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Fortranm wrote:
I would say the most important reason is that a significant number of games have versions on both systems that are supposedly identical and this makes them overlap a lot.
But why is it a problem (barring the unimplemented feature of cross-platfrom obsoletion)?
The issue I'm seeing is we can't create the same game entry that would cover several platforms, which may be desired if the versions for different platforms are indeed the same.
But DOS feels like it should belong to the IBM PC section too, because separating PC into modern and retro would be subjective.
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This happens because the game internally has non-4:3 resolution, but mame and hawk correct the aspect, which doesn't happen when dumping video/screenshots. https://tasvideos.org/Bizhawk/FAQ#RecordingAVideo
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Darkman425 wrote:
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the game does have resolution changes and the encode has the resolution stretched more horizontally than it's supposed to, though I probably could've avoided that by forcing the correct screen resolution in the encoding settings.
Check how it appears if you make screenshots of those resolutions in mame itself.
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We're calling it Playground, not Playaround.
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This post is very important.
We seem to have agreed on the implementation and the main purpose of this entity. But we need to have an agreement on the fundamental rules we want for it. It's clear that we want as few rules as possible, but those that should be there should be as fundamental as possible. For something that's meant to grant a ton of freedom, it's important that the community as a whole is on the same page.
A movie that goes to Playground:
Must break some Wiki: MovieRules (otherwise it just gets published)
Must be reproducible
Must be decently executed
Must have a goal
Opinions, criticisms, additions?
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Fortranm wrote:
The reasons should be self-explanatory so I'll skip this part :D
And I'll skip the part where I ponder them. Let's just operate on a whim.
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ninespaces wrote:
No. It seemed that the amount of time to get them and set them up probably wasn't worth it, compared to just slashing through everything. That said -- I put this together fairly quickly, so I won't be surprised if I'm totally wrong!
The last 2 bosses take so long that I was curious if some spells/skills could help. I see some skills are given to you by the game, are they of any help anywhere? The guide says they are given randomly, so probably makes sense to check if it's feasible to manipulate them. Of course if this would imply rerouting the whole thing, we wouldn't demand it right away, but sounds worth checking for a potential improvement. Still the last 2 bosses look really annoying :D
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ninespaces, are you using spells and skills throughout the run?
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Darkman425 wrote:
On a more serious note I can't imagine how tough it is to actually get charge moves like Sonic Boom mid-combo. Were those moves used as soon as possible in those trials or were there some delays to get the rest of the string complete in a quicker manner?
xxNKxx can you also answer this?
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Fortranm wrote:
Let's me answer that question again then. Including them or not does not create noticeable impacts on results as far as timing for ranking is concerned because they themselves do not depend on skill levels and there isn't anything else that depends on skill levels, if anything at all since we are talking about the inputs that lead to definitive ends, after them either. In other words, there aren't more contents that showcase different skill levels for the sake of competition at that point.
Yes!!!
Trivial post-completion input that anyone can do and it won't affect the result significantly, can only be legitimately excluded from speedrun timing because it's clearly not a part of the primary gameplay challenge, because it's a downtime that provides no room for meaningful skill competition. It's the same reason opening menuing is often excluded too. It clearly feels like low-priority filler, gravy as Mike said, compared to actual gameplay, which we have a definition for:
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.
Of course in cases when menuing or dialogs are primary gameplay, or when it's the only thing left to optimize, we count it as important. Examples:
#6466: Masterjun & ais523's NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" in 00:00.78#7016: Fortranm, Winslinator's INTV Donkey Kong in 00:38.52
But this movie is not such case.
So when people traditionally view relaxing post-completion downtime as insignificant, and a glitch happens during that downtime, that glitch is also viewed as insignificant. It doesn't magically become a part of primary gameplay challenge if it's glitched, unless there appears some skill challenge in that downtime itself, after which it can't be considered downtime anymore, and it can't be excluded from the timing.
In this movie, primary gameplay challenge is satisfyingly completed. Trivial post-completion downtime is bugged, but still insignificant in and of itself. The fact that it blocks part of a traditional ending sequence, is by extension also insignificant, because primary challenge is still completed, regardless. There's no reason to think primary gameplay challenge is also just bugged and not completed, because up until the cutscene bug, the final sequence of gameplay events goes like normal, at least for enough time to look legitimate in and of itself.
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I asked you why Mother Brain or the escape sequence can't be excluded from final time measurement in Super Metroid, while post-completion input sometimes can be excluded.
You said it's because the latter "can be done by anyonewithout noticeable differences in results".
I asked you why it doesn't have noticeable impact on the results.
You said it's because it can be done by anyone.
I don't see how that explains the reason for lack of noticeable impact. Are you saying the thing is the reason for itself? I don't understand what you're arguing.
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And why doesn't it have noticeable impact on the results?
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Fortranm wrote:
I see "why holding 2 buttons to progress through the final cutscene is not a part of actual gameplay in most people's opinion", of course I do, but that doesn't mean I agree with this line of reasoning.
To be clear, why do you think they think that?
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Fortranm wrote:
In those cases changing the ending point usually wouldn't have impacted how the run is done before the points in question in a noticeable way, and that can be part of the reason why "trivial" inputs are kept out of timing in the first place: it is a matter of whether someone wants to make those button presses to proceed the game to a definitive ending state after the end of timing in those cases.
Imagine excluding the escape sequence from Super Metroid timing. Or even excluding beating Mother Brain. If you think why people don't do this, maybe you'll see better why holding 2 buttons to progress through the final cutscene is not a part of actual gameplay in most people's opinion.
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Fortranm wrote:
I think a bigger issue (other than the unlockables factor brought up earlier) in this case compared to the sequence getting stuck itself is that, it gets stuck at a point before it fully reaches a state that's self-finishing, as in no longer requiring user inputs to reach a definitive end.
Isn't all that input does is skipping the dialogs?
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Fortranm wrote:
To summarize, this ending sequence is actually interrupted before it even reaches a completely self-finishing state, and the changes a normally played out ending would have done to the save file do not happen here, if I understand correctly?
In my opinion, visual interruption of an ending sequence can easily be excused if it’s in a state that really takes no further input and all unlockable features are unlocked as usual if there are any. In fact, I’m more willing to consider a game complete if it saves before an ending sequence with all flags set as intended even if it then crashes and the visuals of the ending sequence aren’t displayed at all than in a case like, well, this.
There was a discussion in the Discord server on this topic earlier, and I have seen claims that caring about unlockables is arbitrary. Well, what would be a less arbitrary factor instead? The fact that an ending sequence seems to be initiated? That is indeed the case, but we are having this discussion in the first place because it is visibly interrupted and doesn’t have the same effects, be it visual or not, as the intended ending sequence would have. What specifically makes the initiation of the sequence legit?
That's an important question. Initiation of the sequence is done through the same actions a non-glitched ending would appear after.
Since "proper/definitive ending" is a collection of in-game flags and events, the more of them we have in an ending, the better it is to prove the point that the game has been completed legitimately. What is arbitrary is hard to define because it seems to be an entirely subjective category, an evaluative judgement. In a way, the definition of arbitrary is in itself arbitrary! So when it comes to proving legitimacy of an ending, there are several functions that we need to solve and find a sweet spot: how much can be done to make it obvious, how much work that would require, how much slower the run would be, and how much does this relate to the actual goal of the movie.
So far it sounds like the thing that could have been done to make the ending more obviously complete is not inherently related to the goal of this branch at all. It feels like if SMB had a game end glitch, and you had to jump 3 times in a certain pipe to make the GEG properly end the game in, say 4-2. And to get to that pipe you have to travel back in a level by dying.
Here's a question that could help us solve this: Can you genuinely say the game has been beaten by the player? It's basically what any legitimacy discussion boils down to: whether or not you honestly believe the game has been beaten, or did it just stall in the middle of gameplay.
This is why we indeed require some kind of a clear indication of completion in situations when you glitch the game into the ending state. Like you skip a bunch of levels and very often the final boss, and some parts of the normal ending routine. Sometimes showing more of the ending is a matter of a few extra inputs while you're at it, which is a good reason to ask for the more complete version: exactly because you are really not sure if the game has been beaten or not.
It's true that showing the credits would have been better. I don't even personally see having a detour as bad. But I also have a bit of background behind why we should not demand it.
TASVideos spent a whole bunch of years as a viewer-focused website. We would sit here and wait for content creators to send us their masterpieces, and we would pick those that we liked and feature them on the site. Of course we also aimed to inspire, educate, and praise content creators that were capable of creating things we wanted to accept. But the bar remained so high that a ton of high quality works were rejected originally, because viewers were not all that entertained. It's true that to judge and reject a movie for this reason you have to be a judge and a TASer (tho there were exceptions), but you still base your decision on what the audience thinks, not what content creators think. There was definitely some overlap, but when assessing opinions about entertainment, we didn't ever assign more weight to opinions of those who have created published TASes. Acknowledging opinions of content creators felt like an accidental bonus as long as they are a part of the verbal audience. If not, oh well.
Then there was Vault, and we've discussed its problems at length before. While the fate of a fitting submission was easier, deciding which submission actually fits was still a nightmare. And it was still mostly based on what the viewers feel. So this all resulted in continuing the trend of prosecutorial bias. I should know because I contributed to it!
Around 2012 I started feeling like I was talking to a stone wall after I saw my Battletoads "warps" movie obsoleted by "game end glitch". It felt pointless, ridiculous, contradictory, shooting self in the foot, getting rid of entertaining content despite the absolute focus on entertainment, etc. It felt disappointing and demotivating. That was the trend of "deal with it" that I startedfighting. As a senior judge, I worked on undoing that trend.
But also around 2012 I came up with a concept of nozzle in application to events of human life. It basically means before implementing some idea you first need to give it time, collect the data, research, improve the idea and its components, and boil it down to something very concrete and powerful. As Zhvanetsky said, "you should only write when you can't hold it anymore".
If you have to deal with unfixable problems, spend this time thinking of this situation as a nozzle: research, invent, focus, develop, and then once you get a chance to apply your skill, you will have more of it than if the problem was never there! You will be more prepared for proper functioning than if you just sat and waited. So there will be less pain during transition to lack of that problem, less Stockholm syndrome too. If an old problem is fixed too quickly, some people who got used to it may want it back.
So instead of yelling at the stone wall I tried to conquer it. After I've been demoted from judging for sloppy decisions, I found out that I can only be thorough and focused if I aim for rejection. Experience is meant to tell when rejection is a bad idea, but even then the POV my decisions would be assessed from was exactly the same prosecutorial bias as before. So on one side I started getting praised by Nach, and on another I still tried to make policies morecommunityfocused. Instead of telling people "deal with it" I tried to make sure everyone understands a certain decision and is not ignored by it. But you can imagine how much I started trusting the prosecutorial bias after it helped me improve my judging skills to the point of becoming a new senior judge. Just like in this video:
Link to video
So what this submission made me realize is that it's actually a very bad idea to be viewer focused and not content creator focused. It was freaking paradoxical how someone who hasn't made a single published high quality TAS is viewed as having power over the community of TASers just because that person works on hosting their movies. It's an oxymoron when admin and senior culture is build on rejection of high level effort while aiming to feature high level effort to make the site look better.
The only way to inspire TASers to make high quality works and trust us to host them, is to give them more room for different types of works they want to do. The only way to deserve their trust and respect is by focusing on the way they see things.
TASVideos should become TASer focused!
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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Awosomeandy wrote:
Do I post those to the discord? or to this page? or somewhere else on TASVideos? either way will do
In the thread dedicated to this game, and then please repeatedly yell at us to check how your WIPs replay.
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Forgot to try with panic handlers enabled.
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I'd want someone else to try replaying this to at least get the movie to run. Also when you start the remake, please post interim versions so others make sure in advance they work properly and sync and stuff.
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I match the config, but once I start the movie, Dolphin instantly says "Movie end" and nothing is happening.
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Samsara wrote:
We should almost never be giving authors tons of extra work just to appease our rules, we should be thinking about how to change our rules to better fit what TASers are submitting naturally.
It's part of the reason why I quote them. "Proper/definitive ending" is always a scale, and it always consists of flags and triggers. Just like with the Ship of Theseus, there's no way to define when exactly it's "definitive enough". But cases like this sounds like a great reason to make the spirit of the rule more apparent, and to discuss what this spirit actually is.
Samsara wrote:
The only time in which I would find it acceptable to recommend "fixing" an ending is in arbitrary code execution TASes, where it may only be a matter of mere frames to change a horribly corrupted ending that crashes into an ending that plays through perfectly fine, but that's kind of a different topic altogether.
Can't we discuss it now?
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Note on eligibility: completing the second to last area of the game, Midway, sets flags to move Robin’s brother Elro into her house. This is required for the end cutscenes to play out properly, and as this movie skips Midway entirely, the game will fail to reach the credits after completion. As this is still considered a valid run by the RTA community and saves several minutes, I choose not to make the detour to remedy the issue.
I can't remember any cases where we accepted a movie that uses a major skip glitch and it causes the ending credits not to appear. There's [3822] DS Super Mario 64 DS "jumpless" by Adeal in 55:05.13 where the credits start but can't finish due to an unintended situation that is caused by the movie goal, but there's no way to stick to that goal while still letting the credits fully run. With this game however, it only takes a few minutes to make the credits properly run, so I don't think the RTA consensus is automatically a good reason to not reach the credits in a TAS.
Movie Rules wrote:
Your submission must beat the game, or reach the most suitable endpoint the game allows. Single-level or otherwise incomplete movies are not allowed. Examples of suitable endpoints are:
A definitive ending, such as a credits sequence.
A kill screen, assuming it is impossible to complete even when TASed.
At the very least we need to have a discussion with our community and staff about the ending in this movie, and potential future movies that don't reach the proper ending. I personally don't think that it should be freely allowed to save a fraction of time by disabling the ending sequence. If the run is well made, and there's enough support for the lack of ending, it could probably be acceptable as is if new movies of this branch include the proper ending.
Opinions?
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Radiant wrote:
So if I understand correctly, these "playground" runs get their own threads in the forum but they don't get a publication page?
Correct.
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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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Since it's just a warning, I just need to make it not block launching the game.
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.
