Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Some movies have this category attributed to them: "One player controls two characters". I suppose it was written a long time ago. It should be changed. Here are a few reasons why I think so:
- It does not matter how many players control the characters of the game, because it's a TAS. There may be many authors or a bot may have played some parts. The relevant information is how many characters are used, not how many players/authors there are.
- If it's not changed, why isn't there a category for "two players control one character?" I think it is an equally impressive feat. (I even heard some 4 guys managed to control 1 character, in a record time!) Also, with spliced input, the author may actually never have controlled the two characters simultaneously. Maybe there should be a category for "one player controls two characters one at a time..."
- It may give misleading info for people who browse the movies for the first time, because when you read "one player..." you see a player playing a game in your mind. I think some part of the FAQ says "we do not just play here", but the word "player" gives the impression that someone is just playing here.
- The movies on this site look like they are being played very well by someone, even though nobody is actually playing the games, they are just input files. Actually, you could say that "an elephant with superhuman reflexes controls two characters", because it's a TAS and it does not matter who or what you think the superplayer is. I think the FAQ says/said somewhere that "...as if God was playing the game" or something... Why restrict the imagination of the viewer by saying that there is some "one player" who is playing the game?
- The only good thing I can think of the expression is that it gives special attention to the generally harder task of making multiplayer movies.
I think those multiplayer categories should be changed to simply "#-players", "controls # characters" or something like that. The current expression is not even consistent with other attributes like "aims for fastest time" and "abuses programming errors...", so if it is not changed to something completely different, it should be changed to "controls # characters" for consistency. Even the multigame movies have it in the form "# games in one movie", not "one player in # games".
It clearly says that single (one, not two or more) player controls two characters at one time. I doubt AKA and Mukki were sitting next to each other pressing down their own keys, because that's so difficult.
Joined: 8/26/2006
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I agree that it is now a trivial feat.
However, I think it should be altered rather than be removed entirely. Instead of saying "One player controls two characters" it should read something along the lines of "Two-player movie". This would still be a useful tag to those unfamiliar with the game because it is not alwaysimmeadiately obvious that the run is two playered. This would bring it more in line with the "Manipulates Luck" or "Abuses Programming Errors" because to those unfamiliar with the game it is not immeadiately obvious that glitches have been used or luck has been manipulated.
I have to admit 2 players isn't such a big thing now. Some games I fail to see the difficulty of playing with 2 players compared with one, maybe >2 players or an N64 game would still be impressive nowadays. Although I still like to stick to the rule where if 2 players is faster then it obseletes the 1p, but if slower it gets its own independent category.
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I agree with Aqfaq. I think it should just be "controls 2 players" or simply "2 players".
While we are discussing classes, I think "Takes damage to save time" has been problematic lately. I have published several movies where damage was taken but not necessarily to save time (like SOR, or playarounds like RCR).
Death is also sometimes but not as a "shortcut". So it becomes misleading as well. (Such as Robocop vs Terminator).
Death IS used as a shortcut in RvT. As for the deaths/damage that don't save anything whatsoever in regards to the main goal (such as time or score), I don't think it should be mentioned anywhere in the movie tags, since it won't be a searching criterion.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I agree with Aqfaq. I think it should just be "controls 2 players" or simply "2 players".
Couldn't "2 players" be easily understood as the movie having two authors?
Besides, what are controlled are not players but playable characters (ie. PCs).
"Two characters controlled by 1 author" would be more accurate, although a bit clumsy of an expression.
While we are discussing classes, I think "Takes damage to save time" has been problematic lately. I have published several movies where damage was taken but not necessarily to save time (like SOR, or playarounds like RCR).
That's not problematic at all. If you don't take damage, then is a "Takes no damage" tag. If you take damage, but it's not to save time, then you don't get a cute tag.
Is there even any runs on the site where no damage/takes damage to save time is a seperate category? I think in the infant days of TASing avoiding damage altogether might have come across as more impressive, but its nothing more different than beating a Zelda game with only 3 hearts. A sort of thing which would only matter to an unassisted player, of course if it doesn't cost time then damage should be avoided.
"Two characters controlled by 1 author" would be more accurate, although a bit clumsy of an expression.
The "1 author" part is the part which is, at best, unnecessary, and also frequently incorrect.
Well, in the case where two authors make a movie, each controlling one playable character, then the movie would not receive that tag, but something else. If one single author controls both playable characters, I think that's a feat deserving its own tag. While I don't have personal experience, I can assume that controlling two playable characters is at least slightly harder and more laborious than controlling just one.
Joined: 4/8/2005
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Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Warp wrote:
If one single author controls both playable characters, I think that's a feat deserving its own tag.
You may be right, but I think it should be mentioned in the movie description only, because it does not affect the actual content of the movie. It is just an interesting fact about how the movie was created.
Uses # characters
Abuses death to save time
etc.
"Takes no damage" is for movies where taking damage would save time, but was decided against for stylistic reason. The default is "takes no damage because none can be taken" (pointless) or "Takes damage to save time" (expected). Similarly, "No warps" is not for a game that you can't take warps in, as is "Uses no passwords".
I cannot understand how this spiraled into such a debate considering how trivial this is.
Personally, I would like to see "Abuses major programming errors", as opposed to "Abuses programming errors". There's a lot of difference between occasionally falling into a block and breaking entire stages.
I think "takes no damage" has merit when doing so without losing any time is more difficult than taking it. Of course it would simply become another "abuses luck" which is mindlessly slapped onto every run without even the slightest thought about whether it really deserves the tag or not...
Btw, I think that in some cases "abuses programming errors" is given to games where actual programming errors are not abused at all, but level design errors are. Level design is not programming, and consequently abusing level design errors is certainly not the same thing as abusing programming errors. (Often level design errors arise from the level designer not knowing that with the game engine some very unlikely maneuver is actually possible, and it never comes up in testing. The maneuver itself is not necessarily a programming error at all.)
Another interesting question is that is something like zipping "abusing programming errors"? The zipping feature of some games is *intentional* and works exactly as programmed: The game engine has been explicitly programmed so that the character will be ejected from blocks, and it works exactly as programmed, and thus it's not a programming error. (Of course one could argue that getting inside a block is the error, not the zipping per se, but one could also argue that if the zipping was coded into the game the programmer knew that there are situations where you can get into blocks. If he knew that and he programmed a solution for it, is that really a programming error? After all, everything works exactly as the programmer intended.)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Could someone please add "One player controls 10 characters" tag to the Humans movie.
The tag is missing from that movie and the case does not differ in any way from the Maniac Mansion movie, which is said to control 3 characters.
How about a more generic "one player controls over 4 characters" for all the cases where more than 4 characters are controlled? IMO no need to create a distinct tag for every possible amount of controlled characters.
How about a generic "player controls multiple characters"? Would solve cases when there are several players running the game, and when there's more than one character to control.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I think it may be a good idea to at least distinguish between "controls 2 characters", which is rather admirable, and "controls more than 2 characters", which is even more admirable.
My original idea was that maybe even more granularity could be used. Controlling 3 characters is "cooler" than controlling just 2, but perhaps not as "cool" as controlling 4 characters. But on the other hand, after a certain point specifying the exact number of controlled characters stops being so relevant. "Controls 8 characters" and "controls 10 characters" are approximately equal in "coolness". That's why I suggested a compromise like "controls over 4 characters".
