done a couple years back, I just finished it up to the start of that first miniboss. I don't know if I'll continue it as of yet. If I did, it wouldn't be right now, but maybe reviving a topic that was started nearly half my life ago will kick up someone else's interest.
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feos wrote:
3. Battle City. Have you watched it, honestly?
Yes. Did you read my comment that stated I was only pointing out how movie rating isn't the only thing tied into judging, and I wasn't actually complaining about any of those movies at all?
Do you want my actual opinions to refute instead of complaining about mere implication? Here you go: Like Derakon, I found Jetpack unbearably dull. I voted No in the thread and couldn't even make it 5 minutes into the run before my mind wandered to thinking about my own inevitable death. I'm pretty sure it's only starred because Nach is ridiculously biased toward it. The Simpsons can't make up for its nostalgia value in entertainment and the run is annoying as hell to watch with the sound on. It's also not the first 4-player TAS, so that shouldn't have really factored into the star judgement. Battle City wasn't all that bad but it wouldn't even come close to being starred if it lacked all the playaround stuff, and even that got to be a bit repetitive and dull after a while.
Regardless, I have no qualms about anything being starred or anything not being starred. Normally I wouldn't even care enough to talk about this, but if you're going to complain about my opinions without me even bringing them up or mentioning that I felt anything negative in the first place... Then I suppose I feel obliged to indulge in your pessimistic expectations of me.
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Tangent wrote:
Between the two of you, you went into a Youtube comments section, called everybody "entitled jackasses", "brainless assholes", and said "I'm waiting for the kids to react to this crap TAS I did," and you in particular pitched a martyrdom fit.
Your point is? It sounds to me like you're saying "They're right because you're doing it too", which is the most flawed logic I've seen on these forums in at least 7 hours. It's a Youtube comments section, am I supposed to go in there and pitch an intellectual discussion on the merits of game choice? No, it's a breeding ground for shit-eating rodents, so I'm just gonna throw some more shit in there for them to feed on. My involvement has nothing to do with the original comments and it sure as hell doesn't validate what they wrote.
By your logic, since your first post in the thread was subtly hateful and insulting, that means I'm right and I have every reason to chastise you for "kicking the nest". Which, I should add, is literally what you were doing anyway.
Nice misinterpretation of dekutony's comment, by the way. It couldn't be that he was commenting on the fact that several adults had told him he wasted his time and he honestly wants to see how younger children react. No, your passionate hatred for people who don't deserve it has to twist that into "kicking the nest". Sure. Okay. Here I am implicitly stating that these people are being elitist and brainless and obviously trying to stir up trouble, but nope, according to you he's the one bringing those comments that were already there long before he made that comment.
You can't even argue that his "they're all shitposters" comment in the submission text is "kicking the nest" because how many of those people are even going to see it? Who in their right mind would be joyless and disdainful enough to come here and try to defend hateful comments?
...Other than you, I mean.
And then he/you coming back here to bitch about the comments there not being nice enough, and calling me a shitposter for pointing out that he's kicking the nest. What did the two of you expect would happen? Engaging in the same behavior you're complaining about would cow people into line?
Honestly? I expected a little more respect for someone who's clearly upset at the rash of people telling him he essentially wasted his time. But no, I guess I should've known better than to expect this submission to drift idly by without TASvideos' #1 shitposter popping in and posting their usual smug, victim-blaming white noise.
Can you at least try to know what you're talking about, or have some sort of huge, hilarious meltdown that ends with you claiming you're leaving the forums? If you weren't such a dull, lifeless void I might actually care enough to acknowledge your existence from this point onward.
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Tangent wrote:
At the very least, maybe refrain from calling everyone who doesn't like Club Penguin a shitposter or a child. That might be hard for someone who literally calls himself "Club Penguin" online though.
Not shitposters, according to TASvideos' #1 shitposter Tangent:
I'll never understand why people do this, a single level in Sonic 1 has more gameplay in it than this shit.
