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Nah, this project went through a lot of brainstorming but never left experimental phase, because win10 destroyed all the principles behind it, effectively making hourglass-like approaches useless.
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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Kill screen in this game is the same of on the NES original. Same reason, slightly different memory addresses. Legend: you only have 4 seconds to beat level 132 (count starts from 0). It's not possible, you die.
Language: asm
; Set up level timer, called before every level
; level counter - how many loops you've completed (shown under L)
; level timer - remaining time (shown under BONUS)
$CB8A: A4 54 LDY $54 ; load level counter into Y register
$CB8C: C8 INY ; increment Y register
...
$CB94: A9 80 LDA #$80 ; load 0x80 into A register
$CB96: 88 DEY ; decrement Y register
$CB97: C0 04 CPY #$04 ; perform Y - 4
$CB99: 10 03 BPL $CB9E ; if result is positive, skip to $CB9E
$CB9B: B9 07 C2 LDA $C207,Y ; otherwise load value from memory into A register
$CB9E: 85 2E STA $2E ; set from A register into level timer
If level counter is from 0 to 3, the game will read remaining time from memory. If level counter is from 4 to 127+4, the game will force remaining time 8000. If level counter is from 127+4+1 to 255, the game will read remaining time from memory it wasn't supposed to read it from. This is because NES CPU 6502 uses signed numbers when preforming comparison. So starting at level 123 the game reads level timer from memory again, and it offsets the source address farther from what it's supposed to base on - $C207.
Here's the dump of that memory area, it is inside ROM:
Level counter 132 makes it read remaining time from $C28B which is 4. Greatest possible level counter value is 255, it makes it read from $C306, which is 0. You can see a few more 0 values in-between, so even if you cheat your speed or something, you just instantly die in some levels.
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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It saddens me that you repeatedly ignore the fact that all the needed methods of making sure it's the right decision were used before officially establishing it. It saddens me that you ignore the actual intellectual work we do to handle judgments properly. It saddens me that you blindly call our reasons lame excuses. It saddens me that you invent arbitrary requirements and cargo cults. It saddens me that you switch to personal accusations. It saddens me that you have zero arguments regarding the actual topic at hand.
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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p4wn3r wrote:
However, I should tell you that I have never seen any serious institution that gives someone simultaneously the power to enforce and change the rules without some due process, which you refer later as "those formalities". You can of course disagree, indeed a member seems to be discontent with democratic ideas. In any case, if you don't sympathize with it either, I suggest that you specify how seriously you take your own rules in the Front Page, it would save the members the trouble to figure out how things really work.
We are able to discuss things before enforcing and changing. And we are able to express disagreement with how the rules were changed. The discussion did happen. No disagreement was present before, during, or after the rule change. What else do you want from people who are able to discuss things before, while, and after changing the rules?
p4wn3r wrote:
As I said previously, it was my expectation for any place that wishes to be taken seriously, which I assumed were commonplace. Also, most of the time it's the practice of formalizing that stops abuses. For example, I was in a student union where there were elections, and it was required that the exact date and time of the election should be published in a given manner that made it easy for all students to see, and that it should stay there for a given period, because there were cases where the guys in power would suddenly say that the election was the next day at 2 in the morning, and only his friends would go to vote. After the formalism, it stopped.
How many cases of judge power abuse at tasvideos can you list?
p4wn3r wrote:
From the community, why not? If the input does not matter, why don't you request that the Workbench be abolished, while we're at it? Just tell people to send emails to the judges and things show up published.
Quote input pieces that didn't matter.
p4wn3r wrote:
Abscence of disagreement does not imply agreement.
Absence of ice-cream doesn't imply elephants. Quote disagreement that you evidenced regarding sanity of the updated rules.
p4wn3r wrote:
And also, could you clarify to me why you think discussions in IRC are a transparent way of discussing rule changes?
Because it is a way to collect all the relevant staff members in one place and discuss things in real time. And you are probably underestimating discussion abilities of other members that are present on IRC. The #tasvideos IRC channel is a public and transparent discussion environment by its nature.
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p4wn3r wrote:
The issue is: a judge does not change the law, never. This violates the principle of separation of powers.
Is TASVideos suddenly a country?
p4wn3r wrote:
What I have think you should have done is state that the current text is not appropriate and would make you cast a bad decision, and request the change explicitly. Then, only after theach following discussion, if the staff approves in a transparent way, give the verdict.
Is it just your thoughts, or some approved set of meta-rules TASVideos has been obeying for all these years? Because from what I've seen, this is exactly what happened, just without imposing all those formalities you pretend we have.
p4wn3r wrote:
and request the change explicitly
Request it from whom? Moth is an admin and a senior judge.
p4wn3r wrote:
I read a bit of the Math Blaster thread and it's the exact opposite of what you're implying it is.
