Pages I like:
CommonTricks - specifically, a very good description of luck manipulation
UsingEmulatorTools - how about inputdisplay?
HexEditing - lots of good info here, especially about SMV files. Didn't realize FCMs were compressed until reading so here.
MostActivePosters - Hehe I just like this page
Pages I don't like so much:
Guidelines - Looking at some published movies, I feel like these aren't always followed. It makes me wonder if some people did runs back in the day that were "good enough to get published" instead of attempting to be perfect.
Rules - some strange wording. Example: "If your tool-assisted movie is slower than the non-toolassisted world record of the game you play, your movie will almost certainly be rejected." Seems obvious to me.
Recommended movies - A good page, but I just have my own star list :P
Funny, the pages I don't like are pages I still got a lot of info from!
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
In no specific order:
- GameResources and all the derivative gamespecific pages. Very useful for understanding a game.
- Guidelines and Rules. Mostly for linking to for people who don't get things.
- UsingEmulatorTools - whenever I forget the keyboard shortcuts for some emulator.
- EmulatorHomepages is also very useful.
I've seen all of the rest, but that's all I've got to say.
I hadn't seen BossFightingGuide.
I found the GuideLines useful and informative (at least back when I read it) and CommonTricks similarly.
UsingEmulatorTools has some out of date / not yet entered information (VBA frame advance and the TODO things). I second the request to add input display to the list of useful things that can be done. And autohold, for the emulators that support it. (Is it just me or is FCEU's autofire totally broken?)
Nitsuja:
It's not just you, several people have reported that about FCEU autofire.
I added Input display to the list and wrote what it can be used for. I don't remember most of the commands though, so someone (YOU!) go ahead and fix that.
jxq2000: Rules - some strange wording. Example: "If your tool-assisted movie is slower than the non-toolassisted world record of the game you play, your movie will almost certainly be rejected." Seems obvious to me.
Hasn't been that obvious to everyone in the past, so I think it should stay. The guy who did a sub-standard Sonic 2 video, for example.
The other sections are fine enough as it is, but the whole "tricks" page needs a massive update, as that's where the most runners will want to look first.
How can we improve the usability and usefulness of this website?
The #1 feature I've wanted to see for a long time is searching, where you can type the name of a game, player, and possibly a few other things into a search box. Also an index of all the games with links to the current movies would be nice. The movie history page is probably the closest thing that we have to that already, but an alphabetized index would be nice with 1 line for each game.
Recommended movies: The main problem with this page is that the wrong ALttP movie has a star. Also, maybe this page could have a table of contents. Other than that it's pretty good.
GameResources: Maybe you could link to the forum topics for each game.
MostActivePosters: The groups are weird. What's the purpose of this page? Is it supposed to tell you who the "most active posters" are like the name implies, or is it supposed to tell you what everyone's title is that's based on other things? I guess we don't really need it to tell us who the most active posters are because we have the member list for that, but maybe you could change the name of this page.
ListOfIdeas: Maybe put a star next to the games people are most interested in.
A place for WIP movies / different movie categories / different movie grouping is not the intended focus of this query.
Actually, on the submissions page I would find it useful for there to be a "List accepted submissions" option and a sortable column with the re-record count and possibly another for completion time (if not too hard to split it from the title). I know this might be functionality intended to be covered by whatever overhaul of movie grouping is planned to eventually happen, but it seems like a relatively minor change.
(Random thought about MostActivePosters: It would be funny if someone did something particularly amazing and was given the honorary title of Robot as a result, to keep company with NesVideoAgent.)
(Random thought about MostActivePosters: It would be funny if someone did something particularly amazing and was given the honorary title of Robot as a result, to keep company with NesVideoAgent.)
Lol, that would be awesome! Bisqwit, can you change my rank to robot? :)
Anything and everything that has been pointed out anywhere on the boards or used in any run and isn't already there in some form.
Can you give some examples?
(The only one I can think of off the top of my head that isn't game-specific and I can't find on that page is the 'trick' of jumping to maximize downward acceleration when going off an edge.)
I really like the various anigif pics on those pages which they are on (particularly the representative pics on the Guidelines page).
