Do note that most of this (wall zips and the 0 HP glitch in particular) was technically known by the time Kriole was working on the original all-souls run. He avoided it intentionally. It was deemed at the time that zips would skip or trivialize a lot of content, and indeed, if you look carefully at the glitchless run you'll notice immediately how much interesting stuff present in it is skipped here. Varied usage of different souls, clever movement choreography, actual boss fights (including Julius, which is the best one imo), more sensible character progression/powerup dynamics. It's one of the cases where constraints breed creativity.
While I do think that the glitched run is interesting and entertaining in its own right (especially when it comes to route planning), the glitchless one is very different and, in my opinion, more entertaining. I think they should be in different categories. I fail to see how it would be harmful to the site or anything else like that. The opposite seems more likely.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Has there actually been any non-speculative attempt at researching the absolute upper and lower sustainable size limits of bipedal mammals? Square-cube law, when applied to actually existing species, has a great deal of caveats and cannot be referred to as a generic (let alone final) answer to a particular question. In practice, it dictates the relationship between size and mass, it doesn't dictate specific limits and doesn't take various evolutionary adaptation paths into account (it would be obvious that if there were such thing as a giant human, it wouldn't have the exact same skeletal structure and muscle tissue/bone ratio as us). Like if you take a dachshund and straight-up magnify it to the size of a horse, it would break its spine on day 1, but you don't really see horses having that problem.
Warp wrote:
I really can't understand why you are so eager to believe in fiction, when there is so much marvel and awe in the actual real world.
Are you even able to see your own bias?
Warp, you aren't exactly in the right here. A person is free, and should be free, to pursue and research subjects that interest them, however detached they may be from the scientific consensus or everyday norm. If you were intelligent about it you would contribute something meaningful to that research instead of repeatedly and intrusively saying the equivalent of "what you're interested in is stupid, you're wrong, and I insist that you're the one biased. I will repeatedly confront you for appreciating something over/instead of the widely-approved matters".
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
If this gets published, I suggest the category be named "new content any%". I think that is more descriptive and less silly than "DS%".
Would the Arena glitch still save time if one were going through Lost Sanctum sidequests?
EDIT: Excerpts from the IRC discussion on the matter:
<moozooh> there is merit in the concept of "new content any%" because for extended ports where new content is almost entirely optional, a regular any% would be too similar to the original platform any% and would defeat the purpose of doing it on the new platform to begin with
<moozooh> so there are two reasonable options
<moozooh> 1) do a 100% run with a definition that simply has to include all the new content as well as the old
<moozooh> 2) do an any%-like run with a goal that includes the optional goals introduced in the port but doesn't do everything there is
<arandomgameTASer> moozooh: but see, if it were really 'new content any%', it would need to show the Arena as well. That's brand new to the port as well.
<arandomgameTASer> especially note the any% part
<moozooh> yeah, and that's the problem i see with it atm
<arandomgameTASer> by skipping the 99 item glitch, it's not really any%
<moozooh> that being said, is the arena a quest per se?
<arandomgameTASer> yes and no
<moozooh> well, can it be "completed"?
<moozooh> and how long would that take?
[...]
<arandomgameTASer> it's a monster training sidequest with 6 tiers
<arandomgameTASer> you basically send the monster off to train in any eras you've unlocked
<arandomgameTASer> 10 minutes later, it comes back with an item and better stats
<arandomgameTASer> that item he brings back is how the 99 duplication glitch happens
<moozooh> can you do other stuff during those 10 minutes or something?
<arandomgameTASer> yeah, you can leave and keep playing
<moozooh> oh, that sounds convenient
<arandomgameTASer> EXACTLY
<moozooh> so, how much of the run would have to be remade to include the arena?
<arandomgameTASer> all of it. You can access it as soon as you can save
<moozooh> oh wow
<moozooh> okay that really doesn't help that run at all
<arandomgameTASer> my whole point is you can save at the very beginning, send the monster off, go back to playing, 10 minutes later go back and get 99 power tabs, then proceed to save a large amount of time
<Invariel> And yes, what arandomgameTASer is saying would save a lot of time.
<Invariel> The claim in the thread that Lavos can't be beaten during the first encounter is also wrong.
<arandomgameTASer> the one in the Ocean Palace you mean?
<Invariel> Aye.
<arandomgameTASer> yeah he can be beaten there. Just super difficult
<Invariel> Exactly.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Imagine a giant standing on its feet. Look at the tiny blood vessels at the bottom of its feet. See how the blood vessels would be squished by the giants weight. Blood flow would stop.
