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WST wrote:
The author of this hack is a TASvideos member & TASer marzojr, better to ask him if the hack is finished or not.
As about the quality of the run itself, all I can say is that it looks very improveable for my eye…
We (Sonic TASers) have invited mr CyanTheGamerhog01 into our Discord community so they can learn and improve.
When you say improvable, how improvable are we talking? Is anyone actively working on an improvement?
To the author (or anyone who knows), which version of the hack are you using?
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jlun2 wrote:
I am sorry if my post comes as bad faith. It is not. I do agree it is time consuming to make a TAS. That is why this rule change is a huge plus for me. I can reuse all my discoveries and scripts to make 2+ runs, rather than all that work on 1 single run. That's why I would love clarification on what is a glitch, so I can dust off past games I TASed and modify them to make something new, reusing almost everything. I see that as work smarter, not harder.
I remember the Mirror's Edge community famously had a similar problem.
Not to say necessarily that we should go with their solution. This is an example of why we need to have things be on a per game or per run basis. I know personally as a Judge, in the spirit of inclusivity, I wouldn't reject a good faith effort of the category because they missed an obscure glitch that people can't really agree whether it's a glitch or not in the first place.
If I were to make a standard, I'd probably say that a "glitch" would be anything a reasonable stranger who knows the game and found the video on YouTube would immediately and unquestionably identify as a glitch. To give some examples of what I'm talking about: going through walls, walking on or jumping off non-existent ground, breaking speed-cap for extended periods of time, rewriting memory addresses, taking advantage of overflow/underflow, stuff like that. Anything on the fence or more specific than those lines can be left to the discretion of the game community and the author, with judge as a deciding vote if it is needed. We don't need to go into the level of detail this video here goes into
My preferred name for what I want from the category is "glitch avoidance". I also have heard "low glitch". If changing the terms to that may help, you can think of it like that.
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I have a question about the Jade fight. When you go through the transition from a higher to lower floor, a cutscene plays. I would think you could use the time the cutscene takes to beat her up more. Is there a reason doing the transition is faster?
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I've played a couple games designed for blind people. It's a really interesting experience. I have no doubt that those should be counted as video games.
I know this is a poorly worded definition, but what about "A video game uses electrical signals to provide the player with feedback on their actions"
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Samsara wrote:
The optimization thing is sort of an interesting quandary. This run is objectively the fastest completion of this category, meaning that by our rules it's hard to justify accepting the other run as it's not the fastest known run. However, even though this is the fastest known run, it's hard to justify accepting this as well because it's clear the other run uses the far superior strategy. Since that run came first, there aren't really any excuses for this run being strategically slower. I don't think we've ever had this situation happen with two submissions on the workbench at the same time, at least not that I've seen in my time as a Judge. I've seen it happen with submissions that aim to improve published runs but end up coming short on overall execution despite having faster times. In those cases, it's a judgement call, but we can't really do that here because neither run is published. There definitely needs to be a better way of handling situations like these. I might have to go back to the drawing board for our rules and standards and figure out something that makes sense.
I knew something felt weird when I was watching feos's comparison encode. This run clearly had better movement in the early game and got to Merlin's Secret Shop way ahead of the other run. So if it was using the best strategies, then it should be faster afterward as well, which would have a much smaller end time than Chamale's run, but it doesn't. Looking at the encode, almost universally Chamale's run is beating this run in the second half. If the strategy here was better, then that shouldn't be the case.
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So, the more I try to look into this run, the harder time I have giving it a succinct objective goal.
This run and Chamale's run before it seek to unlock a final boss fight where Slick calls on three others and you fight four people. Other than that, it basically follows an any% route, except they both go out of their way to recruit Ivan, which requires talking to multiple NPCs.
Currently the run is listed as "Secret Bosses". The justification for that is unlocking the final boss fight with four enemies, but if that counts as a secret boss, shouldn't those other fights mentioned be as well? Also, there are bosses that are optional which can be seen as secret or extra, like Benny and Clyde who require going on a branch from the main path, Alex/Ryan (depending on the PC you choose, you can fight the one not chosen) which requires returning to a previous area, and Jesse who requires beating a certain boss five times.
The decision to recruit Ivan is also difficult. Like the Slick boss fight, I can't really say it's the only character recruit that has hidden conditions to happen. There are some characters where you have to refuse invites in order to have a chance of recruiting them for example. Also, having Ivan is not a requirement for the Slick fight, nor do I think recruiting him is the fastest way to fulfill those conditions.
As far as I can tell, the best this submission can get is to be a Playground run, unless there is something I'm not seeing here.
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I'm still leery about dropping the verification movie requirement for Standard. I think the way that runs without SRAM need to be judged case-by-case. Extenuating circumstances should never be grounds for disqualifying a run, but I also think situations where making the SRAM is impossible is rare. We can deal with those as it comes along and accept dekutony's Club Penguin.
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From what I see, in addition to the Gem Shards, 101% also gets regular gems, colored gems and relics. Relics are given for completing a time trial after you already cleared the level once.
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I think I agree that if we want to be a site that tracks records as well as provide video footage of the game, the fastest completion should be any run that gets to the end of the game, even if it isn't the ideal end and even if the good ending run has all the content of the bad ending.
