Post subject: New Category Ideas?
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
Hello, I am making this topic because I personally would love it if there were more TASing categories since it gives even beginner TASers a chance to be able to submit a run that would actually be accepted. Any thoughts about this (positive or negative) will be appreciated. Thank you.
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
One category I have thought of was "crash%", or "The fastest you can crash a game." This category is currently against the movie submission rules(The movie has to complete the game, but if you crash the game you can't complete it). The reason I like this idea is because most games were not designed to crash, obviously. So it would take a lot of effort, research and knowledge to create a sequence of inputs that guarantees a crash. Let me know your thoughts about this.
Post subject: Re: New Category Ideas?
Skilled player (1021)
Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 230
redatchyon2098 wrote:
Hello, I am making this topic because I personally would love it if there were more TASing categories since it gives even beginner TASers a chance to be able to submit a run that would actually be accepted. Any thoughts about this (positive or negative) will be appreciated. Thank you.
It wouldn't really matter what categories there were since many beginner TASes get rejected for sub-optimal gameplay People frequently submit odd categories of games. If the community at large thought crash% or dank% or no control stick% or whatever was entertaining enough to be worth publishing, then MANY more TASes would make it out of April Fools Day alive.
redatchyon2098 wrote:
...so it would take a lot of effort, research and knowledge to create a sequence of inputs that guarantees a crash...
How is that supportive to beginning TASers? That's a very technical aspect and would only be interesting to a select few within the community.
Post subject: Re: New Category Ideas?
Bigbass
He/Him
Moderator
Joined: 2/2/2021
Posts: 189
Location: Midwest
WarHippy wrote:
redatchyon2098 wrote:
Hello, I am making this topic because I personally would love it if there were more TASing categories since it gives even beginner TASers a chance to be able to submit a run that would actually be accepted. Any thoughts about this (positive or negative) will be appreciated. Thank you.
It wouldn't really matter what categories there were since many beginner TASes get rejected for sub-optimal gameplay
Agreed; making more categories doesn't lower the bar for what is considered an optimal TAS (and thus doesn't make it easier for submissions to be accepted). With that in mind though, I think it's definitely possible for beginners to submit highly optimal TASes. Depends on many factors including how knowledgeable they are with the game, and how much scrutiny they put on themselves to save as many frames as possible.
TAS Verifications | Mastodon | Github | Discord: @bigbass
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
Okay, my idea was stupid. Sorry to everybody for not keeping my mouth shut when I clearly have no idea what I'm talking about.
Bigbass
He/Him
Moderator
Joined: 2/2/2021
Posts: 189
Location: Midwest
Hey no worries. You had an idea, and you shared it, nothing wrong with that. You can still make TASes for brand new categories that you come up with; it's just that this site has certain rules regarding how new categories are to be accepted. In fact, I know of a Super Mario Bros TAS that uses a specific game genie code to change the dynamics of the game. It won't be accepted on this site, but it's still entertaining and people still watch it (especially as it's been optimized over time by multiple people).
TAS Verifications | Mastodon | Github | Discord: @bigbass
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
I made this thing, it's for Super Mario Bros. on the NES, it crashes the game by corrupting some memory starting from $0300(which is sprite data, I could be wrong.) with a weird pattern, although I'm not sure exactly how the corruption happens. This was rushed, and maybe someone might be able to improve it for fun?http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/70733209713475564
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Intended route.
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
I didn't understand what you said.( EDIT: I said other stuff that might have offended people or made them have other negative feelings, so I'm making it harder to access. )
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2108)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2821
Location: Northern California
That was a suggestion for a category, as in "the intended route for a game", as opposed to something with major sequence breaks.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
Okay, I guess I was being way too over-reactive.....(Second edit: I'm talking about the thing I said in the post above that was edited out.) Yes, the "intended route" is an interesting idea, since most TASes use unintended bugs or glitches to achieve fast times or entertainment. (EDIT: What makes it more interesting is that some games like Pokemon generation 1 have so many glitches(Did they even play-test it?) that there is no such thing as an "intended route" since it is impossible to play without a glitch occurring, accidental or not.)(Third edit: Am I even talking about the right thing? I may have misunderstood the original concept.)
Pixiuchu
She/Her
Player (146)
Joined: 9/27/2015
Posts: 106
I'm sure that, if you try hard enough, it is possible to play Pokémon Gen 1 without glitches. However it is TAS only thanks to the badge boost glitch and needing to avoid critical hits. Beyond that, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Emulator Coder, Judge, Experienced player (720)
Joined: 2/26/2020
Posts: 773
Location: California
Snodeca wrote:
I'm sure that, if you try hard enough, it is possible to play Pokémon Gen 1 without glitches. However it is TAS only thanks to the badge boost glitch and needing to avoid critical hits. Beyond that, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
You realize there are a ton of straight up unavoidable "glitches" right. Heck, look at Yellow, the starter Pikachu encounter in the beginning is glitched, there is no way around that.
Pixiuchu
She/Her
Player (146)
Joined: 9/27/2015
Posts: 106
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
Snodeca wrote:
I'm sure that, if you try hard enough, it is possible to play Pokémon Gen 1 without glitches. However it is TAS only thanks to the badge boost glitch and needing to avoid critical hits. Beyond that, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
You realize there are a ton of straight up unavoidable "glitches" right. Heck, look at Yellow, the starter Pikachu encounter in the beginning is glitched, there is no way around that.
This is precisely why I wrote: "Beyond that, I have no idea what I'm talking about", implying I have no idea what I am talking about. :)
Post subject: Another thing.
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
What about a "speed overflow", overflow any value that isn't part of a timer as fast as possible.
Post subject: intended route
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
Besides the glitches, intended route runs should also never take unintended shortcuts, now that I think about it.
Acumenium
He/Him
Banned User
Joined: 6/11/2020
Posts: 73
Samsara wrote:
That was a suggestion for a category, as in "the intended route for a game", as opposed to something with major sequence breaks.
To clarify, this changes some games that almost force you out of "intended" route like Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow or their remakes. It actually takes a lot of conscious effort to do the 4-7th gyms in order that most don't take. Sabrina is typically the 5th for people, but many also don't even see the Celadon Gym until later when they're stumped since it's on the dead-end part of Celadon. Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal and their remakes have a similar issue occur twice! The seventh Gym can be fought any time after the fourth and usually is done out of its intended order. The developers may have intended this to be true anyway since the sixth Gym is regarded as far more challenging. And then there's Kanto where you have to do A LOT of sneaking around to reach Brock (the "intended first" Gym Leader in GSC Kanto) as your first.
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
That is correct.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Acumenium wrote:
It actually takes a lot of conscious effort to do the 4-7th gyms in order that most don't take. Sabrina is typically the 5th for people, but many also don't even see the Celadon Gym until later when they're stumped since it's on the dead-end part of Celadon.
If it's reasonably clear that the game developers were OK with the player not doing all the gyms in a precise order, ie. they didn't put any hurdles in the way that would need to be skipped by abusing glitches or clearly unintentional design flaws, then it should be obvious that the runner can complete the gyms in any order (at least those gyms that can be reached in such a non-glich-or-design-error manner). "Intended route" in this context means that nothing is skipped by abusing glitches or level design flaws (it's usually quite clear if something is a level design flaw or not, as it usually requires a lot of effort and trying to find them, and it's usually quite clear that the skip was not intended by the level designers). Doing things "out of order", or even skipping some goals, is completely ok if it's relatively clear that the game was actually designed for that to be perfectly possible by a player who's playing the game normally. Of course this still leaves open the question of whether glitches, or even quirks in the game engine, can be abused to traverse the intended route faster than would normally be possible. I would say that for the most part yes: The aim is to show the intended route, the intended actions in a normal playthrough. This route does not need to be traversed at a "normal" speed, as long as it's traversed, and as long as nothing is skipped that would normally have to be played through.
Joined: 6/4/2020
Posts: 42
Maybe I have misunderstood the original concept, as usual. Sorry about that.