Posts for SmashManiac

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Posted: 8/27/2019 1:15 AM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Love seeing those weird ACE setups! Yes vote for me! A bit unfortunate that not all initial RAM states work, but it's really cool nonetheless. By the way, why is RAM initialized with 0x55 anyway? I thought it was an Snes9x quirk, so I'm kinda surprised to see that same quirk in lsnes.
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Posted: 7/27/2019 5:01 AM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
First of all, this is a definitive Yes vote for me! I love those watching those exploits and just wondering what just happened. As for the rest, there's been some philosophical debates going on, but I think the only question that actually matters is whether this kind of movie violates the intent behind existing tiers. For Stars and Moons, it clearly isn't the case, as there is always the possibility of creating separate branches if a slower movie is considered entertaining and offer something sufficiently different. It's not so clear for Vault. Say we have a slower movie that showcases some traditional gameplay, and a faster one that doesn't need to. Is there some value in keeping them both for record-keeping purposes? Personally, I can think of 3 different categories of valuable records: - Glitchless - Counter-intuitive gameplay mechanics allowed. but no more - Programming exploits As we've learned throughout the years, the line between these categories is not well-defined. Interesting restrictions were therefore managed by acceptance through the Moons tier. Whether this system is a good solution to deal with this particular edge case is something that the community will need to decide, although personally I can't think of a better solution anyway.
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Posted: 5/1/2019 3:59 AM
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SmashManiac
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Funny how this TAS makes this very hard game look almost trivial. Great job, and Yes vote! By the way, shouldn't the 3DS version have been better since it gets rid of the loading screens? Dunno if there's a technical issue with that version or not.
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Posted: 3/14/2019 12:16 AM
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SmashManiac
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Posts: 501
Extremely surprised o see anyone liking the audio on this version and not the SNES one. I'm personally in the SNES camp. I can't stand the Genesis version's stereotypical MIDI music instrumentation, note dissonances between instruments, and the screeching lo-fi SFX. As someone that is pretty familiar with this game, I can't see any optimization issues. Well done! Hoping to see a 100% TAS someday! Note that I have mixed feelings about this movie due to several biases, so I'll refrain from voting.
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Posted: 3/10/2019 9:21 PM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
Why would we need an unofficial mirror for the RNG? I would expect the official release to be used, not some random source. Also, why was version 1.6 chosen? According to the game's changelog, the latest version (1.7) has more weapons and Iji moves 20% faster, among other advantages.
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Posted: 3/4/2019 5:53 PM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
I never expected a game to showcase characters with more destructive eating powers than Kirby. The only downside of this homebrew IMO is the music, but the fast-paced action showcased in this TAS wildly compensates for it from an entertainment perspective. Definitely a Yes vote!
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Posted: 12/30/2018 1:29 PM
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SmashManiac
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Spikestuff wrote:
Done: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/download/52215335120004295
I have to say, I'm genuinely impressed that you went ahead to verify my suspicion and that it took you less than 20 minutes to do so. \(^_^)/
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Posted: 12/30/2018 12:03 PM
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
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Arbitrary goal aside, I heavily suspect that manipulating a single dice throw of 2 or 7 followed by a "Go to Jail" card draw would be faster strats than throwing triple doubles.
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Posted: 11/17/2018 9:15 AM
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SmashManiac
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No offence to the author, but I believe this TAS should never have been published. The reason is simple: The game wasn't beaten. It never reaches the ending screen. The credits gets interrupted and the game returns to normal gameplay beforehand. The very goal the movie must absolutely accomplish wasn't accomplished. I brought up this point many times during judging of multiple Final Fantasy VI submissions in which a softlock occurs in the ending cutscene when skipping a World of Ruin transition trigger, and the conclusion of the debate was that reaching the very end of the game was supposed to be a TASVideos standard going forward. You can read ars4326's comment on the matter in his judging of #4790: keylie & KadMony's SNES Final Fantasy VI "game end glitch" in 32:54.55. This standard was not met here, and that makes me very disappointed. I hope judgment on this movie will be reversed, and if not I'd appreciate a proper explanation as to why from the TASVideos staff.
