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Please excuse my ignorance on the matter, but does a RAM state containing only zeroes must be proven possible on a given console now before submitting a run with this property? I realize that this is probably true for most computers by waiting long enough on a power off state, but I don't think it's true for the general case. If my fear is justified, it would put the validity of most published movies into question.
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Nach wrote:
Posting videos of AO games anywhere on the site is enough to have various content filters (Microsoft, Symantec, "safe" ISPs, and others) to ban the entire site. Posting videos of M games will fly under the radar of most content filtering and not ban the entire site.
I'm not sure how much of that fear is justified. For example, speedrun.com's Manhunt 2 page lists multiple speedruns of the PC version of the game with direct video links. As far as I know this has not caused any major problems for them.
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Thank you very much Mothrayas for sharing why you created that rule; it makes for a very good base for a discussion.
I have to correct you on one detail however: the first thing returned by Google when searching the word "censorship" is "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security", which is exactly what this adult rule does in its current form. So while TASVideos can ban such content, it's definitely censorship.
I few people mentioned that banning AO-games on TASVideos was to make it a safe environment for children. While I disagree with this opinion, it has some merit and I can definitely understand the concern. However, as I said earlier, I believe it is possible for TASVideos to remain a safe environment for vulnerable people AND allow adult video games movies for everybody else. For example, Amazon (which owns Twitch) has a giant collection of explicit sex-related products, but you have to search for them to see them (for the USA market at least).
The age checker solution suggested by Pokota seems like an interesting solution to me (although I would ask for the birth date instead of the age). The issue I see with it however it that it fails to take into account that age is only one factor of a child's maturity. For instance, I've seen plenty of 10-year-old children play M-rated games such as Counter-Strike without any issues whatsoever and with their parents' permission. I really don't feel TASVideos should bypass parents' beliefs about what's good or bad for their children. That said, I believe this solution is still better over banning AO-rated games altogether.
@Spikestuff: Can you clarify your last post? I do not understand what your point is.
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I usually enjoy "game end glitch" runs, but this particular one didn't feel special to me. The game just lagged for a few seconds, then things seemed to go back to normal, then credits. Because of this, I voted Meh.
I think the reason is the Konami code use, a fact that I did not realize before voting, as its unlock was done in an unintended manner, but its use was in an intended manner.
Regardless, this is an interesting gray zone in the rules. I believe the closest precedent was the Golden Torizo code in Super Metroid, since both are cheat codes that cannot be normally triggered under normal circumstances.
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Movie Rules wrote:
Additionally, specific other types of games are not allowed in any circumstance. Video games rated adult-only, or other adult video games with strong sexual content and/or extreme violence to AO standards, are not allowed.
Uhhh... why? This rule seems completely arbitrary to me.
For example, I would theoretically be able to submit a TAS of Manhunt 2 for PS2, PSP or Wii, but not for PC, even though the latter is probably faster to speedrun due version differences, and as far as I know is the version with the current world record.
Yes, I know about the usual argument about people getting offended/traumatized upon stumbling on said content accidentally and losing trust/reputation as a result to justify censorship. It still doesn't make sense to me. I mean, censorship offends me greatly, but this kind of rule is usually designed to achieve the opposite!
Now I don't want to start a debate about censorship beliefs and which opinion is better, because this will go nowhere fast. What I would like however is to have TASes of adult video games have a place to exist on TASVideos.
I'm not sure how strongly people on each side of the debate are, but either way, I believe having a "viewer discretion is advised" warning at the beginning of related encodes and hiding related publication screenshot by default would be a reasonable compromise that would please everyone.
What is your opinion on the matter? Should TASVideos allow adult content, and if so how should it handle it?
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Patashu wrote:
Yes, Knuckles misses 1 ring, but he more than makes up for it with other rings only he can get:
'Casino Night 2
This is the second zone where appear the second group of unreachable rings, 14 in sky at the begining 2 groups of 7, only Knuckles can grab these rings. '
So in the end it's a wash - each character's Ring Attack collects a different subset of all rings in the stages.
Thank you for the correction, I missed this detail.
Zurggriff wrote:
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 are two separate games and one would not obsolete another, just as there are separate published runs for fastest game completion with neither being superior over another. Regarding the in-level rings that were not collected, efforts were made to collect them but all attempts were unsuccessful. As far as doing the impossible goes, Mystic Cave 2, Oil Ocean 2, and Metropolis 2 were previously believed to be impossible to collect all of the rings. And just to point out, this Knuckles Ring Attack collects 5163 rings while the Sonic with Tails run only has 5104 rings in total to collect due to Knuckles only ring monitors (this is a separate game).
Again, thank you for the correction. As for the "separate games" argument, I think that's irrelevant. What matters is that both games are extremely similar, and I can definitively see one run obsolete the other for this reason, just like it happened multiple times with Pokémon TASes.
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Nach wrote:
SmashManiac wrote:
Very impressive ACE demo! The only thing that's missing would be if the "injected" games were playable, with the data exchanged through the extension port.
Such a thing would bar us from accepting a run, as it'd be distributing a bunch of other games.
Uhhh... the legality of this TAS is already questionable. It contains a bunch of music code ripped from other games, sprites ripped from other games, one copyrighted song and one copyrighted video clip.
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I really enjoy the "maximum rings" idea, and the run is very entertaining. It's clear that a lot of work went into this TAS.
However, I have major concerns concerning the goal choice.
First, the special stages contains a lot of rings, and they were skipped. I understand that they're different kind of rings, but I feel that the main goal was not accomplished because of it.
Also, the submission text indicates that an extra ring can be collected in the main stages when playing normal Sonic the Hedgehog 2. (It would also be greatly beneficial in the special stages due to split ring paths.) I'm not sure how if would affect the entertainment value, but it terms of pure rings count, picking the Knuckles version seems sub-optimal and arbitrary to me.
As a final note, I'm wondering what are the speed entertainment/trade-off mentioned in the submission text, as I'm not seeing any details about it.
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Very impressive ACE demo! The only thing that's missing would be if the "injected" games were playable, with the data exchanged through the extension port.
I hope someone will find a way to replay this movie on real hardware!
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A bit late to the party, but here goes.
To put in context, I regularly watched dwangoAC's Twitch streams prior to the TAS block with the various WIPs. I also watched the TAS block live, immediately followed by listening to a VOD of the French restream.
Positives:
- Super-impressive ACE demos.
- Good selection of TASes overall.
- Learning about new ACE techniques in Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past not published on TASVideos.
- Great commentary from RealMyop and Synael in the French restream.
Neutral:
- Galaga and the interactive coloring segments felt tacked on, but they gave some variety.
- Nothing special was showcased about the NES Classic Edition over a regular NES despite having exclusive content in both the menus and games. (For example, I discovered recently that in Kirby's Adventure, using the Crash ability causes a massive post-processing effect.)
- There was no camera on the controllers display board so it made the contraption practically pointless.
- Too much content too quickly. There was no downtime to appreciate the technical achievement showcased while it was happening. Even in the French restream where the trick was revealed early on, the consequence was that they only talked about it over the Super Mario 64 run.
- Out-of-context GDQMonitor references.
Negatives:
- Throughout the entire block, the game audio was barely audible. Kind of a huge problem when you're trying to showcase that the NESes are streaming it.
- The SNES streaming framerate was not good enough to showcase a TAS in my opinion, especially for Super Mario 64 and Portal which have very quick movements and frame-perfect techniques.
- Except for the audience reaction, there was no obvious way to know if the Skype footage was really live since James Chen never went near the couch, which made cross-referencing camera angles impossible to viewers.
- The English commentary was pretty bad in my opinion, to the point where I think it would have been better if nobody would have talked after explaining the NES Classic Edition's technical limitations.
