Posts for dwangoAC

Posted: 8/19/2024 8:23 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

feos wrote:

One important thing. The bigger the changes, the longer they take to implement. Currently we have about 2 active site code developers, and a bunch of tickets that are critical or important. If the reform we agree on is too big, it will take years to implement (nobody knows how many).

That's one of the main reasons my proposal attempts to re-use as much of the existing site code as possible (using the existing submissions storage, etc). Still, many things about this thread are honestly about needing more volunteers in general and site code needs are just as important of a need. Any changes we make will require at least some coding even for the most minimal things we can do. For now, I'd propose starting with a flag for "Synced" based on adelikat's interpretation where it implies hashes and versions are correct. That feature on its own has plenty of uses even if my proposal isn't implemented in full or at all.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/17/2024 10:46 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

Dimon12321 wrote:

In the last couple of years the forum audience has shrinked in 2-3 times. It's already common to see a TAS discussion thread where the first post is "This movie has been published". So concerns the polls too, like nobody is interested is what you have done! Veterans are gone. Most of active players visit the site just to submit TASes and respond to posts in their discussion threads.

Like most communities in the last few years, conversations have increasingly moved to realtime discussions in places like Discord. Still, as others have noted with extensive statistics, submissions themselves are way up. While the shifting location of conversations may feel uncomfortable, I don't see that it's an indication that veterans of the site are gone. You're bringing up valid points around the drop in engagement around things like commenting on runs and voting on them but that aspect is true no matter what solution we investigate and it's likely we can brainstorm ideas like integrations that may help there.

Dimon12321 wrote:

If I got your suggestions rights, publishers will basically become "gods" since they will decide which synced runs to publish.

No, as a site we'd have guidelines that game/community members would need to follow about category handling and most of them would publish the fastest run for time oriented categories. Nothing would change from the way things are handled today in the sense that, after a new, faster run was confirmed by someone else to sync and meets the goals of the category, it would first be marked Synced and subsequently published. (For more subjective or art oriented categories where speed isn't the primary goal of the TAS it would require a bit more nuance as you may have many runs with different artistic elements but that same challenge applies to event content.) Some communities may reasonably opt to not publish, say, every single combination of characters in a fighting game but may opt to designate one as the new best and promoted to a published run. To your earlier point, perhaps the conversation itself would end up happening in Discord but of course changes to any runs would naturally happen on the site itself.

Dimon12321 wrote:

I've been spending months to make a TAS, frame advance all the time, replaying sections in case of discovered improvements, and all I would get is "Synced"? That's not what I was striving for, and I think people will agree with this.

Heck, I agree with that - having said that, that's not what would happen here. Assuming you were creating an any% category run and your final time was faster, your run would first be reviewed and marked Synced by someone else in that game community (or a judge/curator for games without their own communities driving specialized category rules) and would be added to the publication queue automatically. It's already been validated as the new fastest run after all. Runs deliberately created for alternative playaround categories or branches the game/community has set up, such as the different fighting game character example I gave earlier, would stay around as just Synced more likely than not. The significant change away from a centralized submission form to a model where you're submitting directly into a category will immediately make it clear to submitters if the run is likely to be published or not. Of course, community response could change if a particular run was found to be special and any run could be promoted to Published as warranted. The significant change here is the complete redefinition of what a judge does and a significant offloading of many judge functions to individual game communities, giving them the ability to perform the validation that a run can be marked Synced on their own but with judges/curators still around to help answer questions. These are all good discussion topics and it's definitely worth hashing all this out - I look forward to more civil discourse and thanks. :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/17/2024 5:21 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

DrD2k9 wrote:

If the above proposition had the caveat that runs which are currently acceptable for publication cannot be left only at Synced status, then I'd have less of a complaint.

