It is my understanding, although I could be wrong about this, but in some parts of the United States (where "some parts" may comprise as small places as one single movie theater, perhaps), it's not uncommon for, in some movie theaters, certain movies to be kind of party events. With this I mean that people don't just go to see the movie, watching it quietly and then leave, but instead they go to the movie theater to have a kind of party, like it were a college spring break party or something. They will eat and drink, they will make noises, they might cosplay or otherwise dress up for the occasion (eg. in a halloween costume if this is some kind of related movie, for instance), they will cheer whatever little thing happens on the screen at the moment...
Perhaps some people, at some places, in the US do consider the MLP movie such an event.
Personally I would absolutely hate going to a movie theater like that.
You get a similar oxymoron if you substitute x = 0: 1 = sqrt(0 + sqrt(0 + ...)).
Does this mean that you can only say
sqrt(x+sqrt(x+sqrt(x+sqrt(...)))) = (1 + sqrt(4x + 1)) / 2 , x > 0
In other words, the equality does not hold for x <= 0?
If yes, at which point of the proof does one have to assert that x>0?
The infinite series sqrt(x+sqrt(x+sqrt(x+...))) converges to (1+sqrt(4x+1))/2.
What's curious about that fact is that the expression has real values even for negative values of x, as long as x is >= -0.25. (For example at x=-0.2 the expression has the value of about 0.7236.)
This feels highly counter-intuitive. If you tried to approximate the value of the series by calculating finite sub-series, using the algorithm
result=0; while(true) result=sqrt(x+result);
you would end up with the square root of a negative value, which is a no-no. (The above loop works for non-negative values of x, but obviously a negative value will cause an error.)
In this sense the series behaves in a very unintuitive way. It's like the "x+sqrt(...)" part kind of expects that "sqrt(...)" part to be positive (and larger than abs(x).) But since x is always negative in every single sub-expression, how can it ever get positive?
I can't wrap my head around it.
I would describe the TAS both as art, and also not entertaining. I agree with "lengthy and dry" as well. My main concern is the repetition, both with the glitches, and revisiting the areas. I am sure everything was necessary from a technical standpoint, but I could not follow the route at all. In fact, I thought I was finally getting a hang of the route when you were almost to the Spirit Temple boss, but then you backtracked into earlier parts of the dungeon before proceeding to the boss.
When this run was submitted, my attitude was "of course this should be published! We have a severe lack of OoT TASes." However, the more people discuss this, the more it's slowly changing my mind.
It is my understanding that the rather unusual goal for this run was chosen explicitly because it's not any existing goal in unassisted speedruns. And, possibly, it's a goal that can only be achieved with TASing (although you never know, with enough dedication from speedrunners, if they wanted to try).
That in itself gives me contradictory feelings. On one hand it seems cool to have goals that are (possibly) only achievable through tool-assistance, making the run completely unique. On the other hand, being completely unique might also be seen as a point against it, because in general we are wary of goals that are too arbitrary. Not that arbitrary goals are automatically rejected or anything, but still.
In general, unusual goals are allowed if they add to the entertainment of the run, or make it otherwise interesting. In this particular case, the interest might only be theoretical ("is it possible to complete the game without explicitly opening a single door?"), as it causes the run to become perhaps needlessly long and repetitive, as dan says above. Perhaps even boring.
And that may be the crucial part. Unusual goals are accepted if they add to the entertainment value, not if they diminish it. Only any% and 100% categories are accepted with complete disregard to the entertainment value.
I have conflicting feelings about this. On one hand I really appreciate the staggering amount of work and effort that went into this, and I really crave for more OoT TASes. On the other hand... if the run is boring, then it is boring. If it's not any% or 100%, it being boring is quite bad. (Of course being "boring" is highly subjective and up to the individual person.)
with the bluster of an expert, you made it out to be like the any% TAS would be this completely different experience from RTA, worlds ahead, when this isn't the case.
With the bluster of an expert? I don't understand your attitude.
All I said is that there are glitches that unassisted any% runners aren't using because they are too difficult. The one I mentioned is one. Mido skip is another. I didn't say (or, at the very least I didn't mean to imply) that they are completely and absolutely 100% impossible to perform by an unassisted human player. What I said is that these tricks could theoretically be used in the any% run, but they are so difficult that speedrunners aren't using them.
For a TAS they shouldn't be much of a problem, and would probably make the TAS significantly faster, and quite different from the current any% WR.
I also don't understand where you are getting that "worlds ahead" thing from. The original claim was that the TAS would be essentially almost identical to the unassisted run, just with faster movement. My claim was that no, it would be different because it could use glitches that unassisted runners aren't using because they are too difficult.
IMO 8 minutes is completely within the limits of acceptability. If it were like an hour or something, then it would start becoming quite a lot.
I think that a level of "purity" of TASing ought to be preserved. If that means that at some point you just have to wait for 8 minutes, so be it.
lim (x → 0+) x1/ln(2x) = e
That can be fun to prove, but it's not my question. Wolfram alpha agrees with that result, however, for this:
lim (x → 0+) x1/ln(x)
it says: "(limit does not exist in the real line) (there are infinitely many singularities in every neighborhood about x = 0)"
Is that indeed so? And if so, what does that mean?
if you want it to be published as a new branch, then you need to make the case that the gameplay is substantially different.
Define "substantially different".
