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We allow libTAS to run PCem as a DOS machine emulator.
Only TASVideos releases of PCem are allowed. Such releases are marked st to indicate single-threading - modification required for determinism, not available in the original PCem. libTAS is needed because PCem doesn't have any TAS tools.
The setup required may be non-trivial, but game support is overwhelming, because PCem emulates much more hardware than JPC-RR does.
See the relevant section of the Movie Rules:
http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#Dos
libTAS specific rules also fully apply:
http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#LibtasMovies
Guide on TASing DOS games in PCem+libTAS:
http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources/PCem/DOS.html
Huge thanks to people who helped making this possible: keylie, slamo, Dacicus, Nach, and fsvgm777!
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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New gameplay mechanics is what we want the most! Custom graphics and music would also be a nice bonus on top of that. Otherwise I think you know the scene well enough and we can trust your choice based on those requirements (probably involving asking the VVVVVV community too, why not).
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.
No stats...
Is there a level that's the most different from the original game?
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 can't call this a screen that positively signifies a game is finished successfully:
And I don''t see how skipping all of the actual credits is exactly the same as showing them in full.
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.
Where applicable, the movie must reach an ending screen that positively signifies a game is finished successfully.
It must be able to reach the credits or end screen without requiring any further interaction; all input must come solely from the input file
It's quite applicable here, so it must reach some kind of a definitive ending screen or credits.
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 think this movie should end on showing either credits or stats. The way any% runs end feels abrupt.
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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Is there any kind of community ranking for custom levels? Like which one is the most popular, which one is the hardest, some other scale maybe? Here's the wording of our rule:
Non-official games are allowed for submission. However, they go through more scrutiny than other games. This is because the game itself also becomes subject to judgment, so it must meet a minimum standard of quality or notability to be eligible for publication. We look for games that can be played and completed, have some recognition or popularity, or are notable in some other ways as decided by the judge and the audience.
There's some amount of freedom in what can be picked, and ideally it'd be #1 on several different scales, but if there's no such thing then at least on one?
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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Radiant wrote:
Anyway, no vote. VVVVVV has a metric ton of custom levels and very few of them are anywhere near notable for a run (and google suggests this isn't one of them).
Official recognition seems to exist for some "Featured" custom levels
https://distractionware.com/blog/category/vvvvvv-levels/
and I couldn't find this level among them. The feedback on the level itself so far hasn't been positive.
Skipping everything in a "major skip glitch" movie doesn't often get good ratings, and when it does, it's mostly for well-known great games:
http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C3041Y-RatingS.html
There are some unofficial games in that list, but no movies of game hacks.
However, teleporters were never meant to be used in custom levels. When you use them in custom levels, the room you teleport to will not contain a teleporter. Because of this, entityclass::getteleporter() will return -1 instead.
We obviously can't say "This custom level was designed so poorly that you can break it into peaces with some precision and there's nothing mind-blowing about it". But what we can say is "People are making those levels so that they are fun to play, and TASing is meant to add a new kind of challenge to them, ideally both of those layers should be fun to watch".
Official requirements for Featured levels wrote:
DO: Try something different.
I'm very likely to feature a level if it does something I haven't seen in a VVVVVV level before. Experiment with scripting! Try to build levels around unusual ideas!
DO: Make it polished.
This is mostly just a matter of making sure there are no gaps you can fall through or glitches, and that you've tested things thoroughly to make sure sure everything feels nice in the game.
We also can't say that the "major skip glitch" movie makes the good, officially recommended parts of this level's gameplay shine, because we just skip it using a glitch.
The main question is whether we want to treat custom levels (not featured officially) as hacks or as homebrews. We don't accept hacks unless it "features unique gameplay or brand new content" and the TAS is entertaining to watch. For homebrews, we can publish different games separately but they need to meet common requirements for unofficial games; specifically "recognition or popularity" is questionable regarding this level. In any case we can't publish all custom levels of this game, so they will have to complete.
I personally have a feeling that if this movie didn't have a major skip glitch, it'd get better feedback, but then the question is "Are there levels better suitable for an entertaining TAS?"
Since this is about having to reject this movie, I really need some more feedback regarding points raised in this post.
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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fsvgm777 wrote:
Thing is, it's still the same game, just played with a different character. So I don't feel the tag applies here, cause the way I see it, it's meant for completely different games.
Since it can't work with the same movie if the game is the same, it has to be different games, and in this case it's different ROM images, technically. I don't think we need a new tag for "slightly different variants of the same game in one movie", because that would still imply it's not the same game run twice.
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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Agreed and done.
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 know why I named it "save glitch".
[quote="
MovieMaintenanceLog for [2572] GBC Rockman DX3 by Noxxa in 23:33.92"]CoolKirby 2014-04-09 03:01:40 Changed branch to "no save glitch" from ""
feos 2014-04-30 16:34:52 Changed branch to "" from "no save glitch"[/quote]
But I don't know why I didn't obsolete the other version.
Let's see...
