I think this is pretty self explanatory. It worked well for Quake and Half Life 2, and I think it could work well for TAS.
Pros:
People who can not normally work on large time consuming projects now can.
If someone (presumably a major contributor) has to drop out on a TAS, or delay for a year, it doesn’t matter, other people can pick up where he left off (and it wouldn’t really be ‘picking up’ anyway).
Many people working towards a common goal is likely to preserve sanity and produce a good result.
Etc.
Cons: I don’t see any.
Feel free to discuss it further, or start one or whatever.
So what game(s) should be on the list of candidates?
I assume, all wips, whether significant or not should be posted on the forums, as IRC chat cannot really be preserved for others...
Obviously [some of] the really popular games have quite optimal TASes, butI can't really think of any game that I'd like to participate in at the moment...
The QdQ speedruns are indeed so amazing because there are many people competing with each other. When they start, they simply start with competing who gets the first level done fastest. They compete about this for some time, and when they are content that the current record is very good, they lock it and move to the second level (from where the best first-level run left off) and compete with that to see who gets the fastest time, and so on. The end result will be composed of individual levels from several authors (while still being a (segmented) full run of the game).
"Open source" and "done quick" are not very descriptive for this, though. Something better should be used. :)
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Indeed it isn't clear wording, it took me some time to understand what what this self-explanatory name was all about.
I think it's cool to do something like this, if people are well reminded that it isn't a competition to see who's the best taser (so they don't hide their best tricks). People must be willing to collectively produce the best movie possible. It could be very interesting for a complicated game.
Joined: 11/11/2006
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I would just like to personally say how delighted I would be to see such an "Open Source" or Community TAS being worked on (and of course, completed). In concept it sounds great, but I'm unsure if complications will arise in practice. For example, how would you all work at the same time? If you decide to hex edit it all together, what about games that hate hex editing? How would you overcome this?
Edit: Unless you do what was suggested above and everyone try to TAS a level at the same time and stick with the best one, along with sharing each others findings. That would work well I guess.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
If I had to select game suitable for an 'open source' or 'community TAS', I would suggest "Arkanoid: Doh it Again" (for SNES).
If a game has a long learning curve to get to know it, it won't be suited for anyone who just want to give something a try TASing. This game can easily be TASed by anyone. Getting the fastest results possible takes many tries though, and there are an enormous amount of levels, which could easily demotivate a single TASer.
In order to have any real team effort on a TAS, you need the ability to do things in parallel. Different people would be optimizing different levels at the same time. Random Number Seeds make this impossible.
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FODA wrote:
It is the only practical way of doing it. Discussing, wips, discussing, wips, memory addresses, discuss.
I'm not optimistic. "Discussions" in this community so frequently lead to unending insults and flames and personal attacks that I doubt that substantial accomplishments would be anything other than few and very far between using this model. And, inevitably, some working on the same game would revert back to the traditional one-or-two-maybe-three-person TASing model anyway, causing offense and creating more unending discussion and debate...
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I also think this is a great idea.
Some TASes are huge projects for a single person to undertake and many would avoid them regardless of how awesome the outcome will be. Movies that may never have been made will be done.
Of course, that is not the only benefit, the project need not be a long one. It could also be an obsoletion and the resulting improvement may be far greater if put through several TASers.
If anyone can think of a good game for this idea then please suggest it.
How about games that take freakishly high amounts of precision, like Lunar Pool, Mario Golf 64, or Arkanoid? For these, everyone would work on level 1, then the fastest is taken, then level 2, etc.
Joined: 11/11/2006
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Chamale wrote:
How about games that take freakishly high amounts of precision, like Lunar Pool, Mario Golf 64, or Arkanoid? For these, everyone would work on level 1, then the fastest is taken, then level 2, etc.
The fastest time acheived isn't always the best possible result.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
How about games that take freakishly high amounts of precision, like Lunar Pool, Mario Golf 64, or Arkanoid? For these, everyone would work on level 1, then the fastest is taken, then level 2, etc.
Lunar pool is possible to do with Bisqbot. Bisqwit has already done quite a few levels with it. He stopped Bisqbot working on the run... but Bisqbot could finish it (so I wouldn't suggest this).
Mario Golf 64 is possible... but I don't think helping with TASing it is as easy, especially because it's an N64 run. I also haven't found settings for this game that emulated the game well (there were always colors messed up or something). (I must note that I would like to see a TAS for this game.)
Arkanoid is what I suggested, but I think the Snes version, "Arkanoid: Doh it Again!" would be a better option than the Nes version. I'm sure that if lots of people work on the nes version, small improvements will probably be found, but I don't think a really significant improvement is possible. The Snes version however doesn't have a TAS yet, and has quite a few things that make it cool, such as an 8 ball powerup, and a ball moving through all blocks. Since (I think) powerups can't be manipulated as good in the Snes version, a version which uses all available powerups is probably good, so this movie will actually show quite some new things. There are 100 levels in this game, which I think make it especially good for many people working on it.
In order to have any real team effort on a TAS, you need the ability to do things in parallel. Different people would be optimizing different levels at the same time. Random Number Seeds make this impossible.
The idea is that everybody works up to point z (say, end of level 1) at once.
After a while, the fastest/best one is kept. Everybody now begins from where the previous best left off.
i.e., everybody is working on the same segment at a time.
Does Qix for NES have an end? If so, this could be good for the concept. Luck-manipulation is utter insanity. Also, the name catches on: Qix done Quick.
