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Arc wrote:
Whether a human can do it in reality or only in theory is the focus of sites like speedrun.com, not this site. But if a TAS is slower than a speedrun then there's a proven flaw and it warrants rejection. Whereas equaling a TAS does not prove that the TAS has a flaw.
Good point. We want TASes to be reasonably optimized, but not to be "theoretically unbeatable by humans", because it would be something that can't be proven.
Exonym wrote:
As for the vault rules, I don't necessarily agree that it should be completely distinguishable from RTA for the category. In my mind I've always viewed vault as just a record keeping of games from the TAS perspective. Moon/Star tiers obviously are the exception and I think the rule should only apply to them. Obviously I didn't make the vault rules, but that's just my take on that particular rule.
I agree. Being "distinguishable from RTA" sounds more like something about the appearance of a movie, and not necessarily to its optimization level, so I also think that it's something that should be required for entertaining (Moon/Stars) and not for technical value alone (Vault). In fact, what makes a TAS entertaining is how much superhuman it visually appears, while on the other hand most Vault movies often tend to appear less superhuman when watched. Though there are exceptions, of course.
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[4131] NES Mega Man by Shinryuu, pirohiko, Maru & finalfighter in 09:45.35
The movie speaks for itself, with all the improvements and the crazy glitching. I think we really need to put at least one Mega Man series movie, and right now there are none. This one looks like the perfect pick to me. Also the fact that it's a very recent publication is important, for the sake of staying updated with the TASing progresses.
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I agree that console verification is a good reason to allow GBC-in-GBA mode for GB games, since console verification is an activity directly related with TASing, as it works as a proof of legitimacy for movies made with TASing tools.
About one year ago I suggested to allow the GBC mode for GB games only for Moons and Stars, but it was deemed unnecessary. Personally, I'm fine either way about it, as long there is general agreement.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
As a consequence, replicating this run in real time attempts would be very trivial. And this is a problem due to this Vault rule:
Vault wrote:
Must be distinguishable from the best real-time speedruns, and must not be seen as trivial.
Two years ago, the author of this submission decided to cancel right after that I mentioned an issue with this rule. However, one year ago, all tier-specific rules were moved to the Movie Rules page, so anything left in the Vault page doesn't count as a rule anymore, but just as an informative overview of that tier.
MESHUGGAH wrote:
Haha, 1st time viewee here. The RTA looks great. Now what about this TAS? Is it completed in the same time? (Duration)
No, this TAS if faster than any known RTA, even today. Sorry for the late reply.
Blazephlozard wrote:
And from the sound of the description, this TAS is a recreation of an RTA run, as opposed to the RTA runs duplicating the TAS like Dragster/Zool (which should not necessarily be penalized).
It's true that this submission is using a technique discovered and used in RTA play, but it doesn't really matter, since it's doing it faster. A lot of RTA players today are using TASing tools or disassembling in order to investigate games behaviors and develop their speedrunning techniques, so I don't see issues in that sense here.
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TiKevin83 wrote:
That sounds like a regression, I will investigate
Note that this is an unreleased game, so there is a chance that it could be actually supposed to not work on real hardware. I would test it myself if I had a refleshable cartridge, but I'm not sure where to buy one.
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Blazephlozard wrote:
Would that Pinocchio run be accepted then since the game was accepted before? Rather than "acceptability of games, not movies", it may make more sense for it to be "acceptability of categories". New game end glitches can definitely retroactively make a fastest-completion trivial.
I don't think that would work, because it would rely on the existence of previous publications for the relative category. At this point it seems to me that it would be unavoidable to accept the Pinocchio submission... I'll ask to Jigwally to un-cancel it.
Edit: all right, Pinocchio has been resurrected... You're all invited to discuss in the relative submission thread.
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Thank you for confirming, feos. Also thank you to anyone else who contributed to the discussion. This submission is now being re-judged...
I need to handle a different matter now. As it was already mentioned, we can accept movie files that aim for the fastest real-time completion, rather than shortest input length, so both are acceptable. The8bitbeast, which one would you prefer to use?
