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I enjoyed watching the "scenic route" through River City Ransom, as I think adelikat was right on the money about the game having a depth which can't be shown off with a speedrun. I don't like the graphics glitches, but I don't think they detract so much that they ruin it completely.
Yes Vote, but I don't think it should obsolete the current run.
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Well, hunh...
OK. So I never owned an N64, and so I've never spent more than 15 minutes at a time with Mario64. Needless to say, I'm not a huge fan. I think the two Mario64 runs already on the site are entertaining, though at times it's hard to tell what's going on in them. (Though I will say that I liked the old 120 star run a little better than this new one; I dunno, I think I just prefer FODA's style.)
I don't give a rat's ass as to how many movies Mario64 has on this site. It can have 45, for all I care... so long as all 45 of those runs are distinct in non-arbitrary ways. I got the same sense Bisqwit got about the restrictions being arbitrary - caps I can see, and maybe cannons, but coins? (Yeah, I'm sure that has to do with precluding damage-abuse tricks, but it still seems weird to have a run of a Mario game that specifically avoids coins.)
And more to the point, this is still a "completes as quickly as possible," just with an odd set of restrictions. As far as I'm aware, the rules of this site particularly frown on that sort of thing. (E.g: "collects as many items as possible without doing X" is not considered a valid goal, last I checked.)
The author says he's made time/entertainment trade-offs, but I'm not seeing a large prevelence of them. There's nowhere near the creativity in other "mostly entertainment" runs on this site here. I'm not really seeing new tricks (aside from that chuckya thing), and I'm not seeing Mario go out of his way to do something interesting.
Basically, the whole thing feels contrived. The run itself isn't boring or anything, I'm just not seeing the justification.
I don't really know why the concept demo section exists, so I'll leave that up to the admin/judges to decide as to whether it belongs there or not, but I'm not feeling it as far as being published in the main section.
(No vote, in case you couldn't tell.)
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Lol.
Y'know, it's actually more entertaining to see the skeleton tossed around like that.
Also, is this obsoleting on the premise that if someone made an any% as precise or slightly more precise as this that it would be published alongside this one, or is this a game that only gets one movie?
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So I haven't watched it yet (it's too late to do that and sleep tonight), but I saw the old one, I loved it, I know Hal is thorough, and I note that this run takes something like 3 minutes more than the published one despite the fact that it must go out of its way to collect gems. (Not to mention that it beats the optional boss.)
Yes vote now. Then sleep. Then I watch the movie. Then praise and adoration.
Or maybe praise and adoration now:
Halamantariel is like unto a god!
Annnnnnnd...... sleep.
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It's a little of both. The test is administered in different ways, so different tests can yield slightly different results. It also kinda depends on what kind of mood you're in when you take them. But people can change over time, too.
If a particular trait isn't strongly expressed, then it's not uncommon for different tests to express the other one. It's commonly referred to as "wobbling." (And 12% is not strongly expressed.)
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Cardboard wrote:
The Zig-Zag-rooms gained us like a second (Quite amazing, seeing how the sparks go on a timer which defines hate and horrible tasting food (Don't ask)), and then some random frames in the elevator-rooms.
I figured some/most of it had to be in those rooms (because I remember how fiendish those sparks are in real time), I just can't see it when watching at full speed.
Whereas I noticed this move in particular, despite the fact that it couldn't possibly have saved you more than a few frames. (Even though it looks awesome and should be used as the screenshot for the new publication. =D)
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Dammit! Now you're gonna make me go find a copy of the ROM for the laptop, aren't you?! :angry face:
(Will vote after I track down the damn rom again so I can watch.)
Edit: Still can't remember where I got the rom with the right checksum, but that first truck scene was sweet.
Edit2: Hah! Third time's the charm.
Is it sad that I noticed a move that yielded at most 5 frames' improvement in Area 9, but I can't tell what's been improved in Area 12?
Anyway, it's faster and the first truck scene is just pretty. Yes vote.
