Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Fortranm wrote:
Labeling the any% as something else seems to be a common practice for 2DMariogamesingeneral for some reason.
Because it's a fundamental, objective in-game mechanic that affects gameplay so much that it can define the whole branch. Same as "2 players".
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.
There is this Japanese re-release that has the BLJ patched (and this is the version the Chinese localization by iQue and later ports like Super Mario 3D All-Stars based on). I wonder if "16 stars" would just be any% if done on those versions.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
ROM hacks and the Standard class
Some time ago we started wondering why ROM hacks, a niche thing made by fans of a given game for fans of a given game, absolutely has to appeal to an average viewer. I'm still not sure why they were banned from Vault exactly. The problem was definitely not in their potential low quality, because for homebrew games we just require that they are not terrible and allow them to Vault Standard:
Wiki: MovieRules#GameChoiceInGeneral wrote:
Unlicensed and homebrew games need to meet a minimum standard of game quality. They should be complete and original.
Bootleg games must not be direct clones of a licensed game on the same console. Unlicensed ports with unique gameplay, such as demakes, are allowed.
What will be the issue with hacks if we have the same requirements for them in Standard?
One good point is some hacks are so obscure that they are barely findable already, and we can't guarantee about the future. But then we may just demand that the hack is known to smwcentral, romhacking.net, or GoodTools, and approach exceptions case by case.
Overall quality of site content would be a very weird point to make against hacks. If there's more high quality TASes on the site, we get greater coverage, more people get involved and inspired, more people make more high quality TASes. If we have less high quality TASes by excluding hacks, we attract less new content creators and other contributors. So this is counter-productive.
The thing that's actually lacking right now is usable organization, because it's not displayed which hacks relate to which games. But that can be implemented as needed.
Am I missing anything here? Why would we not want to allow hacks for Standard if they are well made and have following?
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.
As a response to feos's post, I wanted to suggest this as well - allowing movies with AR codes, especially if they fundamentally change the way the game is played.
For instance, there's an AR code for Spider-Man 2 (GC) that allows you to swing fast - so fast that you regularly go double or triple the intended web swinging speed, surpassing 350+mph (560+kmh) that requires a drastic difference in the way the game is played.
That sort of raises a question on what determines if an AR code "fundamentally changes the way the game is played". There's an AR code for Spider-Man (GC) (the first movie game) that allows you to play as an otherwise unused model of Green Goblin. It does not change the way the game is played at all, but I have considered using it for another Green Goblin TAS simply because it doesn't make a gameplay difference.
I guess if the code does actually, legitimately nothing, (i.e. floor is lava for a game where you spend almost no time on the ground), then it shouldn't be allowed.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I feel external memory modification should be separated from rom hacks, because they can't make a new game on an existing engine. And memory modification will absolutely be allowed in Playground as long as it's reproducible. Unlike hacks, memory editing can't be limited to some known respected resource of decent quality works, it's just entirely arbitrary.
But I don't think we ever wanted to ban memory editing from Moons. If you can make it entertaining, it's a good reason to accept it IMO. Post #511417
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.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
If difference between 2 hacks is only like between 2 versions of a regular game, most of the levels are the same, characters are the same or only slightly tweaked, gameplay is the same, then we could obsolete one hack with another. Obsoleting by a hack that has different levels would not happen since that's objectively new gameplay worth seeing, and we don't do that for regular games. Cosmetic hacks therefore would be versions of regular games, and as the rule about bootlegs says, they "must not be direct clones of a licensed game on the same console".
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 totally agree with this suggestion, I had one that I shared for the transition of accepting hacks into Standard. But the end goal was this suggestion !
If it can be implemented in one shot, it will be for the best.
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 had this in my pocket since a long time but since I knew it was planned to discuss about it (from staff) at one point, I decided to not share it right away. But now that it is too long for me to keep it, let's share it ;) (I understand staff has a lot to do and this is not your fault).
I would like to propose a change on the "maximum score" rule and in particular, overflows where there are 3 different cases :
The score locks at a certain value, doesn't stop running and has no glitches because of that : the devs thought about a case where the player gets more than this and to not make the game bug/crash or anything made a maximum value but we could still count the rest of the score added to the final score by ourselves and so we would need to maximize it even if the score counter doesn't count anymore.
