So what do you think, TASVideos? Is it even possible that a game could be developed such that it is fundamentally designed to be so difficult as to render it "immune" to the TAS approach and TAS methods? Can any game, in theory, ever be "immune" to TASing?
Edit: sure thing, feos. I hope this will suffice (probably should have done this first, apologies).
Any game that has a "kill screen" (thus e.g. Pacman) is immune to TASing. If the game is not actually possible to beat, then it can't be TASed in the sense that was used there.
The point is, is not the kill screen the de facto end of the game? If one reaches it, and I guess completes it as much as possible, doesn't that mean one has beaten the game, for all intents and purposes?
It's hard to imagine such a game existing. I think it would have to be a kind of game that is not skill-based. The closest thing I can think of would be a chess game. Although, in a sense, there are tools to help even a non-player to play at superhuman strength: Top chess engines. OTOH, beating such an engine would in itself be an almost impossible challenge, except by using another chess engine. So, depending on how you define TASing, this might not be an example.
I think that categorizing a completely unbeatable game as "TAS-proof" is a bit of cheating. Of course it's "TAS-proof" if it's impossible to complete. That sounds like a complete triviality. What I'm thinking with "a TAS-proof game" is one that is perfectly well beatable, but its game mechanics are such that TAS tools do not help beat it any better. In other words, TASing it offers no advantage over playing it normally: It's exactly as difficult either way. It's hard to imagine such a game existing. I think it would have to be a kind of game that is not skill-based.
I think that categorizing a completely unbeatable game as "TAS-proof" is a bit of cheating. Of course it's "TAS-proof" if it's impossible to complete. That sounds like a complete triviality. What I'm thinking with "a TAS-proof game" is one that is perfectly well beatable, but its game mechanics are such that TAS tools do not help beat it any better. In other words, TASing it offers no advantage over playing it normally: It's exactly as difficult either way. It's hard to imagine such a game existing. I think it would have to be a kind of game that is not skill-based. The closest thing I can think of would be a chess game. Although, in a sense, there are tools to help even a non-player to play at superhuman strength: Top chess engines. OTOH, beating such an engine would in itself be an almost impossible challenge, except by using another chess engine. So, depending on how you define TASing, this might not be an example.
You could hold right as the stage started, do four pretty easy jumps along the way, and reach the flag with a 1.85 seconds in-game time every time. There would be no distinction between TAS and real-time, as real-time with just a little bit of practice would always get 1.85, and a TAS would not be able to do it any faster than that.
(The first stage is actually laid out a bit different now for exactly this reason, to make it non-trivial to get a perfectly optimized time).
Now imagine if a whole game was made of stages of this nature. A real-time runner would practically always be able to score a perfect time, and a TAS would not be able to beat that. Then you have a game where TASing it offers no advantage.What's more interesting than games that are deliberately impossible is games where it's not clear if a TAS could beat it or not.
Conceptually, a TAS that controls two programs simultaneously (one client, one server) is not impossible. We don't have the tools for it now, but there's no conceptual reason why we couldn't have a deterministic TCP/IP stack to go with deterministic game and deterministic server.
Conceptually, a TAS that controls two programs simultaneously (one client, one server) is not impossible. We don't have the tools for it now, but there's no conceptual reason why we couldn't have a deterministic TCP/IP stack to go with deterministic game and deterministic server.
