There's also the fact that time savings accumulated in earlier missions can cover for the time lost in the later ones. Then again, if this game proves successful in terms of entertainment and not terribly difficult to manipulate, the site will likely see all three houses done at some point.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Are you sure the later missions can't be done before Death Hand is operational? Palace takes quite a bit of time and resources to build. My bet would be on Atreides due to the AI and Sonic Tank glitches and better rush capabilities in early/mid game. As soon as you get access to a Carry-All, any mission is basically done.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
That would be cool! What would also be cool to have is some kind of a brief changelog for all the officially released versions, as it would be pretty time-consuming to test and cross-check everything on every single one of them.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Google USB cartridge reader. They are technically reverse-engineering devices, and thus illegal in certain jurisdictions, so can't give you any direct links here. Same as mod chips and the like. Best not to discuss them here.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
There's been an identified configuration problem that caused a false positive with Gmail's spam filters (and probably some others). Thanks to this, pretty much all the topic reply notifications I've received lately ended up in my spam folder without me noticing.
Nach has already taken action with regard to this issue, but in case you still get TASVideos notifications in your spam folder, here's a brief instruction to ensure this never happens on your end. The instructions work for Gmail, and should be easy enough to adapt to any email client (web-based or otherwise) that allows configurable filters.
1. Go to Gmail's settings.2. Choose Filters and Blocked Addresses.3. Press Create a new filter.4. Set it up as follows. This will include all of the automatic notifications from TASVideos.
Press Create filter with this search when you're done. Note: You don't have to press the search button!
5. Check Never send it to Spam in the filter actions.
You can specify additional options. For instance, I also apply a custom label, skip Inbox, and never mark it as important. Press Create filter when you're done.
That's all! Your TASVideos emails are now safe from your spam folder.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I raised this concern way way back (2007?) when people were liberally flinging 10s in tech quality at a run that contained numerous known improvements at the time (Fabian's SMW all-exit). The argument at the time was that, no matter how you interpret technical rating or its scale, having known improvements shouldn't have earned a perfect mark just because you liked the run/the game and/or were excited that a long wait was over and/or you wanted to congratulate the author's achievement that way.
While I can't say the situation has changed significantly "for the better" since then, nor have I changed my own frame of reference, I've started treating tech ratings I see on publication pages differently. I now see it as a gauge of the audience's expectation of improvement, which is a quasi-integral parameter that combines optimality (knowledge-based or otherwise) and the perceived skill/effort/etc..
I'll elaborate. When a movie gets low votes, it means the audience wanted it to be better. It means the author either didn't optimize it well, or didn't find enough game-breaking stuff—no matter whether it's even possible in the game. On the other hand, if it gets high votes, it means the audience is satisfied with this movie's optimization and doesn't necessarily want more game-breaking stuff (as, indeed, it can hurt entertainment value). This new understanding actually alleviated a lot of the confusion and disturbance previously induced by tech ratings, and helped me see better what movies are worth trying to improve, if only with regards to the potential increase in ratings (as pointless as that can be).
Hope this perspective was useful for the discussion.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I know that there are several versions of Snake for the TI-83, so you would need to pick one of them, duplicate the program (or just have it pre-loaded), and then TAS that.
Actually pre-loading would defeat the purpose; existing code would need to be whiteboxed and reimplemented the same way existing TASes are. As in, you're free to analyze, modify, and copy somebody else's chunks of code if needed, but unless it shortens the overall input there is no point doing that. I'm quite sure it's possible to optimize the existing code for any of those games, and therein would be the main challenge (consider existing code as a standing record).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
For what it's worth, I agree with the decision of not writing an original game for this purpose. At least Snake is known and tried enough to have some kind of acceptable frame of reference with regards of code size and performance, and that is preferable in a case like this. That aside, like SmashManiac noted, using assembly would likely be the single largest improvement possible in a genre like this, and I have a suspicion that both parts of the TAS would benefit from it.
