Posted: 10/14/2012 6:49 PM
(Edited: 9/17/2013 2:13 PM)
Post subject: The course of the updated site - obsoletion system
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
I didn't see the staff's ideas on the new site design/system/cource written anywhere, so I'll just post my own thoughts. We have recently ran into several cases of weirdness, that was caused (how I see it) by the will to make the judgement of the TASes less vague. And the site admins went a certain path that seems a bit unwise to me. Though, it looked like a case that just must be inveastigated from the long-term goals perspective. What MAY that technical clarity cause in future? How dangerous is it? I'm talking bout those obsoletions, where a certain game-breaking glitch, that cuts the most gameplay off the run, was enough reason to obsolete the full-gameplay run, that also happened to use the same glitch, it just wasn't known to cut that much back then. This looks rather reasonable and fair - from the technical viewpoint. The old usage of that glitch is considered suboptimal, thus the whole old run is suboptimal from that moment. This happened to several gameplay-based TASes, that were obsoleted by the Glitched branches. A WISE obsoletion system is what represents the face of the site, and of the TASing as a form of art. Thus I suggest to keep the "fastest gameplay" goal totally inviolable for any game that actually has that branch. This really rises a complicated question: how to judge cases where the same glitch that was used here and there, still not breaking the game, now breaks to the ending or something like that. I say: let the goal resolve everything! After all, we still don't have a clear definition on when the branch actually becomes Glitched. It was obvious in most cases, BUT not in all. And in some it may even make us kill our own site's awesomeness. Let's keep one-level breaks as still the "gameplay-based" boundaries. RockMan is a perfect example, when the player is moving on the razor's edge between gameplay and glitched branches. Still it is a default branch, because it actually plays and beats the game. If the player breaks through MORE THAN ONE level at once or ALMOST ALL levels in similar fashion - it is a glitched branch. I can't recall any exact examles of that, most of the glitched runs either call the ending from the middle of the game, or screw the very game so much it all becomes a broken toy, that is still beaten sucessfully. And we have to ignore the TYPE of the glitch used to break something. If one glitch allows to call the Level End or the Game End, it shall be allowed in both branches, because it is ONLY ONE of the aspects of the gameplay-based run, while it really becomes the heart of the glitched run. Such approach would never let us lose the TAS records face, always keeping the gameplay optimisation in the proper, easy-to-find place. I'm also suggesting to unobsolete the runs like any% SML2 or 4:21 Chrono Trigger - their defailt branches can only be obsoleted by a better optimisation or better glitches usage, that won't still step over the gameplay goal. That concerns the fastest Battletoads as well, that WAS really a run that represents the TAS art via both aspects: gameplay optimisation and glitches.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 10/14/2012 9:32 PM
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jlun2
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GBA TASer of 2010
And we have to ignore the TYPE of the glitch used to break something.
So....does that mean a TASer can use a glitch that, for example, instead of skipping to the end, use it to skip parts of the game? Take telefang for example: The phone glitch is used to skip to the end. But it could also be used to remove obstacles like npcs. With the above definition, that means a warpless run could use the phone glitch in a sub-optimal way. Which also implies the run isn't optimal. Edit: In fact, to what extent should the phone glitch be used to make a well-defined goal? Can a TASer use it to skip important npcs and warp to avoid backtracking as long as the main storyline isn't skipped?
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.
