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When I try to open the new torrent files it says invalid torrent file for some reason. How did you create 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.
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Samsara wrote:
Any release version is allowed, the only requirements are that the author explains why that version was chosen, and that we are actually able to access that version in order to verify it.
Agreed.
Samsara wrote:
Currently there's no official stance except for "no DRM is preferred but not required". We've accepted Steam TASes already at least.
We had a thread discussing some aspects of DRM. Since we don't want sync to depend on outside world, on unemulated reality, on internet connection, and on availability of online services, we don't want to allow games with DRM that require any of that. If DRM dependency can be resolved by simulating it via API hooks, that's fine, if it's possible. Steam games I've seen submitted so far may depend on Steam API simulation, but overall they seemed to work fine in offline mode.
Samsara wrote:
My gut feeling here is that we should be able to accept them in their current forms, assuming they're "finished" enough to be able to reach an ending of some sort. Early access would definitely be obsoleted by full releases, and episodic games would vary depending on how they're presented: If all episodes are eventually released in a single game, we may prefer all episodes in one file, but if each episode is its own separate game, we'll have to take each episode individually.
Agreed.
ikuyo wrote:
For games with variable graphical settings that can affect performance (such as RE games or the Towerfall 1000fps movie), is there a preferred setting? Is it explicitly the responsibility of the runner to state the environment? (environment rules such as fps are set in libTAS atm, but it's not a bad idea to futureproof)
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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Added!
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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This is good now.
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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Do you know what the manual-only rerecord count is, even approximately?
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I think mmarks solved it by hitting that button after the movie ends. If that doesn't help, then it's fine to use the encode you have.
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Looks like the published movie is a bit incomplete then, since it doesn't trigger the credits by itself. Maybe if you hit some button they appear?
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If there's no manual TASing in this movie, we will have to nuke the rerecord count. We do that for botted rerecords so it doesn't mess with statistics on manual ones on the site.
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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SGB decoration also counts as non-gameplay area similar to overscan, so subtitles need to be moved to in-game area.
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In the current encode there are credits at the end as well. Do they appear automatically after some wait?
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Yeah I wonder if it's possible to create and host a generic GM runner that would work for all such games with minimal tweaks.
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feos wrote:
How was your entertainment tonight? Did you enjoy it? Actually, there is more than one ending for each story. You, my guests, have only experienced a mere fraction. We look forward to seeing you again.
This has some similarities with #6933: DaSmileKat's NES Extra Mario Bros. "bad ending" in 05:24.35. The game is telling you you have more to do, however it's not outright telling you you've failed or it's a false ending. It's also related to [4469] NES Ghosts 'n Goblins by DreamYao in 08:04.45 and its "fake" ending after the first playtrhough. I personally feel this game has enough to offer for a single run-through, and "all endings" will in no way look similar to it. I'm leaning towards allowing this branch, but I don't have strong arguments for it.
I think I have an argument.
Reaching the "tonight's entertainment" speech does mean completing every story once. And getting the "all stories complete" speech means replaying the same stories again and again, hoping to find new story endings. It's not like in other "bad ending" games the game tells you to go back and complete everything once again, but more. In other games you're informed that this ending is improper and you need to use a different route. Then you start from where you last saved or from scratch.
With this game, there's no way not to run into "tonight's entertainment" speech even if you aim for "all stories complete". At some point you will complete every story once without having completed all endings.
You can't even replay the same story to completeness until you've completed them all once. The game is not trying to discourage you from getting the regular "tonight's entertainment" ending, and there's no way to even avoid it! So we can't say it's an improper ending.
Conclusion: this movie will be accepted once routing is final.
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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I don't know if I'm doing this correctly, but I see that this movie is longer if I only compare gameplay durations, both with and without lag. Per-level differences are all over the place: sometimes much longer, sometimes much shorter.
----------------------------
| | lag | lagless |
----------------------------
| old | 1014230 | 375224 |
| new | 1014714 | 375787 |
| diff | +484 | +563 |
----------------------------
gameplay = false
lastgameplay = false
timer = 0
while true do
local first = memory.readbyte(0x385, "WRAM")
local second = memory.readbyte(0x387, "WRAM")
gameplay = first == 3 and second == 3
if gameplay and not lastgameplay then
timer = 0
elseif gameplay and lastgameplay and not emu.islagged() then
timer = timer + 1
elseif lastgameplay and not gameplay then
print(timer)
end
lastgameplay = gameplay
emu.frameadvance()
end
Figuring out if something is a legitimate improvement or not is not only the judge's job, but also something the author needs to prove. Reapplying the same strats on the old publication is a sensible way to check improvement validity, but not when there's 100 levels and level durations differ in both directions. I can't do this automatically, and I can't do this manually. I can't do this partially either, because improvement is not uniform here: if it makes some levels longer in the old emulator version too, I wouldn't know until I tweak and check them all.
On top of that, more accuracy leading to more lag doesn't automatically mean solutions for less accurate version also make sense for more accurate version even if they take longer. Maybe more accurate version needs different solutions that also save some lag. Maybe those new solutions cause too much lag compared to old solutions.
I'm leaning towards rejecting this movie until times become more comparable. Easiest way out is incorporating those strats into the old movie, checking if they save time in every level they appear in, and submitting that. Until then, it's unclear if the new methods are still more optimal with more accurate emulation.
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As I addressed in my last quote in your post, optimality of this approach is incredibly limited. From all the possible values that the game can parse, we're limited to trying a few random ones until we don't want to try anymore.
On the other hand, this approach is also sometimes used in regular tasing when internals of the game are not known and all you can do is indirect manipulation which can also be limited. I can see the value of allowing both options, so disassembling the code isn't required. And if we want to help the community instead of limiting it, it also looks more user friendly.
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.
If a game consists of presenting a story with user input having little to no effect on it, it is not acceptable. This includes games which are overwhelmingly made up of cutscenes with very little user interaction anywhere. This also includes visual novels and games of a Choose Your Own Adventure story book variety, where the user has no creative control beyond choosing between predefined choices. Examples include:
Super Adventure Rockman
The Arcade version of Dragon's Lair.
Indeed this game is overwhelmingly made of cutscenes. Once every few minutes (maybe more often) you get to press a button or two, and that affects what the next cutscene will be. You can't speed up the cutscenes. And you can only skip them if you're replaying the same route again after completing the level (story) once. There's a few places where you can move your controlled object in different directions and do a certain action within a given time interval, but those are still limited and rare. If we compare this gameplay to freely running around, picking up items, reading things, like for instance in Silent Hill, it does look like there's little to no room for creative control.
However we also have the triviality clause there.
The gameplay needs to stand out from unassisted play, and must not be seen as trivial. Note that a game is considered trivial until proven otherwise. If getting perfect times everywhere is challenging, such a game is considered acceptable. If a game was considered trivial but a technique is found later that makes TASing it challenging, that game becomes acceptable.
Example of a trivial (mini-)game which does not stand out is Desert Bus
Completing "all endings" (which is a valid in-game goal and gives you the best ending) is absolutely not trivial, because there's a ton of routing options, a ton of endings, and you have to find the optimal path through all of them in one go, considering the skip option as well, and the fact that some endings tweak some routes.
And I dare say that even the goal we have here is also not trivial. There's less routing to resolve, but there's still a lot of options that unlock other options, different endings, and it all needs to be tested. For example I literally found a route that Spike already tested before and it was slower for him, but for me it was faster than the current submission, and I got a different ending too.
So here's the thing I've been thinking of for a good while.
The current wording of the triviality clause, while it's still debatable if we want to keep it in the future at all, seems to cover a whole lot of things that exist as separate rules. For example, we removed the rule about educational games, because it was incredibly hard to figure out, and the goal of that rule was still to avoid triviality. Similarly, I feel we should get rid of the rule about "visual novels and games of a Choose Your Own Adventure story book variety", because we only want to reject those if it's trivial to speedrun them, and we already have a decent rule for that.
Opinions?Spikestuff wrote:
Movie Must Be Complete is the big one I know it's violating/challenging in terms of rulesets
Indeed this game does not show the credits after you've completed every story once. Here's the translation of what the host is saying when you do so:
How was your entertainment tonight? Did you enjoy it? Actually, there is more than one ending for each story. You, my guests, have only experienced a mere fraction. We look forward to seeing you again.
This has some similarities with #6933: DaSmileKat's NES Extra Mario Bros. "bad ending" in 05:24.35. The game is telling you you have more to do, however it's not outright telling you you've failed or it's a false ending. It's also related to [4469] NES Ghosts 'n Goblins by DreamYao in 08:04.45 and its "fake" ending after the first playtrhough. I personally feel this game has enough to offer for a single run-through, and "all endings" will in no way look similar to it. I'm leaning towards allowing this branch, but I don't have strong arguments for it.
Spikestuff wrote:
You can't select stories independently from the start, so this one doesn't apply.
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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Will the subtitles fit at the bottom center? Also it seems worth it to also delay the entries so they don't appear on screen transitions (which is a general advice in the pub manual anyway).
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Fog wrote:
The goal choices:
Moving aside from the main category itself, how the run goes about reaching these goals is also an issue. To obtain all the endings, the game is reset after reaching each ending. This essentially makes this run a compilation of five different movies under a single movie file. As mentioned above, this doesn't fly for Vault tier, but could possibly make sense for something aiming for Moons.
It sounds like several completely independent movies glued together. There's no point in doing that unless that leads to a special ending in itself or completes a certain in-game mode in its entirety.
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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I agree with all of the above. I have a lot of practical problems with how things have been functioning for the decade+ I've been here (as both user and staff), but I won't be listing them here. I attest that this is 100% a team decision, everyone on staff had a say and was heard out. This is a learning curve too, and we aim to be a staff team that is professional, and also humane. We want to embrace and lead interesting developments, not to shy away from them. And we want the community to be able to trust us as a team. We want this site to feel cosy and exciting. Because that's how best works are created.
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Yes, to me it still looks like a much much better option than having to deal with manual pausing (lua can improve that but still). It'd only need to be a dedicated option disabled by default. Also replacing magic numbers with comprehensible constants will make it a bit less hacky :D
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The first level of Sonic 3 is a good example of this.
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Why would it not survive it?
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Spikestuff wrote:
Anything lower than 720p is out of the question automatically, due to titles that support 50/60fps, we shouldn't be considering reverting to pre-2015 methods.
Secondly, resolution should not be capped to 1080p, nor 1440p for that matter. We should keep to that 4K resolution due to titles that produces colour vomit (see J. J. Squawkers) or PlayStation titles that are both 3D and has dithering (see Crash Warped) implementing.
The image can become muddy, and that's not what we're after.
I specifically said "480p archive.org stream", which is the thing I'm suggesting to switch to, from native res downloadables. Youtube encoding is not going anywhere.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
I just wonder if systems with a big native resolution should instead be encoded as is, like Wii. Where to draw the line?
If it's already 480p output, we won't have to upscale it obviously.
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Radiant wrote:
Maybe that needs a poll too, because for bandwidth reasons I usually watch in 480.
Hmm, but youtube's 480p looks really bad these days! Even 720p is worse than it used to be. And sounds like 480p archive.org stream that still looks like youtube's 1080p is exactly what you need!
Radiant wrote:
Yeah, I've never understood what those "compatibility" movies are supposed to be compatible with; and I've been here for awhile.
With all the variety of software and hardware players, as well as streaming media sites. MP4 is much more commonly supported by legacy players than MKV with its bajillion fancy features and modern codecs we use for primary.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
I just wonder if there isn't any other way of having a crisp pixel zoom in an embedded video. Shouldn't be possible to write our own, simple html5 video player to embed in a movie page, that zooms to pixel-perfect scale a video hosted on archive.org?
Even if someone is crazy enough to add that, we also want it to remain a valid downloadable, so it's just overall better to apply all the stretching before encoding. And most importantly, if we don't pre-stretch, subtutles remain a disturbing hell.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
With that said, I think there is an important aspect that should been taken in consideration: the reason why people don't use watching methods other than YouTube. YouTube is handy, but there is already the option to watch the archive.org encodes in streaming with one click, so why people don't do that? Well, I don't think that the reason is the lack of zoom.
There's no way to control zoom though. You either watch on native res or in full screen. And you can't change audio volume unless you fullscreen it. And it doesn't remember the volume anyway.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Instead, I think that's mostly because the streaming buttons are obscure. Most people don't even know that there has always been the possibility of watching embedded streams from archive.org, by clicking on the buttons under the movie screenshot. After all, they don't even look like buttons, and on the other hand there is already a big list of download links that look like they already contain everything there is to find. I think this should be solved with a simple improvement of the site layout, by grouping every watching option together, making all options evident, and with clearer wording:
Download BizHawk movie
Download video via Torrent
Download video from archive.org
Watch now from archive.org
Watch now from YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Note how I carefully avoided any term like "mirror", "encode", "compatibility", because to newcomers they don't make sense.
Every additional encode should have the same buttons, but listed as a separate group, in order to avoid cluttering. The links to the submission and forum discussion should also go even more separately.
Appearance will be figured out when we agree what encodes we want to have, but overall it's a topic for the new site.
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.
