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At the risk of further taking an off-topic post off-topic:
Warp wrote:
In fact, I find it even more bothering when it's "did you know person X is Y", rather than "I am Y". It's a bit like gossiping.
I'm actually going to quasi stand up for you here Warp, at least on two of the specific points you were trying to make. Had this conversation headed in the direction I initially feared it would and had this been actual gossip I would not have been surprised. It turns out that even a few people with a little less, shall we say, sensitivity have either not posted at all or have posted largely productive posts. I'd also have to agree with you that conversations rife with what you describe as "feminist rhetoric" can indeed get nasty (usually equally so on both sides of the debate in my experience), but I'd again point out that this thread hasn't gone there either.
Having said both those things, you did came off as aggressive in your first post and you do tend to be one of the more vocal people here so I can understand why people replied the way they did to you. While I'm all on board with avoiding gossip I have to agree with others that as far as off-topic threads go this one has been reasonably well-behaved, and I see no reason to try to censor the opinions of others here.
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Lars_Hendrick wrote:
Noted! Thanks for the encouraging feedback. I'll keep it in mind for my next run.
I don't know as if that was particularly encouraging, but as a fellow SFII (well, OK, SPFIIT) runner I can tell you that you're going to need to put a lot more rerecords and time into your next effort. You need to take the advice you've been given in other threads; post to userfiles, *not* as submissions, and post in the forums to request feedback. Take your time, make it perfect, and you will be rewarded.
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I'm sorry to say this but there are just too many times that you miss attacks or waste time by allowing the enemy to attack you when it looks preventable and overall I'm afraid this just looks a bit too sloppy. If this is going for speed to be eligible for the vault it has too much wasted time, but I'm afraid it's so repetitive that it isn't a good candidate for the moons tier either. Best of luck in the future, though!
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I'm very pleased to announce that I have confirmed that a Total Control payload from Lord Tom synchronizes on my hardware as well as on my (currently borrowed) copy of SMB3.
Today I was able to borrow a copy of SMB3 from the same local collector who supplied me with my initial Pokemon Red cartridge and I used this PRG0 vs. PRG1 guide to verify what version of the cartridge I had. When I dumped the movie file I noticed that it used players 1 and 2 simultaneously but I gave away my second controller cable so I scrounged around and found my old light gun. I originally dismissed it because a light gun only has four wires (ground, clock, and two wires that go to pins usually marked as No Connection on most diagrams). Since true's NES/SNES replay device only needs ground, clock, latch, and data for player 2 I was able to make the wire work out, and in a lot of ways it is the best wiring I've found so far, likely due to better manufacturing based on its intended usage.
I was able to synchronize SMB3 all the way to [redacted] when [redacted] appeared on the screen, which made me very happy to see on my own hardware. At Lord Tom's request I'll hold off on describing the current payload although Lord Tom is welcome to post a reply here with more details as he sees fit. My current plans are to work with Lord Tom on refining a payload and for the time being I'm slating this as part 1 of a two-part total control portion of our block. If "part 2" requires substantially more time and the payload is deemed a better fit for this marathon due to timing reasons I may make the call to defer this total control to a later GDQ event, although this isn't something I'll be doing lightly or without input from others. Regardless, I'm excited to have a bit more flexibility and we'll see how this all turns out!
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My goal is to help raise $50,000 in ~1 hour for cancer research during AGDQ 2016 but the effort involves a lot of expenses. I am currently projecting the following expenses for asassyknitter and I for our involvement at AGDQ 2016:
Equipment / games purchases (projected): $245
AGDQ 2016 fee: $40
Airfare: $1,471
Accommodations: $891
Dining out / groceries (projected): $350
Total (projected): $2,997
Some quick notes: Hardware costs for the DS bot are high and we need a couple pricey games this year. Registration is free for runners for AGDQ 2016 so we're only paying for asassyknitter's registration. Airfare is slightly higher than it was a year ago largely due to AGDQ 2016 registration being so delayed and other factors but overall the prices aren't unreasonably high for the dates we are traveling. Accommodations are higher than last year because we're staying for a full 9 nights in order to volunteer with setup and teardown of the game room. Food costs are higher both because we're going for a few more days and because and we've discovered (ok, I've discovered) that it's not a good idea to eat the cheapest food you can find right before a presentation in front of 100,000+ people.
