Further to recent discussion here http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18845 (particularly Warp's comments over the last few days) it appears that, for all there has never been consensus on this site for a Demo Tier, that ACE in particular has over the last few years crept into demo territory. Lots of people like watching these kind of movies but there has generally been a feeling that "pure" demos don't belong on a website that is about optimising video game play. The issue with ACE is that boundaries are blurred as what starts off as playing a specific video game becomes anything that you can do with inputs and a processor.
Incidentally, I suspect there is a reason why we have never had a Demo Tier, and that the reasoning is circular. We don't accept demos because we don't have a Demo Tier; and we don't have a Demo Tier because we have no demos to put in it.
So, at the risk of raking over old sores, I see there being three different ways to go forward:
1) Have a specific tier for Demos. The sort of things that would be appropriate for this tier would be movies with tags like "Demonstration" and "Playaround".
2) A more radical version of the above, which accepts content which the current rules do not allow. This would significantly expand the remit of what tasvideos is all about.
3) Keep the status quo.
Thoughts?
Do we have a clear definition of "playaround" somewhere? I think the lack of consensus on ACE comes from people applying their own definition. I, for one, believe that a "demo" "plays around" with a game's coding, thus it could fall within the playaround guidelines. At the same time, a demo could be considered "an unusual TAS concept" fit for the demonstration tag, but I don't see that defined that well, either.
I don't know how you debate this competently without first defining those terms. Or maybe I just overlooked something. (It's morning for me and I haven't completely woken up yet.)
I have the tendency to post a few too many Kappas.
In principle, tasvideos seldom accepts custom games or hacks, unless they are particularly notorious or famous. Moreover, I don't think tasvideos would ever accept a custom ROM that's not a game at all, but a demo.
It feels like ACE is somehow becoming a way to circumventing that principle. My intention is not to deride or insult the creators of these ACE demos (since I have enormous respect for their technical skills, and the amount of work they put into them), but it almost feels like the particular game that's being used to inject arbitrary code into the console is used more as an excuse to have a demo published on the site than anything else. The game itself isn't relevant. I'm not saying the authors are deliberately and actually thinking like that; I'm just saying that it effectively amounts to pretty much that. It's of course not the intent of the authors to circumvent any rules or princples, or anything of the sort, but in practice it's equivalent to it.
CardsOfTheHeart wrote:
Do we have a clear definition of "playaround" somewhere? I think the lack of consensus on ACE comes from people applying their own definition. I, for one, believe that a "demo" "plays around" with a game's coding, thus it could fall within the playaround guidelines.
I think that's stretching the definition of "play". I think "playaround" means actually playing the game in question. It does not refer to the game's executable code, the console hardware itself.
Anyway, what word you use and how you want to define it doesn't really matter. It's just a word. No principles and criteria should be formed by taking some word and trying to assign new meanings to it. The words and terms themselves are not the point. It's the intent behind them.
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thatguy wrote:
1) Have a specific tier for Demos. The sort of things that would be appropriate for this tier would be movies with tags like "Demonstration" and "Playaround".
2) A more radical version of the above, which accepts content which the current rules do not allow. This would significantly expand the remit of what tasvideos is all about.
3) Keep the status quo.
The point of this metacategory is to host runs that expand the internal gameplay using different sorts of tools and methods: software and hardware, and decide to showcase ideas behind those tools rather than pure gameplay being TASed. When actually implemented, those ideas become concepts, and such runs can thus be called concept demonstrations.
Focusing on those concepts can lead to breaking some rules that make the runs fit into Moons and Vault. If we move all runs that break those rules (but appear to be publication worthy otherwise) to the Demo tier, the overall clarity of the site content won't suffer, and all runs that could be questionable for laymen will be kept in a single area under special rules (and with special notice if needed).
We need some place where we could keep all the runs that break the rules of Moons and Vault. And since it's all about creativity and thinking outside of the box when one comes up with a new concept, you never know what rule will be broken next.
ACE runs that aim for showcasing some payload don't have to beat the game. They can trigger the ending routine by manipulating the game state directly, but this should not be the point of the run: the payload should be.
Some Demo tier runs could break the rule that bans cheat codes. And my page describes the grounds to accept such runs on. If the criteria aren't met, the run should not be published.
