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dwangoAC wrote:
- I like having a system where anyone can upload anything in any category for any game similar to speedrun.com. I'd obviously prefer a few changes compared to how speedrun.com handles things
What would you change?
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.
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feos wrote:
dwangoAC wrote:
- I like having a system where anyone can upload anything in any category for any game similar to speedrun.com. I'd obviously prefer a few changes compared to how speedrun.com handles things
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Samsara wrote:
How do we look at games more objectively, then? This is something that's going to take some community discussion to really iron out, but we've started coming up with a potential new system that should greatly expand Vault in a satisfying way, allowing for more runs to be accepted without opening the doors wide enough to accept absolutely everything: Instead of strictly only allowing fastest and full completions in Vault, we would allow any objective goal for a game. By objective goal, we mean "something that is defined or limited by the game itself".
Here are some big examples, but definitely not EVERY example:
Pure fastest completion (GEG, ACE, etc)
Warps (or fastest "intended" completion)
Warpless/All levels (warps are an intended shortcut so not using them counts as an objective goal)
100% (assuming it can be defined objectively)
Score attack (an objective goal with room for improvement in the same vein as fastest completion)
And here's a list of smaller things that are more dependent on the game, but still objective:
Gameplay modes (including things like New Game +)
Number of players
Character choices
In-game defined goals (i.e, achievements, things that reward the player with content)
How would we handle usage versus avoidance of major skip glitch? Avoiding it is not an in-game option, yet it feels natural to allow it. And some major skip glitches wouldn't fit Moons if we consider them non-objective goals.
Years ago I've had an idea of just keeping all MSGs in the Demo tier. Since they are very obviously some kind of tech porn that takes an expert to create and understand its value.
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.
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Location: Northern California
feos wrote:
How would we handle usage versus avoidance of major skip glitch? Avoiding it is not an in-game option, yet it feels natural to allow it. And some major skip glitches wouldn't fit Moons if we consider them non-objective goals.
Years ago I've had an idea of keeping all MSGs in the Demo tier.
What we consider objective should allow for some flexibility. There are a good number of categories that are not necessarily objective but should probably still be accepted as "standard" anyway: Low glitch may be hard to define objectively, but if we keep it as simple as "foregoes major skip glitch" then I see no reason not to allow them as they come in... Or we could just call runs that forego major skips "all levels" and throw them squarely in the objective category.
Actually, since we've gotten a pretty overwhelmingly positive reaction to this proposal, maybe we should all start working on hashing out the rules in finer detail. We can either come up with a definite list of categories we want to be objective, or try to come up with a clean definition for "non-objective" categories, whichever one would be more clear and concise in the long run.
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 BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
I like the idea of tiers being remade in general, as well as the whole entertainment thing.
How the culture is: right now Moon is "the default", so Vault is kind of pejorative: some people on the forum said your run wasn't entertaining, so it gets an ugly black icon and it's listed lower on the site.
However, people that only know TASVideos from the youtube channel don't care. They watch what interests them and entertains them, not what we have decided is entertaining. Some vault runs are some of the most highly watched TASes on the channel.
How does someone feel when they submit their first TAS on the site, and it goes to Vault, which they learn is the dumping ground? How do they feel when they get 2 answers on their thread before judgment, one saying "Sorry, this wasn't entertaining, voting No"?
Runs shouldn't have to be judged on entertainment to have the default tier, or else get a subpar treatment on the site. They should just be runs, without any tiers.
If it gets good or stellar feedback, they get a special badge like Moons/Stars, gets promoted to Newcomer Corner etc.
This way the audience can decide for themselves, and when they come to the site, we can nudge them towards runs that are found to be entertaining, and remove the whole notion of "these TASes are bad, because they aren't 'entertaining, don't watch them.", from the judging process to publication.
Instead of putting people and runs down, let's encourage them to do better. Let's accept whatever they have for us. If it's suboptimal, we'll them they why. If it's not entertaining to us, then let's leave the entertainment to others who will be entertained and move on.
(I didn't read the rest of the thread so some points may already have been made.)
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Samsara wrote:
Actually, since we've gotten a pretty overwhelmingly positive reaction to this proposal, maybe we should all start working on hashing out the rules in finer detail. We can either come up with a definite list of categories we want to be objective, or try to come up with a clean definition for "non-objective" categories, whichever one would be more clear and concise in the long run.
Maybe we need to ask this differently.
Question to everyone
How would you decide when there's too many branches if you had absolute freedom?
Even with objective branches it often feels like they need to be limited somehow, and even with subjective branches it often feels like some of them need to co-exist.
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.
I think something along the lines of 'Is the difference the new branch has with the old ones interesting enough?'
The difference could lie in goal choice, in routing, in entertainment, in anything really. If the difference is judged non-interesting, I'd publish the more optimised and then the more entertaining one.
I don't think I'd prepare for every eventuality in advance, since I think 'too many branches' is not a problem that will pop up a lot.