We have endeavored come up short to save up ahead of time and we are fully only partially prepared to cover the full $3K of these projected costs personally; if you feel led to help offset our costs I will accept donations with much thanks via Bitcoin at1CknXDyb5jTG1Nw1hs437r6fnz7npBSEfA (consider getting a free coinbase.com wallet) or through this PayPal donation link. Due to some recent medical expenses that weren't covered by our insurance and some unplanned maintenance expenses we will likely need to dip into our emergency fund and/or sell a pinball machine to cover our costs but don't take this as a guilt trip or me begging; I say this to reassure everyone that we will do whatever it takes to get to AGDQ 2016 to present but we would be genuinely thankful for any assistance we receive.
As before, I can offer donors their choice of any games on this games list which includes a few 3DS games and other goodies and we will pass on at least 10% of any donations we receive to PCF during AGDQ 2016. After the event I'll provide a full post-mortem to provide transparency of costs (the SGDQ 2015 post-mortem is here). Donors who have my thanks include:
* A $50 donation from keylie - thanks!
* A $150 donation from endrift - I definitely appreciate it.
* A $100 donation from someone who wished to remain anonymous - this came in right when I really needed it, thanks!
* A $20 donation from dama1138 - I'm glad you got your own NES/SNES replay board going!
* A $30 donation came in from the faraway land where Reinhard harkens from - thanks!
* Someone who has been a fantastic anonymous supporter for the past three marathons gave $60 - most awesome.
* Out of the blue $10 came in from someone who opted to remain anonymous. Thank you.
* A TASVideos member who asked to remain anonymous kindly assisted with a $500 donation! Thank you.
* $50 came in from someone who isn't sure whether they want to be anonymous or not but I'm thankful all the same.
* A $1,000 donation from a donor who has helped out substantially in past marathons came in. You have been absolutely amazing, thanks!
* A $100 Bitcoin donation hit from an anonymous source, for which I am grateful.
* A fellow TASVideos member donated $250 but hasn't yet given permission to be outed - thanks either way. :)
* Your name here! :)
Thank you again to all who have supported my wife and I in the past and thanks for the continued support!
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CoolKirby wrote:
I would like to ask for participation in a short 4-question survey that should take 5 minutes or less to answer. ~snip~
Here are the questions:
1. In general, how immersed do you feel when playing a video game?
~snip~
Thank you in advance, and let me know if there's anything I can clarify or explain!
I responded via the Google form - good survey, but you may want to change or clarify the first question to help the survey respondent gauge whether you are looking for a numerical response on a scale or their own verbose words in their own language. I was probably a bit too wordy in my response. :)
Best of luck with your project!
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There has been no recent progress in clarifying how we would use the existing submission system to provide more visibility for some of the technical showcase runs and there is demand to create a place to describe what we've done at past GDQ events. Because adding a new tier is clearly a politically fraught and technically difficult endeavor I have opted to create a large number of Wiki entries instead, starting with the Wiki: TASBot page and creating individual entries explaining each run of note.
This plan does *not* solve the general problem that there is no place on the site for these types of runs to be submitted but it at least will provide an outlet to describe some of the more technical aspects of what we've done.
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Zowayix wrote:
Things like this are why I was so disappointed that the AGDQ 2015 TASBot runs never became actual submissions here - details like this are what I'm really interested in.