Mayby that was only game this guy had for year closed in his basement and he decided to give it a tribute doing worlds best tas?
XD omg what the fuck why did they do this game
super hardcore mlg pro TAS m8, gr8 gaem 420/yolo- ign
100% constructive criticism from the lovely Youtube audience! Not shitposting at all!
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derula wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
I was expecting kids to complain, not grown up adults shitposting in the comments.
I hope you don't consider my feedback in the rating thread as some of that! I know I probably wasn't constructive, but at least I tried to explain my view as nicely as possible! (Although I have to admit, I often fail at being nice.)
Waiting for temp encode.
I don't think anyone in the first submission thread came off more negative than "Eh, the run's not for me, but I do think it should be published". If you look at the official Youtube encode's comments, they're not exactly the kindest out there.
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
I request the admins here to delete all my movies and my profile / acount, I'm not going to use this site anymore or take part in any scenes related to speedrunning or whatever, I won't be a part of this cancerous misery.
Awww, cute wittle MESHUGGAH woke up from his nappy-times and wants his bottle!
So let me get this straight: You don't mention anything about the apparent low quality of these submissions until now, people wonder why you're suddenly being a gigantic douchebag about it, and that's a dealbreaker for you? The fact that you failed to bring up apparent quality issues 2 publications ago is our fault and makes you want to leave the community?
Can I have all your published runs? I promise I won't replace the submission texts with "WAAAAAH BOOHOO I'M MESHUGGAH AND I'M SO SPINELESS I'M PRACTICALLY FUCKING PARAPLEGIC"!
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Avisynth paired with AvsPmod is your best bet. Avisynth is kind of a video editing scripting language, AvsPmod is probably the best way to write Avisynth scripts. It's not hard to learn.
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xy2_ wrote:
ah, the good ol' samsara switch-a-roo
Ah, the good ol' "poster with one-month old forum account thinks they know me well enough to assign a kitschy, alliterative name to what they perceive to be my behavior".
I'm genuinely curious as to what MESHUGGAH had to say, though. Maybe we can call it the "MESHUGGAH Meltdown", in the spirit of whatever the fuck that quoted post was meant to be. Why was none of this brought up sooner in any of the other submissions?
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
do I need to fucking continue?
I wasn't fucking aware you had fucking started. By all fucking means, you fucking need to fucking continue.
Watching an argument would be more entertaining than watching the run, anyway.
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supersonicjc wrote:
Samsara, I feel bad that you repeatedly have to explain to nintoaster over and over again on any and everything that you say and repeatedly say but I do have to say I can agree with a lot that you have to say about this run and the over dramatic bs that has followed in its wake.
Statements like this aren't going to get us anywhere good. Nintoaster is by far the most receptive and rational person I've ever debated with on these forums. They deserve a lot more credit than that. They took the time to familiarize themselves with the rules, admitted they didn't understand some of the more complex ones, agreed with a lot of what we had to say while still offering up some valid points here and there... Meanwhile, there's still that Diddy Kong Racing submission, where members of the community flooded the forums and essentially called us brainless My Little Pony fans because we were asking about a clear site rule violation.
The only "dramatic bs" has really been Nymx acting strangely and even that's far more low key than some other recent events we've gone through. I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how tame the discussion's been, aside from a couple bad eggs.
EDIT:
Invariel wrote:
And while Samsara was wrong to use an absolute,
Yeah, my fault on that. I have a nasty habit of accidentally using absolutes without realizing it.
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Nintoaster_81 wrote:
There's a fine line between asking questions and interrogating. This teeters on the latter. No one here has said, "Super Metroid is the greatest game ever, and that's why you're all wrong!" You're putting words in our mouths. If anything, we're defending the category, not the game itself. I can't personally answer any of the specific TAS-related questions for obvious reasons.
