This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5182: Meerkov's SNES Zombies Ate My Neighbors in 22:50.71

You might want to double check the level breakdown table. For example, a lot of the 'Meerkov v Allbeert' values seem to actually be the difference between the MechChicken and Allbeert values. Also, many of the Meerkov values are a lot higher than the Allbeert values, which doesn't seem right, as surely this is supposed to be an improvement. Also, based on the description, it does not sound like you fully optimized this:

However, I make a mistake by not luring the zombie tighter and instead going for a chest first. I end the level only 135 frames ahead, squandering two seconds from what I could have gotten :/.

I spend it here, I think it's slightly better.

I'm also confused what you mean by "In my run, I have to leave in 2P's input because removing it would actually desync the run otherwise." Did you start making this as a two player run, and then found that in one-player mode, it desynced, so you kept the second controller's input?

Voting Yes! Awesome improvement of the previous 1-player run! More speedy and more harder!

Oh boy, how embarrassing. Yeah the times are swapped after level 5, but the right two columns(difference between runs) is correct. I'll double check all the data later tonight. Also, yes! I started a 2 player run, got half way finished, and realized 1p is much faster because you need to pick up half as many speed shoes; a big improvement. Even using two players, MechChicken's run has areas to improve, but the need for shoes forced me to start over as a 1p run. This is a very highly optimized run, with the exception of a few things, which I call out in the areas to improve. Level 1, I did make a mistake (doh!), but still was faster than the previous run. On level 3, I actualy did try both ways, using a shoe on 3 and 4. 3 was not much faster. I'll make that more clear I tried both. I did also a lot of different things, like I tried earning a bonus victim on level 47 to use the boss skip glitch mentioned in the forums here. It turned out to be about 100-200 frames slower than the 2P run. Then I had to go back, decrease my score, avoid taking unneccessary hits ( that allowed me to die quickly for the glitch), and then fight the whole boss, resulting in a reductions of 200 frames, a 400 frame swing, without even considering the damage and bonus victim message time. It's not easy to tell, but let me tell you, that spider boss is nasty!! We're basically underneath the boss using a melee weapon while it shoots AoE attacks and exploding bats orbit me. Phew it was a lot of work, basically going back 20 levels and redoing all the rng! While there are areas to improve, we're talking about maybe a dozen seconds, over the whole run. In most areas I fight for every frame possible, hugging every corner perfectly, and trying dozens dozens (like seriously took me hours) of variations when fighting the spiders to get the result I present to you today :)

Easy yes vote. High quality run! I'm glad someone finally took the time to figure out the RNG in this game. Do you think you could post the script you used to get the whole 65k possibilities? (Or the results on a pastebin/excel :) ) Great job.

I'm giving this like the other a Meh. Neither 1 player TASes is entertaining for me. What I'm concerned about is that you lose managed to 304 frames to Allbeert's TAS without explaining why you have lost these frames in the Detailed Comments nor the Possible Improvements. The other concerns on what I have, is what JorWat25 has already mentioned.

i thought he was spending time getting items off the original route and manipulating the drops,isn't it?he goes out of his way pretty frequently.

First of thanks to the early voters, I'm glad this has a fairly positive response so far! @Spikestuff That's alright, but don't let the write up confuse you! I'd like to help explain. I have a habit of being a bit verbose, so I really tried to remove unnecessary over explanation from the post. Grassini is right. I think you are talking about the -304 frames from Lv 15, 21, 29, and 30, the only 4 levels I was slower than Allbeert on. Great observation. The explanation I didn't think would be very exciting to read, but Grassini is spot on: it's just me picking up items and manipulating RNG: Here's the breakdown: Level 15, I picked up 1 more item than Allbeert (-24 frames) Level 21, I picked up 1 more item than Allbeert (-22 frames) Level 29, I picked up 7 more items than Allbeert (-195 frames) Level 30, I picked up 3 more items than Allbeert (-63 frames) Total: 12 more items, -304 frames. Average of 25.3 frames per item. When doing this run, I pick up 70+ items, mostly from manipulating chests. I thought it would be too repetitive so I only included the more unique path changes, and difficult decisions. My whole strategy was to pick up waaaay more items. But it's a good point that these are the only 4 levels I lost frames on. So, why is spending 25.3 frames to pick up an item, worth it? I actually did a bit of math: The shortest level is now level 2, at 199 frames of input (it takes a bit longer for the door to open up, but the real hurry is to pick up the survivor). If we were moving at 2x speed, we would save 100 frames minimum. Every key I picked up on these levels could have been a shoe (I just would have picked up the key on a different level), so we can assume that these 12 items are all worth at least "1 shoe" worth of savings each. We know a shoe is a minimum savings of 100 frames, so spending 25.3 frames to save 100+ frames later is then obviously worth it. It's a bit mundane, but this was the guideline I used when planning my route, by seeing which chests I needed to go out of my way <100 frames for. I fully admit, it's possible I didn't select the optimal ~70 chests ( I mention it as a possible area of improvement), but I'm fairly confident in the route. I'll update the submission to mention this.

