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I find this discussion about a low-level Chrono Trigger run to be very interesting, as I was thinking about a similar concept for a while now which I like to refer to as "lowest stats". Here would be the requirements:
- Acquiring XP is prohibited
- When it's possible to select a party, the sum of the levels of the party members must be minimized
- Cannot use tabs
- Equipping stats-boosting gear is prohibited
- Chrono must equip the mop before his first battle
I don't know if it's possible to beat the game under these conditions without resorting to major glitches, but I figured that it would be a good starting point for defining a doable challenge. One potential variant would be "lowest base stats", which would remove the last 2 requirements from the list.
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While I disagree with turska's opinion and believe the current judgement to be the correct one, I too would like clarification about the no-softlock endings going to be a standard going forward and why this was decided over the more inclusive approach or making split categories. I would like a general agreement on this matter to avoid the same debate to occur again in the future.
jlun2 wrote:
Also makes me wonder the reception if someone ever makes a run that uses this same glitch, but instead of the ending, triggers the final encounter. lol
This was already debated countless times, starting back when game end glitch runs was a new thing. The consensus is that beating the final boss is not part of what constitutes beating a game.
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For the category issue, it's my opinion that this counts as ACE. While it's not assembly language ACE, it's still in-game script language ACE. Same technique, just at a higher level of language abstraction.
Satarack wrote:
If the completing the credits is to be considered having finished the TAS, then yes this doesn't complete the run.
But I think a good philosophical case could be made that reaching the credits is a completed state, if you take examples from other forms of media. For example, do you finish watching a movie once you reach the credits, or do you have to watch the credits to say you have finished the movie? Or how about books, if you have a novel and the author left a personal message at the end of his book after the story, and you choose not to read the author's message, can you say that you finished the book?
And in speed running different communities have elected to follow different views on the matter. Eg. By SDA rules when using real time, time ends when the player loses complete control at the credits, effectively saying that that is the point when the runner has completed the game.
I'm not trying to say it should be one way or another; my point is more that it isn't as cut and dry as it might seem. I mean it's conceivable to have standards based on the kind of exploits involved in a run; which would allow for a more nuanced way of appraising submissions.
I agree, and this is exactly why I would like the rules to be updated: so that our community may come to a consensus as to which approach is the most relevant, and have an objective set of criteria to compete against based on this consensus. Until then, I can only rely on my personal feelings, which are strongly in favor of reaching the very end of the end for a satisfying conclusion as opposed to any part of the end, regardless of the media.
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More charts, including less kiddy versions of the previous ones. Again, only the best entries from each author are considered here, including "default user".
EDIT: One more!
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Instead of taking the winning entry from the SGDQ 2105 competition and patching suggested improvements into it, wouldn't it be a better idea to take the time to make a fully optimized TAS to make sure that nothing was overlooked?
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Tangent wrote:
jlun2 wrote:
Gyre wrote:
The regular sketch% speedrun softlocks at the same point in the ending. It's waiting for an NPC to walk over a trigger but because it's not initialized properly he'll never get there.
If it really bothers people, is it possible to modify the TAS so it won't softlock?
It seems like a valid concern. A number of runs that skip to one ending screen or part of the ending sequence have been rejected for not leaving the game in an actual completed state.
Yes, and how this problem is resolved by judges appears to be completely inconsistent from submission to submission and game to game as well. It bothered me in the last published FF6 movie, and it still bothers me.
I might start sounding like a broken record to a few people, but I'll repeat it again for everyone else: a softlock before the actual end screen does not count as beating the game in my opinion, and as long as TASVideos won't have an objective definition as to what counts as beating the game in the rules, I cannot accept this as a speedrun, but only as an interesting glitch exploit demonstration.
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Bisqwit wrote:
Additionally, it looks like something drawn in MS Paint...
LibreOffice to be more exact - didn't had the time to do something better. I might try again in Mathematica if I get around to re-installing it.
Warp wrote:
Is each datapoint in the curve representing the number of entries that have that length, or is each datapoint the sum of entries that have at most that length? Because the shape of the curve makes more sense as a sum. (I find it really hard to believe that there are exactly as many entries that are 05:02 long than 06:00 long, for instance.)
The curve would be more illustrative if each datapoint represented the amount of entries of that particular length.
Yes, it's the sum of finished entries. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.
As for your suggestion, I would only get a straight line with lots of points close to each other, which would be pretty hard to read. I guess I could group the data by small time intervals and make a bar chart out of it. I'm open to suggestions.