Posted: 10/15/2012 3:56 AM
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
We just reached the borders of the glitched category with some runs (the decision was to erase them at all for some SPECIFFIC situations, that killed the "fastest gameplay" branches). And because these borders weren't at all defined, the site lost its main category for several games. We would anyway have to draw them somewhere, I suggest it to be level border. About suboptimality. Low glitch like "no zips" may be a goal very well. No one sais "avoiding zips is at all suboptimal", because there already is a run that USES zips. The same with Default category. In the glitched run author may use something to reach the most possible effect with some glitch, but in the "fastest gameplay" run he could use the same glitch UNDER the goal borders. It'd be very easy to set the goal properly when you have FINE branch borders. Just read what happened to SML2. Even the author lost the idea of what's now allowed, because the stuation is much more complex, than just USES X/AVOIDS X. Post #259158
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 10/15/2012 6:58 AM
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Warp
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Posts: 7698
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While I must admit I didn't quite fully understand the subtleties of the problem, I'd say that: 1) Using a game-breaking glitch should always happen to achieve the main goal of the TAS. For example, if the main goal is to simply reach the end of the game as fast as possible, then the glitch should be used in a manner that absolutely minimizes this time. Making a slower run that still uses that glitch for something else, is obviously suboptimal, as it does not fulfill this specific goal in the best possible manner. The main goal doesn't always have to be fastest possible completion. Another typical goal is 100% completion (eg. finding all items in the game, if it keeps count of them), with the fastest completion being a secondary goal (iow. find all the items and then reach the end of the game, all this as fast as possible). In that case using the game-breaking glitch is ok if it's used to achieve the 100% completion as fast as possible. 2) Now, some TAS might use some (sensible) self-imposed limitation. A typical limitation is "does not use game-breaking glitches" (with the intention to show more of the game). This is a sensible limitation if it's unambiguous and results in a significantly different game that has high entertainment value on its own. But what happens if the game-breaking glitch mentioned in the first point above conflicts in some manner with some imposed limitation (or makes the limitation pretty moot)? A hypothetical situation I can think of would be that the self-imposed limitation is "does not use death as a shortcut" (this limitation being imposed in order to show more of the game), but there's a game-breaking glitch that allows skipping the vast majority of the game without dying. Does the implied goal of "showing more of the game" give a free pass to arbitrarily use the game-breaking glitch here and there, as long as it doesn't skip too much of the game? My opinion is that it doesn't. It becomes a completely arbitrary rule, and basically sloppy play (because the usage of the glitch is suboptimal). In my opinion: Either you use a certain glitch to its full extent to achieve the primary goal, or you don't use it at all. No secondary goals or self-imposed limitations should allow starting to use the glitch arbitrarily at a whim and without a well-defined goal or pattern.
Posted: 10/15/2012 2:11 PM
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
So you say that the Glitched branch must become Primary for the runs that have the former? In this case any side branch should just avoid the "banned" glitch, automatically showing more of the game, than they would normally, if the glitch wasn't be improved to skip to the end. But I'm against situations that actually kill a gameplay branch. It's like rejecting Aglar's "no zips" run for using things that LOOK like zips. Instead of being rejected it was accepted with a note: "next time avoid ANY zip-like tricks". That still keeps the well optimized run public. But some impressive TASes were obsoleted with a note: "if you want to improve this run by its real category, make sure to avoid X" - which reduces the awesomeness of the site content, that looks unreasonable to me (reasonable would be obsoleting one awesome GLITCHED run by another less awesome but faster GLITCHED run). Also, removing one ambiguity (same glitch obsoletes same glitch) we introduce another, even worse:
MUGG wrote:
What comes to my mind now is what should a new any% run look like. It would need to forgo all the glitches related to pausing & quitting*? __________ * By pausing & quitting at the correct time, you can take one item to another level. This can be used with Mushrooms, Fireflowers, Carrots, Starmans, 1-ups, bubbles, checkpoint bells, goal bells, pipes (either direction; using a downward pipe leads to the famous pipe glitch as we know it). The previous movie used the pipe glitch to skip levels and used a checkpoint bell in moon zone 1 to skip some of moon zone 2. Since apparently the pipe glitch is banned for other categories, what about all the other related glitches? Banning the trick with the bubble would kill the other out of bounds glitch (bubble glitch in conjunction with object-loading glitch). It would probably not be used anyway.
