Active player (406)
Joined: 3/22/2006
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I think I've concluded that the most pointless game to TAS is Duck Hunt. 1. Assuming you can even record the light gun input as part of the run, every single time a duck appears it would immediately die. There'd be no difficulty in all setting them up. 2. The levels keep going forever. 3. It would be totally boring to watch.
Joined: 7/2/2007
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Ahh, I've seen a tool-assisted run of Duck Hunt before. It consisted of an NES, a TV, a gun mounted on servos, a camera, and a computer. Mind, the computer didn't have perfect accuracy, but it was pretty dang good anyway. And seeing it track the ducks, aim the gun, and then fire it was pretty entertaining.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
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Active player (406)
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Haha, why?
nfq
Player (94)
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speedruns/TASes of RPG games are the most boring, because there's a lot of text and you just go from place to place fight a few monsters.
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Interesting that you say that right after an RPG won TAS of the year. There are lots of ways to make an RPG TAS entertaining, but it takes a lot of experimentation and creativity. Personally, I think it would be fun to do a TAS of an RPG where you avoid all enemies and go straight to the final boss at level 1 and luck manipulate to avoid taking any damage. Sort of like Zelda 2 or Castlevania: CotM, I guess.
Skilled player (1827)
Joined: 4/20/2005
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Location: Norrköping, Sweden
That Duck Hunt TAS isn't very optimized, in fact, you can usually shoot the ducks before they appear. Since this game is unsuitable to TAS, it's right up my alley, and I made a TAS of it: .fm2 and youtube. It's actually not that bad, and kinda funny if you're in the right mood. I think there are worse games to TAS than Duck Hunt, although I wouldn't say it makes for a great TAS.
Player (121)
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And yet an RPG just won best tas of 2009... an exception that proves the rule? Also, clay shooting would have been cooler. Edit: Damn you evil genius!
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
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Hah. While I was editing that message two more people posted. That's a first.
nfq
Player (94)
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Heisanevilgenius wrote:
Interesting that you say that right after an RPG won TAS of the year.
yeah... it's also interesting that i myself have done several RPG TASes, like this parasite eve TAS that i reuploaded yesterday: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7723&start=20 RPG TASes are the most boring, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are boring. another reason why they are boring is that you usually can't do anything to speed up your movement or take different weird glitchy routes like in super mario 64. RPGs are pretty linear games.
snorlax
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Looris wrote:
Qix, Pengo, and basically most classic games where one level looks more or less like the previous one. Maybe I'm biased, but for me speedruns are for platformers, and anything that is too far from being one, doesn't quite arouse my interest.
I would love to see a Pengo TAS, though maybe more of a playaround with more combos and the diamond blocks connected in every level would be better than pure speed.
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nfq wrote:
RPG TASes are the most boring
I'd say an RPG TAS is not boring to someone who has played the game (especially if he has played it recently, as he can then best see where the tool-assistance and luck manipulation is happening). On the contrary, it often makes a very interesting TAS. In fact, I recommend actually playing the RPG through before watching the TAS of the game. A 10-hour chess game TAS would be boring even for a chess aficionado.
Joined: 2/7/2008
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Randil wrote:
Since this game is unsuitable to TAS, it's right up my alley, and I made a TAS of it: .fm2 and youtube. It's actually not that bad, and kinda funny if you're in the right mood. I think there are worse games to TAS than Duck Hunt, although I wouldn't say it makes for a great TAS.
I enjoyed that. Do you know what determines the scoring for the ducks? Also, do the round go on indefinitely? Do you know what happens to the round counter?
I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.
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I have made a Duck Hunt topic in the NES section here where I answer these question and where we can continue discussing Duck hunt.
Post subject: Re: Games which are the most unsuitable for TASing
Player (150)
Joined: 11/27/2004
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Location: WA State, USA
Nach wrote:
There's a game on Gameboy called the 4-in-1 funpack. It includes Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, and Reversi (Othello). The Chess engine is Sargon, which acts really stupid in that pack for some reason.
That reminds me of an LCD checkers game I played. Occasionally the game would forget that jumping is required for a match (for reasons I couldn't figure out). When this occurred, my strategy was leave my back row in place (to prevent the computer from promoting its pieces) and sneak a piece behind all of the enemy's pieces. I would then have this piece mill around back there whilst the enemy pieces would move forward until they had no valid moves left, thus meaning I was the winner. My memory is a bit foggy (it's been months), but I seem to recall using this method to win a match without losing any of my own pieces and without capturing any of the opponent's pieces.
Nach wrote:
I also used to wake up every morning, open my curtains, and see the twin towers. And then one day, wasn't able to anymore, I'll never forget that.
