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Posted: 12/27/2013 10:09 PM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
I was a bit torn apart since I'm not familiar with this homebrew fan game and the psychic ability is definitely innovative, but in the end I voted No for the following reasons: - While the game/level design doesn't look terrible, it doesn't look great either. - The lousy programming, especially the collision detection, doesn't seem to make this game a good choice for a TAS. - There are many autoscrollers and slow boss battles, which were pretty boring because there was no superplay showcased during those segments. - I've noticed moments that don't appear optimal. For example, at 31:23 when you break the block under Waluigi, you wait for him to fall straight down while hugging the right block instead of being a bit further to the left and building horizontal speed.
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Posted: 12/23/2013 4:30 AM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Baxter wrote:
I made a long post in an old Tetris DS submission thread
Link is broken; I believe you were trying to point to Post #217340. I really disagree with the idea of combining multiple game modes in the same movie personally. I can think of many problems doing so, such as: - Judging the relevance of multiple categories in the same movie - No easy way to obsolete the movie if a single part is sub-optimal - TASer/viewer cannot choose the category that they're actually interested in
feos wrote:
So Level here is difficulty? If it is an independent mode accessible from start, it may be vaultable, and we wold need to discuss quality instead.
For reference: - Push mode is indeed an independent mode available from the start - Level is the AI's strength, which is really bad IMO even when maxed to 5 EDIT: Thanks scahfy for the movie! Makes me want a fully-optimized TAS of Push mode now. :)
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Posted: 12/20/2013 4:18 AM
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SmashManiac
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There is really nothing impressive in defeating the CPU quickly in this game mode, even on the hardest difficulty. Also, it doesn't look like you used your tetrominoes in an optimal way, nor use your opponent's tetrominoes to your advantage. Voting no.
LSK wrote:
Um, pretty sure you can just tap the "5" on the touch screen instead of scrolling to it?
Indeed.
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Posted: 12/10/2013 5:16 AM
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SmashManiac
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So you put a program in your program in your inventory in your PC in the game so that you can beat Pokémon while beating Pokémon while using your Coin Case while beating Pokémon? Impressive!
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Posted: 12/1/2013 8:20 PM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
AngerFist wrote:
Slowking wrote:
I thought the new tier system was made for unlimited categories and fun runs to be accepted. Did I missunderstand something there?
I second this notion. I thought the whole purpose with the new system was to open up for entertaining movies be published alongside any%s and whatnot. Currently, if we have misunderstood the purpose of the vault, then shouldn't the question: "Did you find this movie entertaining?" be changed so it correlates better with the purpose of the vault?
From what I remember from previous discussions, the point of the Vault tier was to keep a collection of any% records, regardless of their entertainment value. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing else has changed for other tiers; if the movie is entertaining, well-optimized and unique enough, then it's good enough for the Moon tier, just like before.
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Posted: 11/27/2013 4:24 AM
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SmashManiac
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First thing I did was to compare this movie to SuperDoodleMan's Adventure video back from 2006, which at the time used Action Replay to have a frame advance ability and make a segmented run of Melee's Adventure mode on Very Hard: Link to video Much to my surprise, while the in-game times are overall faster here, the times of many individual stages are significantly slower: - Stage 1-2: +3.68s - Stage 4-1: +5.41s - Stage 4-2: +3.99s - Stage 5-1: +3.53s - Stage 6.1: +2.83s - Stage 6.2: +5.24s - Stage 8-2: +1.89s - Stage 9: +9.19s So that's a total of 35.76 seconds lost when combining the bad stages. Sure, a different character was used which may balance things out overall, and there's the possibility of worse luck due to the lack of segments, but I have a hard time believing that this movie is optimal considering this. I may be completely wrong, but that's my impression. In any case, I think that's enough evidence to verify the optimization of this movie. Also, why play during the credits? Pretty sure any% movies are supposed to end as soon as possible according to the rules. I believe useless input it should be cut from the end of the submission.
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Posted: 10/20/2013 5:44 PM
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SmashManiac
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Posts: 501
I'm on adelikat's side. A game has uninitialized RAM and registers, which are in random states, before power-on. I see no reason why a TASer should not be able to pick which of these states to use. The save-anchored movies rule is for when movies start with dirty persistent memory, like SRAM. This is not the case here. Also, as far as I know, the console only initializes the CPU registers before execution at power-on, so as long as these registers are untouched, the movie counts as starting from power-on. I made Thread #14051: Debate: allowed or not? a few months earlier debating this very topic among others. I recommend a read.
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Posted: 10/19/2013 1:15 AM
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SmashManiac
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I'm very happy to see that somehow, a Super Mario Advance TAS looks significantly different from the currently-published Super Mario USA TAS, and how clever some of the strategies were used. Still, there's a lot of recycled content. But more importantly, I don't understand what's with the Peach-only requirement for an any% run. It really affected a lot of the enjoyment I had watching this run. Becasue of that, I'm voting Meh. Nevertheless, this run is definitely worthy of publication, and if published should obsolete [976] NES Super Mario Bros. 2 "warps, princess only" by adelikat in 08:29.57 in my opinion.
