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When I first played this game years ago, it seems like the kind of game which should be easy to break. I'm very satisfied that it happened, though it wasn't discovered by me. It seems that a few days ago, folks in the RTA community discovered a use for an OOB glitch which was languishing in obscurity. The ability to OOB using frame buffering was discovered sometime in 2014, before the current published TAS (though it seems no one here knew about it). However, this run uses an RTA trick that abuses incorrect collision on one corner of the map.
Once outside, you can walk to this door, and cast Flippendo. This moves your hitbox slightly, and I think touches the warp trigger. However, because you are still in the tutorial, the next "cutscene" hasn't been set yet, and is still initialized to the ending credits (thanks for the clarification on this from StarrlightSims). Thus, this is a Wrong Warp glitch.
Because this is lowering the runtime from ~1hr to under 3 minutes, this should probably be an new Category (Game End Glitch). I hope you are all as satisfied seeing this game destroyed as I was.
Most of the movement is taken from the 1 hour any% run, though I did optimize it a little bit further. You can buffer a frame of input prior to starting dialog, and this includes the button that ends the dialog. So every text box closes 1 frame faster in this run.

feos: Judging...
feos: Added DaJaWi to authors.
feos: The way the game behaves after this ending is identical to to what it does after a normal ending, and also the explanation of why it warps you to game end provided in the thread looks legitimate to me.
However there are problems with optimization in this movie. It takes vast majority of input from the existing publication and only adds a corner clip and a few seconds of walking out-of-bounds. But even that little part can be improved as shown in the thread, and also the star is not necessary anymore, but the old input wasn't fixed to remove star collection.
We can safely call this submission sloppy, and in normal conditions it would definitely be rejected. But there's a specific clause that applies to Vault movies that says:
In rare cases, there will be a sloppier movie that is faster than a more optimized movie due to the use of a major skip discovery. In this case, the faster of the two movies is preferred.
Last time this happened to me, when I was able to easily beat the submitted times, I talked to both adelikat and Nach about the above clause and asked if it's actually what we intend for the site, even for sloppy movies. And the definitive answer was "Yes": Vault's main goal is hosting records, and the record value is more important in such cases. If it's sloppy, people may improve it later if they care.
I discussed it once again with other judges and the agreement seems to be that it's not full of glaring mistakes that lose a lot of time, the known improvement that's still possible is less than 10 frames so far.
But the clause that may make this movie acceptable is only for improvements! And this run is drastically different from the existing publication, that is in Moons. Well, the problem is that its rating is quite low after 6 years. It has had the exposure that Vault movies don't have, and yet it hasn't really entertained people: there's only one 6 for entertainment, and all the rest are lower. Despite of having gotten okay feedback when it was submitted, publication ratings still outweigh submission votes.
It may be seen as a problem that people who vote in threads aren't interested in rating the actual movies afterwards, and a part of that problem is that the entire rating system is not nice enough to encourage people to mass-rate things. But that doesn't mean we should assume that the overall rating for any given movie would be better if simply more people voted. There'd still be normal distribution and stuff like that: more people rating movies includes more of those who like it and more of those who dislike it.
So far though, we should work with what we have. And the current data we have means the existing publication belongs to Vault. So is this movie, if it's accepted. Which means the Vault clause on sloppy (yet major) improvements neatly applies to this situation, #6451: MESHUGGAH & AIVV73's NES The California Raisins: The Grape Escape in 04:15.83 being an exact precedent (or at least one that I remember).
Zinfidel: Processing...
feos: This may sound like I'm deliberately making annoying decisions to annoy people into changing the situation those decisions were caused by. Yet it looks like the Vault clause this run was accepted under, is annoying enough for people to go out of their way and improve the hell out of such a questionable movie! This run has been bested in this new submission that looks great! Rejecting.

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Spikestuff
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Majority of this input is based on DaJaWi's work they need to be credited as the author.
<Spikestuff> Meerkov: how much of your input is based on DaJaWi's work?
<Meerkov> Most of it
<Meerkov> I tightened up everything, and resynced it to the new core
<Meerkov> the major change happens when the new glitch happens
Edit: Input is improvable as a note to which I have passed the input along. It's if Meerkov would return to it or not is the next question.
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OH YES Such a simple Credits Warp, just a warp failsafe, yet a very interesting run deserving its own category. Would be nice finding an easier/faster OOB clip in later iterations.
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As a clarification for how the warp actually works, all of the full screen images are on the same screen, just with a different value assigned to them, so for example the 8 story cutscenes at the start of the game are scenes 1-8. After this point, the counter moves to 9, and then in a normal progression of the game, once you collect all 6 stars in the challenge, the game counter updates to the correct number for the Flipendo end screen. However, because the game never has the opportunity to update before you touch the end-level trigger, the game instead takes you to scene 9, which happens to be the end-game scene where you get given the final card.
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StarrlightSims wrote:
As a clarification for how the warp actually works, all of the full screen images are on the same screen, just with a different value assigned to them, so for example the 8 story cutscenes at the start of the game are scenes 1-8. After this point, the counter moves to 9, and then in a normal progression of the game, once you collect all 6 stars in the challenge, the game counter updates to the correct number for the Flipendo end screen. However, because the game never has the opportunity to update before you touch the end-level trigger, the game instead takes you to scene 9, which happens to be the end-game scene where you get given the final card.
Could you provide the RAM addresses? It may help to look for possible improvements.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Could you provide the RAM addresses? It may help to look for possible improvements.
I wasn't the one who did the RAM searching, so I don't have them on hand unfortunately, I can ask the person who did the looking though. Also, on a related note to the category split, it's also possible to use this to skip from Flipendo straight to the end of the first Quidditch match by saving and resetting, so that would also be a thing to look at, as that cuts ~15 minutes off the published TAS as well
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Yes vote from me. I agree that coauthoring is probably called for here based on the amount of input sourced, however. Good work!
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This run made me giggle, to see harry go into the void, touch a door with his wand and boom he found the philosopher stone that's some wicked magic!
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Here's my input it save 4 frames the author is already aware of this input. (made in 2.6) Calling for the delay/cancellation of the submission if my input is used even if mirrored. The author is dealing with IRL stuff atm which is why they didn't do anything, they've had my input since the day it was submitted to work on further. For a 3 minute movie that copies input from a movie that's from 2015 stuff can be milked further down. I don't have the time or effort to care about this no matter what someone says to me in DMs. Edit: Also here's another set of input that avoids using DaJaWi's input outright (which again the author Meerkov is well aware about) and has a different enemy layout (which can be manipulated) that can also be looked into milking down the time.
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This is a nice TAS! I get that it can be improved, but nice work so far! Yes vote, keep going!
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Hi, just wanted to say that I'm aware of the 4 frame improvement from Spikestuff, but I don't have more time to put into this run, so it's submitted as is, though Spikestuff is welcome to join as a 3rd author on this run ;)
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Right forgot to explain a thing here when I provided my input. How did I save 4 frames? Well I avoided collecting a star and decided to kill the enemy sooner. This is the issue of directly copying input without adjusting anything instead the last 29 seconds of the movie is just new input. What's the star for? Well if you watch the Publication the stars are used for Tutorial progression. Collecting all the stars will open the door and end the section. Now does the star do anything in this situation? No, killing sooner is still important that killing later. Now I mentioned this already, but to reiterate my input is not the be all end all and was also rushed basically the same day this submission came through to inform Meerkov of a "hey, check input that you copied" and provided what I did in private. This is why I don't want my input used because it much like the submission was rushed out to give an more can be done, even if not much since this TAS was made the same week as the RTA community found this oob and geg glitch. Edit: And I mean it when I mentioned my input was still not good enough. Still not good enough regardless, rather scrap the input made and just deal out a more acceptable enemy pattern but this is still better than not preventing Harry to grab that Star.
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Post subject: Re: #7011: DaJaWi & Meerkov's GBA Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone "game end glitch" in 02:59.0
EZGames69
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
However there are problems with optimization in this movie. It takes vast majority of input from existing publication and only adds a corner clip and a few seconds of walking out-of-bounds. But even that little part can be improved as shown in the thread, and also the star is not necessary anymore, but the old input wasn't fixed to remove star collection. We can safely call this submission sloppy, and in normal conditions it would definitely be rejected. But there's a specific clause that applies to Vault movies that says: In rare cases, there will be a sloppier movie that is faster than a more optimized movie due to the use of a major skip discovery. In this case, the faster of the two movies is preferred.
I'm sorry but if the submission is deemed as sloppy, and is shown to be improvable, then shouldn't the submission be delayed or cancelled instead of accepted? From my understanding the glitch itself doesn't take up that much of the movie's inputs, so it's not unreasonable to ask if it can be improved and either replacing the movie file with an updated one later. I don't see the point of accepting something that has known improvements and given that the changes are so late into the TAS, a new and better submission is very likely to show up again, making it incredibly pointless to accept this as it is.
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Post subject: Re: #7011: DaJaWi & Meerkov's GBA Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone "game end glitch" in 02:59.0
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EZGames69 wrote:
I'm sorry but if the submission is deemed as sloppy, and is shown to be improvable, then shouldn't the submission be delayed or cancelled instead of accepted? From my understanding the glitch itself doesn't take up that much of the movie's inputs, so it's not unreasonable to ask if it can be improved and either replacing the movie file with an updated one later. I don't see the point of accepting something that has known improvements and given that the changes are so late into the TAS, a new and better submission is very likely to show up again, making it incredibly pointless to accept this as it is.
The author doesn't intend to improve on it, nor does the author of the improved inputs. Honestly, the only noticeable flaw is in one spot so I don't see that as too big a deal.
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Does this rule suddenly not apply with this submission? http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#SpeedOrientedMovieMustBeatAllExistingRecords Spike posted an improved movie in this thread, which therefore makes it the de facto record for this game, which this submission does not beat nor match.
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That record didn't exist before this submission was made, so it did beat all records when it was submitted. Yes it has been bested, but the new improved version is in limbo, and we can't use it for anything directly. Until someone makes an actual new submission, we prefer the currently available record which this run is.
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feos wrote:
That record didn't exist before this submission was made, so it did beat all records when it was submitted. Yes it has been bested, but the new improved version is in limbo, and we can't use it for anything directly. Until someone makes an actual new submission, we prefer the currently available record which this run is.
haha oops whoops #7038: Samsara, Spikestuff, EZGames69 & CasualPokePlayer's GBA Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone "game end glitch" in 02:12.03
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