I watched this when ZFG streamed it, it's amazing that this challenge can be completed. Unless a lot of new stuff gets found, this will also remain TAS-only.
I am well aware that this category is about as arbitrary as it gets, but I enjoyed the TAS and therefore voted yes. At the very least, this should find a place in the Gruefood Delight section.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
In other news, I've toyed with the idea of doing a "Project M All Event Matches" TAS, only to find that one particular event (Donkey Kong vs. many Diddy Kongs) always crashes the game and/or emulator, regardless of whether Project M was used as an ISO or the SD + Gecko method. Today, I finally figured out why: It only crashes on Hard Mode. Easy Mode or Normal Mode doesn't crash the event, so an All Event Matches TAS would have to be performed on Normal instead of Hard. I don't know how this would change things in terms of submissions, but I'm just messaging to tell the news of that.
Or you do everything on hard, except for that one event.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
As I said, the thing that kills peoples motivation for a new TAS, is the inaccurate emulation. But if you really want a new TAS, no one is stopping you from making one. In fact, there even is a verification movie available that unlocks TT, so you can get started right away:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20776651340613891
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I think that sometimes it wouldn't even be a question of whether the game shows more or less explicit sexual content, but whether the speedrun shows that part of the game.
For example, in most GTA games you can go to a strip bar and get a lap dance. However, AFAIK in none of the games is this part of the mandatory storyline; it's completely optional. A speedrun would naturally not show this.
Thus would GTA games be acceptable for publication, as long as the speedrun skips any of those more explicit parts?
Moreover, if getting a lap dance were part of some kind of category (eg. some kind of 100% completion), would it be rejected?
A lot of mainstream games have such parts, sometimes they are even mandatory. Not even sites like Twitch have a problem with those, what they don't want are ganes that are only about sex.
If TASVideos would not allow things like the sex minigames in the God of War games to be part of a TAS, they would be more strict than the prude US-based video and streaming platforms.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I will always be against censorship, but when it comes to games with sexual content (and I mean more explicit than some nudity), it's hard to even find a game that has non-trivial gameplay. In a perfect world without censorship, your generic hentai dating sim would simply get rejected for being a bad game choice.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Version differences in general and how we should treat them is an interesting topic.
In some cases, it's obvious that two versions are completely different games and should be published separately. A good example of this are some remakes like SM64DS. Then we have updated ports that are mostly interesting on their own based on their additional content (I'll go with another Mario example, the "You vs. Boo" TAS of SMB Deluxe).
It gets more difficult when we get to things like the countless ports of Doom or 1.1 releases. SMB Deluxe did eventually get an any% publication because it was deemed different enough. But it's harder to find examples of separate publications of closer variations of the same game (SMB Deluxe is still on a different platform after all!).
I tried to think of some examples that would fall into such a category, versions of the same game that are very close (not a full remake or significantly different platform), but have some notable differences. One game that comes to my mind is Tenchu: Stealth Assassins with its separate publications of JP and U. But those two TASes are both in the moons tier. What would have happened if one of the TASes wouldn't have been deemed entertaining enough for moons, would it have been rejected?
Let me bring up a game that hasn't been TASed yet because of technical limitations:
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was released for PS2 and later got an HD port for PS3 as part of the Sly Trilogy. The PS2 version has all the glitches and is very entertaining to watch as a speedrun, especially since many of the non-gameplay parts can be skipped in some way. The PS3 port removes the biggest and most spectacular skips and also forces you to watch all those cutscenes that you could skip in the original. From a technical perspective, the run is significantly different between the two releases: The original is fast paced and can skip 90% of two of the games chapters, while the port has to play every single level and is mostly reduced to use skips within the regular gameplay. Would a TAS of the PS3 version get rejected for having less entertainment value than the original, despite being a very different game? Or would it still get a vault publication because it's different enough?
If there is an example of two versions of the same game being released in moons and vault, let me know!
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Regarding OoT: The only version differences that count in that game are 1.0 vs. 1.1 vs. 1.2. Everything else is text or - in case of PAL - framerate. U and JP can be any of the three versions, while PAL can only be 1.2.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I can see why this game is not very popular. What hurt the entertainment value for me were the many dialogue sequences that would often result in additional loading screens. It really makes you miss the days of one sentence-stories. The boss fights were also a problem because they kept re-using that Dynamo guy.
On the positive side, seeing the TAS go through those hordes of enemies in a fake difficulty-setting was very satisfying. I also liked how fast faced the TAS was, whenever it didn't have to stop to clear text boxes. Overall, I'm giving it a weak yes.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
In the case of SMB, this would mean that any% and warpless would be main categories, while things like PAL, max coins, FDS -3 and whatever you have would be considered side categories. Having to draw the line where movies would go would be kind of arbitrary, but ultimately so is the decision on whether a run should go to vault or moons currently.
Would be weird to have the fastest possible time (PAL) as a side category. It would make more sense to have NTSC as a side category.
Mothrayas wrote:
We have, for years already. I'll grant that more should be done with it, but that's where the technical and practical hurdles come in.
