We should include the letter X somewhere in the name. It is a well known fact (at least from a Stargate episode) that a name sells better if it contains an X.
Besides, none of you ever tried to make my avatar or get the code I wanted.
That's precisely the problem. You want people to do the job for you. That's not how you deal with people.
The correct question is "how do I make an avatar?" and "can you recommend me a good image creation program?" and "do you know any good tutorial for this program?" (even though the last two things you could find yourself in a few seconds of googling, but it's not wrong to ask those questions either).
I think that you are not seeing the true reason why he (and perhaps you?) was flamed. You defended him by arguing that it's not polite to attack people simply because they don't know how to do something. However, that was not the point nor the reason for the flaming.
There's a big difference between just not knowing how to do something and not wanting to learn how to. The reason why he was flamed was not for asking but because he was not willing to learn but only wanted others to do the job for him. Not only that, he also responded quite rudely to the attempts at teaching him how to do those things, which was, I believe, the final nail to the coffin.
For instance, it gives a quite lazy and presumptuous image of him when he says "I don't know how to resize an image, resize it for me". That's not how you communicate with people. Instead, he should have said "I don't know how to resize images; how is it done?". Or better yet, he should have been more proactive and searched for that info by himself. (Of course asking that question here *is* searching for info and it's ok, but the point is that he should ask how to learn to do things by himself instead of asking people to do the things for him.)
He presented a "I don't know how to do it and I don't even want to know, I want you to do it for me" attitude which is rather irritating. You really shouldn't defend that kind of attitude.
That's just a patently false statement.
Can you mention even ONE movie which does *not* aim for speed? Even one?
All movies in this site, every single one of them, aims for speed. In a few cases maximum possible speed may have been sacrificed a bit (ie some frames, in one case even perhaps some seconds) for entertainment, but speed is still a goal. Even the fixed-speed scroller gradius videos aim for speed wherever they can, ie. in the boss fights.
There are movies where some constraints have been put for entertainment, but still speed is the main goal. Heck, there was even a "fun run" of SMB where pressing the B button was prohibited. However, the goal of this run was still how *fast* the game can be completed without the B button. Even with the constraints speed is still the goal.
Speed is the sole major judging category when accepting submissions. The rule is not rigid and in a few cases simply beating an existing run by some frames is not seen enough to obsolete it, but speed is still the major factor in the run. A run which is significantly slower than the existing one would certainly not obsolete it.
If speed was not the main goal in these runs, why are the runners always trying to find new faster routes, new glitches to exploit for speed, even programming tools to squeeze even the last possible frame? Heck, why is there a frame counter in many emulators if speed was not a goal? If speed wasn't a goal then the frame count would be irrelevant.
*All* videos aim for speed. In most of them it's the only deciding factor. In a few cases some entertainment issue may kick in, but speed is still a goal nevertheless.
"Not all movies here aim for speed" is just as false as it gets.
Have you ever read the workbench group? It's quite full of questions and suggestions related to speed. There are tons and tons of questions along the lines of "at xyz you did this, but if you had done that instead wouldn't you have saved a few frames?" or "was it really necessary to collect item x? you would have saved a lot of time if you hadn't taken it" and so on.
I don't remember too many suggestions along the lines of "if you sacrifice 5 seconds of speed here it would be much funnier". In fact, many videos sacrifice funny things for speed simply because it would be too slow to do them.
Just because in one movie some seconds were sacrificed for entertainment doesn't make it the general rule. As I have been saying many times, the rules are flexible. However, the main principle of making a video here is to complete the game as fast as possible. Sacrificing speed for entertainment is very rare and judged in a very case-by-case basis. It's sometimes tolerated, but in the vast majority of cases speed wins.
Here's something I've been thinking about. With the new domain change to TASvideos, aren't we encouraging people to think only in terms of speed (since TAS stands for Tool-Assisted SPEEDrun), while the number one goal should be entertainment?
You are twisting my words.
The three videos I'm talking about are the gradius videos. Speed is not the essence there for the simple reason that the games are fixed-speed scrollers. Besides the boss fights there's nothing else to do in these games than try to do something funny. These games are not very suitable for *speedrunning* and more to perform awesome stunts. In fact, the official attitude towards the gradius videos is "no more of these, please", which I think is quite telling.
The others you are referring to are bordercases. A few frames may have been sacrificed in order to make the run more interesting, or a 1 frame faster submission may have been rejected because it doesn't contribute anything (the game is not well known and it just doesn't make sense to steal the original video from the original runner).
Even if some frames have been sacrificed for entertainment, speed is still the main goal in those videos too. Sacrificing a thousand frames for entertainment would be completely unacceptable because the run would then be just way too slow. Also in runs where there are some constraints to make the video more interesting, speed is still the main goal. Sloppy running is not allowed, no matter how "fun" it may be.
Let's put it this way: How many submissions have been rejected during the entire history of this website because they were not fast enough? Sloppy running has always been the biggest argument to reject a submission.