1. We have every right to ask questions. If they were being answered, this wouldn't be an issue. The only reason we're so insistent with our questioning is because not a single one of our questions has been addressed.
2. Didn't you guys accuse us of hating Super Metroid?
3. That's why we were asking Nymx about it, and instead of answering our questions he just posted that cryptic and ominous "I think its too late now" response. Also, you're here defending the run and category or whatever, why don't you know anything about it?
I don't need to pretend to know how you operate. That's stated clearly in the mission statement, submission instructions and movie rules, which I've read through. From my understanding, once a video is submitted a forum thread is automatically generated where members can scrutinize offer feedback and constructive criticism on the TAS, and also vote on its entertainment value. From that point the fate of the TAS is left in the hands of a judge, who will then determine whether the video is worthy of publishing or not. If there's anything I'm leaving out, please let me know. I'm not saying this to sound like a douche; I legitimately want to know for the sake of myself and others here who are having a hard time understanding the process.
The scrutiny is part of the process. We don't accept anything short of perfection, and there's far more to the submission process than just those three pages. We don't operate like your community or SpeedDemosArchive or any other console-based speedrunning site. There are strict rules about what we allow and don't allow.
This run is on the borderline of acceptable to us, its possible future on the site comes down to how entertaining we feel it is. If the community deems it not entertaining, we can't publish it due to how our system works: Runs that don't fall under "any%" or "100%" have to be entertaining enough to be featured on the site.
For the sake of argument, I'm putting myself into your shoes. My only basis for comparison is our speedrunning community, so let's say for the sake of argument that you decided to start speed running Super Metroid. You complete your first any% RTA and decide to submit it to deertier.com. To your delight, your time appears uncontested on the web site. In fact, you can submit times without even linking to a video, however times that are close to world record would likely be investigated. Now, if we're truly comparing apples to apples within the context of this discussion, a better example would be you submitting a category that's not currently listed on deertier.com. From that perspective, yes, I can see your point, and such a submission would likely need to be legitimized before a branch is created on the web site. However, 100% map has, and will continue to be a legitimate branch for Super Metroid on deertier.com. I think the disconnect happens when the speedrunning community assumes that a particular category is fit for the TAS community. We see a TAS and stack it up comparatively against the best human players, and figure out the limitations of what can be realistically applied in a run. You guys take the human element out completely, and deal with the limitations of the game itself. Both have entertainment value, but it's clear that the standards are much higher here. There's nothing wrong with that, but I guess we're not used to it.
A legitimate branch to you guys doesn't necessarily mean a legitimate branch to us. Keep in mind that Super Metroid has the most published categories out of any game on this site. That's what we're concerned about. There are tons of legitimate speedrunning categories out there for other communities that we wouldn't allow on the site.
As far as I'm concerned, it's already ridiculous that we have a published "in-game time" TAS for this game that exists alongside the real time run, solely because it's a category your community accepts and appreciates.
I agree with the first part, however to say that you're not the ones making it an issue is incorrect. He was called out on it at least 4 times, even after he responded to the initial concerns on the first page of this thread. Like you, I fully expect nymx to give cpadolf full credit for his portion either as co-author or contributor, whichever is decided on.
He's being called out on it because it hasn't been addressed in accordance to the rules of the site. Once Cpadolf is credited as a co-author, and specifically as a co-author, we'll stop pressing. As it stands right now, Cpadolf's input was essentially stolen. Not literally stolen, he's getting credited in the description now and that's a great start, but the fact remains that a portion of his exact input is in this run.
There's a bit of iffiness on co-authorship at times, and people have different opinions on what deserves co-authorship... But I still think the co-authorship credit should've happened as soon as it was brought up the first time. The site specifically asks you to co-author someone when you use their input. The edge case with "frame wars" almost always leads to every participant getting co-authorship credit on the final run.
I think I was confusing "arbitrary" with "ambiguous." It's not an arbitrary goal within the context of deertier.com, but as I discussed above, the goals don't necessarily line up between the two sites, and that's fine.
