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I would advise against introducing Hyper Sonic into your run at all, because it raises the question: is the amount of rings gained by transforming greater than the amount lost by the transformation's ring consumption over time? Maybe it's possible to determine that one way or the other, but then that begs the larger question of how the ring attack ought to be evaluated, because whether or not that matters in the first place depends on the answer.
Is success measured by the mere fact that all rings were, at some point during the level, collected, whether or not the HUD's 'Rings' field reflects that at score tally, or is that very reflection the most important criteria? In other words, do you go by what rings were actually collected or what the HUD says at the end? In non-transformation runs, it's both, but if you transform, you have to pick one.
If the former, given the high speeds attained by both Hyper Sonic and the use of tool assistance, combined with the constantly decreasing 'Rings' value, I would point out that things could get pretty confusing with regards to determining whether or not rings trailing you when equipped with the Lightning Shield were actually collected, to the point of having to rely heavily on RAM watch to accurately make that determination (assuming that's possible) - which is fine, just something that would need to be considered, for what it's worth.
And, to remain consistent, whichever answer you choose, you should also apply the same approach throughout the rest of the game. So, if you opt to transform here, in MGZ2, then you have to ask yourself if transforming is optimal everywhere else. At that point, maybe you would be better off just setting up a separate goal category specifically for Hyper-ring attacks. For example, in order of importance: transforming; collecting as many of the remaining rings as possible (without regard to HUD display at end, let's say); speed.
So, that's my two cents four paragraphs about that. Also, hi everyone. I may not be around much of the time, anymore, but I do try to check in every now and then even if I don't post anything.
Best of luck Evil_3D on your future endeavors.
P.S.: That's not to say you couldn't or shouldn't transform at the very end of levels for entertainment purposes, so that the level ending reverts the transformation and cuts off any ring loss before it occurs.
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It would be problematic because eventually you'll transform and suffer ring loss over time, but that's not to say it wouldn't be fun to watch... and personally I think the objective is both.
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How could I not vote yes on this? Great job, guys. By the way, I love the cover image of Knuckles hunting rings. Did someone make that just for this run, or...?
Additional thoughts:
6:37 Why the jump before going down the tube? Faster down speed / tube speed...?
17:30: Hm... were you not able to fall between the cheeseburgers? I thought I remembered doing that as a kid.
26:33: Watching this for the first time was actually very dramatic despite, or perhaps because of, the fact you just stood there doing nothing. Really exciting, honestly.
All of Oil Ocean 2: Sorcery. You absolute madman.
Evil_3D: Just wondering, what was the hardest stage to route? Chemical Plant? Got any other comments on routing?
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mz wrote:
TheYogWog wrote:
So, for me, looking back the question is, "was it worth it?"
These replies before mine clearly show you that NO, IT WASN'T WORTH IT.
Eh, I don't think so; we were having fun, perhaps until you showed up. But at the time of this post your post count is 666 so I'm kind of scared to proceed but here we go...
mz wrote:
If making a TAS of a Mickey Mouse game is the only extraordinary thing I'll make in my life, I'd kill myself right now.
Wait, are you telling me to kill myself? Harsh, man. I'm being totally honest here and this is what I get, right away? Even on TAS Videos? It's okay though. I'm not totally butt-hurt (only a little.)
Or a lot.
No seriously though just a little.
TheYogWog wrote:
All those hours I spent replaying the same ten seconds of gameplay, here and there, over and over again could probably have been put to better use
^This should be the tl;dr, and an important lesson for newcomers before they dive too deep into this.
Eh. Fair enough. To some people it's worth it; to some, it's not. I guess, in short I would say that it was, for me. I'll leave you to speculate about what that says about me and my life -- I don't really care. I think you may have a point in that new comers may be well advised to not waste their time if they have other, better things to do like going out the club or whatever.
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feos wrote:
Hint: adding a brief tl;dr line can make more people want to read the entire post :)
Fuck 'em! Learn to read assholes.
This is probably the Best Damn Root Beer talking. No offense intended!
Edit: changed "read" to "learn," as was originally intended. This confirms it was definitely the alcoholic soda posting.