The author loses the idea of what he is allowed to do to keep the fastest gameplay run valid. ANY TRICK might appear to cause game end. If it was used in a gameplay-based run in many places for some LITTLE benefit, banning it would result in this: You need to JUST REMOVE the new-banned trick to restore the category. Now as we now that ANYTHING can appear to cause game end, it may kill the interest in actually TASing anything. Because you are never sure what would become game breaking in future. Here we get a situation, when while no gameplay improvements are found, the Prmary category misses at all. No one would redo a run just to avoid ONE trick, not succeeding in improving the very run. Finding a gameplay improvement motivates people to redo runs. Not discovering that the old trick is banned. And still we need a rule when the skipped part is considered TOO MUCH for a Primary category. Megaman might skip literally EVERY level from the beginning. Would it still remain Primary? Or a judge must set it to Glitched and propose NOT SKIPPING levels for a Primary branch? Then it wouldn't differ too much from some of the OBSOLETED runs (besides subpixel optimisation). So I think the "same glitch" clarification has too many pitfalls for actual TASers, while the opposite has lesser pitfalls for judges. And if we don't need creating pitfalls for our players, we must discuss everything related to that problem.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 10/15/2012 3:12 PM
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AnS
Emulator Coder, Experienced player (727)
Joined: 2/23/2006
Posts: 682
feos wrote:
We would anyway have to draw them somewhere, I suggest it to be level border.
That's still rather arbitrary way to draw a line. Can you explain why skipping a whole level is different category from skipping the whole game?
feos wrote:
So I think the "same glitch" clarification has too many pitfalls for actual TASers, while the opposite has lesser pitfalls for judges.
Indeed, I don't quite understand the recently imposed urge to make judges' life easier at all costs. The priority should be to make players' life easier, and judges have to spend more effort on thinking/investigating/foreseeing instead of just applying common rules (such straightforward work doesn't even require humans). Players are content suppliers. They can exist without other groups, while other groups cannot exist without them. Limiting the freedom of TASers' creativity in favor of more comfortable management is... is something that can only exist in commercial structures.
Posted: 10/15/2012 3:30 PM
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
AnS wrote:
feos wrote:
We would anyway have to draw them somewhere, I suggest it to be level border.
That's still rather arbitrary way to draw a line. Can you explain why skipping a whole level is different category from skipping the whole game?
I try to set my opinion basing on what actually happens on the site. Most of the runs we have already have rather obvious solutions on whether they are Glitched or Primary. But when we have those cross-goal obsoletions, things may happen far not the way the author would intend. And to avoid disappointments, we HAVE to set the barrier. So, I recalled the situations in the Glitched runs we have and tried to work out AT LEAST something certain. I'd be glad to see other suggestions.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 10/15/2012 3:59 PM
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jlun2
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GBA TASer of 2010
AnS wrote:
feos wrote:
We would anyway have to draw them somewhere, I suggest it to be level border.
That's still rather arbitrary way to draw a line. Can you explain why skipping a whole level is different category from skipping the whole game?
About that, if skipping a level somehow becomes a different category from skipping the whole game, I'm totally going to do a "full" game TAS of Telefang which abuses the phone glitch to skip huge sections of the game all while following the path the game developers intended to do. Even though that leads to the question - why bother do that if you can simply skip to the end?
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.
Posted: 12/8/2012 5:45 PM
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
A sudden thought visited my head. Some time ago I had an argument with adelikat and Zeupar about obsoletion obsession. I was told by those guys that no matter what, a faster movie MUST obsolete a slower one, ideal solution would be to keep just one speed-oriented branch for each game, but "the poo-shield isn't strong enough" to apply it right away. This point is about setting a record, which is quite sane (at first glance). You use a trick you knew as the most optimal, kept a record (published run), then someone either improves this trick (making your old aplication of it suboptimal), or finds a way to skip the whole segment where this trick is needed. That means your run is overall suboptimal from this point, and once an improvement is submitted, it must obsolete your movie. This perfectly fits into the old politics (keep amount of branches as little as possible). However, until now, no strict border was drawn to separate obsolete-worthy runs from legit goal choices. But this is quite important, because adding a new branch usually means the adjacent branches still use tricks that may be proven suboptimal by such new run. And this situation kinda contradics with the record-oriented politics explained above. Example: [1908] SNES Super Metroid "ingame time" by Saturn in 39:15.30 contains tricks that prove suboptimal the tricks used in [1368] SNES Super Metroid by Taco & Kriole in 38:41.52 but none of them obsoletes each other. Why? Because the goal was considered different enough. No one minded SM had 5 branches from