Lots of things in a TAS are completely breaking the spirit of the game.
Memory corruption needs to be allowed in the Vault precisely because not everybody finds it enjoyable. Entertaining or not, it is still an achievement as a speed record.
This all comes down to the philosophical question of what exactly constitutes to "complete the game" as fast as possible.
Putting aside the recent discussion about what the purpose and meaning of a "TAS" is, quite arguably the Vault tier is about speedrunning at its purest form. But what is "speedrunning"? Here there can actually be different points of view and opinions.
Some could argue that it means simply reaching the end of the game as fast as possible, by whatever means possible (with some reasonable restrictions). Others could argue that it's playing the game through as fast as possible.
At first these two things might sound like the same thing, but they actually aren't. The former allows the run to just skip from the intro screen to the ending credits in a fraction of a second, and still consider it a "legit" completion. The only thing that matters is that the end credits appear on screen; it doesn't matter how they are made to appear. The latter wouldn't, because the game wasn't actually played through.
I would say that the former idea adheres to the letter of the definition of "game completion", while the latter adheres to its spirit.
Many people find heavy glitch abuse in speedrunning disappointing. Especially glitches that skip significant portions of the game. They feel like it's a bit like cheating: The game isn't actually being played through. I have said this in the past, and I'm going to repeat it again: Why are we dismissing that sentiment so lightly, even ridiculing it sometimes?
Of course for practical reasons we cannot ban all glitches. That would be an endless swamp of controversy, with endless lists of minutia dictating what is and isn't allowed. That's just not practical (and no better evidence of this is the fact that in the beginning unassisted speedrunning was like that, but the idea was abandoned mainly due to its impracticality.) However, I would argue that banning a technique that actually corrupts the game code, allowing significant portions of the game to be skipped via non-gameplay, could arguably be banned in pure speedrunning categories.
Of course I understand that's probably never going to happen, but I can still express my opinion about it.
I know that not everyone will agree, but I support the disallowing of memory corruption for vault purposes. That was probably a tough decision to come by. I think ACE has its place, but I never enjoyed the runs that took advantage of it. Also, although I know it's really tough to test and search for, it really feels like completely breaking the spirit of the game.
I'm happy to see I'm not the only person in the world who thinks like this.
If it were up to me, ACE would be banned from Vault completely.
I was honestly ready to hate the episode, especially given its title, and its beginning. But I couldn't. I actually liked it. It was surprisingly funny.
The commutative property of multiplication (of real numbers) is often deemed a kind of self-evident fact. However, from a quick google search I haven't found a formal definition that states that the rule is only valid when changing the order of a finite amount of terms. The property does not necessarily hold if changing the order of infinitely many terms in an infinite product.
For example, the Wallis product is:
2/1 * 2/3 * 4/3 * 4/5 * 6/5 * 6/7 * 8/7 * 8/9 * ... = π/2
However, if we rearrange those terms a bit, we get:
2/3 * 2/1 * 4/3 * 4/5 * 6/5 * 8/7 * 6/7 * 10/9 * 12/11 * ... = sqrt(2)*π/2
Clearly the commutative property for multiplication does not hold for infinitely many terms being exchanged.
This showcases how precarious it is to do operations on infinite series. Something that seems completely self-evident with finite series might not be true for infinite ones, and may lead to incorrect results. I was wondering if there are formal rules on which operations are valid or invalid for infinite series.
S8E3 is so horrible that it made me postpone watching new episodes for the time being. I can't dig the Maud humor. It's even worse than the preceding Maud episodes, maybe because this episode was written by someone I don't know.
I still haven't seen that episode, but now you are making me curious. I loved Maud's debut episode (it's definitely in my top-10 best episodes list, perhaps even top-5), and while the other ones might not have exactly reached the quality of that one, they weren't that bad. How bad can this one be?
OTOH, the series creators have had a really bad habit of ruining some good things over the years, so it wouldn't be unprecedented if they ruined Maud as well.
Warp says:
By replying in this manner, Warp shows that he has hallucinated a set
By replaying in this manner, Warp also shows that
By believing in that, Warp shows that
Warp resumes with this:
Warp proceeds with this:
After seeing that he is fully predictable, Warp decided to post a reply:
Warp proceeds with this:
probably to provoke a specific kind of illogical and absurd reply from Warp.