There's still the problem of what to do for the movie already on the site. I'm all for making different endings eligible for a Wiki: Standard category. That feels objective enough to me. As it stands now, that is not a Standard class and I can't just decide by myself it should count. It's possible if we accept this, we can choose not to obsolete the previous run and move N. Tropy ending to Wiki: Moons. Currently, the class has an entertainment requirement. The movie on this site has a rating of 6.77. That feels borderline to me, and if we do change so that different endings can qualify for Standard, then we'll have to remember to switch it back. I might be willing to do this. I don't want to obsolete the previous movie because these two movies have different goals and both goals are legitimate ways to finish the game. Beating N. Tropy isn't full completion either.
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I would like to have a discussion to see how members of the site feel. Should this run be seen as completing the game, which would qualify it as Standard fastest completion? How should we deal with the other submission which beat N. Tropy?
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I'd like to know if there are other similar shortcuts in the game and how much time they save combined. If it's just that one, then that probably wouldn't make the run too much different.
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ItsPietroFelix wrote:
Ok, i GENUINELY* did not know about that. If any mods are reading this, you can set this TAS to rejected because i'm definetely making a faster one with this strat.
As the author, you have the option of cancelling the submission. This will take it off the workbench same as a rejection. Please do so if you don't intend to keep this run. If you do intend to keep it, explain how you would like it to be judged.
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Based off my testing, monster movement is controlled by RNG, but slots aren't. The symbols cycle and you choose when to stop them. It's fairly consistent which symbol you end up with depending on when you start pressing the button. The symbols change every frame, though, so doing it in real time would be really inconsistent.
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Crash41596 wrote:
feos wrote:
"no clips" sounds very good, but I still need to watch the current 2 movies. The current pub would be a weak Moon until a "no clips" submission happens and obsoletes it. Crash41596 what do you think?
I very much like the idea of "All Levels". I am not sure where that would leave the ant's cave level, it's a level where you do a side quest that is completely optional. The level itself is not on the map, but accessed via the enchanted earth level. A majority of glitches that save a good chunk of time are not clips, but level loops, which can be done anywhere there is a death trigger you can fall into.
I remember that, getting through the level and seeing the chicken drumstick, wondering what it will be used for then at the end of the game realizing that it wasn't used for anything.
What language would you use then? How about "all stages, no level-wrap" that would cover what Dragon Gate skips as well as require new strategies in a lot of levels.
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I have a couple vague ideas about it, but probably some brainstorming would help more. Possibly something like "no levels bypassed"? In the Aero 2 speedrunning community, they call their second category "all levels" even though the fastest completion also plays every level technically. There are just glitches that allow people to skip to the end.
Another idea would be "no clipping". The Dragon Gate skip is clipping through a damage barrier, and though I don't know the full mechanics of the falling out of level glitch I think it involves clipping through either the floor or a death barrier. This would allow the Pools of the Ancient Dead early level end and disallow a clip through a fence on Cemetery Hill which I'm okay with in a longer run, but it will also allow climbing on level geometry to walk on the walls.
I'd be interested to hear what some people who know Medievil might say about this.
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I have some concerns about having the published run be a different branch, mostly because I'm not sure if it's different enough. We have a soft guideline on the site that major skip glitches usually mean about half the content is skipped. This can be overcome by community consensus, though, which is why I'm posing the question to this forum.
When I look at branching games, I personally focus on how different it feels. I've said this before, but route changes have usually have to be drastically different, and I mean drastically in order to feel like a different run. It's true that Dragon Gate glitch skips 6 stages, but nearly every other stage (with 2 exceptions from what I see) will be exactly the same as this run when the run without Dragon Gate skip is updated.
I'm more interested in the glitches which allow the player to ignore all stage goals in certain stages, such as the glitch that involves falling through the level, or the one in Pools of the Ancient Dead and The Lake. By my view, not using those techniques would do a lot more toward making the run feel different than this submission, and I would feel much more accepting of that.
In short. I don't believe Dragon Gate Glitch by itself is enough to warrant a new branch, but Dragon Gate Glitch plus the skips mentioned in the previous paragraph would be. I also think the skips in the previous paragraph are the more important one to address.
That said, this is not a final opinion, just a call for feedback, so please provide your own opinions.
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As feos said, there don't seem to be that many places where the goal of avoiding coins really inconveniences the player that much. The only spot I really saw was in 3-3 where one platform was completely covered i with coins. There may have been other places, but it really did seem similar in the side by side.
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I suggest that the current movie that is on the site gets a new branch due to the dragon gate skip. Currently the categories for rta are No DGS, and Any%. No DGS is pretty much all levels, or NMS?. Classifying a major glitch in this game is very difficult due to the time frame the dragon gate skip was actually discovered. The dragon gate skip allows you to skip both dragon gems, the dragon fight, and the dragon armor entirely, not to mention 6 levels. It is a 12+ minute time save
We are still working on the rules for the no major skips branch, but I will bring up to the rest of the judges for opinions.
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Most glitch avoidance runs I can think of outright disallow the action that causes the glitch even in situations where the glitch doesn't trigger. I think I'm more in favor of this line of thinking. "I used the major skip glitch, but not in the way that causes a major skip" feels not right in my opinion. Also, I feel there's a need to be able to properly define things. I'm not sure if that needs to be a hard rule, though. I think the nature of the thing requires a case-by-case basis.
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In your first set of bullet points, one of them is "No ACE or sub-frame reset." Usually, that means you know the technique exists and it would save time, but you consciously chose not to use it for whatever reason.
