Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Dwedit wrote:
I remember back when the issue of ending input early was controversial.
That time is back!
Wow this movie is a Goldberg machine. It simply gently pushes the ball that then takes 12 minutes to RICH while presenting you a hilarious comedy. I laughed several times, it's the funniest TAS I've seen in a long while. The main feat is gameplay that looks primitive but does in fact have variety for almost the whole time. You never know who loses next and when, and how long the opponents take to defeat themselves. At first it even looks like one of them is winning and maybe the whole thing desynced. And it's much more ridiculous to watch this in the emulator with input display, when you are already sure the actual input ended minutes ago, but keeps delivering.
This movie is not trivial, even simply judging by the fact that it was revised a few times after considered finished, and quite a bit of time was saved since then. While the current input may be trivial to execute, it was not trivial to come up with it. Technically the same situation as with [4173] SMS Zool: Ninja of the "Nth" Dimension "game end glitch" by The8bitbeast in 00:21.61, the only difference is this game doesn't have a published movie yet.
I also remember a movie where it was a meaningful question whether you aim for shortest input or fastest ending: #7123: Jigwally's NES Solitaire in 00:40.93.
feos wrote:
You can potentially delay the ending indefinitely with your shorter input. We wouldn't want t to watch a 10-second movie that makes the game end 10 hours later.
But you can't indefinitely speed it up in your ending-based movie. There's only so much you can do to end the game faster, and it gradually gets harder and harder to come up with new timesaves. You can't make it happen instantly.
And you can't indefinitely delay movie end to make the game end faster. After some point it becomes unnecessary.
So in terms of obsoletion criterion, ending-based movie is clear cut.
I think for this game, judging movie optimality by when the game ends is a better idea.
There's only so much speedrun challenge to this game if one only aims for shortest input. When the only room for further optimization is those 17 frames, it's not hard to just go through them all and test them, checking if either of them leads to an ending at all. Arguably if there's some obscure combination of inputs that makes the game end even later, how do we judge it? Optimality becomes a moot concept when you sacrifice one important aspect to gain another.
But if we aim for quickest ending, there's still a lot to optimize in the future. Aiming to actually win as soon as possible gives you minutes to work with, and after some time you can't make it end sooner by extending your input any further.
Now the really hard question is whether we should prefer some approach to a given game or should we just start allowing both to co-exist.
For me this movie is absolutely Moons, but I'm sure the ratings won't agree with my sense of humor. I'm not ready to allow both for Standard because I don't agree that they are de facto standard goals already. If you only have 2 options, and for every single movie you have to decide which to pick, it may become a part of your actual in-game goal, but it can't become a separate goal in and of itself. It can be a second version of any goal you set, depending on the game. I don't know if many people here would want to see every movie in 2 variations of how it ends.
At the same time I can see unique value in both if they look distinctly different. How about this:
If aiming for a different kind of ending can make the whole movie look different enough, then it's a proof it can work as a goal on its own and deserves a place in the Standard class. If it's just a minor variation of the main goal, it's up to the author and the audience which one to prefer.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Morrowseer wrote:
It seems like the site rules are outdated, so shouldn't it be updated to allow images up to 125x125?
Updated.
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.
Tell me which config tweaks we need to change for this to become official.
Looks pretty damn close to native if you ask me:
DOSBox dumpPrBoom dump
PS: This is meant to be pixel accurate to native Doom look, with shrinking width to be 4/3 of height in post. Can't trust that job to prboom since non-square pixels won't look right at low resolutions.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
fsvgm777 wrote:
With in-game codes* being allowed for Moons, I feel we should have a separate "Uses an in-game code" tag to properly differentiate from "Uses a level password". What do y'all think?
Use cases would be for unlocking all levels or vehicles or giving access to various items, for instance.
Agreed, we'd use it for any code that's not a level password.