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I was just watching the movie, Special Correspondents, but don't ask me how it is because I wouldn't know -- I didn't get more than 15 minutes into the film before I got derailed by one of the comments Ricky Gervais made to a woman in an elevator (thanks a lot, alcohol.) Specifically, he said that he had never done anything extraordinary. That got me thinking.
I have done something extraordinary. Ricky Gervais' character in the movie might not have, but I have; and so has every other published TAS author on this site. I think that, in general, most people on Earth couldn't even comprehend the idea of a TAS -- no matter how well it might be explained to them, TAS is something that has to be seen in order for new-comers to fully understand -- let alone understand how to make one themselves. For one to actually produce a quality TAS, I think, requires an uncommon level of intelligence or, at the very least, an exceptional interest in a particular game or in the very subject of TASing.
FWIW, I am basing my beliefs on the reactions of those closest to me. For example, my brother is a good guy but quite different to me in a number of ways, and on being linked to the finished product of my Sonic 3 & Knuckles ring attack his only remark was to complain that it was, "over an hour long," implying that he hadn't even watched the whole thing. Honestly, I'm still unsure whether I ought to just laugh at the irony of the whole situation (even a Sonic TAS wasn't fast enough...) or if I should be legitimately offended that my own brother couldn't be bothered to take an hour out of his life to witness the fruits of my year's worth of loving labor. But, whatever; that is what it is. At least we TASers can be thankful that in the virtual realm people -- mostly members of the real-time speedrunning community, but also mere spectators who have a keen sense of taste in what they watch online, or even just each other (fellow TASers) -- appreciate the work we do. And I still firmly believe that TAS constitutes modern -- and I mean literally modern -- art.
I'm pretty much retired from the craft at this point. I haven't actually done any TASing in quite a long time, mostly due to time constraints, and the fact that at 30 years of age my hands and fingers can no longer sustain the abuse of hours-long TAS sessions and all the frantic keystrokes that go along with that. I estimate that well over a million individual button presses went into making my TAS, and I suppose similar estimates would hold true for many other authors as well. So, for me, looking back the question is, "was it worth it?" It's kind of a tough question to answer. All those hours I spent replaying the same ten seconds of gameplay, here and there, over and over again could probably have been put to better use, theoretically. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed doing it at the time, and really the worst I can say about my time spent TASing is that it was time "well wasted."
The thing I like most of all is just this idea that in the end I've created something, that I've contributed something to "the culture;" meaning, both the TAS and Sonic the Hedgehog communities. And that's something that every TAS author can say about their games and respective communities. And that's pretty extraordinary, in my opinion, when, in the age of information where many things have already been done before, it's becoming increasingly hard to do something new or original.
I think (and please, correct me if I'm wrong) my TASing experience is unusual in that I focused entirely on a single game. I know virtually nothing about the intricacies of TASing on any platform other than Gens, or any game other than Sonic 3 & Knuckles. And yet I feel my experience working within that extremely narrow field was extensive enough as to have given me sufficient knowledge of how TASing in general works that I'm still able to discuss the subject itself. There is a quote (sorry, I couldn't find out who originally said it) that basically says, "good art doesn't follow the rules, it makes its own," and I have always taken pride that my TAS tends to follow that statement. Initially, a lot of posters in the Sonic 3 & Knuckles thread told me that a ring attack TAS wouldn't stand a chance of being published because the goal choice, as it had been defined up until that point, was too arbitrary. In a sense they were right. It takes a strict set of logical rules to make any kind of score-based TAS work, and I'm just really pleased I was able to chart out those rules for myself in a way that other members of the Sonic/TAS community deemed acceptable for the first time.
Probably the single most memorable time of the whole experience for me was during Marble Garden Zone, Act 1. My girlfriend, who I'm still with to this day, had, at the time, recently been forced to report to the local jail to serve time for a prior incident involving drinking and driving. It was a pretty sad time for me in my life, and probably much more-so for her. She had "Huber" privileges, however, which allowed her to leave jail to report to work several times a week. I was her ride to and from, and mid-way through recording MGZ I brought my laptop along for the ride so I could show her my progress. I must have spent over a month working on that one Act -- an unprecedented amount of time for me to have devoted to such a short length of the overall game at that particular point in time -- and I remember feeling pretty proud of the footage I was able to show her.
