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Warp wrote:
Somehow that principle seems wrong. After all, the original purpose for the vault tier (or one of its original purposes) was the change in policy that "every game deserves a TAS, regardless of entertainment value". Rejecting board games by default seems to go contrary to this idea.
I'm a bit confused, because this seems to be your thesis, then you proceed to give a very thorough and convincing argument of why it doesn't make sense to put board games into the vault. The following is almost 100% the exact logic chain we went through when deciding upon the no board games rule back when the vault rules were written:
That's not to say I advocate blindly accepting board game TASes either, and that's where the dilemma comes into play.
The problem with board games is enemy AI, and difficulty levels. Playing on the easiest difficulty feels completely wrong and unbefitting of tool-assisted speedrunning, which ought to emulate a perfect player crushing a computer game at its best. A computer AI on the easiest difficulty presents no challenge at all, so TASing it seems rather pointless.
Naturally TASing truly shows its power only if the computer AI is playing at its best. We would get to see how a "perfect player" would crush the AI player even at its strongest. That's the spirit of TAsing. The problem here is, of course, that at the strongest difficulty level the AI can often take a very long time to make a move (even minutes, if we are talking about more complex board games). This is not very watchable...
Then of course there's the whole discussion about what exactly constitutes game completion. After all, the vault is for "any%" and "100%" runs only... These categories usually fit poorly into a board game. Unless you consider playing one single game against the computer "any% completion" (but that would probably be stretching the definition quite a bit). It could perhaps suit games where there's some kind of "campaign mode" or such, with an actual goal and ending (eg. becoming a tournament/world champion).
This is well written, and people should read it!
I would also add that board games introduce a level of subjectivity into a tier designed to minimize subjectivity as much as possible. The logic currently is simple, if there's something arguable, we just ask their be entertainment value (and thus moon tier).
And lastly, the vault is about "speed records", with the assumption those have value. Beating up on an AI that is intentionally poor (to be easy), and doing basic moves (that any player can recreate) only with more precision is really trivial. Ideally the vault rules minimize the ability to make an extremely trivial TAS and have an easy publication route. (The bar is really low, but these types of TASes fall even below that).
I think the no board games rule is correct. And I think the correct thinking is a tier dedicated to them, feel free to discuss that.
The only thing I would point out there, is that this is a tier for un-entertaining board games.
If you do something interesting enough, it is moon-worthy and not in need of this tier.
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Warp wrote:
I don't see any problem in publishing this kind of TAS.
One question, though: Are there difficulty levels, and if so, was this played on the hardest?
This was done on the easiest difficulty. As with most board games in this era, the high levels take a really really long time to move. And generally the easiest level involves some randomness as that is a quick easy way to lower the AI's skill level. Thus, hardest difficulty means a very long movie of watching the computer think, and the easiest involves a trivial manipulation of the RNG to make the CPU make a horrible blunder.
See Battle Chess, and Chessmaster TASes and discussions as this is pretty much the same situation.
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Just post a fixed movie file, and a judge or admin can replace the submission file for you.
P.S. do we have anything other than meaningless non-gameplay events to talk about?
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On the topic of rerecords. I don't like that MrWint's movies count bot rerecords, and that the statistics page is skewed as a result. But then again, even the movie with the most manual rerecords of all time (SM64 120 stars) has a significant number of bot rerecords.
The real problem is the notion of a rerecord was a cute little stat back in the day that has only gotten more meaningless. For instance, you can't compare an editor created movie (such as FCEUX's TASEdtior) to a manual one. The numbers simply don't match in terms of reflecting the amount of effort. As more advance tools develop, I see the number only become more problematic not less.
So while I'm tempted to try to fix the rerecord count on this movie before publication, why bother? There's already so many movies that weren't fixed. And what does fixed even mean? At best we would be guessing on the number of non-bot rerecords. And does the bot's work not matter at all?
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I fixed the bug in question, BizHawk revision 8760 has the fix. Note: It may be some time before the next official release, but it is safe to assume there will be sync compatibility (for GB at least). Encoders/Publishers, if you need a copy of this build let me know.
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I voted for solarplex. It was a tough choice between him and Forgone Moose.
I happen to know that Forgone Moose's work is well optimized and consistently high quality. He also has the most published movies this year.
But when I think about the type of TASer I think has the brighest future in TASing and will be the type I most enjoy, I prefer those that can handle a variety of platforms/emulators/genres over those who become the master of a single game.
With that, the tie breaker went to solarplex.
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This category is a bit light this year :( mamuuuut, his list seems like a more impressive list of TASes (in terms of enterainment value and amount of work it took to make).
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Happylee always impresses me with his SMB expertise, and Mars608 has impressed me to be able to hang with HappyLee at that level.
But I think for this award, variety matters a lot. On that front, I voted for TASEditor and MESHUGGAH. They are the face of the modern NES TASers, using amazing precision and cranking out lots of TASes (like the NES category used to be back in the glory days).
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Had to vote solarplex here. He rocked it with 3 runs that I enjoyed a lot. And he took one for the team do "bless" us with Superman 64 finally!
Honerable mention to MrGunz and Bloobelia rocked with the super precision we've come to expect from them.
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TAS of the year awards are about entertainment. The run on this list I enjoyed the most is crazy Taxi.
A close and notable 2nd was Paper Mario.
And a notable mention for Oot, but that's just a small iteration in a serious of improvements I've already seen, it had less enjoyment factor as a result.
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I try not to vote for more than one movie, I like to commit! But in this case I had to vote for both The Mask and Crazy Taxi. When I think of the spirit of the Speedy award, I think more along the lines of "ludicrous speed", fast action with maniac attitude. And both of those movies do a marvelous job with that.
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I voted for Pokemon Emerald Version. Mostly because out of the 3-4 that seemed to have an extraordinary amount of luck manipulation, that's the one I know for sure how extraordinary it is.
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I literally laughed out loud when I saw the Pong TAS, quite loudly actually. It is the only one on this list I can say that about so I only have one logical choice for my vote!
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Crappiest game to play? or the game that makes for the crappiest TAS?
Because if it is game that makes the crappiest TAS, I think I win this one: [2646] NES Gotcha! The Sport! by adelikat in 03:25.33
But as a game it isn't the worst, certainly not as bad as Superman 64...