Btw, mildly off-topic, but the smallest chess programs written in x86 assembly take less than a kilobyte of code (incomplete rulesets have been implemented in as little as 446 bytes, a complete one stands at 831; sources to both are available on the page), there are versions of Tetris and Helicopter in 256 bytes each, etc. Sizecoding has existed for decades, and it is a thing that translates well to tool-assistance, but sizecoding alone doesn't need tool-assistance to demonstrate its results; the second part of a TAS (i.e. clearing the game itself) is the main thing that ties it all together in a continuous movie and makes it a concept worth exploring in my opinion.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I'm not sure how I feel about this run.
For one, tool-assisted speedcoding is a completely unexplored area that is potentially fascinating and worth trying. This movie being first of its kind (to my knowledge, if you exclude the ACE "write-a-game" stuff) also deserves recognition for that fact alone.
On the other hand, there are several very significant issues that will not be easy to work out.
1. Choice of platform. The amount of platforms where our current tools can handle both the programming environment and the end result can be counted on one hand, and frankly, all of them are horrible except DOS. TI-83 is particularly horrible because of its many limitations and the fact that it's a dead platform.
2. Choice of game. Snake isn't exactly best TASing material no matter how you put it. This particular implementation is also notable for being absolute worst at potential entertainment value. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to watch it beyond the first ten seconds. I also dislike rulesets that allow the snake to wrap around because that makes it trivial even in realtime.
3. Obsoletion chain. Considering that writing the game is technically part of the TAS, nothing prevents a contender from writing a different game, even if it only differs slightly, to take advantage of the TAS part, because we don't have authorities on game rulesets. This issue alone warrants a discussion on whether TASVideos is the right place for tool-assisted speedcoding.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I have to agree: as much as I'm hyped by seeing these new discoveries, some of them are actually getting ridiculous. Going through walls/out-of-bounds with this glitch isn't much different in principle to using X-Ray for the same task. This is most certainly a major glitch, and shouldn't be used in "glitchless" runs.
It's a shame, though, because when there's a dozen of unique game-breaking glitches, a TAS would still only use the fastest one(s). Similar to Megaman 1, indeed.
At the same time, I would like to see a glitched 100% run using this trick at some point.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
With respect to Vault-specific rules (which I really think is a whole another, completely separate discussion), I'd prefer to keep them to the minimum in any case so as to avoid complications and, most important of all, attempts to "pre-judge" a run, which is the situation you're describing. I mean you're free to have any kinds of expectations, but that's something that shouldn't be officially endorsed imo, even implicitly.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The problem with that is that the Vault is the upper layer of grouping—vaulted runs still exist in the same potential obsoletion chain as the Moons and the Stars, and goal choice might end up the tipping point that pushes a run into the Vault territory or out of it. We've had that happen. So naturally we shouldn't concern ourselves with rules specific for the Vault because runs aren't created to be vaulted—they end up vaulted.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I think going always-easy won't be too appropriate for the same reason as using debug menus, cheat codes, continues, passwords, gameshark, etc.: if it makes the game easier in a way that an any unassisted player could take advantage of from the start, then it's not worthy of a "perfect, godlike player". I've elaborated upon this in my previous post here on this page.
Using the default difficulty (i.e. Normal or its equivalent) would, in my opinion, be more appropriate, and it has other benefits, too, but the best approach would be to decide it on a game-by-game basis with some generic difficulty used as a default baseline.
I actually think we need to make an elaborate write-up upon the framework of gameplay, challenge, entertainment, and creator's intent that ties everything together with regards to our stated goals, rules, and needs.
With regards to the question at hand, as I see it, there are currently six options to choose from that were mentioned (and enjoyed at least a post or two of vocal support) at least once in this topic:
1. Decide on a game-by-game basis, default on the hardest settings:
+ a lot more versatile in goal choices;
+ provides the most potential for impressive runs;
– more challenging to judge in some cases due to goal choices;
– complications may arise if an improvement is submitted using a different setting due to the rule's laxity.
2. Decide on a game-by-game basis, default on standard/typical settings (i.e. don't change them, or use a universally adopted setup used by relevant speedrunning/etc. communities if there exists one):
+ a lot more versatile in goal choices;
+ more comparable to typical playthroughs/unassisted runs;
+ strikes a balance between speed and entertainment;
– unless it's also the easiest setting, it's rarely the fastest option;
– unless it's also the hardest setting, it's rarely the most entertaining option;
– complications may arise if an improvement is submitted using a different setting due to the rule's laxity.