Sure, that's reasonable - the goal here is to reduce the crushing workload on the judges while opening up the site to allow more diverse content to find a home, not to reduce the number of publications. I'd expect more publications overall rather than less. Having guidelines for individual communities to ensure categories we publish now would generally, likely with few exceptions, still be published is entirely sensible.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/17/2024 5:59 AM

Post subject: Proposal: Synced runs as a new site structure

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

I took some time to work out how best to respond but I still don't feel like I have solutions to everything. Still, I have long felt similarly to ikuyo, feos, and others on staff that our current volunteer pool is inadequate to handle the volume, is unlikely to ever be large enough to not be a limiting factor, and efforts to get more productivity out of the system will always lead to burnout. For the sake of everyone, I feel we need to reconsider how to change the conversation from killing the site (effective post title notwithstanding) to considering the curation focused rework TASVideos needs to continue existing as an ongoing concern. On the one hand, we must find a way to allow the diverse TASing communities to find a home here or they'll find a home elsewhere as I've repeatedly reinforced every time a similar topic has come up, extending to the TASBot community where there are still barriers to event content publication on TASVideos. On the other hand, we are a curation site highlighting the "best" TAS content and always have been, and anything less than that would be devastating to many in the community. I believe it is possible to serve both needs simultaneously but doing so will require nontrivial site code changes. Join me in a thought experiment about where speedruns and superplays of various types end up. On one extreme is SDA glitchless style human RTA runs with no tools allowances whatsoever. At the other extreme is classic TASVideos fastest goal completion at all costs TAS content. In the middle with no home is a long tail of users and communities neither extreme serves, including gamers with disabilities or accessibility needs who use tools openly in honorable ways. TASVideos is far more in a long term position to change to accept that long tail but doing so threatens the historical image of the site by eliminating the high standards our publications have been held to. So what do we do? I feel strongly, and have felt for a long time, that we need ways for communities to be self-regulating with their own community categories that meet their needs, such as the fighting game folks or individual communities like Celeste. If we give them a home similar to a speedrun.com page where they can make categories and hash though their own requirements, they'll do a lot of the hard work without requiring a huge amount of staff oversight. Encoders would continue and expand as needed, publishers would continue to handle descriptions and other aspects of promoted runs, and judges would primarily move into curator roles focused on highlighting runs with far less frequent adjudication. What makes a run valid in this new community-driven approach? How do we choose what to highlight and when? Some of these implementation questions will need to be hashed out, but I feel strongly after discussions with adelikat and others that the baseline requirement across the board for emulator-based submissions is a confirmation a run syncs for someone other than the submitter, preferably along with verification of hashes and other common header/metadata fields. Event or non-TAS content such as on-console superplays with tooling (think CZR playing SM64 on drums on a real N64) would need community and category defined requirements for marking it as synced. Instead of words like self-published, I'd simply call this organizational structure "Synced", and it would be the base level requirement to be added to a given community branch/category. (Imagine for a moment what it would be like if 20 years ago we'd made it a requirement that users uploaded movie files as as userfiles first and another user had to mark them as synced before that userfile could be sent through the submission system - that's effectively what I'm describing here). Unlike our existing submission process that uses a common form, a runner would instead select the appropriate game/community hub page, select the category/branch they want the run to appear under, and add a submission there (new game pages and new categories could be created by sufficiently established users). Once the submission was successfully synced by someone else from that game/community it would be marked as Synced and be automatically assigned a numerical page similar to our existing ####S for submissions. They could, in fact, *be* submissions as they are implemented on the site today but adjusted as needed to be visible, filterable, and searchable site-wide. It's fine for a Synced run to never be promoted to a Published run in this new model because it's no longer treated as "not accepted" by default. Individual game/community members could use their own decision process to decide what runs to promote up to Published. Perhaps fighting game communities have obscure character-specific categories that remain as Synced runs while new and improved any% category runs get promoted to Published runs with descriptions and ####M pages. Encoders would process Synced runs to archive them but would uncheck the "Publish to subscriptions feed and notify subscribers" box on YouTube (i.e. it wouldn't be promoted). If future volume exceeds encoder capacity, individual communities could set additional criteria for archival or encoding queue priority as needed. We don't have to treat these stages using existing site naming and features but it may be helpful for the sake of discussion to think of it as various levels of searchability and visibility:

State	Visible	Searchable	Promoted
Hidden userfile	No	No	No
Visible userfile	Yes	No	No
Synced	Yes	Yes	No
Published	Yes	Yes	Yes

In essence, what I'm proposing is something similar to a userfile as the basis for what a user would add in a particular category/branch in a given game/community space where it would show up in a pending list prior to another user validating it as Synced at which point it would become searchable on the site (and likely eventually archived by an encoder subject to availability). Synced runs which the individual community deemed worthy of promotion would bubble up to Published runs, complete with descriptions and a publication and posted fully on YouTube. Judges would be much more hands-off, only stepping in for significant issues or corner cases and possibly not even called judges anymore. Perhaps their role would morph more into one of curation, selecting the best Publications to highlight on the front page. In summary, I feel we need to move to a curation model as quickly as possible for the health of the site while simultaneously giving room for more TAS oriented communities to have their own spaces. My framework above is just here for the sake of discussing what's possible rather than the way it has to be but I'm pretty convinced the concept of Synced is sound and worth exploring further regardless of how it's ultimately implemented or coded. Thoughts?

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 7/8/2024 3:56 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

I've been patiently waiting since 2015 but despite that long amount of time I have to say I'm excited to see the progress that's been made. There were so many things that weren't in place that are slowly coming together thanks to the volunteer efforts of the site coding team. Some folks don't have as much free time as they used to and progress has been glacial at times. I can't deny that there have been times where this situation has sapped my desire to keep working on these types of projects but I'm optimistic we'll get there. (By the way, we just passed the two year mark since the Triforce% showcase was presented, can you believe it?)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 6/22/2024 4:36 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

I decided it was better to make this its own post instead of muddying the Thread #8217: Staff topic. As you might have noticed, I haven't been able to stream or make content for a little while. I've unfortunately been pretty sick for the last several months. I've lost a lot of weight and only managed to get a diagnosis recently. As I go into this treatment and recovery phase, I hope I can entertain you with some TASBot Vault videos. There's some amazing stuff we haven't been able to show - some of it has TASBot's original form or old intros, but I'm sure you'll love it and at the end of each one will be something about National Alliance on Mental Illness. I'd be lying to you if I tried to pretend like going through this medical journey without having income or being able to work has been easy on my family and I. There's been a lot of anxiety. It's been hard. Still, I want to destigmatize getting help for mental health aspects. The TASBot community has supported NAMI for a number of years; we've done TASGiving and Desert Tesla Charity Drive and other charity events benefiting them and I've included additional information below. You're also more than invited to come to https://Discord.gg/TASBot even if it's just to hang out, we have TAS.Bot wiki content that needs updates and various things that anyone can get involved in. I have a number of leads, admins, moderators, and editors that are already helping out and TASBot will be at various charity events in person with other handlers and leads that are taking him for me. I'm very thankful for everyone supporting me while I've been on this journey. If you want to help me directly, swing on over to https://Patreon.com/dwangoAC or just watch TASBot videos wherever they're posted. I look forward to getting back in touch with you as soon as I can and I miss you guys greatly. - dwangoAC Here's the first TASBot Vault video (it's definitely sus): Link to video For the last few years now, TASBot has supported NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI is the largest grassroots mental health organization in the United States. And in our current climate, our mental health matters. If you or a loved one is struggling, you are not alone. Visit https://nami.org to learn about the free programs and services near you. You can also call the NAMI helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI or text NAMI to 741741.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 9:53 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

EZGames69 wrote:

For what it’s worth, the current all levels publication says it’s console verified, but I’m unsure how it handles the resets and if it has different rng each time.