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broken sword would be the most boring TAS ever for people who have never played it
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I once had a chess game for the ZX Spectrum which was really, really bad. Not only was it really weak, but it would always do the exact same moves (in other words, if you have beaten it once, you could beat it again by playing in the exact same way). But the worst (and most hilarious) thing was that it had a bug that made it not recognize checking in some situations, so it would move something else than the king (or protect it). You could then capture the computer's king and the game would then simply continue. Of course from that point forward the game became more or less nonsensical, but that didn't stop the program from continuing. (I don't remember exactly what happened if you ate all the computer's pieces. I think it then just stood there doing nothing because there was nothing to do.)
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Wow. That actually sounds like it would be great for a TAS.
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Warp wrote:
A 10-hour chess game TAS would be boring even for a chess aficionado.
A chess TAS would undoubtedly be the most senseless project ever. If you want to see a chess TAS all you have to do is visit the world chess computer championship site and click through the matches.
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
Chess is a great idea. Not only are there hilariously stupid chess AIs on '80s hardware, it should be possible to do bizarre things, like march your king into the enemy camp and still win. I tried to do something like that with "Shougi Fuurinkazan" for the SNES, but I lack the talent.
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Dromiceius wrote:
Chess is a great idea. Not only are there hilariously stupid chess AIs on '80s hardware, it should be possible to do bizarre things, like march your king into the enemy camp and still win.
Undoubtedly. However, the problem, as I see it, is that difficulty level and entertainment are on the opposite ends of the scale: 1) For the run to be even mildly entertaining the computer has to move fast (preferably a few seconds per move), but in that case the computer doesn't have any significant amount of time to be a fair challenge and the whole thing just doesn't make much sense. It would be humiliating the computer without giving it any chance to actually fight back. Also the challenge of actually beating the computer to pulp is next to nil at such low difficulty settings. (This is especially true with old consoles and home computers which didn't have any computing prowess to speak of.) 2) On the other hand, setting the difficulty to max, or even to a fair amount so that the computer actually gives a fair challenge, would result in an extremely long and boring run where nothing happens 99.9% of the time. Maybe if a TAS is done with a fair difficulty setting, an exception to the publication rules could be applied and the video cut so that the waiting time between moves is reduced to just a few seconds (maybe with some kind of subtitle or whatever telling how much time really passed).
Active player (406)
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I think your earlier example is the perfect sort of chess game that would work in a TAS. One with crippling glitches you can exploit, while also manipulating the AI into doing stupid things.
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Warp wrote:
For the run to be even mildly entertaining the computer has to move fast (preferably a few seconds per move), but in that case the computer doesn't have any significant amount of time to be a fair challenge and the whole thing just doesn't make much sense. It would be humiliating the computer without giving it any chance to actually fight back. Also the challenge of actually beating the computer to pulp is next to nil at such low difficulty settings. (This is especially true with old consoles and home computers which didn't have any computing prowess to speak of.)
I'm not certain that would be an issue in practice. The only chess-like game I'm familiar with is (in my less-than-expert opinion) very hard, but the only time it takes more than 5 seconds to make a move is in the endgame. The viewer would presumably need that time to analyze the moves themselves, anyway.
Joined: 1/3/2006
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I would find it to be quite funny to take as many of your oponents pawns as you can get, while you lose as little as you can. And if AI manipulation might be out of question because of the loading times, what about a two player run? In this case you could show really weird glitches in the chess engine, and maybe resulting in a really bizarre checkmate. I still think though, that bashing the cpu is the best way for a chess TAS
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The problem with chess is that the shortest possible game is already known, where Black wins on its second move. In chess notation, it's 1.f3 e5 2.g4 Qh4#. If I have to explain it, it's roughly as follows : White moves the pawn on the F file (where the white-squared bishop is) by one square, thus moving it to the f3 square. Then, Black moves the pawn on the E file (in front of the king) by two squares. Then, White moves the pawn on the G file (in front of the black-squared knight) two squares ahead. Finally, Black moves the queen to the h4 square which is checkmate. Here's what the checkmate looks like. http://yfrog.com/htcheckmateintwoj (Alternately, White can move the F pawn by two squares, and Black can move their pawn by only one square, it's the same thing in the end.) Obviously, a regular, strong chess engine would never fall for something like that (no strong chess engine would play one of these moves early in the game because they aren't good to begin with), but in a TAS, who knows what can happen... Any chess nut such as myself knows that. However, seeing "playaround" games would be interesting, at least to me. I'm sure someone can come up with a lot of creativity, whether the moves are actually good or not. In video games, such as on the NES or whatever, chess video games tend to be of a low playing level, since it's aimed at kids after all. Others have difficulty levels. It would be fine to have a category where the computer loses like on the link I provided (shortest possible checkmate), regardless of difficulty settings, but if it's just that, it's not very interesting. It would be nice to see something more, because personally, seeing a TAS end like that with nothing else would leave me on my appetite. Chess games would be good for playaround runs however. Well, for those that know chess well, that is.
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