But aren't the main focus entertainment, as opposed to speed? It doesn't feel very accurate when they're called speedruns.
I still don't know where this misconception has started and why it seems so prevalent.
Just look at the videos. What is the common thing to all of them (except perhaps two or three)? To complete the game as fast as possible. The main source of entertainment is the speed of completing the game as fast as possible with superhuman reflexes (thanks to tool-assistance). Even when some constraints are put in a run (eg. no warps, no death, collect all objects or whatever) the main goal is still the same: To complete the game as fast as possible (within the constraints).
The author of the run should aim for entertainment other than speed too, but only if it doesn't make the run slower.
How many times have you seen a run which is significantly slower obsolete a previous run? (This rule is *flexible*, of course, we are not robots nor lawyers, but by default the rule is imposed quite strictly.)
I believe you are confusing the statement "we are not trying to compete with regular speedruns, we are not trying to beat anyone, this is just for entertainment puposes only" to mean something like "we only do this for entertainment, not speed" which is a completely different thing.
300 speed, 13 entertainment. Make the math. Which one is the prevalent main objective of these runs?
Entertainment, not speed.
You are just starting to be ridiculous.
It's like that one guy who adamantly claimed that "timeattack" and "time attack" are two different things (I don't even remember which one was supposed to be what).
The same argument could be made for not changing the site's name from Nesvideos to TASvideos.
Personally I don't care if it's nesvideos or tasvideos. Nesvideos was more established, tasvideos is more accurate.
However, your comparison is flawed because "tool-assisted speedrun" is *both* established and accurate to describe these runs.
I'm still trying to figure out how adventure games like Uninvited got published. I know that fast menu manipulation is necessary skill for making a TAS but, even after watching the Uninvited run, I'm not sure why a game that is 100% menus and no apparent opportunities for luck/bug/glitch manipulation should be the subject of a TAS.
Because superhuman speed is entertaining to watch. Blindingly fast non-human speed is awesome to watch. Not *everyone* might find the joy, but many do. That's why.
Why should luck manipulation or glitch abuse necessarily be part of a TAS?
Someone just suggested in the irc channel that we should change the meaning of TAS to Tool-Assisted Superplay.
Why?
Speed is the main objective in the movies. Entertainment is achieved by speed. Besides, "tool-assisted speedrun" is an established term to describe exactly what these videos are (way before this site even existed). Why it has to be changed?
As for the exceptions: I don't understand how you can say that we are a site focusing _,.-~*'`mainly`'*~-.,_ on speed, and yet we host a bunch of movies that do not focus on speed. dan_ said that he counted something like 13 non-speed oriented movies on the site, which means that 13/300+ movies aren't conforming to what you claim the site focuses on.
This is getting quite hilarious. You are just proving my point. From 313 currently published movies only 13 have speed as a secondary objective. Which means that 300 do have speed as their principal objective.
300 speed, 13 entertainment. Make the math. Which one is the prevalent main objective of these runs?
You are not comfortable with the word "speed" because in a whopping 4% of the published movies speed is not the main deciding factor for publication (while in the remaining 96% it is).
Besides, even if in 13 movies speed is not the *main* factor, it *is* a factor nonetheless, and thus qualify for being termed as "speedruns". There's nothing *wrong* in calling them "speedruns" because they are.
However, they were instead accepted, since they sacrifice unecessary speed for a very necessary bump in entertainment. That is the difference.
You still don't seem to understand the difference between the terms "main" and "only".
I have repeated over and over that speed is the *main* objective of these runs. I have not said it's the *only* objective. "Main objective" means that in the vast majority of cases (probably about 300 currently published movies) speed is the main deciding factor on acceptation/rejection/obsoletion. There may be a few cases (perhaps about 10 of them) where entertainment has surpassed speed in the judgement, but such few cases hardly make entertainment the *main* judging category over speed. If 300 movies have been judged acceptable because of their speed and 10 movies because of their entertainment, I would say the balance goes quite heavily to the speed side.
The exceptions simply mean that the rules are not rigid. Although speed is the main objective, that isn't a rigid rule, but it can *sometimes* be overridden by another objective. However, such exceptions do not make the rule false, just a bit flexible. I don't see any problem with this.
On topic: No, because otherwise the Gradius movies on the site should be obsoleted by faster submissions. However, Bisqwit has already stated that he isn't so sure that this is the best idea, since it isn't going to be any more entertaining than the original.
The gradius movies are exceptions because of their very nature. However, there are 3 gradius movies and they hardly overweight 300 speed-oriented movies. I don't see any problem in having such exceptions.
If it was a difference of 2000 frames, then yes, it should be obsoleted. However, if it was 2000 frames of nothing but standing around instead of passing the time doing entertaining things, a lot of people would complain/vote 'meh', because who wants to watch a boring movie, even if it's faster? If it was the difference between a XXX2 frame movie that was jaw droppingly cool versus an XXX0 that was faster but too boring to watch, I don't think it would be obsoleted. I do think that someone would eventually make the improvement with the necessary cool tricks, and that would end in obsoletion/evolution.