@Allbeert I'm glad you liked it! Sure, I'm happy to provide the script. I copy/pasted the values for Shoes and Skeleton keys directly into the script so I could highlight them in my HUD. If you use this script as is, you'll get the HUD I was using. To generate the drop table, I was using gatherRNG(), but it's not hooked up anymore. I provide no warranty, use at your own peril! http://pastebin.com/x6UfXhPw

About that mistake at the very beginning, while it does mean it's suboptimal, look at final fantasy v tas(not the recent one). He says sorry I didn't know much about luck manipulation. Despite early mistake, it was still accepted. Tasvideos does not have a mandate for frame perfect submissions. Not everyone has all the time in the world. And would greatly slow down production if anything.

Entertainment run. Technical tricks only: sliding, run everywhere possible and luck manipulation. But it works! Location of victim is non-manipulable? Yes vote

@XYZ correct. You can't manipulate the victims location. The way it works is you have between 1-10 victims on each level, equal to the number saved on the previous level (+1 if you get 40k points). Each victim has a number from 1 to 10 as well. So I you have 2 victims left alive, the next level spawns victim #1 and #2, which are always in the same locations, regardless of which the id number of the victims you save. This is the issue with using the boss skip glitch on the level 48. The #1 victim is always locked behind the boss door. The victim#2 is superduper far away from #1. You game over if you have 0 victims left, so you always have to spawn victim#1 which is behind the boss door.

About that mistake at the very beginning, while it does mean it's suboptimal

Clearly it's RNG manipulation.

@lord Yoshi, hah well actually a little bit:). I'd fix it except I'd need to redo the rng for the entire game. It's not completely for nothing. I do end up with 4 more bazooka ammo as a result of that path, which is not a great trade, but does help since I actually do run low at one point during the run.

So with this submission comes a new question: Should this obsolete both the published 1p run and the 2p any% run? This has been getting much better entertainment votes, enough to make it to Moons (as you can see by my quickly-rescinded judgement), and as far as I can tell it is definitely much faster to use 1p for any% runs for several reasons. From the improvement table, the published 1p run is slower than the 2p run in about 19 levels, while this new run is only slower than 2p in 6 levels, so it's worth talking about whether or not we can consider this equal on the level of the 2p run. Speaking personally, I would probably push for double-obsoletion right now while still allowing an optimized 2p any% run to have a shot at being re-published if the audience finds it entertaining. I just think that this run outshines 2p in terms of better routing and strategy, and it seems like the only reason it's slower in those 6 levels is because it gets speed shoes to save far more time in later levels. So what do you all think?

I think you've about hit the nail on the head, Samsara. Let this one obsolete both any% runs, with the caveat that "2p any%" is still a valid category by our metrics.

I think you've about hit the nail on the head, Samsara. Let this one obsolete both any% runs, with the caveat that "2p any%" is still a valid category by our metrics.

The question is, are they different enough entertainment wise? Any% has been retired from our official system some years ago. Many games have both published, aiming for speed alone is only a goal for Vault runs. Having done some of those 1p/2p runs myself, I know well how good it can be to have both, so please keep your horses guys. I'd better see an actual comparison of differences, probably I'll try to do it in a few days. Looking at numbers alone, 2p has the same amount of "yes posts" as this one, but it has better votes. And with no one complaining about similarity, it doesn't feel like there's need to obsolete the 2p run, but I'll look closer later myself.

My opinion is that number of players should only be concerned with going faster, not be regarded as a seperate category in any other respect, so yes I would say it should obsolete both 1p and 2p. But I don't know how or if this is formalized anywhere in the rules. I know Battletoads for example maintains seperate 1 and 2 player runs (my opinion there too would be that it shouldn't) but does this always have to be true whenever 2 players is a possibilioty? Maybe some formal guidelines should be added regarding this for consistancy?