The score overflows to 0, the memory allocated for the score isn't enough but the score is still working, games could potentially even store the real score in its RAM, the devs could have think about it and was then intended but due to space in memory/on screen, time or because everyone was doing it this way it wasn't possible to go further. Since we still have the score just not the higher numbers, we can still know what is the score and so I think it is not a problem.
The score overflows but is glitched or the game isn't working normally, (while I'm less confident about it) we should then maximize the score while not making it glitching like stopping it at the very last/maximum number before the score glitches.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
What's the suggested rule change tho?
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.
Do not use fan translations, cracked game versions, or otherwise hacked ROM images — translators do not want you to use obsolete versions and we prefer non-hacked games.
But after we allowed hacks for Standard, I wonder if we still want to be so strict about game translations. For example, which issues will we face if we allow fan translations on the same principles as other hacks (should not be bad and overly obscure), and outside of Standard? IMO it also makes sense to apply our usual requirement of no audiovisual or gameplay affecting glitches.
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.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6449
Location: The land down under.
If the translation doesn't do anything that would come off preferable over the base game (regardless of language) then I wouldn't have an issue with it, especially if it syncs between the two.
Bonus points if it syncs on multiple translation hacks of varying languages.
But if it has an advantage (or disadvantage) over the base game then I don't think a translation hack should be allowed.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
But after we allowed hacks for Standard, I wonder if we still want to be so strict about game translations. For example, which issues will we face if we allow fan translations on the same principles as other hacks (should not be bad and overly obscure), and outside of Standard? IMO it also makes sense to apply our usual requirement of no audiovisual or gameplay affecting glitches.
I agree with that but are there any occurences of fan translations that adds something to the game other than pure translation ? I mean by this that the way the game will be played should change because of this (RNG that takes as seed text chosen by player, fastest route beeing different because of the translation). But we also need to consider different fan translations for the same language and also 2 different languages (can be considered separately ? together ?).
These conditions can be hard to verify tho so I don't mind and will be happy for any fan translation to be acceptable as different hacks. But language differences still shouldn't be considered for obsoletion.
Fan translations sometimes change some of how the game worst, accidentally or otherwise. It would take a fair amount of research, likely by the submitter, that the only change is the text. Even then a text change could be considered a gameplay change if the timing differences to draw all the text affects something. An example would be if the RNG is timing dependent and the different text length means requiring different approaches.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2823
Location: Northern California
It never felt right to me for the rules to have said both "we prefer (U) games and English language" and "we explicitly do not allow fan translations", so I don't really mind lessening the restrictions on them, but it's also something I'm not exactly keen on arguing for, if that makes sense.
A few issues come to mind: First, how far should we take it? A game can be translated into potentially dozens of different languages. Do we want to handle all of them, assuming the translation patch exists and that someone is willing to TAS it? What if a published run syncs fine on a translated version? Is that acceptable, or does it have to be completely made from scratch? If a translation introduces a game-breaking glitch not present in the original game, how do we handle it? Is there a reason to accept translations of games without much text? If all that changes in a game is a few HUD elements or a title screen, is there really a point to hosting that? At the same time, if we only allow plot/story/text heavy games, isn't that just an arbitrary restriction?
I feel like instead of discussing this right now, we should be looking more into figuring out how we want to treat Moons as a whole, or working a little more to elevate Playground from its WIP phase into more of what we want it to be. The way things work right now, even after all of the recent changes, doesn't accommodate everything we want in an elegant way quite yet. Ideally, we work things out to let things like fan translations fall into place naturally, rather than explicitly try to consider them and rewrite the rules to account for them. To be blunt, I would sooner crush my hands in a vise than let the rules get back to being a labyrinth of addendums and overworded clauses.
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.
Like Samsara said before me, I feel like if a fan-translation makes the movie more entertaining, it shouldn't be outright refused. As for most rules, I feel that a case to case basic would be the best, as entertainment is kinda subjective anyways.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Spikestuff wrote:
But if it has an advantage (or disadvantage) over the base game then I don't think a translation hack should be allowed.
