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Desyncs for me with SolarWolf 1.5+dfsg1-3, 1.5+dfsg1-5, and 1.5+dfsg1-6, and libTAS 286306e and latest interim. Also it needs to sync on an official libTAS release so it'd have to wait for it even if it syncs. And if it only syncs on interim and not on official release, we could make a custom release from that old commit... if it synced.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I don't feel this goal belongs even to Wiki: Playground, because entering a game genie code instead of doing anything in the game can technically be done to all games that GG existed for. And for games it didn't exist for, there are other ways of external-cheating that don't even involve live memory editing: you just hack the game to instantly end. So I'm not convinced there any play in this movie.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Spikestuff wrote:
Misinterpreting my concerns:
Spikestuff wrote:
A character name as a branch implies we would accept and publish every character. Which isn't good on the site side, as Judges and Publishers will have to deal with a "mess" of fighting game TASes.
But I already experimented with that idea with 5 separate characters in Tekken 3 and they're ineligible to be accepted due to Yoshimitsu (and that puddle can get muddier, but let's avoid that puddle) and of course Guilty Gear X as I referred to earlier.
I'm not seeing any misinterpretation.
Spikestuff wrote:
tl;dr what I wrote.
Is unlock character faster?
> Yes
Obsolete.
You stated an opinion. I'll count opinions in the next post.
Spikestuff wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Understand what we, the side that's against this arbitrary branch is trying to tell you. Don't gloss over it.
I'm not responding back if you don't get our point of concern, cause everything doesn't always work. And definitely doesn't work here for fighting games.
Which part of myexplanations fails to work in fighting games and why, exactly?
DrD2k9 wrote:
Just a suggestion on inclusion of “savegame” as part of a branch name (for any genre): Have “savegame” always be the first part of the branch name as it’s the main differentiator for that particular branch. Then any additional branch name identifiers would follow.
So for the above example: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance “savegame, arcade mode”
I don't mind.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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So I was still missing an explanation on what makes fighting games with unlockable characters fundamentally different from all other games with unlockable characters - so different that they would require an exception in movie rules despite lots of people asking for power-on and savegame branches to co-exist for all games. The reason to have such an exception in the rules has to be really good and can't depend on someone's preference, because exceptions complicate things going forward. So when we add an exception, we need to understand it really well, and word it really well, for players to abide by those rules and fur judges to enforce them. The exception must feel natural to the people involved, because otherwise it feels forced and pointless. We don't want that in Movie Rules (anymore).
Since the staff talk was brought up, I thought maybe I'd find more information there, so I'll try to go through points mentioned there and see if the current system handles them or not.
Reminder: We're discussing a situation when we have 2 movies of a fighting (or racing) game, and an unlockable character is the fastest. The question is whether we can have both as branches in Standard and why.- "NewGame+" does not work as a branch label in fighting games where you unlock a char.
Indeed, we're switching from that label which only works for unlockable modes, over to "savegame" which seems to communicate the main point accurately in all cases. We also have a movie tag for it that basically means the same thing.
An icon was suggested, but we don't put icons into encode subtitles or youtube titles, and it'd mean the same thing as the "savegame" branch that does go into video.
- They can't be separate branches, because then they'd have to be labeled by character name, which would mean we have to allow different chars to co-exist in Standard (or look like we already do).
Not true. As I mentioned in the previous post, we only put the char name in the branch label if showcasing that specific char was the sole purpose of the movie and it didn't end up in Standard. Since Standard wants optimality within certain allowed goals, only the most optimal char is allowed, so whichever is currently known to be optimal for a particular goal will be used. If a different char is discovered to be more optimal, its movie will obsolete, and neither needs a char name.
The savegame branch would just be labeled "savegame" + whatever other standard goal it would have, if applicable. For for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance it becomes "Arcade Mode" and "Arcade Mode, savegame".
If a suboptimal character is submitted just for entertainment, and it succeeds in that, it will be put into the branch label. And it still doesn't mean all other branches of that game now have to spell out the char, because they still only aim for the optimal one.