Alyosha, since Moons, it doesn't work like that anymore. Here's a list of our games with branches that were considered entertaining enough and different enough to co-exist (as of April of 2014): http://pastebin.com/vsZ8UtrF Notice the amount of branches for popular games, and amount of 1p/2p co-existing, which has been a standard practice for years. Here's the rules: http://tasvideos.org/JudgeGuidelines.html#TiersAndGoals http://tasvideos.org/JudgeGuidelines.html#Branches Also see how unobsoletion has become an official practice too: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14430 This post specifically explains it. And here's an example of a working comparison.

Eh? Maybe I don't get the question then. Why is it even a question whether this run can/should obsolete the 2 player one or not? Wouldn't the answer be no it can't? (going by all that stuff you posted)

I already posted the question that decides that: Are they different enough entertainment wise? In most cases, 2p action is more entertaining by default, just because there's more of it. And 1p action is entertaining because it has to showcase a different approach in strats: implementing them alone one must tighten the amount of overall actions, that might lead to unobvious solutions, resulting in unique entertainment as well.

The intent of the question was never meant to be "can we have a 1p run and a 2p run published at the same time", because obviously we can judging from the tens of times those same examples were brought up. It was supposed to be "Since this run is technically superior in every way to the 2p run, should we obsolete the 2p run until we get an optimized version". There were calls for the currently published 1p run to obsolete the 2p run when it was submitted, I'm just carrying it over here and making it more of an issue. There just so happens to be another case for double obsoletion: 1p was originally published because it is the fastest any% for this game: Thus, it can be safely Vaulted, which it was. 2p was published to Moons, but since its publication the ratings haven't exactly reflected that of a Mooned submission. feos, even with all your arguing for it to remain published, you only gave it a 5 in entertainment, well under what a Mooned submission should be. As far as I can tell, we don't have any situations where there are both 1p and 2p any% runs in Vault, and as far as I know we can't allow that under Vault rules. Because of this, it makes sense to obsolete the published 2p run at this moment just based on its current ratings alone. We can't drop it down to Vault because it doesn't qualify, since it's not the fastest any% it has to be treated as a separate category. Of course, if someone submits an optimized version later on down the road then we can definitely re-publish the category if it's well-received, which it should be.

I didn't say they should co-exist, I said they should if they deserve that. As for technical superiority, see my judgment of Super Metroid: - "glitched" run was proposed to obsolete "in-game"due to the latter being suboptimal by the today's standards - back when the "in-game" run was submitted, the community decided it should co-exist with the main branch, however - when a new run of the main branch is submitted, the decision must be made again, since those are the 2 branches with the most content overlap We should not mess with obsoletion chains for the sake of keeping the most up-to-date run visible alone, we should figure out solid reasons to keep branches separated or to merge them, basing on their content overlap and how entertaining it is. See, technical value is not the main factor. It only is, when comparing similar branches. And it is their similarity that we must figure out. Anyway, I'm saying all that before actually having looked deeply into both.

Speaking personally, I would probably push for double-obsoletion right now while still allowing an optimized 2p any% run to have a shot at being re-published if the audience finds it entertaining.

This is what I call messing around with obsoletion chains. Even if the 2p run is improved, that won't change its gameplay much, so its entertainment value is going to remain the same as it is now (mostly). So we already can make decisions considering these predictions. Note: I don't mean we must blindly obsolete whichever is less entertaining by the statistics, but carefully compare content itself and how unique it is. Come on, it's Moons already for both of them, you don't have to obsolete (unless they're really similar)!

Glad everyone is liking the submission. Happy to be up for Moon status. Since I spent quite a bit of time playing this game I thought I'd offer my thoughts on the 1P v 2P discussion. I read the previous submission's forum posts, and I had a few thoughts on the subject. I'll give a few arguments for having only one any% category, here's why: This game doesn't really change much with 2 players. It reminds me of games where Hard Mode just gives enemies 2x the HP. In this game, you would need to collect 2x the items. 2P doesn't allow any new tricks. In Sonic 2, Tails can carry Sonic, which can really change the strategy. In this, a 1P and 2P run isn't very different. In terms of the guideline that 2P runs can often have more "action": This run is a full 8 minutes faster than the 2P run. I think that is very competitive when it comes to action on screen.

Well, I watched them, and I can say that since I still can't watch either of them entirely due to complete boredom, I'm not opposed to obsoletion anymore. Their gameplay is indeed quite similar, and 1p is done with a faster overall pace and better precision.