3. Decide on a game-by-game basis, default on the quickest setting (typically easy, with some exceptions):
+ a lot more versatile in goal choices;
+ provides the most potential for the shortest/fastest runs;
– more challenging to judge in some cases due to goal choices;
– complications may arise if an improvement is submitted using a different setting due to the rule's laxity.
4. Enforce using the hardest settings in all cases:
+ a lot more convenient to both pick goals and judge;
+ provides more potential for impressive runs;
– entertainment will suffer in some cases due to needless repetition, extra lag, etc. forced by the rule;
– runs submitted on other difficulty settings will have to be rejected even if they suit the goals better.
5. Enforce using standard/typical settings (i.e. don't change them, or use a universally adopted setup used by relevant speedrunning/etc. communities if there exists one):
+ a lot more convenient to both pick goals and judge;
+ most comparable to typical playthroughs/unassisted runs;
+ strikes a balance between speed and entertainment;
– entertainment will suffer in some cases due to mediocre balance or goal choices forced by the rule;
– runs submitted on other difficulty settings will have to be rejected even if they suit the goals better.
6. Enforce using the quickest setting (typically easy, with some exceptions):
+ a lot more convenient to both pick goals and judge;
+ provides more potential for faster runs;
– entertainment will suffer in some cases due to overbearing trivialization of in-game situations forced by the rule;
– runs submitted on other difficulty settings will have to be rejected even if they suit the goals better.
This situation outlines the aforementioned need for a write-up, because it's clear to me that options 1–3 put emphasis on overall goals (fastest, most impressive, etc.), while options 4–6 put emphasis on rule and content consistency and ease of judging. In my opinion, while the latter options put less strain on both judges and authors (at least in a way), they potentially lock us out of the better content for purely bureaucratic reasons.
But either way I think we should make a poll and let it run for a while, so that enough feedback and arguments can accumulate, then have adelikat & the team decide based on what we arrive at.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
If you're so close to finishing the 2015 turn TAS but still yet to investigate all the new discoveries that require completely revamping the plan (which would delay the submission by months at best), why not finish and submit the 2015-turn first, using the 2015-turn era knowledge, while it's still the year 2015. Get it published, then work out further improvements without such a pressing need (and then submit again). It's not like the 2015 turn plan is sloppy or anything...
I talked to dwangoAC about it some weeks ago, and he seemed to be in favor of doing this, much as, I presume, a lot of other people waiting for anything to be finished at all (I'm in their camp). I understand the desire to submit a perfect piece of work, but this kind of obstructive perfectionism ends up in lose/lose scenarios more often than not. Submitting a well-planned and executed TAS now is a safeguard against, say, any of you losing motivation or capability to continue, or otherwise losing time/progress, and to be fair there's really no major drawback there aside from, maybe, some stifled pride.
Think about it!
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
On one hands, those topics need more attention. On the other, most HL TASes I've seen so far are unwatchable due to the bunnyhop jitter used to optimally gain speed.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
No, he has a point. While it's true that in a TAS it's easy to predict whether a player character will get hit (we know it won't unless the movie author has it in their stated goals), there's a difference in the kind of precision that might be required for them not to. This is what Warp is talking about. It creates additional headroom for the author to demonstrate their creativity and penchant for optimization, and it drives the stakes higher for the audience.
Dodging a hundred bullets is absolutely more impressive than one because whenever we're watching a movie (a gameplay, or a live action, doesn't matter) we unwittingly attempt to connect with characters we're presented. Whenever we're watching someone playing a game there's always at least one point where we compare the on-screen performance with our own projections, in the forms such as:
— "I'd never be able to do that",
— "this part looks like it could be done a bit better",
— "this looked like it took a ton of effort", and so on.