By posting such a conclusion Warp admits that
in order to influence Warp's way of making posts.
Warp resumes:
Warp admits that he is incapable of having a discussion
Warp concludes:
By stating things like this Warp once again demonstrates that
with a simple goal of "taunting/mocking" Warp.
You are deliberately doing this, aren't you?
Nobody writes like this, with the person being present, unless they are mocking, condescending, or deliberately taunting. Especially not in this context. This is not a style of writing that's intended to be a discussion. It's a style that's intended to be either condescending or mocking, or both.
dwangoAC wrote:
Hi Warp - I'm on staff and I do not believe I have taunted you in the course of this conversation
I have emphasized several times that I have experienced this from some of the members of the site staff, but obviously not all of them. I would like to repeat that.
dwangoAC wrote:
I'd like to note that you've been rather aggressively presuming you are the subject of taunts or attacks even when people are simply trying to express that they don't agree with you using neutral wording.
In this particular case, I don't think the above is "neutral wording". It's written exactly as condescending and mocking.
As I wrote on IRC when feos first posted it, there is no way to draw it with size realism
Maybe. It just felt like the "tool-assisted speedrun" section was deliberately drawn very small.
Anyway, it's just a petty thing. Let's move on to something more constructive.
I understand the triviality argument, including when it's based on a TAS run being indiscernible from human play.
Being indiscernible from human play cannot in itself be any sort of grounds for disqualification, given that some TASes are extremely close to their unassisted counterparts. Sometimes even pretty high-profile ones, such as Super Mario Bros (with the unassisted world record being a mere 2 seconds slower than the TAS, using the same timing system).
The triviality argument make sense for "games" that aren't actually games. At least not ones where completion isn't really a well-defined concept, or there simply aren't really anything that could be considered gameplay mechanics. (For example a trivia game that consists merely of multiple-choice questions isn't really a "game" per se, as it contains nothing that could be considered gameplay mechanics. Of course with some games this distinction can become blurry and ambiguous.)
Where this whole thing starts becoming a bit ridiculous is when rules of thumb, guiding principles, examples, are being taken as hard rules. For instance, the notion that edutainment games are usually the kind of games that aren't "real" games (at least in the sense that it's reasonable to create a TAS of them). Sure, that may be a good general rule of thumb, but when it's taken as a hard rule, it allows for no exceptions. It becomes especially ridiculous if, as was the famous case, "edutainment game" is taken as anything where the player has to answer some math questions, completely regardless of whatever other gameplay mechanics there might be in the game. This whole thing is kind of like not seeing the forest for the trees.
If entertainment is all the staff/community wants to be concerned with, then we must consider the proposition to eliminate the vault; though I'm sure this would anger a lot of the community.
The Vault tier was an excellent addition to the site (which I wholeheartedly supported and promoted). Prior to it, there was what essentially was a slightly loosened "Moons tier" only. In other words, TASes of games were only accepted if they were "entertaining enough" (with, possibly, slightly lower standards of qualification than the current Moons).
Vault was created to allow any game to have a TAS, completely regardless of entertainment value. I have always said that entertainment is subjective, and the TAS of any game can be interesting and entertaining to somebody. (Very typically somebody could have played a particular, perhaps more obscure game as a kid, and would now be interested in seeing a TAS of it. If TASes of ZX Spectrum games were reasonably feasible, I certainly would be interested in seeing TASes of many games I played as a kid, even if they would be "boring" to most other people who have never played nor seen those games.)
Many of us produce TASes knowing before we ever start working on them that they are doomed for a vault publication. It doesn't change the fact that we enjoy the process.
I have been trying for long to promote the idea of elevating the status of Vault. For it not to be considered a sort of "garbage dump" for all the "boring" runs. A fame that I don't think those runs deserve. I think getting to Vault should be an honor, a privilege (similar to how getting to the top of the list at speedrun.com is), not a "punishment". But while there have been some further ideas thrown around (eg. by feos), it has never gained any further traction, sadly.
That's exactly what I predicted as your reply. Nice job.