Just like this:

python3 tastm32.py --hardreset --blank 2 --console nes --players 1,5 --transition 675 S --transition 1614 S --transition 2910 S --transition 4067 S --transition 5153 S --transition 6318 S --transition 7279 S --transition 8247 S --transition 9118 S --transition 9995 S --transition 10832 S --transition 11676 S --transition 12528 S --transition 13385 S --transition 14247 S --transition 15170 S --transition 16133 S --transition 17313 S --transition 18515 S --transition 19573 S --dpcm drmario-resets-2b.r08

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 9:32 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

EZGames69 wrote:

But that not only requires the authors of the old tas to make a submission for level 20 (since the submission I linked isn’t even the current fastest level 20 from my understanding), but it would essentially be the equivalent of taking the last inputs of the movie file after the last resync and using that as it’s own separate publication. I don’t know if the RNG would be the same after said reset compared to first power on, but if it is then I’m not sure what the point would be other than having two separate publications with one just being essentially an identical segment from the all levels pub. It would be redundant in my opinion.

If it turns out that it's truly exactly the same input and there's no faster way to complete the game than the final level inputs used in the 100% branch I'd concede that point but what I definitely don't want to see happen is the Tetris Mode B branch removed in the future if a run that does all levels but has identical final level input comes up...

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 9:19 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

EZGames69 wrote:

It’s my understanding that the all levels TAS does the exact same goal as the CtrlAltDestroy, as the last level in the all levels TAS uses the highest difficulty. If we were to un-obsolete that old movie and put it as its own category, it would be significantly slower than the already fastest version of level 20. In fact, there was already a submission that completes level 20 significantly faster than the obsoleted movie does. I wouldn’t feel comfortable un-obsoleting a movie who’s goal has since been bested not just from other submissions but also by the all levels movie.

Oh, I very much anticipate that the new branch would fairly quickly have a new submission against it. That's, in many ways, sort of the point - providing a dedicated branch that allows the fastest game completion regardless of method.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 9:06 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

feos wrote:

Wiki: MovieRules#MovieMustBeComplete wrote:
Your submission must play the game from the beginning, and must finish the game, or reach the most suitable endpoint the game allows. Level selects, single-level movies, or otherwise incomplete movies are not allowed.

That's fine, but this is the exact same exception to that rule that [4210] NES Tetris "Mode B" by Archanfel & Baxter in 00:36.89 is under, unless you want to see that one removed from the site as well. As an inclusionist I'm of course always going to advocate that branches are in general not a harm to the site but this is the last I'll argue this, I've provided as much evidence as I can as to why this should be treated like Tetris and if Dr. Mario can't get the same exception I'd rather leave the conversation alone than risk Tetris being delisted as that would be even worse than if I'd not said anything at all.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 8:02 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

feos wrote:

It's not a game end glitch but a level completion glitch, it's used in the "all levels" branch in most levels. The judgment for #6123: poco_cpp's NES Dr. Mario "all levels" in 06:44.03 explicitly says:
The player already provided a movie file that beats level 20 HI speed with the same inputs used in the submitted movie during level 20, and I was also able to do the same with other levels. This means that the submitted movie does include the inputs of a fastest-completion run in it; in other words, by fulfilling the full-completion goal, it does also fulfil the fastest-completion goal.

That's fine, but they're still *two different goals* - one is finishing all levels, the other is similar to how we handle Tetris. I still assert that there should be a branch that allows for using the built-in start level selection just like Tetris and allows completing the game as fast as possible instead of trudging through a 100%. The current TAS is many years old and can be improved but it should be a separate branch all the same.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 6:39 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

feos wrote:

So if both movies were played optimally (given current knowledge), one would absolutely not include another, right?

One completes only a portion of the first level and triggers a game-end glitch, the 100% completes all levels but of course takes much longer.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 6:11 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

feos wrote:

dwangoAC wrote:
on the basis of it being a different category
Elaborate?