In my opinion, the file that aims for the RTA-oriented timing record is more notable for both record keeping purposes and for technical value. Still, the decision is up to the author.
I also have a new question for the audience: how much did you find this movie entertaining, and why?
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dekutony wrote:
Don't really know why its Moon tier honestly.
I accepted it for Moons because the audience reaction was good. Although I was half expecting the publication ratings to be relatively low for entertainment, but that alone isn't enough of a reason for disregarding the submission response altogether. Anyway, please wait some more days for a tier revision.
Edit: all right, overall rating is pretty low now, I agree to change it to Vault already.
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The8bitbeast wrote:
I found the 9.88 strat. I TASed it then I was also the first one to replicate it RTA.
I also found the 9.84 strat. I made a tutorial on it, then someone else did it RTA
Excellent.
Now I only need to wait confirmation from feos, about what are the actual policies for determining triviality, since I seem to have found an inconsistency with this judgement.
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Thank you for your insight, g0go.
I have an important question though: who was the first to discover the 9.84 strat? I'm asking because The8bitbeast uploaded the movie file after that it was officially achieved by RTA runs, so I think I'm missing something.
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EZGames69 wrote:
What do you need to be convinced of in order to revert it?
You need to convince me that:
1) This submission is a speed-oriented movie that beats all existing records
2) This submission isn't too trivial for being considered as an example of superhuman play
Regarding the first issue, Blazephlozard gave a great argument in this post. Specifically, it's about the fact that the submitted TAS has been tied by RTA attempts after that it was made. So, technically speaking, the TAS has been the actual record from the start.
About the second issue, I simply think that we could draw a more relaxed borderline for defining triviality, so that TASes could be considered acceptable even when it's clear that they could be matched by human attempts. This would mean that some judgements that I used as precedents should be revised. For example: #5218: FatRatKnight's NES Overlord in 03:57.34
If you think about it, there are a lot of TASes, especially A2600 ones, that can probably be tied with RTA attempts. No one did it yet just there aren't enough people interested in trying challenge them, for the moment. Also, the fact that a TAS was tied by an RTA attempt doesn't necessarily mean that the TAS was trivial, since the RTA runner could have managed to tie the same timing by implementing new techs or optimizations that weren't discovered by the author of the TAS.
In any case, the movie rules are considering the triviality about a game as a whole, and not about specific TASes that could be made on them. So my reasons for rejecting this submission were more about not beating known records and because of some precedents I followed. But lately I'm beginning to see that both these could be seen from a different perspective. I just need to discuss with other user and with the rest of the staff, for making sure.
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Alyosha wrote:
There has to be a better solution here then to have the 'published ' run be the slower one, that doesn't make sense.
I agree to that we have to figure a better solution for that, but first we have to make sure if this submission is or isn't trivial, which is a separate matter.
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EZGames69 wrote:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Blazephlozard wrote:
2. There is a slower movie published, so publishing the maxed out time is important to Vault's mission of record-keeping. If there wasn't a previous movie, rejecting would make more sense, but as it is, the game has been maxed and deserves to be recorded as such
What about the Pinocchio submission? Should that be accepted too, even if it's extremely trivial?
how easy and fast can this be performed in real time?
If you click on the post I linked in there, you'll see that only 3 perfect-frame inputs are required in order to match the execution time. I dare say that most average speedrunners could manage to do that in less than 50 attempts.
Now, compare that with the best SMB records, that consist in many more frame-perfect inputs, often much close to each other, and needed in many tech instances through almost ~5 minutes runs. If humans managed to do that, then matching the Pinocchio movie I linked would be obviously RTA-viable as well.
Blazephlozard wrote:
I don't think Pinocchio is the same situation since it's comparing a full game run to a maxed "game end glitch" run. Though Vault rules don't generally care about that difference, one can say that the full game run is still the fastest completion that follows submission rules, and therefore there's no need to accept the trivial one for record-keeping.
This is comparing a non-maxed "game end glitch" to a now properly maxed "game end glitch" run, so since it's the same glitch, the non-maxed publication is now no longer beating all (comparable) records.