One semi-exception to requiring only optimal chars in Standard is cases when chars actually work as different game modes because of how different they are. Then they go into the label.
That's all I could find that didn't look like miscommunication, uncertainty, or repetition. In the next post, that will hopefully be the last one, I'll do numbers and count opinions.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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EZGames69 wrote:
Robotron 2084 displays the (!) sign on several inputs, mainly the joystick inputs that are used for moving and shooting.
Fixed.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Anyway, back to my summary posts...
First I want to explain how the current system works, given the suggested new branch label. Then I'll go through potential complaints about it and see how to resolve them.
For almost every Standard goal there can be a "savegame" counterpart. I gets a special branch label highlighting its savegame nature, and formerly it was "NewGame+", but "savegame" is a much better term, because it covers all cases and communicated the main point more clearly and accurately. It also gets a special movie tag.
There's no obsoletion between different standard goals, even though sometimes different movies can be considered the same goal and supersede one another, for example if a game without an ending was completed to the end of the first full loop, and then someone extends it to reach a kill screen. Basically it's when a new movie contains an oldmovie while having the same goal.
"Savegame" goals that can't go to Standard, can go to Alternative if they look entertaining and and different to the audience than their Standard versions. Due to the nature of goals that aim for entertainment, it's possible that different Alternative goals will look very similar, and to avoid clutter we can properly obsolete some run that the audience likes less by something that feels like a new and improved version of it, even if the goals are not identical.
Having to pre-moderate Moons by only allowing things that actively entertain the audience so much that it's verbal about it, over the years wore out, because it stopped making sense to remain overly restrictive. So when we were brainstorming about retiring the tier system, I had this vision in mind:
feos wrote:
what we need to adjust compared to old TASVideos is lowering the entertainment cutoff and increasing the branch count cap.
So instead we post-moderate when there's an agreement that there are too many branches that are too similar.
Now, I said that "almost" every standard branch can have its "savegame" counterpart. Of course there can be exceptions when it's agreed that it doesn't make sense to separate them, for example when there's little to no gameplay difference added by post-completion. Then there are cases when something that you can unlock, while looking subjectively cool, is suboptimal in terms of objective speed. For example if you want to complete some game as quickly as possible from a fresh save with base characters, with unlocked extra characters you still need to complete the game ASAP. If new characters don't help with that, it just means base characters are more optimal. Which is why we have the "uses a suboptimal char" movie tag, and movies aiming for that simply go to Alternative instead of Standard.
Interestingly, suboptimal chars make labeling kinda tricky. Not necessarily harder to do, but it may look inconsistent across all movies on the site.
Publisher Guidelines wrote:
The point of branches is to highlight specific goals that runs may conform to. These goals are highlighted, because they introduce gameplay differences into TASes that are significant enough to be published as separate branches. Two kinds of goals exist:
Internal condition - something the game directly and unambiguously offers as an optional component of play which significantly affects what is seen from the game (warp usage, player amount, character choice).
External condition - something the players limit themselves to (exact completion percent, pacifist, certain glitch set).
We don't have a concept of "default goal", therefore we don't use labels like "any%" as a branch label. Instead we identify what is unique in every branch or set of branches, something that the other branches of the same game don't represent.
We put internal conditions into branch labels if there are (or can be) counterpart runs, for example if we have different movies using 1 player and 2 players, both will tell player count in branches. But if we would not allow some internal conditions to co-exist on their own, they don't have to be mentioned explicitly.
For example we don't allow branches for each character to co-exist in Standard, so any Standard movie will need to pick the most optimal character, and it won't be mentioned in the branch label. But if there's an Alternative counterpart branch that uses some character just to showcase it, that character will be mentioned in the label.
And here's a part even I'm not sure about, because it never happened before. If the standard goal uses the most optimal char, and the alternative movie uses a suboptimal char, sometimes they are spelled out in all branches:
Super Mario Bros. 2Castlevania III: Dracula's CurseCastlevania: Bloodlines
sometimes only the suboptimal char is spelled out
Super Mario Bros. 2Final FantasySuper Mario Advance
and sometimes only some branches spell out chars
Sonic 3 & KnucklesSonic Advance
Due to crazy differences between how games approach things we need to put into branch labels, I don't feel it's possible to make it all look 100% consistent. And the problem here is that putting chars into Standard labels may make it look like we accept different chars to Standard on their own, which we don't. Maybe we just need to accept (instead) the fact that branch labels can only make sense within one game? After all it's just a way to communicate differences between branches, which is usually needed for one game. Across different games, it may be possible to have a unified name that marks similar branches, but it's not guaranteed.
