Gameboy games can be reset by pressing A+B+Start+Select. And actually, games don't need to adhere to that. Mega Man II for example disables (or perhaps doesn't implement) this restart sequence.
On Gameboy games, one can't claim it's some hardware action the game has no control over. How do you feel about abusing resets here?
I may have given the impression that I want to make the distinction based on the technical aspects of resetting (and other things like pulling the plug.) However, that's not what I meant. I have been trying to explain what it means (at least to me) to want to see the game played by a perfect being, and what constitutes (in my opinion) gameplay and what doesn't.
Let my try to explain it in a slightly different manner.
Putting myself in the position of a viewer, there really isn't much practical difference between eg. the reset button, the power button and pulling the plug: None of them are (usually) input to the game, part of the gameplay, and instead all of them interrupt the execution of the program via outside influence, via the hardware. While there may be big technical differences eg. between the reset and the power buttons, from the spectator's point of view, there's little practical difference: Both interrupt the execution of the game, possibly messing up the save data it was writing, and neither is part of playing the game itself.
When I watch a TAS, I want to see how it would look like if a perfect being were to play the game, and I just don't see interrupting the execution of the game program via outside influence as part of that. I fully acknowledge that not everybody agrees with that, but that's just how I see it.
I am fully aware that there's at least one game where resetting is actually a gimmicky part of the game. As I already said, I would be fully ready to make a special exception for that particular game. You can reset the game all day long if you want. (Personally I would prefer if it was reset only when required, but I wouldn't lose any sleep if the restriction were completely lifted in this case.) That particular exception doesn't change my view that resetting is just not part of playing all other games.
Also, it doesn't really matter how the game is reset. Doesn't make much of a practical difference either, from a viewer's point of view.
feos wrote:
I still can't see the border you draw here that isn't based on your feelings/beliefs.
You are correct. It's based on feelings. As said, I want to see the game played by a hypothetical perfect being, and there are certain things I feel are not part of gameplay (such as interrupting the game program's execution via hardware.)
If you want to make it technical, something that could be put into practice, then that's easy: No resets, no power cycling, no pulling the plug, no ejecting the CD unprompted, no removing the game cartridge, no external cheating devices. Yes, I know not everybody agrees with that, but it would be a simple rule. (And yes, a special exception can be done for the one or two games where resetting is mandatory. I don't have any problem with that.)
Apparently you are unable to comprehend the difference between "harware abuse" and "abusing programming errors in the game" and think that opposing one means opposing the other as well.
Warp wrote:
Resetting during saving is not playing the game, plain and simple. It's messing with the hardware.
Okay.
So you finally understand the difference? Good.
Demon Lord wrote:
As a viewer, I enjoy an healthy mix of "pure" (a.k.a. play by the rules, but extremely well), software glitch abuse and heavy hardware abuse runs, as long as they're flagged as such and don't obsolete each other.
In case that's referring to my views on this subject, I would like to point out, once again, that I don't understand where this notion is coming from that I somehow oppose the abuse of heavy glitching.
Abusing the hardware, and abusing glitches in the game, are two completely different things. "Playing the game" does not mean "abusing programming errors in the game is forbidden."
Warp: Everything but speedrunning must be banned for TASing.
...
The problem with Warp's points is that there CAN NOT be a strict border for what actions can be considered allowed glitches and what are disallowed glitches. Battletoads jumping over the tube is allowed or not? Dying on a jet? Performing a hyper jump? All 3 can be done on console in real time.
I think you are confusing me with somebody else (probably somebody that only exists in your imagination) because nowhere have I said anything even remotely like that.
Apparently you are unable to comprehend the difference between "harware abuse" and "abusing programming errors in the game" and think that opposing one means opposing the other as well.
Or you are just pulling my leg and trying to troll me, which is a distinct possibility.
In fact, that's part of normal every day usage. Who here hasn't had someone turn on the washing machine or something else and have their power go out, and end up losing power to their console or computer? This happens normally, why should I not be allowed to use it to my advantage?
The exact same logic could be used to allow bending cartridge pins, cutting connections, ejecting discs and using cheat devices.
None of those constitute gameplay, but seemingly this is something that is impossible for me to explain in a manner that can be understood. Whatever. It's not like I expected to change anybody's opinion. I will always detest hardware abuse, but it's something that I just have to live with.
The console maker placed a reset button on the console, that button is fair game.
The console maker also put a power cord on the console. By your logic it's fair game to abuse it. Just pull the plug whenever you want to corrupt something.
Seemingly there's some difficulty in understanding what "playing the game" means. As I said in my first post, I fully understand that some people won't agree with me on what that means, or why it should be the "spirit" of speedrunning.
feos wrote:
I fail to see the connection. Some people consider abusing glitches in unassisted speedruns to be "cheating". So what? What does that have to do with anything?
Sure, and you could also open the console, cut some connections and solder in some additional resistors, for fancy effects. That's still not playing the game.
I agree with Warp that smashing the console, or anything else modifying the console itself is wrong. But manipulating the input to a black box is fair game.
"Input for the console" isn't necessarily the same thing as "input for the game" (the latter of which can be, and often is, a subset of the former.) The electric plug of the console could be, technically speaking, considered "input". It's not input for the game, though.
In my opinion, speedrunning should be about playing the game, not about trying to corrupt it by abusing things that the console might support but does not constitute any form of gameplay. There's a reason why in most consoles there's a warning when you are saving, along the lines of "saving, please do not turn off the console or remove the game cartridge."
