it isn't possible to finish game, because getting to bowser pipe is impossible
NEVER say anything is impossible. At tasvideos, impossible things happen all the time! Who would have believed ten years ago that you could beat SM64 with zero stars, or finish OoT as Child Link, or get Pokemon Yellow to write and run your own computer programs? But these things have all been done.
Since I feel this will be rejected, I recommend it wholeheartedly for gruefood delight.
The early poll results suggest that some people are voting "no" because they don't think this movie should be published. "Did you find this movie entertaining?" doesn't mean "Should this movie be published?", it means "Did you find this movie entertaining?"
If you are concerned that casual viewers may see the time and believe that the movie is not in fact a record, you can put a message in the publication to that effect. Here's an example of a movie that does this: http://tasvideos.org/2379M.html
That's not really a defining feature of the category, though. Remember that MrWint's first TAS obsoleted a TAS that used ZZAZZ, which is a huge buffer overflow.
How does that make it not a defining category? The "less glitched" movie does not use buffer overflow; every subsequent Blue movie, and all the save-corruption Yellow movies, use some kind of buffer overflow, which makes "no buffer overflow" a great category because it is saying "this is the fastest run we have of this game which doesn't use buffer overflow". I think "no buffer overflow" is a perfect name for the branch.
Good to see that this got published before the ET improvement. Congratulations adelikat, you hold the record for the two worst games ever made at the same time.
That leaves Super Metroid. What would be a good place to ask about the glitched category? Perhaps the game's forum topic?
A better place would be in the discussion topic(s) of the relevant movie(s), since this is a matter of the movies and not really of the games themselves. A link to this page in those discussion topics may attract the attention and opinions of Super Metroid TASers, and others with a particular interest in the game, which is probably required given that this particular game has a rather special status in the world of speedrunning and therefore does not always follow regular rules.
Also don't forget Pokemon Blue! If there's any game that rivals Super Metroid for having an unreasonable number of categories then this is it (and it doesn't help that, since Red, Blue and Yellow are considered identical for TAS purposes, many of the movies do not show up in each other's submission histories and the sheer number of movies can go unnoticed). I have struggled so much to think of a better name for primorial#soup's movie than "less glitched" that I increasingly find myself questioning whether unobsoleting it was a mistake. Especially since it is a suboptimal movie (no Brock skip, which was discovered shortly afterwards), and also because it doesn't contain anything the 100% run doesn't.
Good work CoolKirby! I agree with your decisions to leave some of the movies unchanged for the minute and wait for other opinions.
CoolKirby wrote:
Also, thatguy, I just called EarthBound "no save corruption" because both the save corruption glitch and the run are faster than the debug menu glitch and run and therefore both are obsolete. It's good that you're trying to cover all the bases though; that might be a useful skill when more cases like these come up!
The reason for the Earthbound branch name I gave was that, in the opinion of this humble user with his miserable postcount, that all movies should attempt to complete the game as fast as possible under the restrictions laid out by the branch name, if any (with the exception of the branch name "playaround"). The current Earthbound "no save corruption" movie does not do this, since it can still be improved by accessing the debug menu, which is not ruled out by the branch name, even though the debug menu is of no consequence in the any% run either.
Still, I do not like the name "no save corruption, no debug menu" as a name, it does sound very arbitrary. "No memory corruption" sounds like a compromise, since as far as I am aware both save corruption and accessing the debug menu would qualify as memory corruption.
Shouldn't "hard mode" not be in the title since it is already assumed that the game should be played on the highest difficulty?
And yeah, this looks gruebound since it has an unvaultable goal choice. If it does end up getting rejected I'd recommend this for gruefood delight. It does look very well-made, but just doesn't fit in with the site policy as it stands.
Right, here are some suggested names for those "less glitched" counterparts to the movies on Radiant's list. When I have been able to find a name for the specific glitch, I have used that; otherwise, I have gone for a generic name. A couple of these names are especially clunky, so help would be appreciated. In addition I am not familiar with all these movies, I often had to go by author's comments and the like for information, so if I have made a mistake about which glitches are and aren't used in the movies do correct me.
