Streaming arbitrary data through an external port: this should be allowed depending on entertainment value. A huge number of games are vulnerable to ACE, so if you're going to pick a game to do an ACE movie with it should be for a very good reason. It should be allowed more generally in Vault unless movies are way too similar on the same console even across games. The controller port isn't the issue here.
But the question is: Is it even a speedrun anymore?
What's happening is that you are hacking the console (using bugs in some game to do so) and starting to enter and run your own program. The game itself has ended and isn't even running anymore. The console is now running your custom program, not the original game. The speedrun has stopped, and now it's just some homebrew demo being run.
This is only slightly different from simply creating your own homebrew ROM and running it. Only the method by which it's entered into the console is different (as well as there being more space limitations because you don't have a full ROM cartridge to play with, but that's rather inconsequential in this context). TASVideos has never been a demo compo site, but a speedrunning site. (We could start publishing demos, and this has actually been suggested since many years as a separate part of the site, but they would not be speedruns.)
Of course it becomes muddier when what the ACE payload does is to jump to the end of the game (by some definition of "end"). In this case I would say that at a very minimum if it does anything else besides jumping to the end, it's sub-optimal and thus not eligible for Vault, maybe not even into Moons. (I would say that even Moon TASes need to actually play the game, not run custom demo code.)
Witnessing the ending without completing typically required objectives: this sounds like an entertainment value issue. If a run that skips straight to the end movie is uniquely entertaining from one that gets both the victory conditions and the resulting movie, why not allow it? But I suspect this specific scenario causes a lot of entertainment issues.
This goes more into the philosophical question of what constitutes "completing the game". There is no one single unambiguous answer.
Most consider simply reaching a point in the game that can be universally agreed to be the "ending", no matter how that point is reached, to be enough for "game completion". This could be some kind of ending credits, or whatever the game uses to signal the player that the game is finished (usually accompanied by there not being anything else to play and the game stopping from accepting any input, other than perhaps returning to the main menu.)
But if a speedrun where to do nothing more than jump straight from bootup to the ending in a fraction of a second, showing literally no gameplay whatsoever, not many would consider that very entertaining. It might technically fulfill "game completion" as defined above, but it wouldn't feel very satisfying. No part of the game was played, after all.
But defining "completing the game" in any other way would be difficult and contentious.
In the world of subjective feelings there's no correctness, only popularity. Playing a game with resets is not correct. Playing it without resets isn't correct either.
I wasn't using the word "correct" in this context to mean "a mathematically provable absolute fact", but more like "valid" and "legit". It is possible for the majority to hold an invalid position or opinion. (I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm just saying that popularity all by itself isn't a good argument.)
But as said, I don't hold any illusion that in this particular case my opinion will sway the majority (or anybody, for that matter). I'm just expressing my personal frustration and disillusionment over the situation. Many speedruns (tool-assisted and unassisted) have become something I'm quite uninterested in, and either boring or annoying to watch (often both). I find this especially sad when the speedrunning of a particular game used to be extremely enjoying to watch, but then it degraded to a point that I cannot even watch a single run to its completion without getting so annoyed that I just stop watching (the previously mentioned Half-Life 2 being a quintessential example of this).
Sometimes, especially on the unassisted side, the rules can be pretty arbitrary, yet the community accepts them nevertheless. (Even on the tool-assisted side it can sometimes feel that way. For example, using a cheat code in a game is generally banned, even if it can be entered via controller input alone, because of it having been specifically programmed into the game as an easter egg. However, if the exact same cheat can be triggered via a glitch, then it's for some reason accepted, even though the end result may be exactly the same. Why one is banned while the other isn't, even though the end result is exactly the same, is beyond my comprehension.)
How many people also find such a rule unambiguous and share your notion on "legit" speedrun/superplay, "actually" paying the game, and using "normal" input?
I have never maintained the illusion that my opinion will have any effect on speedrunning (either tool-assisted or unassisted). I have since long resigned to the fact that certain speedruns of certain games are simply too boring for me to even bother to watch because of the sheer amount of what I consider illegit techniques being used. (As an example, I haven't watched Half-Life 2 speedruns in many years. I stopped watching some time after speedruns just literally spent several minutes doing nothing more than quick-saving and quickloading repeatedly hundreds of times, which is boring as hell.)
