FWIW, [3257] GBC Shantae "100%" by arandomgameTASer in 1:19:15.18 is called 100%, despite the game not tracking a percentage counter, or giving you any reward for getting everything in the game. I don't really see the problem with 100% tbh. As long as the criteria are well defined and it covers everything in the game world, what's the problem?
100% is defined as all transformations, all items, which includes every collectible in the game. This means GBA mode has to be enabled to get the Tinkerbat transformation.
Precisely this was discussed many times years ago. I'm glad it's finally been implemented.
I can draw a movie flag for "fastest branch" in a few minutes, and all will be happy: all who want to know the fastest one would instantly know it, all who want to know the conditions would see it in the labels.
Back when this was discussed, the question arose whether "fastest completion" means that absolutely anything goes, no matter what. In other words, even if the run just jumps from the main menu to the end credits in a fraction of a second (as has been demonstrated to be possible, even with console verification, at least in one case), literally showing no gameplay (or even the main menu itself) at all. Has this question been resolved with a simple "yes", or are there some more complex criteria?
100% rules question: say a game contains 100 items, some of them have duplicates out of bounds, and collecting both the out-of-bounds and in-bounds copy does not increase your percentage more than collecting just a single one. Is it legitimate for an all-items/100% run to collect just an out-of-bounds copy of an item, and not the intended original?
The game officially promoting maximizing some item or action, can't be completely disregarded if we want to come up with a solid full completion definition for a given game. On the other hand, we can't limit ourselves to this alone either, because the community speedrunning the game may happen to have fuller definition for full completion. So to actually define full completion for a given game, we can't have strict rules, but we can have guidelines that would let us understand how to even handle this. Here's what has been agreed on, on IRC:I added the last point to indicate that when people are brainstorming, we must encourage them to come up with clear and solid definitions, but we still rely on the community decision. So if everyone agrees that this movie's goals should be considered full completion for this game, at least for tasvideos, we can consider it vaultable.
- Read the manual.
- See what the game tracks, recognizes, awards for.
- Check what existing speedrun community does.
- Talk to the community and try to come up with an agreement.
- Keep the definition clear and solid considering the above factors.
Suggest rules clarifications and movies to flag.
When counting some units instead of percents, apply similar logic. Refer to collecting all items as "all X".
I get the analogy being made here. I would state that you're missing one piece, in that, not because the game being unplayably boring is why "passwords" are used, but because the game explicitly wants you to input "passwords" to get randomly created characters, with a few special discs providing special characters. I cannot say if MR or MR2 are "boring" to play without generating a monster via a CD, as I have never played them nor ever will. However, I can tell just by reading this thread that they are certainly intended to be played by inputting "passwords" for new, randomly-generated characters. Given that is a major point of the game, I'd definitely consider allowing an exception for Vault in cases like this.
For the purpose of that rule, I think the usual/unusual specification can only be scoped to the game in question. If it's scoped to gaming as a whole, "unusual" is too broad to effectively classify. MR2 may use an unusual method of gathering input compared to other games on the platform, but that would also extend to any game that requires unique controller/peripheral data handling. If the difference is that other games happen to support the data natively over the controller bus, that's a limitation of the tools, not a fault of the game. It doesn't seem like an enforceable distinction when scoped outside of the gameplay of the game alone.
I also disagree with the continued focus on "arbitrary" when applied to discs being a factor; the data pulled from the discs is no more arbitrary than the set of controller inputs. The data gathered from any given image is small, can be generated/simulated, and leads to a finite and fully handled set of outcomes in the game. This is not a case of hijacking a peripheral IO port and injecting program-altering instructions. It is loading data from a fixed medium using intended and expected game functionality. The data that's loaded in this manner is limited and fair, but currently not included as part of a movie file. I don't see why including this information as part of a submission makes it not objective when everybody has the same ability to craft and introduce data.
I don't know the full history of your interactions with educational games and past rulings, so I will decline to comment on that.
You bring up Moons and Stars, but in your personal estimation, how far is this current submission from meeting Moons criteria? I don't know the future, and other individuals are far more creative than I can envision, but I personally doubt a movie for this game could be significantly more entertaining than what has been shown by NK. I don't think such a movie will ever meet the bar for Moons just by virtue of how the game progresses and the limited options available to a player.
Not allowing arbitrary Discs feels like an arbitrary restriction
I disagree that the rule applies here because it specifically denotes playing the game in an unusual way. Using discs or otherwise is in fact the usual way of playing the game. Not using discs and otherwise would, for purposes of casual play and developer intent, be unusual.
This gets into the grayer area that I mentioned though, and a lot of it is tied to experience. I played this game a fair bit when I was growing up, and all I can say is that playing the game without the ability to use discs feels wrong.
It may as well not be the same game at that point, since it so drastically limits your options. From a TASing/speedrunning perspective, it also takes away a huge chunk of the routing challenge. Those are not objective things that can be part of any set of rules, but in this case do matter a lot for the competitiveness of the game down the road.
However, for the reasons stated in the prior paragraph, this is not nearly as interesting of a problem to solve, nor does it reflect how a typical player would experience the game. It may not make a difference in trying to keep rules consistent, but in my opinion makes any disc-less submissions far less interesting/entertaining to perform or watch.