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Mini-tutorial: I thought this was a good idea, but not explained very well. I know time was a factor, but I think a pre-recorded video would have been better here for this very reason.
TAS showcases: I didn't see the point of showing pre-recorded videos for a live event. For Sonic Advance it made sense because of the cam hack next to the console verification, but not for the other games. Also, the commentator for Ikaruga did a really bad job, and seemed to try to remember more than anything. Overall, I felt that it was average compared to other SGDQ runs.
Competition: Great game choice! The time limit was just right in my opinion, and I really enjoyed fighting against the hard deadline (vs the high probability of cheaters in a honor system)! I did not expect to rank this high (31st for win condition) considering that it was my first TAS. Seeing two of the best runs compete against each other at the end and seeing where I messed up was pretty cool, even if they didn't end up being the real winners. (By the way, for the room where dwangoAC mentioned that they were using different strategies, I actually tried both routes during the competition and I ended up using the same amount of frames.) Aside from the technical difficulties, the only thing that I felt went wrong was that the rules on TASVideos were not entirely accurate, which made me lose some time at the beginning due to the confusion. I hope a similar competition will be organized in the future! :D
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To add to my previous comment, including the emulator used (and maybe the core used too in BizHawk's case) to the leader table might be a good idea, considering movie conversion between emulators is not possible after all.
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It would be great if the final league table could contain the following columns:
- Position
- Author
- Frame count
- Real time
- In-game time
- Score
Fun times by the way, can't wait for the final results! ^_^
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Sounds fun! I might participate just to see how I compare against experienced TASers.
Questions:
- By "submission", are we talking about the standard submission process, or is there going to be a special submission procedure?
- Anything planned if TASVideos goes down during the race?
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samurai goroh wrote:
I usually only check and vote runs I'm interested on. So if the run was good, I'll like it (because I already liked the game and had an idea of what to expect).
So what I'm going, is that the only people that voted are people which Like Final Fantasy Games, so hence that biased poll results. (And yes, I think the poll makes no sense for where should it go if it gets published)
Yes, but considering that argument also applies for users rating movies after publication, I don't think it's that much of a difference.
Spikestuff wrote:
People are voting on "should be accepted?" not "is it entertaining?".
Some people definitely are, and looking at Sir VG's last comment, he seems to have done that very mistake. Still, it's hard to assess how widespread this problem really is.
That said, I can think of an easy way to remove that possibility:
How entertaining is this movie?
Very entertaining
Somewhat entertaining
Not really entertaining
Not only would it force the viewer to consider the entertainment factor, but it would also defines more precisely the choices.
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That's a very good point. After verification, the old run had 94% Yes votes but only a 5.5 rating. Assuming the audience has similar tastes, that's a pretty big gap between the average and the aggregate statistics.
It looks like we're in a situation similar to the difference between a movie's Metascore and Tomatometer - same reviews, different measure of overall satisfaction, wildly different results. I'm not sure which statistic is the best one to determine Moons qualification, but if it is the average rating, then it might be worth considering using a different voting question during submission to avoid bias.
Your run's execution is very good, but it seems there is an issue with how similar this game is to the NES version. We usually allow ports to different platforms, but not when they are direct copies of one other (like those modern games for currently "competing" consoles). Slight differences would justify publishing versions of a game, but when there's (little to) no difference, people simply feel the original version is the only one they want TASed, because the runs would look identical, presenting very little unique content (if any). The case for this game is that it's actually the NES ROM being emulated, with some additions that don't affect TASing (at least those official tweaks that we know of). The NES version is the one that was TASed to death throughout all these years, so it's hardly possible to compete with the existing records in it.
This game is so similar to the NES version that I consider runs of it branches of the latter. If there were more unique content presented here (by playing different modes maybe), it might have gotten better feedback, but for this run, I'm rejecting it.
I'm not seeing how replacing a few pauses with damage resolves the original rejection issue. While I'm all for publishing runs for other versions of the same game personally, I'm afraid there isn't currently a tier for "similar but for a different version" movies for now.
Therefore, and seeing as it is your third submission for this version of the game and you didn't write anything meaningful in your submission comments this time, I have to ask: is there anything unique in your run that can't be done on other versions of the game or hasn't been done yet in existing categories?
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Aren't you losing time for entering your name? I know TASVideos encourages this, but I really hate it personally as it goes against everything a speed-oriented TAS goes for.