If one version allows a glitch that the other doesn't, isn't this a substantial difference? It's often very visible, and leads to very different-looking gameplay, and is often quite easy to explain to the average viewer (not necessarily the technical details of the glitch itself, but the fact of the existence of the glitch, and what it allows doing differently).
Related and inspired, but not dependent on it.
Some people believe that mathematics is just a meaningless game of symbols. I don't like this though. It surely must have some metaphysical meaning.
In case somebody missed it, it's a meme. (Google it).
could you name a single one of these mysterious TAS only OOT any% tricks that you apparently know about that nobody who actually works on the game does? if there are some gamebreaking TAS-only tricks the community isn't aware of, we'd be GLAD to know.
Gladly. I once was watching a twitch stream by Torje, and asked him precisely about this, and he proceeded to demonstrate a trick inside the Deku Tree that allowed opening a spider web in a much more straightforward way than when speedrunning normally. However, it required quite a bit of setup for a human player to execute. He demonstrated the trick on the stream. It's a trick that any% speedrunners don't use because of the setup.
If you want more details, ask him. He knows infinitely more about speedrunning the game than I do.
The only thing left on the TAS side is boring movement optimization.
Since when have we stopped making a TAS for a game if it's "too similar" to the unassisted run? I have never heard of such a principle before.
Besides, to the best of my understanding, you are quite wrong. There are many known glitches that are theoretically possible in the OoT any% route that speedrunners don't use because they are way too difficult to do in real time, or would require too much setting up to be worth it. For a TAS they of course become possible (and don't require any setup that's aimed for human speedrunners). Ostensibly this would allow significant savings and shortcuts, compared to the current unassisted any% WR.
TASing has always been about overcoming human limitations, and show what it would be like if a perfect superhuman were to play the game to its absolute perfection. And Ocarina of Time any% would be the absolutely perfect place for this.
When did this change?
(a) a platform emulating an earlier platform, such as Wii Virtual Console
(k) a bugfix between versions or a glitch only present in one version is not
Can it be inferred from this that a TAS of the Wii VC version of Ocarina of Time would not be accepted (ostensibly because the original is preferred over a port)?
If that's the case, then I really, really wish the rules were changed to be more lenient.
So you're seeing no answer in that other thread nor its links?
The thread is about whether a TAS of a Wii VC game is acceptable at all, not whether it would obsolete its N64 counterpart or exist as its own separate game. I see no official answer to either question there.
MM was nearing completion before the recent discovery of a new trick (equip swap / egg dupe) which necessitated a reroute and thus a remake, all those hours of work lost.
It's an interesting question that if years of work have been put into a particular TAS, and it's nearing completion, and then a new glitch is discovered that pretty much nullifies all the work and requires starting almost from scratch, whether the existing work could still be published, even though it's known to be sub-optimal. It would indeed be quite harsh to just throw years of work away because of such a technicality.
when OOT would-be TASers consider having a go at any%, whose TAS route is at this point essentially the same as the RTA route, the prospect of such a time investment just to make what is essentially the old TAS plus some new tricks, which one could just watch the RTA WR for, doesn't seem too pressing.
We don't forgo making TASes if they would look too similar to the real-time speedrun. If that were the case, then for example the SMB TAS wouldn't exist (because it's almost identical to the speedrun).
It is my understanding that an any% TAS of OoT would be quite different to the real-time speedrun (much more so than eg. in the case of Super Mario Bros). If I understand correctly, there are tricks (especially eg. inside the Deku Tree) that speedrunners forgo because they are way too difficult to do in real-time, or would require too much time to set up (a TAS would obviously be able to go straight to the trick without any setup required). Even though the overall route would be very similar, the TAS would probably look very different (for example because in a TAS the runner doesn't actually have to see where he's going, and can side-hop all the time) and significantly faster.
The route being essentially the same has never been any sort of issue, or reason to avoid making a TAS. I do understand, however, that the sheer amount of work in order to create an optimal any% TAS for this particular game is enormous (even though the length of the run would be somewhere in the ballpark of 15 minutes, give or take, which doesn't sound so much, but with this game it is a lot).
It relates to my question of where the line goes that distinguishes between two games being "the same game" (and thus not being able to co-exist in Vault), and when they are considered different games (and thus able to co-exist).
I don't really understand the comics. They use both a rather different style of art, and a rather different style of storytelling, than the TV series. In fact, the comics look a lot like they are a parody of the TV series. If something like the Mad Magazine were to make a parody of MLP:FiM, it could well look like that.
If somebody ever makes an any% TAS of Ocarina of Time, the Wii VC version, would it be considered the "same game" as the original N64 version, or would it be considered a separate game? (In other words, could a Wii VC version and N64 version co-exist in Vault?)
They are in principle the same game, but with either minor modifications to the game itself, or imperfections in the VC emulation system, make them behave differently (eg. by causing the N64 to crash the system when a certain glitch is triggered, which does not cause the Wii VC version to crash.)
to us in the OOT community, this TAS is one of the best accomplishments of our two decades of work and research, if not the single greatest achievement anyone in the game has accomplished so far.
I understand and appreciate the amount of work that went into this. I just wish we could finally have a proper any% TAS of OoT, using all the most modern routes and glitches. For some reason this seems to be the only game for which there exists TASes, just not an any% one (which usually is the default fastest-possible game completion).
