Game Description

“Zool – Ninja of the Nth Dimension” is a platformer released in 1993 for various consoles including the Sega Master System. The game varies drastically across platforms. The Game Gear version has similar mechanics to Master System, but entirely different level layouts.
The Master System version was exclusive to Europe, hence the PAL settings were used (sorry encoders :P)
The objective of each level is to collect 99 objects. These objects could be food, z-tokens or items such as super jump. Once you collect 99, the arrow will point to the exit. The exit does not exist until you have 99.
It turns out none of this matters because this game is beatable within 32 frames of actual gameplay. This is the game end glitch category which obseletes #6572: The8bitbeast's SMS Zool: Ninja of the "Nth" Dimension "game end glitch" in 03:10.05 by 8373 frames (a time save of 2:47.46)!
The final time for this TAS is 21.609 seconds, making it the fastest Master System TAS on TASvideos!
This TAS is a 9.88 second time using RTA timing as on https://www.speedrun.com/zool_sega_master_system/full_game It is possible to get a 9.84 time, but that would result in a later final input, meaning a slower TAS timing.

The New Credits Warp

My current published TAS uses a credits warp in 2-1 which involves being hit by an enemy onto a bouncy surface. The earliest this warp can be done is in 2-1 (level 5) as there are no bouncy surfaces in levels 1 to 4. After this TAS, an RTA community for this game emerged. During a run, cxrnxr encountered an earlier credits warp in 1-2 https://youtu.be/pUnCy4g7G08
After this credits warp was found, a gold rush to push it earlier begun. With lots of help from the community, I was able to pull back the credits warp to the start of level 1.
The key to the credits warp is to have Zool teeter on an edge and press up (Note that you can also press P2 Up or P2 Down). Pressing up appears to reset/affect Zool’s teetering animation and doing this with specific positioning at specific spots of the animation will cause the game to warp you to the credits.
There is also a third method of credits warp that has been found by Phozon, but it is slower than the teetering method. In the clip Phozon gets hit by an enemy into a bouncy surface, then grabs a wall. The game warps him to the credits upon him grabbing the wall. It is currently unknown if this is possible without the bouncy surface. https://clips.twitch.tv/WildPunchyStapleAMPTropPunch

Optimizing the Game End Glitch

As the game end glitch has to do with Zool’s teetering animation, causing certain things to happen with the animation can trigger it.
One option is to wait for Zool to teeter and experiment with pressing up at certain points of the animation. This is bad as you have to wait for some time before he will start teetering.
The alternative is to press up on the frame you reach 0 speed. Simply reaching 0 speed from not pressing buttons doesn’t work, but reaching 0 speed through pressing L, R or L+R gives potential to cause the glitch. Therefore, in the TAS, I aim for the fastest time for Zool to be:
-In the teeter range of the edge while
-Pressing L, R or L+R and
-Reaching 0 speed on the same frame (I’ve never seen the glitch occur with nonzero speed)
As such, I hold L at the start of the TAS until Zool has moved to the left enough that letting go of L will allow him to reach the edge. Here is a list of acceleration values with the buttons that are pressed shortly after letting go of L:
Buttons PressedAcceleration to the right
Neutral0x48
Right0x40
Down0x15
L+R0x00
L-0x40
It is important to note that shortly after letting go of L, pressing R, L+R or nothing will all have the same effect on speed, which is equivalent to the acceleration of letting go of L. The R or L+R accelerations from the table only come into effect once you have a speed below 0x0200, which occurs 9 frames after letting go of left at top speed (0x400). Despite not affecting speeds when at high speeds, pressing R or L+R has some affect on the glitch as it affects the teetering animation.
Counter intuitively, pressing R actually causes Zool to decelerate slower, making him go more to the left! This can be used to potentially make it to the edge while letting go of left a frame earlier.
This TAS reaches 0 speed on frame 1073, at which point it presses up as it’s last input. The previous input was a R input with some speed about to hit 0. As discussed previously, this can lead to the glitch.
My main concern is that it is possible to reach the edge with 0 speed on frame 1072 by utilizing down presses. However down presses have an acceleration of 0x15, which misaligns your speed value modulo 8 and there is no way to restore the alignment other than hitting 0 speed (using neutral inputs) or using 8 down presses. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem possible to trigger the glitch by pressing up on the frame you hit 0 speed if you achieved that 0 speed through a neutral d-pad input.