The obsoleting TAS is a 100% TAS while this is a fastest ending TAS employing ACE that demonstrates significantly different mechanics such that it should stand on its own. It should not have been obsoleted and should be its own category instead.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/22/2024 4:30 PM

Post subject: Dr. Mario ACE

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

I wrote a plea at Post #524950 - please un-obsolete [1290] NES Dr. Mario by CtrlAltDestroy in 01:12.83 on the basis of it being a different category. Thanks for the consideration!

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 3/9/2024 4:03 PM
(Edited: 3/9/2024 4:04 PM)

Post subject: I realized I was still bitter and it wasn't helpful

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

Hi all, I'm here with my hat of dwangoAC, Senior Ambassador of TASVideos on to confess I've allowed bitterness to sneak back in on this topic. I'd like to apologize for how it's again recently impacted my participation on the site and in the community. It's not a new pain point by any stretch; the rejected Pokemon Plays Twitch presentation submission was all the way back in 2015 and I've held and personally battled with various forms of resentment around it ever since. I recently had a conversation with a couple judges where I somewhat stubbornly made an assumption about how unfair their judgements could be for runs that are different (in that case around PC games that include the OS boot time) and I realized after the conversation that I was out of line. In retrospect, I assumed the worst of our site judging process and in that moment I could only view the site through the lens of inflexibility when nothing could be further from the truth under the current proactive leadership we now enjoy. Judges, I respect the difficulties you face and recognize many of my needs and proposals have a direct impact on you as well and I'm sorry for not being more thoughtful of your own challenges on the site. My priorities as Senior Ambassador must always put the current needs of the site ahead of my own grievances and hopes for the site, which over the years have extended to a desire to allow a broader range of Tool-Assisted Speedruns and Superplays to be present on the site. I want to see everything from the live performances, events, and presentations of various forms as discussed in this thread but I also want to see other new forms of TAS content including game-specific rerecording frameworks and, even more controversially, I want to make it possible for players with disabilities who use tools or unconventional controller methods that are excluded elsewhere to submit runs here. All those things represent my desired future for the site, but it will take time, buy-in from other staff and volunteers, and probably a lot of experiments and failures along the way before we get there. It's clear I need to be a better representative of the site as it is now and I can't do that with this darkness weighing me down. I am therefore making a renewed effort and commitment to not allow past or current bitterness around this issue to seep in and cloud my interest in the site. I'm going to start by trying to be more involved in discussions where they're happening (generally on Discord) while doing my best to set aside my own biases and ensuring I'm not battering everyone over the head to prioritize solely what I want. I see how hard staff and volunteers are working to maintain and improve the site and I appreciate their efforts - keeping a site running is so often a thankless behind-the-scenes task but without their efforts we wouldn't have a site at all. I'll also be renewing the effort to harness the strengths of the TASVideos and TASBot communities together to create new content that continues to push the boundaries of what a TAS can be and how they can be presented regardless of whether what's created can be showcased here. There are exciting new frontiers to explore and we're only just getting started. Thank you to everyone who has been involved in these discussions and here's to TASVideos continuing to thrive!

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 2/17/2024 9:52 PM

Post subject: Officially submitting this under Windows XP?

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

Do you have any plans to return to this now that Windows XP TAS's are acceptable using PCEM under libTAS? I, for one, would love to see that! :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 2/5/2024 6:37 PM
(Edited: 2/5/2024 6:38 PM)

Post subject: TASBot Re: Gradius is up!