I'm glad you understand that... Except for the fact that you're still defending the category.
Sarcastic, assumptive, and already dis-proven by some of your own members:
Oops, I accidentally assumed that the majority of the community thought the run wasn't entertaining. Oh wait, the majority of the community thought the run wasn't entertaining. Yes, obviously some people are going to enjoy it, but from what it seems the majority of our community isn't exactly thrilled by this run.
See above quotes. I don't really understand what you're trying to say here. Those "bunch of extra rooms that serve no purpose" are purposeful in filling out map squares. This is not simply an extension of a 100% item run. The goals between the two categories are completely different, therefore logic and planning were required in routing this run to optimize time.
So what you're saying is these extra rooms serve no purpose outside of a logical route. Thanks for proving my point.
Let me be blunt, here: This is a niche category made up by your community because no one wants to run the categories that people actually care about. This isn't a contested category like any% or 100%. It's impressive that so many new strategies were found specific to this category, I'll admit that! It's that kind of thinking outside the box that leads to huge new discoveries and I'm glad the run exists if only for that. But what purpose does it serve outside of your community? Who's going to wake up one day and think "Wow, I really want to watch someone fill in all the map squares on Super Metroid!"?
If people want to watch it, it's still going to be around. As has been stated before, your goal has been accomplished for your community. Having it published here isn't honestly going to change anything significant in the long run aside from maybe a couple thousand more people watching it and most likely thinking it's not for them.
I understand this, and don't really disagree with anything stated here. Admittedly, I think some of the "persecution complexes" were based on knee-jerk reactions, likely due to the harsh criticism nymx's submission received right out of the gate. I can understand and appreciate the high standards you guys hold these submissions to, but I also think there are better ways of offering feedback, especially to someone who is still relatively new to TAS-ing. This thought is loosely echoed by one of your own members (on dwangoAC's comment about the TASvideos community not being bad, just "different"):
Kurabupengin wrote:
Some people here are though... not all of us, just some from my experience. (and admins know who I'm talking about...)
My dismay wasn't necessarily directed towards the possibility of this submission being rejected. That is, of course, your perogative, and respectfully so. This TAS will continue to exist and likely appear elsewhere, regardless of the outcome here, and is a great contribution. My dismay was primarily directed towards the attitudes of some of the forum members who decided to comment. You may consider it just criticism, and I'm sure that flies perfectly well within your community, but it's not attractive to newcomers. I've seen this time and time again in discussion forums, back when I used to participate in them regularly (on topics completely unrelated). Many members developed cliques, and subsequently complexes that largely alienated newcomers. People that weren't opposed to taking a little bloody lip were fine, but the rest likely never signed into their accounts again. I got tired of the incessant bickering and ego trips and largely disappeared. I'm not saying this is what's happening in this forum, but what I have seen is an eerie reminder of what turned me off of discussion forums in the past.
Well said. No, really, I agree with a lot of that, but...
Harsh criticism does not mean it's invalid criticism. If you focus on the tone, you'll miss the actual point of the message. Two or three people with harsher comments than everyone else don't speak for an entire community. Honestly? I like the fact that we're not afraid to hold back, that we're a bit more judgmental and critical of newcomers' work than other communities would be. That's how criticism should be: Harsh enough to get a message across, but not enough to discourage the newcomer.
If you look at submissions in the Gruefood forum, you'll start to notice that a lot of our comments can be both critical and encouraging. Not all of them: It's unreasonable to expect everyone to be 100% perfect, let alone the community as a whole, but for the most part we're about as welcome we can be without showering praise onto new TASers.
What we really want is for people to join our community and share their work with us before submitting it! The broad TASing community is already split up into cliques as it is. There are people who TAS exclusively on Youtube or Nicovideo, there are French communities out there, people who TAS on Twitch, there are sub-communities for specific games... And that's fine, but once a submission makes it to this site from one of those communities, then things start to change.