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Posted: 11/11/2018 8:29 AM
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SmashManiac
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I was about to express my fear of the beginning of a dark era of submissions for silly game jam fan games... but this TAS is surprisingly entertaining and appears very well optimized. So that's an unexpected yes vote for me!
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Posted: 11/8/2018 6:49 PM
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SmashManiac
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As someone who finished this game, I have to say that this is really impressive, mixing the original stiff gameplay with all these emergent techniques to create something truly unique. Congratulations! One thing that I'm wondering though is whether an any%/100% category split should be done here, or maybe have the door open for a glitchless category instead. I'm honestly torn on this one.
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Posted: 10/22/2018 3:38 PM
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SmashManiac
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I believe there has been a publication mistake. This movie was accepted to Stars during judging, but published to Moons instead.
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Posted: 10/10/2018 5:25 PM
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SmashManiac
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This is basically the same AI technique that was used in the nineties to create DeepBlue: write a program with game-specific human knowledge about the game, and bruteforce the rest. It's a cool demonstration of that technique, but it's not sufficiently special or innovative to be worthy of a publication here in my opinion.
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Posted: 10/8/2018 5:20 PM
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SmashManiac
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Posts: 501
Fortranm wrote:
Does the game still go up to Lv.24 under 2 players mode then? Maybe beating Lv.24 would be a better goal in that case.
2-player mode is a best of 3 out of 5 versus match. Difficulty is selected per player and never changes throughout the match, and the maximum level selection in that mode is 20.
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Posted: 10/8/2018 4:50 PM
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SmashManiac
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Whoa, all levels up to 20 on HI? Now that was totally unexpected! I was worried that I'd be tired of seeing the remove glitch over and over, but I didn't after all, so definitely a big Yes vote here! As for ThunderAxe31's excellent question about obsoletion due to content repetition, I believe the core of the issue is due to an edge case in current definitions of tiers. If we didn't have the Vault tier, obsoletion would be obvious as this submission has more content. With the current Vault tier definition, we could argue that either the old movie should only be downgraded from Moon to Vault as it's still the fastest completion record, or to obsolete anyway because the old movie falls into the single level exclusion for fastest completion. I believe the correct choice here is obsoletion, as the level select option could be seen as skipping progression without the need of a password or cheat. In either case, I recommend an updated definition to clarify said edge case with whatever option is applied here. Note for judges: - Extra care should be taken to verify that no level selection shenanigans occur between resets. - While the game goes beyond level 20 up to level 24 (the game loops to more level 24s afterwards), those levels generate the same number of viruses in similar layouts, and does not appear to increase the difficulty anymore. Maybe a technical analysis would reveal otherwise, but from a casual perspective there is no noticeable difference.
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Posted: 10/7/2018 6:20 PM
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SmashManiac
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I had an issue with the previous submission because it selected Level 20 MED instead of Level 20 HI. I felt (and still feel) that it is an arbitrary goal considering: - It's not the hardest difficulty setting. - The congratulations screen does not reflect a proper ending, unlike Level 20 HI where the viruses are being removed from Earth by a UFO. When judging it, ThunderAxe31 concluded after verification that using MED instead of HI was not relevant in that specific case, and that the congratulations screen could be viewed as an ending, just not the best one. While I disagree with the ending interpretation, this is a valid point. Now this time, we have a submission that only beats Level 15 MED, an even easier difficulty setting because there's less viruses and more empty room to work with. Somehow, our arguments have been twisted to "any congratulations cutscene that plays after beating a level counts as beating the game". Here's an important fact about Dr. Mario: after level 15, the game automatically progresses to further levels after the congratulations cutscene, which have more viruses to clear and that spawn closer to the top edge of the level. This is different from the level 20 case, which also progresses up to level 24, but since levels 20 to 24 have the same difficulty, that progression is irrelevant. And for those that are still unconvinced, let's consider Tetris 2 SNES, another Nintendo game with similar gameplay made around the same era. It too has congratulations cutscenes after beating levels periodically, but only level 80 in Normal mode and level 100 in Puzzle mode would say "The End" at the end of said cutscene. (Note that I'm not sure whether not selecting HI speed in Normal mode for that game still triggers this message or not.) So I'm sorry, but as cool as the strat used is, I simply cannot accept this submission as completing the game, and I have to vote No for entertainment value because it is such a disappointment to see. It's a cool individual level completion, but nothing more.