Since you didn't even try to defend yourself, I'll take that as a concession that you chose those two areas in the picture deliberately to be misleading (most probably to elicit such a response from me). In other words, there was no honesty in you making that picture.
Btw, I also love how a member of the site staff is taunting/mocking me, right in the thread where I criticize some members of the site staff for doing exactly that.
Warp, we know Nach can sometimes take things too far but I believe he's sincere when he says he respects you. Let's set aside the personal relationship conversation and focus on the intent of the discussion instead; I trust the two of you are mature enough to hash out your relationship in a less public forum.
I know what it is to have a stubborn personality that sometimes goes too far, with complete disregard to what the other people on the other side of the screen feel. I know this because I have been like that. Text on a computer screen is so impersonal, and it's oftentimes hard to remember that there's an actual human being behind that text, and thus things are sometimes said that one would never say in person (or at least I wouldn't.) It's a learning and growing experience.
If people want to make fun of me (which I know painfully well is sometimes happening behind the scenes, where I'm not present, eg. at IRC), well, shame on them. I have grown a rather thick skin over the years (in some sense perhaps unfortunately.) I just wish that members of the site staff acted with a bit more professionalism. Criticizing what I say is, of course, completely fine. Making it personal is not. Especially in public.
With this I'm not accusing all members, of course!
feos, that picture is rather hilarious given the fact that probably about 95 to 99% of TASes published on the site focus solely on completing the game as fast as possible (sometimes with side goals, which still have to be completed as fast as possible). It's the non-speed-oriented "superplays" that are in the significant minority. Yet the sizes of these two areas are completely reversed in your picture.
I swear I'm not nitpicking in the least when I say this: I honestly and genuinely can't understand why some people seem to be so obsessed in maintaining that these are "superplays", not "speedruns", and seem to pretend like actual speed-oriented playthroughs are simply a small minority of all published runs. What's so shameful in calling this a speedrunning site, which sometimes also publishes non-speed-oriented playthroughs?
The vast majority of people out there know this as a speedrunning site. It looks to me that only a few people here adamantly maintain otherwise, for reasons unknown.
I really can't understand why you are so obsessed in maintaining that the meaning of the "S" is that particular word, and has always been, as if it literally were a matter of honor. As if it meaning "speedrun" was somehow shameful and dishonorable, and any such claim an insult, as if it were some kind of degrading derogatory term used to denigrate the site.
And the funny thing is that the vast majority of people out there know it as "tool-assisted speedrun". It's only a portion of people in this forum who are adamant in that it must mean "superplay" (some of them quite fanatically at that). Reminds me how a few people went to absolutely ridiculous extents to maintain that these were "timeattacks", not "speedruns". They lost that battle. But it seems that the "it means superplay I can't hear you lalalala" crowd is still strong to this day. As if it were a matter of extreme importance.
The origin of the name of TASVideos is Tool-assisted superplay movies, this is not up for debate or negotiation.
I was there when "TAS" was first suggested. The acronym was not original, and had been used before by another speedrunning community. It meant originally "tools-assisted speedrun". When I was suggesting/promoting that acronym, it was always "speedrun".
The "S" meaning "superplay" is a backronym. The acronym was taken from the Doom speedrunning community, and later the S retrofitted to mean "superplay". It was not like somebody suggested "tool-assisted superplay, or TAS for short". It was more like "speedrun doesn't cover every single run, so let's change the S to mean something more fitting".
I remember this vividly. Are you calling me a liar?
This ranting has deviated the conversation away from the original topic I wanted to discuss.
I understand why the Moons tier exists (even though I have for long rallied for a change in the status of Vault vs Moons, elevating the former rather than it being considered a garbage dump for all the "boring" runs, but that's another topic). My objection, however, is not to the purpose of the Moons tier, but the rather arbitrary way in which runs obsolete other runs there.
I'm repeating myself here, but I believe it deserves repeating: An author may do a lot of work for a run with a non-standard goal, and may for example define a detailed list of goals and/or limitations for the run, in order to increase its entertainment value.
This run might be officially published, even though it was one single person who decided on that list. Ok, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, assuming that everybody else is ok with that list, and it's considered reasonable.