EDIT: Yeah it's just the last boss and the fight looks almost identical. Obsoleted.
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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andypanther wrote:
The requirement of having to prove that there is a definitive maximum score. That might work for games where you can easily score high enough to max out a counter at something like 999999, but not for other situations. I never understood why score runs should be judged that way, it's like asking people to proof that the time for a speed-oriented TAS can never possibly go lower.
When was the last time you looked at that rule? I can't find the requirement you mentioned.
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andypanther wrote:
The current policy on highscore as a goal is perhaps the one rule on this site I disagree with the most.
The entirety of it, or only specific parts?
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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Thanks that finally works!
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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It has 640 and 480 there but in libTAS it still runs at 320x240 (even with writing to disk enabled). Can I hack libTAS to also have 320x240 as a virtual res option?
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 still get lots of resolution changes while dumping video, even though I set virtual screen to 640x480. The game runs at 320x240, don't know how to change that. Doesn't happen when running the movie without video dumping. I use this command:
-c:v ffv1 -vf scale=320:240 -sws_flags neighbor -pix_fmt bgr0 -level 1 -g 1 -c:a pcm_s16le
and even rescaling it on the fly doesn't prevent new segment creation. Is there any way around this?
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 future plan is to limit Moons only to goals that are
inherently subjective and abstract
different enough from other branches
entertaining
For example, a Playaround consists of arbitrary artistic decisions and can't be objectively measured in a meaningful way. We have to rely on subjective tastes of the viewers, which is why it needs to be entertaining.
Similarly, a Demonstration is anything that isn't described by existing standard goals, so there's infinite room for what can be done, but we need to only publish things that stand out in terms of content and entertainment value.
There will be a discussion on which movie goals should be acceptable to Standard, and which should remain dependent on entertainment.
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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c-square wrote:
I ask that the question of triviality not be pre-judged here and now, but left open for discussion in the future. This way, the run is free to be adjudicated on its merits against the site rules at that time, and is not weighed down by any judgement of triviality made today.
That's a fair request! You can even cancel this until then, and uncancel whenever things change. Anything that would be put in the rejection note would basically repeat what is already said in the thread, and you won't be able to unreject it yourself if we reject it.
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Full ending is preferred indeed, however I haven't precisely compared the available options yet.
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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c-square wrote:
No, I didn't think to mention it. To expand on what I wrote in the submission:
c-square wrote:
Levels 2 and 4 remove all limitations on the speed of input, meaning that multiple keys are accepted per frame. This means that the strategy used in Level 1 does not work here, and a completely different strategy is required to make sure the script is keeping the input flowing just ahead of what the system can accept.
Each frame, the system provides the game with between 1 and 4 inputs from the keyboard buffer. There doesn't appear to be any obvious pattern to the number of inputs accepted each frame. The script keeps the keyboard buffer primed with six characters beyond the last character accepted to ensure no frame is sub-optimal.
I'm not sure if that is what you meant by "makes input rate per level unpredictable throughout the whole level, and with due effort you could reach unexpected quantities of accepted input," though if it isn't, I'd like to know what was meant.
The game seems to match what I meant. If the input rate is not constant, optimization is non-linear. Still borderline trivial IMO because you just look at the upcoming 6 chars, hold their buttons, and the game advances to the next few chars. You don't really have to ponder any strategies at all.
c-square wrote:
Regarding Boxxle, do you mean that walking one direction takes a different number of frames than walking in another, or that pushing in one direction is slower than pushing in another? If so, I can certainly see a complicated function to solve; however, from watching the run it definitely appears that direction doesn't impact movement speed.
Even with constant speed, there's a lot of movement in different directions that you need to optimize. Proving it's trivial once you know the route, and that's the only possible route, would in itself be non-trivial.
c-square wrote:
The fact that Salary Man and Bishi Bashi Special 3 were once accepted to Moons is irrelevant. If they stayed in Moons, then there's no issue. But if these runs are being demoted out of moons and being considered for vault, then they should be subject to the same criteria as any other submission for vault. If they pass, they can enter vault, if they don't they should be unpublished. For example, Moons doesn't have a goal choice limitation either, but that doesn't mean a once-moons Playaround should get to be 'grandfathered' into vault just because.
When demoting Moons movies to Vault we don't do full rejudgement from scratch, because priority is too low. If those games run at fixed timer and all you do is just hit known-in-advance buttons as many times as you can, then that's trivial indeed.
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.
In Boxxle there's a lot of different movement to optimize. Salary Man and Bishi Bashi Special 3 were initially accepted to Moons, which doesn't have a triviality rule.
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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Having to rely on external capture software means it's underdeveloped. I wouldn't want to allow a new TASing emulator to be submittable if it required external capture tools.
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.
And I don''t see how skipping all of the actual credits is exactly the same as showing them in full.
DO: Try something different. I'm very likely to feature a level if it does something I haven't seen in a VVVVVV level before. Experiment with scripting! Try to build levels around unusual ideas!