To be continued...
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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JosJuice wrote:
CoolHandMike wrote:
For one I do not think the term "SRAM" or even "SaveRAM" really means a lot to most people. So a more obvious term through the site could be better.
A new and clearer term would especially be appreciated for Dolphin, as the GameCube stores game progress on flash memory in memory cards but also has an SRAM chip that stores console-wide settings. Normally when TASers say "SRAM" they mean game save data, but that usage of the term doesn't make sense on its face when talking about the GameCube.
What about the term suggested by Masterjun (and Wikipedia) - "savegame"? The purpose here is more important than the underlying technology (battery backed SRAM, Flash, etc), and it's clearly different from emulator savestates. And works as movie branches too instead of NG+.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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KusogeMan wrote:
Is any of these runs remotely interesting? Is this what the site is trying to achieve with the bizarre SRAM rulesets? Nobody has ever made any category for this in an actual speedrun of the whole MK series, so i have to guess the answer is no.
[...]
I believe the game dev's intended gameplay modes and speedrunning community choice divisions should be a focus of TASVideos main categories when it comes to racing and fighting games TASers. The SRAM division is interesting for adventure and RPG games, like banjo kazooie whcih has a data carryover glitch, or newgame plus categories which exist in rpg to make new versions of the adventure, but shouldn't affect competitive games in which unlocking content was the only way devs could expand game hours. The respective game community should be the standard, this works for most games and when the time comes for a game in which it doesn't, you can use your other rulesets or entertainment value. Wanna make up some weird category that doesn't exist?
KusogeMan wrote:
To me this site is like an archive of sorts, if a speedruns exists, it should also have the corresponding TAS to show the audience what perfect play in the speedrun would be.
These 2 posts are quite remarkable because they highlight the misconception about our goals while also guessing them almost right and self-contradicting.
The site is an archive of TASes indeed, because our goal is being a service for TASers that remains relevant over the years. If we are not useful for various TASer groups, they split away and we eventually become useless for more and more such groups. And to remain useful we want to educate, encourage, and inspire people to become skilled TASers, and then to meet their requirements with our policies, like the Judge Guidelines now say:
Above all else, treat our community with care. Be kind and courteous to them, always respect their work, encourage them to continue, and use your knowledge and skill to help them improve.
Always adapt to the needs of the community. Consider every angle of a problem, and work together with the rest of Staff to provide the best solution.
The site should change to fit the community. The community should never change to fit the site.
Service-based leadership even happened to be adelikat's vision for the new admin team and I independently happened to have a bunch of pagesabout it and they got Samsara's approval back in 2021.
So we absolutely want to give TASers more freedom and safety for their experiments, because only then they can create truly powerful things.
What we've never done though is considering developer intentions when deciding on policies (or anything ever), because creativity means doing the unexpected. The only thing we have is the product itself (the game) and content that exists objectively, and that's the main purpose of the Standard class. There is a category that is subjectively closer to intended gameplay, but we've never questioned the fact that it may also be glitched to death in its own regard, and heavy glitching is very much not what the devs intended to present to the world. Sure some people may not be entertained by such movies, but developer intent is never brought up as a complaint. We simply don't care about it.
What speedrun communities do may be relevant in cases when we want to allow some branch based on how supported it is, but lack of support in speedrun communities has not ever been brought up as a factor when arguing that we should not support it either. We have our own community for such decisions, and our own site goals that I explained in details. Telling our own community to "deal with it" because some people who have never posted here don't speedrun a given category yet, is ridiculous level of arrogance.
And the self-contradiction part is where an archive is meant to feature achievements while also limiting them in some specific case because suddenly it doesn't matter at all what can be achieved there.