Resetting during saving is not playing the game, plain and simple. It's messing with the hardware.
Let's say a game runs with 60 input frames per second and 30 visual frames per second. That means you have 2 frames of input for each visual frame. Wouldn't it be possible on a real console to hold right on frame 1 and left on frame 2 with light speed reflexes to make the game register this as pressing left-right at the same time?
That would happen only if the console polls the controller 60 times per second and buffers the pressed buttons until the application wants to read their state. It doesn't sound like anything that any console or game would do (although that's only a guess from my part.)
I have expressed these opinions several times in the past, but I'll allow myself to repeat them here (and perhaps expand a bit.) Note that these are my personal opinions, and I fully accept the fact that not everybody agrees with every single point.
The "spirit" of tool-assisted speedrunning should be to show what it would look like if a perfect being would play a videogame. A being that's not encumbered with limited reflexes and reaction speed, and who knows and sees exactly what the game is doing, byte by byte and bit by bit.
Emphasis on playing the videogame. Playing a videogame constitutes, in my opinion, taking the controller and pressing its button to control the game. Hardware abuse does not constitute playing the game. It's hardware abuse. Pulling the plug from the console is not playing the game; resetting while the game is saving is not playing the game; ejecting the CD when the game is not prompting you to do so is not playing the game; smashing the console with a sledgehammer is not playing the game.
(Yes, I know that there are like two games in existence where resetting the console is a gimmicky part of the gameplay itself. I would be fully ready to make an exception with those few games. I have never opposed the idea of accepting exceptional circumstances applied to some individual games.)
If it were up to me, saving in a videogame would be considered a no-no, for the simple reason that it's a waste of time. (Of course there may be some games were not saving isn't a choice, but that's just something inevitable then.)
An argument could be raised that if I oppose hardware abuse, what about pressing left+right or up+down on controllers that don't normally physically allow that to be done (due to how their D-pad is physically designed.) If it were a question of all-or-nothing, ie. either accept D-pad abuse as well as every other possible hardware abuse, or accept none of those, I would choose the latter. (I wouldn't lose any sleep if D-pad abuse were allowed but not any other form of hardware abuse, though.)
What I find hilarious is that certain episodes seem to be worthy of their own page. LOL
Why is that hilarious? It's pretty commonplace with popular TV series. (For example, Lost has a separate page for every single episode of the entire series.)
I don't see anything wrong in dedicating space for the thing that a person is most well known and famous for.
If you are reading the article about, let's say, Isaac Newton, would you be more interested in knowing what he accomplished as a physicist, or what he ate for breakfast on february 5th?
Man, Wikipedia's FIM article is so ridiculously fan-asskissing it's hilarious. You can tell right off the bat it's written by biased bronies.
Care to point out examples of bias?
(I don't think that telling that there's a large peripheral demographic fandom is bias. It's just describing a well-referenced fact.)
Finding the Movie Class Guidelines page is quite difficult. There's no obvious way of finding it from anywhere easily. (The only chain of links I could find was from the main page > articles > editing > editor guidelines > movie editing > movie class guidelines.)
The box describing a movie has its classes listed on the right. One would assume that clicking them would give a description of what they mean. Instead, they just jump to a list of all movies having that class (which can oftentimes be pretty large.)
I think the link should point to the relevant section of the movie class guidelines page (or, perhaps, a page that describes what they mean.) Said page could contain links along the lines of "list all movies with this class."
We solved it (without the throw, that is.) The map is quite ingeniously designed so that the puzzle is confined into a single room and is quite difficult to figure out, but you start figuring it out in parts, like progressing in the level step by step, until you get the full solution. I wish I could design puzzles like this. Well done, sir.
Thank you for the upload.
Is the game on the lower right Gradius 2 for the NES? I'm quite impressed by the graphics. Why is there no TAS of that game (I mean just that game)?
I like how Warp didn't say anything about the bot examples he gave/got responded about.
Is this suddenly some kind of pissing contest about who outsmarts the other?
I presented something that I see as problematic about one of the pages in the website, and asked for opinions and suggestions. Somehow this thread turned into some kind of argument bordering a flamewar.
On the other extreme we have 6 rerecords for a 30-minute run. Sorry if I'm a bit skeptical about this being the actual count.
Not sure what's up with that, but still, it doesn't imply anywhere bots were used.
My original post was not only about bots. It was also about lost and tampered rerecord counts.
6 rerecords for a 30-minute movie sounds to me like the actual count has been lost along the way. The GoldenEye run having exactly 400000 rerecords sounds to me like it has been tampered with. (It would require quite strong evidence to convince me that the author just happened to finish with exactly that many rerecords.)
I remember one case where the author directly stated in the submission text that he changed the rerecord count because of personal amusement or something.
So it does happen.
I, for one, still find the rerecord statistics quite interesting, regardless of the single movie using bots that skews the rerecord statistics a slight bit.
A single movie? I have hard time believing someone would rerecord over 2 million times by hand. Or even 860 thousand times. (If you rerecorded once per second, you would have to do that contiguously 24/7 for over 10 days in order to get 860 thousand rerecords.)
If those millions of rerecords are indeed all made by hand, then I stand corrected, and impressed.
On the other extreme we have 6 rerecords for a 30-minute run. Sorry if I'm a bit skeptical about this being the actual count.