This connection has historically been stronger in unassisted runs because we know they are done by people like us, who make mistakes, rather than some hypothetical perfect beings. But in the case with perfect beings the point to drive home isn't just to demonstrate the lack of mistakes—it's obvious enough from the get-go—but that the hundred bullet scenario provides the opportunity for eliciting a "this looks on a completely different level from a human player, there's no way anybody would be able to do that without making mistakes" kind of emotional response—the feeling of overwhelming awe. Dodging a single bullet is something that anyone can do, so even if it's faster, it would fail to entertain for that very reason.
This is exactly why games with complex movement generally end up so much higher on entertainment scale than the "run right for justice" ones. Perfectly holding a direction button is easy, perfectly executing a walljump or a 50-hit combo isn't. More opportunity for mistakes (and thus, optimization). When a TAS is played on an easier difficulty because it allows a larger pool of resources to take advantage of, it may similarly expand the opportunity for mistakes/optimization, which would elicit the emotional response we're looking for. Timer alone would never be able to do it; it's just an abstract number you can't connect with. Lower time is a function of better gameplay, not the other way around.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
It's practically mantra that decisions of the past aren't binding precedent for future decision, so this seems both wrong and counter to what most decisions that have been made for games played on the easiest difficulty have stated re: runs on a harder difficulty would obsolete, even if slower.
But... this is exactly how categories work on every speedrun site ever. A category is established by a local authority figure and it remains the same unless there is a compelling reason for it to change. It makes perfect sense, what's so hard to understand about this? It's exactly because certain aspects of speedruns are unquantifiable and that the voters are an ever-changing vocal minority that judges exist to decide what works and what doesn't, making decisions that are supposed to make the site better.
With regards to easy mode runs accepted with a purported future reestablishment of an obsoletion chain, that typically happened because they improved upon runs so heavily outdated that by that virtue alone they were far more technically impressive than their predecessors. It is a populist decision of sorts, but it is a special case that is not granted on a daily basis. It furthers the goals of entertainment and improvement of the site's content while trying to make the proper rule set known.
What exactly is your stance on the subject, anyway? You seem to be worried about things that are already in (relatively) working order. In your six years on the site you must have familiarized yourself with its workings enough so I don't have to recite them.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Obsoleting a run that was more challenging to create simply because of that seems completely wrong.
This would a valid concern, but speedruns in general are agnostic to the precedent challenge. Hundreds of runs were at one point improved (oftentimes by different players) by fixing a relatively simple oversight, or a strategic change, or by utilizing a newly discovered skip, allowing easy gains for comparatively less effort. For the sake of the progress this is a necessary evil. The only reason at all that we have all the different categories aside from any% (and 100% where applicable) is because it's entertainment that demands it.
If a run on easier difficulty allows more impressive character choreography or resource management, and the audience and judge find them as such, then it shouldn't be a problem. It would only be a problem when choosing the easier difficulty amounts to trivializing the content, achieving the goal opposite to the situation in my previous example. In fact, an easy mode run that requires more resource planning and more precise choreography would take more effort to create as well, resolving your concern.
To give you another example of a hard → easy obsoletion, that would be Contra: Hard Corps. The initial runs were done on the US version where a single hit equaled death. In 2007 the TASers doing this game, starting with Ash Williams, switched to the Japanese version that had a lifebar allowing several hits to be taken before deaths. While normally it would be considered easy mode (it is significantly easier when played in realtime), nobody complained because they got to see additional damage boosts, and it was deemed entertaining enough to reestablish the obsoletion chain.
Tangent wrote:
As for the Vault, its description says that the guidelines for difficulty still apply, but the guidelines are along the lines of "choose the most entertaining". It's contradictory. It's meant to be purely speed records, and if we're focusing solely on speed, that's almost always going to be on the easiest difficulty.
It's because TASVideos's purpose is not that of a catalogue or a sports authority. We're an entertainment site first and foremost. First the difficulty is chosen, and the chain of obsoletion that follows is thereby constrained to the initial choice; a precedent law of sorts. It seems contradictory at first, but as soon as the initial submission is established, it doesn't have to change unless there's a very compelling case that would probably even be enough to take it out of the Vault in the first place.
There are two reasons the concept of Vault has been created at all: 1) oftentimes, even in the case of an extremely bad/linear game, sufficient competition may breed content that becomes generally entertaining; 2) if there are people willing to exert effort TASing those games, then surely there is an audience that might be interested in seeing those games, bad as they are. That audience is also valuable, and discarding it outright was something that interfered with the site's progress. (I, for one, am very pleased with its present content structure.)
