River City Ransom is a goofy game which deserves a goofy TAS.
Emulator used: FCEU 0.98.16
Does not aim for fastest time
Plays on Novice level
Uses time to save trashcan
We looked at previous submissions and demonstrations of this game and tried to include the most entertaining parts of what was available, and add in a few ideas of our own along the way. Hopefully you'll get a kick out of it.
Bonus: Watch this run with the option "Allow more than 8 sprites per scanline" checked to make it easier to see when there are many sprites on the screen at once. This option is located in the main menu under Config -> Video.
(Changing this option may require an emulator restart if the colors get messed up, but it will save this setting.)
Those who say that "[this movie] doesn't belong on this site" can go read WhyAndHow again.
A movie is entertaining when it is:
* Interesting (not slow, boring, or repetitive)
* Surprising (does the unexpected)
* Skillful (handles awkward situations efficiently and creatively)
and
our main goal is to create movies that are beautiful to watch.
In my opinion, this site needs more movies like this. This is the ideal.
However, such movies pose a judging problem. Movies that compete for speed
are easy to compare; just a scalar number against a scalar number.
But play-around movies like this; if you receive a couple of them, what should you
do? How can you judge them and decide which ones to keep and which ones to discard?
This is all politics, and that's where this submission is stuck at.
Does it honestly deserve the place it's aiming at?
Even the voting feedback does not make the decision all that clear.
We have to remember all the kind of bias that exists in the votes.
(Indeed, judging is not a democratic process;
the votes are there just to give an idea of audience reception.)
I am accepting this movie on the following grounds:
The votes have been positive for the most part.
The movie is consistent with the message of this site…
I think a no-vote category where publishing is decided solely on number of frames could create interesting competition.
IMO, this isn't a good idea...if there's no voting, just framecounts, there's the potential to get sloppy runs that are quick only because of new glitches being found and exploited, or a good route through the game.
I think a no-vote category where publishing is decided solely on number of frames could create interesting competition. There could even be some "top 5 fastest times" or whatever, with the fastest one being published, the rest mentioned.
Actually, I mostly referred to the initial (first-generation) submissions. Obviously, once such a movie has been accepted, it's pointless to judge/vote on the subsequent improvements, but I still think that the initial submissions should be treated with caution to minimize the amount of publications for Front Line-type of games or just poorly made movies.
Introducing thresholds may help against sneak improvements, though… Not sure if complicating things is better by itself, perhaps someone could suggest something better than "for movies over 5 minutes long, don't submit improvements less than 0.02% of the precedent movie's length".
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
IMO, this isn't a good idea...if there's no voting, just framecounts, there's the potential to get sloppy runs that are quick only because of new glitches being found and exploited, or a good route through the game.
The cynicist in me would answer to that: And how is that situation any different from the current situation? ;)
I think either categories 2&3 or 3&4 should be merged, otherwise we'll spend eternity discussing what category a certain movie would belong to.
The other possible distinction would be:
1) speedruns with universally accepted completion goals (any%, low%, 100%) and scoreruns (for games that have competition in score) — these are judged by technical merits;
2) entertainment (everything that falls outside the scope of the category #1) — these are judged by entertainment merits.
However, I still think both should be voted upon. In case of technical movies, this is to help sorting out sloppy runs. Also, splitting the site in two very distinct categories would allow splitting the ratings evenly, with sole technical rating for tech runs and sole entertainment rating for entertainment runs, and to possibly substitute polls with respective ratings as well. How about that?
I am in 100% agreement. One caveat, movies that aim for speed should still not waste times that could be entertaining, and movies that aim to entertain should not uselessly waste time (IE standing around, things done for entertainment's sake are not counted).
This would rid the entertainment people of pedantic technical assholes like me.
Bisqwit wrote:
I realize that this may sound like a blanket defense, but the site Rules (and Guidelines) are not a work of God. They're not strict and not subject to a debate to the letter. They are an attempt to formulate what we (hopefully everyone, but especially I) feel like is best to guide players towards creating the best movies for this site, and to minimize the chances of conflicts between players.
Barbosa wrote:
They be more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.
