I really think that "serious game" is too vague and ill-defined to be used in any kind of judging decisions (especially now that the vault tier exists so that we can get closer to the goal of "every game deserves a TAS."(*))
I'd say that if a game has a clearly-defined ending, then it's at least 99% eligible for TASing (the 1% reserved for very special exceptions.) Currently it isn't even a question of whether it's "boring" or not.
(*) Yes, I know that's not the actual core principle behind it, but I think the idea of the tiers has been at least partially inspired by that notion.
Even with the introduction of the vault, there are still some standards. Gameplay must stand out from non-assisted play, and it must be a "serious game". This TAS does not meet these requirements in a satisfying way. Rejecting.
Given that writing a good description for a movie may entail some work, such as watching the run itself (yeah yeah, captain obvious), reading the submission text and possibly reading something about the game itself (given that there's a high possibility of it being an unfamiliar game to the editor), I wonder if it would be worth marking (somehow) the movie's page with something that says "I'm working on this" so that work wouldn't be duplicated among editors.
I don't know if you have seen this, but you should check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdhmFFKEuog
The sound mixing is a bit off, but otherwise I thought it's wonderful.
The new tier system doesn't mean that we suddenly accept anything that anybody cares to submit. There are still minimum standards and requirements that need to be fulfilled.
Generally speaking, completing the game is one of them (with very few exceptions.) In general playing only the first level in a multi-level game is usually grounds for rejection.
(A problematic case is when the game has no ending and the levels just go forever. Those usually tend to be rejected for the simple reason that they are unsuitable for TASing. With some exceptions existing, of course. But that's the general rule of thumb.)
Could someone explain to me the idea of that game? Because it would be rather trivial to win every single round if you wanted (just write the word). I don't really get it.
If someone's legitimate post gets erroneously filtered as spam, does he/she get some kind of notification, and what are the procedures to report the false positive?
I see. I suppose that the mods are removing the spam posts pretty quickly, and I just happened to stumble across a couple of them before they were removed. Well, I suppose everything is fine in that case.
If you don't want to clutter the UI with mostly useless features, perhaps it would be enough to have support for it in an ini file or as a command-line parameter?
I watched the episode "The Show Stoppers" again, and it was very interesting because I didn't remember how clear it actually is what the crusaders' talents are, and how clear it is to many of the grownups. The episode actually goes a long way to highlight their actual talents, and to show how AppleJack and especially Twilight see clearly what they are and try to nudge them into the right direction.
On the other hand, it's a bit annoying, from a storywise point of view (and not only in this episode but all the subsequent episodes dedicated to this subject), that the crusaders seem to be determined to absolutely not find their talents. They explicitly avoid doing and showing off what they are good at, and instead stubborningly try to do things they even themselves know are not good at. It's like, at some level, they don't even want to accept their true talents, like they want to avoid them, and to preserve their blank flank status.
I also find the lack of guiding from the grownups' part a bit appalling. The kids are clearly desperate to find their talents, and many of the grownups clearly see what they are, yet do very little to actually guide them to find those talents. They wouldn't even need to be very explicit about it (like outright stating it); it would be enough for them to just "casually" nudge them in the right direction. Like eg. Applejack could just tell Apple Bloom something like "hey, I'm constructing this thing, would you like to help me?" Or Twilight could do something like "hey Sweetie Belle, I'm composing this song for Princess Celestia and I'm having trouble with it; would you like to hear what I have done so far?"
(Nudging Scootaloo to the right direction would be a bit more difficult, as it's not completely clear what her talent is, but I'm sure Rainbow Dash could have some ideas given that it's something related to physical abilities, and seeing how Dash is basically Scootaloo's "cool big sis".)
Oh, boy, people posting the ponies here now?
I've held off on doing that myself since I didn't want to flood the thread with stuff most people here don't want to see.
Well, the title of the thread is "post your art here." If you have drawn something, that's art. Why would ponies in particular be taboo here?
In Sonic Rainboom Rainbow Dash flies down, breaks the sound barrier, and then makes a 90-degree turn. How many g's does she experience?
Somebody did the math.
I didn't know there was already such a license in place. Which in itself is a bit telling. (As you might guess, I browsed the site and read many articles to see if a usage license was mentioned, but couldn't find any.) I think it should be clearer and more visible under which license the keypress files are being distributed.
Just wanted to draw something, so I drew this (click for a bit larger version):
(And no, I did not draw the outline of the pony. I'm not that good of an artist, unfortunately. I traced it from here. Coloring is mine, though.)
Had a bit of a problem because I don't have an aquamarine coloring pencil. Had to improvise with cyan and green.
I also scanned a few intermediate steps along the line:
I also like the little HDRI effect you have going on near the tree, even though it might have been unintentional.
I think you are misusing the term "HDRI". A regular image file cannot contain HDRI information (at least not without modification). If an image was produced by using HDRI in the original material, then it might be feasible to say "HDRI effect", but not otherwise. (For example an acrylic painting would certainly not use any "HDRI effect" because there's no "HDRI" anywhere in the creation process of said painting.)
In gaming, I think the closest term that you are thinking of is "bloom effect" (which is often, although not always, achieved by using HDRI data.)
(Note that I'm using the term "keypress file" instead of "movie file" even though it's not the customary term for those files, but I'm using it here to avoid confusion with video files. After all, "movie" and "video" are very similar in meaning. "Movie file" is once again an example of a very poorly chosen term, but which persists due to a de-facto grandfather clause.)
As far as I know, emulator keypress files submitted to the website do not use nor are distributed under any particular license. It seems that this has never been thought of much and it's in practice completely unspecified.
This, of course, causes some controversies sometimes. From time to time it raises the question of how much an author can copy another author's keypress file contents verbatim.
In fact, it's actually unclear whether emulator keypress files fall under copyright in the first place. (Arguments could be presented for both views. For example, the moves of a chess game do not fall under copyright in most jurisdictions, no matter how long the game might be. On the other hand, musical notes written on paper do fall under copyright, even if there are just a few of them. Comparisons to keypress files could be presented for both cases.)
To settle the issue and avoid all controversies, I think it would be better if submitters would have to agree that their keypress files will be published and distributed by tasvideos.org under a permissive but fair license (that preserves authorship information but allows others to reuse the contents in derivative works.) One of the Creative Commons licenses ought to be perfect for this (and this is a very common thing in many websites, eg. many wikis and other content distributors.)
You might think this is useless nitpicking, but I really don't think it is. I think this should be seriously considered. It's better to avoid future problems with this simple change than just leave it be and hope that it will never bite us.
(One remaining question is that if this is implemented, what will be done with existing keypress files that are currently being distributed by the site.)
It's an interesting question (and something I don't remember ever having been discussed very profoundly) how much one can copy from another person's TAS without offending their rights or feelings (especially if you do it without asking.)
Is there any license that the keypress files must be submitted under? It would make sense if they had to use eg. a creative commons license.
(And no, I did not draw the outline of the pony. I'm not that good of an artist, unfortunately. I traced it from here. Coloring is mine, though.)
Had a bit of a problem because I don't have an aquamarine coloring pencil. Had to improvise with cyan and green.
I also scanned a few intermediate steps along the line:
