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Can't get this to sync. Can you describe the exact sync steps from a fresh portable install? That is, after unzipping Dolphin, create an empty portable.txt file alongside Dolphin.exe, then it will be independent on whatever you had previously played.
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Bizhawk movies include SaveRAM anchor in them.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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What does the questionmark icon say when you click it (bottom left)?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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In a lot of places I see you wait for the hole to move closer towards you, but you don't also move closer to it to get down sooner. Does it never help in those cases?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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We define gameplay as "an in-game task or puzzle that is meant to be accomplished or solved by a human while playing the game, by sending inputs to the game and getting its reaction".
If a code instantly moves you ahead in the game, it doesn't add any new task or puzzle beyond what was originally there. It quite obviously removes the task that was there - playing through the levels to get to that point normally.
It would have added gameplay if it unlocked a level or a character, or at the very least an item. While items are not in-game challenges, they were agreed to belong to unlockable gameplay, and maybe the definition above is a bit old now (it was added when we tried to decide whether there's any gameplay still left in #6466: Masterjun & ais523's NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" in 00:00.78). If it was an item that you could use to make shortcuts, it'd fit. But if the code is already the entirely of the shortcut, it's not allowed for Standard.
However it's fine for Alternative now if it's entertaining!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Because they both aim for fastest completion, just using different timing. Unless one happens to be cool enough for Alt.
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Yeah it'd be ideal if the main submission obsoleted the current record within the same metrics first, and then the one that aims for a different type of ending could co-exist as a secondary publication file.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Cycle count in this core is important because it's the only way to have correct duration info. It's easy to fix it by simply saving the movie when it pauses on the last frame.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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KusogeMan wrote:
I did a little searching into the profiles and I noticed something very clear from the start. The only who are being affected by this rule in this voting were the specific people that voted against the ruling that was passed.
[...]
So basically this is the equivalent of inviting 12 politically not interested people and 2 politically interested people to vote for laws that only affect those 2 interested people.
It's called the community. There's no sane way to look at an open questionfor everyone and conclude that it "invites" specific types of people in prejudiced quantities. We invited the entire community. We invited everyone, to share their thoughts and feelings, to give us ideas and suggestions.
Comparing people who were firmly against obsoleting the most legit category ever (starting from power-on) to "politically not interested" is invalid. It's the most legit category ever because it requires zero technical verification, and has zero room for speculation about optimality of unlockables and their legitimacy.
With movies that start from a savegame or a savestate, you need to technically verify that they are reproducible, and then also verify that they unlock and use the most optimal things. And those things may also raise questions about whether they should be allowed, like what if you could unlock noclip in a platformer or an FPS? What if you could unlock a mode that removes all enemies? Would those things count as the most optimal route ever? There's no such concerns for power-on startup. And it's always been accepted for the entire history of the site. People supporting it are absolutely "politically interested".
KusogeMan wrote:
I could give a more specific example with politically charged issues but I don't want to derail this. I just wanted to vent out how bad i feel about being a major contributor, along Spike obviously, and having my vote crushed by the uninterested party.
Do you want your feelings to matter more than the rest of the community? We can not provide that. Best we can do is counting everyone's feelings equally. And in cases when feelings of some people contradict feelings of other people, what do you think the best solution is?
My personal solution is reflected in my forum signature, and it's what I've been doing since 2018 when I became a senior judge. Or maybe even since 2014.
For conflicting opinions, the best thing to do is figuring out reasons and priorities behind everyone's point of view, and accounting those priorities as best as we can, instead of sticking to hyper-focused extreme visions that miss the forest behind the trees.
We, site staff, can not afford missing the forest behind the trees. We need to see the bigger picture at all times. Not only in space (various people posting in a certain thread during a year), but also in time (what should we expect to happen as a result of our decisions, in the next several years?)
Now you may know that the universe operates by the laws of logic. People may not know exactly what's happening in nature through facts, but facts we can observe can only compose a theory that is able to reliably predict things if it's build using logic. Your smartphone keeps working because processes inside it rely on laws of physics and their logic.
Similarly, we won't be able to build a reliable system for people to operate in unless we rely on facts (opinions/feelings/experiences) and logic. Logic guarantees it will keep working given the same reality, and if reality changes we should be ready to adjust the rules. And those adjustments still have to be logical, because only then people will be able to understand them, and to predict results of their actions. This is what makes a policy legitimate - when people who want to challenge the policy conclude in the end that it makes sense. We do this among staff all the time, and we invite the community to chime in all the time.
KusogeMan wrote:
I understand you don't want to discuss this anymore because you already voted.
Honestly, I don't feel comfortable commenting anything nowadays on the site.
I presented a ton of logical arguments in this thread in all my previous posts. If you're interested in helping the community move forward, discuss them using logic and facts, and be open to other people's logic and facts. If you don't use logic and objective verifiable facts, yet you still want your feelings to matter more than feelings of others, you're being disruptive.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Spikestuff wrote:
I can refer to Guilty Gear X: Advance Edition where Ky is obsoleted by Zato as they're both characters available form the start for an instance of a character that wasn't unlocked.
Since they are available from the start, a Standard movie starting from the game start requires the most optimal char to be used. Originally one char was considered the best, then later it was found that another char is better, so a movie with one obsoletes a movie with the other.
Since SaveRAM is not involved, movies of that game will be unaffected by the (year-old) changes in SaveRAM rules. The slower char will remain obsoleted, unless people take a second look and feel that it's entertaining and different enough to co-exist in Alternative, with the "uses suboptimal char" tag. If that happens, particular char available from the start would be the only difference, so we would put char name into branch label to distinguish the 2 existing branches.
It won't imply any policy regarding other games and their branches. Branch labels are only used to indicate what makes branches different for a particular given game. If we try to add other meanings to branch labels, it quickly becomes impossible to reliably handle.
Now, you also asked "Let's pretend that Zato's the "savegame" character for this, which is why I'm saying for the sake of argument" in a non-public chat.
If Zato was a savegame char, the whole point of this thread's existence is splitting savegame-anchored movies into their own goal sets and obsoletion chains, therefore it would be published as a separate Standard branch called "savegame", and the Ky branch would remain without a label. Because there would not be several branches coming just from char choice. Savegame would be the key difference, therefore it goes into branch label for all savegame goals.
Finally, if we imagine an unlikely scenario that after that distinction someone makes entertaining movies for suboptimal chars, labeling becomes more complicated, tho it doesn't mean we won't be able to solve it.
Most likely for Alternative, we would not care if it's a savegame char or not, so yes, in Alt a better savegame char can obsolete a base roster char. However it doesn't mean it'd be faster. It could be slower and more entertaining, and still obsolete, because in Alt we aim for entertainment.
Now I said above that if a suboptimal char exists in Alt, both char branches would be labeled, because it's what we do according to branch label policies. But it really looks like "princess only" is a better example here, where an Alternative branch aims for a specific char, while other branches aim just for the most optimal char combo whatever it is.
For that reason, chars that are used for Standard goals (and can be changed in newer runs if they are quicker) should not go to branch labels, unless char choice results in what we consider a separate game mode altogether.
Chars that are used for entertainment in Alternative goals will go to branch labels if showcasing them was the sole goal.
If the Alt goal is different, and any char could be used within that goal, then that goal goes to the label but not the char.
Finally if different chars co-exist in Alt within the same goal, they go to branch labels to distinguish which is which.
This is all just branch labeling policy, obsoletion policies are unrelated and don't need to care how we label things. It's the other way around: we agree on obsoletion (or split) policies, and then adjust the labels to work with it. Making movie rules depend on labels would be a very bad practice that makes things worse.
Spikestuff wrote:
I can also refer to Digimon Rumble Arena where an unlocked character wasn't allowed, and instead a character that's available from the start would have been preferred instead.
That submission would be accepted under the current SaveRAM rules as a separate "savegame" branch.
Spikestuff wrote:
But we're in the new site era now where we have a new submission that's using an unlocked character in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance which should outright obsolete the Kenshi run and be the preferred run. But isn't for some reason.
A character name as a branch implies we would accept and publish every character. Which isn't good on the site side, as Judges and Publishers will have to deal with a "mess" of fighting game TASes.
But I already experimented with that idea with 5 separate characters in Tekken 3 and they're ineligible to be accepted due to Yoshimitsu (and that puddle can get muddier, but let's avoid that puddle) and of course Guilty Gear X as I referred to earlier.
If individual char branches are not good enough to go to Alternative, they just go to Playground. There, they will have char labels, because showcasing those chars was their sole goal. As I explained above, we need to update labeling policies to account for the new class system.
Spikestuff wrote:
In my opinion the character should obsolete the other regardless if they're an unlocked character or not and if they're an unlock then they should have the tag of well in this case `Second quest/Post game-completion`. We have tags, we should make the tags work at the very least, we still make new ones to this day.
This allows it to be simplified, and any other run from an unlocked roster or a standard one can instead go to Playground whilst the actual fastest can obsolete one another.
Adding extra clauses to movie rules is the opposite of simplification. Especially when those clauses go against the already existing agreement (always split SaveRAM in Standard unless all unlocked content fails to make the movie quicker). And especially against the current site direction of letting everyone have their favorite goal published (as long as we can afford it).
If our wording of the current policies needs to be clearer, we can and should improve it.
Spikestuff wrote:
This also allows another type of branch for fighting games, where you have the fastest character, a playaround and then "all endings", at least for the fighting games that show off different endings.
A fighting game movie that goes through all chars doesn't sound like a very popular goal among players or viewers, so I think it would be incredibly rare. If replaying the game with all chars is the only form of full completion for a particular game, maybe it's fine for Standard. But that's a discussion we haven't had yet, and adding it to this one seems to only make it even more complex. Like look at all the posts I already made in this thread, and tell me how many people have read them all and understood them.
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Thanks, that's a solid enough reason then!
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However, it was only after I had got this done and the encode uploaded that I checked the No-Intro database. The database said that while the split games are considered "good" dumps the original data of the memory pack is considered a "bad" dump.
I can understand that but it's kind of a bummer to realize the version you've made a completed TAS on was considered a bad version.
How easy would it be to resync on the good dump version?
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Should all be done.
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Great work! Here's a 4K encode
Link to video
Would you be interested in continuing the Genesis journey by checking out Demolition Man?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
How many of them are actual co-authorships, and how many are different names of the same user?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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upelly wrote:
Hi everyone, I just want to clarify, I made several mistakes in my original submission, including with the framerate (I had not realized the game has an unusual framerate). I will be re-making the TAS in the future with a latest version (v1.6 on pip) and the correct framerate, once there is an official LibTAS release with the required functionality. As for this submission, I'm not sure what the procedure is but please feel free to discard this TAS
If you hit the Edit button on the submission, you can then change the Status to Canceled.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Counting public opinions...Savegame based unlockable character should always obsolete clear save character in fighting games (and possibly racing) if it's faster.
2/16 (12.5%)
Spikestuff wrote:
SRAM should obsolete, but only for Fighting Games, and the information has to be very clear about it in the Publication. It will also cause the least amount of headaches.
I just fully agree and wish there were special rules for some genres
On the fence but a compromise of some kind looks acceptable.
4/16 (25%)
Samsara wrote:
I'm really on the fence about this. The easiest way to handle this would be through superseding, i.e we accept the first one we get and obsolete with the other, but we still have to figure out what option we prefer. SRAM better fulfills the goal of being as fast as possible, though it introduces conflicts of "legitimacy", for lack of a better word, in that a run that starts purely from power-on can be instantly verified as legitimate while SRAM needs further investigation to prove that nothing unfair is being carried over.
I think obviously we accept it as-is right now, but I think I might prefer the SRAM one, because it's faster and doesn't detract anything from the normal run? I can see why others might feel differently though, from a legitimacy standpoint. I also thought we were going in the direction of not superseding Standard branches even if content overlapped, so maybe both would be ok.
What if we limit the "SRAM-anchored movies would never compete against 'clean' movies under Standard" clause to the Fastest Completion types of categories only, or at least do not apply them to the Full Completion categories? While they are all categories under Standard, full completion is ultimately not exactly about "beating the game as fast as possible" in the most literal sense and is arguably less "sensitive" to certain differences that would have caused relatively bigger impacts to fastest completion runs in many cases.