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

I'm a bit late announcing this here, but the first TASBot Re: / TASBot Revisited video is up in the form of TASBot Re: Gradius! I've also released the TASBot HD Gradius video. I'm already starting progress on the next video but I'm analyzing with whether to do one TASBot Re: video per run or combine multiple TASBot HD videos into a summary TASBot Re: video where it makes sense to do so. Meanwhile, I've also started releasing YouTube Shorts based on outtakes and those have turned out well thanks to the efforts of Spooey who has been doing the video editing on those. Enjoy and tell me what you think! Link to video

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 2/4/2024 6:54 PM

Post subject: The NetHack TAS started in 2010 and it's still going

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

The NetHack TAS has gone through several significant milestones since ais523 kicked things off in earnest in 2010 and we're now in 2024 with significant work still needed to bring the TAS to a close but there's still hope for this ambitious project. We're doing a planning session in the next week or so and all are welcome to get involved - the primary discussions are taking place at https://discord.com/invite/nzEBRqH8g7 if you want to get involved. More updates as they happen to come, but let's land this thing! :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 1/11/2024 11:11 PM

Post subject: TASVideos game choice update

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

Recently, the site admin team took the unprecedented action of unpublishing a run; this news post talks about what happened and the changes we're making to the site movie rules as a result.

In brief, a user submitted a run for an unlicensed game containing a graphic corpse in the end credits. During the judging process, the focus was around determining if the game ran afoul of the existing adult game policy and the game was deemed to not fall into that category. After the run was published with the offending end credit censored, multiple TASVideos members spoke up to let site staff know that the game itself was explicitly focused on acts of genocide. We unpublished the run as soon as we became aware of the sensitive nature of the content. To say it upfront, the site staff would like to collectively apologize to the affected communities for not understanding the nature of the game. This run never should have been published in the first place and we've adjusted the movie rules page to clarify the site's policies around these types of games and content to note they are not permitted on the site in any form:

Games and content that break our site conduct policy are not permitted
- Specifically, this includes games and content that promote targeted harassment, violence, and/or bigotry towards specific individuals
Games and content deemed adults-only are not permitted

There were multiple points where a lack of cultural knowledge and awareness led to the run being published and going forward we want to make sure we're diligently identifying runs like this in the judging process before they're published. We feel the rule changes adequately cover this case without being overly restrictive and hope the changes along with your feedback, even for published runs, helps prevent a situation like this happening again. We'd like to thank everyone who spoke up and helped us understand the situation better and we always welcome that same constructive feedback.

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 12/23/2023 8:14 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

Dimon12321 wrote:

Brain Age TAS by micro500. It was a real console playback, right? It's disappointing that all other Nintendo DS games are not verified yet

I have to concur, the amount of effort micro500 put into Brain Age was immense and it showed. Huge props to micro500 for the effort he put in during the years he was active - I'll have a lot of opportunities to showcase and highlight what he was able to accomplish for sure. Plus, Brain Age remains one of the most fascinating works of transformative art I've ever seen. So there's that. :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 12/23/2023 1:56 AM
(Edited: 2/5/2024 6:31 PM)