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Posted: 10/14/2013 12:21 AM
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SmashManiac
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I just checked the official encode on YouTube, and the audio pitch drops whenever there's a lot of action on the screen. It's really annoying. Is this an encode issue?
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Posted: 9/23/2013 1:50 AM
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SmashManiac
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In general, I find action-puzzle speedruns like Solomon's Key and this not very entertaining to watch because they look like walkthroughs. And in this case, the game is super obscure and doesn't look very fun, not to mention all the major bugs mentioned in the submission text. Looks like a good chunk of work was put into this TAS, but unfortunately I'll have to vote No as far as entertainment goes. That said, I'd really like to know how you discovered this game MESHUGGAH. Do you know a website dedicated to homebrew games or something?
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Posted: 9/12/2013 4:41 AM
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SmashManiac
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To clarify, I'm not proposing this idea for the sake of having more views or being popular, but to make more people discover, appreciate and create TAS art.
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Posted: 9/12/2013 4:35 AM
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SmashManiac
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I would like to summarize here a discussion I had in the submission thread for [2452] GBC Super Mario Bros. Deluxe "You vs. Boo" by got4n & negative seven in 04:54.24. The part that does make sense here is that the time for this movie is longer than the time of the one it obsoleted. That wasn't a mistake, since the movie is shorter in frames. The problem is that the framerate used to convert the frame count to time is different from the previous one. Assuming the current framerate used now is the correct one, I believe the old publications should be fixed to be able to properly compare times with normal speedruns.
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Posted: 9/12/2013 4:27 AM
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SmashManiac
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OK thanks for the clarification CoolKirby. I believe I understand the situation now, so I'll stop bumping this thread and instead write a post in the site bugs. ;)
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Posted: 9/10/2013 3:01 AM
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SmashManiac
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I just thought of something that might have been confusing me from the start. Is the framerate embedded in the movie file itself? Because if that's the case, why would the emulator allow such a thing, and why isn't the setting regulated?
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Posted: 9/8/2013 6:51 PM
Post subject: Official TASVideos show?
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SmashManiac
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Whenever I look at YouTube encodes of TASVideos, I'm always disappointed by the number of views. Even for popular games, unless the movie is shared by a popular website, it takes a long time to break 10000 views, and when it does, comments are usually filled with ignorant people complaining that TAS is basically cheating. However, TAS can be something mainstream. For example, the French show Speed Game by RealMyop and CoeurDeVandale regularly showcase tool-assisted speedruns as part of their weekly show. They take great care to explain what a TAS is, what is going on while the movie is playing based on general game knowledge and the TAS author's comments, include definitions at the bottom of the screen for those not familiar with the terminology, and even invite authors directly to present their movie. For example, their episode about [2399] GBA Rayman Advance by got4n in 1:16:19.97 has gotten more than 120000 views in just a month, and got4n himself said that he became interested in making TASes because of their show. For those interested in watching Speed Game: http://www.jeuxvideo.com/chroniques-video-speed-game.htm The reason I bring this up is because I believe the TASVideos community would greatly benefit if they had a similar show for an English-speaking audience. What if there was an official TASVideos show on GameTrailers? Or a dedicated Twitch channel with live Q&A and special events? I believe that not only it would give more exposure to TASes and TASVideos, but also generate revenue that could either be used to make TASVideos a better website overall or to give to charity organizations. I probably won't participate in the rest of the discussion since I don't have the time for it. I just wanted to throw the idea in. What do you guys think?
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Posted: 9/8/2013 5:26 PM
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SmashManiac
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The reason why I believe brute-forcing needs to be a requirement for gameplay time is because perfect knowledge of a game is impossible. Over the years it has been proven countless times to never believe anything at face value for speedruns. Say, for instance, who would have thought possible to beat Super Mario World in less than 2 minutes from power on? Assuming a movie is valid based on current knowledge goes against that principle. If you want accurate times, you need absolute requirements based on zero assumptions. Let me explain with an extreme example. Let's say that TASVideos transitions to gameplay time. One day, somebody figures out a super obscure way to interrupt what everybody thought to be a non-interactive cutscene and render a publication invalid, and it will turn out that the previously-obsoleted movie was actually faster. Sure you can correct the mistake, but it will not change the fact that the published record was a complete lie all that time. This is an unacceptable scenario in my opinion.
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Posted: 9/8/2013 4:52 PM
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SmashManiac
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I just thought of another reason why accurate framerate is important to consider: NTSC vs PAL.
Ilari wrote:
Previously, each emulator had its own framerate, now all files for given system (and region) are evaluated with the same framerate.