This has been discussed at length in the technical / showcase tier discussion thread - trust me, I *really* want a way to submit what we do in some way but there is no current method on the site to do so and there are a couple of other annoying limitations. I am actively working on the Wiki: TASBot timeline page and I would love to have some way to link to more technical details on this kind of stuff. I am actively looking for volunteers to flesh out the timeline above with more entries. I'm still wrapped up doing administrative stuff and haven't yet started any console verification tests but hope to get to that point over the weekend.
Sorry keylie, I didn't see your PM for some reason, possibly due to switching between browsers and having one open that kept the notification from appearing. I've sent you a PM, I would love your help.
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I really hope someone is able to find the free time to complete the new any% because I think it would be so cool and I'm very excited!
(sonicpacker, you seem to be taking offense when none was likely intended - I think we're all just happy to see something interesting on the horizon and can't contain ourselves.)
I for one will patiently await whatever happens... so it can be console-verified. :)
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marzojr wrote:
Out of curiosity, did he try some form of compression? Streaming a LZ77 or LZSS decompressor* first, then having the SNES decompress this data as it is being streamed might allow a lot more effective bandwidth.
*LZ77 and LZSS decompressors are relatively small and evry fast, for a good compression ratio, which is why I mentioned these.
You would not believe how much time we spent trying to figure out how to improve the datarate through all manner of hackery, including considering various compression methods. In the end, the burden was reading from the controller port and processing what came in in few enough clock cycles to do useful work on it. The only viable option we came up with involved hacking directly into the expansion port and feeding data in there but even that wasn't very good. At the end of the day, we *did* use "compression", although it was more like "lightweight encoding" - for the Pokemon Plays Twitch run we used the first bit of two bytes to signal whether what followed was 3 5-bit bytes or 2 7-bit bytes with an extra flag left over for signaling things RED said. I can dig up the details but long story short it gave us one extra character to play with, which was very helpful.
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feos wrote:
Are there any ideas about total control already? I suggest this: make SNES show some kind of a comics using input ports to feed image data. It's been proven that using some smart tricks, it's possible to display VERY realistic (if dithered) images on SNES. And if making a single picture work is too slow, there might be a bunch of simpler ones, creating animation. If it ends up being doable, maybe there's a guy on the web who will be interested in making such animation for such an event.
The current plans for total control are in a bit of flux and p4plus2 as well as Masterjun have made a request to keep the payload itself a bit under wraps so that particular aspect won't be here on the forums but if someone is dedicated enough they can ask us directly and we'll fill you in. I'll be sharing details about that run as much as possible without spoiling the surprises, however.
As far as your ideas, they are all good, and in fact they more or less line up with the ideas we had for AGDQ 2015 before we developed Pokemon Plays Twitch, but ultimately the hardware limitations made streaming content or animating it in any way unbearably bad. Ilari made an image writer that was quite interesting but it took quite some time to write a single image to the screen even at the maximum rate we could sustain through the controller cables so I don't think that's a good choice. Besides, we already have artists making art for Brain Age and I don't want to conflict with that.
Overall, I think I'm the most confident about Brain Age, next is Total Control, a little less confident about Super Scribblenauts until I can get my own hardware to test with, and the least confident in the Speed TAS Competition because that bit is a huge organizational effort involving a lot of moving pieces. I'll update as best I can, however. More updates tonight, stay tuned!
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Warp wrote:
I think it's a bit disappointing that, once again, it seems we won't be getting an actual good old (tool-assisted) speedrun of a game, running on a real console, and instead everything will again be some kind of gimmick or non-speedrun demonstration.
This is a bit funny, given that 99% of TASes are any% game completions as fast as possible.
I generally agree with your sentiment but I suspect we will get more time during SGDQ for standard console verification and playback runs as we did this year. The feedback was at best mixed in regard to not doing console verification [at SGDQ 2015] so if we do that again we'll make sure to disclaim it better but for now I'm planning on everything for SGDQ 2016 being console verified or somewhat less of a gimmick than total control.