Darkman425 wrote:
Fan translations sometimes change some of how the game worst, accidentally or otherwise. It would take a fair amount of research, likely by the submitter, that the only change is the text.
My thinking was that if the audience can spot problems with a translation, it would not be eligible for Moons. Though that would be harder to figure out for Playground, since it's for runs that the audience doesn't get excited about.
ViGadeomes wrote:
I agree with that but are there any occurences of fan translations that adds something to the game other than pure translation ? I mean by this that the way the game will be played should change because of this (RNG that takes as seed text chosen by player, fastest route beeing different because of the translation).
Darkman425 wrote:
Even then a text change could be considered a gameplay change if the timing differences to draw all the text affects something. An example would be if the RNG is timing dependent and the different text length means requiring different approaches.
If basic mechanics remain intact, route adjustments coming from text changes feel like speed-entertainment trade-offs to me.
ViGadeomes wrote:
But we also need to consider different fan translations for the same language and also 2 different languages (can be considered separately ? together ?).
Samsara wrote:
A game can be translated into potentially dozens of different languages. Do we want to handle all of them, assuming the translation patch exists and that someone is willing to TAS it?
I admit I don't have an answer to this one.
Samsara wrote:
What if a published run syncs fine on a translated version? Is that acceptable, or does it have to be completely made from scratch?
If it syncs on both then we could have a secondary encode.
Samsara wrote:
If a translation introduces a game-breaking glitch not present in the original game, how do we handle it?
Reject, because it has a gameplay affecting glitch.
Samsara wrote:
Is there a reason to accept translations of games without much text? If all that changes in a game is a few HUD elements or a title screen, is there really a point to hosting that? At the same time, if we only allow plot/story/text heavy games, isn't that just an arbitrary restriction?
Samsara wrote:
To be blunt, I would sooner crush my hands in a vise than let the rules get back to being a labyrinth of addendums and overworded clauses.
I agree that it feels like adding too much complexity, which is bad long-term.
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.
For example, which issues will we face if we allow fan translations on the same principles as other hacks (should not be bad and overly obscure), and outside of Standard?
I suppose this implies that fanTL would never be used to replace/obsolete movies done on official releases, which I think should definitely be the case.
And then we run into a paradox.
feos wrote:
For example, which issues will we face if we allow fan translations on the same principles as other hacks (should not be bad and overly obscure), and outside of Standard? IMO it also makes sense to apply our usual requirement of no audiovisual or gameplay affecting glitches.
This sounds intuitive for all intents and purposes, on first sight. However, if they have completely identical gameplay, doesn't that mean we are allowing movies with identical gameplay to be published alongside each other? If we don't do this for official releases in different languages, why would we do it for non-official translations of all things?
Let's turn this around. If we are treating them as hacks, let's stick with the "no cosmetic hacks" rule, and allow fanTL that DOES have noticeable gameplay differences, intended or not, instead. Maybe a Moon requirement can still be reasonable?
Or, if we actually are talking about using fanTL with identical gameplay for Moon branches of official games, the maximum that I personally consider reasonable is to accept a Moon branch movie done on said fanTLs only if there is no existing movie of the same category done on official releases and allow the latter to obsolete the former later.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Fortranm wrote:
feos wrote:
For example, which issues will we face if we allow fan translations on the same principles as other hacks (should not be bad and overly obscure), and outside of Standard?
I suppose this implies that fanTL would never be used to replace/obsolete movies done on official releases, which I think should definitely be the case.
I didn't intend that implication and I don't agree with it. I treat translations the same as speed-entertainment trade-offs, which are never a different branch if that's the only difference.
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 didn't intend that implication and I don't agree with it.
I guess I thought that's the implication because of the phrase "other hacks". As it stands, hacks are only accepted as separate games and not as substitutes of official releases (outside of edge cases like the game being broken and can't be completed etc), right?
feos wrote:
I treat translations the same as speed-entertainment trade-offs, which are never a different branch if that's the only difference.
I agree, but I believe the main point of contention on this topic has always been about official vs unofficial releases and legitimacy.
