Posts for arkiandruski


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I have to say this is one of the more enjoyable A2600 movies I've seen. I think a large part of it has to do with the music. Also, The game does well in making everything seem less abstract. So I found it entertaining. I don't know for sure whether this is good enough for Moons yet. I'd need to see more feedback. As for in game time vs. input, I'm in the camp that says always end input at the earliest moment possible, even in some pretty extreme cases (which this isn't).
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I remember in the movie rules that one of the acceptable places to stop a looping run is where it's impossible to complete the current level, which it seems is the case with what Winslinator is saying.
Movie Rules wrote:
Games that loop endlessly without some kind of ending can still have a defined ending point, which can be...The game reach[ing] a point where it becomes impossible to complete the current round.
Oh, but this is a single loop. That sentence Memory quotes is actually difficult. The thing mentions difficulty increasing, and difficulty increases between loops, right? It did go through every unique level layout, though.
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It's tradition for users on TASvideos to use April Fools to submit movies that have no chance of being accepted, either by being a bad game choice or having really weird goal choices. Notably, there've been a few Test Program TASes submitted on April Fools. So, yeah, for this submission. It breaks the site rules about not being a game, so it can't be accepted into Vault, and there's nothing in the movie that would qualify it for Moons.
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When I first saw this was an autoscroller, it made me seriously question whether there was really any opportunity to showcase the TAS aspect. The screen doesn't seem to move any faster if you kill enemies earlier of later at least most of the time. I didn't see any lag when watching the file, so lag management isn't a major consideration. The fact that enemy spawns are fixed also kind of adds to it's triviality. Based off of that, I figured there wouldn't be much opportunity to save or lose time, but looking at the leaderboards on speedruns.com, the gap between 1st and 2nd place is surprisingly large. It looks like there's a lot more opportunity to save or lose time than I thought. I might wonder whether all the time save might just come from being able to fire faster, but I believe that there may be enough there for this to qualify for Vault.
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Saw that Memory mentioned Super Mario Bros 3 and I decided to look it up. It does seem that that game had a situation similar to this. When [4032] NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" by Masterjun & ais523 in 00:00.78 was submitted, the previous movie was [2588] NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" by Lord_Tom & Tompa in 02:54.98. The previous movie executes its glitch by manipulating objects to go to certain places which set up the RAM so that once Mario goes the wrong way into a specific pipe, the game will warp you to the ending. The new movie gets to the ending from the title screen. It doesn't even enter the game proper. For the 7-1 version, like you said for Coin Case, the set up for the glitch can be disguised as normal gameplay, so the audience might not know anything is happening until the glitch takes effect. Abusing the way the game reads inputs to warp to the ending from the title screen is very, very, very different from that. It's not close to the same method. It doesn't look the same. It is very obviously completely new. Thing is though, [4032] NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" by Masterjun & ais523 in 00:00.78 obsoleted [2588] NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" by Lord_Tom & Tompa in 02:54.98. Even though they relied on very different methods to achieve their goals, they were still deemed to be the same category. Is there something special that makes this situation stand out from that? I supposed you can say they're different games, but it seems to be tradition on this site that Pokémon games of the same generation are treated as the same game, so I'm not sure if that's enough.
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In other words, Pokémon chain of succession is a huge muddled mess. I tend to lump all forms of memory corruption into the same category. I know that's not really the case and Pokémon specifically has a long history of all kinds of memory corruption being used, but I'm probably not the best judge for this kind of stuff. May I ask: what's the difference between this and save corruption that a lay person might be able to pick up without all the background information. It feels like save glitch is ACE and this is also ACE, but it takes longer to get there.
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I have a question. I'm a little over an hour into watching this run, but it's my understanding that the reason we use glitches unless it's for playaround purposes is because it gives us advantages we can exploit to lower the time. It seems to me that the fixes needed to have this glitched movie beat the glitchless aren't simple quick fixes along the lines of just being able to replace the submission file, so why shouldn't this movie be rejected or canceled in favor of the glitchless run until you implement these changes. There's also the problem of possible similarity between this run and the glitchless. It feels to me like a large portion of the game is just being played normally even with the glitch. How much does this glitch allow you to skip?
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This is a pretty significant improvement over the previous TAS. I'd say the proper course of action would be to accept this movie and make a note to the encoder to wait for a version of the emulator with better audio. The problem isn't whether the input file is acceptable for the site.