You might not notice it, but you yourself are proving my point.
You are basically saying that yes, if someone submitted a movie which was around 2000 frames faster, it would definitely be accepted. However, if two movies around 2000 frames faster (give or take a few frames) were submitted, the more entertaining one would be chosen. And that's exactly the point: Speed is the main deciding category (about 2000 frames faster is a *lot* and *definitely* would be published) and then the entertainment is a secondary category (sacrificing 0.1% of the speedup for entertainment is hardly a *main* deciding factor compared to the overall speedup of about 2000 frames).
No, a couple of exceptions do not make the rule false. They are just exceptions.
Right, but a couple of exceptions definitely stand to contest naming these movies as 'speedruns'. If we start hosting even ONE nonspeedrun on a speedrun website, then what is next?
That argument is just fallacious. A few exceptions do not mean that speed is not the *main* objective of the majority of the movies.
The Rygar -movie- has been granted a special exception
I don't understand why this exception was given: the movie should be completed as per the rules of the submission queue. Otherwise, we shouldn't turn back other submissions that don't complete themselves.
I don't see any reason why such an exception couldn't be granted. The rules are not rigid. We are humans, not machines nor lawyers.
I download the file and plays fine on Media Classic. But when i make my vcd of the file and play the vcd on my dvd player it picture on tv is upside down along with all of the letters.
Turn the dvd upside down and the picture then will be ok.
Also, I don't know if this was already planned, but it should be possible to sort by individual rating categories rather than by the averaged rating. Technical excellence and entertainment value will probably each give a much different order.
Yes, I'm sure it would. However, to avoid clutter and the troublesomeness of maintaining, I won't implement this.
We have, however, planned on adding some top-10 lists to the moviestatistics page: Top-10 average score, top-10 technical score and top-10 entertainment score (and more if more categories are added).
Personally I'm not sure if adding top-10 lowest scores would be a good idea. For sake of completeness they could be there, but they could be rather depressing to the authors and I don't like the idea of rubbing their wounds like that.
Exactly. It has some constraints ("must kill every monster, must find all secrets") which cause it to not to be as fast as a non-constrained run, but it's still done as fast as possible. Thus it's a speedrun.
So you're saying that, if someone found a way to glitch SMB3 to go straight from startup to endgame sequence, it should obsolete the current run?
No. There can be different categories for the run of a specific game. Why do you think there are several versions of the supermetroid run and two versions of the rygar run? Two versions of Zelda2 run? The list is actually quite large.
However, even when some constraints are put into a certain run in the name of entertainment, speed is still the main goal. The video would be rejected if it wasn't aiming for speed.
The problem with your argument is that 'TAS' means that all movies are focused entirely on speed.
That's as silly as saying that "speedrun" means that it's focused entirely on speed. Just look at the vast amount of Quake speedruns to see that it's not *only* about speed (even though speed is the *main* objective).
However, this site is not all speed inclusive, and so to accept 'TAS' as a term for these movies would call for the instant rejection of all non-fastest movies.
Don't be silly. There's nothing in the term "TAS" that would exclude putting constraints on a specific run. Even though a constraint is put in a run to make it more entertaining, its main goal is still speed and it's still done tool-assisted, hence it's a TAS.
By your classification the 100% Quake speedrun is not a speedrun.
Also, for the record, there have been a lot of movies that have been rejected despite being faster. IIRC, Atlantis No Nazo can be beaten by one frame, as many have shown, and yet we haven't accepted it because it adds nothing to the entertainment value of the run.
SMB runs have been obsoleted by runs which are only a few frames faster even though the new ones do not add *anything* to the run (besides those few frames of extra speed).
It's not a question of "is it more entertaining?" but a question of "is this game so popular that it's ok to screw up the original runner by allowing someone else to obsolete his movie by 1 frame?" Surely if someone posted an AnN run which was 2000 frames faster it would obsolete the current one regardless of whether it's more "entertaining" or not.
If entertainment was the main goal, then an AnN movie which was *slower* than the current one, but more "entertaining", could perfectly obsolete the current one. However, I don't see that ever happening. Why? Because speed is, after all, the main issue.
As soon as one faster movie is rejected due to being less entertaining, it sets a precedent that refutes the term 'TAS'.
No, a couple of exceptions do not make the rule false. They are just exceptions.
The Rygar TAS has been granted a special exception: It's *not* necessary to provide input for the final ending screen to change (it requires a button to be pressed) even though the rules say that in all submitted movies all the necessary input has to be included in order to get to the ending of the game. Does this exception make that rule false? Of course not. It's just one exception.
Maybe there should be a third category to vote on.
Yes, we definitely want to hear suggestions on what could be added to the rating system.
Note, however, that if the rating system changes too much, the current votes might get obsoleted and a revoting would be needed. We have to consider everything.
