If it were up to me, and me alone, I would use the "heavy glitch abuse" tag as an umbrella term for RAM and save data corruption, ACE, generic hardware glitches like the DPCM, and other instances of (near-)total control originating from glitch abuse. And then I'd just make all the runs made that way completely separate from the rest of the runs so that the two groups never overlap in obsoletion chains. :p
That doesn't sound like something that I would furiously disagree with.
I think that if such Vault acceptance rules were to be devised, they would probably have to deal with the glitches themselves, rather than the amount of gameplay in the run.
FCEUX input - doesn't work without the word "file". Do we really want to sentence ourselves to using a bigger construct, that isn't perfectly accurate either?
FCEUX replay - well, it replays input, producing gameplay replay, it replays subtitles, and it includes whatever it needs to make that replay guaranteed, as sync settings, and then probably other overhead that's not required but is nice to have.
What is wrong with "FCEUX input file"?
I suppose "replay" is better than "movie", but I wonder if there's anything better still. ("Replay" immediately made me think of an "instant replay" of TV broadcasts, which is a video recording of the live event being repeated. Emphasis on "video recording". But yeah, I'm not sure this would cause as much confusion. Maybe not. Just wondering if there would be something even less ambiguous.)
On the other hand, we still accept both any% and full completion, "no completion at all whatsoever" is not what one would be looking for when he comes to a speedrun site.
But given that runs that skip large parts of games (eg. entire levels) are acceptable, where do you draw the line? If a run plays the first level of the game for a couple of seconds and then glitches to the end of the game (with the same glitch that would be usable right from startup), would that become acceptable?
(What if the glitch has to be performed on the first level of the game for it to work? It becomes even more complicated. Technically part of the game has been played. A really, really small part, but still.)
The quick answer that comes to mind first is usually "Whenever a game affords more entertaining branches, they will be in moons". But in this particular case, I'm not sure it's gonna work best, because, as it was already said quite a few times, there's no way a 2 second run with no gameplay beats the fastest gameplay-based run in any other aspect than pure time. It's faster, but it's not better. Should I repeat my Demo tier mumbling again? :D
I have to acknowledge that the question is difficult. If we wanted to define Vault in such a manner that runs accepted to it retain a sensible amount of gameplay, how would we do that without the rules governing this becoming overly arbitrary, complicated and ridden with complexities and endless lists of exceptions? It's not an easy question.
There is certainly value in glitches that utterly break the game and perhaps even skip the entirety of it, but it may be problematic if that's the only published version of the run. The suggested Demo tier is perfect for runs that skip the entire game, but that leaves the question of how to define a valid entry for Vault.
I fail to see the point. I don't think the General forum is the proper place for this, even if it's done completely amicably and in jest, with no ill intent of any kind.
I'm sorry Warp, but you're ignoring Invariel's points and claiming that he isn't contributing, and "attack and sabotage" really? Really?
You have the nerve to tell someone who has put more into the conversation than you, a user who has been posting more information than a loopy one like you, that's disgusting.
Are you going to decide to be selective on what points are being brought to the table again?
Post reasonably, respond to his posts, or really, is it because you don't have anything to contribute to the conversation?
So what exactly was your contribution to this conversation, other than attacking me?
I'll tell you the same thing as him: If you want to throw your vitriol at me, send me a PM. I can take it. Just keep it out of the public forum. If you don't have anything to contribute, go somewhere else.
I suppose that the topic started in somewhat vague terms, so here's a much more concrete question that can be derived from it:
Currently the Vault tier is extremely strict in what's accepted there: Only one any% run of a game, and a possible 100% run, is accepted, period. Nothing else is accepted.
This means that many (perhaps most) games only have one published run, in Vault, and no more runs of it will be ever accepted (most probably).
So what happens if a run is submitted that just skips the entire game? I think that technically speaking it fulfills the requirements of vaultable any%, and thus it will replace any possibly existing run of that game. Which means that there would essentially be no speedrun of that game, for all intents and purposes.
Is that really what we want?
I think this is something that should be decided pretty soon, because it's very probable that such runs will start being submitted at some point.
Invariel wrote:
I don't really appreciate your "the sky is falling!" approach to change, but I work with what you give me.
Did you have something to contribute to the conversation, or are you just going to attack me and try to sabotage the conversation with your not-so-veiled passive-aggressive attitude? If you don't like me, that's fine. I don't mind. I have a thick skin; I can take it. But keep it to yourself. If you want to throw your vitriol towards me, send me a PM; keep it out of the public forums.
Who is art made for? The artist, a particular viewer, a larger audience? You make art to make art, and other people decide whether they want to appreciate it or not. "I don't like the colour brown!" So ... don't look at art that prominently uses brown to make its point.