Jumping

Jumping causes faster acceleration and deceleration, but it is not useful as the smallest jump lands later than the last input of this TAS and there does not seem to be a way to trigger the glitch in the air.

Brute Forcing Attempts

In a desperate attempt to save that potential extra frame, I wrote some scripts to brute force this TAS. As mentioned above, we can remove jumping from the search, but each frame we have any combinations of U,D,L,R, shoot to choose from. From here I noticed that down has the highest priority and up has the lowest priority, meaning that I didn’t include any inputs in my brute force that had combinations of up or down with left or right.
I also didn’t do much brute forcing with bullet shooting because it didn’t seem to have a serious impact. Most of my attempts only pressed up at the end of the inputs, since it doesn’t seem to do anything in game apart from messing with your teetering animation and triggering the glitch.
My method for detecting a game end glitch was to look at the level value and check that it wasn’t 0. The glitch always corrupts your level value to something different.
Below I’ll summarize a number of different approaches that I took to brute forcing, but it is likely that I missed some attempts that I’ve forgotten about.

Brute force attempt 1

My first attempt literally started searching the whole d-pad and shooting space before I realized the search reduction methods above. I got about 5-6 frames in with the brute forcing and did not trigger the game end glitch.

Brute force attempt 2

I started the run by holding left for a bit, then went 1-2 frames before this TAS lets go of left and searched the space with the minimizations above. I got 6-7 frames in without triggering the glitch.
I also only allowed neutral and R within 7 frames of letting go of left. Both neutral and R do the same thing to your speed, but have different effects on your teetering and hence the glitch. L+R and R have identical effects in all aspects within 7 frames of letting go of left.

Brute force attempt 3

I held left until the frame before I let go of left in this movie and searched the whole space. I noticed that L+R, R and neutral did the same thing within 7 frames of you letting go of left. Once again, I got 8-9 frames in without triggering the glitch

Brute force attempt 4

Here I assumed that left wouldn’t be used after I let go of left, so I removed this from the search

Brute force attempt 5

I let go of left 1 frame earlier than this movie and removed down from the search space as down results in the speed misalignment. I did not find a solution that was faster than this TAS

Brute force attempt 6

Same as attempt 5 except that I let go of left on the same frame as this movie. Here I reproduced the glitch at the same speed as this movie through the brute forcer. Interestingly, last input was on the same frame as this movie, but the fadeout to the credits happened 2 frames slower. This was because the brue forcer stumbled across a slightly different pattern of pressing right vs pressing neutral in the 7 frame window after letting go of left.
At this point I concluded that the brute forcing attempts were finished and I had not found any improvements to my original solution by hand (this submitted movie). It’s possible that the fadeout could happen quicker than this movie, but not the last input.
I’m extremely confident that I exhaustively searched the space of left, right and left+right inputs. However it was too computationally intense to search the space including down inputs fully. I did however search a large portion of that down input space.
This means that I’m relying on my understanding of the glitch triggering conditions to conclude that this it optimal. Although, the elusive potential frame save still bothers me a lot, hence all the brute forcing attempts and delayed submission.
My original script can be found at this link, but I ended up with about 10 different scripts in the end for different phases of testing. This is just my first script: userfiles/info/61050675887497989

RTA Community and “Console Verification”

Shortly after my original TAS, an RTA community popped up for this game. This led to many discoveries including the new game end glitch that allowed me to save so much time with this TAS.
After finding the new game end glitch, I quickly made a TAS which matches this submission’s TAS timing. I realized that this would be possible to match RTA as it only relied on hitting 2 frame perfect inputs. After some trying, I managed to get the WR of 9.88 seconds RTA timing. Note: RTA timing starts from pressing 1 on the title screen and ends on the first fully blue frame after the level fades out to the credits.
I made a tutorial on how to achieve 9.88 and we eventually had 40 people tie my RTA world record of 9.88!
Of significant note is btrim who achieved 9.88 on console https://youtu.be/RNwVmRxMNXw Considering he held the 1 button from bootup, he actually completely matched this run in timing from power on. This makes this *technically* the first console verified Master System TAS!