Around then I had just started listening to silly, gangsta rap music while recording. I don't normally listen to or pay much mind whatsoever to that genre but in an odd way I feel it really did help improve my "game," as it were. I don't think I would have been able to produce such an impressive MGZ1 without the aid of Biggie Smalls' (for whom my avatar is plagiarized based-upon) "somebody's gotta die," among other classics. Truly, there is nothing like sitting alone in your bedroom at 2:00 in the morning, trying to shave just a few frames off a segment of video, with Tupac in the background describing how he lives every day of his life as if he were going to die that very same day. Now that is hardcore as fuck. Even mother fucking Arthur Fonzarelli isn't that cool.
That said, at this time I'd like to take the opportunity to offer an apology to all of the special stars TASers out there. At one point in the publication thread for my own TAS, I expressed that the quality of my TAS was, overall, on-par with that of any given special star TAS. I see now that this was a very naive suggestion of me to posit. Granted, I still contend that the latter half of my TAS may well qualify for that merit; but I'd now like to acknowledge that the first half is considerably improvable. Some time after publication, WST submitted his own take on my first level of the game and improved the time by something like 6-15 in-game seconds. And it wasn't until some time after that, when I attempted (successfully) to improve his time on that same level, that I really understood just how much effort, thought, and skill goes into the types of TASes we see on the front page. And just for reference, in case anyone's interested, here's: my MGZ1;my AIZ;WST's AIZ1; and I've elected to omit my improvement of WST's AIZ1 as the video quality of my upload was so terrible it's almost not worth watching (I don't know shit about video encoding), but it should be none the less available on my channel page in case anyone really wants to see it.
Here is what I feel is the single greatest moment of the entire project:
Link to video
So, with that I think I've pretty much covered everything I have to say in retrospect. I sincerely hope this reads more like an article and not just a blog post (I fancy myself as something of a creative writer, although I'm not per-say published anywhere, yet). Maybe this is a sad and embarrassing thing to admit, but I don't have (or ever intend to have) kids, I've not attended college and other than holding a steady manual labor job for the past seven years (and being a damn good employee, at that), my Sonic TAS is probably the most significant thing I've accomplished with my life.
I'll continue lurking for the rest of today, as I've nothing else to do except drink the Best Damn Root Beer and watch the rest of that movie, Special Correspondents. In the off chance that anyone is still reading, I for one would be really interested in hearing others thoughts about TASing in retrospect, especially some of the more experienced members (like, say, Nitsuja (although I'm pretty sure he doesn't even visit here anymore)). I deliberately tried to include personal anecdotes about TASing, despite the risk of sounding more blog post-y, as I want to encourage others to share their own. So, please, feel free to share any intimate details, or brag, or stroke your own ego, as I have, as much as you want so long as you tell an honest and heart-felt story about what TASing has meant to you in your life.
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Derakon wrote:
Any game that has a "kill screen" (thus e.g. Pacman) is immune to TASing. If the game is not actually possible to beat, then it can't be TASed in the sense that was used there.
I've got two words for you: de facto.
Or is that one word?
Who knows or cares...?
...Actually I just looked it up and it appears to be one word. So yeah.
The point is, is not the kill screen the de facto end of the game? If one reaches it, and I guess completes it as much as possible, doesn't that mean one has beaten the game, for all intents and purposes?
I don't know. I've actually always wondered what a Pac-man TAS would be like. For some reason the very idea of it perplexes me.
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The image below states that the game, Round 42, is the "only game in history that has remained immune to TASing, because it's fucking just that hard of a game."
Don't be alarmed as you scroll down (assuming you didn't see that this post (the one you're reading right now and not necessarily the image in question) was posted by me, and immediately (rightfully) assume it was tl;dr, and stop reading there); you're still in Kansas.