Maybe that doesn't sound like a good justification for this specific proposal, but the general idea is that it's probably reasonable to allow obsoletions between save-anchored and "clean" movies for non-fastest completion categories based on how different they actually are instead of having a blanket "ban" on all obsoletions between movies with different save-anchor statuses under all of Standard.
Jos (on Discord) wrote:
Having two branches for fighting games for starter characters and unlockable characters isn't the end of the world IMO, but it is kind of a strange split
The cause of this argument right now is, as I see it, because TASVideos wants to draft one rule to apply to all games. And if that's something you want to do, I think the fact that fighting games get this branch split that isn't aligned with how the fighting game community acts is an acceptable compromise
The best solution is allowing them to co-exist as separate branches.
10/16 (62.5%)
feos wrote:
I don't want save-anchored movies to compete with power-on ones in Standard, because the former kinda give themselves a handicap which would somehow not count as a part of its completion time. I feel it's fair to instead have more branches. But in Moons, I think we can obsolete goals with and without save-anchor if they are too similar, and if there's consensus. I'd argue save-anchored would generally be more entertaining.
This seems like the most reasonable way of handling things to me, if the unlockable characters aren't significantly different gameplay-wise to the base characters.
I see more reason in not allowing unlockable characters to standard than I do in having them obsolete base characters.
In any case, it's effectively just NG vs. NG+, and it seems wrong to me that a NG+ run would obsolete a NG run.
I think the most clear and logical ruleset you can have for any game is to have the run from a fresh unaltered save file, regardless if this is the fastest category or not. It should never be completely obsolete by a run which take advantage from having a save file.
Personally I don't like watching these fighting games, but I do think it's an interesting principle to see how fast one can beat a game out of the box from power on.
https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Posts/528739
I really don't quite get what's so bad about having seperate publications for fresh starts and save starts in fighting games (and racing games, and other games where the game is still played from a 'new game' state - but in an unlocked (hard) mode).
If a game has people working on SRAM-cleared TASes then they should be able to get those TASes published as such.
Allowing both SRAM-cleared and SRAM-anchored movies as opposed to only one or the other gives TASers the freedom to work on what they actually want to work on without having to worry about their movie being disallowed on the site before they even make their first input. And I'm very much in favor of staying on that path of acceptance, rather than reverting back to more restrictive policies.
i'm proposing there be two branches: one that starts with the roster available from power-on, and one that uses whatever the best character is after everything is unlocked (presumably what the fighting community, which you're an ambassador for, wants)
InputEvelution (Evelyn) (on Discord) wrote:
I don't play fighting games much, but I watch TASes of them. I personally am very interested in seeing what can be done just with characters who are unlocked from the start
dwangoAC (on Discord) wrote:
I, for one, am almost always in favor of being an inclusionist and don't see more branches as a problem unless they're way overboard; I'd want to see the reasoning for the branch explained well and any gotchas as it were but I'm in favor of accepting the nuances of other speedrunning communities and noting where things deviate from TASVideos norms (while also having a concession that they may not be considered standard runs on the site)
TASVideos doesn't work like a traditional leaderboard, you're arguing that a "slower" run shouldn't exist but that "slower" run still has value to some viewers
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Desyncs for me with SolarWolf 1.5+dfsg1-3, 1.5+dfsg1-5, and 1.5+dfsg1-6, and libTAS 286306e and latest interim. Also it needs to sync on an official libTAS release so it'd have to wait for it even if it syncs. And if it only syncs on interim and not on official release, we could make a custom release from that old commit... if it synced.
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I don't feel this goal belongs even to Wiki: Playground, because entering a game genie code instead of doing anything in the game can technically be done to all games that GG existed for. And for games it didn't exist for, there are other ways of external-cheating that don't even involve live memory editing: you just hack the game to instantly end. So I'm not convinced there any play in this movie.
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Spikestuff wrote:
Misinterpreting my concerns:
Spikestuff wrote:
A character name as a branch implies we would accept and publish every character. Which isn't good on the site side, as Judges and Publishers will have to deal with a "mess" of fighting game TASes.