I have a silly idea to set up Zelda II in the background for AGDQ 2016 and play that during any technical issues that come up as a backup strat of sorts but I don't know how well that would fly... :)
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I'm happy to report that everything except the console verification runs made it into the AGDQ 2016 games list. We don't yet know what days things will be scheduled on but Brain Age, the Total Control run, the Speed TAS Competition, and the Super Scribblenauts run were all accepted. I've updated the first post with this information and I've started working hard on getting everything moving in a sane direction to have all framework done by December 6th with all payload fully done the week before the marathon starts. (Seriously. I don't want to scramble again. Ever.)
Thank you to everyone who made suggestions. If you can help out with anything please let me know, there are plenty of small tasks to go around. Special thanks to everyone who has contributed to the lively Brain Age discussions - I'm quite impressed with the artwork and I already think Brain Age will be very well received.
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jlun2 wrote:
I'm tempted to say go out with the 2003 plan, but then with these major discoveries killing the endgame from 2015 turns to 2003/4, chances are someone or group will find an even better route. 0_o
I'm not saying it's impossible, but *this* is the plan from "someone or a group" - there isn't much left that can be done at this point. :)
I do not believe it will be possible to get the portal within 4 spaces of the starting portal on Fire and thus I think we'll need to go with the 2,004 plan but we still have some testing to do to confirm that it is really, truly not possible to do so. I'm just glad we don't have to completely throw out the run so far... :)
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Please note that I created User movie #26379843736052819 based on work from Weregoose and scahfy which implements a different version of Snake named BMAMBA but in the process Weregoose determined that the emulation in Bizhawk is about half the speed of what it should be. Before I attempt another TI-83 run the emulation speed needs to be resolved but I think this alternate version is worth looking at as it uses a Lua loader to make the programming process far faster.
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Weregoose wrote:
Instead of us disorderly humans, if TASBot sought to speak with something sentient, the first encounter would invariably lie with something more at its bit depth. To foster reaction from the audience, TASBot could identify herein as having always been a girl gamer at heart, and then proceed to romance other A.I. specimen in the room—GDQ Monitor. Some digital banter between those two would allow for better storytelling, and maybe the inevitable third-party ebotica.
I am all good with continuing the banter but as keeper of TASBot I refuse to consent to streaming ebotica. :)
Weregoose wrote:
The slow-moving twitter account would need an update. I've registered @MrsTASBot before anyone takes it prematurely.
Sure, but check with micro500 or I before starting some kind of shipping or other story as we have a specific direction we are taking TASBot and I need to further coordinate with GDQMonitor's keeper before we get in too deep.
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Eh, why not, I'll jump into the fray.
Every question worth asking deserves the scientific process treatment, which is to say, postulate a hypothesis and attempt to disprove it. It's clear ars4326 is willing to attempt to disprove these articles because he's following up on what sources are available, trying to determine the validity of various stories. This research could very well be useful for disproving hoaxes, assuming ars4326 is willing to accept what he finds (and I think he is). It could also unveil information lost in archives that's worth reviving in digital form for future scientific study, regardless of whether or not that evidence lends credence to the possibility of larger-than-what-we-would-now-consider-normal people.
At least with Robert Wadlow and several other tall people there are good scientific records to back up the existence of giants in at least some context. Clearly, there were some earlier articles from newspapers of various reliability that require additional research to see if the people they identify are as real as Robert Wadlow was. I see no reason why research in this area should be discouraged if said research is done with proper scientific rigor, transparency, and documentation, and with a healthy degree of skepticism against sensationalist journalism.
Warp wrote:
What really grinds my gears is when people are so gullible as to actually believe that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of scientists and aficionados from all around the world, from different countries, cultures, ideologies and philosophical stances, are somehow in a huge world-wide conspiracy and have, somehow, all agreed on hiding something, or lying about something.
