Another problem that I believe has cropped up is lack of accessibility for a method to quickly and easily share WIPs. For years, DeHackEd's microstorage was the default for showing off tricks and progress, however as new emulators have cropped up, so have new file formats, some of which aren't supported, and some are supported with limited functionality (i.e. lack of .m64 embedded savestates). One possible way to increase sharing of files and WIPs is to make an official script for use on the site, where a user has X amount of hard drive space to upload files, and they are stored in an accessible manner for others to view. I don't know how much allotted hard drive space comes with the current site hosting contract that we have, but even if it's 20 GB, that allows for nearly 7 MB of space per user to utilize to share their collection of files. Or, limit uploading to those users who have posted within the past year, and the allotted amount would grow greatly.
I had a similar idea. I don't know about limiting one person's upload quotient. Instead, why not just limit file types? Savestates, movies, and Lua scripts?
Also, a download counter, plus a facebook-style 'like' system, would help encourage current TASers. I notice when I submit a movie, people who never replied in the thread often say "I enjoyed the WIPs, and so here is a yes vote!" I'd be more encouraged if I had known they were watching, and enjoyed the WIPs.
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 just tried it again on my home computer (original post was from my laptop), and both the MM7 and Zelda 2 clips looped properly. *shrug*
It's possible what you accessed before was an older cached version while I was still developing the feature. See if it works on your laptop now.
I just checked on my laptop and everything looks good. Dunno if it was a false alarm or not but it's a moot point now. Thanks for implementing the feature!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It would solve one of the biggest flaws in DeHackEd's system (the inability to search for a particular file
That makes it useful for secretly sharing WIPs. Unless you wipe your history folder on a regular basis then it should be possible to browse through it and recover lost links. I guess you could create a system where you could register on DeHackEd and track your upload/download for you. That way you can have another cookie :-)
It would solve one of the biggest flaws in DeHackEd's system (the inability to search for a particular file
That makes it useful for secretly sharing WIPs. Unless you wipe your history folder on a regular basis then it should be possible to browse through it and recover lost links. I guess you could create a system where you could register on DeHackEd and track your upload/download for you. That way you can have another cookie :-)
We could just use bossymossy's idea and add a "this file is secret, do not show the link to others browsing my WIPs"-option.
Also, I liked mmbossman's idea. Hopefully it'll become reality on this site.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Kuwaga wrote:
Is there no way to make these videos stop buffering across their loop points? Things could get pretty slow on a big page like that.
I wish there was a way. If you find anything here that should allow for that, let me know.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Mitjitsu wrote:
mmbossman wrote:
It would solve one of the biggest flaws in DeHackEd's system (the inability to search for a particular file
That makes it useful for secretly sharing WIPs. Unless you wipe your history folder on a regular basis then it should be possible to browse through it and recover lost links. I guess you could create a system where you could register on DeHackEd and track your upload/download for you. That way you can have another cookie :-)
Yeah, like Brushy said, it wouldn't be difficult to have a public and private section of a WIP briefcase to address that type of thing.
As for lost links, I work from on TASes from a couple different computers and locations, so it's hard to keep track. Also, when you know that another player has linked a file in a monster thread (i.e. Super Metroid) but you're not sure where it's at, a personal drop-box would keep the confusion to a minimum and make things a lot easier to find quickly.
Hm, there doesn't seem to be a way to make youtube videos stop buffering without clearing the data so far. Wouldn't a feature like that save youtube money? Strange.
Is there no way to make these videos stop buffering across their loop points? Things could get pretty slow on a big page like that.
Yeah, noticed that problem myself too. Pretty annoying. If you have watched several videos, the only way to make them stop buffering and clogging your connection is to go to another page and then come back (or to wait for all of them to finish loading). Reduces the usability of the feature a bit.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Warp wrote:
Kuwaga wrote:
Is there no way to make these videos stop buffering across their loop points? Things could get pretty slow on a big page like that.
Yeah, noticed that problem myself too. Pretty annoying. If you have watched several videos, the only way to make them stop buffering and clogging your connection is to go to another page and then come back (or to wait for all of them to finish loading). Reduces the usability of the feature a bit.
How about F5?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Do you have specific gripes with the current design and ideas for how to improve it? A site redesign isn't to be embarked on lightly. That said, the front page has seen a few revisions in the last year.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Isn't the whole site (Except the forums) literally composed of a 'Wiki' (I use the term very loosely) style system?
The sites pretty flexible (Within reasonable constraints, of course, hehehe), what bugs you about its design?
I do agree it looks a little drab in colour scheme, but there is not much reason to change that apart from purely cosmetic reasons.