No matter how you look at it, TASVideos's goals and rules have always relied heavily on entertainment. This is, in my opinion, the right way to go.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The best choice is what makes the best runs, which sometimes (usually) is the hardest difficulty, but in some cases it's not. If choosing a higher difficulty prohibits using certain TAS tricks like damage-taking strategies (because of reduced player HP/increased enemy damage) or only makes boss battles more repetitive (because of reduced player damage/increased enemy HP), then choosing an easier difficulty could be preferable.
I'm in full agreement with this general line of thought. Goals are best chosen with entertainment in high priority, and difficulty choice stems from this.
Mothrayas wrote:
EDIT: What may also need to be taken into account is whether the opportunity of more damage boosting strategies would outclass the harder mode's greater emphasis on health management. This might be a contentious issue.
It might depend on how much of a difference it makes on general gameplay and how high a game's overall potential for variation/entertainment is. For instance, it might be warranted to have an anything-goes easy mode any% that uses all the resources and speed tricks and completes the game quicker, and a more entertainment-oriented hard mode any% that demonstrates the concept of an "invincible" character who never gets hit at all. If the difference would be too subtle to let such runs coexist, it might be worth it to discuss it with the community first and, ideally, run by a judge before committing the main effort.
Mothrayas wrote:
One point I do believe should be discussed is the enforceability of the guideline as it currently stands. As Samsara said, sometimes runs are rejected for not using the hardest difficulty, and sometimes they are not. Currently the difficulty "rule" is only a guideline so it need not be enforced in its current state. However, we'll probably want to handle this more sensibly than "sometimes do enforce it, sometimes don't".
[...]
Personally, I think a better solution would be to enforce playing on the highest difficulty, unless a good case can be made for an easier difficulty run that it would make for a better watch than a highest-difficulty run. Runs that use easier difficulties without good reason would be rejected. I think this is what we already have been doing, but having it fixed on paper as a rule might be good. On the other hand, it might also be considered too restrictive. Thoughts?
Sounds fine to me, but I would point out that the default choice should be the hardest difficulty selectable from power-on. Sometimes, as is the case with arcade-style looping games, the hardest difficulty is offered as an unlockable/second quest/second loop-type option, in which case accessing it immediately requires dirty SRAM (which is not a preferable thing). At one point several years ago we had a very silly situation where all of the Castlevania: SotN started from a dirty SRAM. I think this went way past the line at the time.
Like you said, enforcing hardest difficulty is largely what we've been doing all this time. Difficulty choice is important, and historically defaulted on hardest for a good reason, but similarly there have been good enough reasons for not choosing it in many individual cases. I, too, feel it should be open to variation but without needless laxity. Thus:
1) choose the hardest mode by default;
2) if there are compelling reasons to choose an easier mode, or if the hardest mode cannot be selected from power-on, discuss it using factual examples and illustrations and see what the consensus is (or risk having it scrutinized at the time of submission). Without meaningful consensus, fall back to #1.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
It was an interesting concept that was kind of entertaining and then you took a warp zone. meh.
I ended up in this camp as well. Most of the movie is a highly technical and stylistically varied playthrough that is probably as entertaining as an SMB run can get, showcasing basically every trick in the book. But the loops... Honestly, I think they have no place in this category. You take every coin there is anyway, no point repeating the same stuff over and over just to make some arbitrary counter (that resets at 100 anyway!) go up.
If it is at all possible, I would kindly ask the authors to submit a version without loops instead. I don't believe anybody would miss them.
Voting meh so far.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
2. Choose Filters and Blocked Addresses.
3. Press Create a new filter.
4. Set it up as follows. This will include all of the automatic notifications from TASVideos.
Press Create filter with this search when you're done. Note: You don't have to press the search button!
5. Check Never send it to Spam in the filter actions.
You can specify additional options. For instance, I also apply a custom label, skip Inbox, and never mark it as important. Press Create filter when you're done.
That's all! Your TASVideos emails are now safe from your spam folder.