Warp, curiosity does not make a conspiracy theorist. You've used the phrase conspiracy theory or similar phrases multiple times, but I just read through this entire discussion and I have yet to find a place where ars4326 made any claims that are even remotely conspiratorial in nature. He's gone out of his way to repeatedly highlight that additional research is required in several areas. Now, ars4326 has definitely referenced material you might not hold as a worthwhile source, but I see no intentional conspiracy. I also see no reason to believe that what he finds will necessarily be in disagreement with your purported hundreds of thousands of scientists (and I admit I'd be thrilled if his research results in increased discussion and debate in the scientific community).
While this subject might personally interest you less than other things, there is no sane reason I can come up with to discourage curiosity. Far from it, in fact - the most important thing I try to impart to children I mentor is the art of being excited to learn how to learn, being excited about learning something of interest. My son is interested in paleontology and I'm delighted when I see him discovering something that's new to him. I can only hope that he will eventually discover something that's a secret to everybody. (Yes, I totally just quoted the Legend of Zelda - this is TASVideos forums we're in now, after all, but I digress).
As an unrelated aside, I do consider myself to be a largely cheerful person, which does tend to grate on the nerves of others at times, but I'm willing to accept any stereotype this may make of me. :)
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Weatherton wrote:
How is this?
Awesome! I know it is hard to get a lot to fit. Can you please incorporate the text that appeared when I was trying to get Twitch chat going at AGDQ 2015? It was something like que? Over and over or some other copypasta. Maybe that would require its own question to do it justice...
I'd love for EtoHawk to become usable but I couldn't get it to work so for now I'm literally using the official executable compiled for Windows inside of a bottle I created in Crossover Linux. It's not exactly "emulated" (WINE, the core component inside Crossover Linux, is a circular acronym for "WINE Is Not Emulation"), more like translated. It's definitely cheating, don't get me wrong, but it's better than the alternatives.
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As an aside, for Blockout I did the entire run in BizHawk 1.11.1 in Crossover Linux, a paid-support variant of WINE which I have been an advocate of for many years. I had initially had difficulty getting BizHawk to run in this environment, but I discovered that installing all of the BizHawk prerequisites manually (DirectX runtime web installer, the Visual C++ redistributable, and the Windows Imaging Component) along with the Courier New font was all that was required. CPU usage was far lower using this method compared to running BizHawk inside of VMWare Workstation and I was pleased with the stability, although setting the font to 180 DPI did cause some UI elements to become truncated. I look forward to a day when BizHawk runs natively but for now this solution meets my needs.
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Here's a final draft which I've finished condensing. We have a maximum of 10 categories across 5 games we can submit. Each game description is limited to 400 characters, and each category is fairly limited as well and if you type too much and submit the form deletes everything and you have to start over so I'll generally try to keep the category descriptions short. Everything we do at AGDQ 2016 *will* be console verified (in contrast to SGDQ 2015), and we want to make absolutely sure it's always clear to viewers that this is not human reflexes so each game will be "TASBot plays..." or have that verbiage inserted in some way as a form of disclaimer.
Here's what I'm planning on pitching:
Game: TASBot Console Verifies...
Description: Sometimes some plain old console verification is in order. In this run, TASBot will play your choice of Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) either using warps or the longer but more entertaining warpless run, or if SMB2U isn't yet ripe for return, we can also offer Ecco the Dolphin or the short and entertaining Zelda II!