It's always worrying (to me at least) when a submission from another community appears out of nowhere without any input from us. As I've said, we wouldn't judge a WIP nearly as harshly as we would a submission. We're far more accepting of people who actively take the time to consult us or collaborate with us, and we're more than happy to offer advice and constructive criticism if we're asked.
Am I defending the harsher-than-usual comments made in this thread? No, but I'm defending the fact that they made valid points that seemed to be ignored due to the content of the rest of the message. Focusing on the presentation means you're not focusing on the content, and the content is what needs to get through. You can ignore the presentation without any consequences.
For example, if someone says "It looks like you could've taken a different route through Maridia. Also, you're fat and ugly", you can safely ignore the second sentence while gleaning information from the first. You wouldn't just assume that the first sentence is untrue because this theoretical jackass pulled out a personal attack.
There's a psychological reason behind harsher criticism as it is: Optimistic and positive criticism don't necessarily get a message across as well as something a bit more scathing. Sure, you have people on the site who are always encouraging and positive, and I really like that those people are around, but from my experiences newcomers generally don't learn from that.
There needs to be a strict balance: Something that bluntly tells someone what they're doing wrong, but assures them that if they put in the time and effort, it can be fixed. Not everyone can do that. I know I have problems with being harsh, myself, as I'm sure my entire posting history can easily tell you. But in the grand scheme of things, I'm just one person. Everyone is just one person. You may have a horrible first experience, but if you stick around you'll see that not everyone acts the same way.
I admit I've been pretty harsh in this thread, including this post, and I apologize for that. I have to give you and the rest of the SM community props for actually having this be a proper debate and not a gigantic shitstorm like certain incidents in the past. I appreciate the time and effort that went into this run, and like I said I'm glad it exists even if it just turns out to be a reference point for future SM TASing... I'd just like to actually see that time and effort taking place as it happens instead of seeing the results appear out of nowhere.
This goes out to all the contributors and Nymx especially: If you're interested in TASing, even if it's just for Super Metroid, I urge you to stick around our community. You'll learn a lot about how we operate, the TASing process, and you might even learn some new things about Super Metroid. We're not nearly as harsh to people who take the time to get to know us.
Either way, keep doing what you're doing.
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Nintoaster_81 wrote:
<--- 2nd post lurker right here. Hi TAS guys, I'm from the Super Metroid (human) speedrunning community of the likes of deertier.com. I've been watching this debate unfold over the last 24 hours or so.
While I understand that new submissions are subject to scrutiny, particularly with a game that's been dissected as much as Super Metroid, I'm a little dismayed at the attitudes expressed on this forum. While I wasn't expecting high-fives and champagne, I certainly wasn't expecting this kind of negativity and smugness towards nymx.
That's not at all what's been happening. From my perspective, we've been asking legitimate questions and have gotten no good answers in return. You guys' entire argument seems to be "Super Metroid is the greatest game ever, and that's why you're all wrong!"
All of our concerns have either been evaded or ignored entirely in favor of the things that don't really matter. Our criticism over the category was twisted into us "hating" the game. If you're going to participate in this debate, can you at least try to see this run from our perspective, instead of barging into this community and pretending you know how we operate? Christ, and you call us smug.
On the issue of the script copying from Ceres to Brinstar from cpadolf - nymx has alluded to this multiple times during his live streams and is not trying to plagiarize the work of someone else. He has admitted that this was an oversight in the submission text and apologized multiple times now, and yet everyone is still hung up on it. Credit will be given where credit is due. Let's move on.
It better be given where it's due. The entire beginning of the run is 100% Cpadolf's input. He deserves co-authorship credit. There's no reason not to do it, there's no harm in doing it. Again, this shouldn't be an issue. We're not the ones making it an issue, NYMX is the one focusing on it.