But then, another author might take the list, change it somehow, remove some items, and create another run that's "better" (by some subjective measure), perhaps precisely thanks to having modified the list of requirements. And this new run may have a chance of not only be published, but obsoleting that previous run on the same "branch", even though the branch may have not been defined almost at all (at least not with any sort of detailed precision).
I would imagine this could easily lead to demotivation in some cases. Why do so much work on creating a run, only to have someone else obsolete it with another run with different goals and restrictions?
With any% and 100%, the goals and restrictions are usually pretty unambiguous, and if a run gets obsoleted, it really means that the new one is achieving those goals better than the old one. With some of the Moons categories, however, it can be completely arbitrary.
It's still unclear to me why the same approach as used at speedrun.com wouldn't work here. Different categories are pretty well defined, and the restrictions and goals are agreed by the community by consensus.
It's also still unclear to me who decides, and how, if a new submission belongs to a certain branch or not, if its list of goals and restrictions is different from the existing one. (If this was answered, I missed it.)
You could have stated your point of view without claiming no one is allowed to disagree with you.
To me it sounds like I'm saying where you fit into this since this has happened a few times.
It doesn't matter what I say. I could go on a huge tirade full of insults, swearwords and the most heinous things worthy of a lifetime ban, yet personal attacks and mockery would still not be the appropriate response from site staff. Don't try to excuse your mockery towards me by alluding to how you perceived my messages. If you want to refute my claims, do it neutrally and professionally.
Then why are you trying to "correct" people who are stating what the site is and should be about?
Patashu wrote: "The name TASVideos doesn't stand for Tool-Assisted Speedrun Videos, it stands for Tool-Assisted Superplay Videos, and it always has (AFAIK). Therefore non-speedrun content (like playarounds, score attacks and ACE demonstrations) are permitted on the site."
Patashu was talking about the name of the site and the site's goals. You tried to "correct" him.
Correct him on the origin of the name.
Anyone who tries to alter the core purpose of our site, diminish it, and pass that off as reality deserves to be mocked incessantly. Not that I'm trying to mock you at all. But if someone did, in this case it's well deserved.
My respect for you as the highest member of the site staff is diminishing by the message. Learn some professionalism, will you?
I have been mocked and attacked by other members of the site staff plenty enough in the past, and frankly, I'm absolutely sick of it. I don't need it from you.
What I don't like is constant squabbles over the soul of our site, but hey no one is perfect.
Then feel free to refute and critique my claims in a civilized manner, without resorting to personal attacks.
You wrote it as a passive-aggressive mockery against me.
I didn't intend it that way.
You could have stated your point of view without making it about "Warp does this, Warp does that". That sounds like, and pretty much effectively is, a level of mockery at me, no matter what your true intentions were.
Anyway, it appears to me that we are talking about two different things. I am talking about what the acronym "TAS" meant originally. I was there when it was suggested. In fact, and while I can't be 100% sure, but I'm like 95% sure, I was the person, or one of the people, who suggested it, or at the very least, promoted it. As said, it has been so long that I can't remember exact details with absolute certainty, but I do vividly remember that the suggestion was precisely originally "tool-assisted speedrun" (because that was what it meant in the Doom speedrunning community).
Anyway, you seem to be taking that as some kind of statement about what the goal and purpose of the site should be. My recollection of the events surrounding the adoption of the acronym "TAS" has absolutely nothing to do with what the site should be about, only what those letters stood for originally. It irks me when people keep repeating that "TAS has always stood for tool-assisted superplay, not for speedrun", almost dogmatically, when I vividly remember otherwise. The "superplay" backronym was suggested later.
My position as site manager is to defend the site against the notion that we are not and have not always been about Superplays. Comments such as "Anybody who claims otherwise is engaging in historical revisionism" against our position regarding Superplays will be treated with the cold hard facts as just done earlier.
Our site was, is, and will continue to be about Superplays. No apologies will be made for what we are about.
You did not simply state facts in a neutral manner. You wrote it as a passive-aggressive mockery against me.
I'm getting really tired of the complete unprofessionalism that some members of the site staff have demonstrated, and keep demonstrating, over the years. There have been personal attacks, insults, swearwords and mockery, both in private and in public. There have been threads with explicit mockery against me in their titles, created by site staff.