Perhaps a customizable colour palette/skin options?
I can throw together Alien Soldier and Bloodlines tricks pages in about 5 minutes. Actually I think I'll do that after I submit this post. We could just start doing this after every submission where some tricks are used... is there a tricks page for the game? If no, add one. If yes, add whatever new info in the submission.
Another thing, the recent changes seems pretty impossible to find nowadays. I think the last 6-8 changes could be on the front page. This was one of the pages I used to check to see if any article i was interested in had changed, and if there was any info I could add on the subject.
While on the topic of the front page...
Besides latest edited articles, I think the News should be on there, and the proportions of the other items should be changed.
How about, for example
8 latest published movies
8 latest submissions
8 latest news items
8 latest edited articles
4 recommended movies
Also, mz suggested earlier that more people should have the ability to add News items, for example when releasing a new version of an emulator. I don't know how this works today, but that sounds like a good idea to me.
Derakon:
adelikat and I have been discussing setting up an automated encoding machine. There's some issues we need to work out though, such as getting the emulators to accept all the encoding params via command line, possibly even running in window less mode, uploading to somewhere, and somehow working out the ROM images available on the system.
I have a quite automated system for encoding snes runs. I think the only think missing is automatic determination of how long to encode. I guess I could just set it to stop encoding x% after the input is done. I do it by first having set up a hash database in the file system, with a directory with symlinks from rom hash to rom file. Then, given an smv, I read out the checksum, and look it up in the hash directory, and play it with snes9x set to dump raw audio and video to disk. To avoid wasting disk space, the output video file is a fifo. Ideally, the output audio file would also be a fifo, but that causes deadlocks, so I have to do the encoding in 3 steps: First I cat the video fifo to /dev/null, and just dump the audio. After that, I start ffmpeg encoding from the audio file and the video fifo, and do the first pass and second pass of the encoding.
This probably isn't the best way of doing things, but it is pretty automatic and flexible. Perhaps you can do something similar?
Hmm...thinking about it, I can't think of any mechanism to prevent potential DOS attacks against an automated encoder short of a privilege and quota system. So I say just let the user tell you how long to encode for.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
amaurea wrote:
I have a quite automated system for encoding snes runs. I think the only think missing is automatic determination of how long to encode.
For WIPs, there isn't much point in showing anything after the input dies out. I imagine 10 seconds after last input would be good enough for any particular WIP.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Hmm...thinking about it, I can't think of any mechanism to prevent potential DOS attacks against an automated encoder short of a privilege and quota system. So I say just let the user tell you how long to encode for.
As you say, some kind of quota system is more or less a necessity. It could be, for example, one automatic encode per day per registered user per IP address. Users with higher ranks could be given the permission to use it more often (eg. 10 times a day or whatever). If the privilege is abused somehow, it should be possible to demote or even completely ban individual users (based on account and/or IP) from using the automatic encoding service.
No system will be 100% fool-proof, of course, but at least should stop the most obvious vandalism.
For the TAS WIP that we don't see, I think that in the currentform (discussion in one thread) you can pratically only have one run per game. There's no place where you can update the information about your own run. I don't know what would be a better approach.
1- One thread per run in a new section forum. But I guess that the discussion would be scattered all over and we will miss tricks and info.
2- Have a new system for run that can be used by player. Something like a mini website. When you can define the trick you use, the time saver you found, the route that you will use. It's already possible with the Wiki, but to me, wiki is hard to use. I guess something like the post, when you can change the Font and formattating easily.
3- Host the wip on the site. I don't know how much space is needed for this. But why are we still using Dehacked solution for WIP ? It was good, but it might be better to have a place inside TASVideos to support this.
Being a only viewer myself, I wanted to share my take on the site.
I have found that other gamers I know don't really like the idea of a Tool Assisted run. To start with, many of them are unfamiliar with emulators, and I think the stigma of piracy is a little off-putting. (Although that's a whole other debate.) Second, watching a player they don't know functionally "cheating" is a hard sell. The idea of integrating a tricks and knowledge wiki may be the most important key to hooking new viewers. We should push it to be a major part of the site.
Second, why not upload simple flash games where people can try light tasing and replaying and sharing them? Maybe a game with a main character who can time travel, then you can re-watch your efforts sped up. I know I have trying out tasing on snes9x a few times, and its a bit much for me. It could be fun and easy, depending on how you design the game.
Also, I think the site needs to make clear that despite rerecords, robots, etc., the final result is just controller input. It wasn't made clear on the front page, and I think its a big aspect to understand what a TAS is. Just a little thing to throw out there.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