Video link: https://youtu.be/LKL08w3h1ik
Category: SMB2U Warps by Aglar and Andrewg
Estimate: 07:41 (07:41.16)
Category: SMB2U Warpless by Aglar and Andrewg
Estimate: 18:29 (18:29.26)
Category: Ecco the Dolphin by Itresad
Estimate: 20:45 (20:44.95)
Category: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link by TASeditor
Estimate: 5:36 (05:35.93)
Game: TASBot Vs. Humans
Description: The Streeeeemerz speed TAS competition at SGDQ 2015 was a huge success that bears repeating. During a set time any viewer can submit a TAS of a just-announced game, ending with a race of the fastest viewer-submitted TAS pitted against already prepared human runners. We can use a freely redistributeable game or even a game as part of a Humble Bundle tie-in. See: http://tiny.cc/TaS
Video link: https://youtu.be/LKL08w3h1ik?t=23
Category: Speed TAS competition by dwangoAC
Estimate: 15:00
Game: Twitch plays Super Scribblenauts
Description: Twitch chat interacting in Pokemon Plays Twitch was one of the most memorable moments of AGDQ 2015 and we want to bring back that fun... for a price. This should be a donation incentive or limited to subscribers and will involve Twitch chat directly solving hilarious puzzles in Super Scribblenauts by interacting with a channel bot and creating objects by popular vote.
Video link: https://youtu.be/LKL08w3h1ik?t=232
Category: Twitch plays Super Scribblenauts by dwangoAC and micro500
Estimate: 15:00
Game: TASBot plays Brain Age
Description: In Brain Age we solve a series of simple math problems, but the answers we give aren't quite what you'd expect. Watch as we deftly draw FrankerZ as the correct answer to 1+6 and generally treat the answers area as an art canvas. This features full DS console verification via stylus control and screen capture. If this is scheduled near the end we can incorporate memes and notable events as answers.
Video link: https://youtu.be/LKL08w3h1ik?t=67
Category: Calculations x100 by micro500, xy2_, and many talented artists
Estimate: 25:00
Game: TASBot takes total control of....
Description: Finding an arbitrary code exploit and gaining total control of a console game is non-trivial and has proven to be quite entertaining in the form of Pong and Snake at AGDQ 2014 then SMB on SMW and Pokemon Plays Twitch at AGDQ 2015. In this run, p4plus2, Masterjun and others will flex their mastery once again with something that's sure to surprise the audience.
Video link: https://youtu.be/LKL08w3h1ik?t=51
Category: Total Control by p4plus2, Masterjun, and others
Estimate: 20:00
I'm pandering to an entire committee here, and I'm not sure what will sell these ideas the best. Adding up all of the estimates (which might be quite wrong) runs over an hour and a half, and that's without any setup time included. There is no way that every idea we're pitching will be accepted, so we need to accept that and figure out how to ensure the stuff that should be seen gets a spot. If something that gets accepted somehow goes completely sideways between now and the marathon we will likely be allowed a concession and can swap it out but I'd rather not do that unless we have to.
I'm being careful with the credits - if the credits are too long, they tend to just say "...and a bunch of TAS'ers" and not credit anyone, so I'm trying to find the fine line between crediting everyone and having no one credited. I have limited time left and need feddback as soon as possible - anyone have anything they'd like to see?
Here is the pitch video:
Link to video
Update: The TASVideos submissions for AGDQ 2016 have been submitted, with several hours to spare. They will go live and be visible as soon as someone on the committee has a chance to vet it. Also take note that I created an endorsement video which is tacked on to the end of the Pins Done Quick Twilight Zone submission video which you can find here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgI7linEoHQ
Now that everything is submitted we should have an answer on what makes it and what gets cut by the end of next week, based on the currently defined schedule. I'll post a follow-up once we know what was accepted. Thanks to everyone in IRC who provided feedback and didn't get sick of me asking for it. :)
Edit history:
- Changed Brain Age estimate to 25 minutes at micro500's request
- Updated Brain Age description to something a bit better, need feedback
- Condensed to get down to 400 characters, altered significantly
- Continued condensing and clarifying, updated categories, updated ending summary
- Updated "bonus game" wording
- Added Snake and SMB on SMW because it fit
- Updated date for Twitch plays, updated Brain Age categories
- Updated SMB2U game choice, need suggestions for other titles to pitch
- Added Ecco the dolphin, reworded race
- Added Youtube link
- Reveal surprise game as Super Scribblenauts, hiding it wasn't working
- Add Zelda II, video links
- Condense Brain Age categories, reword to get to 400 or less characters
- Added times and made slight rewordings
- Updated TASBot vs. Humans category, noted that everything has been submitted
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Chamale wrote:
Perhaps Drugwars would be another good game choice for the TI-83?