The point of having the criteria is that if we can't define the goal for the Demo tier, we won't even know what we want to have there. So I define it this way: Expanding the game software or hardware in some way only makes sense if it is a part of some concept that's being demonstrated. So just like we assess the quality of optimization and entertainment level of a run, we can just as well asses the qualities of the concept. And if it meets the criteria, we should publish it as a Concept Demonstration.
Warp: anything you could come up with can be checked against these criteria and that way we could figure out whether we want this published or not.
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.
As both TASer and viewer, I personally don't feel the necessity for a new tier. There are Playaround and Demonstration movie categories for grouping runs that have an objective different from beating the game, and if a run fails to fit in the current requirements, then it's either low entertaining quality or excessively obscure in its goal.
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ThunderAxe31, look up some examples on my page. We do have relevant content and possibilities around, it just doesn't fit yet.
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.
I do recognize the judging issue in demos -- particularly obsoletion and category expansion -- but assuming we are talking about MrWint's Pokémon Yellow here, I would have accepted that run in a heartbeat and worried about consequences and implications later.
I would have accepted that run in a heartbeat and worried about consequences and implications later.
And I worry it would lead to a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line? Do we suddenly start accepting all ACE demos with complete disregard to whether they even resemble a speedrun at all?
How many of these ACE demos would you accept? How many would be too many? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? Where's the limit? Or is there a limit, or any sort of criterion that defines acceptability? Should tasvideos.org just become a dumping ground for all console demos as long as they are injected into the console using ACE techniques?
Consider, for instance, speedrun.com. Every game may have one or more categories, but the requirements for those categories are really strict. They are not arbitrary and acceptance is not really up to people's subjective opinions on whether it's "worthy" or not. If the speedrun adheres to the requirements, and can be verified as being legit, its results are published in the top list for that category.
I have hard time believing that if you tried to submit, let's say, a glitchfest demonstration, they would accept it. It's not a speedrun. It's something else. It doesn't really belong there. It belongs to YouTube, Twitch, or somewhere else.
With this I'm not saying that ACE runs shouldn't be published here. I'm just questioning the criteria by which they are accepted. There seem to be pretty much none.
I think that's stretching the definition of "play". I think "playaround" means actually playing the game in question. It does not refer to the game's executable code, the console hardware itself.
You think "playaround" means actually playing the game in question. This is my problem. Everyone has their own interpretation of the word. As far as I'm concerned, a "demo" would be a subset of the playaround category. Real time speedruns aren't constrained by developer intent. Why should a playaround be constrained by the original game? This is the kind of ambiguity that I need cleared up before I can even see grounds for a debate.
Warp wrote:
Anyway, what word you use and how you want to define it doesn't really matter. It's just a word. No principles and criteria should be formed by taking some word and trying to assign new meanings to it. The words and terms themselves are not the point. It's the intent behind them.
Again, I don't know what the intent of the term "playaround" actually is because I don't see a good definition for it on the site.
I have the tendency to post a few too many Kappas.
Ultimately, it becomes less a matter of what the original game was and more a matter of what people do with the hardware.
So why even include the original game in the first place? To have something to lift some assets from? Dubious.
At some point, we've moved from a TAS to a plain demo. And this isn't the site for demos (however cool they are). If you want demos, a site such as Pouet is the correct location.
The implicit, but unstated, rule motivating Warp's posts seems to be that a playaround can't use ACE, only a demo can.
In my books, once you start executing your own code, the game has ended. And since the game ended before reaching the end, the game wasn't completed.
The game isn't even relevant anymore at that point. It was simply used to inject code into the console. Which game was used for this becomes a moot point (other than by the technical details of how to inject code into the console using that particular game, but this has nothing to do with speedrunning and completing the game in question.)
Why do some ACEs even bother to jump back to the game's code at some point? It's completely moot. If they are pretending like they have actually completed the game, they did so in a completely suboptimal manner (unless the ACE does nothing else besides jumping to the end, which would be a somewhat different discussion.) In fact, it almost feels like they are trying to get published based on a technicality. (And, once again, not that the authors are deliberately trying to circumvent some rules. It's just effectively what's happening, even if it's in good faith.)
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Warp wrote:
In my books, once you start executing your own code, the game has ended. And since the game ended before reaching the end, the game wasn't completed.
The game isn't even relevant anymore at that point. It was simply used to inject code into the console. Which game was used for this becomes a moot point (other than by the technical details of how to inject code into the console using that particular game, but this has nothing to do with speedrunning and completing the game in question.)