KusogeMan wrote:
Once again, TASers prefer to do slower movies than go through SRAM verification movie hassle.
This claim lacks any statistical data across any amount of TASers other than like 2 people, and it assumes intentions of everyone else in a very specific illogical way. There's no way to measure how many people on the site considered making a savegame movie and decided to do a power-on one instead because of the "SRAM verification movie hassle".
Savegame movies always existed and they were always fine. If someone looks at how hard it would be to make a verification movie, yet they don't mind making a full TAS, they somehow consider the verification movie harder to make than the entire power-on TAS? That's ridiculous to imagine, because I don't know a single game where a full TAS is easier to make than a verification movie. Sure, making a verification and a full TAS is harder than just the full TAS, but the verification movie usually kinda fades compared to amount of work that goes into a well research and optimized movie regardless of verifications.
If someone is so afraid of making a verification movie, it sounds like they just don't have enough energy to TAS at all. So if we try to force them to TAS harder by obsoleting the easier-to-make thing, it feels bizarre to expect that they will make a proper savegame movie just out of obedience.
On the other hand, if we have room for both branches, everyone could pick a project they currently feel the energy for, and be tempted and encouraged to work on harder things because it's cooler, not because they have to. Creativity and inspiration are incompatible with involuntariness.
To be continued...
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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The post is becoming impossibly long so I'll break it into several...
So I've reread everything once again to understand what the community thinks (including the non-public chats that spawned these new questions), and it's hard to summarize it all because a ton of different things were used as arguments, and not enough effort has been put into stating problems, questions, and reasons in the clearest way possible. So if I miss or misinterpret some idea, please explain it again as clearly and logically as possible.
I should start with explaining the current direction of the site.
During the first years of TASVideos we were very restrictive in what ends up being represented as publications, because there was a ton of misconceptions in the outside world that had to be disproved, and this new hobby kinda had to prove itself by featuring the most awesome stuff first. The most entertaining movies were preferred, and the rules weren't super strict otherwise.
This was considered too restricting and the concept of tiers was introduced, so in addition to the most interesting movies we could have boring movies that accomplish some very standard and basic goal (initially the only allowed Vault goals were fastest completion and full completion). But since for every single submission we had to decide on a tier, it led to tons of borderline cases where simply based on feedback (or lack thereof) we were unsure how to judge something.
Since people like to be creative and they don't always aim to follow well-established paths, we also had to clarify more and more things in Movie Rules to make judgments more consistent and future-proof. Because old rules and wording would either not solve some new problem, or the solution was worded in a cloudy way that could be interpreted differently by different people.
Those trends would build up over the years and eventually turn into unmanageable mess that was the least future-proof, because it was impossible to keep maintaining. So we retired the tier system and switched to a class system that let us depend on feedback much less for goals that are well-established and standard, and only need feedback for goals that are inherently subjective.
That alone helped immensely, but then we realized there were other problematic trends that failed to make everyone's life better. The most problematic ones were prosecutorial bias and gatekeeping. We were so restrictive that we risked becoming irrelevant, because TASers could eventually abandon the ship that was purely viewer-focused and not creator-focused.
So we reevaluated the main goals of the site, and switched from being an exposition of cool things to being a service for the TAS community. Being too restrictive did result in parts of our community having to go on their own for a bunch of years and currently we're trying to fix that. And for authors in general, we switched from being judgmental about their works to being helpful for them, because that's how we get more people involved and educated, which leads to more content in general, and as a result to more awesome content that the site always wanted to have.
On the other hand, inclusivity on TASVideos is not an entirely new concept. It's the neatest way to have a compromise between conflicting camps if their opinions can't technically be implemented directly at once. We discuss opinions and boil them down to something objective, and then rely on things that are the most objective for all parties.
Allowing different things as different branches used to be the most harmless solution to any kind of disagreement about goals, because different crowds could have something they care about featured on the site and up-to-date. People spent the recent years fighting for acceptance of some goal that used to be rejected entirely, or only allowed under very strict conditions. So we started actually believing that giving creators more freedom benefits everyone long-term, because results of their hard work won't be considered "unnecessary" after the fact anymore, by judges who've never even played those games.