Essentially, a judge decides something and people protest after many pages demanding to reconsider the rule. Then the rules get changed, the dicussion is acknowledged in the change, the decision retracted and the judge casts a new verdict. No problems in the process.
It took so long to fix the rules because there was disagreement among staff members (and among users). Here, no disagreement was present. Do you disagree with the updated rules? Do you think the movie would have been judged differently by the older rules?
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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You haven't been around since we added the tier system, have you?
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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klmz, what definition of "warp" are you using, and where does that definition come from?
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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About SM hacks, here's a brilliant piece of research by ED that helps to see basic qualities of SM hacks (List_of_all_existing_rated_SM_hacks.txt document):
Post #449604
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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p4wn3r wrote:
I have abstained from commenting on this submission, as I do for most controversial movies, but there's one aspect of the verdict that I find a bit troubling.
It looks like the rules for the Vault were updated before accepting the movie. Not commenting on the merit of the movie, it seems disturbing at an institutional level that the person in charge of judging something is capable of unilaterally changing the rules that determine how the judging should be done.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to retract this decision and create the discussion about rule changes to the Vault to see what people think of this? The way it was done it's hard to escape the conclusion that the rules were changed to legitimize the acceptance of this movie, which hampers the credibility of the judging process.
We don't change rules in order to justify our whims. We discuss everything among staff and only update the rules when we have consensus.
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.
"All kills"? I think only aiming to kill enemies that spawn as you progress through the game is implied, it doesn't make sense to keep respawning the same enemy for eternity in order to kill literally everything possible. Or maybe "maximum kills", since it's impossible to kill literally everything? And it's clearly not full completion and not vaultable.
Memory wrote:
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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FatRatKnight wrote:
To break things down, the method is "password", the effect is "final round", in some terms that makes sense to me. We're preferring the effect in this case, then?
We prefer the end goal, something that represents the primary condition and implies the secondary ones.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
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FatRatKnight wrote:
I still say "password". Any particular reason why I would think "warps" means I aim to take the maximum number of warps possible in a run? I agree that "password" has a minimum of description, but I ask to be convinced that "warps" is enough to specify fastest path using warps but "password" isn't enough to specify fastest path using password.
I think it also has to do with how traditional the "warps" goal is: it's instantly clear to most of the people who understand what warps do in the game.
What do you think of simply "final track"? It's inaccessible without a password, so the latter is implied. And it seems we can't formalize in a branch what is it's goal about equipment, so we can rely on mentioning that in the description.
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The DSS sumoning glitch is not a warp. It is just a high-speed movement that ignores any obstruct in the path. You can tell this with frame-advance, memory watch and/or just the exploration status (colorization) of the in-game map.
Neither are the OoB room-transitions using the DSS sumoning warp glitches. These normal room exits are always working just as expected, in-bound (see below). It's the DSS sumoning glitch that catapults the character out of bound.
There are indeed glitched warping spots in this game but they are all located in a particaular room in the Arena Area, and this run has nothing to do with them.
Yeah, you can safely assume that I am an expert of this game. ;-)
I think I was confused by the movie description, it says "allowing the player to warp directly to Dracula". However, "warp glitch" describes any way to get into later in-game point in a moment, warping around the map at the light speed delivers you to such points, so I think the branch is correct.
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It's quite strange how you completely ignore the fact that we only publish unvaultable goals if the result is entertaining enough.
If we stop preferring more entertaining runs for such goals, and instead enforce arbitrary opinion of arbitrary "majority", how will it become more fair to any runner?
The line about creativity perfectly answers your questions. If someone comes up with creative ideas that don't fit into this arbitrary rule set that you want us to start enforcing, we are being unfair to them, because by your suggestion we will need to reject their highly impressive and entertaining movie simply because it doesn't fit into arbitrarily picked rules. And you want it to happen in a tier where entertainment is the fundamental goal.
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.
I will play devil's advocate as well. Must the cartridge be "mass-produced?" Does "mass production" in this case refer to production method or production volume? There are services which will create a cartridge (complete with artwork and box) from a custom ROM, for a reasonable cost. These services will create multiple copies of a cartridge, but each is still hand-made--not mass production method, strictly speaking. If one were to have such a cartridge created, would it satisfy the "homebrew" criterion, even if only 1 such cartridge had been created, and created solely to satisfy this criterion?
I'll quote my IRC note:
02:58 <feos> I think the only part that wasn't clear in the rules is when something is a hack AND a homebrew
02:59 <feos> then we'd need to figure out what it is primarily. for physically distributed builds it's primarily a homebrew, for web distributed patches it's primarily a hack
But f you never ever distribute your rom-hack of SMB, and then release a single cartridge, then it's arguably a homebrew. But no one does it simply to mess with tasvideos, people release hacks and homebrews independently of us, so we have solid chance to know for sure what it is primarily.
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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Warp wrote:
feos wrote:
Keep in mind that we're talking about cases when it's not even possible to be objective with things like full completion. Whenever something subjective, even if it is an opinion of the (currently active) majority, it doesn't make sense to enforce such opinions blindly. It's not a democracy, it's art, it involves being creative, overcoming expectations and surprising the viewers. We want innovative thinking!
As said, it works for regular speedrunning. Why wouldn't it work here?
Because
feos wrote:
It's not a democracy, it's art, it involves being creative, overcoming expectations and surprising the viewers. We want innovative thinking!
Warp wrote:
It's not a question of whether the goals are sound and logical. It's a question of consistency and fairness.
We are consistent and fair about only publishing the most entertaining side goal branches.
Warp wrote:
I don't think it feels fair for a runner to do a lot of work on a run, just to have it become obsoleted by another run that's shorter or "better" because of choosing a different set of rules.
If it is better because it is more entertaining, it feels fair for a runner.
Warp wrote:
If the rules for a branch are agreed and fixed, it becomes fair for everybody, and ostensibly leads to healthy competition where everybody is on an equal playground.
Are talking about the same completely arbitrary set of rules? Because when I say "arbitrary set of rules", it means it makes no sense to enforce them. When you say "arbitrary set of rules", you want us to enforce them. But you do not like it when we enforce entertainment requirements. Are you seriously expecting the site to stop asking for entertainment in Moons?
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Memory wrote:
Now while I don't disagree with this, for devil's advocate purposes, what if I were to take what the site would currently consider a hack and release it in a cartridge format? Would it then be eligible for vault?
I asked myself this question as well.
Since Vault wants clear cuts as opposed to figuring out subjective enough-ness, having been released in real world on a physical media, as opposed to web releases of patches, sounds like a clear cut for me.
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SmashManiac wrote:
the rules for Vault clearly states that hacks are not eligible
Citation needed.
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"Password" still doesn't tell anything about what to expect. And I think password is just a way to showcase this highly impressive, but still very odd goal.
I don't like "final track, all equipment", but it tells everything one should know about the run to be able to decide if they want to watch it.
It's also interesting that we have "playaround", which showcases non-fastest-completion entertaining gameplay, but for password-based speed-oriented entertaining gameplay we don't have any common name.
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Warp wrote:
Well, my "perhaps we should start moving away from this" suggestion stands.
Rather than have one singular runner decide at a whim what the particular list of requirements is, and then have another runner decide on a different list at his own whim and have it obsolete the previous one, pretty much arbitrarily, perhaps it would be a better idea that if we create a non-conventional branch for a game, its rules ought to be decided by majority consensus (of runners acquainted with that particular game), and agreed to not be changed unless there is a very good reason for it (and most definitely not at a complete whim of one single person).
That's pretty much how it works in regular speedrunning, and I don't see why it shouldn't work here as well.
Keep in mind that we're talking about cases when it's not even possible to be objective with things like full completion. Whenever something subjective, even if it is an opinion of the (currently active) majority, it doesn't make sense to enforce such opinions blindly. It's not a democracy, it's art, it involves being creative, overcoming expectations and surprising the viewers. We want innovative thinking!
Otherwise, you're underestimating effort players and judges invest into making sure the given goals are sound.
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I've read the thread, as well as most of the submission text. WOW. I've seen some controversial cases over the years, but this one is out of this world. Pure legitimacy chaos.
In a perfect world where we only care about this submission alone, it's acceptable, despite of how crazy things might get. Not using ACE, using in-game methods to actually obtain pokemons, it all makes sense and feels somewhat right.
Now, what should we do with rules and policies?
Let's say we simply ban ACE in full completion runs, as most of us seem to agree on. How do we ensure it's not used in a given submission? FatRatKnight's post gives a brilliant example of how unmanageable the judgment becomes: the only way to make sure none of the ACE techniques are used is reading the entire code executed by the game over the course of the movie (and beyond, up to ending). Sure, it can be done by some program. Who's making such a program, please?
We can make sure ACE is present without any problems, yet it's mostly handled based on trust: the author tells us where arbitrary code is executed and how it is enabled, we look there, we find that it is true (or not). Even then effort should be invested into making sure this particular technique is legit, not an emulator bug, would work on console with some tweaks and precision if needed, etc.