The same is true for many TASes that overly abuse things like savedata corruption (especially if it happens via the reset button).
I suppose that I can take some solace in the thought that your only answer to my arguments seems to be "nobody thinks like you", which is an argumentum ad populum at its finest. Popularity doesn't make an argument correct; it only makes it popular.
If you consider pressing the reset button to be the same thing as using a gameshark
No, I don't. I was simply pointing out that your argument for allowing the reset button could just as well be used, as-is, to allow any other way of skipping cutscenes, even those that are genuinely considered cheating and generally disallowed. In other words, it's not a very good argument for allowing the reset button.
If we want to have a functioning rule set about what TASing techniques should be considered legit, we have to find something between the extremes of "anything goes" and an absolute purist approach. It is inevitable that some arbitrary lines have to be drawn for that.
As I have been saying many times, I think that a legit speedrun/superplay ought to consist on actually playing the game, using normal controller input, not breaking the game with things like the reset button or other means. I think it wouldn't be a very ambiguous rule to forbid the reset button (with an exception granted to those three games where it's mandatory in order to advance in the game at certain points).
I run Diddy Kong Racing, a game where we use the reset button not to perform glitches, but to skip long cutscenes. Not pressing the reset button would add zero value to the run, no extra gameplay, only more time spent watching cutscenes.
Compare that to something like: "We use a gameshark to skip long cutscenes, but nothing else. Not using gameshark would add zero value to the run, no extra gameplay, only more time spent watching cutscenes."
Would that justify using gameshark to skip cutscenes?
Unfortunately no, it isn't that simple. As I said, without any exaggerations, probably half of all video games don't have an up to date manual especially not with walkthroughs or any standard to follow which would detail the developers/designers intended way to beat the game.
Why are you clinging to this "what the developers intended" thing? Nowhere have I ever argued about what the developers "intended". I don't even remember using either word prior to this (at least not in this specific context).
With some games (especially those where glitches allow skipping significant portions) it could be an interesting category to see the game beaten using the "intended" route, without unintended skips (I'm sure a consensus could be reached with many games on what's the "intended" route). However, this is a completely different and unrelated subject. I have never argued for this, especially for this to become somehow mandatory.
Abusing glitches is most certainly not something that the developers ever intended, but that's just fine. (Sometimes it would be nice to see "glitchless" or "low-glitch" categories, but that shouldn't be the mandatory main category.)
1 - Warp:Only intended and expected actions allowed that required for the gameplay
While Warp mostly used different metaphors and terms, I believe the keypoint here is that all your actions are limited to interacting with the game through the way the developers intended it.
Phrasing it like that sounds a bit misleading, as it may give the impression that I support abusing glitches being banned as well. Certainly things like going out-of-bounds is not what the developers intended. However, for speedrunning purposes that's A-ok (unless we accept some form of "glitchless" or "low-glitch" category for a particular game).
I suppose the ambiguity comes from that expression "interacting with the game", which exact meaning is unclear, especially when coupled with "the way the developers intended".
It's ok to do things the developers didn't intend, but I'd prefer it if it were done via gameplay, not via non-gameplay methods (such as the reset button). With many consoles, especially the older ones, this would be a rather simple thing to mandate: Controller button presses only, no other buttons on the console, or any other way of affecting the game. (If in some consoles it can be reset with the controller buttons, then that particular combination could be banned as well. Although I wouldn't lose much sleep if that particular console is made an exception. No big deal.)
If a particular individual game makes the reset button a gimmick, then by all means make an exception with that one game. Press the reset button all day long if you really want. However, that should be exactly that: An exception. (Not extremely different from other exceptions that are sometimes granted for some particular individual games, such as not requiring the TAS to contain the last input to dismiss the end credits, or the TAS given the permission to have an unusual goal that's not fastest completion. Just because a few individual games are granted these exceptional permissions doesn't mean that they are automatically granted to all games.)