So what do you think, TASVideos? Is it even possible that a game could be developed such that it is fundamentally designed to be so difficult as to render it "immune" to the TAS approach and TAS methods? Can any game, in theory, ever be "immune" to TASing?
Edit: sure thing, feos. I hope this will suffice (probably should have done this first, apologies).
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Here is the definition of art provided by Oxford dictionaries: "The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power." And from here, on TASvids: "Art is created when an artist creates a beautiful object, or produces a stimulating experience that is considered by his audience to have artistic merit."
Hopefully we can all agree here that video games constitute art. Whether in a more traditional sense -- where you look at things that can be seen or heard, like graphics or soundtrack -- or in a more abstract sense -- considering the artistic merit of unseen things, such as a game's code or gameplay mechanics -- it is clear there is art to be found in gaming.
I think we can also all agree that TAS are a form of art. In the visual sense there is the video itself -- what you see when you watch a TAS -- while in the abstract sense there is the actual button inputs -- what a TAS literally is, and what you don't see when you watch one. Maybe I'm wrong but these seem like 2 different things to me, and people could be able to look at them separately, as 2 sides of the same coin.
It's been said that one doesn't understand art; one interprets it. I think that's true, and it makes me wonder: is it fair to think of a TAS as an interpretation of a work of art, which would be the game that the TAS is, well, TASing?
For me, this idea makes sense. Especially thinking about it in the abstract -- how certain button inputs on specific frames and locations within the game world interact with the core mechanics and overall engine of the game, to produce something entertaining to watch. I don't think I can imagine a more literal interpretation of a video game than that.
But how can this be? How can something that is an interpretation of another work of art, be itself, art? Yet from my perspective, that seems to be the case with regards to TASing and video games. Has this sort of thing ever happened before with other art forms? Has it ever even been possible in history, until now? Keeping in mind the idea that video games could be considered a relatively modern form of art. And TAS, even more modern than that. Maybe it makes sense that such new and modern art forms would have built-in the capacity of defying traditional rules of what art can be, and how it can be interpreted.
Thoughts?
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What worked for me was having a small YT channel where I could upload my progress gradually in segments. So I would finish one level, upload a video of it, and then the comments on that would help provide motivation for the next level. Given the long production time of most TASes, I feel this is a nice way to offset that wait time for prospective viewers of the finished product as well as increasing your own motivation.
And I would also like to echo what others have said, both about loving the game in question and working with others. Even though I didn't exactly work with anyone in particular for my Sonic 3 TAS, I can certainly see how doing so would help aid motivation for all parties involved in the project. That said, if you can't find anyone to work with directly you could always post about it in the appropriate forums, which is another thing I did that helped provide valuable support for me.
Also, Adderall
Well, feos you wrote that? That's a surprise, I can see you edited it last but for some reason I hadn't thought you wrote the whole thing. These guidelines were something I returned to periodically throughout the production of my TAS, and they were very helpful. They're written in a way that intrigued me as to what a TAS could be and inspired me to try different things. I really took them to heart, and I guess it paid off in a sense because eventually I earned my star, which I don't think I could've done without them.
I was going to post this link myself until I saw you already did.
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Spikestuff wrote:
TheYogWog wrote:
tl;dr: TAS chess when???
BLAH. BLAH. BLAH.
Refer to my post on this thread about a serious Chess TAS that was submitted and could be obsoleted with Godlike RNG (for Black win).
Yeah but why not a run that's less speedrun-y and more superplay-y? Like Mortal Kombat, sort of.
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I for one would enjoy watching a chess TAS, not sure if the concept is really viable but it's an interesting idea. Whether it's against a really powerful chess engine or even just something from like an old DOS game, it could be good either way.
Although I think it would be a lot harder to make against a powerful engine because you probably couldn't manipulate it as well and you would also obviously have to be quite competent at chess yourself. Watchability might also be less because I think with more advanced engines they actually take a bit of time to calculate their moves, and at such high levels of play unless the viewer is himself a master chess player a lot of the brilliance and complexity of the moves, and hence of the TAS, would be lost on them... unless, perhaps, like others have said, the TAS contained some kind of commentary to explain the logic behind them and the impact each move has on the game.