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Chanoyu wrote:
I don't think I'd prepare for every eventuality in advance, since I think 'too many branches' is not a problem that will pop up a lot.
Just going through all in-game options in some games would result in 20-30 branches (different combinations of characters, simultaneous player count, difficulty, warp usage, etc.). And the borderline of "different enough" may be tricky to define, for example if there is disagreement on which branches make sense to exist on their own.
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.
I don't think I'd prepare for every eventuality in advance, since I think 'too many branches' is not a problem that will pop up a lot.
Just going through all in-game options in some games would result in 20-30 branches (different combinations of characters, simultaneous player count, difficulty, warp usage, etc.). And the borderline of "different enough" may be tricky to define, for example if there is disagreement on which branches make sense to exist on their own.
Will people make 20-30 TASes of the same game though; for how many games is that really a danger? "Different enough" is indeed tricky to define, but maybe a poll question in the vein of "should this movie be published" can help with some intersubjectivity.
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Chanoyu wrote:
Will people make 20-30 TASes of the same game though; for how many games is that really a danger?
Hard to tell. If a game offers enough difference for 30 branches, I wouldn't mind. People feeling passionate about TASing something is an important factor we've never considered in the past. It needs some care.
Chanoyu wrote:
"Different enough" is indeed tricky to define, but maybe a poll question in the vein of "should this movie be published" can help with some intersubjectivity.
Indeed this is what I suggested here. Though it looks like the system I suggested there is still too complicated. Maybe there shouldn't be a defined list of branches acceptable by default.
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.
I don't see a need to limit branch numbers as long as they all have a different goal. However if there are minor variations that lead to the same result, that would be a limitation. For example, consider Chrono Trigger endings. I wouldn't mind seeing all of the endings as separate branches ("fastest ending #1," "fastest ending #2," etc). But saving the Chancellor doesn't cause a different type of ending; it just changes the scene. So saving the Chancellor would be a slower-than-optimal way to achieve the ending and would be avoided. But if a branch were aiming for, say, full completion instead of that particular ending, then the Chancellor would have to be saved.
The main focus should be on making sure that the player has clearly defined their desired goal and achieved it as fast as possible without violating the goal's internal conditions.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
What exactly does the term Demonstration mean in this context anyway? To me the term demo kind of imparts a meaning of something shown as a proof of concept that may not necessarily be the full featured product. Would a demo have to be a full complete playthrough? Would it even have to be optimized?
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
What exactly does the term Demonstration mean in this context anyway? To me the term demo kind of imparts a meaning of something shown as a proof of concept that may not necessarily be the full featured product. Would a demo have to be a full complete playthrough? Would it even have to be optimized?
I'm just getting caught up on this now, and I absolutely love the idea. I know the conversation has died down, but I hope it's not too late to add my input.
To me, TASVideos has always strived to be the definitive collection of high-quality video game superplays. In that vein, I believe the criteria for publication on this site can be distilled down to one simple question:
Does it showcase both obvious and optimum superhuman play?
As long as a movie displays both, then there's value in adding it to our collection. And while both what is obvious and what is optimum are subjective in nature, for the most part both are easily demonstrable; for the times where they are not, that is precisely the reason we have expert judges.
feos wrote:
Question to everyone
How would you decide when there's too many branches if you had absolute freedom?
Our goal is to showcase superhuman play. There are several categories of superhuman play, including (ordered by increasing technical merit):
- Superhuman Speed
- Superhuman Precision
- Superhuman Tactics/Strategy
- Superhuman Luck
- ACE
These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more.
As long as a submission showcases more obvious or optimal superhuman play along the same lines as an existing run, it should obsolete that run. If, however, a run introduces new categories of superhuman play, or if it introduces different aspects of the existing categories, then it deserves its own branch.
For example, there are often times when a game is played with more than one player, new strategies are introduced that are not available in the single player run. In this case, it deserves its own category because the play the movie presents is markedly different. In contrast, some games have little interaction between players, in which case a multi-player run may just showcase better superhuman speed or luck. As this second type of run would be providing a more obvious display of the same criteria, it would obsolete the single-player branch.
To sum up, I think what has hindered us in the past is that we have been too focused on the input to our process and not put enough focus on the output. While having clear technical criteria on what should and should not be published can give us some hard-and-fast decision-making advantages, it has proven inadequate because technical criteria does not equal quality.
Our acceptance criteria should be instead be focused on the output of each run, and drive maximizing what makes TASses wow both TAS and non-TAS communities alike. If we strive to host the most obvious and optimum superhuman runs, then everything else should take care of itself.
Joined: 7/12/2009
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dwangoAC wrote:
- I like having a system where anyone can upload anything in any category for any game similar to speedrun.com. I'd obviously prefer a few changes compared to how speedrun.com handles things and I'm not interested in a clone of the site but the general principle of anyone being able to upload something appeals to me greatly, as does the freedom to have more categories than we do now for our heavily curated runs.
