Note: Due to the page engine restrictions, my name is spelled with a capital "m" in the heading; however, I do not approve of spelling it with capitals.
That being said, this page happens to be a personal page of moozooh. Try not to vandalize it beyond recognition, as it currently is an example of nicely organized and fully informational page as I see it. :)
The list of the Most Popular Excuses viewers give for publishing a movie
— a half-serious document of bad argumentation used in Workbench forum
— a half-serious document of bad argumentation used in Workbench forum
(Please, try not to edit these pages without telling me first, unless it is a comment or typo correction.)
Some info about moozooh
Right here. I moved it to a subpage to avoid clutter.
Current TAS projects
None worth mentioning. I burnt out on TASing Super Metroid because I don't see myself catching up on the more capable players without spending more effort than I'm willing to; besides, all the categories I was planning to do have been done by this moment.
Possible future TAS projects
SNES — Super Metroid: Redesign — any% TAS
Super Metroid: Redesign (SMR for short) is a brilliant hack of one of my favorite games — Super Metroid. It features a huge, elaborated and well-thought new world map, lots of gameplay changes and so on.
This was my ongoing project a while ago, which I decided to put on hold due to three major reasons:
- Super Metroid 14% TAS gained higher priority;
- Saturn resumed working on it as well, and it was unlikely that I could keep his pace of production up and still deliver unexpected results (in any case, it would be wiser to analyze a complete movie once it's done to avoid making the same mistakes in planning and/or execution, if some new details would be uncovered in the process);
- The WIP I produced had to be redone, anyway, since I had made several seconds' worth of mistakes over the span of my v1 WIP, and it turned out that v2 wasn't fully optimal, either. The new version would be made on Snes9x 1.5 due to superior emulation.
Drewseph's beta-TAS made on SMR version 2.0 (somewhat outdated route-wise) can be found here.
Status: on hiatus; to be restarted.
The goals: will have to be recalculated upon Saturn's submission and new information; as of now, it remains sub-1:00 by in-game timer.
The progress: the old WIP and other things can be found here permanently (well, at least until I submit it).
Project page — all the useful info on this run is/will be there, including progress reports.
Discussion thread.
The goals: will have to be recalculated upon Saturn's submission and new information; as of now, it remains sub-1:00 by in-game timer.
The progress: the old WIP and other things can be found here permanently (well, at least until I submit it).
Project page — all the useful info on this run is/will be there, including progress reports.
Discussion thread.
Arcade — DoDonPachi — tool-assisted score-attack
DDP is the legendary manic shoot-'em-up made by Cave, a company that has been the headliner of the genre ever since. It's the second game of DonPachi series, and arguably the most popular one: there are Saturn and PlayStation ports, and the arcade PCBs are rather widespread (if a bit pricy). DDP is followed by DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou (whose PS2 port has been semi-TASed by none other than Morimoto himself), and the recently released DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu.
DoDonPachi's scoring system is rather simple in theory:
- Don't die and don't bomb, thus abusing the "maximum" bomb multiplier.
- Kill enemies in rapid succession, never letting the chain drop until the end of the stage.
- Minor: pick up every item/star without interrupting the previous goals.
- Minor: cancel as many bullets as possible with large explosions.
- Minor use laser over blooming flowers.
However, with all the supposed simplicity, it's also filled with lots of obscure tricks and strategies the world record holders use, which still haven't been made public. Some of them are completely unknown to the western players, even though DDP has seen very fierce competition due to its popularity.
The current world record with A-L ship type is 748,414,350, by SOF-WTN. According to the experts, WTN dies on the true last boss once (not particularly surprising), which would have otherwise put his score to ~760 million.
The current TAS record with the same type is 759,281,170, by Takuro. It's been noted that it contains serious (as far as TASing goes) chaining mistakes netting about 30 million points.
The current TAS record with the same type is 759,281,170, by Takuro. It's been noted that it contains serious (as far as TASing goes) chaining mistakes netting about 30 million points.
As such, a good goal would be to break 800M points (though realistically there is no known way to get above 790M). A lot of shmupping enthusiasts would be very pleased to see such a run, though I guess it won't be easy on the eyes. If the goal is reached, it might be possible to make a 2-player follow-up run where one player scores as per the optimal route, and the other flies around just dodging the bullet swarms, baiting enemies in favorable positions and generally disrupting aimed bullet patterns.
Status: waiting for FBA to fully support the game.
The goals: 800M+ points, speed disregarded if/when it hinders optimal scoring tactics.
The progress: gathering information.
The goals: 800M+ points, speed disregarded if/when it hinders optimal scoring tactics.
The progress: gathering information.
Other TASVideos-related activities
Editor duties
I'm actively (not really) maintaining Super Metroid Tricks page, and will probably add Super Metroid Redesign Tricks if needs be (so far I've been gathering SMR-related stuff on this page). Experience gained from TASing Super Metroid engine-based games and analyzing others' runs gave me lots of useful information that has yet to end up on those pages.
I also monitor recent changes, and contribute minor corrections, adding new content and [re]writing movie descriptions. I don't do that too often, though. So far I'm the second most active editor (not counting judges and publishers).
Encoding
I generally help the process by discussing compression options and parameters, but do not actively encode TASes myself due to laziness and comparatively poor hardware.
Favorite Runs (in somewhat particular order)
Tool-assisted
See the alphabetically sorted list here. (Note: needs updating.)
See also:
- my rating page.