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feos: Based on that chart, this movie actually beats the published any% in terms of level times. Now this might sound like a completely crazy suggestion, but maybe it could obsolete the any%?
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Personally, I don't there should be a hard limit on how many branches are published for each game, or even a soft limit along the lines of "when you reach this number of movies, it's time to start seriously question new branches" Instead, I like to focus on significant gameplay differences, or "compelling differences" like the Judge Guidelines say. In my personal experience, route differences are usually less noticeable unless they are drastically different, and I mean drastically. What stands out more and I feel is a better criteria is looking at the techniques used. Does a new branch consistently apply techniques that are not present in the current branches? Let's use the Ring Attack runs as an example, since I saw those contested earlier. One of the byproducts of collecting every ring is that a large portion of the level needs to be visited, so just naturally with that goal, some techniques, like for example glitching to the end of the level become less useful. I'm feeling the effect of that on the Aero the Acrobat 2 100% run I'm currently working on. In the any% run, wall zips were the way to beat most levels. However, in 100%, when I have to visit most of the map anyway, they become much less useful. It doesn't mean that the move is disallowed, just that the goal changes the usefulness of the technique. We've had a few runs rejected because they didn't apply techniques that weren't present in the published movies, even if it makes a different route or is highly optimized. A really good example of this is #5978: The_Tas_Master's N64 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "All Medallions" in 53:21.70. While it's reliance on techniques that weren't present in other branches wasn't the only reason that movie was rejected, it's still a significant one. One that's more in line with this submission is #1572: mr_roberts_z's N64 Super Mario 64 "Coinless-Cannonless-Capless" in 1:03:10.80, which people also felt was too similar to published movies. Like a few others, I watched the currently published "Sonic and Tails" TAS and compared it with this TAS and the Tails only TAS level by level, noting where things changed. Keep in mind, that the casual viewer is not going to look at these things in that amount of detail. They are going to watch the entire movie and mostly go by feel, and if it feels the same as a published movie, it might as well be the same. Since Sonic and Tails has access to Tail's moveset, I was expecting Tail's techniques to be similar to the any% movie. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Tail's levels actually do feel quite different for the most part. Enough that I believe a new branch is justified for the category. Sonic alone, however, didn't. I think it was about 2/3s of the way through the Sonic 3 portion where I thought of a big reason for this. Everything that Sonic can do Sonic and Tails can do as well. It's just that Sonic alone doesn't have access to Tail's moveset. With this in mind, the run is less of a run with a different character and more like Sonic and Tails, but Sonic is not allowed to use Tails. Movies where the moveset of a character is limited in some way can, should, and have been accepted for publication if the limit leads to different solutions in almost every circumstance. Movies like [1868] SNES Super Mario World "no powerups, maximum exits" by PangaeaPanga in 1:18:23.22, [2062] N64 Super Mario 64 "70 stars, no Backwards Long Jump" by Jesus, Kyman, MICKEY_Vis11189, MoltovM, Nahoc, snark, sonicpacker, ToT, CeeSammerZ, coin2884, Eru, Goronem, Mokkori, Nekuran, Nothing693 & pasta in 42:58.52, or to use a non Mario example, [3375] SNES Disney's Aladdin "capeless" by jaysmad in 16:36.78 are accepted because limiting the moveset like this removes a tool that was used constantly in the other runs to the detriment of all other possibilities. So oddly removing options actually leads to increased variety of techniques employed in almost the entire run. I noticed in the any% movie that Sonic relies on Tails a lot less than I initially thought, and unless he's using Tails, the solutions are going to be the same as a Sonic only run. In terms of different characters being justified for branches, let me use another game to help provide a barometer for my limits. In Super Mario Bros 2 (US version), I don't think there's any reason to have a Toad only, Luigi only, or Mario only run. Peach only is much more justified. Even though all four characters play differently, Peach is the only one with a noticeable unique ability. She can float, which leads to significant changes. I see no reason why the others would be really unique in that regard, even though Luigi's extra jump height does give him different route options in some levels. Also, very minor point that shouldn't have bearing, but I feel is worth mentioning: the speedrun.com leaderboard for this game lumps Sonic solo and Sonic and Tails into the same category. One small thing I find disappointing is the currently published any% is five and a half years old, and watching the submission in comparison to that, I can really see the difference that those years make in understanding the game and adding further optimization. The improvements this movie makes really should be represented in a published Sonic 3 and Knuckles TAS. I don't think this movie is different enough to justify a new branch, but if we could find any way to publish this movie without adding new branches, I think we should make that happen. I also would be interested to see a level by level breakdown for how this compares to the currently published any%, especially to see if it's actually faster on any levels.