To be fair, this is a rather poor example because there's a lot of very heavy mammal and (previously) reptile species who didn't have this problem. Including naturally bipedal ones and ones able to put their entire weight on two feet at a time for whatever reason.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
This was very interesting. The constant zips and glitch warps made the game look more like Harmony of Dissonance than Aria of Sorrow. The resulting route is very interesting, and very unexpected. You never know where the TAS goes next. The execution is spot on, too, resulting in a very, very entertaining TAS overall. Easy yes vote.
What scrimpeh said. Route planning is top-notch in this movie. Yes vote and a separate category please!
It's my birthday today, and this run is perhaps the best present I could have received from TASVideos today. Many thanks!
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
What Bruno and Moth said is correct; "any%" = "fastest%", or, to expand, "whatever percentage of collection, etc., is needed for the shortest run". It can't be longer than another category by definition (although I guess we made up the "game end glitch" category as an exception). Thus a 100% run that also doubles as the fastest available run is technically any% as well, it's just that the any part equals to 100.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Btw, I'm not sure exactly how the harvester AI works, but in the TAS it might have to be micro'd to harvest patches in an optimal route so that there's as little travel time as possible.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Probably because, assuming they exist, their body would've been in pain for the knees along with heart problems.
Well, those people are anomalies, so it's expected that they are going to have all sorts of health issues with their height. The supposed "true" giants would have sturdier bodies adapted to the size and weight over the course of generations—a luxury mr. Wadlow couldn't have. I mean if you suddenly elongate a cow's neck it won't even be able to lift it off the ground, but giraffes are doing just fine because they're built for it.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
By the way, if anyone's interested, here is the unofficial changelog for v1.0 to v1.7. Featuring at times hysterical changes such as "the maximum overall number of buildings that can be present on the map reduced from 81 to 80". Priorities, lads, gotta set them right!
Overall it appears to make the game significantly easier. I'm not sure if any of those changes work in the TAS's favor, seems like the opposite is more likely.
Another interesting thread on version differences.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
In the source, it's obvious that power output is either 100 (if health is 51%-100%) or 50 (if health is 1%-50%). There is no inbetween, and the GUI is lying to us. The OpenDune source comments on this behavior and suggests that it's wrong.
Is that the only instance you have found where the GUI shows false info?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Well, we could probably gauge some opinions on that, but objectively speaking a 2-player TAS 1) is more complex to execute (sometimes more than twice as complex due to the possible interactions), 2) has much more potential for various forms of entertainment and artistry.
For me that's easily worth as much as a boss skip or a new movement trick. An improvement is always going to be an improvement, but a improvement that is so much more complex has to have a better chance at being notable in my book.
Frankly though, I don't care as much as long as new guidelines are sensible and consistent, whatever they end up like.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I'm wondering if any of those skeletons on modern photos I've linked have made it to labs and not ended up a hoax. One would think that the scientific community would be in uproar already. Anthropology is not exactly a field where something new and exciting happens every day... especially considering it deals only with the past matters (and the ever-shrinking body of physical evidence).
A giant skeleton that's not simply an extreme singular mutation would easily be Nobel prize material, but no-one seems to have claimed that one. I'm pretty certain something like that would be more deserving of a prize compared to stuff like "the discovery of a bacterium and its role in gastritis". One can see why I'm not keeping my hopes up. :\
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Using less (or the same amount of) characters is hardly a notability criterion. Simply because that's so much easier to do than adding more controllable player characters.
I would think that an improvement that does that still has to fulfill some other two criteria to be valid for the flag, same as any other improvement.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Thanks for the testing! It appears as if the relationship between structure health and its production speed is close to linear. Thus it probably makes sense to always keep up core facilities at 100% in a TAS unless it's a question of having to wait for the next harvest or something like that.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
First of all I think we should decide once and for all whether this flag is supposed to state the obvious ("the time has been cut in half, must be notable!") or the otherwise ("this may not look very significant at all, but it actually is!"). The two goals would require fulfillment of quite different criteria, and even more consideration must be taken if we're to satisfy both goals at once.
thatguy wrote:
I'm not a fan of the fourth criterion (every TAS of a game is of interest to that game's speedrunning community), and the the first criterion is pretty arbitrary (why 10%?), though I agree the time save should certainly be a factor. The other two are pretty much what I think of as a notable improvement.
In particular, I think "notable improvement" should be a tag that says to the audience: "don't worry if you watched the previous version, this is different enough to be worth watching". This will normally be because a significantly different route is used, often due to the discovery of new sequence breaks; it might occasionally be because a movement optimisation was discovered that, when applied throughout the run, saves a lot of time; sometimes it might be because entertainment during autoscrollers and other downtime is improved.
I definitely agree with this and want to stress that the criteria shouldn't be too broad or pandering to the fans. For instance, every improvement to SMB any% or Castlevania HoD glitched run, or anything else like that, even by one frame, is going to be "notable" simply because they have been hotly contested and have arrived at the point where no-one has any decent ideas on how to improve them further, so literally anything that ends up faster is surprising and praiseworthy. But to the community at large, and even to a large part of specific game speedrunning communities, an improvement on the scale of <1% would be inconsequential unless it brought some kind of new knowledge with it. Like a new route or a new generic technique that could be used elsewhere to improve other runs, and maybe even runs of different games that share the engine. In this respect a large new skip provided by new knowledge is definitely more notable for me compared to general optimization that amounts to the same amount of time saved.
thatguy wrote:
Another thought - when a game-breaking glitch is discovered that splits the game into two categories, should the first run in the "skip to the end" category be considered a notable improvement? It fits the criteria but is not technically an improvement, but rather a run in a new category.
I think it should. It's notable by the necessity of introducing a new branch to accomodate such an improvement.
I would adapt Warp's and thatguy's ideas as follows. An improvement would be notable if any two or more criteria are fulfilled. (I summed up my reasoning for this at the end of the post.)
1. Improvement uses new generic glitches or techniques that are clear and obvious (i.e. can be spotted in realtime without requiring indepth knowledge of where to look).
Examples:
— attack-backdash in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow;
— flagpole stall in SMB;
— bunnyhopping (6/5) in SMW;
— walljumps in Yoshi's Island;
— quick boss kills in NES Castlevania;
— using Fang's D weapon exploit in Contra: Hard Corps;
— teleflinging in VVVVVV and virtually every kind of zipping in runs where there was none previously;
— probably most (all?) of the memory corruption or ACE-type exploits that work with a generic setup (such as closed lid/open tray-type exploits).
2. Improvement uses new occasional glitches or techniques that skip or significantly shorten portions of gameplay compared to predecessors and are clear and obvious (i.e. skips bosses/levels/paths/items considered necessary, but using methods known only to be applicable in those particular circumstances). As for the significance of the skips, a good check would be to ask yourself whether they altered your perception or enjoyment of the run (for better or for worse); if yes, then the skip is definitely significant enough.
Examples:
— skipping new stars in SM64 any%;
— Arne's Castle Crush zip in DKC2;
— Bomb Torizo skip, Phantoon quick-kill, Draygon quick-kill, etc., in Super Metroid;
— most of the level skips in NES Megaman games;
— most (all?) of the runs that skip bosses or levels where previous ones didn't;
— probably most (all?) of the memory corruption or ACE-type exploits that require a uniquely specific setup (meeting a certain thing at a certain position at a certain time, etc.).
3. Improvement uses a drastically different route and/or item set, etc., that hasn't previously been seen or expected to be seen in the current branch and is clear and obvious (again, a viewer should be able to tell this without indepth knowledge).
Examples:
— the recent Umihara Kawase sightseeing run;
— most of Super Metroid glitched any% runs (all of those that end up over a minute faster at least);
— too lazy to pick, fill this up for me please.
4. Improvement uses more characters controlled at once (i.e. 2P where the previous run was only 1P, 3P/4P instead of 2P, or and so on) or completes an extra game.
Examples:
— The Lost Vikings;
— TMNT;
— The Simpsons;
— Baxter's Adventure of Lolo + Defenders of the Crown;
— pretty much everything of the sort.
These four notability criteria I consider primary, or conceptual. Normally any one of them alone would be enough, but, in my opinion, they also need to significantly contribute to the run itself.
5. Improvement is 10-20% shorter than the previous version. There definitely should be a criterion like this, and 10% seems like the most fitting round figure to start. This would prevent single-frame improvements from being automatically notable unless they fulfill two or more of the other criteria. At the same time I don't think any improvement that is 10-something percent shorter is automatically notable either; it's important to denote the difference between a good improvement and a notable one. There are still runs on the site that were done with outdated tools and whatnot, so generic optimization can save tons of time, there are also runs that save large amounts by singular strategic changes while remaining mostly identical to the predecessors (i.e. those that would beg to comply with criterion #3 but fail to do so). A notable improvement must put something new on the table other than general optimization in my opinion. (I partially amended this notion below, but mostly to save consideration effort, since an improvement larger than 20% is guaranteed to fulfill one of the other criteria as well.)
6. Improvement uses drastically different stylistic choices or speed/entertainment trade-offs. This is mainly intended for playarounds or other entertainment-oriented runs that provide ample freedom of expression.
Examples:
— adelikat's Gradius;
— adelikat & JXQ's River City Ransom playaround;
— various Mortal Kombat TASes.
These two notability criteria I consider secondary, or practical. They would add weight to any of the primary criteria, or they could prove notable together if the improvement didn't carry any new tricks/ideas but still offered a significant increase in both optimization and entertainment value.
But, like I said, that's just the distinction I made for myself while thinking this up, in practice any two of the six should do. I think having two or more criteria fulfilled is the only way to prevent oversaturating the site with this flag. In general this should translate to providing the audience with multiple reasons to watch a run they could have skipped otherwise, so even if they don't care about one of them they would likely care about the other. Regardless of audience's expectations or preferences, such a run should be guaranteed to succeed at being:
— novel or unexpected (reasons 2, 3; generally well-accepted by broad audience);
— more visually impressive or plain entertaining (reasons 1, 4, 6; particularly important for casual audience who doesn't track every improvement);
— more precise and speedy (reasons 1, 5; particularly important for experienced audience who love TASes for their advantage over unassisted runs);
— contain new/interesting ideas or solutions (reasons 1, 2, 3; particularly important for speedrunners/fans of the game who mainly hunt for new tricks and strats and not as much for the stylistics and gimmicks).
(Also note that I only picked examples I was more-or-less sure about, and that the same people may find themselves as parts of different kinds of audience depending on the game in question.)
Additionally, if the improvement satisfies one of the following two criteria it should be granted the flag automatically:
1) improvement is >20% shorter;
2) improvement is so drastically different from the published works that it necessitates creation of a new branch (obviously this wouldn't be applicable to runs that didn't aim to improve on any of the existing branches to begin with, and as such were first of their kind).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
But seriously though, this would be (more) interesting if they had pictures as well.
Oh, I've seen hundreds of pictures. They're usually found on the same sites that post crop circles, UFO sightings, pyramids, evidence of Atlantis, and conspiracy theories... or the sites debunking them. A cute self-contained ecosystem.
Even if some of that information is factually true, the sheer amount of irrelevant noise makes it extremely unpleasant to waddle through in search of solid proof. And the people who propagate the noise are pretty special as well. A couple of my friends turned into a unique breed of escapists thanks to that.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Oooh, the notable improvement debate. I started one a couple years ago! It dies out unexpectedly quickly without satisfying results, but most of my points from that time still seem to stand. (I was so harsh back then, wow.)
I maintain my opinion that the guidelines for notability should be reviewed (they're still extremely inconsistent), the flag itself issued/revoked correspondingly, and I find it confusing that the list of people in charge of that flag is still closed to all but the core staff. Neither the privileges page nor the roles page ever mention it. If this is simply up to a publisher then it's even more baffling that we have extremely comprehensive guidelines for assigning mostly self-explanatory movie classes but not for something as vague and subjective as notability.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
You aren't making a point there. That page tests emulators against the behavior of PS1, which absolutely strictly denotes that matching PS1 is the expected behavior. The fact that none of them can do it 100% means they're either flawed or incomplete, which all of them obviously are. It doesn't mean matching PS1 isn't the intention.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
By "obtain some TAS", do you mean getting a hold of TASing tools?
In this case you will want to grab the latest version of BizHawk and do some reading if you haven't yet. You will also need a Super Mario World ROM, but don't ask where you can get it.
Your first and obvious step would be loading the game into BizHawk and gradually going from there. Getting a vague idea of what different tools do and playing around with them is a good way to start if you come unprepared.
And welcome! Enjoy your stay.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I'm sorry to be so obstinate here, but this could turn into a political topic and I want to be clear that we're not going to do anything except what a PS1 actually does.
Why, nothing political about it. If something call itself a PS1 emulator it's only natural to expect it does what a PS1 does. If it were a PS2 emulator one would expect it to match PS2's behavior. Makes perfect sense to me; not sure if there's room to argue otherwise.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Macro-based TASes have been known for a while in Quake and Half-Life speedrunning communities. I wouldn't get my hopes up on publishing if I were you. It's a logistical headache to judge/verify (you need an emulator, fresh system image installed, AHK setup, and the game itself), not exactly trivial to standardize, and is guaranteed to be suboptimal due to lack of easy rewind and frame advance (besides the forced pauses for sync stability).
I think your only solid option is to use Hourglass inside Virtualbox and hope it works.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