If some random user does that, then that's one thing. They should be moderated as usual. But when the site staff starts doing that, that crosses a line of professionalism big time. You don't need to like me; I don't mind that. If you don't like what I'm saying, that's also fine. You are free to disagree and critique. But when you start publicly attacking me and passive-aggressively mocking me, that crosses a line.
If your intent was to make me angry, then congratulations. You succeeded, big time. You can't believe how much restraint I am putting myself through in order to avoid writing swearwords here. I expected more from you in particular.
5) Post 2010, every time someone reminds Warp
6) Post 2010, nearly every time Warp brings this up
7) Post 2017, Warp now claims
Haven't we gone through enough instances of personal attacks against me from the part of the site staff? Do we really need to go through yet another one, and from you of all people?
If you want to state facts as you see/remember them, then state them as facts, in a neutral manner. Don't go into passive-aggressive personal attacks with "Warp says this, Warp says that". Have some professionalism, especially given your position.
Didn't know the history, thanks! (I joined later.) I'll correct the post.
I apologize if I sounded a bit blunt in my response. I oftentimes fail to check how the tone of what I write looks like.
Anyway, in order to actually contribute to this discussion, some thoughts about entertainment vs. limiting rules:
Speedruns (be they unassisted or tool-assisted) are entertaining all by themselves, no matter what the goals may be. If they weren't, nobody would make them, and nobody would watch them. It's not like speedrunning is some kind of boring job that just has to be done by somebody. People play games fast because they like it (most often because of the challenge and the competition), and people watch them because they find them entertaining and exciting.
Some people here seem to think that burdening "entertainment" branches with a strict set of rules would somehow destroy or diminish the entertainment factor. What is this idea based on? Do you really think that people would stop watching speedruns if the (non-any% non-100%) branches were more clearly and unambiguously defined?
An argument could be made (which has been at least implied) that fixing with great precision the rules of a given branch would limit creativity from the runners. My suggestion was not, however, that the site staff would come up with a list of rules and requirements, but that it would be made by the runners themselves, by consensus. (But once it has been decided, it would be set in stone, and changed only if there are very, very good reasons for it.)
I would once again ask: This exact thing works at speedrun.com. Why wouldn't it work here? There, many games have many categories that have technically speaking "arbitrary" rules and limitations, but these have been decided and agreed by the speedrunners themselves. The list of limitations in some categories for some games can be quite extensive (and sometimes not without slight controversies). But nevertheless, it works there, and can result in very popular speedrunning categories (once again Ocarina of Time being the posterboy for this, although it's of course not the only example.)
When the rules are clear and unambiguous, and not up to each individual runner, it helps creating healthy competition. This doesn't have to come at the expense of entertainment. In fact, it can be quite the contrary.
If each runner can decide on his own special exemptions for a particular branch, it kind of erodes the whole idea, and I'm sure it can cause demotivation. Imagine if, for example, in the OoT MST category a speedrunner could decide at his own whim that he will allow himself to use the GIM glitch (which is normally banned in that category), for instance, and actually have a shot at getting his run on the MST list. Imagine the backlash that would cause. Not least from the other speedrunners.
(I'm sorry for gushing over speedrun.com so much, but I can't help but like how they do things.)
The name TASVideos doesn't stand for Tool-Assisted Speedrun Videos, it stands for Tool-Assisted Superplay Videos, and it always has (AFAIK).
Actually no. The name comes originally from the Doom speedrunning community, from much earlier than the nesvideos (not to talk about tasvideos) site even existed, where "TAS" was originally short for "tools-assisted speedrun". The same acronym was adopted here, originally with the same meaning. I know. I was there.
Some time along the line during the earlier years of the site some people wanted to change the meaning of that "S", so they suggested a convenient alternative, "superplay". In other words, "TAS" became a so-called backronym.
Anybody who claims otherwise is engaging in historical revisionism. Now everybody is repeating the mantra "the S doesn't stand for speedrun!" like it were absolute gospel.
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Edit by moderator: This thread has been split from Branch for Saturn's Chrono Trigger and Speed and entertainment requirements, tiers - split 14293.
