Despite being a more faithful representation of the game, which should always be preferred with all else being equal, the resync is essentially relegated to being a sidenote—even though in theory it should take priority since the rules invalidate gains made thanks to emulation inaccuracies.
2. Nobody is allowed to offer a resync on behalf of the author (under the original author's name, of course) if they aren't around. That situation has, in fact, happened in the past, when adelikat submitted a resync of Phil & Genisto's Circus Charlie in their name, having failed to find meaningful improvements. And it was accepted because the previous run was made on a horribly inaccurate, long-deprecated emulator, and there was an effort going on to replace all runs made on it with something better. This situation is liable to repeat in the future as TASes become better-optimized, and we'll likely run into it whenever we orchestrate new efforts to get deprecated emulators off the site and find other movies without known improvements.
2. Situations where a different author had genuinely tried to find gameplay improvements but failed, yet their effort resulted in a different (more accurate) time compared to the original movie, this is best done via a separate submission, and credit can then be shared between the author(s) of the original movie and the author(s) of the attempt at improvement. This addresses concern #3 and the other half of #2.
3. Once a movie is confirmed to sync on console, no future resyncs for it are necessary.
1) the existing publication has no documented improvements;
2) the author of the movie intending to replace it has failed to find improvements but can prove their due diligence in trying;
3) the change of emulator has lead to fixing immediately evident presentation issues (wrong visuals/sound/game behavior) and/or made it sync on console.
1. Minor resyncs where relatively few actions need to be taken to achieve sync on a more accurate emulator can be added to the existing publication as per the current practice, but the time and encode should be changed appropriately and the old movie file removed from the publication page. Having a less accurate movie made on a deprecated emulator alongside a more accurate one serves no functional purpose. A link to it can remain in the submission message for posterity. Such resync can be offered by whoever as long as the credit remains with the author(s) of the original movie. This addresses concerns #1 and partially #2.
I can attest that developing and tuning the lua scripts to tas it optimally was certainly not a trivial task.
Just wanted to reiterate why all the Half-Life TASes done are not compatible with TASVideos current Movie Rules. Please note that I'm writing these down from the top of my head, but I believe my information should be correct. #1 - Enabling the console requires to launch the game with an additional parameter or changing one of the .cfg files that gets executed once the game launches.
#2 - Manipulating FPS seems to be still not allowed
Number 2 also affects TASes like Elasto Mania and any other TAS that requires manipulating the framerate to a specific value using either developer code or an external application.
None of the Half-Life TASes were done on an original version. Half-Life TASes uses specially crafted files from different versions to get a new game with the desired features. Imagine as a NES game but the ROM they use uses code from an Alpha version and a Beta version, creating an entirely new game that wasn't released anytime by the developers. They didn't even had this version of their own game. Another example would be that while this is still Half-Life, multiple files have been removed, added, changed to get this package what YaLTeR develops.
I'd like to ask about the admissibility of the TAS discussed here: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22739 Thanks
http://tasvideos.org/34M.html http://tasvideos.org/36M.html These movies seemed to be placed in Vault, likely by autoplacement from ratings. The goal is playaround, which isn't a Vaultable goal. These should be moved up to Moons.
Just wanted to reiterate why all the Half-Life TASes done are not compatible with TASVideos current Movie Rules.
Hey feos, I just saw your message on the forums about my AD&D: Cloudy Mountain submission, but having trouble logging in to the forums so hopefully you see this. So the TAS does indeed forgo the corner skip. The main advantage of using that skip in the Any% branch is that it reduces the amount of mountains needed to enter from 3 to 2. In the "All Tools" branch, we must visit at least 4 mountains to meet our objective. Therefore, using the corner skip in "All Tools" is only useful if you need to get to a mountain in the lower-right of the map very quickly. In the case of this TAS, none of the mountains in the lower-right presented optimal cave layouts so there simply was no point in using it to get over there. In conclusion, I think I mischaracterized using that objective in that I meant that it forgoes a major skip in reference to the Any% branch. In reference to its own "All Tools" branch, I would say the corner skip is DEFINITELY NOT a major skip, so it would probably be best to delete that objective for the publication. Sorry for the confusion.