We can definitely afford some extra slots in Alternative for things that are not as stunning in terms of entertainment, unless questionable branches become a problem, which is when we start obsoleting the most mediocre ones. And in Standard, we can have extra slots for movies that shouldn't compete with the most basic and natural (literally standard) goals.
This is why I was surprised to realize that we may have missed something important during the initial discussion half a year ago, and that in fact savegame rules we established failed to solve fighting games. And racing games. And non-fastest-completon movies. We've had a staff talk and couldn't agree on how obsoletion should work in those cases, so the most reasonable next step was bringing it up to the community.
And the result was quite interesting. It wasn't a hard community split between 2 options that can't co-exist where an independent solution was necessary that could work both ways depending on statistics (objective data settling the conflict of subjectivities). Instead it was a request to change the direction and goal of the site for one particular case of fighting games ... two particular cases of fighting and racing games ... three particular cases of fighting and racing games and also non-fastest-completion movies.
And it would have just been a new consensus if the community went "oh! right! yes!" and agreed that it makes sense to change the direction and goal of the site in those individual cases. Or if that extra clause clearly felt like it matches the direction and goal of the site and fulfills it more faithfully, and we simply missed it the first time around.
For example, that happens when some clause has all the traits of a workable solution:
Overwhelming majority of the audience subjectively likes it or at least doesn't particularly mind it
The logic is compelling to people who agree and even to those who don't enjoy it
Even if logic and feelings don't cut it, it still looks like the most fair option given the situation at hand, one that's the most faithful to our top priorities
However that did not happen, and a lot of people were actively against savegame ever obsoleting clear save branches in Standard. I've read all this talk several times by now, and I still don't quite understand logically which problem exactly such obsoletion would solve without causing new problems. And it does seem to contradict the site's goals.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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infinitephantasm wrote:
hello, wanted to ask a question about a movie for beatmania 2ndMIX i was thinking about submitting, but wasn't entirely sure if i should. it's normally an arcade rhythm game, which would usually probably warrant something like a max score run with a lot of showiness in extra keypresses, due how the game works involving scoring and bonuses. but, the movie i made uses a hidden code/button combination in the game's song select to skip playing any songs at all, jumping straight to the ending (detailed more here -- normally, this allows you to play any song in the game).
would something like this be worth submitting, or should i just abstain and try for something a bit more interesting? i'm not entirely sure if using something that technically falls on the category of level select (even though in a rhythm game, you pick the songs freely) such as that would be considered not OK.
Skipping everything and simply calling an ending sounds like skipping any and all gameplay, which then raises the question "what are you even speedrunning?" But yes, skipping straight to the ending has been disallowed for a very long time.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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EZGames69 wrote:
But that not only requires the authors of the old tas to make a submission for level 20 (since the submission I linked isn’t even the current fastest level 20 from my understanding), but it would essentially be the equivalent of taking the last inputs of the movie file after the last resync and using that as it’s own separate publication.
I don’t know if the RNG would be the same after said reset compared to first power on, but if it is then I’m not sure what the point would be other than having two separate publications with one just being essentially an identical segment from the all levels pub. It would be redundant in my opinion.
We have a somewhat recent example (tho in theory it could have gone to Playground if the author was interested).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Your submission must play the game from the beginning, and must finish the game, or reach the most suitable endpoint the game allows. Level selects, single-level movies, or otherwise incomplete movies are not allowed.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
The player already provided a movie file that beats level 20 HI speed with the same inputs used in the submitted movie during level 20, and I was also able to do the same with other levels. This means that the submitted movie does include the inputs of a fastest-completion run in it; in other words, by fulfilling the full-completion goal, it does also fulfil the fastest-completion goal.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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So if both movies were played optimally (given current knowledge), one would absolutely not include another, right?
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dwangoAC wrote:
on the basis of it being a different category
Elaborate?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
I want to make a tutorial(s) for using MAME in BizHawk.
Thanks!!!