- I'm in favor of more freedom in the types of content we host. There's an entire category of differently-abled speedrunners who are using tools to assist their speedruns who can't post their results on any of the mainstream speedrunning sites. We don't let them on here either because it isn't perfect and therefore falls short of the glorious standard of the site. I'd like to inclusively welcome them in with tags that allow their content to be categorized appropriately. We've lost some of the essence of what made us unique back in the early days of Tool-assisted superplay movies and I want to see us welcome that somehow.
I'm in favor of allowing more experimental content types. There's someone currently working on a very different way of "tool-assisted" gameplay that relies on virtual intelligence, like MarI/O on steroids but with a lot more human crafting around it. There's no place for that kind of content here right now and there really ought to be.
Being more accepting of LOTADs would be pretty interesting, there's many people that spend some time making TASes of long games, but don't make the extremely high time commitment of making a fully optimized one.
For example, MaskedTAS made TASes of 15 different categories of Metroid Prime 2.[/url]
So the thing about lotads is that really the difference between them and a TAS is that the creator declares it suboptimal up front as optimization wasn't a big focus. In that regard, the problem with LOTADs is that they're extremely easy to beat. Rather than make an entirely new system for them (any sort of publication invites competition and therefore easy obsoletion), I feel the solution is to make userfiles better and more easily searched and such.
[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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Added this to the OP but I'm posting it separately to bump the thread:
Instead of being expanded, the Vault system has officially been retired as of today! We are moving away from tiers and into just general acceptance and archival, no longer dividing the runs on our site by entertainment value or using it as a metric for judging every single run that comes in. Victory is ours!
This thread will now be used to collect and discuss feedback on the implementation of this new system. Implementation is currently still in progress, so any and all feedback is appreciated! We'll be continuing to collect feedback going forward as well, so if I forget to remove this message after several years, feel free to pretend it's still relevant and post your feedback anyway!
I've created pages for the new "standard" class and for the term "class" as well. Feel free to weigh in on them, ask questions, do all of that good good community stuff.
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 BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
What I want more than anything else would be to have highscore as a standard goal that functions the exact same way as completion time does for speed-oriented TASes. The current policy on highscore as a goal is perhaps the one rule on this site I disagree with the most.
Just like with speed-oriented runs: Someone creates a highscore run of a game, it gets published as the current record. Then someone submits a run that gets a higher score, it obsoletes the old one.
The difference compared to speedruns are infinite scoring glitches, but you could kind of compare them to something like ACE, something that changes the run enough to justify separate categories.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I completely agree with you there, that's definitely one I want and will likely be one of the first we add.
[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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andypanther wrote:
The current policy on highscore as a goal is perhaps the one rule on this site I disagree with the most.
The entirety of it, or only specific parts?
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.
The current policy on highscore as a goal is perhaps the one rule on this site I disagree with the most.
The entirety of it, or only specific parts?
The requirement of having to prove that there is a definitive maximum score. That might work for games where you can easily score high enough to max out a counter at something like 999999, but not for other situations. I never understood why score runs should be judged that way, it's like asking people to proof that the time for a speed-oriented TAS can never possibly go lower.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Congratulations! I think this is an amazing step for opening up this site to all sorts of great content and growing the ranks of TAS content producers. Changing the status quo is never easy, so I applaud all the initiative and hard work that people have put into this to make it happen.
A couple thoughts/questions: I noticed that the new rules have no triviality restriction. I personally believe there shouldn't be one, however I wanted to double-check to make sure I'm understanding it correctly, especially given a recent conversation around the subject. Under the new rules, runs are acceptable as long as they exhibit sound TAS techniques throughout, appear optimal, and beat all known records for their chosen goal. Do I have that correct?
I also noticed that there is no criteria stating that the movie must stand out from unassisted play. I do think there would be value to adding this rule back in. As I mentioned in my post above, I believe the value of this site is to offer movies showcasing superhuman play. The site's unique library would be watered down significantly if it also contained movies indistinguishable from those on non-TAS speedrunning sites.
A couple thoughts/questions: I noticed that the new rules have no triviality restriction. I personally believe there shouldn't be one, however I wanted to double-check to make sure I'm understanding it correctly, especially given a recent conversation around the subject. Under the new rules, runs are acceptable as long as they exhibit sound TAS techniques throughout, appear optimal, and beat all known records for their chosen goal. Do I have that correct?
I also noticed that there is no criteria stating that the movie must stand out from unassisted play. I do think there would be value to adding this rule back in. As I mentioned in my post above, I believe the value of this site is to offer movies showcasing superhuman play. The site's unique library would be watered down significantly if it also contained movies indistinguishable from those on non-TAS speedrunning sites.
Those rules are in movie rules, not Standard rules. All movie rules still apply (tho they do need to be updated).
[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
