I agree with aqfaq Is there anyway to simply get rid of the "send data" button?
The bulk of the site code was developed before AJAX was very popular or strongly supported. What you are suggesting pretty much requires it. That in itself is not a problem nowadays, but it would probably require a significant refactoring of the underlying code. (Not only would the web page contain the javascript necessary, but it requires backend support from the server. In other words, it requires for somebody to develop it. It's not something that's simply done in five minutes.)
Without AJAX you are pretty much restricted to "submit" buttons to send data to the server. (I suppose clicking the rating scale could work as a "submit" button in itself, but that means that it would have to reload the page from the server to get an updated rating. And since there are two ratings, you would be doing it twice. But even this way would require some refactoring of the existing backend code.)
Video games — especially older ones — generally have very few good sources of unpredictable data; the chief among those is the player. Moreover, older console games generally didn't reseed the PRNG — they either chose a seed based on when the player started the game, or had a fixed seed. Thus, the only real source of unpredictability used was the player. By removing all unpredictability from the player, you remove all unpredictability from these games.
If this is to become an article (rather than a speech given at a marathon), perhaps that part could be elaborated further. It doesn't really explain how or why what the player does affects the randomness or what values the PRNG produces. As it is, it just leaves it as a bit mysterious "what the player does can affect the PRNG, somehow".
Perhaps a few concrete examples could be listed. For example, some older games simply had a PRNG updating at each frame (or such), like it were a "clock" that goes through a (pseudo)random sequence, constantly changing at each frame, and when any part of the game needs a random value, it reads the value that it happens to have at that moment. Thus the player (or more precisely the TASer) can for example wait for an additional frame or two before doing something so that the PRNG will have a different value, which will affect that something (eg. a random item drop).
Of course many other techniques were (and are) used. Perhaps briefly list a few examples.
As I've said before, I will rate every movie after the rating system requires 1 click instead of 10 clicks. I like rating stuff. I rate albums at allmusic.com, movies at imdb.com and books at goodreads.com, all of which require 1 click only. Rating can be done easily right after finishing the thing and it takes only a second. By the time I've rated 10 TASes at TASVideos I've rated 100 things elsewhere. That's why I don't bother rating TASes.
So you first spend anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours watching a TAS, but then you can't be bothered to spend a few seconds making "10 clicks".
Makes complete sense.
I think that showing a slight bit of the process of creating a TAS was a good idea. Personally I didn't find that part too long or boring. (I noticed that the number of frames needed to wait before starting the level was unexpected by you, but that didn't bother me. I thought it was interesting rather than awkward or bothersome.)
Perhaps in the next GDQ marathon, something else could be briefly demonstrated, such as how to find the memory address for a certain value, how to show said value on screen in real-time, and how to use it for something useful. I think some good example of this could be showcased and explained in a minute or two.
(I know this is sounding a bit like a TASing tutorial, but hey, if it's interesting, so what? It can entice people to try it.)
Is each datapoint in the curve representing the number of entries that have that length, or is each datapoint the sum of entries that have at most that length? Because the shape of the curve makes more sense as a sum. (I find it really hard to believe that there are exactly as many entries that are 05:02 long than 06:00 long, for instance.)
The curve would be more illustrative if each datapoint represented the amount of entries of that particular length.
Perhaps we should indeed talk about two "sub-categories" of console verification of TASes: Those that work as-is on the console, without the need of any modifications, and those that require minor modifications to sync on the console (but such modifications make it desync on the emulator, because the emulator is not yet 100% accurate).
We may have seen existing TASes, and most of the speedrunners at the event might have seen then, but I'm quite certain that the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of viewers have not. Thus I don't think it's that big of a deal to show existing TASes. We shouldn't be judging the interest of the TAS block based on our personal experience, because we are biased.
It would be nice if the TAS block presented things that have never seen before by anybody, and thus surprises everybody, but that can be hard to do every time, and perhaps a bit unrealistic. (If it's eg. just some regular game completion TAS, then a long time would probably need to be spent to make it, and kept under the wraps possibly for months, if it's supposed to be a "surprise" revealed at the marathon. Is it worth just for a few minutes of "surprise"?)