But I already experimented with that idea with 5 separate characters in Tekken 3 and they're ineligible to be accepted due to Yoshimitsu (and that puddle can get muddier, but let's avoid that puddle) and of course Guilty Gear X as I referred to earlier.
I'm not seeing any misinterpretation.
Spikestuff wrote:
tl;dr what I wrote.
Is unlock character faster?
> Yes
Obsolete.
You stated an opinion. I'll count opinions in the next post.
Spikestuff wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Understand what we, the side that's against this arbitrary branch is trying to tell you. Don't gloss over it.
I'm not responding back if you don't get our point of concern, cause everything doesn't always work. And definitely doesn't work here for fighting games.
Which part of myexplanations fails to work in fighting games and why, exactly?
DrD2k9 wrote:
Just a suggestion on inclusion of “savegame” as part of a branch name (for any genre): Have “savegame” always be the first part of the branch name as it’s the main differentiator for that particular branch. Then any additional branch name identifiers would follow.
So for the above example: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance “savegame, arcade mode”
I don't mind.
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So I was still missing an explanation on what makes fighting games with unlockable characters fundamentally different from all other games with unlockable characters - so different that they would require an exception in movie rules despite lots of people asking for power-on and savegame branches to co-exist for all games. The reason to have such an exception in the rules has to be really good and can't depend on someone's preference, because exceptions complicate things going forward. So when we add an exception, we need to understand it really well, and word it really well, for players to abide by those rules and fur judges to enforce them. The exception must feel natural to the people involved, because otherwise it feels forced and pointless. We don't want that in Movie Rules (anymore).
Since the staff talk was brought up, I thought maybe I'd find more information there, so I'll try to go through points mentioned there and see if the current system handles them or not.
Reminder: We're discussing a situation when we have 2 movies of a fighting (or racing) game, and an unlockable character is the fastest. The question is whether we can have both as branches in Standard and why.- "NewGame+" does not work as a branch label in fighting games where you unlock a char.
Indeed, we're switching from that label which only works for unlockable modes, over to "savegame" which seems to communicate the main point accurately in all cases. We also have a movie tag for it that basically means the same thing.
An icon was suggested, but we don't put icons into encode subtitles or youtube titles, and it'd mean the same thing as the "savegame" branch that does go into video.
- They can't be separate branches, because then they'd have to be labeled by character name, which would mean we have to allow different chars to co-exist in Standard (or look like we already do).
Not true. As I mentioned in the previous post, we only put the char name in the branch label if showcasing that specific char was the sole purpose of the movie and it didn't end up in Standard. Since Standard wants optimality within certain allowed goals, only the most optimal char is allowed, so whichever is currently known to be optimal for a particular goal will be used. If a different char is discovered to be more optimal, its movie will obsolete, and neither needs a char name.
The savegame branch would just be labeled "savegame" + whatever other standard goal it would have, if applicable. For for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance it becomes "Arcade Mode" and "Arcade Mode, savegame".
If a suboptimal character is submitted just for entertainment, and it succeeds in that, it will be put into the branch label. And it still doesn't mean all other branches of that game now have to spell out the char, because they still only aim for the optimal one.
One semi-exception to requiring only optimal chars in Standard is cases when chars actually work as different game modes because of how different they are. Then they go into the label.
That's all I could find that didn't look like miscommunication, uncertainty, or repetition. In the next post, that will hopefully be the last one, I'll do numbers and count opinions.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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EZGames69 wrote:
Robotron 2084 displays the (!) sign on several inputs, mainly the joystick inputs that are used for moving and shooting.
Fixed.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Anyway, back to my summary posts...
First I want to explain how the current system works, given the suggested new branch label. Then I'll go through potential complaints about it and see how to resolve them.
For almost every Standard goal there can be a "savegame" counterpart. I gets a special branch label highlighting its savegame nature, and formerly it was "NewGame+", but "savegame" is a much better term, because it covers all cases and communicated the main point more clearly and accurately. It also gets a special movie tag.
There's no obsoletion between different standard goals, even though sometimes different movies can be considered the same goal and supersede one another, for example if a game without an ending was completed to the end of the first full loop, and then someone extends it to reach a kill screen. Basically it's when a new movie contains an oldmovie while having the same goal.