Aside from that detail, this run is godlike. Amazing use of glitches. Congratulations!
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My vote goes to updating the category of the current any% run to a new "bad ending / all upgrades" category, publish this movie for any%, and switch the Star tier status from the old movie to this one.
For the record, here is a list of what I feel are worthy categories for Mega Man X2 right now:
- Any%
- 100% (all upgrades + Zero parts)
- Best ending (upgrades not required)
- All upgrades (Zero parts not required)
- All major enemies (all bosses except Zero, fully-upgraded Radar Killer, all other mini-bosses)
- No damage
- Basic abilities only (no upgrades, cannot use sub-weapons)
- Pacifist (no Zero parts, can only defeat bosses)
- Any combination of the above
...actually, that's a pretty good list for any platformer.
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This run is amazing! I marvel at the precise movements, how you're using the charge so effectively and the bosses manipulation! Easy Yes vote from me!
EgxHB wrote:
This is the second MMX game.
There are 12 physical buttons on the SNES controller.
2*12 = 24.
The author's name is Hetfield90.
90 - 24 = 66.
66 turned upside-down is 99.
Mega Man has two eyes.
99 is two digits of 9.
You know what that means, people?
You mean...you don't know?!
How could you not know?! That's...that's practically blasphemous. Say you're sorry! Apologize to the funyarinpa!
#4infinity
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Very nice TAS, although the high cutscenes vs gameplay ratio and the abuse of the Dark Spark + Level 2 Old + Level 5 Death combo made long segments of it rather forgettable, especially in the 2nd half. Still, as someone familiar with this game, I give a Yes vote overall.
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Game: YOU HAVE AN AMAZING WISDOM AND POWER.
Me: I agree.
Reading the submission comments though, I feel that emulators for TASing should have an option to record input at any given CPU cycle. I'm surprised this is still a problem.
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I see that we're talking about board games only in this thread, but I would like to remind everyone that sports games, educational games and game show games are also excluded from Vault for the same reason.
I'm with Warp on this, at least on the principle. I see no reason why some genres should be excluded from Vault, as the whole point of this tier (at least for me) is the best theoretical speed that a game can be beaten. adelikat's argument about the triviality of making board game runs may be true for some of them, but not only is it false in the general case, but I don't see why not have the trivial ones have their own records anyway.
Now, here are the subjective issues I see with applying such a thing blindly:
- There would be lots of implementations of the same board game to manage.
- Theoretical optimization and TAS optimization may be incompatible.
- Ending input early may cause the resulting movie to continue by itself for hours.
- A.I. difficulty depends exclusively on implementation.
- Optimizing input speed and animations is usually not interesting for these types of games.
So, the question is: should we care about this kind of subjectivity for the Vault tier? In my opinion, the only reason we would care about this would be in fear of introducing too many low-quality TAS to the site to the point where it would endanger its reputation. Considering that the Vault tier is pretty much the "forgettable garbage" tier already, and has not caused any issues with the site's reputation, I don't see how it would be a problem.
That's why I would resolve the situation like this:
- Remove all genres exclusions from Vault.
- Allow all versions and categories for all official games in Vault.
- Let other communities bother with theoretical optimizations for the abstract version of games.
As for the creation of new tiers, it's in my opinion that it would only introduce artificial fragmentation and confusion. It's already possible to sort movies by user rating, so I don't see why additional tiers would be necessary. The improvement I would do however is make this sorting more obvious.
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Wow, ACE in Zelda 1! And while I did not understand the technical details much due to the bad English, the results are quite impressive! Congratulations TASeditor and Masterjun! :D
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Love the new route, congrats! <3
ALAKTORN wrote:
I presume calling yourself Jeed cost you some frames? What’s the ruling on naming in TASes, actually? I suppose you could be allowed to name yourself whatever you want, even though it’s not a speed-entertainment tradeoff.
The rules states: "A speed-oriented movie must beat all existing records"
Also, the guidelines states: "Unless you are desperate for frame optimizations, give a proper name in name entry screens. Then again, there is no reason to wait for a name entry screen before you do that. Sneak it in anywhere you can."
So it's basically a gray area, since the rules seem pretty clear about the absolute of speed, while the guidelines seem to contradict this absolute. Personally, I'm strongly against entering a custom name if it causes any time loss, but I believe the staff has a different opinion on the matter (unfortunately).
EDIT: One more!
Note that I counted "default user" entries as from the same author.