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After spending half an hour figuring out #1, everything else fell into place in a matter of seconds. Only 10 becomes any sort of obstacle once you've developed a working strategy for the first 9, and (not coincidentally) only 10 requires any sort of logical thought or visualization to construct. (And ironically, 10 is the easiest to do if you approach all of them by trying to logically deduce what you need or try to visualize the final set.)
Hardly mathematical at all.
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I'm with Hero on that one: if a movie is good and better than anything it might obsolete, it should be published, even if it is demonstrably imperfect.
This site's about making quality runs. Not squeezing every last frame out of a game. I think our record of publication speaks to that effect.
(And as the author of exactly one submission which was rejected because the run was simply not interesting enough, that issue hits home to me. I think devotion to quality is what makes this site what it is, and I would be very hurt to be told flat out that I was wrong about that.)
With regards to taking pride in a movie: I think saying "don't get emotionally attached" is good advice, but at the same time I think it's advice that's hard to follow. -shrug- Humans are, after all, emotional beings.
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RT-55J wrote:
You could always patch the game if the graphical error is not related to the emulator's quality. I doubt the judges would care very much as long as the end result doesn't desync with the original rom and it looks exactly like the (E) version.
Mmmmm... not sure about that. I think it'd be very much akin to the rule prohibiting translation patches. (The glitch exists on the cartridge itself, so you'd have to rip code out of the rom to fix it. And that would cause a whole mess of issues which may not be obvious even if you tested it with a .smv)
Halamantariel wrote:
This is a pretty selfish comment, but the currently published Lufia II run uses the (U) rom which has a horrible horrible horrible (times 1000) graphic bug somewhere in the game, which the (E) version doesn't have.
With the rules stated above, I would NOT have a choice to use the damned ugly (U) rom? Unless that rule of "voting" to accept the version change is used. That could be good...
Unfortunately for people who'd like to see that shrine in the published run, there's a second reason not to use the (E) ROM: PAL timing. The (E) ROM plays in exactly as many frames, but the emulator actually displays them slower. Thus, the final movie would be longer. Sucks, dunnit? =\
I feel like the spirit of the original rule was solid, it was just worded too vaguely. I think the intention was that TASers should use the rom version that:
a) allows them to play the game the fastest (I.e: utilized the most tricks/bugs/glitches or includes less lag)
b) provides the most challenge (if any one version of the rom is more or less challenging beyond the inclusion/exclusion of a trick than another)
c) looks, sounds, and feels the cleanest
d) provides the most entertainment from other factors (e.g: the dialogue in one version is funnier/easier to read)
in that order. All of those factors contribute directly to potential entertainment value. Interestingly enough, the first can actually clash directly with the second, and in at least one case it clashes directly with the third*. So maybe the order there is up for debate. Or perhaps should be weighed on an individual basis; I dunno.
I also think it's good to set up a "default" rom, so that we don't have people switching to a different version just because the intro screen is shorter. Faster-scrolling (but completely unintelligible) text is open for debate and may fall under that first guideline; I won't go there just yet. But the extra second that a longer intro adds to a movie has no business being factored in.
*: I speak here of the Lost Vikings movie. The quality of the sound on the Genesis rom is crap, yet even back when the published version only used 2 players, it was the version chosen because it's the faster one to run.
Edit: I also feel that I should add that I've always felt that the rules of this site were to be taken as a whole and not piecemeal. And if taken as a whole, they give a very clear impression that this site values quality of runs more than anything else. Not frame-perfection. We strive for speed, but before that we look for quality (The results of the last submission for River City Ransom should be enough to demonstrate that.)
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After re-downloading the video for this game on SDA, I can see why the star was removed. I still like this run, and I still think it's much better than the run on SDA, but really it doesn't show off what tool-assistance can do like most of the other starred runs do.
(E.g: Umihara Kawase is difficult to play, period, let alone actually be good at. At least one of the short cuts the published run uses would be maddening in real time, if not completely impossible. And every level is played like that, to some extent or another. It's jaw-dropping. This? Not so much.)