The point is that the Pinocchio submission is aiming to obsolete the published movie, because they're both aiming for fastest-completion. So it's not "comparing a full game run to a maxed game end glitch", but instead it's simply "comparing a slower run to a faster one".
And this isn't just a matter of Vault being strict, because even for Moons we still have an additional requirement for categories to be accepted as separate branches, that is: featuring different movie contents. On speedrun.com each category is considered as independent from each other, but here instead we have a branching system of movie goals that, if necessary, may even obsolete each other or branch again.
Blazephlozard wrote:
2. There is a slower movie published, so publishing the maxed out time is important to Vault's mission of record-keeping. If there wasn't a previous movie, rejecting would make more sense, but as it is, the game has been maxed and deserves to be recorded as such
If a submitted movie is breaking a rule, it doesn't matter if there is an already published movie. A judgement should not depend on whatever there is already a published movie or not, but instead on whatever the previous judgement precedents are, which is a different thing.
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I watched the encode with the time lapse. Now I see just how powerful the OoBs can be. At this point I think that "no fail missions/no OoB" would be a great for an entertaining movie. Note that the "no OoB" part may result subjective, so it could be more effective to define it as "no clipping glitch".
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Blazephlozard wrote:
1. The time was first achieved in TAS, and later duplicated in real time thanks to the frame timings needed being discovered through TASing; so though it wasn't submitted yet (due to 8bit thoroughly brute forcing every possibility!), Zool in 21.61 beat all records at time of creation. (same situation as maxing Dragster's in-game time)
Nice thought, I'm adding it to the aspects I should keep in consideration.
Blazephlozard wrote:
2. There is a slower movie published, so publishing the maxed out time is important to Vault's mission of record-keeping. If there wasn't a previous movie, rejecting would make more sense, but as it is, the game has been maxed and deserves to be recorded as such
What about the Pinocchio submission? Should that be accepted too, even if it's extremely trivial?
Blazephlozard wrote:
In the end it doesn't reeeeally matter that much, but, I suppose the precedent is more important than the 8 second run. Though generally, "maxed" times will probably be this short.
Well, it does matter, since The8bitbeast did put actual efforts for making this movie. But I agree that setting a precedent is more important, and that's why I'm grateful for this submission, even if it could remain rejected.
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ViGadeomes wrote:
Could we consider the RTA runs starting on power-on ? then a TAS will be always faster on the menuing part when pressing pause to make the in-game loads faster.
A couple of frame-perfect inputs are not enough for making a run impossible to match with real-time attempts, see this video. Specifically, at 4:57 says: "they are extremely difficult to perform and usually require multiple frame-perfect button pressed to work". Yet, the techniques described in that video are well known to be viable for human players.
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Memory wrote:
Aladdin is trivial on a conceptual level. You perform 0 gameplay and 0 difficult inputs. There is no optimization to be had.
Ok, so you refer to the specific submission, not to the game in general.
Memory wrote:
Pinocchio was never actually rejected, it was cancelled, so no comment on that one.
It was cancelled right after that I pointed out its triviality. Also, that submission was claimed for judgment by me, and I was about to reject it anyway. Not sure if you needed these details, I'm referring just in case.
Memory wrote:
#6345: MarbleousDave's NES Duck Hunt "All levels" in 1:15:12.15 in fact is noted as being obviously superhuman in terms of whether or not RTA could match, but it was still rejected for triviality due to it being trivial in a tool assisted setting.
The last one is especially key because to me it indicates that triviality is more than the ability of RTA players to match a time.
I agree with that decision. I consider that as an additional requirement on top of being superhuman, rather than a different triviality standpoint.
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Memory wrote:
The vast majority of games that I am aware of that have been rejected for triviality in the past have been rejected for being trivial on a conceptual level. For example, #5799: Flip & ajfirecracker's Genesis Aladdin, Disney's "game end glitch" in 00:02.64 is literally just setting a menu option. Here, the concept potentially allows for further optimization (movement is important), it's just not known to be possible.
Sorry, I don't get what you mean... Maybe you're referring to the fact that the rejection for triviality is usually applied to the game choice (see Barney), rather than to the run execution.