With Windows TASes, and if we ever get to TAS modern consoles, these "no external influence" rules become even more relevant. For example in Windows "no alt-tabbing away from the game and launching a hex editor to change the savefile of the game". Or killing the game from the task manager. Or pressing ctrl-alt-del to reboot the system. Or running a background program that allows you to jump to the end of the game with a button press.
Didn't SDA start as (almost exclusively) a site for Quake speedruns? The good thing back in those days was that Quake speedruns didn't need to be recorded as video, but they could be recorded as relatively small "demo" files, which anybody could replay on their own computer if they had a copy of Quake. Thus bandwidth and storage space wasn't a problem.
Of course nowadays it's more common and convenient to just stream speedruns live, and then archive PBs, and submit them to these sites (well, mostly speedrun.com, I suppose), because you can do this with any game, and it doesn't need support for any replay data files. As you say, SDA for some reason couldn't keep up with this innovation.
On that note, I think the Quake section of speedrun.com is quite a disappointment. There are only 4 entries on the nightmare any%, 5 entries in the easy 100%, and 3 entries in the nightmare 100%. For some reason this isn't a very competed game at speedrun.com (which I find quite strange, given how much Quake is speedran overall.)
Also, apparently speedrun.com doesn't do segmented Quake runs, which is my favorite category for that game, which is also a disappointment.
1. In case you don't know, I already started and having a page with good up-to-date informations listed down at Wiki: MESHUGGAH/ForbiddenTechniques
I still favor p4wn3r's view. And I couldn't find any counter arguments or different approach for the opposite of these:
p4wn3r wrote:
Frankly, arguments as "the game should be played like X" are useless for TASing. It's just not how things work here, we already play games at extremely unrealistic conditions. We're definitely not interested in how things were intended to be, we're interested in how they are.
It's not really a question of how "realistic", or "possible", or "intended" something is for a human player to do. My own contention with speedruns (be they unassisted or tool-assisted) is how much the behavior of the game is influenced from the outside, ie. using things that are not part of the game itself.
Some people have the opinion of "if it's possible (without eg. modifying the hardware or using cheating devices), anything is allowed". I don't agree with that. And neither do these people! (At least the vast majority of them.) Let's take an extreme example:
You are speedrunning a Windows game, and you save the game as soon as it starts and is possible. You then immediately alt-tab away from the game, launch a hex-editor, and use it to edit the savefile of the game so that when you return to the game and load it, it jumps right to the end of the game.
Would this be acceptable by anybody (even those whose opinion is "anything goes")? No. Yet, it's perfectly possible to do that, completely within the system itself, and we didn't even need any hardware abuse, reset buttons, pulling the powerplug, or anything.
Many people would say "ok, as long as it can be done from within the game, anything goes". Yet, once again, this is not the majority consensus either. For example, when running Source Engine games (such as Half-Life), it's generally forbidden to open the developer console and enter some cheat codes there, or jump to the last level, or anything. Even though this can be fully done from within the game, and we didn't even need to exit it, or use any sort of hardware abuse to do it.
So there are reasonable limits to what a runner (unassisted or tool-assisted) ought to be allowed to do. There just have to be, by necessity. The question is merely where those limits should be put.
If even many things that are fully doable from within the game, using the game's own input, may sometimes be banned, more the reason to ban hardware abuse, or any other form of influencing the behavior of the game from the outside, using things that are not input to the game itself.
Many people say "TAS means tool-assisted superplay. SUPERPLAY!!!" Ok, well, play the game then. Don't break it using input not intended for the game, such as the reset button. Or break it by running your own custom code by abusing an exploit within the game (even if it can be done with controller input alone). That's not playing the game.
I know I'm almost alone with this, but I do not consider any speedrun (unassisted or tool-assisted) to be legit if it doesn't actually play the game at all points, and instead resorts to external ways to influence it (or runs custom code). Glitching the game is ok (although the difference between glitching and ACE can become fuzzy at some extreme levels), but only when it happens within the terms of the game itself. (For example, I don't consider resetting while the game is saving, in order to corrupt the savefile to be legit gameplay. Sorry, I just don't.)
I think much of the confusion about "technical rating" stems from that word, "technical".