A Faster Run in RTA Timing (9.84)

It’s possible to make the game fade to the credits 2 frames faster than this TAS. You need to pause and unpause frame perfectly within about a 10 frame window near the glitch. This is a general glitch which will make any level fade out 2 frames faster. This is not used in the TAS because it causes your last input to be 2 frames later.
A button file of this 9.84 can be found here: userfiles/info/61050567104901897
Note: It’s quite possible that there’s an alternate method to trigger the glitch that fades out much faster. As I said in the brute forcing section, I found one with an almost identical setup that fades out 2 frames slower. I haven’t put heaps of effort into finding a faster fade out as that wouldn’t affect the TAS timing.

RAM Addresses

AddressDescription
0x0AB5,0x0AB4X Vel
0x0AF8,0x0AF7,0x0AF6X Position
0x0AB7,0x0AB6Y Velocity
0x0AF5,0x0AF3,0x0AF4Y Position
0x0A92HP
0x0A80i-frame timer
0x0ADDDObject count
0x0A84Level
0x0B95,0x0B85Boss HP

Final Thoughts

Thanks again to Revenged2, greysondn and Synahel for making sure the original game end glitch wasn’t lost. It was finding the post in the TASvideos forum where I actually found out about this amazing TAS game.
Thanks to cxrnxr and the rest of the RTA community for helping to find the faster credits warp
Thanks to EZscape for bringing more attention to this game and the Master System

ThunderAxe31: Judging.
ThunderAxe31: Setting to Delayed, in view of a possible improvement.
ThunderAxe31: Sadly, this movie fails to meet one important rule: a speed-oriented movie must beat all existing records. This rule is strict, since one of the main basis of this site is to represent TAS records. What's worse, is that those already existing records were played without using TASing tools, which means that this submission doesn't feature superhuman play.
Before proceeding with the verdict, I've considered the possibility to let the author replace the submitted movie with a version that triggers the ending 2 frames earlier, at the cost of having additional movie inputs, if that resulted faster than all known records. This could have been taken into consideration, in light of a recent precedent that preferred a movie that beats the game earlier by using more inputs, as opposed of a counterpart that beats the game later with less inputs. However, it turned out that the RTA community tied the faster ending movie as well. The author mentioned the hypothesis of triggering the ending even earlier, but he in the end he wasn't able to do so.
So in any case, this submission is rejected for failing to beat known records.
Beside the judgement itself, I have an additional note. First, I want to thank the author for making and for submitting this movie, despite the fact that it somehow could have appeared unacceptable from the start. Failing to beat known records is usually considered as an obvious mistake, however this is a special case because it opens to a new problematic scenario that has not really figured out yet. While the gameplay execution is considered trivial for this submitted movie, it isn't the case for the currently published movie, as it well featured superhuman gameplay and did beat all known records at the time. Submissions that get rejected for trivial gameplay are usually the result of a bad game choice, as it's the game itself which is not able to feature superhuman gameplay in any form. However, in this case we have a typical game that allows for developing and showcasing plenty of superhuman play, except when the specific game end glitch technique present in this submission is applied. As I mentioned at the beginning, beating all known records is considered a strict requirement, but I wonder if an exception should be raised for the usage of glitches that produce a trivial movie for games that would otherwise be suitable for featuring tool-assisted superplay. Otherwise, the currently published movie would remain perpetually not obsoleted, despite eventual discoveries that could improve it without making use of the trivial glitch used for this submission. The very same situation also applies for this game, so we're not talking about an isolated case and we may see more games falling into this limbo, in future.
In any case, the aforementioned problem doesn't concern this submission, as in itself doesn't affect the current judgment, so this matter should be duly discussed in the Ask a Judge thread, or in any future submission thread that will aim to obsolete the currently published movie, without making use of a specific technique that could render a whole movie trivial to match with real-time play attempts.