For clarity I think we can reuse the definition of in-game codes that was present in the old movie rules:
When we speak about codes that are part of a game that we allow for use in certain scenarios, we are talking about passwords that can be entered in a menu, pressing some buttons on the title screen, passing execution parameters or setting environment variables for DOS games, or anything of a similar nature. This excludes things like Game Genie codes or emulator cheating tools. Codes are considered secret if the game never tells them to the player: neither through official documentation nor during gameplay.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Feel free to create a thread for this game in https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Subforum/20 so it's more easily available, and people who want to follow your progress will subscribe to that thread.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
All the manuals I'm reading say Rapier only gets unlocked if you've completed Venom, but it's available here right away?
EDIT:
Ah I see it uses a code
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Yeah if we become the only source of some hack and nobody else on the internet is interested in hosting it, that makes acceptability of certain hacks entirely depend on stability of us hosting the patches. We take stability and future sync seriously so we would do that, but some hacks may contain copyright infringing content. So it turns into a paradox where our publications of hacks start depending on us hosting illegal content. We can't go that path.
I don't think we can even officially endorse any given 3rd party hosting just for us, because if it has to go down we will have issues again. So it makes the most sense to share future-proof-ness with all the people who want to maintain hack databases on their own, instead of exclusively for us.
Even if we mirror all our patch files privately just in case, we can't expose them to the outer world.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
I can't get this run to sync (yes I enabled the AR code). Desyncs in the very first level just like the other run.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Info Teddy wrote:
AntyMew wrote:
However, it would be very possible to build the game for x86 Linux and then drop in all the necessary non-GPL assets from an official release.
This seems to basically be an extended case of TASing PC games by porting them to Linux (when possible, e.g. GameMaker or Unity games that run the actual game code in a virtual machine instead of compiling to native code), only in this case you are simply porting the game to x86. We already have a publication which does that: [4579] Windows Unworthy by keylie in 24:05.40. We also have [4496] Windows Backyard Baseball "Pick-Up Game" by TiKevin83 in 04:45.05, which is a publication that unofficially ports the game to Linux using (as far as I understand it) an engine replacement known as ScummVM. So, I'd say the scenario with OneShot here is acceptable, and in fact even more acceptable than those previous two examples, since we're only porting it to a different architecture while keeping the operating system the same.
In general, any unofficial port is allowed as long as it doesn't introduce anything different gameplay-wise from the original game, and is reproducible and syncable.
Agreed. The rules encourage people to ask us when modification is the only way to TAS the game, and if it's indeed the only way, it makes the most sense to allow it.
In the case of Unworthy, the port did introduce a mechanic not present in the clean game, but it was not possible to figure out why and fix it, so I decided to err on the side of the author. If it's feasible to avoid this, of course it'd be better.
Info Teddy wrote:
This was a workaround so we don't make Keylie release a different branch just for us. While it wasn't hard for me to do, we want to discourage this when possible, otherwise it will become a mess if people keep doing it. I even decided not to put that fork into TASEmulators so people don't think it's more official than upstream and stick to it.
Info Teddy wrote:
AntyMew wrote:
more broadly speaking it's an interesting question. What if the engine also requires some source code edits to make it TASable?
That's a bit iffy, but in theory at least, we would be able to audit exactly what the patch does and make a determination as to whether it introduces something different gameplay-wise. (Too bad VVVVVV couldn't test this for us, it's already such a good, well-behaved game that it was TASable in libTAS and we didn't need the source code release at all.)
As long as the run is syncable and the patches to the game reproducible and reasonable, I don't see why we couldn't accept them.
Yeah that's the beauty of open sores source. In general discouraged, but if this is the only way and it can be done properly, we should allow it.
Info Teddy wrote:
AntyMew wrote:
What if the engine is not open source, and a mod of some sort makes it TASable?
That's more tricky. I vaguely recall there being a bit of an effort to write the rules for game- or engine- specific TAS tools (e.g. Source Pause Tool, Minecraft TASmod, and so on) and make them acceptable, but I'm not sure where that's at right now. Regardless, I think in the future they would be acceptable as long as the tools are good enough (e.g. replay is input-based and not state-based so you can't modify the replay to do impossible things).
