I am submitting what I consider to be an improvement to the published TAS for NES Solitaire but I need to clarify what I mean by an improvement because the run time of this movie is longer than the published TAS.
In this game, after all the cards in every foundation have been revealed and the deck/pile is empty, the game proceeds to automatically place the remainder of the cards. By the typical TAS timing method of "final input", I was able to find a solution in 2241 frames (Userfiles/Info/71423838930932281). However, including the time it takes for the game to place the remainder of the cards, the final card is placed significantly later (~100 frames) than the published TAS. Despite it having an earlier final input I did not feel it was appropriate to call this "faster" since from the POV of a viewer they'd have to wait longer for the final win message.
So I went back and adjusted my heuristic to search for a better solution with this metric & found a solution which places the final card 25 frames sooner than the published TAS at the cost of a later final input.
feos: I explained why this ending is preferred in this post. This movie makes the game end 34 frames sooner than the existing publication. It arguably aims for in-game time, except there's no such thing in this game, and the global timer at address $0006 simply increments always. If we only count by when the game ends, this can only go in one direction. But counting by movie length can lead to movies becoming shorter while the game ends later and later, so it would be tricky to clearly compare and obsolete.
Console verification. This used the movie included in the submission. If the submission is accepted, and if FractalFusion's edit that includes music is used instead, I'll re-verify/record with music as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OPQ8BzmjY8
Edit: This has been obsoleted :P
I would like to cast my vote for publishing the "shortest input" version of this run. That's always been more interesting to me than drawing a fairly arbitrary line about which point in time counts as reaching the ending. Watching an ending play out by itself also adds a unique and pleasant flavor, especially when the input endpoint is displayed in the encode.
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Personman wrote:
I would like to cast my vote for publishing the "shortest input" version of this run. That's always been more interesting to me than drawing a fairly arbitrary line about which point in time counts as reaching the ending. Watching an ending play out by itself also adds a unique and pleasant flavor, especially when the input endpoint is displayed in the encode.
The exact point when we consider the ending has occurred may indeed feel arbitrary. But if the basic ending routine doesn't change, every run that reaches it can be clearly and unambiguosly compared to another.
Another important aspect:
You can potentially delay the ending indefinitely with your shorter input. We wouldn't want t to watch a 10-second movie that makes the game end 10 hours later.
But you can't indefinitely speed it up in your ending-based movie. There's only so much you can do to end the game faster, and it gradually gets harder and harder to come up with new timesaves. You can't make it happen instantly.
And you can't indefinitely delay movie end to make the game end faster. After some point it becomes unnecessary.
So in terms of obsoletion criterion, ending-based movie is clear cut.
I think for this game, judging movie optimality by when the game ends is a better idea.
Jigwally, does this game have any kind of consistent in-game timer, even if it's just in memory and not displayed anywhere?
FractalFusion wrote:
Video (with music ON)
While the no-music version is not particularly enjoyable in terms of audio, I didn't feel like music improves the experience. It's hard to really hear it behind the constant sound effects, and it's not even that great imo.
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.
This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.
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[4471] NES Solitaire by Jigwally in 00:40.93