I don't see how the goal is arbitrary. Either the map is filled completely, or it's not. True, there is no in-game (post-game) quantifiable measurement for map completion other than watching the squares fill in on the mini map. This is a downfall to this particular category, but I'm pretty sure he didn't spend 6 1/2 months TAS-ing a route that left reason to doubt whether or not all map squares were filled in.
Except that's not how we define an arbitrary goal. If the run didn't achieve its goal, it would be rejected for not achieving its goal. The matter at hand is whether or not the goal is worth publishing. I don't think so. It's arbitrary in the context of the site. I'm sure it achieves the incredible, thrilling goal of completing every square of the map, but that doesn't change the fact that no one outside the community would care about that.
Is it entertaining to watch? Well, that's subjective. But to say that it mirrors a 100% run whilst ignoring item collection is ignorant. The route itself is different, therefore many new room strategies had to be implemented. So for those asking what it brings to the table, there should be enough new/original room strats to answer that. And for the record, the descriptive commentary of individual room strats is about 3 hours and 15 minutes long, not 5. If people would rather read than watch, then maybe nymx can provide a written play-by-play, but that's up to him.
It may not mirror the 100% run, but what does it have over the 100% run aside from a bunch of extra rooms that serve no purpose to a logical route? Oh, sure, there may be new strategies specific to this route, but that's exactly what they are: Strategies specific to a route that only appeals to your community.
Lastly, to admit there's 90 seconds of improvement to be made should act as motivation, not a detriment to submission, imo. It's not to say, "well, I know I could've done better, but I was too lazy to go back and make the changes." Admittedly, I don't know much about TAS-ing, but I do know that one does not simply go back in the script and tweak things (I'd attach a Boromir meme if I could). If you make changes to early script, you have to rewrite everything that follows, so it's no small feat. Maybe nymx's run doesn't fit your criteria of "high quality," but maybe it will entice other TAS-ers to improve on his, who knows. Regardless, I don't think his intent was to make it perfect the first time around. Rather, I think it was a means to open up a fresh category and create some buzz around it, and to try something that hasn't really been attempted before.
Except if you spend 6 and a half months on a run that you know you can improve and you know you're going to improve, then you can spend a few more months pushing it to its absolute limit before submitting it to a site that asks for nothing short of perfection.
The run could have just as easily been put on the site's Userfiles or any other storage medium and shared with our community. It didn't have to be submitted. But since it was submitted, it's subject to our high standards of publication. We won't just publish anything that's optimized. Even the most entertaining game in the world would have rejected runs if they're of arbitrary categories: Otherwise, we'd have runs like Donkey Kong Country "collect the letters K and N in 5 stages", or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "all items except for the Shield Rod and all bosses except for Olrox and Succubus", or Super Metroid "defeat Spore Spawn" cluttering everything up.
Case in point: We're judging the TAS based on the TAS, not on the game. We see the category as arbitrary and not entertaining enough to publish. We generally don't hate the game, so you can all drop the persecution complexes.
I need to sleep.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
The amount of 1st post lurkers is suspicious... are we under attack?
We're fine! Remember the last time a game's community rushed to TASvideos to defend a controversial TAS? That went over really well! We even went a full page before the personal attacks came out!
...At least the Super Metroid community seems to be less likely to accuse someone of wanting to have sex with cartoon horses.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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EDIT: ^^^^ Ohohoho, nice catch. That definitely needs to be explained.
I can't wait to see twenty more people sign up to do nothing but vouch for this run and then never post again. People have TASed live on Twitch before and incorporated the community's ideas into the run. Don't treat this run like it's such a novel concept, because it really isn't.
Personally? I think the goal choice is arbitrary. These kinds of runs have been rejected before. Barring that fact, we already have about 4500 published runs for Super Metroid, what does this one bring to the table? Does it add anything significant over the 100% run, or is it just the same thing but without item collection and more detours of nothing but running through hallways?