How much can a TAS differ from a version of the same TAS that fully syncs in the actual console, for it to be considered "console-verified"?
1) None at all. If any modification at all needs to be done to the keypress data (amount, timing...) to make it sync, it's not "console-verified". Also even if no modification is needed, but the number of frames to completion differs (in cases where the console "polls" the input, rather than the input being fed to it on a regular basis), it's also not "console-verified".
2) If the input syncs fully in the console without any modification, even if the completion times differ (in cases where the console "polls" for input, thus allowing leeway in the timings.)
3) If the only modifications needed are adding or removing a few extra lag frames or empty input due to differences between the emulator and the console, then it's still ok. (It would be great if the emulator matched the console perfectly, but until we get there, this ought to do.)
4) Something else?
I fear that if we organize too many events too frequently, they will lose that something that makes them interesting and exciting. If you eat some delicious exotic food once a year, it remains exotic and exciting, but if you eat it twice a week, it quickly becomes boring and tasteless.
Anyway, when reading your post, for some reason the yearly TAS awards came to mind, somehow. I'm wondering if they could be somehow merged with this (and perhaps expanded somehow).
This game mode controls like VVVVVV - you can't simply "jump" down, you can only invert gravity, and can only do so while on the ground.
Can't you "jump" by simply inverting gravity for a bit and then restoring it? It ought to increase your falling speed from a ledge.
But I haven't played this game, so I'm just shooting in the dark.
It's perhaps somewhat ironic (and even unfortunate in a sense) that the two first TAS blocks were kind of too awesome for their (or our) own good. As Mothrayas said, they probably gave too many people the wrong impression that TASing is all about hacking and breaking games and making them do funny things (rather than, you know, speedrunning and completing the games). Those expectations are hard to follow and, well, not really what it's all about.
This time you showed what TASing is really about, which I thought was great, but it had to live in the shadow of the two earlier "gimmick" presentations.
Those wrong impressions and expectations are also quite unfortunate in the sense that it's a speedrunning marathon (ie. completing games as fast as possible), not a "let's break this game and make it do funny things" marathon. So it kind of misses the whole point... (But on the other hand, the "gimmick" TASes presented something different, something new, instead of the same thing as everything else during the marathon, which may be part of the reason.)
One idea that came to my mind which would perhaps be "gimmicky" but still preserve the spirit of speedrunning would be to connect TASbot to two consoles at the same time and have the same input control two different games (ie. a multigame TAS; one input, two games). This might be technically infeasible, though.
(Also, for it to work as a presentation, the games and the TAS would need to be selected such that it's very clear visually that what's happening in the games is synchronized, ie. that it really is the same input being given to both games. The playable characters in both games need to move the same way most of the time, etc. It just doesn't look very convincing or interesting if the two games seem to be advancing very independently of each other.)
I didn't notice anything wrong with your presentation. If you weren't feeling well, it really didn't show at all. In other words, you made a very good job.
As for the contents of the TAS segment, I liked that you selected more "pure" TASing for this marathon (in that they were actual speedruns and playthroughs), rather than go with the non-speedrunning gimmicks. However, I think that you went perhaps a bit too much to that side in that you used the emulator for one run and just a video for another. I understand perfectly the technical reasons for this, but I think that the audience would prefer seeing the cute little robot "playing" on an actual console. Just running an emulator on a PC doesn't have that same feeling...
I was thinking, perhaps, and if at all possible, if in the next marathon (or one of the future marathons) you could actually have the robot visibly connected to the console on-camera, for everybody to see. To really drive home that yes, the robot is directly connected to the gamepad port of the actual console. I don't know if this is technically possible because I don't know what kind of setup is needed at the site, but just a random idea.
If people are desiring more "gimmicks", then perhaps have one such "gimmick" and one more "regular" TAS, as an in-between compromise that ought to have the best of both worlds.