ThunderAxe31: After reading some opinions in the submission thread and discussing with other staff members, I decided to reconsider my current verdict for this submission and start over this judgement process.
ThunderAxe31: At first, I was sure that this submission shouldn't be accepted because it doesn't stand out from unassisted speedrun play. However, after extensive discussion with other staff members, I've come to change my mind about it. I used to think that a TAS should be considered as such only if it's impossible to be matched by real-time attempts, but in the end we can't really draw an objective borderline for defining what it's within human possibilities and what is beyond that, as we've seen over time speedrunners breaking the limit multiple times over history. And on the other hand, trying to enforce such requirement would also uselessly limitate TASing possibilities, as the TASing community did also repeatedly surpass the previous feats, to the point of reaching paradoxical results. In this specific case, the paradox consists in having optimized gameplay so much that it actually turned out easier for human play attempts, to the point that they could in fact match its timing.
So, since the staff come to agreement about allowing these kind of movies, the Movie Rules and Vault pages have been updated accordingly. Specifically, submitted movies are not required anymore to beat all known records, but just to at very least match them. Note that this rule change wasn't made just for the sake of accepting this submission, but rather because it was considered as more appropriate for its original intent.
Another important rule change was the introduction of a better definition of triviality. We want to restrict triviality on a game-by-game basis, depending on if a game can or not produce TASes that aren't too easy to make or to match in RTA. This basically means that even if a new submission results easy to make or to match in RTA, it will be accepted anyway if that game was previously known to feature at least one TASing record that wasn't trivial to match in new TASing attempts, with the tech knowledge available at that time. Please note that this new rule is referring to edge cases like GB The Adventures of Pinocchio, which isn't exactly the case for this submission, as it required some extensive research in order be made, as well as appreciable efforts in order to be matched by real-time attempts.
Lastly, I want to note that the requirement of being "distinguishable from the best real-time speedruns" was removed from Vault and implemented to Alternative and Stars tiers.
Now that we sorted out the technical matters about rules and policies, and come to the conclusion that this submission should and is acceptable, let's look closer at the movie itself. Even though this movie was considered to be matchable by real-time attempt by its own author, even before that it was submitted, I have to remark that this is a TAS in all aspects. It features proficient use of the TASing tools, as well as a deep understanding of the specific game mechanics and quirks. Also, a lot of efforts have been put in order to make it optimized as much as possible, given the currently available techniques and knowledge. So even though it's matchable by human play, it wasn't trivial to make. And now that the Movie Rules are officially not requiring anymore to beat all known records, there isn't any issue on the technical side to be found.
Regarding entertaining, we've seen mixed reactions from the audience. There have been a relatively enthusiastic response, but this doesn't change the fact that there is little to be watched, as gameplay visually resulted extremely short and basic.
For the rest, I have to note that we already have a published movie that beats the game by triggering the credits routine early via a glitch. Since the movie goal is the same, this submission has to obsolete it.
Accepting this submission for Vault and obsoleting the current game end glitch publication.
feos: Pub.
feos: Fixed rerecords.