If there are 90 seconds of known improvements and an updated submission is being made, why even submit this one? I completely understand if someone spends a long time working on a TAS, gets burnt out, and ends up finding improvements later on but doesn't have the motivation to incorporate them into a new run, but that clearly isn't the case. 90 seconds is pretty significant, even for a longer run like this, not to mention there will likely be further optimizations found on a second pass. Unless it's going to take the better part of a year, it would've probably been better off to have waited for the improved version.
If community "calaboration" is so important, why wasn't this community involved in any way? I find it incredibly sketchy that nothing about this run was mentioned here until this submission. It would've been easy to, say, put this run up as a Userfile on the site and post it in the Super Metroid thread for people to comment on. So why didn't that happen? I'm all for collaboration, believe me, but is it really even collaboration if you're not reaching out to a community that knows what they're doing?
Most importantly, why am I asking all these questions when I know I'm not going to get proper answers in return, let alone anything that isn't an insult or someone telling me I'm wrong?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
This is the first known calaboration between a TASer and community.
What an accomplishment! I can't think of a single other TAS that garners help from the community, except for maybe almost literally all of them published on this site.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Hello, old friend. It's been a while.
Link to video
The main improvement over both the published run and my last improvement WIP is not changing the difficulty: The difficulty changes nothing that would be noticeable in the run, and in fact no one really knew the differences between each difficulty until recently since they're not even noticeable to experienced players. This saves about 2 seconds, but most of that is lost due to Bizhawk's more accurate loading times, leaving the improvement to only 53 frames upon landing in the first stage. Around 15 frames are gained, but 23 are lost, leaving the current improvement at 45 frames.
There are two things to note: There's an extra enemy spawn compared to the Snes9x WIP which causes the bulk of the lost frames, and I unavoidably lose a frame every time I land, since the landing cancel has to be performed a frame later on Bizhawk. If I can get that enemy to cooperate and not spawn, then I'll have at most 6-7 gameplay frames over the Snes9x WIP due to all the other minor movement optimizations.
I know, I'm just as confused as you are.
This may become a group project depending on circumstances.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Oh yeah, this is a collaborative TAS. I knew I was too tired to post.
Kurabupengin wrote:
LEL i thought we were going to keep this secret
I only planned on that since I hadn't seen this thread for some reason... also I was only planning on keeping it secret before April Fools' Day <_< I figured I'd be more motivated if it was out in the public eye anyway. We did kinda start the improvement a couple weeks ago and I haven't been checking in...
Exonym wrote:
First of all, is landing on the skateboard necessary? I don't see anything that warrants it, or do you have to be on it to advance the stage?
It ends up faster from what I tested due to how that stage ends, but it's been a couple months since I did that stage so it's worth taking another stab at.
EDIT: Aha, I took note of it back when I was working on the run. From what was going to be my submission text: "Using the skateboard allows me to use two less spin-dashes (which means two less stops) and also allows me to skip walking up the staircase, simply by bouncing off a crate, a dude-who-can-only-exist-in-the-90's, and jumping off the skateboard at the peak of my ascent so I can bounce off of the second crate at the top of the stairs, getting me a little more distance."
I'll take a look at it on the improved file, since I was thinking that the skateboard looked a little too slow compared to an alternate route.
Second, I'm assuming the slopes that looks like stairs can't be dashed up, because you walk up them. But the slopes that arent stairs can be? Seems like a silly game design.
That's exactly what I meant when I said if something looks out of place, then that's how the game works. You can't even crouch on stairs, which means you can't dash. Being anywhere near them locks you at normal walking speed, even if you fly at them at 7 pixels-per-frame you'll just immediately drop all your speed once you get within a certain distance. You can dash up the slopes in the first area without losing speed, but you lose speed dashing up the slopes in the second area (noticeable in Area 2-2). Sometimes you can land on slopes and stop immediately, sometimes you can't, sometimes it's based on positioning and sometimes it just doesn't work no matter what. The mechanics are just... strange, overall.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