You have to be more pragmatic than that. Do you want this hobby to grow or shrink in popularity? Do you want to appeal to the largest possible audience, or do you want to rules-lawyer?
I think this hobby should be flexible and adapt, not be rigid and set-in-stone damn the consequences. (I'm not saying there will be negative consequences if we keep going in this direction; I'm just opening up a discussion on the possibility.)
If you don't like where that is going, you have three options:
1) Get off the ride.
2) Make a TAS of your own following the rules that you find most pleasing.
3) Sit back, relax, and see where things go.
citation needed
Nobody is being forced to watch these movies.
I don't really appreciate your passive-aggressive tone. Just chill out. I'm trying to have an amicable conversation and discussion.
Why change something if it's the current term? You can't please everyone, nor make it easy for everyone.
Yeah, why bother with improvements? Let's just let things be like they have been, and never improve anything.
Why does it bother you if something is improved? If a change in a term will cause less misunderstandings, what harm does it do to you?
Samsara wrote:
There's no need to deprecate or change a term that takes less than a minute to understand.
I don't think you understand. The suggested change is not for the benefit of regular visitors, or the people who come here to stay and learn. The suggested change is for the benefit of the wider casual audience who are not aficionados, but may watch speedruns and marathons from time to time, and who may encounter these terms. In this case, a misunderstanding in the meaning of a term can cause indirect harm, if these people get the wrong impression of what's going on, and start spreading false rumors.
I don't really like this elitist attitude of "these are the terms, learn them or gtfo". (Ok, nobody has said exactly that, but it's the impression I'm getting from some people.) We should strive to reach the wider public, not to enclose ourselves in a semi-closed elite group where only people inside understand what the terminology and jargon means.
MUGG wrote:
And if you change the name, it won't stop me from calling it a movie file in the future.
If the term is deemed misleading and confusing, why would you deliberately want to use it? I don't understand.
This is not the first time a confusing term has been completely deprecated and erased from the site. Long time ago some people kept stubborningly using the term "timeattack" instead of "tool-assisted speedrun". It was phased out because it's extremely non-descript and misleading, and like "movie file", could be confused with something else.
I originally suggested "keypress file", but I got convinced by the posts of several people that "input file" is fine, so I voted for that.
moozooh wrote:
FWIW, regardless of how we call the actual input/replay/whatever files, we can still refer to our publications as movies (which is arguably a more suitable context for the word, considering how the publications are presented).
Hmm... Please define "publication". I'm not entirely sure what exactly it is, in this context.
Perhaps a better worded form of the topic title, and the question I'm posing, is "how should "speedrun" be defined?" And the point I was trying to make was to question the generally accepted definition of "get from the beginning to the end of the game as fast as possible by whatever means possible".
That simplistic definition does on the surface seem completely fine, and for like 10 years it was completely fine. However, as more and more techniques are being found that allow skipping large parts of games, and sometimes even the entire game, the sensibleness of that definition can be questioned.
That's why I asked who the target audience for tool-assisted speedruns is. Is it a small group of people who are trying to hack the games and find out technical ways to get to the end of the game (ie. most of us)? Or is it the larger audience of casual viewers? Who are we making these TASes for?
If one of the primary aims of TASing is to attract a larger audience of casual viewers, and entertain them, then techniques that just outright skip the entire game may go contrary to that goal. It may satisfy our technical curiosity and sense of achievement, but it might not be that enticing to the larger public.
As I commented in my original post, many casual viewers don't like extreme glitches that break the game (eg. by going OOB). Of course this is an extreme view, and there are at least equally many viewers who are fine with it, and like seeing games broken like that. But should we dismiss the former group of people without even hearing them? I ask once again: Who are we making these runs for?
I'm not trying to say that we should just ban all glitches, or even major glitches, or even glitches that skip the entire game. I'm just thinking out loud, and trying to inspire some dialogue and ideas.
playback or input file seems a nice way to name it,but i also don't find it a very relevant issue
But on the other hand, I don't think there is any harm in gradually phasing the usage. If people just start saying eg. "input file", that usage will start getting more popular.
As said, the reason to do this is to avoid needless confusion among new users.
A movie file can contain much more than keypresses: reset button presses, savestates (comparable to keyframes in video files), author info, comments... Theoretically you could even include instructions for controlling the whole interface, including loading ROMs, connecting controllers etc.
That doesn't mean that the term should remain misleading. In vernacular, "movie" and "video" mean pretty much the same thing. Neither of them convey the notion that the file contains timed controller input data; on the contrary, "movie" easily conveys something that the file is definitely not (ie. a video capture of the game).