It never felt right to me for the rules to have said both "we prefer (U) games and English language" and "we explicitly do not allow fan translations", so I don't really mind lessening the restrictions on them, but it's also something I'm not exactly keen on arguing for, if that makes sense.
I think it's worth something to be able to say of a run: this can be done on a real game on a real console. It's why playback files are required, and spliced movies are rejected, right? Official language options keep the run 'real' in this sense, fan translations do not. To have a tas author, or a judge, or whoever prove that there are no differences that effect this realness seems to me not worth the trouble at all (if they do, however, I see no reason to reject). To let go of the standard of realness for readable text seems to me not worth the trade, it's not like you can follow the story through all the text mashing usually anyways. Good submission notes are probably a better guide to understanding what's going on than a translation patch.
(Gameplay patches provide more and different gameplay, and that gameplay on a superhuman level is the reason tases are made, so they are clearly of a different kind to aesthetic patches.)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
It looks like the time has come... to discussboard games once again!
We're banning them from Vault/Standard since 2012, and I've been thinking that it's not perfectly justified for quite a while. Especially with our shift towards a TASer focused system.
So what about we rehash which problems we used to have with board games in Vault/Standard, and we discuss whether those problems are still critical.
- How do we define an ending?
Similarly to how we define it in other games: if the game has an ending, voila; and if it doesn't, we end on completion of last unique gameplay (or hardest loop, or highest score, or kill screen).
- How do we handle difficulty? Strongest AI can be unwatchable, and easiest AI is too trivial.
Let TASers decide which difficulty they prefer for a given game, just like we do for all other games and it works fine. And in Standard it doesn't have to be watchable.
- What do we do with thousands of versions and variants of the same board game?
If it's just a version of the same game by the same developer, obsolete. But if that version features enough differences, make it its own thing.
- Any other questions?
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.
Board games in general typically have a lot of exploitable AI/RNG and that alone makes me feel like they're adequate for TASing. With the relaxed rules of Standard it'd be great to see board games make the cut.
Just posting to voice my support of accepting board games to Standard.
I've never liked the claim that a board game on a console/pc isn't considered a "real" video game effectively because it began its existence (or is also available) in a non-video format. It's a game being played on a video screen that uses inputs in the same ways as nearly all other video games. That alone makes it a video game in my opinion. They can also be TASed like any other game, and they often have potential for optimization (i.e. through RNG manipulation as mentioned in posts above).
Another consideration: many puzzle games (like Boxxle), that are already accepted, could easily be converted to physical materials and played on a board on a tabletop as a board game. Would those have been unacceptable if the board game version had existed first?
The one caveat i would add regarding potentially accepting board games, is that competitive board games should require at least one computer/ai opponent to be acceptable in Standard.
TASes of competitive board games that only use "human" players should need to meet community consensus for acceptance to Moons/Alternatives. Otherwise Playground could be considered as a possible landing spot before outright rejection.
A few issues come to mind: First, how far should we take it? A game can be translated into potentially dozens of different languages. Do we want to handle all of them, assuming the translation patch exists and that someone is willing to TAS it?
In my opinion, the point of a translation (to viewers) is to change a game from something they cannot read to something they can; thereby making the game more entertaining to watch. I'd argue, then, that any translation to English should be allowed, and any other translation should not be.
feos wrote:
It looks like the time has come... to discussboard games once again!
Most importantly, quite a number of turn-based video games are, gameplay-wise, indistinguishable from board games; so I see no good reason to disallow boardgames when we allow runs on, say, King's Bounty or Railroad Tycoon.
In my memory, the two main arguments against boardgame runs is that (a) we don't want runs on 100+ chess games, and (b) most boardgame runs consist of luck-manipping the AI to commit suicide and that's boring to watch. I feel that both of these were good arguments back when the site had a couple hundred runs on it, but with the current set of (almost 5000) runs I don't see a problem with allowing boardgames.
We might (?) want to have a "one game per platfrom rule", meaning that (e.g.) any Chess run on Windows can obsolete any other Chess run on Windows, even if it's a different chess by a different publisher. I'm not saying this is necessary, but it alleviates the "thousands of variants" issue.