This is only my personal opinion, of course, but I never envisioned that rating to be something objective, something that can be measured with hard numbers and mathematically proven. In that sense the word "technical" gives a very misleading impression.
I would say that "technical rating" is as subjective as "entertainment rating". I don't see any problem in it being someone's completely subjective opinion. Absolute objectivity is not required. If you personally feel that the TAS is technically impressive, by whatever qualities you think are relevant, you are fully entitled to your opinion and your rating. Don't be fooled by that, should I say, technical-sounding word "technical".
Another common misconception is that "technical quality" refers solely to how frame-perfect the TAS is. In other words, if the run can most probably not be improved anymore, or by any significant amount, then it should get a perfect technical score.
I completely disagree with that. I don't think technical rating should measure frame perfection (and not only because it's something that can never be proven exactly). It can be part of it, but only a small part.
As the guidelines say, in the same way as not all games lend themselves for a prefect entertainment rating, no matter what the TASer does, likewise not all games lend themselves for a perfect technical rating, no matter what the TASer does. The TAS could be frame-perfect, and still deserve a 3 in technical quality, for the mere reason that the game is so simple and straightforward that it just doesn't allow the TASer to show any technical prowess in its making.
While entertainment rating ought to be how entertained you were by watching the run, technical rating ought to be a (somewhat subjective) measure of how much work and effort was put into making it. And this is not measured (solely) by the number of hours put into it, but by the amount of other kind of work. With some games a lot more work like this is just not possible, while with others entire new technologies have been developed to make a faster run.
The recent NES Arkanoid warpless run is a perfect example of a TAS that deserves a very high technical rating. The author developed an entire simulator in order to be able to brute-force an optimal path programmatically. This is the kind of hard work I'm talking about. It's not just the perfection of the end result, but the path there, the technical work that had to be put in order to achieve this. The impressiveness of that work.
Of course you are free to interpret "technical rating" as you wish, but this is how I would see it.
Looking through Douglas Korekach's (the person who claims to have gotten a 1:42 in Pitfall!) scores, a few odd things jump out at me. For one, in a lot of his games, he sets a world record that is 5 times more than the next closest person to him.
I wouldn't put any weight to any world record claims at Twin Galaxies, especially those made 20+ years ago with exactly zero evidence, given the website's horrendous track record in terms of standards of verification. (In the most infamous cases that have been the source of huge controversy in recent years, world records were claimed with the only "evidence" being the word of a TG admin who claimed to have witnessed the making of the record... while being a close friend with the speedrunner.)
Twin Galaxies has got, at least in the past, a lot of false credibility and authority because the Guinness World Records used them as their official source of video game world records for many years. I get the feeling that GWR did a bit of shoddy research on the TG website and organization, and considered them more credible than they really were, perhaps because the people at GWR didn't really know better when it comes to these new-fangled fancy technologies and video game culture. (I hope they have learned better recently. Haven't checked what they currently use as their sources.)
Past that, I swear I once posted a thread on the topic of "do we need more than one run per category" on SDA.
I like the fact that speedrun.com is actually a full list of entries for a game, rather than just the best entry and nothing else. You can see where everybody stands (especially when it comes to a very popular game), and you can watch their runs if you want.
It wouldn't be the first time that I check the rankings on a particular game at speedrun.com and notice that "oh, this guy I have been watching at twitch has made a new PB. I have to see this." This even when said person is on 3rd place or whatever.
Two perhaps a bit lesser-known movies (at least when compared to the huge block-buster movies) I would recommend are Predestination (2014), and It Follows (2014).
A site gap that I do think exists is in community-driven TASing. TASVideos isn't an amazing place for human theory TASing (TASes that try to optimize the current human capable RTA route), and sometimes their branches don't line up well with SRC community defined categories.
I think that another thing is that TASVideos is a bit too restrictive when it comes to different speedrunning categories for a single game, and I'm not really sure why.
TASVideos isn't just all about speedruns. Lots of videos makes entertainment tradeoffs, and there are playarounds too. So in a sense, not all videos are speedruns because they don't complete the game as fast as possible.