TASVideoAgent
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Patashu
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Whoops! You accidentally the Game. This has to be the most hilarious method of triggering credits I've ever seen in any game ever, and it's been extensively tested and documented, so excellent job to everyone involved. That said, the end result is trivial for a real time runner to get (as evidenced by 40 people matching the time). It might be worth swapping it out for the button file that does the frame perfect pause, just so it's slightly more difficult (only 2 people match the time now). Though if it did get rejected for triviality, what happens to the old run? It would be permanently obsolete but also unimprovable. So I'm very interested to see how TASVideos judges handle this edge case.
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It depends on whether "beating all existing records" includes having an equal time. I believe it should be, and this is a very good example of why. It also sounds like the TAS submitted should have been the longer input with the faster ending, assuming this is not due to the difference in timing between TAS and RTA, but rather due to the difference in timing between end-of-input and reaching the end state. This was recently debated in #6587: adelikat's NES Monopoly in 00:29.53. This submission was accepted for doing exactly that, and the judgement specified that we can't have it both ways. Regardless, great TAS and Yes vote for entertainment!
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Patashu wrote:
It might be worth swapping it out for the button file that does the frame perfect pause, just so it's slightly more difficult
The8bitbeast never mentioned a "frame perfect" pause, but instead "about a 10 frame window".
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At this point, I have to ask: does the game's error handler just send the player to the credits when a crash would occur? Yes voting.
Patashu
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Patashu wrote:
It might be worth swapping it out for the button file that does the frame perfect pause, just so it's slightly more difficult
The8bitbeast never mentioned a "frame perfect" pause, but instead "about a 10 frame window".
To be clear, the 'frame perfect' part is that you have to press the pause button, release it the next frame, then press it again the frame after that (which is slightly hard for a human to do). The actual window itself is 10 frames wide, this is correct.
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Techokami wrote:
At this point, I have to ask: does the game's error handler just send the player to the credits when a crash would occur?
Pretty much yeah. Some people have gotten resets with the glitch instead though. It seems possible that it just corrupts your level and if that happens to be over the total number of levels it counts as the credits. I'm not 100% sure though.
Patashu wrote:
To be clear, the 'frame perfect' part is that you have to press the pause button, release it the next frame, then press it again the frame after that (which is slightly hard for a human to do). The actual window itself is 10 frames wide, this is correct.
Yep. So you have about a 10 frame window to start the pause, but you have to let go of pause the next frame and press unpause the frame after.
SmashManiac wrote:
It also sounds like the TAS submitted should have been the longer input with the faster ending, assuming this is not due to the difference in timing between TAS and RTA, but rather due to the difference in timing between end-of-input and reaching the end state. This was recently debated in #6587: adelikat's NES Monopoly in 00:29.53. This submission was accepted for doing exactly that, and the judgement specified that we can't have it both ways.
It's an interesting thought to optimize for credits triggering time. So exactly what happens here is that when you optimize for TAS timing, you will get the glitchy graphics on the earliest possible frame. But when you optimize for RTA timing, you will delay the glitchy graphics but have a quicker fadeout to the credits. It depends where you want to draw the line, since TAS timing technically optimizes for the earliest possible time where the level value is greater than final level (triggering the credits). If enough people wanted this to be optimized for RTA timing I could go with that, but I would be less certain of it's optimization as I've purely optimized for triggering the glitch quickly, not triggering the fadeout quickly.
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I'm afraid that there is an issue with this submission: it fails to beat RTA records. What's worse, is that it doesn't feature superhuman gameplay at all. I could consider accepting if the movie did at least beat those records under the RTA timing, but it just so happens that the speedrunning community managed to achieve 9.84 time as well. However, The8bitbeast mentioned the hypothesis of an even faster run in RTA timing:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
Note: It’s quite possible that there’s an alternate method to trigger the glitch that fades out much faster. As I said in the brute forcing section, I found one with an almost identical setup that fades out 2 frames slower. I haven’t put heaps of effort into finding a faster fade out as that wouldn’t affect the TAS timing.
As SmashManiac mentioned, we recently had a submission accepted for having a real-time ending point faster than the previous publication, instead of beating it by using shorter input length, and with that precedent in mind I could take in consideration the RTA timing. So this submission could still have a chance to be accepted if the author manages to find an improvement that beats the currently known RTA records, under either TAS timing or RTA timing. The8bitbeast, would you like to attempt to improve this movie further? I'd also set this submission to Delayed status if you expect to need much time.
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Will the even more obsolete previous run remain published in perpetuity if it is not possible to beat the new RTA runs?
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Patashu wrote:
Will the even more obsolete previous run remain published in perpetuity if it is not possible to beat the new RTA runs?