My question is still this: Why is it bad to host such runs that our community members made exclusively for our community?
You guys talk about the rules, but if the cause is really worth it, rules can be exclusively bended:
[2558] SNES Super Metroid "GT code, game end glitch" by amaurea, Cpadolf & total in 14:52.88 is a terrific run everyone loves, and the debug code it uses was considered to be justified, due to that run's other merits. Why can't we extrapolate such approach for other runs that people put their TAS related effort into?
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.
My question is still this: Why is it bad to host such runs that our community members made exclusively for our community?
I'm asking what the limits and criteria of acceptance are for that. Do we just publish everything that anybody submits, or are there minimum requirements? Why are some submissions accepted and others rejected? How many "runs" of the same game is it reasonable to host?
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Warp wrote:
I'm asking what the limits and criteria of acceptance are for that. Do we just publish everything that anybody submits, or are there minimum requirements? Why are some submissions accepted and others rejected? How many "runs" of the same game is it reasonable to host?
Nothing is accepted to the demo tier as it doesn't exist. My impression was that this thread discusses the suggestions, which I have plenty of.
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.
Nothing is accepted to the demo tier as it doesn't exist. My impression was that this thread discusses the suggestions, which I have plenty of.
As you might remember, I have been one of the biggest proponents of some kind of demo tier, separate from the actual speedrun tiers. But the discussions about that kind of tiered system has never produced any actual results, even though there have been many good suggestions. Will it ever happen?
The underlying question here is, how many different ACE Playarounds should be published on the site.
Creating an additional tier does precisely nothing to address this question, so it's not going to help. Indeed, it would only confuse the issue further, considering we already have more tiers than most visitors know what to do with. So let's not do that.
Instead, we should look into whether the current guidelines on playarounds are (1) written down somewhere, and (2) sufficient if ACE'ing is becoming more common.
Creating an additional tier does precisely nothing to address this question, so it's not going to help.
I think it would help.
Generally speaking there has always been a principle of keeping the number of different kind of TASes of a given game to a very moderate amount. (Once you start hitting like 5 or 6 different kinds of TASes, it starts being too much, and the discussion always turns to whether to accept a new one for it or not.)
Also another driving principle is that of obsoletion: A "better" TAS of a given game, using the same category, obsoletes the older one, and thus there always exists only one "official" TAS of that game in that category.
A demo tier would pretty much remove those limitations. You could have as many ACE (or whatever) runs of a particular game without having to worry about those limitations. If there are 20 amazing ACE runs using a particular game, it would be completely alright. It would also allow other types of TASes of that game besides ACEs, and there would be no need to worry about there being "too many" categories. As long as it's something notable and exceptional, it would be ok.
It would need to be a rather distinct tier, kept conceptually separate from actual TASes, so as to not get confused with them.
Generally speaking there has always been a principle of keeping the number of different kind of TASes of a given game to a very moderate amount ... A demo tier would pretty much remove those limitations. You could have as many ACE (or whatever) runs of a particular game without having to worry about those limitations.
That strikes me as a strong argument against having a 'demo tier'. The way you describe it, it would basically become a dumping ground for arbitrary videos with no quality control. That already exists, and it's called YouTube; the purpose of TASvideos is different.
Maybe you missed the "as long as it's something notable and exceptional, it would be ok" part?
To me, not having a separate "demo" tier for ACEs, and trying to shove them into the same space as all the regular TASes is what makes no sense. Acceptance is completely arbitrary, as there are essentially no rules nor guiding principles, "obsoletion" is completely nonsensical (how and why exactly would an ACE demo "obsolete" another? On what criteria?) and there would just be this strange situation where a few ACE demos for a certain game are accepted, but their number is artificially kept down because the normal TAS principles are being applied to them, even though those principles do not make much sense (because they were designed for TASes that aim at fastest completion).
"Completely arbitrary" is the key issue here, IMO. There is no rhyme or reason, there are no guiding principles, there are essentially no rules. (In fact, I'd say that ACE demos break the rules, pretty much, because they don't complete the game nor break any existing records.) Publishing them is subjective to the highest degree. Not publishing an ACE demo is subjective to the highest degree.
If somebody were to submit a new ACE using pokemon yellow, using a completely different payload, what would happen? Would it be accepted alongside the recent one? Would it be rejected? Would it replace the recent one? What? And why?
