This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6838: DreamYao's NES Batman "no kills, lowest score" in 09:39.83

I was expecting to see a pacifist run. It turns out that Batman punches almost everyone in the game, but he doesn't kill anyone. He still employs violence, but not deadly force. Weird category.

Yeah, the category doesn't make much sense for me as well. Hitting the enemies looks cheap, and I feel that avoiding to hit them entirely would result in much more interesting strategies. Also, how much time would be saved if you killed the enemies?

Yeah, the category doesn't make much sense for me as well. Hitting the enemies looks cheap, and I feel that avoiding to hit them entirely would result in much more interesting strategies.

Check the previous submission.

I actually really like this run. A pure pacifist game with no punches at all (except for bosses) is either literally impossible or would require crazy amounts of despawns to slow the game down tremendously. I also appreciate a couple boss strategies that only use punching, especially stages 2-3 and 5-2. I vote Yes for this to be a separate pacifist publication. It contrasts well with the any% run: that run also avoids damage, whereas this one shows some minor timesaves from damage. My only concern is that the boss in 3-3 seems a little unoptimized to my untrained eye. I feel like you should be able to jump a bit in each cycle and start punch volleys higher up, maybe saving a handful of frames by the last hit. I am also a bit concerned about how slow the 5-2 fight is compared to the any% run, but I doubt there's any other strategy that doesn't make him run away.

Welcome to TASVideos. Judging by your submission, it appears you understand the concept of TASing and are willing to put in work to make your product as good as it can be. That's a great start, and I encourage you to keep making TASes and learning. This submission plays through the NES version of Batman with the added goal of not killing any enemies. Though killing is not allowed, the author does allow himself to attack them, but disallows the use of guns. Since there is a goal for the movie besides going as fast as possible, the run must qualify for Moons to be published. There are three criteria used to judge if a goal besides fastest completion and full completion can be used for a TAS. Two are listed on the Movie Rules page, and the third is a requirement to qualify for Moons. They are as follows: 1. Is the goal clear and does the movie accomplish said goal? 2. Does the goal "offer new TAS material" or "compelling differences" from published TASes? 3. Is the resulting movie entertaining? All three criteria must be met in order for an alternate goal movie to be accepted and published by this site, so let's look at each in turn. 1. Is the goal clear? Is it accomplished? Although there was initial confusion about the goal of the movie, it has since been cleared up. The rules are: 1. Do not use guns 2. Do not allow any enemy to die outside of bosses 3. Complete the game as fast as possible while adhering to the first two rules. As such, this movie does have objective standards by which it can be compared against future movies. Watching the recording, it appears to accomplish those goals. Therefore, the movie qualifies under the first criteria. 2. Does the goal provide new TAS material? For this, we compare against the currently published TAS of the same game, noting where the goal choice required different strategies in order to deal with obstacles. In order to accomplish the goal of killing no enemies, this movie relies often on avoiding enemies and punching them to take advantage of a long intangibility when taking damage to walk through. Based on that, we must look at the published TAS to see whether it avoids enemies or uses the punch to damage them and walk through without actually killing, and whether that happens significantly less than in this movie. Watching the current TAS, we can see that it does indeed avoid enemies (for example, here) and it also punches enemies to walk through without killing them (for example, here), so the question remains: does this goal lead to significantly altered gameplay? I would say it doesn't. The published movie and this movie take largely the same route through the levels. Time as well isn't affected that much by the change in goals. This movie is only 18 seconds slower on a 9 and a half minute movie. While time isn't really a factor for approval or dismissal, it can be used as an indicator. Thus this movie fails on the second criteria. 3. Is it entertaining? Admittedly, this is a subjective measure. I was able to feel entertained watching the movie. The movie also has just one "no" vote out of seven votes, which, while not overwhelmingly positive, may be enough to show that the movie can survive in moons. The currently published TAS also has a Moon rating. Therefore, I believe this movie passes under the third criteria. As such, out of the three criteria, the movie passes two and fails one. However, as stated earlier, it must pass all three criteria in order to be accepted by this site, and since it fails on the second criteria, I'm afraid it can't be accepted and must be rejected. TLDR: This goal isn't different enough from any% to justify a branch. I believe it should be rejected.

Can the goal be defined as "minimum score"?

Even if you change the goal like that, the problem remains that this is similar to the published movie.