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Posted: 7/22/2018 6:30 PM
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SmashManiac
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Very impressive gameplay with a Yes vote for entertainment! I have a bit of an issue with what this movie is trying to accomplish though. For those unfamiliar with the NES version of Dr. Mario, there are 9 different congratulations screens: - Level 20 LOW: Black screen, minimalist music - Level 5 MED: Flying book - Level 10 MED: Flying rooster - Level 15 MED: Flying spray can - Level 20 MED: Flying dinosaur in egg - Level 5 HI: Flying turtle - Level 10 HI: Flying pig - Level 15 HI: Flying witch - Level 20 HI: Day to night transition, UFO abducting viruses, falling stars Here's a Youtube video that shows them all. Note that with the exception of Level 20 LOW and Level 20 HI, the only differences between these congratulations screens are the flying object in the cutscene and its speed. Everything else is the same. Because of this, I feel that completing Level 20 MED is an arbitrary goal, as it's not the hardest difficulty setting (it quickly becomes impossible to place pills in the top corners at HI), and the reward is basically the same as completion of some of the earlier levels (unlike Level 20 HI's cutscene which shows the viruses disappearing from Earth). I'm not sure if this is sufficient grounds for rejection, but if published, at the very least it should not obsolete the existing movie in my opinion, and I have no idea what category it could fall into.
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Posted: 7/19/2018 10:40 PM
Post subject: Re: Dealing with invalid publications
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
GoddessMaria wrote:
...that's assuming a judge is too incompetent to not know the difference and failing to properly follow the Judging Guidelines by not checking every detail of the submission prior to rendering judgement.
Judges are humans. Judging is difficult. Perfect judging is impossible due to the sheer amount of factors to take into consideration. Honestly, the fact that there have been so few mistakes over the years just shows how an amazing job the TASVideos staff is. This is not said often enough and has to be commended.
feos wrote:
Alright. This is an example of thorough research that is often needed. See, the fact that it wasn't thorough enough means the human factor is likely to cause this kind of errors. To overcome it, research needs to be done with more dedication. And this is sometimes just not happening, be it judging, rejudging, or rerejudging. And it takes tons of time.
I might be missing something, but I believe the claimant should always be able to provide all the necessary research in advance so judges don't have to waste the time to do the same except validate it. It would be an immediate rejection otherwise.
feos wrote:
You can't prevent it. If the claimant only addresses one aspect, there can be a lot more. We either find and resolve them while we're at it, or another person brings them up later. The former takes tons of time we simply do not have. The latter takes the same time, just spread around. And both claims need to be verified anyway.
The latter would only take the same time if all aspects of a TAS would eventually be claimed, which I believe is extremely unlikely. Also, I should note that there's something similar already happening during the obsoletion process where the previous movies have to be re-evaluated when a new TAS is being considered to obsolete another TAS through non-conventional arguments. Obviously the scope is much more limited than my suggestion, but all I'm saying is that's already happening up to some extent. All that said, I see your point about rejudging multiple aspects of the same movie through multiple claims being tedious. A possible solution might be that once a warning has been published to ignore other claims for the same movie as they're unnecessary for the sake of integrity. That would limit the scope of the problem further. As for the rest, I think it's an acceptable risk, but that's solely based on my experience so I can't prove it.
feos wrote:
There are also controversial cases when we need to talk to other judges, to users, to the author, to hardware people, to emulator authors. And there are cases when policy depends on the decision. There's no way to take shortcuts, otherwise they will catch us later.
I have to trust you on that one. I didn't really think that a technical argument would require independent expert validation, but you're probably right. I'm not sure how frequently this would occur, but I was hoping such cases should be reviewed earlier rather than later anyway though.
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Posted: 7/19/2018 5:56 AM
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SmashManiac
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Posts: 501
Floogal wrote:
To be honest, I don't think a 100% video should even bother being accepted here. The minigames were already seen during the 97% route, and the boss rush is slow & boring with no powers or helpers. 100% would simply be padding.
For the boss rush, I believe you can't use abilities, so there would be some difference, even if that's probably not the most interesting thing ever. However, my main concern is the Vault tier. If my interpretation is correct, 97% is not eligible for Vault, but anyone adding the extra 3% immediately causes the padded movie to be eligible for Vault, which has to obsolete this movie due to being too similar in content. I thought it was worth considering this problem now.
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Posted: 7/19/2018 5:40 AM
Post subject: Re: Dealing with invalid publications
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
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feos wrote:
Second, the only other example of unbeaten games is single level movies. Those were allowed by the former rules, again no one is claiming such movies beat the game. It was just banned later.
Incorrect. As I linked in my original post, there was a Final Fantasy VI run that was published even though it ended in a softlock.
feos wrote:
Third, I don't know what relation any of this has with "endorsing cheating". Why "endorsing cheating" exactly, and not "stealing cookies", "fighting aliens", or "cooking pasta"?
Am I that bad with analogies? Alright then, allow me to clarify. TASVideos publishes a TAS. The information in the publication is false. The error remains forever without any correction. So, if a cheater makes a fake TAS on purpose to get notoriety and it gets published somehow, his cheat will remain on the site forever, and at best obsoleted. Because of this, it's hard to use TASVideos as a resource for theoretical best times and record progression, because the integrity of its leaderboard is jeopardized. Simple as that.
feos wrote:
This means the same movie we rejudged a week ago can be brought up regarding some other aspect, repeatedly. Which, in turn, means that we'll have to rejudge each movie several times now
I already covered how to prevent this in the mitigation techniques of my last reply.
feos wrote:
don't know where you got "10 minutes" from, and I don't understand how rule changes are going to be worked around.
My 10 minutes estimate is based on requiring the analysis to be performed by the claimant in advance, and rejecting claims that cannot be directly verified by a judge. It should be as simple as following a series of steps. I believe that's about 5 minutes to read, execute the steos and confirm the claim, and 5 minutes to update the site. Obviously I'm not counting passive steps such as running a TAS up to a certain point. In any case, even if my estimate is wrong, my point is that it should be a quick and straightforward process. As for rule changes, there's nothing to be worked around. Newly-banned emulators are easy to detect and flagging such movies could be automated, and as for the rest it's very unlikely to affect many movies so it will simply wait until someone finds and reports the problem.
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Posted: 7/17/2018 11:33 PM
Post subject: Re: Dealing with invalid publications
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SmashManiac
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feos wrote:
This is still exactly what I argued against: it requires explicit rejudging, and it can result in reports flood. The only practical benefit I see is encouraging TASers to obsolete such movies. But I would say the cost is way to high.
If TASVideos claims that a TAS beats the game when it really doesn't, then that's no better than endorsing cheating. Eliminating that is the most important benefit in my opinion. Re-judging should in general be very fast too, so I'm not seeing any issue here. Only the one aspect of the movie that was brought up by the claimant would need to be re-evaluated, not the entire movie again. By requiring the claimant to bring up the necessary evidence to support his claim, it should be a straightforward verification. The only case I can think of a claim taking more than 10 minutes to process in this case would be if a rule change must be considered, in which case it would be beneficial to everyone to have the matter settled as soon as possible for future TASes anyway. It's also possible to mitigate reports flooding in ways that are not possible for regular TAS submissions. For example, Twin Galaxies requires a specific level of reputation in order to open a dispute. Other possibilities include limiting the number of concurrent open disputes to one per user as well as one per movie, and ban users making too many false or incomplete claims.
MESHUGGAH wrote:
Any estimation of the amount of pubs/subs need to be rechecked? (retroactively ~6044 subs...)
Submissions: 0, because they've already been rejected. Publications: 0 initially, then at most 1 per manual claim.
Spikestuff wrote:
See, I'm failing to see an issue with the first point... Especially when the largest joke was given as an example which wasn't commented on by you.
There was nothing to comment about. You described the very problem I want to fix, and mentioned that you don't have an issue with it. That's fine, but that's just your opinion. The fact remains that some of the current publications are deceptive to the general public, and I've been fooled myself several times.
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Posted: 7/17/2018 2:53 AM
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SmashManiac
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Thanks a lot for the explanation dwangoAC!
feos wrote:
Supporting custom rerecording workflows that only work on the per-game basis is not only extra coding, but also a whole new platform that needs to be verified against all sorts of abuse.
I agree, but preventing such submissions because they require additional code analysis seems a bit extreme to me. Just my two cents.
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Posted: 7/17/2018 2:27 AM
Post subject: Re: Dealing with invalid publications
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SmashManiac
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Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501
feos wrote:
What to do with them is a valid question, but can you start with listing the pros and cons that you have in mind, that make it clear to you that we ought to do something about this?
Sure thing! Pros of flagging publications not up to standard: - The publication history remains intact. - The information in the publication is no longer deceptive. - Past mistakes are better documented for everyone. - TASers would be encouraged to fix flagged non-obsoleted movies. Cons of flagging publications not up to standard: - The feature has to be implemented. - A judge must review manually claims for non-standard flagging. - There needs to be a good definition of what should be flagged and what should not. For example, timing emulator inaccuracies that does not affect the game's logic might not be worth flagging. - There is potential abuse for people submitting false claims. Maybe this is not the best solution, but it's the best one I can think of.
Mothrayas wrote:
SmashManiac wrote:
There have been propositions in the past to unpublish such movies, but for some reason that never happened as far as I know, and I cannot find any explanation as to why on these forums, so I can only speculate.
It was voted against.
No wonder I could not find it with such a title. Thanks!
Spikestuff wrote:
Simple solution. Obsolete it.
That doesn't fix the issue of incorrect information being published on the site in the meantime. Plus, sometimes the issue affect movies that are already obsoleted.
feos wrote:
Imagine we agreed to have a workflow for marking invalid movies. In order to determine their validity, we have to check them against all the existing rules. Basically, we have to rejudge them.
I agree that it would be insane to do that. I was thinking more in the lines of flagging a publication with a warning only when someone reports an issue that is confirmed valid by a judge, maybe through a dedicated forum or something like that.
Warp wrote:
I have no idea if there exist any such TASes that are in a published (non-obsolete) state.
Yes there is; see the City Connection movie I gave as an example in my first post which does not complete the game as defined per the rules.
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Posted: 7/17/2018 1:28 AM
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SmashManiac
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My memory is a bit fuzzy about this game, but wouldn't it make sense to append the mini-games for 100% at the end of this movie now? I feel it will get quickly obsoleted otherwise.
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Posted: 7/14/2018 7:52 PM
Post subject: Dealing with invalid publications
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SmashManiac
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Since the beginning of TASVideos, many submissions were accepted and published, only to later have that publication questioned as it did not or no longer meet the standards of the site. Seeing how this problem just occurred again a few weeks ago with [3722] NES City Connection "warpless" by link_7777 & EZGames69 in 04:35.60, I think it's about time something should be done to fix this long-lasting problem. Here are a few examples of how such situations happened in the past that I can think of on the top of my head: - Single level TAS published, then afterwards no longer considered up to standard as it did not reach the game's ending. (e.g., F-Zero) - Glitched TAS published, then afterwards determined invalid due to the glitch not existing on real hardware. (e.g., Chrono Trigger) - TAS published, then afterwards revealed to not have met the criteria for beating the game. (e.g., City Connection) The way these publications have been handled in the past were to leave them as-is, and obsolete them as soon as a replacement movie existed. For example, here is ars4326's explanation as to how he had to deal with such a situation with Final Fantasy VI following an ending softlock debate which changed the standard for game completion: Post #415341 The issue with this approach is that errors or changes in standards remain as-is on the site and never acknowledged publicly, sometimes years after the issue was noticed. Even when the movie does eventually get obsoleted, it still remains available, and cannot be used reliably as an historical archive of TAS progression. There have been propositions in the past to unpublish such movies, but for some reason that never happened as far as I know, and I cannot find any explanation as to why on these forums, so I can only speculate. In any case, one alternative could be to announce on now-considered-invalid publications something like "WARNING: This movie is no longer considered to meet TASVideos's standards as it violates the following movie rule: XYZ". To ensure such publications does not cause issues in the future, I would move them to a new "bad movie" tier, and make sure they no longer hide valid movies they originally obsoleted.
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