Acceptance is completely arbitrary, as there are essentially no rules nor guiding principles, "obsoletion" is completely nonsensical (how and why exactly would an ACE demo "obsolete" another? On what criteria?)
Have you read Nach's lengthy explanation on why the recent Pokemon run was accepted? It seems to me that answers every single one of your questions here.
It strikes me that the issue is not so much "these questions have gone unanswered", but that "these questions have been repeatedly answered but you disagree with the answer". Now there's nothing wrong with that, you can certainly consider changes you'd like to be made to the site; but it would be vastly more productive if you start with describing the current answers and what exactly you dislike about them.
Because there are clear rules and guiding principles on both acceptance and obsolecense, and Nach (among others) is using those; there's nothing more arbitrary about these runs than about any moon or star run. And again, nor does throwing a new tier into the mix make the decision any more or less arbitrary.
Have you read Nach's lengthy explanation on why the recent Pokemon run was accepted? It seems to me that answers every single one of your questions here.
Not really. Why does it obsolete the other run? On what grounds? It received more positive comments?
If somebody submits a new one, on what basis will it obsolete, or not obsolete, this one? Why should it obsolete this one?
Having just one ACE run of a particular game makes little sense. Which one is the "official" one? The newest that has been submitted? Will every submission automatically obsolete the old one, as long as it's "entertaining enough"?
It strikes me that the issue is not so much "these questions have gone unanswered"
Where are you getting that "unanswered" thing from? Not from this thread, at least.
but it would be vastly more productive if you start with describing the current answers and what exactly you dislike about them.
If seven relatively lengthy posts in this thread are not enough, then I don't know what is.
Because there are clear rules and guiding principles on both acceptance and obsolecense, and Nach (among others) is using those
What are they? I didn't find any in Nach's judgment of the run. Unless you count "User feedback for this run was terrific." Can it get more subjective than that?
(Yes, you can use that as a reason to publish. I don't see how you can use that as a reason to obsolete a previous run.)
I also liked this: "The votes were good too, not that that matters."
Not that that matters.
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Warp wrote:
Radiant wrote:
Have you read Nach's lengthy explanation on why the recent Pokemon run was accepted? It seems to me that answers every single one of your questions here.
Not really. Why does it obsolete the other run? On what grounds? It received more positive comments?
Because there are clear rules and guiding principles on both acceptance and obsolecense, and Nach (among others) is using those
What are they? I didn't find any in Nach's judgment of the run. Unless you count "User feedback for this run was terrific." Can it get more subjective than that?
Gee, why not look at the paragraph which actually had the word "obsolete" in it. Here's a direct link to it: http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html#PayloadUniqueness
This section actually discusses what the run itself did on objective grounds.
Quoting the section I wrote regarding feedback which made no mention of obsoletion, and only there for tier consideration as somehow being my decision for obsoletion was a real nice job on your part. </sarcasm>
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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Regarding something more on topic.
I agree with these two posts:
Warp wrote:
In principle, tasvideos seldom accepts custom games or hacks, unless they are particularly notorious or famous. Moreover, I don't think tasvideos would ever accept a custom ROM that's not a game at all, but a demo.
It feels like ACE is somehow becoming a way to circumventing that principle. My intention is not to deride or insult the creators of these ACE demos (since I have enormous respect for their technical skills, and the amount of work they put into them), but it almost feels like the particular game that's being used to inject arbitrary code into the console is used more as an excuse to have a demo published on the site than anything else. The game itself isn't relevant. I'm not saying the authors are deliberately and actually thinking like that; I'm just saying that it effectively amounts to pretty much that. It's of course not the intent of the authors to circumvent any rules or princples, or anything of the sort, but in practice it's equivalent to it.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
As both TASer and viewer, I personally don't feel the necessity for a new tier. There are Playaround and Demonstration movie categories for grouping runs that have an objective different from beating the game, and if a run fails to fit in the current requirements, then it's either low entertaining quality or excessively obscure in its goal.
Along with no one bothering looking into classification, as well as the huge divide I see in posts arguing for interesting demonstrations and what is normally done, as well as feedback from typical viewers, I am withdrawing my support for any kind of demonstration tier that I gave in the past.
I've summarized my thoughts on the matter here: http://tasvideos.org/Nach/RFCTierTechnicalShowcase.html
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