Ah, so that's the explanation. Thanks! :)
Ilari wrote:
SmashManiac wrote:
Assuming the framerate for this movie is correct, the issue remains. Why is the old movie still showing the wrong time? Are there other publications affected by this framerate issue?
There are loads of publications affected by the framerate issue. E.g. Any older .fmv, .fcm, .smv, .vbm. There are also some pubs where publication time and submission time slightly mismatch because the framerate change (ugh, didn't see that).
These are major issues in my opinion, and you're confirming what I was afraid of. Are they going to be addressed? Redoing the encodes for old publications is probably unrealistic, but what about the rest?
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Posted: 9/8/2013 4:51 AM
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SmashManiac
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got4n wrote:
There isn't an explainaition, they just adjusted the framerate and make it longer and other weren't, look the frame count it's shorter :p
Don't be ridiculous, there HAS to be an explanation. Framerate isn't something arbitrary that is changed on a whim! To be clear, I'm not questioning if this movie is really shorter than its predecessor (it is). What I'm questioning is why the framerate is different, and I have not received a satisfactory answer on this matter. Even CoolKirby doesn't know the answer despite his edit, which really bothers me. Assuming the framerate for this movie is correct, the issue remains. Why is the old movie still showing the wrong time? Are there other publications affected by this framerate issue? Shouldn't their times be fixed as well? It may not be a big deal for TASers, but it is a big deal when comparing times with normal speedruns.
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Posted: 9/8/2013 4:16 AM
(Edited: 9/8/2013 5:40 PM)
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SmashManiac
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The fact is that both input time and movie time are valid criteria. Warp has also mentioned "end the input where no further input can make the game end faster". I thought of it myself as well and I also think that this is a valid criteria. For the purpose of this debate, I'll call this concept "gameplay time".
    Input time advantages: Easy to compare times, the coolness factor of making the game beat itself. Input time disadvantages: Null input can still be considered input, the awkward period where input is still possible but really shitty gameplay is occurring, which potentially delays the ending, and sometimes for extremely long times. Movie time advantages: Natural way to compare times, allows comparisons with normal speedruns. Movie time disadvantages: Difficult to define for some games with multiple endings, may require a longer input time to trigger a shorter ending sequence. Gameplay time advantages: Allows comparisons with normal speedruns, allows comparisons with Speed Demos Archive times (not directly). Gameplay time disadvantages: Requires brute-forcing to prove validity of movie, must define and ban reset input from that verification, may trigger a longer ending sequence.
My thoughts on the matter are as follows: - I consider null input as input, which makes the early input end a silly concept to me. - The difficulty of defining when exactly is a game beaten makes it hard to measure movie times in general, but it's still feasible. - Gameplay time is not practical because of the brute-forcing verification requirement, which may be impossible to verify in a reasonable amount of time for multiple games. - Since non-interactive cutscenes count as gameplay time at the beginning and middle of a movie, it is a bit silly to me to not include similar non-interactive cutscenes at the end of a movie as part of gameplay time as well. Conclusion: Considering the above, I believe the best choice is to use movie time by default, and input time for the rare categories which has significant entertainment value for it. But this assumes that the TASVideos staff is up to the task of measuring movie times manually. Otherwise, input time should continue to be used. EDIT: Added 4th thought.
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Posted: 9/2/2013 5:31 PM
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SmashManiac
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I saw the longer time when this was submitted to I ignored it because I was sure it was going to be rejected for optimization. Now I see that it was accepted, so I'm pretty confused. What's that about a framerate change? I don't remember seeing any news about this. What is the reason behind this change, and why weren't the old publication times updated as well? Seeing a longer movie obsolete a shorter one doesn't make sense to me. If that's not a site bug, somebody should clarify this in the publication description at the very least.
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Posted: 8/31/2013 3:13 AM
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SmashManiac
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Very interesting glitches! Also I just learned a lot of stuff about Pokémon that I didn't even suspected existed! Thank you very much! :)
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Posted: 8/24/2013 6:00 PM
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SmashManiac
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It's my opinion that this port of SMB2 is absolutely terrible. Also the run was quite boring to watch. No vote.
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Posted: 8/24/2013 2:24 AM
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SmashManiac
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This again? I'm just going to repeat myself then.
SmashManiac wrote:
Super Mario Advance is a bad port of Super Mario Bros. 2 in my opinion, and adelikat made a princess-only TAS of the latter in 08:29.57. Voting no.
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Posted: 8/21/2013 5:09 AM
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SmashManiac
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That is the most epic thing I've ever seen in A Link to the Past. Yes vote.
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Posted: 8/10/2013 7:28 PM
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SmashManiac
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I wasn't aware of the WIPs, but since this one is complete, my vote is to publish this one for now. And yeah, this isn't pacifist - lots of normal enemies killed. Not that it matters to me anyway; the run is pretty good regardless.
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