Is that a TI-Basic game? I'm.. not at all familiar with it and the name seems unappealing to me but I'll take your word for it. :) I'm more interested in the BMAMBA variant but I won't be taking on anything else myself for the time being while I focus on AGDQ 2016 preparations. Thanks for the feedback!
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Weregoose wrote:
Hi. It was nearly seven years ago that I drudged up the very code that found its way into this TAS. While wikified, this Snake clone is by no means an "official" version by any stretch of the imagination. The language's ease-of-access grants that there are multitudes of attempts in the wild. This one in particular was made to save face for the wiki by replacing a buggier creation that someone else had self-published. I dabbled in the concept again down the road and produced prgmBMAMBA. If you want a higher-resolution play area that doesn't slow as the tail grows longer, yet without invoking z80 Assembly, then that's what it's about.
This is some fascinating backstory! I didn't realize that this particular version was made because an earlier version on the site was so poor. Thank you for coming to the forums to post this. How did you find out about this run, if you don't mind me asking?
Weregoose wrote:
I dabbled in the concept again down the road and produced prgmBMAMBA. If you want a higher-resolution play area that doesn't slow as the tail grows longer, yet without invoking z80 Assembly, then that's what it's about.
This is definitely possible if there is consensus that it would be a "better" choice when it comes to subjectivity; I can't say I'm chomping at the bit to do this work a second time as I'm currently focusing on AGDQ 2016 TASBot block prep but it's an interesting idea.
Weregoose wrote:
Also, for the sake of spending less time in the editor, several of those early commands assume a "dirty" environment and can omitted if typed from a memory reset. Plus, there are often 2–3 ways of typing any one token if you want to minimize keystrokes.
If there are any commands I can omit for this specific version I can probably hex them in, just let me know what is safe to delete. I did my best to find the shortest number of keystrokes for each token and then standardized on that - I was surprised to find so many things could be done in more than one way for no particularly good reason, to be honest. :)
Weregoose wrote:
Lastly, z80 Assembly can be entered as hexadecimal strings into the native BASIC editor and compiled. I know of some experts on that, if you're interested.
Now *this* is interesting - this thread repeatedly has people pontificating on being annoyed that I didn't "just run a native game" but the limitation in the emulator that prevents creating a movie in this state isn't likely to be resolved anytime soon so this is perhaps a way to make it happen. It would be awesome if we can figure out a way to use a Lua script to do the conversion automatically. I'm quite interested in this concept and would love to know more. If there are resources you can point at please do so, and thanks for the pointer!
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We're a couple of days into the submission process for AGDQ 2016 and the submission thread already has massive numbers of comments about rejected games. I encourage people who are interested in TASVideos participation at GDQ's to take at least a quick glance through the thread - it will help enlighten everyone about how much competition there is for time during the marathon and how few runs actually make it in. We've been very fortunate to have a high acceptance rate but we have to make a convincing case.
I've spent today doing research on what needs to be pitched and how. Lacking other options I'll be pitching a console verification of [1746] NES Super Mario Bros. 2 "warpless" by Aglar & andrewg in 18:29.26 (thanks for the suggestion, ais523!) as well as an undefined "total control" run with the hope that we can actually pull off something interesting. This last bit is a bit risky, but only somewhat - there are at least a couple of things we know we could do now, but none of them are as amazing as Pokemon Plays Twitch.
I'll write up submission text likely tomorrow or Thursday, finish up video selections late Thursday night and Friday, and make the actual submission no later than midnight PST on Friday. I'm a bit behind schedule on video creation but I've largely been stalling hoping something else will come out of the woodwork. I'm still confident I can put something useful together, however. Thanks to everyone in IRC who has helped make suggestions!