- my "Top-10 TAS moments" (out of date);
Unassisted
- Half-Life 2 in 1:36:57 by Half-Life 2 done Quick team;
- Half-hour Half-Life by Spider-Waffle;
- Castlevania: AoS Soma Boss Rush in 1:21.38 by dingusSJr;
- Quake done 100% Quick lite 2 by QdQ team;
- Touhou 08: Imperishable Night Extra mode score-attack by AM;
- Touhou 07: Perfect Cherry Blossom Lunatic mode score-attack by HASEGA~;
- Portal in 14:37 by DemonStrate;
- Diablo in 06:07 by groobo;
- Quake done Quick with a Vengeance by QdQ team;
- Super Metroid in 00:32 by Hotarubi;
- Quake 2 in 19:33 by groobo;
- Castlevania: AoS Julius Boss Rush in 3:28.63 by sarou;
- Deus Ex in 43:20 by dex;
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 18:12 by stanski;
- DKC 101% in 00:44 by Lucid Faia;
- Super Mario World no powerup run by jimsfriend.
Runs I look forward to
(In order of anticipation.)
Tool-assisted
- SNES
- Super Metroid: Redesign any% by Saturn (public WIP, discussion thread).
- Super Metroid RBO/Suitless run by NameSpoofer & hero of the day (discussion thread).
- SMW2: Yoshi's Island 100% by NxCy & Baxter (spezzafer's discontinued WIP, discussion thread).
- Contra III: The Alien Wars improvement by hero of the day (discussion thread).
- Super Castlevania IV improvement by Phil and AngerFist or a different author.
- Donkey Kong Country any% improvement by Arne_the_great and Tompa.
- Donkey Kong Country 101% improvement by Arne_the_great and Tompa.
- Genesis/32x
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Sonic+Tails any% improvement by upthorn.
- GBA
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow all-souls run by pirate_sephiroth or a different author (pirate_sephiroth's public WIP, discussion thread).
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow warpless/no damage/any% improvement by Yrr (discontinued WIP, v2 public WIP, discussion thread).
- Metroid Zero Mission low% by P.JBoy (discontinued WIP, v2 public WIP, discussion thread).
- Metroid Fusion 0% improvement by BioSpark (discussion thread).
- NES
- Megaman 5 v2 by Baxter (public WIP, discussion thread).
- N64
- Mortal Kombat Trilogy by Dark Cloud (discussion thread).
- Killer Instinct Gold by Dark Fulgore (discussion thread).
Unassisted
- PC
- Quake done Quickest — the improvement of QdQwav by QdQ team (improvement tables).
- Quake done Quickest lite — the improvement of tRR by QdQ team (improvement tables).
- Quake done 100% Quickest — the improvement of QdQ100Qlite2.
- Half-Life: Episode One Done Quick by HL2DQ team (test run video, discussion thread).
- Half-Life: Episode Two Done Quick by HL2DQ team.
- Portal segmented any% v2 by DemonStrate (discussion thread).
- Portal advanced courses any% & least portal runs (discussion thread).
- Diablo II: LoD (sorceress) improvement by Siyko (discussion thread).
- ElastoMania SS any% by Xarthok (discussion thread).
- SNES
- Super Metroid SS 100% by Hotarubi (discussion thread).
- Super Metroid any% by 072.
- GBA
- Castlevania: AoS Soma Boss Rush v2 by dingusSJr.
- Genesis
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 v4 by stanski.
My movie rating scale explanation
Some time ago I moved to an absolute yet more versatile perception-based rating scale. I find that it works rather well without contradictions. My standards aren't exceptionally high (the basic range is 6—8 for both values), but I don't grant 9 and 10 lightly, either. The amounts listed in parentheses account only for separate movies (no two versions of the same movie, the one with higher marks is taken into account; tech marks are adjusted for obsolete movies).
Entertainment rating:
- 9.5—10 — incredibly impressive and/or funny movie, can watch it over and over;
- 8.5—9 — very interesting and versatile movie that I'd gladly watch/have watched several times;
- 7.5—8 — rather interesting movie that I will most likely want to re-watch;
- 6.5—7 — mildly interesting movie that is easy to watch the first time, but has little rewatch value;
- 5.5—6 — nominally interesting movie with low rewatch value, usually seen with fastforwarding through boring parts;
- 3.5—5 — boring movies that I can't stand watching at normal speed, rated depending on boredom level;
- 0—3 — awfully boring movies that I can't couldn't finish watching, rated depending on the percentage of the movie length seen.
Technical rating:
- 10 — a movie that is known to be unimprovable by all the known means — i.e., if something could be done, it had been done (implying that author has chosen the best route, used every known way of optimization and had perfect luck manipulation throughout);
- 9.8 (really 9.75) — a movie that's supposed to be unimprovable by all the tested means, which has a high degree of uncertainty to it, or an author's testimony that bruteforcing could help optimizing the movie further.
- 9—9.5 — a movie that shows extraordinary planning, brilliant and thorough execution and little to no time lost in luck manipulation; a movie which leaves an impression that the author had considered everything and made even very unlikely things possible;
- 8—8.5 — a movie with no flaws apparent to the outsider (or insignificant flaws apparent to an experienced person), which keeps the flow and maintains high quality throughout its length; there's hardly any first-generation run (i.e., the one that didn't have a previous TAS to improve upon) that can go above this point;
- 7—7.5 — a movie which contains things like missed tricks, small generic mistakes, minor inoptimizations and above-average luck manipulation; a movie where the lack of thoroughness might be apparent to an experienced viewer;
- 6—6.5 — considerable amount of flaws both in planning and execution, average luck manipulation, missed global timesavers and improvability apparent to outsiders;
- 5—5.5 — obvious mistakes throughout the entire movie, poor planning and below-average luck manipulation;
- 4—4.5 — bad mistakes, little to no luck manipulation, otherwise non-publish-worthy;
- 0—3.5 — movies of quality so poor that they shouldn't have been published here in the first place.
Comments
(Feel free to write comments, suggestions and other things here, if you want to. Any feedback is welcome.)