Though, like Phil, I'd still like to hear if I'm right about that. =D
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After watching the .avi twice, I'd give this a firm "meh." Convincing Lakitu that you'd completed a lap you hadn't actually finished gets old after the 4th or 5th time, and the only course that doesn't do that is apparently very poorly optimized. On the other hand, I did laugh at the great lengths he went to and marveled at the techniques he used to actually land in those spots that tricked Lakitu.
-shrug- It's ok and I wouldn't be put off if it was published, but I firmly believe that it could be better, and I'd definitely like to see some more variety.
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I'll vote after the .avi download finishes, but I had to interject first that a lot of the people in this community do not happen to see anything that gets posted to this site until its submission, and even more don't see anything until it gets published.
E.g: I peruse the forums occasionally, but if it's not in the SNES or GBA sections, I'm likely to miss it. But I use the submissions RSS feed, so anything that hits the submission queue is instantly a blip on my radar. On the other hand, a friend of mine also checks the main index, but neither reads the forums nor checks the RSS feed, so he is blissfully unaware of anything in the works until its publication.
The Kart series is immensely popular to even casual fans, and MK64 is probably the crown jewel of the series. The number of people who are going to view demos compared to the number of people who are likely to see the published .avi is small. Miniscule, even. Finish the Time Trials run. Plenty of people will still see it and be surprised and thoroughly impressed. If that's not good enough for you, then maybe you needed to find a new project anyway.
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Baxter wrote:
Accepting this would mean that every other single lap time trial movie should be accepted.
While one should always be mindful of the dangers of creating a possible precedent for something you don't really want to establish as "OK," I think the author here has gone to sufficient lengths to make it clear that a single lap of this particular track is not comparable to a single lap of most other tracks.
However, I agree with the majority here that the purpose of this site is not to pander to hardcore fans of a particular game who are trying to achieve an arbitrary goal (i.e: not a goal of "fastest/fast and very entertaining completion") for it.
Personal example: I absolutely love the original Megaman X game and have made "X-buster only" runs through the game dozens of times on the console and with an emulator, simply to challenge myself. I've toyed with the idea of making a TAS of that, but ultimately decided that it wouldn't be appropriate: it's just a gimmick, and it doesn't add anything to watching the movie for a viewer aside from a certain novelty value. (I may still make the movie one day, just for curiosity's sake, but unless I got a lot of positive feedback on the forums I wouldn't try to publish it.)
It's cool that you like the game enough to have done this, and I find it interesting that you've managed to beat a time so very closely contested by so (relatively) much, but I don't think it should be published, even as a concept demo.
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Phil wrote:
I've noticed many people voting yes because of those screenshots...
If you think that's a problem, go see what a few people have said about the River City Ransom run, which has a star. (I can recall at least four people saying that if the description of the run had not included the "beware of people wielding trashcans" line, it would not have been worth watching.)
Having played this game in my childhood (in English), I knew what that line in the screenshot was before I watched the run. I didn't find it funny in the first place. (Personally, I'd like a screenshot of destroying that reactor in section 7 with the 3-way shot, because I always remember that being a difficult room to clear. Also, if I'm not much mistaken, the run on SDA also cancels out of that area after clearing the obstruction so he can run it with the Rocket Launcher, whereas I never knew about that trick so I just cleared the area with the 3-way gun anyway.) But after watching this and comparing it to the published run, it's clear (to me, at least, as someone who played this game way back in the day and knows how hard some of these things are in real-time) that this one is better-played. I don't give a damn about the language change or the fact that the J rom is "harder"*. This is a better quality run that overcomes the slowed-down text scrolling by more than just a few frames.
Yes vote.
*: It's not. I can tell you just from what I remember that the platforming aspect of this game was way more complicated and, more to the point, skill-based than the actual presence of the enemies. The authors of both movies have done a remarkable job ignoring the bullets so you'd never be able to tell it from these movies, but just during the regular course of game play you end up with a huge bar of hitpoints amazingly quickly, and the reward from clearing area 1 is an item which lets you recover the entirety of your health bar once per area. As such, later in the game, taking damage is nothing, whereas missing your jump is instant death. So a more difficult platform-aspect of this game would more than compensate for fewer or simply more conveniently-placed enemies.
But, hey, that's just one man's opinion.
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Yeah, I just wish I could offer criticism/advice regarding the planning/route of the game. =P I loved the game, but I was never able to play it past the first floating temple thingie, for whatever reason.
I agree that the Lich wouldn't be worth shooting for, since there aren't any feasible ways to manipulate the ALI of your units in a speedrun. Though manipulating a Crown just to have an early hit-all Holy attack for the Leader's team might be valuable, say for Pogrom Forest or something.
-shrug- Just a thought.
Also, don't you need the Herostar to get Norn and (therefore) Debonair to join you? Or am I just imagining that?
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primorial#soup wrote:
I'm not sure which game Phil was playing, because this is not accurate. Or even close to accurate. As far as I can figure, the PRNG for this game works in the following manner. Before every map (or rather, upon returning to the main map screen), the PRNG is seeded. Every time a random value is accessed, the value is advanced to the next value in a calculated, determinate sequence. If one performs the same actions in the same order, regardless of how much time passed, which coordinate you sent your units to, if you deployed extra units, if you used items (other than Jokers!), etc., the results will always be the same. You will always pull the same Tarot Card when liberating, battles will be exactly the same (same damage, same combat order, same hit/miss), buried items will always be the same, enemy units will always drop the same items.
That seems to contradict the fact that when I'm playing at normal speed, I can manipulate the Tarot card I draw when liberating by simply having the unit wait outside the city for a second or two before liberating.
And... ok, so after a little testing, I'm sure Tarot draws when liberating towns can be manipulated by simply taking more or less time to liberate them. (I tried stopping before entering and moving to a different section of the town to liberate it; both changed the draw.) Though that may have been because I tested during the early parts of a mission, while the computer is still deploying its units and giving them orders, so there may have been calls to the PRNG during that time that might not have otherwise been made. Still, manipulation is possible outside of changing the seed - it may simply be difficult or inefficient.
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Y'know... if the frame counter only determines how many numbers on the RNG are burned, shouldn't calling the RNG give you a new set of 32 time-dependant N's? Or at the very least, shouldn't exhausting the current "list" on the RNG do that?
I.e: if I enter an unecessary battle, will that change the potential of the next floor?
Hell... I hadn't considered that possibility.
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Righteo. So the "warped" run was not accepted because it simply wasn't interesting. Since someone else has gone ahead and done a version of Lufia 2 that doesn't use the cave, I've decided it's less important that I actually do work on that run. As such, I decided I'd give the full run of this game another shot.
WIP
Rom used: Claymates (U).smc
Just plays through the first level. May not be fully optimized because there's a point where I have to slow down and I'm not sure I did that efficiently, but it's just a demonstration of what the mouse looks like when he really gets to cut loose. If you'd like to see more of this, let me know.
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Hrmmm... well, having an upper-bound is nice, and it's a little lower than I had been working off of. It still means there are 2^10 N'' for any given N, and it doesn't explain why some layouts are identical except for their dropsets. But any information is nice. (Where the hell were you guys when I hit that brick wall in the first place two years ago? =P)
While I'm here, any further work on your run, Nitro?
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Spoony_Bard wrote:
One question, though, would it have been worth it to pick up one of the Capsule monsters? Perhaps they could have helped with randomization in battles, or absorbed a few hits? Or are they totally not worth it in a run?
There's no expedient way to get any of them to rank up, so it's highly unlikely that they're worth the time. The only feasible use for them I ever saw was as another target, but eventually boss battles become less about making sure you survive the shots and more making sure you can squeeze as much IP out of them as possible, so even that's very limited in use.
At least that was my take on it. I dunno what DragonDarch said about it.
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Gunty wrote:
At this point I tried hexing the part where I bought them, but it turned out to be slower because of all the frame I had to add to synchronise it.
Edit: to clarify, the desynchronising was due to random lag frames, so getting the items in the correct order again would lead to even more lost time.
That's weird. It never gave me any trouble at all. Maybe that's from the US version as opposed to the PAL one.