For those reasons maybe a TAS, not of the game of chess itself, but of any old video game that happens to be about chess would be more in line with TASing. I don't doubt in such cases there would be enough things that an average chess-playing TASer could discover and exploit to create entertaining videos. I can imagine scenarios like quickly capturing all of the computer's pieces without losing any of the players', or only using one specific piece to capture throughout the whole game, or the player losing almost all of their pieces early on only to come back and recapture all of the computer's pieces or just simply win by checkmate despite being severely low and outnumbered in material.
tl;dr: TAS chess when???
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ars4326 wrote:
But besides those two, it's probably hit-or-miss when watching a live TAS stream. In my case, if I were do to one you'd likely see me in one room repeating a jump over...and over...and over again. And then I'd become picky and redo the jump from scratch in a completely different way, lol.
Yeah, I'd say that's the trouble with live streaming TASes: they just doesn't seem like they would be very interesting to watch. Yet for the author it is interesting, so I think there are genuinely interesting things happening all the time during production of TASes or none of us would even be here, right? I've always felt if you could find an entertaining way to express to the audience all the interesting things that are happening, then maybe the concept would work. If they understood why you're repeating that jump each time and what your goal is when you redo it, suddenly it becomes a bit more interesting to watch. The only problem I've had with that is determining what is too much or too little detail when explaining things, and that the constant explanation tends to slow down the whole process of TASing quite a lot for me.
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I don't really care about labels that much but I came across a video this morning that left me wondering if and where TASers might fall within the increasingly broad term, gamer. Here is the video in question. I'm probably not alone here when I say there's times when TASing is the only "game" I'll play for months at a time, and that's not really playing it properly then is it? Is that gaming or is that TASing?
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Hm, I thought one of the conditions of having your run published here is that it becomes part of the public domain? If so doesn't that mean they can all technically be used by anyone for whatever purpose, regardless of the authors consent and despite it being kind of a shitty thing to do without it?
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Mr. Kelly R. Flewin wrote:
Pfft... we all know how to win an award!
1. Submit an inferior TAS with almost no re-records and claim it's Godlike
2. Bitterly complain, bitch, whine and moan when people complain about it
3. Claim racism, sexism or whatever -ism is the buzzword the week you submit
4. Make a total scene and complain that you'll start your own site
5. Quit the scene
Congratulations, you just won the award for Lamest TAS'er of the Year!
Please be aware, competition may be fierce, so you will have to really amp up #4 to ensure you have a chance.
;)
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
That's oddly specific. Did someone actually do this recently?
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So after a lot of experimenting I'm fairly certain Sonic and Tails can 100% every level in the game, including giant rings, with the following exceptions:
-97 in AIZ2 KTE area
-20 ICZ signposts
-10 LBZ signposts
I've also developed at least functional routes for most levels, too. It's all mostly unverified right now in the sense that I haven't done actual test runs for proof but theoretically I don't anticipate there will be any major issues that affect ring totals or route paths.
If anyone would like to help me out with doing test runs or has any ideas how to get any of the missing rings, let me know.
Edit: Managed to get the macros I needed working well enough on my own, probably no need for help with that anymore.
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I see this was posted a while ago without too many replies, and I know this is a topic which I also found to be confusing to get the hang of at first. So, just briefly here's what I'd recommend doing to get started, using Gens:
While recording, load your savestate and enter the input you want for player 1. When you're satisfied, pause the emulation without saving and cycle through the different input tracks until you reach player 2. I'm not sure the default keybind for this action, for me it's ">" (shift + ".").
Then simply load that same savestate again and enter player 2's input. During this time, player 1 will automatically repeat the input you entered previously. When you're finished, you can then save over the savestate and both inputs will be recorded.
Hope that helps.
So what do you think, TASVideos? Is it even possible that a game could be developed such that it is fundamentally designed to be so difficult as to render it "immune" to the TAS approach and TAS methods? Can any game, in theory, ever be "immune" to TASing?
Edit: sure thing, feos. I hope this will suffice (probably should have done this first, apologies).