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So this movie was accepted before, but an improvement was found. The stuff leading up to the ACE was well played. From what I saw, the route was similar to the previous movie with some new strategies. I didn't really take the time to see them side by side to catch all the little details. As for the ACE itself, the run before improvement was already a great feat and required a lot of knowledge and research. The new ACE looks a lot cleaner, though. It feels like there's less confusing actions, and it seems the code itself takes a shorter amount of time to input. There's barely any time to think before the ending is reached. I see no reason why the previous decision shouldn't carry over to this one.
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If anyone's interested, I'm working on a 100% run of the game. Here's the first world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGyUGeyKK78 http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/63790666754878600 I've been posting more frequent updates on the Discord.
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I liked it. Good use of glitches to fall through the floor and cut out large parts of the level. Also substantial improvement even if you factor out the time saved by switching to easy difficulty. Yes vote.
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While I take no issue with the tier placement of this movie, I do take issue with its justification since I believe it grossly misrepresents what's going on. The phrase "run right and occasionally jump" implies that the gameplay was simple and doesn't require a lot of thought or variety in the inputs and that is really far from the case. The raptor and t-rex levels in particular are incredibly complex in how the movements came together and involved careful thought and planning to make them the way they are. They both also have a large variety of moves combined in intricate ways in order to do well on the levels. I also have to wonder: if this counts as holding right and occasionally jumping, then what platformer game doesn't? If this is the case, then all side scrolling Mario games, all Castlevanias from the NES and SNES and all the Mega Man games would also count. in light of that, the phrase becomes absolutely meaningless as a justification.
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I've made a small improvement to the movie. It's available here. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/55266424905150957 Can I have the file replaced?
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Thank you for your response. In answer to your questions: 15:15. At that moment I'm just waiting for the level to end after the fight is over, so I'm free to do whatever I want. 20:04: T-rex levels went through a ton of iteration. The thing is, most of the time you can't avoid taking damage from those things anyways, so might as well get a boost from them. Also, I calculate eating once lets you take damage from about 5 rockets (if the soldiers aren't shooting bullets at the same time). That more than makes up for the animation.
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They use covers, but yeah, I'm still a bit leery, and there's a decent chance that another video has the tracks from the games claimed anyways.
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Since April fool's is over, I'd like to say a few things. This idea popped into my head as a challenge that would actually be difficult and impressive to pull off with a TAS. Playing a rhythm game optimally in a TAS setting is trivial, which makes them bad game choices. This movie is a test run to see if the end result of the challenge might actually be interesting. Elite Beat Agents and the entire Osu series is an interesting set of games for a low score run for a few reasons. - there is a life bar, so failure is possible. On harder difficulties, you have to be pretty good just to avoid dying. - the scoring system is rather complex and based on combos, so you're inventivised to keep the combos short, but doing so requires playing better in order to have the life left necessary to break it and survive, so there a trade off. - the story in these games tends to be amusing, and even more so if you play poorly. So the movie itself was put together quickly, and is therefore suboptimal, but I would be interested to hear if this might be a goal to look into for a more serious effort. EDIT: Also, feel free to still give it a joke rejection message. I'm not trying to take that fun away from judges.
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Okay. I'll take it either way, then. From the posts it looks like there will be no question that better techniques were found.
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Before I make a judgement on whether easy mode is okay, what are the differences between the difficulties besides the hyenas going down in one hit?
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I prefer to download the video to my computer and to watch in a media player. That really makes the best experience for me.
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Platform and action games are best for this because it's very easy to see visually the results of your actions (most of the time).
Post subject: Re: Speedy TAS of 2018 - Nominations now!
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Um, mtvf1..
Mothrayas wrote:
Special note: Due to issues with nominations for previous iterations of this award, nominations must include an explanation in order to be counted. It does not need to be long, but it needs to make clear how the nominated movie ties in with the award description (see above). Nominations with no explanation or with no appropriate justification will not be counted.
You might want to expand on your post a little bit..
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Second Woops