"Savegame" goals that can't go to Standard, can go to Alternative if they look entertaining and and different to the audience than their Standard versions. Due to the nature of goals that aim for entertainment, it's possible that different Alternative goals will look very similar, and to avoid clutter we can properly obsolete some run that the audience likes less by something that feels like a new and improved version of it, even if the goals are not identical.
Having to pre-moderate Moons by only allowing things that actively entertain the audience so much that it's verbal about it, over the years wore out, because it stopped making sense to remain overly restrictive. So when we were brainstorming about retiring the tier system, I had this vision in mind:
feos wrote:
what we need to adjust compared to old TASVideos is lowering the entertainment cutoff and increasing the branch count cap.
So instead we post-moderate when there's an agreement that there are too many branches that are too similar.
Now, I said that "almost" every standard branch can have its "savegame" counterpart. Of course there can be exceptions when it's agreed that it doesn't make sense to separate them, for example when there's little to no gameplay difference added by post-completion. Then there are cases when something that you can unlock, while looking subjectively cool, is suboptimal in terms of objective speed. For example if you want to complete some game as quickly as possible from a fresh save with base characters, with unlocked extra characters you still need to complete the game ASAP. If new characters don't help with that, it just means base characters are more optimal. Which is why we have the "uses a suboptimal char" movie tag, and movies aiming for that simply go to Alternative instead of Standard.
Interestingly, suboptimal chars make labeling kinda tricky. Not necessarily harder to do, but it may look inconsistent across all movies on the site.
Publisher Guidelines wrote:
The point of branches is to highlight specific goals that runs may conform to. These goals are highlighted, because they introduce gameplay differences into TASes that are significant enough to be published as separate branches. Two kinds of goals exist:
Internal condition - something the game directly and unambiguously offers as an optional component of play which significantly affects what is seen from the game (warp usage, player amount, character choice).
External condition - something the players limit themselves to (exact completion percent, pacifist, certain glitch set).
We don't have a concept of "default goal", therefore we don't use labels like "any%" as a branch label. Instead we identify what is unique in every branch or set of branches, something that the other branches of the same game don't represent.
We put internal conditions into branch labels if there are (or can be) counterpart runs, for example if we have different movies using 1 player and 2 players, both will tell player count in branches. But if we would not allow some internal conditions to co-exist on their own, they don't have to be mentioned explicitly.
For example we don't allow branches for each character to co-exist in Standard, so any Standard movie will need to pick the most optimal character, and it won't be mentioned in the branch label. But if there's an Alternative counterpart branch that uses some character just to showcase it, that character will be mentioned in the label.
And here's a part even I'm not sure about, because it never happened before. If the standard goal uses the most optimal char, and the alternative movie uses a suboptimal char, sometimes they are spelled out in all branches:
Super Mario Bros. 2Castlevania III: Dracula's CurseCastlevania: Bloodlines
sometimes only the suboptimal char is spelled out
Super Mario Bros. 2Final FantasySuper Mario Advance
and sometimes only some branches spell out chars
Sonic 3 & KnucklesSonic Advance
Due to crazy differences between how games approach things we need to put into branch labels, I don't feel it's possible to make it all look 100% consistent. And the problem here is that putting chars into Standard labels may make it look like we accept different chars to Standard on their own, which we don't. Maybe we just need to accept (instead) the fact that branch labels can only make sense within one game? After all it's just a way to communicate differences between branches, which is usually needed for one game. Across different games, it may be possible to have a unified name that marks similar branches, but it's not guaranteed.
To be continued...
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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JosJuice wrote:
CoolHandMike wrote:
For one I do not think the term "SRAM" or even "SaveRAM" really means a lot to most people. So a more obvious term through the site could be better.
A new and clearer term would especially be appreciated for Dolphin, as the GameCube stores game progress on flash memory in memory cards but also has an SRAM chip that stores console-wide settings. Normally when TASers say "SRAM" they mean game save data, but that usage of the term doesn't make sense on its face when talking about the GameCube.
What about the term suggested by Masterjun (and Wikipedia) - "savegame"? The purpose here is more important than the underlying technology (battery backed SRAM, Flash, etc), and it's clearly different from emulator savestates. And works as movie branches too instead of NG+.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