Aria of Souls; "Warpless" (already in title)
Contra 3: "2 players, in bounds"
Crash Bandicoot: "No memory corruption"
Earthbound: "No debug menu, no save corruption" (both are needed as both have been used to break the game in glitched runs)
Earthbound Zero: "No breadcrumbs glitch"
Final Fantasy Adventure: "Warpless"
Kirby's Adventure: "No stone glitch"
Metroid II: "No select glitch"
Pokemon Blue: "No save corruption, no ZZAZZ glitch, no transform glitch"
Super Mario Land 2: "No memory corruption"
Super Mario World: "No memory corruption"
Super Mario World 2: "No egg glitch"
Super Metroid: "No X-ray Scope glitch"
Zelda II: "No healer glitch, no zipping"
Zelda: Link's awakening: "Warpless"
Zelda: LTTP: "No pixelporting"
I have left Chrono Trigger off as currently the only other non-obsolete run is the 100%, which can just be called 100%, unless it turns out it is possible to 100% the game faster using save corruption techniques. IIRC there was an unsuccessful campaign to get the "less glitched" movie unobsoleted.
EDIT: on second thoughts, Turska's run (the 20-minute one) used save corruption to glitch objects, didn't it? It therefore seems likely it would be faster to use this glitch to get 100% completion, and hence I would call this movie, "100%, no save corruption".
Yet again. MEH EXISTS! I cannot stress this enough
Yep, "meh" is the perfect word for a run like this. Not entertaining, but are attention spans really so short nowadays that people can get bored in 25 seconds?
The most pleasantly unexpected TAS I can remember - this was hugely entertaining, looked superhuman, and proof that a TAS does not have to be a broken glitchfest to impress me. I didn't have to think twice about slapping a big fat yes vote on this one. Worthy of a star, before anybody else mentions it. And yes, play on through the credits if they allow it; I hope the makers of the first SMG2 TAS, whenever it gets made, make the same decision.
Just one question, since it's years since I played this: given how you muck about on icicle mountain, i presume it's an autoscroller; however, when you move to the top of the screen it definitely scrolls upwards faster. How does this stage work again? I'm sure I'll kick myself when I find out the answer.
Why does the any% run of a game have to have a branch name at all? The point of a branch name is to say "this movie attempts to beat the video game as fast as possible, with additional constraints given by the branch name". If there are no additional constraints (any%, in other words), then why is a branch name required?
Notice also that there are some games for which we have other runs but not an any% run (100% runs like Banjo-Kazooie, Kirby and the Crystal Shards, or playarounds like International Soccer Star Deluxe and Super Scribblenauts, spring to mind). In this case of course, they should be labelled appropriately.
While we're at it, we may as well standardize the naming of 100% runs. Some call them "100%" but we also have everything from "Warpless" to "120 Stars" to "All Dungeons, Temples and Ganon Trials" to "102%" to "Gotta Catch 'em All" to "All Souls" to "100 CDs" to... well, you get the picture. To be honest I prefer the descriptive labels rather than just calling stuff "100%", since we already have a tag for "100% completion", and the branch name describes what 100% completion is.
Radiant wrote:
Of particular note here are the Metroid runs. In the Metroid speedrunning community, which predates the TasVideos site, the three standard runs are Any%, 100%, and Low%; where Any% allows the use of any glitches you can find. That means we should probably not call any Metroid runs "glitched" given that the Metroid community would call them "Any%".
I don't think we should make an exception for Metroid. The any% runs should not have a branch name just like any other any% run. For a start, we already time games differently to how the Metroid speedrunning community does, which has been controversial enough in the past. In any case, we shouldn't be comparing real-time and tool-assisted speedruns, so why label them as though they are Metroid real-time runs when they are not?
Right, so as I understand it, the consensus has changed from "Movies should not be labelled glitched if they are the only branch" (which was I believe Radiant's original point) to "movies should NEVER be labelled glitched as glitched movies are just any% runs".
So Radiant has cleared up a small list of movies fitting the first criteria, but it seems the much larger list of movies with the glitched label which were not the only branch, and their low-glitch counterparts, also needs addressing.
Is there a way of searching for the word "glitched" in movie titles and removing them en masse? That would cut down on a lot of work.
There also needs to be a rule for naming the low-glitch branches. I would suggest either a blanket term, "low-glitch", or a game-specific label, "avoids [X]", where X is the glitch used in the any% (formerly glitched) version.
Finally, Super Mario 64 "0 Stars" is similarly an any% run, so that should lose its label too.
Svimmer would you like help doing this? I would happily offer my services as I don't know how to TAS but am very interested in contributing to the site and also very interested in this project - as interested as I am in the progress of any TAS (maybe except TTYD). I feel like when I'm showing other people TASes they don't know what they're watching, and I sometimes struggle to explain. They are also sometimes disappointed when they realise the game isn't being played in real time. Well, this would help me personally if nothing else. I also feel like it would help to spread awareness of TASing and tasvideos.org, as I still see "f***ing cheaters" and similar stuff in the comments of every Youtube encode.
However, this video was your vision. I could quite understand you not wanting me to muscle in. In that case I look forward patiently to the end product.
Quick noob question: what's the rationale for going for in-game time rather than real time? And do you know how much faster this run could have been in real time if that had been the aim?
However, i enjoyed this run more than most fighting-game runs, because unlike many such games the quickest strategy is not spamming the same move ad nauseam.
...when there is only one run for a particular game, then that run shouldn't be labeled "glitched".[/list]
My point is that there are two runs for Pokemon Blue, a glitched run and a low-glitch run, and that Radiant's suggestion would leave the two movies with the same title. Whether the glitched or low-glitch runs should get the branch label is a totally different discussion.
Just to point out...
Pokemon Blue does have an any% run. It was removed from obsoletion quite recently actually. So the glitched version should be labelled "glitched".
http://tasvideos.org/950M.html
I'm guessing Radiant didn't see it because they aren't next to each other in lists of movies. This is because the glitched version is done on the GameBoy, while the any% run is on the Super GameBoy.
Good job Spikestuff! This is a neat video that emphasises many of the differences between the two sorts of speedrun:
- Most of the time the TAS saves over the RTA is in the execution of superhuman tricks (specifically, the flagpole glitch).
- The TAS also does many entertaining things like walking backwards, walking through walls and that random walljumping bit while waiting for the bullet bill. These don't affect the completion time due to SMB's shitty frame rule, but the TASer puts them in just because he can.
- The true time difference is clearly much larger than one second, illustrating the difference in timing conventions.
Before watching, I had absolutely zero familiarity with this game (haven't even seen the other TASes) but half an hour to kill. I was kept entertained throughout, maybe with the exception of the autoscrolling and underwater segments. I just love that leaning-forward-whizzing-along-really-fast thing (1:15 in the encode) - Donald's face looks so pissed off :)
Toothache wrote:
It's quackers how fast this run is, and that's no yolk!
Yes votin
This comparison video of two SMB TASes gave me an idea... I'm going to write in having the TAS and AndrewG's run play side by side for the documentary in the section where the two types of speedrunning are compared.
That's a really great idea! You could even do it as one of those comparison videos where there's a counter keeping track of the frame difference; it's quite possible that such a video is already on youtube somewhere.
Also raising a fairly pedantic point - in your script it says that the TAS of SMB is only about 1.5 seconds faster than andrewg's time. This is partly due to the different timing methods of SDA and tasvideos. Iirc the "real" difference is actually about four seconds - I'll see if I can verify that.
EDIT: I've checked Youtube with every search phrase I can think of and there isn't a comparison video. Wikipedia (that incredibly reliable source) has confirmed that I was right about the timing differences, but it's probably worth double-checking. Andrewg probably knows.
Solid stuff, probably a 7.5/10 for entertainment. Always interesting to see how a run of a remake compares to the original. This is almost like watching a low-glitch SMB2, although you still get some of the old glitches and some new ones.
Can someone give me some guidance on how to give technical ratings to movies? I've never TASed (and at the moment don't have plans on doing so), but I understand the process decently well. I decided to make an account because this site has given me so many hours of entertainment that I thought I should at least give something back, and rating/voting seems to be the easiest thing to do.
The technical rating seems basically "How hard was it to make this TAS?" And I don't know because I've never TASed - even if I had, it's hard to make a judgement unless you've attempted to TAS the same game. So for me it seems like it should just be the number of rerecords (lots of them = high technical), with maybe a few modifications for if the TAS does something really crazy/slightly sloppy.
Do you have a rough estimate of the completion time?
I wouldn't be surprised if it were longer than any run on the site. Even if you caught the Pokemon at the same rate as the Blue 100% run (one every 80 seconds), you'd overtake Final Fantasy 8, and Blue has item duplication and experience underflow to circumvent level grinding.
Speaking of Pokemon Blue 100%, I think the reason it is interesting is that it has a goal that is not meant to be possible, and uses glitches to make it possible, kind of like the Super Mario Bros walkathon that completes every level of the game without using the B button. The reason this hack was made was explicitly to make 100%-ing the game possible without connecting to other devices, so seeing that done has limited potential for surprising the viewer.
You'd have to reach moons as well, as hacks are ineligible for the vault. Judges are quite ruthless with runs of hacks. So you'd have to find a way to make all that level grinding entertaining.
The only thing that might save you is that, because it's a hack, it won't have been beta tested very well, so there might be some bugs lurking in there. These might help shorten the movie, which would be less effort for you and would make it more watchable.
So all-in all, is it likely to get accepted? Probably not. Does that mean it's not worthwhile? That's up to you.