I'm working on a run of the NES game Monster Party, and I'm not sure when I should end the movie. Most movies end on the last necessary input (to beat the final boss, for example), but the ending of Monster Party requires player input to progress.
It seems to me that I have three options - I could end the input on the last necessary frame and let the viewer/encoder go through the ending text; I could end the movie on the last button press during the end sequence (which would inflate the frame count beyond actually "winning" the game); or I could submit the run as being as long as the last input but still scroll through the text before ending the movie file. Is there a standard procedure for handling this dilemma?
Rayas wrote:
Dunno if I'm really clear. I need to drink more.
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adelikat wrote:
The idea was to kill off my family to avoid lost time to them getting sick and other inconvenient things.
While there are plenty of valid opinions on when movies can be edited, your movie does need to be sufficient to trigger the full ending scene, even if the game has been won by this point.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
There's at least one exception to that rule: Rygar. It's allowed to end right when the final boss dies, even though after the longish ending sequence the player has to press a button to get the final congratulations text screen. The encoder usually does this so that the run doesn't have to be many seconds longer just for that one single keypress.
In most cases, you should scroll through all the text afterward.
There used to be a brief discussion on this somewhere on the site, but I'll paraphrase what I remember.
These are your 3 general choices.
1: Quickest time to end input
2: Quickest time to get to credits with a secondary goal of ending input as soon as possible.
3: Quickest time to end input such that no further input can disrupt the credits from rolling.
It depends on how the game ends mostly.
In Super Mario Bros 1, the convention is "end the run as soon as the final axe is touched." In a game with an easily defined ending frame like this, I feel like it is best.
There was once a run of River City Ransom (http://tasvideos.org/1662S.html), where the author trimmed a few seconds, but caused the game to effectively end 3 minutes later than previously. This is stupid, don't do it.
In the Gradius run, input ends quite early, but the game still ends roughly as fast as possible. This is probably okay because the Gradius run is more about showing off than it is final completion time.
In the DKC3 105% run, the very last input of the game is skipped because (1:) it needs to be pressed a minute or two later than the rest of the input, and (2:) the screen automatically passes after 8 minutes. The screen is the 105% screen, and isn't exactly a crucial part of the credits so to speak.
In your case
I could end the input on the last necessary frame and let the viewer/encoder go through the ending text;
If the text scrolls automatically, this is fine. Even if the text scrolls faster with input, you may or may not have to scroll it. If the text does not scroll without input, this is generally not acceptable. Unless there is some strange case like DKC3, you should almost always complete the ending text to get to what we could call the "final state" of the game (automatically rolling credits, "you win", "the end")
I just want to clarify that the encoder records past the end of the input, if that wasn't clear.
I could end the movie on the last button press during the end sequence (which would inflate the frame count beyond actually "winning" the game);
The way you describe it, this is probably what you need to do.
or I could submit the run as being as long as the last input but still scroll through the text before ending the movie file.
This is not possible. The movie you submit directly determines the time that is assigned to the run.
As you can see there is no clear cut answer, but I think your case may be pretty straightforward. If you have any questions, just post the file before you submit, and someone can give feedback on how to end it.
Joined: 1/6/2012
Posts: 585
Location: Azerbaijan, Baku
in Cutthroat Island game for SNES and Genesis, after you beat final boss, there are end credits and 7 screens that says to "Press A button to continue" and final screen "Press Start to play again". Where do i need to stop input?
Link to video