CoolHandMike wrote:
Note still have not been able to use the other method of zipping with the same game name successfully. Might skip this unless someone else has a video of this working which I could just drop into this section.
Just describe the steps you're doing and I'll check what's missing.
CoolHandMike wrote:
Do not use SystemBus since it may change values and cause a desync.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
If someone were going for maxing out a score counter that was retained between songs, repeating a song could be considered a scoring loop; but it would not delay completion. It would speed up the run and thus completion by repeating the most efficient song in regards to points/time.
If all songs were optional, maybe you could only play the optimal ones and repeat them, but in linear games repeating some level means game end is delayed. The goal of max score is not to hit score cap at any cost, but to complete the game the quickest while also getting maximum reasonable score. Score cap is allowed too, but only if it naturally happens while playing without infinite loops.
DrD2k9 wrote:
The "Boost" mode is arguably acceptable for Standard Publication on our site as the code is used to access an even more difficult mode than is normally selectable (as opposed to making the game easier). Unfortunately, I don't feel that having both a normal play publication (even at the fastest scroll setting) along side of a "Boost" mode publication is worthwhile for the site.
So here's my proposal for getting the fastest publication of this game on the site:
I will create a new run using the "Boost" mode code to TAS the hardest/fastest difficulty of play. I'll also use the fastest scroll setting to minimize lag.
While it technically makes the game more difficult, the "Wacky" mode will not be used; because the graphical alterations may be noxious to some viewers.
As I don't want to manually resync every note in the game, nor would I want to offload that effort onto LoganTheTASer (we need to change his name on this submission, by the way), I have already written a Lua script to automatically input the note presses where needed for perfect play.
Ending input early is not an option as a Start press is necessary to progress from the final score screen back to the menu to show the checkmark indicating completion on the last song.
Regarding branch naming:
I feel that an "any %" run of this game should be required to complete all the songs as there's no other good way to define a valid endpoint of the game.
Given the need of a Start press after the last song, there's no real way to end input early. So a "full completion" run wouldn't be any different than "any %" run. Also due to the final Start press, not getting maximum score doesn't speed up the final inputs. So all three branches are effectively the same from a time-perspective; getting less than a perfect score could be considered sloppy play given that it doesn't save time from an optimization standpoint.
Therefore, I feel the "Boost" mode run should be considered the baseline "any %" run of this game and should be published branchless.
Sounds like "max score" is simply the only sensible branch for this game, and the boost mode would be preferred indeed (unless it reduces your score).
Patashu wrote:
I was going to say 'IMO the scroll speed should be at a rate that is comfortably readable by rhythm game players so that they can follow along with the charts' but, well... if it saves FRAMES, rest assured I can't argue with that!!
Well, we tend to skip all skippable cutscenes, and to speedup all cutscenes that can't be skipped, so using a slower mode to make things readable in real time would be something longplays do rather than speedruns.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
I think this run would be better branched "all songs" or "full completion" instead of "maximum score."
Because the game doesn't monitor score beyond one song, there's no real way to determine when to define the endpoint of "Maximum Score." If the game tracked score beyond 1 song, then maxing out the score counter itself would be that endpoint.
If a game automatically resets the score as you progress (for example, in every level), "max score" must be reached in every such segment.
DrD2k9 wrote:
Even if this was the case, replaying the various songs is an option. This means that the fastest method to reach the theoretical maximum score would be to replay the song that yields the most points/time spent over and over again until the max score was achieved.
Infinite scoring loops that delay completion are not allowed.
DrD2k9 wrote:
Considering that the game does checkmark each song once it's completed, we can claim that it does monitor a completion level of sorts. Thus 'full completion' or 'all songs' would be a better descriptor of the run. The run should still qualify for Standard publication.
But does this run go out of its way to maximize per-song score too, or does it just aim for shortest time in each?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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An important question is also how different it feels compared to existing branches: https://tasvideos.org/272G
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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What's the difference between characters and why was this one used?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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While those are not official releases by the original author, I feel it's acceptable as long as we can know which exact versions of everything we need, and how to install them. People who maintain Debian packages sound reliable enough to me to count them as official porters at this point, when the original game is dead and hard to setup.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