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

TL;DR; TASBot has turned 10 and I'm moving to full-time content creation with new TASBot HD and TASBot Re: videos but I've been laid off and my kids and I are relying on your renewed support - Comment below, what's your favorite TASBot memory? :) TASVideos was born on December 6th, 2003 and TASBot was born on December 22nd, 2013 when I first assembled him. It's been a wild ride of ups and downs but TAS event content I've led has raised more than $1.4m USD at various charity events in the last decade and I aim to keep going. I supported all charity event travel costs with my day job, ultimately spending $20k more than I recouped through Patreon and elsewhere, but it was absolutely worth it. Unfortunately, I was laid off many months ago in a challenging time for the security consulting market and I've decided to focus on making new TASBot content instead. My kids (DefeneSam and Wrentendo) and I can't relocate from the SF bay area and I need to net $6k per month just to survive due to high housing costs; I regret I'll need to pause donating 10% on to charity for now but I'll give you plenty of fun content if you can help us, so read on! (As a brief digression, nothing about my involvement on the TASVideos side as a senior staff member and Senior Ambassador will be changing and I'll continue to create content directly for the YouTube TASVideos Official channel. A lot of the initial content I'm describing below is based on the last 10 years of charity event work but I'm also working on some new YouTube content that's unrelated to TASVideos or even traditional TAS content. I'm very sensitive to ensuring everything I do in each of my roles/positions is first and foremost above reproach, faithfully following the TASVideos content policies and CC-BY-2.0 attribution requirements, and always promoting the site positively. Please feel free to reach out to me directly on any of this, I don't mind.) I'm announcing TASBot HD and TASBot Re: YouTube.com/dwangoAC content! Remember Pong inside SMW, Brain Age, or Pokemon Plays Twitch? I couldn't have presented any of those without the help of an awesome community of TAS authors, presenters, and volunteers from TASVideos and elsewhere. TASBot HD is an exciting project where I'll be cleaning up past charity event run videos with full attribution and other TAS authors and presenters that helped make it all happen. The original videos were often posted in lower quality on scattered channels with uneven editing and this is an opportunity to honor everyone who helped out for charity. We're already underway updating the TAS.Bot wiki with proper attribution and Wiki editors are welcome. TASBot Revisited (stylized as TASBot Re:) is an opportunity to dive deeper into how each run was created; livestreams give only one shot to get things right and TASBot Re: is an opportunity to revisit the most amazing content we've made and the people behind it with in-depth explanations around some of the craziest things we've done. Think of TASBot Re: videos as a mix between minidocs and explainer videos with a dose of nostalgia, created during Twitch.tv/dwangoAC livestreams complete with perks like a return of PBN / Paint By Numbers. I'm also looking at relaunching an idea I toyed with in a different form called FasTAS which takes the concept of glitched games in 60 seconds or less to short-form video. I experimented with a few ideas already and I'll likely condense TASBot Re: videos to their most interesting sections as FasTAS videos. I'll be adapting based on audience feedback, so stay tuned for more FasTAS and other new content news. I'm currently releasing YouTube Shorts based on TASBot Re: video content which have been a lot of fun. I'm relaunching my Patreon.com/dwangoAC page and I've significantly expanded the tier rewards and incorporated shoutouts in video credits for all tiers, with higher tiers receiving more prominent coloring in a new vaporwave aesthetic. I'm also giving all tiers early access to videos with no ads until they go public. It's never been a better time to support my family, TASBot and I, so click that tier now! :) I plan to take TASBot to upcoming charity events while also enabling other TASBot handlers but future travel depends on revenue streams, including direct support. Can you spare supporting on Patreon or elsewhere? If so, thanks. You can also help with edits on the TASBot Wiki or just checking in on the TASBot Discord server to help there if financial support isn't possible for you right now. Genuinely, from DefeneSam, Wrentendo, TASBot and I, thanks for everything, and here's to another decade! So with *all* that out of the way, what's your favorite live TASBot memory from the last decade of events? :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 11/12/2023 3:11 AM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

I'm very thankful for Dimon12321 who edited the encode. It's currently up as unlisted for review and tweaks to make sure we got the attribution and other particulars correct. Here's the video: Link to video

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 11/8/2023 8:37 PM

Post subject: One more attempt at finding a video editor for commentary videos

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

Do you have basic video editing skills? If so, please see above - this is one more attempt at hopefully finding someone on the TASVideos side to help publish the commentary video for Super Metroid on the main TASVideos YouTube channel. If we can get a good flow going I'd love to see more of these happen but it'll take a touch of volunteer work - are you willing to lend a quick hand?