If the question is about outright adding TAS tools through modification, we have a thread about it. If it's about tweaking the game so it runs better in libTAS, I don't think we've had such situations before, and obviously the ideal solution if tweaking libTAS to support it. If that can't be done, we don't have much of a way to actually review the patch, and I don't know if we can afford depending on black box binary patches officially.
Info Teddy wrote:
AntyMew wrote:
What of downporting it to an earlier OS, ex. Windows XP? Etc. etc.
Again, this seems to just be an extended case of porting Windows games to Linux, and like I said above we have two movies published based on that. So I'd say it's generally acceptable (as long as it syncs and is reproducible and doesn't introduce massive gameplay differences).
Yep.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Insane! Arrows sticking to thin air was my favorite part!
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Read the posts below yours.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Dimon12321 wrote:
Doesn't it correlate with what you and feos responded to me earlier about non-deterministic Windows installation? So, if we use only one specific distribution, then we get it working fine, right?
We couldn't accept Windows activation in movies, and we would be unable to ensure sync if Windows is installed outside libTAS, so there's no way to make judges and publishers activate it separately or secretly. That was the main obstacle.
Dimon12321 wrote:
1. From what moment should the actual movie begin? Can put an installed game (folder + .exe) on a PCem hard drive and start a libTAS movie recording where we simply surf the explorer up to the game .exe, launch it and go on with the game as usual?
Or should we begin with mounting a game image with, let's say, Daemon Tools and install it live, then launch it? - Can it be a separate movie?
Installing the OS will be a separate movie that we can host and distribute, and if your game takes more than a few minutes to install, you can prepare it in yet another movie, and provide it alongside your submission. Pretty similar to DOS rules.
Dimon12321 wrote:
2. What about game distributions? If we record us installing the game, will it be ok to show a CD key for a game?
That sounds like a problem yeah, similar to problems with activating your OS.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Rules for hacks have been updated tho.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
KennyMan666 wrote:
Putting in an actual page selector like on forum pages, and/or putting the "Next" button below the results rather than above would probably go a long way here.
Agreed.
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 think it even fits Standard these days, it's just that unrejection of hacks would be a HUGE undertaking, and we're trying to focus on the current queue for now. PG unrejections are also a part of this plan.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Minimum A frames is not the goal here, we even have a rejected submission with A frames an order of magnitude fewer than this run.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
I feel if we call the branch label "minimum jumps" it would be neater and more informative at the same time, while still being accurate. Sorry it took me so long to raise this question, but what does everyone think?
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Mizumaririn wrote:
I made the atlas encode using lua to read RAM and ROM and output .bmp files. And ffmpeg to string them together.
Can you share it?
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Incredible stuff! The hack, the movie, the atlas encode (how did you make it btw?)
Petting the dog is non-trivial so it counts into TAS time. Encode does not reflect the last part correctly. After petting the dog, press A to advance to the credits. Should it also be included in TAS time?
Yes please.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Fortranm wrote:
What intrigues me the most from all of this is actually the implication that the existing feedback does not suffice for the entertainment criterion. In fact, there have been a couple of times over the years where I found the decision on publishing a movie to Vault vs Moon (before the tier revamp) to be somewhat arbitrary, namely not considering a movie qualified for Moon despite the poll result showing significantly more Yes votes than the other options. It might be better if there is a clearer stated threshold that a Standard-ineligible submission needs to meet in order to be qualified for Moon.
The context around this movie makes its Moons eligibility not proven. There has been a hard disagreement about legitimacy of its goal, which is a fundamental Moons factor. And not just about the goal in isolation but also how it relates to our approach to cheats over the years. There's no way to resolve this in a future proof way without setting some kind of a precedent, and there's no way to set a precedent if we only got 4 Yes posts in 5 months and no real discussion about why it makes sense with a cheat.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
TL;DR: Please watch this movie, vote, and post your impression about the run in the thread!!!