Suggestions for future GDQs:
- Maybe it would be better to have dwangoAC handle the technical aspect exclusively, and a completely different one to focus on the presentation and commentary preparation exclusively. That way, I don't think dwangoAC would be overwhelmed.
- It seemed there were a lot of uncertainties until the last minute. Freezing the content of the presentation a few weeks in advance may have allowed a more polished one. Ideas that don't make it can always be re-used in following GDQs.
- Creativity is the limit for ACE demos. It may be a good idea to seek out people in the demoscene to help fuel it if it ever becomes a problem.
- Quality over quantity.
Overall, I had a blast! Good job to everyone involved! I hope you will find my criticisms constructive, and I'm looking forward to the next event. :)
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Pretty entertaining run, even considering the long waiting times. Especially happy with the boss skips, since their repetitiveness drained the entertainment for me in the currently-published TAS.
Really interesting choice with the SFX too; it's bizarre at first, but overall I think the positives outweighs the negatives in terms of entertainment value in the context of a speedrun.
My only gripe with this TAS is the zip-zagging technique being a bit nauseating, but I got used to it fairly quickly.
All in all, that's a Yes vote for me!
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Kinda disappointing to only see the first level. Each screen has 5 levels of difficulty before looping, and this TAS only showcases the easiest level. I'm not sure how much of a factor it is in the end though, considering the techniques used.
Details about region differences and difficulty modifiers.
What I've seen is really entertaining though, so I'm voting Yes even though I'm craving for more. ;)
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For those asking, I did not previously vote as the voting instructions wisely request to watch the movie first. I just wanted to point out a relevant movie rule that I believe prevents this particular submission from being published based on the author's words. As for the "You Have to Burn the Rope" publication argument, I believe this precedent is irrelevant considering TASVideos has a policy of not repeating errors of the past.
Now that I have watched the movie, I'm voting No. This TAS appears well optimized, but the game itself is so atrocious that it doesn't redeem it. In particular, I'm seeing the same 3 or 4 techniques constantly repeated due to the bad game design, the music is so bad that I had to mute it even though the movie is 4 minutes long, and the clashing colors and sprites are a sore to my eye. It's not even good enough to fall into the "so bad it's good" category in my opinion.
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Movie rules wrote:
Non-official games are allowed for submission. However, they go through more scrutiny than other games. This is because the game itself also becomes a subject to judgment, so it must be a high quality and notable hack or homebrew with a strong following.
Submission message wrote:
This game is really bad, if you couldn't tell, thanks to some very bad and delayed controls, hitbox weirdness, it's bad music, the spindash being useless for casual play, and obviously stolen assets.
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I was watching a video of someone playing Dessyreqt's ALttP randomizer. At some point, the player uses the Fire Rod downwards, hits an enemy, and burns it... along with another enemy completely out of the way near the top of the screen!
You can see this occurring here at 1:14:10.
Link to video
I'm assuming this glitch occurs in the normal game as well, and since I never saw this bug documented before, I wanted to do so here in case it would be a useful speedrunning tactic.
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Saw the Twitch VOD a few days ago too. Fantastic multi-tasking and gem management!
I really like how much knowledge of this seemingly-simplistic game you exploit! I don't know how good it looks to people unfamiliar with the game, but for those that are like me this is absolutely incredible.
Great job Le Hulk! :)
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Am I to understand that the 2-second SMB3 TAS can't be submitted yet? Is it just because emulators are lacking sub-frame inputs or is there also an accuracy issue?
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KadMony, while you are correct that I grouped versions when I said "fully obsolete" and was unclear about it, I would appreciate if you could remain civil in your replies. Thanks.
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Congratulations for this amazing improvement!! I'm thoroughly impressed by the amount of technical details used to plan and execute this run!
It's unfortunate though that the ending screen still triggers on a later frame than the currently-published game end glitch TAS due to early input end shenanigans. I hope that a new route will be discovered that would fully obsolete it regardless of timing conventions!