How do we make sure no one is silently using some of those "arbitrary" techniques that this run explicitly bans? How do we make sure none of them is used accidentally? What about ACE techniques whose application for a given game isn't known yet, but the author has discovered them and sneakily applied them here and there? What if HappyLee is using some secret ACE techniques to dig into a few walls? We've never checked!
Let's look at it from the other side too. Where do we draw the glitchiness borderline when items needed are actually collected non-ACE (supposedly)? As long as an in-game routine that grants you another item is executed, it's legit? In theory, it can gradually become glitchier every time even without ACE. Let's say we keep vaulting such things as long as they don't hack the items in directly. Then what if someone makes a less glitchy run that resembles normal full completion TASes more, and it is Moons worthy? Will we allow a " 100%, no ACE, anything goes otherwise" run alongside a "100%, no memory corruption" run, just like we allow something like this for any%?
Even though this run in itself is somewhat clear, I feel we'll have to resolve the above sooner or later anyway. But if you think of it, all this should be used right away to verify this submission as well!
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
Nach wrote:
If the main goal is to actually collect them wherever they are, even if it means warping to them, and you did so, then you completed your objective. If you just put an item into your menu but did not actually collect them, then you did not complete your objective.
Errr... I could argue with that (NES Megaman TAS completing the game without flagged as completed).
I'd say it's the opposite case. Those flags only get set after you beat it the normal way. The game has ended in any case, we don't depend on full game state being identical to normal completion. We just require that the game after glitched ending acts like after normal one.
Full completions TAS rules are different, see my post in the initial thread:
Post #468560
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Before I actually read the whole thing, this is what I think.
When one focuses on speed alone under certain rules (tasvideos rules in this case), this speed is what we want, as well as creativity involved into reaching that speed of game completion. As long as it obeys the rules, it's considered a speed record, and even if it's boring, we still publish it (to Vault). We can call it any%.
When we talk about full completion instead of fastest completion, an extra goal gets added. But it's important to figure out the priorities. Do we want it to be just as fast as any%, with expected artifacts of full completion obtained by any cost (that fits into the same rules as any%)? Or do we want to see something additional actually achieved gameplay-wise, and only then we want it to be optimized for speed?
I don't think the rules for these 2 goals are the same. We allow hacking in game ending as long as the result works the same as after legitimate ending. But when we want to see some creativity in obtaining extra stuff, we have already agreed that we don't want to see plain any%. We do not evaluate TAS merits of a full completion run by artifacts that appear in the end, we evaluate it by superplay involved in obtaining them. When we can hack such artifacts in by corrupting memory, the purpose of the category gets completely defeated.
We can use "arbitrary code execution" to complete the game within the any% goals. This proves a point about absolute fastest game completion within certain rules. If from the same point we hack in full completion artifacts, what point does it prove? That you can hack them in? You obviously can, it's total control! But it's not related to actually completing anything.
Now we enter gray area. Because you could ask: "Then what is so impressive in ACE speedrun in the first place? You simply hack the ending in, nothing impressive!" To answer that we keep branches that avoid game breaking glitches and still aim for any% rules otherwise. This is because Moons allow to publish such branches as long as they represent enough unique content and entertain the audience. And they are liked exactly because people are interested in "spoiler free" game completion in terms of legitimacy. Some people don't feel like runs with major skip glitches are legit, and for them we have those branches.
In short: we allow 2 types on any%!
Can we do the same with full completion - keep a branch that hacks in arbitrary completion artifacts and then a branch that actually achieves them through gameplay? I don't think so. Because up to the point if reaching ACE such runs would be the same, and after that point they are virtually the same as well: just stream code that sets some more bits, that's all. Such 2 runs would be too similar to co-exist as separate branches.
Therefore means to get completion artifacts without obtaining them in some way don't make sense.
However, this leaves us with a question: What if it's not total control? Where do we draw the glitchiness line when we judge game completion? I don't know. I need to read the thread.
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Warp wrote:
feos wrote:
But it's a Moons era, and Moons were allowed to have esoteric branches from day 1, as long as they are entertaining.
Perhaps we should start moving away from this? After all, how much could the list of requirements be shortened and still be accepted under the same branch category? Who decides this? Wouldn't it be unfair to the author of the first run that someone else could just remove some requirement from the list and make a "better" run that way? When runners can freely decide what the branch category is supposed to mean, it makes no sense, as anybody can obsolete anybody else's run by coming up with a different list of requirements.
If it's
1) more entertaining (check out how low entertainment rating the run we're talking about has),
2) similar enough, and
3) there's an agreement among viewers and judges,
it'd obsolete if by the Moons rules, regardless of internal rules of the run. We never allowed endless amount of esoteric branches, and if we need, we obsolete different branches by one another.
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.