I spent a week talking to Spyro people and watching different TAS and RTA branches, trying to compare them while still figuring out how the game works and why something makes sense. There's A LOT to unpack, so hold tight!
Moons
First and foremost, I'm not convinced this branch meets the Moons requirements yet. The original thread has 8 Yes votes and no No votes, but only a single post about voting Yes, and one post about being unsure what to vote, though "it was still enjoyable to watch". This thread is 7 Yes against 0 No votes, and also twoposts about entertainment.
The nature of the goal itself also plays a role in how this should be judged. And the previous thread contains an opinion that using the cheat makes this goal questionable. I'll try to explain what that means.
Cheat
The game is divided into several worlds, and from each world you have access to a set of levels. You can access new worlds by going to balloonists (one per world) that send you there, but they only start talking to you after you've fulfilled their requirements, otherwise you can't exit the current world and go to the next one.
Spikestuff wrote:
To enter Peace Keepers you require 10 dragons.
To enter Magic Crafters you require 1,200 gems.
To enter Beast Makers you require 5 dragon eggs.
To enter Dream Weavers you require 50 dragons.
To enter Gnasty's World you require 6,000 gems.
This is why any% [1862] PSX Spyro The Dragon by lapogne36 in 41:38.30 is basically a collectathon. The game requires you to do quite some work to be able to go from point A to point B.
The cheat code in this run removes that requirement. Which gives you the ability to go from point A to point B directly, basically you can just go beat the final boss right away.
Vortex
The vortex goal means you need to leave each level through its end portal (vortex) instead of through menu, and that's a human imposed goal not recognized by the game.
It's important to know that there's one vortex that's only accessible after you've beaten the game 120%, so this run doesn't have it.
The Vortex goal is not directly tied to the cheat code that unlocks all worlds. You can use all vortexes in a 120% run, or all but one in a regular run. Also you can unlock all worlds and then save the game, and playing from that save you can also access all but one vortexes while not having to collect anything, which will look somewhat close to this submission.
I asked the Spyro speedrun community, and the only reason the cheat is used and not a pre-made in-game save, is convenience and tradition. It's how this category appeared, and people liked it and it's now one of the most popular RTA categories.
Difference
So how different is this run from any% in the end? While watching the 2 side by side I noticed that the movement in this run is much less intense, however the tricks are more pronounced. Spyro runners confirmed me that all the major mechanics and techniques used in Vortex also have an optimal application in any%, you just can't really glitch any% too hard because then you're out of your way and can't collect the required things anymore. So this category is definitely more glitchy.
Legitimacy
The previous thread contains some discussion about whether it's fair to call this a meme category. I want to note that even in the video the author linked where the goods of the goal are explained it's called a meme at 6:51 ("It was looking like the category would have the same fate as many other meme categories").
Now more seriously, it was argued that this goal meets the spirit (intent) of our original rule about codes and unlockable content.
We allow playing unlockable content using in-game passwords
Using in-game codes[1] or passwords at the start of a game is allowed if it uses a built-in hard mode or if it makes cosmetic changes to the game, as long as parts of the game are not skipped.
Using in-game codes or passwords at the start of a game to unlock a special game mode, character, level sets, or otherwise play the game in some unusual way is allowed.
For codes that add content, allow a separate branch for Standard.
For other kinds of in-game codes, just require that it meets Moons requirements.
Outside world
It exists???!!!
Yeah, we spent almost 20 years limiting what is allowed to be published regardless of how many people want to make a TAS of something and how cool it can be. To be published, it absolutely had to entertain our general audience, or, later, to meet our really strict Tier rules. If something didn't meet those rules, we could be sorry all day but still reject a great piece of work.
While initially it was necessary to gain ourselves the name for only publishing really good movies, it looks like we missed the moment when the world around us caught up on speedrunning and got rid of ignorance about what TAS actually is. Those were also the times when human speedrunners started replicating techniques that were believed to be TAS only. Reality started producing better humans (so to speak), who were able to match TAS times or even beat them.
That one aspect was already worth worrying about, because it was a start of a bigger trend: people became so interested in real-time speedrunning that they didn't bother to also/instead make a TAS.
You might think it's natural, because real-time speedrunning is EASIER, but that assumption actually contradicts the main premise: humans learned to pull off TAS-only techniques. It's can't be so much harder to TAS for them. They are just more interested in their own actual gameplay skills.
If you actually talk to those people, they will tell you that while TASing is obviously cool in itself, the freedom they have in their self-imposed speedrun rules is a much better ground for really inventive competition than rigid rules of TASVideos that simply ignore the outside world and its trends. To be able to influence TASVideos judgments one has to register and become an active viewer, which means a viewer generally caring enough to be around and to post every once in a while. And to be able to influence TASVideos policies, it doesn't even help to be an admin apparently.
Nach wrote:
As much as I would like to see this published, this run is not eligible for the vault, and didn't gather enough support for anything higher, rejecting.
Let alone regular staff members. And yeah, "having" to reject good movies was already an indication we were shooting our own foot. Look where it brought us (this is from Spyro Speedrunning discord):
CFGamebreaker wrote:
why dont we simply just make the run significantly less cool to conform to an arbitrary rule so we can get judged by people who dont even know the game? like no attack on any individuals but this whole debate is a great example of why i think the whole tasvideos process is just archaic and silly.
lu.cx wrote:
id even go as far as saying that category extension tas can also be as enjoyable to watch and shouldnt be just looked down on by tasvideos
aldeezy1 wrote:
The TASvideos' hard "no cheats" rule is too restrictive for niche categories like vortex. The entire run is predicated on allowing the use of cheats. Requiring a 120% file devalues the movement in cliff town, wastes 20 seconds at tuco, adds a level not historically done in the category (replacing Gnasty Gnorc as an endpoint), and occasionally removes obstacles (dragons, chests). If that's the only kind of run that can be accepted on TASvideos, fine, but that run is not the vortex category RTA runners run, nor care about. They have multiple TASes that were made within the rules of the category they care about. Who are TASvideos to say those are invalid? This arbitrary judgement is just silly to me.
[...]
I'm just saying that I can think of a few sites that dropped out of fashion due to restrictive global rules that failed to accommodate
Composer wrote:
Yeah both using the cheat, or starting from a full completion file are just as arbitrary as one another. But like Hum said, we have legitimized the category we now know today as vortex, with the cheat. So it only makes sense that the TAS follows the same rules of the category. Even if starting from a file would be more interesting (which it isn't), that should be pointless since the category has legitimized itself with the ruleset it has for the past few years, so changing the rules of the entire category for a TAS to fit a no cheat rule is silly imo, because then it is no longer a "vortex TAS"
Vortex isn't vortex without the cheat
These are just from my interactions with them. You can find much more if you search for "tasvideos".
One may say "LOL, SO WHAT, WHO CARES", and it's what we've been replying, officially. But guess what, there are dozens of people who speedrun Spyro 1 all the time, and there's only a single TAS publication and it's a freaking decade old. You know what is also a decade old? https://speeddemosarchive.com/Spyro.html
If this is not an indication that we are actively becoming irrelevant, then I don't know what is. If motivating people to create and contribute TASes is not our goal anymore, then we're just wasting our time here. And if it is, then we're not so good at it apparently.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
Enjoy the much more accurate cyclecount of Nymashock ;)
I've heard the site doesn't parse those yet.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
I wasn't entertained, because a lot of the rounds were still too similar, and I'm not even sure what the goal in this movie is. If it's not speed, it needs to be mentioned in the branch and assessed.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11269
Location: RU
It is really just about authenticity of whatever you are able to find. If the best you can find is a cracked version, it's fine. If it's official, it's better.
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.