But I see your example features the same issue as this submission: the specific submission was rejected due to triviality, but if not using that glitch, the game would be otherwise non-trivial. In fact, there are already some published movies that were made before the trivial glitch was discovered: [3340] Genesis Disney's Aladdin by Flip in 10:04.86
Then, so far we found three games falling into this limbo:
SMS Zool: Ninja of the "Nth" DimensionGB The Adventures of PinocchioGenesis Disney's Aladdin
I'm willing to contribute to the cause by being a guinea pig myself and submit an improvement to [3086] GB The Adventures of Pinocchio by Baruch in 07:43.71
This would be the perfect stress test for figuring out a solution, as the current publication is in Vault and thus new submissions will go under even more scrutiny...
Anyone is invited to contribute to the project, given that you're not afraid of getting a rejection. :)
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EZGames69 wrote:
I get why some games like Barney have this rule in place but I find it really unfair for actual games like this.
I agree, and that's why I theorized the idea of raising specific exceptions for allowing movies that forgo using known techs, if these would make an entire movie trivial.
In any case, let's continue this discussion in the Ask a Judge thread. In this thread, instead, I think we should only talk about this specific submission and its judgement.
EZGames69 wrote:
What we’re essentially saying is we cannot reach the pinnacle of a fastest known record at all, and that doesn’t feel right to me.
It's not that "we cannot" reach it, it's that we can reach it too easily. So easily that it's not a tool-assisted speedrun, but just a replica of a real-time attempt. And thus it's not much meaningful as a "pinnacle" to aim for, at least in TASing.
Memory wrote:
What about cases where there are frame perfect ILs for a game performed by humans, but no RTA has strung them all together? Would we reject such a submission as well?
My opinion is that a submission should be rejected only if the whole movie is RTA-viable. That's why I asked to The8bitbeast to provide an improved movie, if that could have introduced even a bit of gameplay that can't be reproduced by real-time play.
I also think that a speed-oriented submission that matches RTA records could still be accepted for Moons, if it includes superhuman playarounds. However, as far as I know, there are currently no precedents or rules contemplating this possibility, so please take my words just as an idea, for extreme cases. The only thing it comes to mind is this line from the Vault page: "Opportunities to entertain the audience where it does not affect time is not a requirement. However, it is encouraged and can be used as a tie-breaker for two equally fast movies." But even about this, there are no known precedents.
Memory wrote:
What is triviality? Does the fact that RTA runners have performed it truly make it trivial?
Good question. It all revolves around answering this.
From the standpoint of the RTA rules, some runs may be considered godlike, for the amount of skills and efforts necessary to perform them. On the other hand, in my opinion, from the standpoint of tool-assisted play, anything that can be performed in legit RTA play is to be considered as trivial.
From the start, the purpose of TASing was to reproduce gameplay that can't be possibly reproduced by human attempts under any circumstance, and thus one of the original goals of the site. For this reason, I think it would go against the premise of the site the idea of publishing movies that aren't exclusively within TASing possibilities.
By the way, the term "trivial" may sound a bit detrimental towards some RTA achievements, but it's just a term I use to differentiate between what is TAS-only gameplay and what is RTA-viable.
Memory wrote:
It sounds like the game is non-trivial to optimize, it's just short enough to be able to match.
Elaborate this, because it seems a contradicting statement to me.
I disagree that it's the game itself to be short, it's more like that the glitch discovered opened a loophole that allows to skip any TASing challenge.
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Blazephlozard wrote:
What do you think of a new version of the full game TAS which uses Duel Escape for the tutorial, but not for any other duels? It's technically a speed/entertainment trade-off, as having to carefully manipulate RNG to embarrass every opponent in one turn is more entertaining than pressing Down+A.
I didn't consider the possibility of escaping the tutorial alone, but I think that in the end it could be considered as a speed/entertainment tradeoff as you said, so it would make sense. I like the idea! I'm definitely looking forward to see it done.
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I wonder why this submission got less (and worse) votes than the TGC1 one. Is it because this is Japanese? Or because it's shorter? Or maybe just because it got less attention due to the other submission(s)? In any case, I need more votes, or even posts, if anyone is kind enough. Thanks.
