Table of contents

Not present in BizHawk 2.3.1

Potential techniques not implemented so far.
A platform/game that polls for input from the console/controller multiple times within a single frame
Nearly all platforms allow to plug or unplug controllers while the console is powered on / game is playing
2 or more platforms/consoles connected together

Techniques conflicting with rules

Potential and theory techniques disobeying TASvideos' rules (as of 2019/01/09).
  • Special exceptions like Rygar auto hold buttons post-TAS are excluded.
  • Movie publishing related problems independent of using not allowed techniques like educational games or triviality are excluded too.
Rule: MovieRules#NoTamperingWithTheFilesTheGameIsComposedOf
  • Emphasis on That means no renaming/copying/deleting/replacing/editing files that affect game-play.
  • SDA has a similar rule, ...interacting with the game other than through the gameplay itself is not allowed. This rule covers ... active methods (such as removing or altering a game disc/cartridge/file while the game is running).
Potential techniques:
  • Using built-in consoles accepting commands
    • Half-Life: Done Enormously Warped uses console commands (probably written into a config file beforehand, outside of the game. Couldn't find any information about this).
    • Many PC games exposes low-level operations such as ejecting the disk, creating or deleting files, making it very hard to generalize a rule for this kind of activity. **Using consoles usually requires to activate a cheat/developer/debug mode beforehand.
    • More examples: PC Quake, PC Morrowind, PC Source 2 engine games
    • Number of possible titles: very high, few thousands.
  • Editing files (on platforms with the ability to edit part of a game)
    • Many PC games allows you to edit in-game variables stored in a .ini/.cfg (human readable format) file.
    • More examples: Duke Nukem 3D, Half-Life, Skyrim.
    • Number of possible titles: low, maybe a few hundreds.
Theory techniques:
  • Repacking game data
    • Manipulating files to make more optimized to the game engine, shortening game load without changing the process of the gameplay (games unpacking files from .zip files on the fly, for example, DOOM 3).
    • Number of possible titles: very low?
  • Changing files from the outside of playing the game
    • TODO: Reeavaluate and reword to a mght-be-acceptable way of manipulating. (file permissions, deleting specific files but levels).
      • Ejecting disk while installing, aborting the process to have an any% of game files
      • Not allowing reading cinematic files
    • Number of possible titles: very high, few thousands.
Rule: MovieRules#NoSkippingToTheEndWithAPassword
Judge: Mothrayas' last post says: No.
Rule: MovieRules#NoRandomizedOrUnverifiedCustomInitialRamState
Platforms/games that forgoes initializing initial memory
Rule: MovieRules#RomImageMustBeIntegral
Platforms and games that requires external medium
Rule: MovieRules#RomImageMustBeGood
Platforms/games not archived or the inability to ensure the game is really original, unmodified
  • FDS
    • If C64, DOS, and some other consoles have the privilege to make use of cracked ROMs, other platforms should also take advantage of with some more rules applied. Mostly pointing arrows towards this platform, which media is also degradable and is in a poopy situation.
    • Not approved method Erasing save files on FDS games
  • J2ME
    • (.jar mobile games) don't have a reliable archive collection.
    • These games usually modify themselves when saving settings or other things, making them unreversible to the original state after playing it at least once.
    • This is a bit of a problem because these files are easy to manipulate, so pirate released ones will include their graphics / texts, modifying the original game.
    • Other mobile platforms except Android also doesn't seem to have a verified collection of ROMs.
  • Number of possible titles: more thousand.
Rule: MovieRules#RomImageMustBeGood
Platforms that accepts multiple game media
  • No official tools
  • Official tools as a peripheral
    • Sega Cards/My Card: (Power Base Converter/Master System Converter and Card Catcher)
Number of possible titles: Can not be estimated, probably thousands.
Rule: MovieRules#RomImageMustBeIntegral
Games with multiple discs
Games that also came in multicart format, not just standalone
  • Using a multicart version of a game can potentially change different game factors from simple lag frame differences to different starting memory states.
  • Example: NES Streemerz and other games from Action 53
  • Multicarts are not allowed when there's also a standalone version, see Mothrayas' last post
  • Number of possible titles: very low, maximum a hundred.
Relevant rule: MovieRules#GameMustBeReal
Platforms with adapters/converters non- or officially manufactured to play games released for other platforms
  • Atari 5200 has official A2600 adapter (official)
  • Intellivision's System Changer A2600 adapter (official but third party)
  • Colecovision Expansion Module #1 to A2600 (official but third party)
  • Number of possible titles: very high, thousands
Rule: MovieRules#CheatsDebuggingCodesAndArcadeContinuesAreNotAllowed
Some games have mistakenly not disabled debug modes still accessible either by pressing a button or fulfilling a list of conditions.

Dangerous and real-life hazards

Potential phenomena that could be considered for speedrunning purposes.
Recent post by feos
We do not allow events of the physical or hardware world to be used in TASes. Because these can't be emulated.
Somewhat relevant SDA rule (Impossible inputs):
As such actions require worn out controllers, non-standard controllers or excessive force, they are treated as hardware modification and are thus banned as well.
Platform that allows pulling of the game media + Games that forgoes erasing or writing initial memory
  • Number of possible titles: no known values, my estimation is a few hundred
  • Genesis: cart swapping to use region locked games
  • A7800:
It doesn't appear to have any ill effects, actually, on the system or the carts. However, it will crash the game in progress and, in about 80% of cases, will actually draw graphics stored on the second cartridge on the screen. Also, with a cart out of the slot the screen resolution apparently changes itself depending on the presence (or lack thereof) of a cartridge in the cartridge slot.
Frying
Other link for atari: http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/vcs/vcs.html
Metal bread knife on Colecovision
Being a stupid kid, I would run a metal Bread knife along the board in the expansion slot of my Colecovision with the power on and game playing! Some of the more interesting "effects" was in the game Popeye it garbled the graphics/playfield,, somehow though it seemed to have the effect of combining 2 screens! The ship level was combined with the building level with the See-saw with Wimpy on the bottom. In Mr. Do! It mixed up colours and seemed to create invisible enemies (or make my character invisible) needless to say I wont be trying that with either of my current Colecovisions!
Environmental conditions Kicking the console, spilling acid...

Forbidden for good reasons

TODO: Write here something.
Rule: MovieRules#BiosMustBeReal
Platforms using BIOS or firmware files.
  • Very similar to platform exploit with the difference of ability to get immediate effect by editing the BIOS/firmware to jump to credits.
  • That's being said, I don't see any real reason for a movie should abuse this.
Relevant rule from MovieRules#Playarounds: "Arbitrary code payloads which have nothing to do with the game are not allowed. A payload which would work just as well contextually if executed on any other game for the platform will be rejected. TASVideos is not a place to show off your science projects. "
My own opinion: Exploiting the platform is not really a speedrun. We run the game and then we speedrun until the end. Communicating directly with the console is an impressive feat. If it's that entertaining, there could'be platform TASes, like "PSX Console any%".

Uncategorized so far

Emulation for the Nintendo 64 is not cycle accurate, and therefore, no functional emulator in this present time emulates lag properly.
  • Possible category: tertiary
Rereleased consoles with different software/hardware

SDA relevant informations

(From ais523)

TODO

HomePages/MESHUGGAH/ForbiddenTechniques last edited by MESHUGGAH on 2/5/2019 2:28 PM
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