A tiny addition to the "common tricks" bit: The duck/walk applies to Kid Chameleon as well as Rygar, but it's not nearly as useful.
I don't know if this would be useful to others, but I would enjoy if each movie had a line with an estimation about how much time does it take to beat the game for a normal player. That way, I would know beforehand if Friday XIII is a short game that takes about 10 minutes to beat (with some practice), or if it really is as long as a full run of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It doesn't have to be very precise, just "half an hour", "a raining day", or "many days" would be enough for me.
A more precise estimation would help appreciating the quality of a run, but I think it would be a source of troubles.
That's all.
EDIT: It can be included a difficulty meter, too.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
CommonTricks - newbies, inter
GameResources - everyone
ListOfIdeas - not very usefull, maybe for newbies, but can be deceiving
GuideLines - important.
BossFightingGuide - newbies
EmulatorHomepages - important
UsingEmulatorTools - important
CodecProblems - important, but i prefer using xvid so we dont have codec problems at all.
PasswordGenerators - cool. could add gauntlet, with permission of the guy from gamefaqs.
Rules - important
HexEditing - this helped me
GenericTips - for newbies and inters and people who think they are expert at TAS, but aren't (like me hehe).
Helping - its good as it is
Users - never found a use for this
MostActivePosters - nice page
Recommended movies - its nice as it is, very good page
Movie history - having the record is good
And since we're suggesting here, i'd like to have a unassisted speedruns page, but that could be complicated and not the goal of the site. but it would be just a "fun" page. dunno.
And since we're suggesting here, i'd like to have a unassisted speedruns page, but that could be complicated and not the goal of the site. but it would be just a "fun" page. dunno.
It would be basically repeating what Speed Demos Archive is doing. There's no need.
CommonTricks: Because of it's general nature, I assume most people would glean this stuff just by watching speedruns and playing games, but it's good to have it all in one spot. Same goes for the BossFightingGuide and generictips.
GameResources: The "trick" pages for mario and megaman and the like are interesting and well laid out.
UsingEmulatorTools: This one helped me out big time just this morning. I was one of those people who assumed movies couldn't be resumed... Heh.
HexEditing: Can't imagine using this information, but it's good to know it's there.
Guidelines: I found it to be very encouraging and inspiring. I guess you could say it's the most useful. It's all gold, this page.
The rest weren't very useful to me either because I'm new to the community (though I've been lurking for some time now) or don't a password generator for the games listed.
How can we improve the usability and usefulness of this website?
The only suggestion I can think of is to make the Guidelines and usingemulatortools pages more visible to the casual n00b... but really, they're already pretty visible. You'd have to be some kind of idiot not to find them.
Did this list contain pages that you had never seen before?
Yes- "movie history" "codec problems" and "password generators"
How can we improve the usability and usefulness of this website?
Many movies refer to other movies in their description without providing a link or even the exact name of the other movie. For instance, the full Zelda: A Link to the Past run refers to the "short version" of the run, and I can imagine some people reading that description wondering what the short version is and not knowing where to find it. Maybe it would helpful for all the references to movies to get links, except when it's talking about the movie that it directly obsoleted.
How can we improve the usability and usefulness of this website?
Correctly title and alphabetize the movie pages. It's confusing having Mega Man after 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. It's real confusing having Legend of Zelda 2 in the L's, and Zelda 2 in the Z's. The 3 Castlevania games are nowhere near each other. Change Castlevania 3 to the English name first to stay consistent with the rest of the entries, the same way that Bionic Commando was recently changed.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Many movies refer to other movies in their description without providing a link or even the exact name of the other movie. For instance, the full Zelda: A Link to the Past run refers to the "short version" of the run, and I can imagine some people reading that description wondering what the short version is and not knowing where to find it. Maybe it would helpful for all the references to movies to get links, except when it's talking about the movie that it directly obsoleted.
That a good idea, but the problem with movie pages is that movies.cgi is basically a search engine. It takes different types of search options, and the id= is just one of them.
There are no pages dedicated to single movies, even though it's a common practice to link to them with the id= setting.
I'm open to suggestions to help this.
