Revision (current)
Last Updated by ais523 on 4/18/2022 12:45 AM
[=/images/newbierec.gif|title=Watch and explore the below!] Welcome to the Newcomer Corner! This page was designed to collect the most important things the newbie would need to know about TASing. You bumped the question mark box. Now see what it spawned for you!
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''"True pleasure cannot be attained unless one is out of the ordinary."%%%
"Supreme bliss! Your brain has now been fried by that sort of pleasure. Your life from this point on will consist only of you pursuing that sort of pleasure"''
__TAS (tool-assisted superplay)__ - is the craft of creating superhuman gameplay movies. We aim to play games in the most incredible way they will allow, which means we investigate games as hard as we can, and try to showcase every tiny feature they have inside. Deep investigation and endless experimenting discover things many people could not imagine about the games we TAS. We then use these features to present how the games afford to be played, in all the ways we can invent. The most popular ways are to use the game resources to push the games to their __speed__ limits (beating them as fast as their engines allow) and to __play around__ in the funniest manner.
Now, we are not going to lie to you, the casual visitor, we have to use specific tools for what we do. We keep 10 savestate slots for all kinds of route testings, we roll back __just every__ outcome we are not satisfied with. We play frame by frame, exploring all types of behaviour the game provides. We hold a game on an endless pause, observing its internal memory addresses, mulling over the options to act, calculating the potential profit of different variants, applying them to the gameplay, inventing the new and unexpected decisions by insight... It's quite a new form of amusement. Especially if you TAS the game you played in your childhood, you supposed you knew every aspect of it, have snooped every corner of its levels, and now you have an ability to dive into it completely, and not just __play it__, but __play with it__. That anxious feeling, which is pretty undescribable.
You still think TASing is easy? You think we bot those games? You think we have the tools that beat games instead of us, so that we just control the result? Huh! No tool can create art by itself, it only helps us to "draw" our ideas within the playgrounds, that we consider those games to be. And we also love to work hard! Only the hard work produces the supreme bliss! Enjoy the list of the most delicious mockery we handle every day:
* Games with physics models that require a ludicrous amount of manipulation for optimal speed. Press right for one frame, A for the next frame, nothing for two frames, right for eight more frames (unless you touch the ground on frame six, in which case you'll need to backflip into a circle while abusing your keyboard) etc. etc.
* When there are like 10+ ways to do something, and you have to test every one up to its perfection, to come up with the fastest.
* "Hurray, half of the run is done, which has been in progress for 7 months, a new trick was found... Time to restart!"
* "Oh God, I just got a coin 5 frames faster!!!" Picking a hex editor and pasting the rest of the already done run after the improved section. The rest of the run kindly desyncs... "TAS all over again, yay!"
* Finishing a large portion of gameplay only to find that you lost a few frames near the beginning.
* Reproducing a glitch that you accidentally stumbled on, aren't really sure how it works, and rerecorded it over.
* Having to backflip all the way, because the hero normally moves like a lazy turtle.
* Looking at the decompiled source for the first time, seeking for very specific things, when you have zero idea how the game works in the first place. Assembly is the least friendly language ever.
* Trying to manipulate luck from a point 10,000 frames back, which messes up everything in between.
* Keeping motivation for an entire project and trying to ignore the lures of a shiny new TAS to work on.
* Working for several hours trying to save 3-4 frames and succeeding, but later you lose them because of a frames rule.
* You submit a movie that gets quickly obsoleted by someone, then you improve over him, he submits an ever faster version, until one of you gives up. Frame wars.
* See more in [/Forum/Topics/6448|that thread].
But we don't mind actually. It is worth it. We just wanted you to know that superhuman outcome goes only after superhuman effort. Once you succeed, you can't stop. Did you think we would not show the goodies to you? Catch!
__Fun aspects of the process (TASing):__
* Controlling the freak paradise (time rewinding, memory monitoring, ...)
* Meaningful investigation (consuming new unique information)
* Objectively unique task (the gameplay suggests puzzles no one actually created)
* Nostalgia factor (childhood games)
* Flow (mental state)
* Luck (impossible + hard work -> possible)
* Collaborative enjoyment (still rare here)
__Rewarding aspects of the result (TAS movie):__
* Competitive enjoyment (frequent here)
* Positive feedback (impossible + hard work -> possible)
* Personal feeling of achievement (final product)
* Community status/ranks/comments/etc (the more the better)
* Personal feeling of self-perfection (improving your soul, mind, abilities)
Now, since you're introduced, you may want to read some actual explanations of how TAS works, or see more impressive movies (the 10-movie list is just 0.1% of what we actually got). See the [WelcomeToTASVideos|About] page if so, it is full of helpful links, and [Movies] page tabs, suggesting different options of navigation. Have fun here!
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