that point (it was cool, and 2 more published branches to come). But in some cases, the branch wasn't considered different enough. And one movie obsoleted another one. Despite of having noteably different flow. Why? Some tricks used in one branch were proven subopptimal by a new branch. And it got obsoleted. Examples: [1564] GB Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins by andymac in 21:43.52 [1721] GB Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins "game end glitch" by andymac & MUGG in 02:28.08 [450] SNES Chrono Trigger by hero_of_the_day in 4:21:11.83 [1285] SNES Chrono Trigger "save glitch" by inichi in 21:23.98 [1920] NES Battletoads "warps, 2 players" by feos & MESHUGGAH in 11:04.72 [2100] NES Battletoads "game end glitch" by TheZlomuS & DyLaX in 01:02.68 I was saying adelikat that a fastest branch is a gameplay-based TAS, and a glitched is different enough to become a side branch. He said that the trick used in any% branch was considered optimal when any% was published, but was proven suboptimal when glitched was submitted. He said the author might be trying to cut some more time with some trick in any% run, but couldn't, and the glitched run utilizes it better, thus must obsolete any%. He also suggested to obsolete all 3 Toads runs with one. Why such double standard exists at all? There might be a sudden border between a trick (SM cases) and a glitch (SML cases) - but no one ever mentioned that. It might be a personal decision of adelikat, but what it was based on back then? To keep branch amount minimal? This restriction was terminated. To avoid suboptimality? More or less suboptimal movies of same games have to co-exist (still, co-exist based on what?). To always keep only the fastest branch? It was never done officially. To satisfy the viewers who found the obsoleted run too outdated? SML2 and Toads still don't fit. Why then? Tell me someone? And now, when we no longer aim for branch minimum, we revive arbitrary goals as long as their submissions were not really sloppy. That system was successfully runned in for quite some time. But the obsoletion obsession still doesn't want to be revised. WHAT FOR we keep it?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 12/8/2012 5:51 PM
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natt
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feos wrote:
No one minded SM had 5 branches from that point (it was cool, and 2 more published branches to come)
I think that the forest of super metroid publications on this site is a cluster-circle-jerk of boring junk. Of course, I don't really care much about any of that stuff at all.
Posted: 12/8/2012 5:59 PM
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Warp
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We can't possibly create a new branch for every single submission just because they do something differently. For example, if there are 20 possible glitches that can be used to complete a certain game faster (ranging from barely noticeable glitches that save just a few frames to absolute game breakers), but using all of them results in a complete mess (ie. not much left of actual gameplay, screen is mostly garbage) and consequently there would be demand for a slightly less glitched version, which ones of those 20 glitches should be "banned" in such a "low-glitch" run? One author might decide to ban glitches A, B and C, while another author decides to ban glitches B, D and F, and a third one just glitch E. Should all of them be accepted as their own branches? If there are 20 possible glitches, there would be over a million possible combinations of which ones are used and which aren't. We can't possibly create a million branches for that one game. It's a question of pure practicality. The line must be drawn somewhere.
Posted: 12/8/2012 6:02 PM
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jlun2
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GBA TASer of 2010
I was saying adelikat that a fastest branch is a gameplay-based TAS, and a glitched is different enough to become a side branch.
Yea! Let's have like 5 TAS's of Telefang! 1. A glitchless run 2. A run that uses glitches to skip NPC's 3. The first published Telefang TAS 4. The second published Telefang TAS 5. A TAS that simply triggers the credits using the same glitch as runs 2,3,4. Why? Because it looks different! But seriously, I don't think there should be a branch for everytime a glitch makes the run look different. It'll make it hard to decide to what extent does the run have to look similar enough to obsolete an old run.
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.
Posted: 12/8/2012 6:07 PM
(Edited: 12/8/2012 6:13 PM)
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
Warp: yes, but I'm not talking of publishing just everything. Though the idea of "publication-worthy goal" is totally ambiguous. And I didn't speak of banning tricks (which can be proposed for future submissions, and only based on vewers opinion).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 12/8/2012 6:10 PM
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feos
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NES TAS of 2011
jlun2 wrote:
I don't think there should be a branch for everytime a glitch makes the run look different.
All the glitched branches we have published made the games not just "look different", but turned them into something undescribable (or skipped). No problem with that particularly.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 12/11/2012 7:18 PM
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KusogeMan
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Joined: 2/5/2012
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ok,but the glitched/fastest version remains the primary speedrun of the game,right?
TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.