In general, "speed/entertainment tradeoff" is usually made when the absolutely fastest completion time would be very boring to watch, and a slightly (usually only very slightly, although there are probably exceptions) slower way is much more viewer-friendly. That's why it's called a tradeoff: Sacrifice a bit of speed to make the run less boring. Pay something, gain something.
Quite clearly a custom demo that's run using ACE isn't a "speed/entertainment tradeoff". It's not sacrificing a bit of speed to make the otherwise boring run a bit more viewer-friendly.
Outright playarounds are quite an exception rather than the rule, and often (although not always) done with games that have a less-defined "goal" or "ending", and where "completion speed" makes less sense as a concept. For example the Family Feud and Brain Age "TASes" are playarounds because they make much more sense given these particular games.
But what are ACEs? They aren't speedruns, they aren't "superplays" (getting the ACE to trigger is "superplay" of the base game that's being run, but that stops when control of the console is gained). They are just custom demos. The method by which they are injected into the console is technically very interesting, but they are still just custom demos. Limited romhacks of sorts.
But TASVideos has historically allowed runs for pure entertainment if I'm not wrong, not just purely aiming for best time.
In general, with extremely few exceptions, at the very least the run has to complete the game, so it's not like anything goes as long as it's "entertaining".
So in that sense, why not? I find it siimlar to Arbitrary Code Execution, that while possibly through normal controller inputs, once activated, the sky is the limit.
The problem with arbitrary code execution is that unless it's used to jump directly to the end of the game (I'm not going to the question of whether that's a "legit" completion of the game of not), it essentially just wastes time. Not really a speedrun.
Over the years I have grown less and less fond of overly glitched speedruns (both real-time and tool-assisted). It depends on the game, of course (Megaman 1 and 2 are still really cool), but in general, I have found overuse of glitches to bypass things more and more boring and uninteresting. The more it breaks the game and deviates from normal gameplay, and the more time the run spends in "glitched mode", the less interesting. (This is why I can't even watch eg. most 2016 Doom speedruns. They are just boring.)
I suppose I have simply lost that marvel about games being broken, and would be more interested in games being actually played "normally" but superhumanly. There are only so many times I can watch a game being utterly broken before it gets old and tired.
The first 20 minutes of this run were interesting to watch. Then... well, it has already been discussed above.
In fact, do most of the TAS for systems with analog+digital buttons bother ensuring that the analog is a strict representation of what a physical controller would read or do they just send the digital press?
I'm not an expert on this, but I believe that with some controllers for some systems it's possible to input "impossible" values through the controller port. Values that are not possible with an official unmodified controller (but may be with a modified one, or a third-party one).
Consider, for example, that most gamepad analog sticks are restricted to a circular motion at their outer edge, while the values they send to the console are most probably within a square. For example, the two values for the X and Y positions of the stick may be within the range from 0 to 255 (ie. 8 bits), but combinations like 0,0 (which would be eg. the extreme top left corner) or 255,255 (which would be the extreme bottom right corner) are impossible for the mere reason that the stick can't move to those positions because there's a physical barrier stopping it. But if you physically remove that barrier, they might become possible.
(Note that this might not always be the case, as many gamepads will map the circle within which the stick moves onto the entire 256x256 address space. But for some systems it might be the case.)
If some system has thumbstick positions that are impossible on the official unmodified controller, should those impossible inputs be allowed in a TAS? That's a difficult question.
For the Goldeneye glitch, isn't it interesting to see? Wouldn't a TAS that implemented it be worth watching as a side movie, not replacing the main?
If I understood correctly, the only thing that the glitch (triggered by abusing the second controller) does is that it stops the game from incrementing the internal timer during certain cutscenes in certain levels. The run itself doesn't really change, only the final in-game time. Thus there wouldn't really be anything different about the run to see.
It just fit so well on the topic of what I consider hardware abuse to affect a game, and what the real-time speedrun community (in this case the Goldeneye speedrun community) thinks of it.
I'm told that this is apparently a really hard problem:
Find positive integer values for x, y and z such that
x/(y+z) + y/(x+z) + z/(x+y) = 4
I have a solution, and it's not very small.