[/quote]
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I've been lurking the TASvideos site for a while now (maybe a little under a year?) but this video is what made me decide to register in order to state:
I approve of this Tool Assisted Silliness.
In all honesty, inhuman acts of perfection get old after a while. I've more often been entertained by abuse of game glitches or mechanics in order to tighten up other TAS videos, and this is a fantastic example of glitch/gameplay showcasing that I REALLY enjoyed. I don't know if such glitch/gameplay showcasing is strictly appropriate for tool-assisted gaming (aside from glitches requiring frame precision, at least), but I certainly enjoyed it immensely. More videos of this sort, or (in my fantasies) a sister site or category for goofing around and showing off glitches and gameplay oddities would be immensely appreciated.
Thanks for the laughs, adelikat and JXQ!
In all honesty, inhuman acts of perfection get old after a while. I've more often been entertained by abuse of game glitches or mechanics in order to tighten up other TAS videos, and this is a fantastic example of glitch/gameplay showcasing that I REALLY enjoyed. I don't know if such glitch/gameplay showcasing is strictly appropriate for tool-assisted gaming (aside from glitches requiring frame precision, at least), but I certainly enjoyed it immensely. More videos of this sort, or (in my fantasies) a sister site or category for goofing around and showing off glitches and gameplay oddities would be immensely appreciated.
There's only one difficulty: Where to draw the line?
If this run had been 1 hour long, would you have approved it? I think many wouldn't. So where is the line of acceptable timewasting?
Then why have rules at all? The only rule needed is: "Submit anything you like and if enough people vote yes, it might be published." It would make the rules page quite shorter.
Then why have rules at all? The only rule needed is: "Submit anything you like and if enough people vote yes, it might be published." It would make the rules page quite shorter.
I don't know.
Seriously- I've rewritten this post nine times, and I can't come up with a sensible answer to that question of why rules are explicitly necessary when we are able to discern the interesting, artful movies from the gruefood.
I'd be interested to see what Bisqwit has to say about it, but I don't want to put him on the spot.
That's part of why I suggested a separate category for plays with major time-for-entertainment tradeoffs (and actually glancing at previous discussion here it seems to be under consideration anyway - whoops): as Bisqwit mentioned in the publishment acceptance comment, it's very difficult to be objective when "entertainment value" is the only real standard, making strict judgment for public publishing purposes is an open invitation to ugly drama and politics. Different people will have different standards, expectations, and even preference in entertainment, so there really aren't any hard and fast rules about what would be publish-worthy and what wouldn't.
I'd be tempted to suggest setting it up as a less structured "here's a place to share screwaround TAS runs, we'll make a .avi for ones that get a lot of public support and the judges like," but that feels somewhat contrary to the professional tone of the site and leaves me a bit nervous about it causing more trouble further down the line. (Though I admit, I haven't really followed the community, so I may not be the best judge of this...) Splitting it off into a "sister site" with that more casual air may get around that, as long as the respective admins/site owners don't have ways to get on one another's nerves too much. But I'm a complete newbie to office politics, so that may just be my fantasies speaking.
Warp wrote:
where is the line of acceptable timewasting?
Again, this is mostly a personal preference, but I'm inclined to think that taking more than a minute or two (maaaaaybe stretch to 3-5 in very slow games or while showcasing a LOT of glitches with item you'll never encounter again) is where goofing off without moving the game forward tends to get tiresome. Even that may be too long if the goofy actions aren't kept fresh, and hesitating to set something up without a good reason is very very bad. Taking unusual or impossible paths at the cost of time is fine (see: trashcan pit toss), but the speed should at least come close to expert "real" play without any embarrassing slip-ups and proper abuse of frame advance when the 'mistake' isn't a fresh piece of amusement. Avoiding uninteresting backtracking through glitches or suicide (as used in this video) is also wise, and may actually make opportunities for entertaining "one-sided-against-the-player" RNG abuse in RPGs and the like. But, I think I'm on a rather forgiving end of the spectrum as far as professionalism of entertainment runs goes; I wouldn't really object if TAS-quality speed outside of entertainment segments remained the standard. Not that I'd have any place to object anyway, but, y'know.
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.