That's a good question. Could an hypothetical new submission to be considered as acceptable if it forgoes making use of a glitch that could save time, but also make it trivial to replicate with human attempts? I can think of another case of a game that got an improvement that was unacceptable due to triviality: #5946: Jigwally's GB The Adventures of Pinocchio "game end glitch" in 00:14.80. The fact is, no one has yet attempted to improve the relative current movie with a submission that forgoes using that trivial glitch, so I'm afraid that we never had chance to face the actual problem so far.
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Okay, so the state we'd be in is that we'd have a TAS that's beaten by RTA in its category, that would be obsoletable only by a full game run (or by a new understanding of the glitch that is not RTA-matchable).
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
The8bitbeast, would you like to attempt to improve this movie further? I'd also set this submission to Delayed status if you expect to need much time.
As I mentioned, the TAS timing here is unlikely to be beaten. But if we're going with RTA timing as the metric I'll go on the hunt for some faster fadeouts. I'll have a try at that, so setting this to delayed is probably the best way to go.
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Okay I've tried pretty hard and it looks like a faster RTA time isn't happening for this
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So submissions can be rejected if they become so optimized that there’s no way to get faster or at least not tie with WR? I get why some games like Barney have this rule in place but I find it really unfair for actual games like this. What we’re essentially saying is we cannot reach the pinnacle of a fastest known record at all, and that doesn’t feel right to me.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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I'm not sure how I feel about this. This could be used as a precedent to reject any run where TAS happens to match RTA, and I'm not entirely sure that's what we want to do. What about cases where there are frame perfect ILs for a game performed by humans, but no RTA has strung them all together? Would we reject such a submission as well? What is triviality? Does the fact that RTA runners have performed it truly make it trivial? It sounds like the game is non-trivial to optimize, it's just short enough to be able to match.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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EZGames69 wrote:
I get why some games like Barney have this rule in place but I find it really unfair for actual games like this.
I agree, and that's why I theorized the idea of raising specific exceptions for allowing movies that forgo using known techs, if these would make an entire movie trivial. In any case, let's continue this discussion in the Ask a Judge thread. In this thread, instead, I think we should only talk about this specific submission and its judgement.
EZGames69 wrote:
What we’re essentially saying is we cannot reach the pinnacle of a fastest known record at all, and that doesn’t feel right to me.
It's not that "we cannot" reach it, it's that we can reach it too easily. So easily that it's not a tool-assisted speedrun, but just a replica of a real-time attempt. And thus it's not much meaningful as a "pinnacle" to aim for, at least in TASing.
Memory wrote:
What about cases where there are frame perfect ILs for a game performed by humans, but no RTA has strung them all together? Would we reject such a submission as well?
My opinion is that a submission should be rejected only if the whole movie is RTA-viable. That's why I asked to The8bitbeast to provide an improved movie, if that could have introduced even a bit of gameplay that can't be reproduced by real-time play. I also think that a speed-oriented submission that matches RTA records could still be accepted for Moons, if it includes superhuman playarounds. However, as far as I know, there are currently no precedents or rules contemplating this possibility, so please take my words just as an idea, for extreme cases. The only thing it comes to mind is this line from the Vault page: "Opportunities to entertain the audience where it does not affect time is not a requirement. However, it is encouraged and can be used as a tie-breaker for two equally fast movies." But even about this, there are no known precedents.
Memory wrote:
What is triviality? Does the fact that RTA runners have performed it truly make it trivial?
Good question. It all revolves around answering this. From the standpoint of the RTA rules, some runs may be considered godlike, for the amount of skills and efforts necessary to perform them. On the other hand, in my opinion, from the standpoint of tool-assisted play, anything that can be performed in legit RTA play is to be considered as trivial. From the start, the purpose of TASing was to reproduce gameplay that can't be possibly reproduced by human attempts under any circumstance, and thus one of the original goals of the site. For this reason, I think it would go against the premise of the site the idea of publishing movies that aren't exclusively within TASing possibilities. By the way, the term "trivial" may sound a bit detrimental towards some RTA achievements, but it's just a term I use to differentiate between what is TAS-only gameplay and what is RTA-viable.
Memory wrote:
It sounds like the game is non-trivial to optimize, it's just short enough to be able to match.
Elaborate this, because it seems a contradicting statement to me. I disagree that it's the game itself to be short, it's more like that the glitch discovered opened a loophole that allows to skip any TASing challenge.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Memory wrote:
It sounds like the game is non-trivial to optimize, it's just short enough to be able to match.
Elaborate this, because it seems a contradicting statement to me. I disagree that it's the game itself to be short, it's more like that the glitch discovered opened a loophole that allows to skip any TASing challenge.
The vast majority of games that I am aware of that have been rejected for triviality in the past have been rejected for being trivial on a conceptual level. For example, #5799: Flip & ajfirecracker's Genesis Disney's Aladdin "demo glitch" in 00:02.64 is literally just setting a menu option. Here, the concept potentially allows for further optimization (movement is important), it's just not known to be possible. EDIT: Something I saw somebody else bring up is that this could potentially encourage hiding work to prevent it from being replicated prior to a submission. I don't think this should be the be all end all deciding factor, but I don't like the idea of encouraging this.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Memory wrote:
The vast majority of games that I am aware of that have been rejected for triviality in the past have been rejected for being trivial on a conceptual level. For example, #5799: Flip & ajfirecracker's Genesis Disney's Aladdin "demo glitch" in 00:02.64 is literally just setting a menu option. Here, the concept potentially allows for further optimization (movement is important), it's just not known to be possible.
Sorry, I don't get what you mean... Maybe you're referring to the fact that the rejection for triviality is usually applied to the game choice (see Barney), rather than to the run execution. But I see your example features the same issue as this submission: the specific submission was rejected due to triviality, but if not using that glitch, the game would be otherwise non-trivial. In fact, there are already some published movies that were made before the trivial glitch was discovered: [3340] Genesis Disney's Aladdin by Flip in 10:04.86 Then, so far we found three games falling into this limbo: SMS Zool: Ninja of the "Nth" Dimension GB The Adventures of Pinocchio Genesis Disney's Aladdin I'm willing to contribute to the cause by being a guinea pig myself and submit an improvement to [3086] GB The Adventures of Pinocchio by Baruch in 07:43.71 This would be the perfect stress test for figuring out a solution, as the current publication is in Vault and thus new submissions will go under even more scrutiny... Anyone is invited to contribute to the project, given that you're not afraid of getting a rejection. :)
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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Aladdin is trivial on a conceptual level. You perform 0 gameplay and 0 difficult inputs. There is no optimization to be had. Pinocchio was never actually rejected, it was cancelled, so no comment on that one. #6345: MarbleousDave's NES Duck Hunt "All levels" in 1:15:12.15 in fact is noted as being obviously superhuman in terms of whether or not RTA could match, but it was still rejected for triviality due to it being trivial in a tool assisted setting. The last one is especially key because to me it indicates that triviality is more than the ability of RTA players to match a time.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Memory wrote:
Aladdin is trivial on a conceptual level. You perform 0 gameplay and 0 difficult inputs. There is no optimization to be had.
Ok, so you refer to the specific submission, not to the game in general.
Memory wrote:
Pinocchio was never actually rejected, it was cancelled, so no comment on that one.
It was cancelled right after that I pointed out its triviality. Also, that submission was claimed for judgment by me, and I was about to reject it anyway. Not sure if you needed these details, I'm referring just in case.
Memory wrote:
#6345: MarbleousDave's NES Duck Hunt "All levels" in 1:15:12.15 in fact is noted as being obviously superhuman in terms of whether or not RTA could match, but it was still rejected for triviality due to it being trivial in a tool assisted setting. The last one is especially key because to me it indicates that triviality is more than the ability of RTA players to match a time.
I agree with that decision. I consider that as an additional requirement on top of being superhuman, rather than a different triviality standpoint.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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Could we consider the RTA runs starting on power-on ? then a TAS will be always faster on the menuing part when pressing pause to make the in-game loads faster. This is only the community choice of making RTA runs starting at a certain point. Some community starts a run when pressing "start the game" other like Super Mario 64 choose to start the timer at power on other which are most likely in the same situation that this game, where runs start at the menu before starting the game because there is a glitch that you need to setup, this is the case of some pokemon categories, I have also in mind Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) where the runner starts the run when creating a custom circuit, which would be used as well in TAS. For me, This game has to be considered for RTA runs as a speedrun starting on power-on or before using the pausing glitch that will be used in the actual game. Most likely, the RTA community will choose to change the rules of the any% category to make a real difference between two runs. If we reject this movie now but the speedrunning community change the rule for the game and that the TAS with the pausing glitch is actually faster than any RTA run, the TAS would have to be rejudged and accepted ? I feel it unfair. What do you guys think ?
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If we're talking purely about gameplay speed, surely the famous [3662] A2600 Dragster by MrWint & Omnigamer in 00:08.39 submission would also fall under the triviality umbrella? RTA runners had achieved the time in this movie long before it was ever made, and there were no questions about it back then.
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Bloopiero wrote:
If we're talking purely about gameplay speed, surely the famous [3662] A2600 Dragster by MrWint & Omnigamer in 00:08.39 submission would also fall under the triviality umbrella? RTA runners had achieved the time in this movie long before it was ever made, and there were no questions about it back then.
This is a different case since that movie is faster in frame count than RTA.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Memory
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EZGames69 wrote:
Bloopiero wrote:
If we're talking purely about gameplay speed, surely the famous [3662] A2600 Dragster by MrWint & Omnigamer in 00:08.39 submission would also fall under the triviality umbrella? RTA runners had achieved the time in this movie long before it was ever made, and there were no questions about it back then.
This is a different case since that movie is faster in frame count than RTA.
tbf the primary metric used for the run was IGT and it does match in that regard
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero