This might be blasphemy and i'm pretty much a nobody around here so i don't expect to be taken seriously, but i'm not a big fan of scroll glitches.
The thing is, i really like watching Sonic speedruns, but mostly i just watch for continuous running sequences. All those tricks where the player drops Sonic through a wall and appears at the end of the stage are not that fun to watch.
Don't get me wrong, every once in a while i see an enjoyable creative setup like at 8:29 or 30:19 in this video and that's nice. It's cool for what it is and i'm sure it's interesting to people who have attempted Sonic speedruns, but otherwise ...
What are the chances of a Sonic speedrun being made without any scroll glitch usage whatsoever? I think that would make the end result a lot more accessible and enjoyable to watch, because i think that's what most people who click on a Sonic speedrun are looking for.
We all want to know the absolute fastest completion time but that's not necessarily what we want to see.
Okay, fire away.
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Haha thanks for the response (i guess?) but what about every other optimization that's been discovered in the past six years? Or even including Tails?
I mean, sometimes there are large portions of the main path of the game that are never fully explored. That's not a concern? Nobody cares what they would look like in 2010?
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Tuesday = new technical/combo video/article | Thursday = new screenshot | Saturday = new strategy article
The people who do care don't care enough to learn to TAS Sonic games. The people who have learned to TAS Sonic games don't care to make glitchless runs.
That's about the size of it.
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Derakon: Alright fair enough. I just think it would get a lot of views because it would be more enjoyable to watch from beginning to end.
Plus it would be easy enough to label as a valid speedrun - "Forgoes scroll glitches" or whatever.
But if it's a lost cause, i won't hold my breath.
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Tuesday = new technical/combo video/article | Thursday = new screenshot | Saturday = new strategy article
A category like "uses the route intended by the game developers" has been suggested several times in the past (directly by me and indirectly by several other people), to be applied to many games (such as megaman), but the suggestion has never caught on.
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I actually wouldn't mind trying my hand at Sonic 3 glitchless if there's enough interest (which I'm fairly sure there is).
You may have to wait on me to finish my real-time speedruns of the game though :P
Warp: Yeah that's kind of what i'm asking for but honestly i don't even mind most glitches. I realize in a Sonic TAS it's always going to be hard to tell what's going on.
But when the majority of the game scrolls by underground where you can't even see the character behind a wall of garbage, that's a bit much. If we just take this one glitch out of the equation, it should solve a lot of aesthetic problems.
http://sonichurricane.com
Tuesday = new technical/combo video/article | Thursday = new screenshot | Saturday = new strategy article
I actually wouldn't mind trying my hand at Sonic 3 glitchless if there's enough interest (which I'm fairly sure there is).
The problem with "glitchless" is that it can become quite hard to define what constitutes a "glitch" and what doesn't. Almost invariably any "glitchless" run will end up forgoing certain glitches (mostly the major ones), while other "minor" glitches are ok, hence technically speaking breaking the premise. Personally I don't think "glitchless" is a sensible category because it's extremely ambiguous and, basically, arbitrary (iow. the author himself decides what he personally thinks constitutes a "glitch" that must be avoided and what is ok to use).
Many runs, instead, don't even claim to be "glitchless", but instead something along the lines of "forgoes using warps" or "does not use death as shortcut", etc. However, there isn't a sensible category for "avoids 'scrolling' glitches", because that's really hard to define accurately in a completely unambiguous way.
Naturally my proposal of "uses the route intended by the game developers" could be somewhat ambiguous as well (as there may be many places in a game where it's up to opinion whether a minor shortcut constitutes breaking the intended route or not), but at least it's, IMO, much less ambiguous than "glitchless", while achieving what people usually mean by that term (ie. avoid major route-breaking glitches, but allow minor ones).
You know, I was actually thinking about this just a couple of days ago. In my opinion a possible solution would be "uses the SDA route".
Basically you take the route used in the SDA, meaning that it can be played by human hands, and you optimise it.
Unfortunately I still think it would be rejected, but as I said more than once, fortunately we have Youtube :)
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The above post is quite hilarious, and the reason it is hilarious is that the aforementioned runs (by me) are quite old and outdated, and are about to be replaced (by me) with runs that much more closely mirror the TAS :P
That and it would be laughed out of town from a semantics standpoint anyway.
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Since when do we need a special category for a run like this?
GlitchedLow gltich
or
GlitchedLow glitch
If a run is sufficiently glitched, the glitches are definable enough, and a low glitched run is demanded enough, then a low glitch category works and gets accepted on the site.
I'd say the two most requested ones that aren't already done are low glitch Megaman, and Sonic 3. Someone doing those is virtually guaranteed strong audience support and publication (given that the technical quality is still on par with the glitched versions).
I see no need for additional categories. 'Route intended by programmers' sounds like a most terrible idea. Who's to say what they intended, and more to the point, why do we care what they intended?
Route used by SDA? I see what you are getting at with this idea, but it still doesn't work for obvious reasons.
Let's just try for some common sense here. If a run gets too broken, it loses that familiarity/nostalgia factor for people. If the main source of that brokenness is one particular glitch, then a run avoiding that glitch could be publication worthy (by having an audience support, being sufficiently different from a glitched run, and having a well defined goal).
I don't like the "glitched" rotule for Sonic 3 run. I think it's better using just "any%" rotule cause all the stages are played at least. I think movies like THESE deserves a "glitched" rotule:
http://tasvideos.org/1588M.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/1299M.html
MY opinion.
I'd say the two most requested ones that aren't already done are low glitch Megaman, and Sonic 3. Someone doing those is virtually guaranteed strong audience support and publication (given that the technical quality is still on par with the glitched versions).
I'm still concerned about the heavy arbitrariness of the author defining at his own whims what constitutes a glitch to avoid, and which glitches are ok to use. "Low glitch" is such a vague and ambiguous term. It doesn't really define anything. How many glitches need to be avoided for it to be considered a "low glitch" run?
And most importantly, if after accepting such a run someone else submits a run which is slightly faster and which uses one type of glitch more, will it be accepted as the new "low glitch" run or not? Who exactly defines which glitches are ok and which ones break the category, making the run unacceptable? More importantly, how can an author know which glitches he can use and which are out of question (so that the run will be accepted)?
There has been some discussion, if not even minor controversy, over what constitutes "arbitrary goals" recently, and IMO "low glitch" is far on the wrong side of arbitrary goals.
I see no need for additional categories. 'Route intended by programmers' sounds like a most terrible idea. Who's to say what they intended,
I'd say with many games, such as Megaman, it's pretty obvious what the route intended by the developers is.
and more to the point, why do we care what they intended?
Quite many people seem to care, as there has been regular demand for such runs for years. My suggestion is intended to be a rational approach to this request many people have.
Route used by SDA? I see what you are getting at with this idea, but it still doesn't work for obvious reasons.
Yeah, that's not a pretty good idea. It would mean that the goalposts will shift as the runners at SDA get better at speedrunning a game and learning how to use new shortcuts and glitches.
I'd say the two most requested ones that aren't already done are low glitch Megaman, and Sonic 3. Someone doing those is virtually guaranteed strong audience support and publication (given that the technical quality is still on par with the glitched versions).
I'm still concerned about the heavy arbitrariness of the author defining at his own whims what constitutes a glitch to avoid, and which glitches are ok to use. "Low glitch" is such a vague and ambiguous term. It doesn't really define anything. How many glitches need to be avoided for it to be considered a "low glitch" run?
I think in difficult cases (Sonic isn't one of these imo) the authors should probably ask the target audience and just make the run people are demanding for. There's no need to define that kind of category unambigously imo. Obsoletion issues would have to be decided on a case by case basis.
And if the author isn't sure whether their new low-glitch run, with which they'd want to obsolete an older one, would still be considered low-glitch, I think they'd be smart enough to raise the topic before finishing the run anyway. There'd be some tough decisions to be made every now and then, but I don't think there's a viable way around it.
I agree with Kuwaga. We don't need to have an airtight definition for what is and isn't acceptable; the author should just clarify which glitches he's going to uses and which he's going to avoid, and as long as he's consistent and the audience thinks he chose well, there won't be any problems.
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Agreed. The point of low glitch runs is more of the spirit behind them rather than strict definitions. It's more akin to a pure entertainment run.
Another that's pretty popular is Super Mario 64. That one's been caught up in semantics as well.
I'm thinking: What would be the relevant difference between "low glitch" and "uses the route intended by the developers"? Personally I just like the latter more as a concept because it's, at least in principle, less ambiguous.
Or maybe a better term than "less ambiguous" would be "expresses better what the goal of the run is". It tells the viewer "so, you want more of a 'regular walkthrough' of the game, but with tool-assistance? This is it." The term "low glitch" doesn't convey that meaning so clearly.
Agreed. The point of low glitch runs is more of the spirit behind them rather than strict definitions. It's more akin to a pure entertainment run.
Another that's pretty popular is Super Mario 64. That one's been caught up in semantics as well.
Yeah, oddly, while I absolutely love the glitching in games like Sonic 3 and Rockman 1/2, I'd really love to see an "intended route" run of Super Mario 64 that doesn't rely so heavily on BLJs. I guess glitching in 3D games confuses my head, I dunno.
Wouldn't "intended route" be too limiting though? I mean what happens if you gather so much speed that you go off a ramp and fly clear over a tunnel? Should you have to slow down there?
Personally i'd be happy just to see Sonic on the screen during most of gameplay (not just appearing to stand victoriously at the end). I certainly wouldn't mind if he skips past parts of the level as long as he's not teleporting into a wall to do it.
Plus how would you enforce "intended route"? Draw out a map path that the TAS must adhere to?
Anyway bottom line is i'd be happy with either one. It just seems like "Low Glitch" has a better chance of being accepted than "Intended Route." But i guess we'll never know until it happens.
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Tuesday = new technical/combo video/article | Thursday = new screenshot | Saturday = new strategy article
Wouldn't "intended route" be too limiting though? I mean what happens if you gather so much speed that you go off a ramp and fly clear over a tunnel? Should you have to slow down there?
Well, what if you can enter a wall just right, and because of that you zip at enormous speed through the entire level to the boss? That's exactly what runs do now.
I'm not arguing against that, because that's the essence of TASing, and that's exactly why TASes are so cool. I'm just proposing a kind of rational compromise which would satisfy those wanting to see a more "normal walkthrough" of the game using tool assistance.
Plus how would you enforce "intended route"?
In the same way as how you define what constitutes a "low glitch" run and what doesn't.
That feels too game-specific. A "category" that was created for a Sonic game, and basically can only be applied to that Sonic game (it could be theoretically applied to some other games as well, but there's no rational reason to apply it to them because momentarily exiting the view isn't as "bothersome" than with that Sonic game).
Plus it doesn't stop the TASer from glitching its way through the levels with Sonic being most of the time behind the scenery anyways.