They're not the speedrun community organizing an event to have fun, they're a company that uses speedruns to make money.
When money is involved, especially the sums we are talking about here, things tend to get a bit ugly, even when none of that money goes to the organizer or anybody else (besides the charity organization). If nothing else, because of legal reasons. Everything has to be done by the book. And when there is a significant amount of people involved, I'm assuming that preventive measures have to be taken to combat foul play from anybody. Every single cent must be accounted for.
And of course since these events are of significant size (with hundreds of participants and visitors, and dozens of organizers), it requires work and attention for things to go smoothly (and to, once again, minimize the possibility of ugly things happening.)
Rigidity and bureaucracy are an inevitable, and necessary, side-effect of all this. An event of this size just cannot be organized like it were a lan-party among a half-dozen friends. The more people are involved, and the more money is involved, someone somewhere is going to screw up. Or play foul. Or something is going to go wrong. These possibilities cannot simply be ignored.
I might be stating the obvious (and possibly repeating what has already been said previously, but I'm too lazy right now to go through 16 pages to check), but if you need to add frames to a movie in order to run it in a console, shouldn't it be the emulator that's fixed (and made to run more like the console)?
I was thinking about the most awesome "memorable highlights", but you are right, if there were any controversies or other unusual stuff, be free to post them too.
Edit: Btw, damn you for that video. It led to other YouTube recommendation videos, which led to other videos... which led to videos like this (completely unrelated to GDQ, but fully related to awkwardness): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ITftz_kbNs
Let's just say I now fully understand what "cringe" feels like. Ach.
For the benefit of those who didn't follow the stream 24/7, what were some of the memorable highlights of SGDQ 2015, so that we could check them out from the archives? (Direct links are appreciated but not required.)
I get really annoyed when people use the argument: "this series has x number of stars already and therefore another run of said series cannot obtain a star even though it clearly deserves it". If a run deserves a star, then let it, regardless of "Well Ocarina of Time has one so we must take its and get it to Majora's Mask". I don't care if it's a Mario, Mega Man, Zelda or Metroid game. If a game clearly deserves a star, then give it to it.
I agree when it's a game series (especially one that's so loosely connected as the Zelda series). However, I think that stars for different TASes of the same game ought to be limited to a rational amount.
If you put yourself in the shoes of a first-time visitor who has not seen many TASes (if any), but perhaps knows the games themselves (and might have even played them), which one of the two suggested Zelda runs would be a more awesome introduction to TASes?
(Would this change if we assume that the visitor has never seen nor played the games?)
What we find impressive might not always coincide with what a first-time visitor finds impressive.
You spent 50 euro on a game that is 14 years old? Is it rare now or something?
It's the HD remastered version of it. (They updated some of the models and textures, and made it support 1080p resolution.)
Btw, I notice that Final Fantasy Type-0 has appeared on Steam. I wonder if I should trust Square Enix once again, or learn from my previous mistake...
Any opinions?
(Yes, I know it's not a JRPG per se, but an "action RPG" in the same style as Crisis Core. Nevertheless. I wasn't extremely fond of the latter, so I'm a bit dubious.)
Numberphile published today another "throwing yahtzees" video. The host asks what's the probability of getting a straight when throwing 6d6.
That got me thinking: What is the probability of getting a straight if you were to throw five different dice: A d4, a d6, a d8, a d12 and a d20?
(Obviously any straight that can be formed with those dice suffices. The dice don't need to be in that order to form the straight.)
And while we are at it, what's the probability of throwing 5-of-a-kind with those dice?
Then something very strange happened. Square stopped making JPRGs, at least for the Final Fantasy series.
Square Enix happened.
I actually wanted to check this when you wrote it, but I totally forgot. I remembered it only now.
Final Fantasy X was published in July 2001. The Square/Enix merger happened in April 2003.
So no, I don't think "Square Enix happened" is the correct answer.
Is it simply that that trick doesn't work with this game?