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 10/28/2023 4:18 PM
(Edited: 12/3/2023 5:34 PM)

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

I will say upfront that changing the level itself that way does indeed feel a little "cheap/cheaty" as you phrased it and I suspect this is more of a Playground run as a result but I can't deny it surprised me and amused me. Yes vote from me. I'm especially intrigued at this use of changing the FPS, and I'm curious if I could have used a similar approach in #8318: dwangoAC, Spikestuff & rythin's Flash Thy Dungeonman "100%" in 00:20.00 to achieve the same general effect without resorting to .ltm file hackery. I'll have to see if I can spend some of my free time experimenting with that, such as that is, heh. Thanks for making this and I look forward to seeing what you're up to for AFD as well. :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 10/15/2023 6:00 AM
(Edited: 10/15/2023 6:05 AM)

Post subject: Publishing Hollow Knight TAS's on TASVideos

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Skilled player (1007)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014

EnderOnryo wrote:

I was told to post this here by Feos so I am doing that. https://discord.gg/AZjaQaJ49R

I stopped by the Hollow Knight Discord server and had a chat with several of the established folks there. They're using libTAS in their efforts, but they have to use it in a very different way than most of us are used to, and some of those ways may... sound somewhat alien at first, but I think we can find a path forward to publish Hollow Knight TAS runs. Here are the considerations at play:

Hollow Knight TAS runs will not require a new movie format as they are using standard libTAS movie files
Most runs are based on an altered initial state, as in, runs would require a verification movie to be run first
Nearly all runs significantly change the FPS setting within a band of 50 to 500 FPS to mirror RTA rules
Variable FPS means Load Removed Timing (LRT) is used instead of TASVideos style power-on to last input rules
Many runs are segmented or rely on other runs; think everything from simple NG+ runs to individual level runs
The Hollow Knight TAS community enjoys a wide variety of branches, many of them amusing meme categories
Hollow Knight is a Unity game which currently introduces significant non-deterministic behavior on playback
Savestates in libTAS fail across different play sessions; saved runs must be replayed from the beginning
Encodes can take over 10 hours for a single run due to the nature of software rendering
Encodes nearly always have to be done segmented due to desyncs on playback
The desyncs are accepted as a part of TASing a Unity game as an unalterable annoyance
Nearly all Hollow Knight TAS runs are consumed via video encode playback due to the above issues

So let's just address the big issues right off the bat - the TASVideos community isn't used to having to put up with desyncs on playback as a part of life, and the concept of having to do a segmented encode attempt seems ridiculous. Investigations into how Unity handles RNG have led folks to the conclusion this problem may never be solvable due to the sheer complexity of it, so unfortunately this isn't a matter of waiting for emulation or tooling to improve. We the TASVideos community have absolutely rejected runs that couldn't sync in a single setting, but that's just the norm for the Hollow Knight community. The differences continue from there, most every TASVideos run is locked to something like 60 FPS but Hollow Knight RTA runners use a number of various tricks that significantly affect the FPS the game runs at and the TAS community mirrors the range that RTA runners can achieve. (Hollow Knight TAS folks reading this, please feel free to register an account and comment on things I got wrong, misremembered , or simply explained and/or represented badly.) Publishing Hollow Knight TAS's on TASVideos raises many challenges and resolving those issues is almost certainly going to require compromise, moreso on the TASVideos side in the form of having to accept segmented encoding and the resulting requirement to make the encode itself the primary consumable. Compromises would also be needed from the Hollow Knight TAS community. For instance, I made it clear that we'd need reproducible steps such as a verification movie to get a game configuration into the correct state to allow a judge to recreate their run, painful though it may be. They'd also have to.. um... potentially rename some of their meme categories to meet site decency requirements. Maybe. One of their categories is Bench Out-Of-Bounds, and that one has a comparatively tame acronym. I'll let you be the judge. :) One other topic that came up was the Hollow Knight TAS community currently lacks a home to place their knowledge. They have a few scattered documents and links to resources such as a Pastebin of abbreviations and this Hollow Knight enemy health analysis document but there's no central repository. A game resources page would be ideal for them. So how about it? Can we find a way to work past the somewhat foreign requirements and chart a path to accepting Hollow Knight TAS runs here on TASVideos? I, for one, think we should do what we can to accommodate them in some fashion but I'm usually overly optimistic so let's see how shocked folks are at what I've said and take it from there. :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.