Even if "keypress file" (or "button press file", or "controller input file") might not be all-encompassing, at least it's significantly more descriptive, accurate and less misleading.
There is enough confusion among the casual spectator about how TASes work. We don't need to add anything more to it by using confusing terminology.
This is a very minor issue, but the term "movie file" has always bothered me, because it sounds a bit misleading. AFAIK, the term itself comes from the very first emulators that existed (or one of the very first) to refer to the file that records timed controller button presses and can be used to replicate gameplay, and the term has stuck ever since.
I understand that after over 10 years the term is pretty much de facto "standardized", but it still nevertheless bothers me how misleading it sounds. The problem is that to me it sounds confusingly similar to "video file", which is generally understood to be a file containing video material (eg. in mpeg format). Of course the terms are different, but to the average person they may sound interchangeable.
These keypress files are not video files, obviously. Calling them "movie files", however, may confusingly sound like they are. This may happen when the term is used eg. in events like the GDQ events, or other shows, and it may cause misunderstandings for the casual viewer.
I think "keypress file", which I have been using here, is a much better term. It's much more accurate, and causes a lot less potential confusion. It gives a much better picture of what kind of file it is. Of course it's not the only option. Maybe "button press file", or "controller input file", or something along the lines.
Just throwing some ideas out there.
I liked how in that The New Screensavers segment not only was the actual console prominently shown on screen, but you explained that it is an original unmodified console, and the only thing that TASBot is doing is feeding it normal controller input. (Minor perfectionist nitpick: It would have been good to also mention that the game itself was also the original unmodified game.)
I would have liked to see that at the SGDQ event as well. There are always new viewers who don't know what's going on, so it would be good to take a few seconds to explain briefly that no, there isn't any odd trickery going on, that it really is the actual original console running the actual original game, and that nothing more is done than feed controller input to it through the normal controller port. In the case of beating the four Mario games, it would have been a cool mention to say, and if possible show, that they are indeed running on four NES consoles.
But other than that, no complaints. It went great.
standup maths posted a math challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh8h8MJFFdI
In short: 36 is a square number (because it's 6*6) and a triangular number (because it's 8*(8+1)/2). The question is: Are there other numbers that are also square and triangular at the same time? In other words, there exist some integers n and m for which n2=m*(m+1)/2. And if they are, what is the pattern?
Not much of a spoiler, but 36 is not the only such number, and there exist others. However, the second part of the question is more difficult.
Are you being hypothetical because of that SGDQ thing that will most likely apply to one game and then would very quickly peter out once the novelty is gone? I mean, shoot, remember when ACE runs appeared once a week? Hardly ruined the site then.
This whole topic feels like a major overreaction to Youtube comments, tbh.
Better to have the discussion now than when half of the runs are 2 seconds long and the public at large has already lost interest. It's good to be aware in advance of things that might change the nature of this hobby, and have hypothetical contingency plans if that were to happen. Even if absolutely nothing of the worst scenarios realize themselves, it doesn't hurt to have the discussion.
I think the site is an archive to every game's fastest possible completion with no tradeoffs made,with a secondary goal of entertainment.
But the site exists, and keeps thriving, because people get interested.
How do you keep people interested? Certainly not by making runs increasingly boring.
i'd like to mention the fact that a lot of the glitched speedruns are actually much more skill intensive than the regular routed ones
I sometimes get the feeling that there is a demand by the larger public for certain types of run (usually glitchless, and runs that use the route intended by the game developers), but we don't accept and publish them because of technicalities. And sometimes I feel this in fact goes contrary to what the main motivation for this site existing is. I think this site exists primarily to entertain and impress, but that might not always be achieved.
(Again, I'm not saying we should just accept and publish anything and everything. I'm just trying to generate some discussion and throw some visions about possible future directions and run categories.)
It doesn't sound nice, but why should the speedrun community care about how speedruns and TASes are perceived outside of it?
Because if TASing becomes obscure and inscrutably technical, if you remove the entertainment factor from it (from the point of view of the casual viewer), you may be dooming the entire hobby to obscurity and death. Less and less people will become interested and try TASing as a hobby.
Some people might say that we make TASing primarily for ourselves. While in some sense that might be true, I don't think it's the main impetus. We make TASes because they are awesome to watch. We make TASes to impress, and to enjoy. Not just ourselves, but everybody.
How many TASers came into the hobby because of seeing a TAS that they considered to be awesome and marvelous? I would be ready to bet that the vast majority, if not every single one, of them.
So what happens if you start removing that awesome appeal of TASes, from the point of view of the casual viewer, the general public?
That's why we should care.