Watched this side-by-side with the any% publication. That run doesn't really kill that many enemies either! And then it does, it's clear that it doesn't save that much time, it's either to reduce lag, or to save some frames by going past dead enemies quicker. The only thing that looks like a substantial difference is lack of sub-weapons in this run, but that doesn't drastically alter gameplay compared to their usage either. The levels are really linear, and the strategies are basically the same in both runs. In Moons we want branches that offer significant gameplay difference compared to how the game is normally played, which is why a pacifist run for Contra is very successful: enemies die from one hit, and there's a ton of them to kill, so sparing them looks obviously different, and challenging on its own. With this game, both runs just punch their way through the game regardless, with a few kills and sub-weapon usage in one of them. The previous submission didn't get much appreciation towards this goal either.

Can the goal be defined as "minimum score"?

There's no visibly defined score to speak of in the game, so no. EDIT: I've been informed there is in fact a score, but only on the pause screen. Still, given that "lowest score" wasn't the initial goal, but a reclassification of the run, there would need to be proof that the score is in fact as low as it possibly can be for it to count as an applicable goal. Ideally, there'd be a way to see the score in the run as well, but it could be tracked through RAM without needing to change the run.

EDIT: I've been informed there is in fact a score, but only on the pause screen. Still, given that "lowest score" wasn't the initial goal, but a reclassification of the run, there would need to be proof that the score is in fact as low as it possibly can be for it to count as an applicable goal.

When will we finally give up this rule? Whenever it comes up, I just have to go on a rant because it doesn't make any sense. Runs that aim for fastest time do not have to prove that they can't be done faster, that's how it should be for score as well. All this restriction does is keep people from creating TASes. At this point, this rule for score comes off like old SDA rules against out of bounds or savewarping. Rant over.

"Minimum score" was not the intended goal of the run to begin with, therefore there's no consistent proof that the goal was even accomplished. If killing is the only thing that contributes to score, then that's all the needed proof.

"Minimum score" was not the intended goal of the run to begin with, therefore there's no consistent proof that the goal was even accomplished. If killing is the only thing that contributes to score, then that's all the needed proof.

Exactly. The author would just have to explain that nothing else in the run contributes to the score. If the score is affected by other factors, like health left at the end of a boss fight, then it would be necessary to take damage to minimize the health bonus. It's not an arduous requirement to explain how points are scored in a game. In this case, the author must explain how points are scored, since we can't observe the score changing just by watching the TAS. Which leads to another question: is low score a reasonable goal for a TAS in which the score is never displayed? You can do low% in Super Metroid because the value is presented at the end of the game. If we never see a score, then how do we know that we just watched a low score run?

Here's what I found after a little digging: The score is stored as a 2-byte value located at 00BB. Multiply that by 100, and you have your score as displayed in the pause screen. The way the game keeps score is actually pretty simple. Enemies in stage give you 100 points. There are "B" tokens that give you 1000 points Bosses give 10000 Joker gives 100,000 points. You can check that by restarting the game and looking at the score at the beginning, since score carries over between playthroughs. I also found that if you game-over, your score resets to zero, and you start at the beginning of the room you were in (last normal level room if you were in a boss room). So the way to get the lowest score possible is to game-over in the last room, then beat the final boss and Joker, giving you a final score of 110,000 If you don't want to accept game overs as a legitimate technique (which, it's not disallowed in the Movie Rules) there are a few enemies in the run that die to the environment, and that also increases the score counter. They are in level 2. To truly accept this as lowest score no game-overs, I would have to be convinced that keeping those enemies alive is impossible. If no effort was made to spare those enemies, then I can't really say this went for lowest score. Either way, I don't think lowest score can be accepted as a goal this movie accomplishes. That said, whether or not this movie does succeed at achieving lowest score does not in any way change my assessment that this movie is too similar to the published run to work as a new branch, and those are the grounds on which I would like discussion to fall in the future. If anyone can convince me this movie is significantly different from the published movie as a result of the goal, I will restart assessment with those new ideas in mind.

While I did enjoy this run, the thought behind this category is an example of “you thought this is impossible, but you were wrong” category, which it fails to redeem. I would rather see a true no-hurt-enemies run rather than this compromise, even if it was much, much slower. Nonetheless, I am voting yes, because I enjoyed it.

I'm voting No because I think it doesn't differentiate itself enough from the existing run. Also, as arkiandruski said, I'm not convinced that it achieved the goal of low score because of the enemies that were permitted to die. Batman didn't kill them, but maybe they could have been saved. Even if this is a successful low score, I just don't see the point.

om, nom, nom