Language: lualocal List = {} List[0] = "BEN" List[1] = "DEAN" List[2] = "JOHN" List[3] = "SAM" a = memory.read_u8(КАКОЙ АДРЕС-ТО???) gui.text(10, 15, List[a])
Will people make 20-30 TASes of the same game though; for how many games is that really a danger?
"Different enough" is indeed tricky to define, but maybe a poll question in the vein of "should this movie be published" can help with some intersubjectivity.
I don't think I'd prepare for every eventuality in advance, since I think 'too many branches' is not a problem that will pop up a lot.
Actually, since we've gotten a pretty overwhelmingly positive reaction to this proposal, maybe we should all start working on hashing out the rules in finer detail. We can either come up with a definite list of categories we want to be objective, or try to come up with a clean definition for "non-objective" categories, whichever one would be more clear and concise in the long run.
Sound may not work, likely due to an error in how PCem emulates the ES1371 / Sound Blaster PCI 128 card.
I did notice one minor thing however. You seem to go to the backpack at the level fadeouts. Sometimes this seems to be for picking an item while the fadeout goes on, but other times it seems to be a case of lag reduction. I've noticed that for the lag reduction (and assuming you aren't picking an item) the Pause menu can be substituted, which could have less lag. However, the gain is very minor and likely outright negated due later lag being thrown off. Not really worthy of rejection, but perhaps something to keep an eye on in case you want to squeeze just a little more timesave in.
For a PC game, can a settings file be provided for an option that is permanently set on first startup, not modifiable from within the game, and not tied to save data? Iconoclasts has a flag in its data directory called settings, which contains a flag to know if this is the first time you've opened the game. This is used to allow players to skip an intro cutscene before the title screen that is unskippable otherwise, guaranteeing that the player will see it during their first time booting the game. Once the player has selected New Game, and enters a game, this flag is permanently set. Since iconoclasts uses manual saving otherwise, you don't need to save your new game at all (you can essentially close the game right away and generate no save data while still keeping the first_time flag).
Some systems, such as DOS, expose separate parts of the operating system and/or the game to the user. You are not allowed to manipulate these files except as is normally necessary to play the game, such as "installing" it. [...] That means no renaming/copying/deleting/replacing/editing files that affect gameplay. However, editing environment settings or utilizing standard third-party tools in order to get a game to load is allowed as long as the game runs as it's supposed to.
Giving yourself a headstart is not allowed. The game must start from a common starting point, which is the very beginning.
1) Would having credits play out like this be a valid speed/entertainment tradeoff? Or would it be best to skip all cutscenes to save the 45 seconds? (I’m not concerned about Moons/Vault tiering, since I’m working off of the assumption that the end TAS will be entertaining enough to warrant a speed/entertainment tradeoff like this, but I’d be fine if that assumption is wrong.)
2) What would count as the final input for TAS timing for a Fresh File TAS? The moment we kill the King? or do we default to entering the fountain as the final input as we would for an RTA run? Can we count the movement after the credits as “post-completion input”? The relevant portion of the rules suggests that “Extra input does not change the resulting ending”, which is true, but it also suggests that “Extra input is trivial to execute for anyone replaying the movie”. Is holding B to leave the credits, holding right, pressing A once, and pressing R1 to enter the fountain sufficiently trivial?
How do we look at games more objectively, then? This is something that's going to take some community discussion to really iron out, but we've started coming up with a potential new system that should greatly expand Vault in a satisfying way, allowing for more runs to be accepted without opening the doors wide enough to accept absolutely everything: Instead of strictly only allowing fastest and full completions in Vault, we would allow any objective goal for a game. By objective goal, we mean "something that is defined or limited by the game itself". Here are some big examples, but definitely not EVERY example:And here's a list of smaller things that are more dependent on the game, but still objective:
- Pure fastest completion (GEG, ACE, etc)
- Warps (or fastest "intended" completion)
- Warpless/All levels (warps are an intended shortcut so not using them counts as an objective goal)
- 100% (assuming it can be defined objectively)
- Score attack (an objective goal with room for improvement in the same vein as fastest completion)
- Gameplay modes (including things like New Game +)
- Number of players
- Character choices
- In-game defined goals (i.e, achievements, things that reward the player with content)
- Tool-assisted speedrunning covers many scientific topics as well as an ever increasing materials that can not be fit inside the tasvideos Wiki.