Is it even possible to access those from anywhere on the site? I can't find anything.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
A redesign that makes it possible to no longer have a policy that tries to minimize categories would be a great thing to do. Don't be afraid of chances, sometimes they are necessary to stay relevant and not go the route of SDA.
The idea of a design with game pages is something I always supported, you should really look into that!
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I'm going to quote what I said a few minutes ago in the submission thread of SMB1 PAL:
The way I see it, the rules should say that you can use whatever 60Hz version you want and that the fastest such version is preferred. If you want to use a 50Hz version you need to justify it with gameplay differences, so it can be decided if this version should receive a separate publication or obsolete the 60Hz publication. If the gameplay differences are small enough, it could still be rejected for being basically "the same but slower".
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Console versions of PAL games run at a lower framerate than NTSC games, running at ~50Hz compared to NTSC's ~60Hz, and the games themselves are often not modified or poorly modified to accommodate to the change in timing. Due to this, PAL versions of ROMs are generally not allowed, unless there are significant technical and/or entertainment merits to using this version. See Rygar and Blaster Master for examples of good usage of the PAL ROM.
Saying "generally not allowed" is too strict. It should really be similar to how US vs. JP is handled. Right know, it discourages people from submitting TASes too much.
Aside from that, I find it at least questionable in general to say "NTSC US" is preferred, because no matter what, this comes off as US-centric. Especially when dealing with PAL games that don't run at a slower framerate, the language is not a factor, so it's hard to justify why NTSC US should always be preferred.
The way I see it, the rules should say that you can use whatever 60Hz version you want and that the fastest such version is preferred. If you want to use a 50Hz version you need to justify it with gameplay differences, so it can be decided if this version should receive a separate publication or obsolete the 60Hz publication. If the gameplay differences are small enough, it could still be rejected for being basically "the same but slower".
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
This is pretty much the worst possible decision. It does not acknowledge that the site rules for PAL versions are outdated and should be changed to be more flexible. And the argument that the differences between this TAS and the NTSC version are too small is kind of weak, if you consider the level of optimization that SMB1 TASing has reached.
As of this post, 62 out of 79 voters have said that they found this TAS entertaining. And there also seems to be a consensus that in one way or another, the rules need to change. Are you just going to ignore this?
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Or we just do regular 100% and any%, which I doubt will ever happen before we have access to a more accurate emulator. As of now, the awful lag emulation would give a TAS way too much of an advantage, resulting in gameplay that would be impossible on console. Lag is a big deal in DKR, since it affects boost physics.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
So my vote goes to HappyLee's suggestion. Either vault it (which I'm not sure is possible under the rules), or reject it. Actually, if the decision is made to obsolete the NTSC run, I half-expect HappyLee would cancel his submission before it could be published anyway.
Again, the vault is not a place where you put TASes you disagree with. Its purpose is to contain any% and 100% TASes that have a low entertainment value. Since this TAS was quite well received, I doubt it would get a vault publication.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
To me, opening the disc tray in any non-intended situation falls under the same category of glitches as cartridge tilting. It's not something I want to see in a TAS.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
From what I'm seeing, here's the problem.
PAL is of lesser quality than the NTSC. This has nothing to do with Europeans saying, "but you hate us". FFS. It's got nothing to do with that. NTSC was done first because it is higher quality than the PAL port of this game.
The object is to ultimately showcase the best the game has to offer under the best conditions. That's been done, and for this game, has been done a long time ago.
This video, while done well, still uses a lower quality version of this game. It exploits a loophole available only to this version and the physics apparent only here. The loophole doesn't show up in the NTSC and can't be used to shave time there.
Bad game version has been used pretty much forever to put runs in Gruefood. I don't see the issues behind putting this particular run in Gruefood. Yes, it's well done, but that doesn't mean that it should be published.
Publishing this in any way shape or form is going to lead to PAL versions of every game being submitted regardless of quality.
Have you read this excellent post by MrWint that goes into deatail about PAL just being a "bad port"? The situation isn't as simple as you might think it is.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
2. A movie that hasn't been published yet; something that would debut at the event.
This is a really interesting idea. What if the TASBlock was entirely new TASes that haven't been shown anywhere yet? People could volunteer runs that are due to be finished within, say, the next two months, elect to delay submission to TASVideos, and show them for the first time at GDQ instead. We get the surprise factor from previous GDQs but with something much more reasonable and representative of typical TASVideos content.
Please don't. It would suck for us to have the marathons dictate when we can see a new TAS.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
This new trick is enough to justify a restart of the TAS that is currently being worked on. Sucks to lose all the progress, but we're talking about minutes here, not just a few seconds...
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Is there any good reason to ban RBA in MST? If you take a look at 100%, it is allowed to use RBA, as long as you still get every item legitimately. So why not allow it in MST as well, as long as you still get all the stones and medallions legitimately by beating the dungeons?
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
It's amazing how they can still find things like this after all these years!
I guess this makes the recently published MST TAS outdated again. I wonder if it would be faster now to do Jabu as adult.
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There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.