This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5110: nymx & EternisedDragon's SNES Super Metroid "100% Map Completion" in 1:12:25.01

Part of the rejection message for the previous run (emphasis mine):

However, that is not even the major issue - the actual reason I am rejecting this run is because, quite simply, viewer feedback to the category was poor. Many people in the submission discussion disagreed with the category choice not going for 100% items, making a large part of the run look like entering through rooms and 'oddly' leaving without picking up any visible items, or otherwise entering rooms without any purpose. Obviously it's a part of this category, but it still appears odd. We understand that this is a recognised category on Deer Tier, but here on TASVideos we can only publish the categories that we deem interesting and entertaining enough, and Super Metroid is already overflowing with categories on this site as is. Deer Tier is a community dedicated to Super Metroid and we are not, so we have different standards here. If Deer Tier wishes to host this TAS on their own site, then more power to them; but the category just doesn't click with the TASVideos audience here. The lack of optimality, particularly compared to current Super Metroid publications on this site, and compounded with the relatively large 90 seconds of known improvements, didn't help viewer response either - but I don't believe that an optimized improvement would be enough to save the category.

We'll see where things go this time around, but I have to admit I don't see anything changing from the previous submission even with the improvements. EDIT: Let's keep things civil, first off. Instead of criticizing the author or the community, criticize the run and category. The most important thing to me is how suitable/entertaining the category is for publication. Do the improvements save it, or is it still too arbitrary/non-entertaining?

Voting No. The new tricks are cool, but the category is very derivative of the currently published 100% run. I feel these new tricks would be better served being implemented into that.

How long was this run in development? I noticed a lot of the recently discovered tricks weren't used, so I'm assuming the run's been worked on for quite some time.

This game had -a lot- more hidden save rooms than I remember... Anyhow, in terms of optimization and planning, the run looks much better now. I enjoyed a lot of the route changes. I also liked you going through the grappling beam escape room backwards, I don't remember if that was in the previous run. However, most of my thoughts on the previous submission still apply to this run. The main problem still is this run's similarity to the current 100% run. There's still a bunch of item rooms that you enter, only to immediately leave again. Yes, there are route differences between the two categories, but frankly it doesn't really matter. Picking up all items just requires you going to a large portion of the map anyway. The order in which you do that is mostly secondary. The tricks that are unique to an "all map" run aren't really enough to make a difference. There's not really much you can do about that, to be honest. It's just how the game is. I'm reminded of this 100% map run for Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, which was rejected in part due to similar problems. Like this run, the Circle of the Moon run spent a lot of time visiting screens on the map, only to immediately turn back again. Like Circle of the Moon, Super Metroid also doesn't show any kind of percentage for map completion, which means there is no acknowledgement from the game for uncovering all the map. Considering how the game does show a percentage for item completion, and getting all items requires going to a large portion of the map anyhow, this just makes 'all items' the better metric for a full game completion. Still, you did an excellent job improving the previous submission, and the resulting movie looks much better. I'd like to commend you for sticking to it and producing a run that, taken on its own, is a very good TAS of Super Metroid. It's just that the category falls short next to 'all items'. ...What the world really is waiting for is Super Metroid "pacifist". Come on. You know you want to.

I'm going to echo what scrimpeh said about this looking better and feeling a lot more like a TAS than your previous submission, where you tried to make a realtime run but with tools. I also applaud your decision to not name any of these shinesparks "Nymx originals". I offer the following three potential improvements to your run, in the hopes that they help your time: 1) Ceres [2913] SNES Super Metroid "game end glitch" by Taco, Sniq & total in 07:14.75, at roughly 3:30, demonstrates what you could probably do around frame 12900 of your movie. 2) Brinstar At frame ~36000, you enter a room and jump, which puts you into a really nice position for getting thrown across the room (and down), and it looks very pretty. However, when you revisit the room, you have to slow down considerably in order to hit the tile you neglect with your long jump. It /might/ be faster to simply run down and nail that knockback, which would mean that your revisit can maintain speed and just space jump across the top into the power bomb area and the beginning of the game. 3) Norfair At frame ~57500, after defeating Crocomire and collecting the Power Bomb, you drop down, kill a stack of enemies for health, and then run into the save room to the lower right. You probably would save time by turning around right away and going on to collect the Grapple Beam, hitting that save room on the way back. I had to watch again, because there was the possibility that you collected health on the way out of the save room which would invalidate this comment, but you don't, so I think I'm good here. You would definitely travel less, which is why I think it would be a time saver. With all of that said, until more information is provided, my answer to the 'entertainment' question is a weak 'meh' leaning toward 'no'. I find very little interesting about colouring the map when there is no visible metric to prove that it has been done, and I see no reason to visit the entire map if you have no intention of collecting all of the items hidden therein. I don't think that this category is suitable for this particular site, but I do think that your skills as a TASer have improved in the last year.

Thanks Invariel. For the Ceres run, Taco has performed that after I finished the early parts of my TAS. As you know...TASing Super Metroid is not an easy task, in regards to going back and correcting stuff. It basically invalidates the rest and requires rescripting (RNG and various things change). Good point about Brinstar. I'll have to revisit that idea on my 3rd version. Sometimes things never work out as planned and I have to use an alternate strategy. But it will definitely be reconsidered. The Norfair situation was a bit different. I didn't have wave beam and was unable to shoot the farming pit that you are referring to. The angle of my shot was not steep enough. However, you are correct that a rearrangement of visitation could speed up things. I appreciate your feedback. This 2nd version was a fun process, but is very taxing. In total, the original script with reworking took about 15 months to produce. So, I'm reluctant to start anything at this moment, as I need rest from this.

One more point Invariel. I provided a Lua Script to confirm the map tile visitation, in case you didn't see that in my submission. That will show you everything was visited. With the use of S.M.I.L.E (our map editor for creating hacks) we are able to confirm the count of square for each area, thus leading my lua script to contain the max values of squares that need visiting.

Regarding Ceres, you can still try it and see if the rest syncs. Or try it and mark it as a known improvement of X frames for a future attempt. Regarding Norfair, the Wave Beam doesn't enter into anything. You shoot the pit (as you do in the current attempt), and then turn left and go down. You don't need the Wave Beam. On your way back up, you shoot the pit and collect health, run right into the save room, turn around and exit up-right as you do in the current attempt. There's no Wave Beam involved. Regarding the Lua script, I honestly don't care that you have an outside piece of code that confirms your work. It's not something that is measured in-game, and on top of it, you've got a controversy around a tile that may or may not exist (which, by the way, invalidates all existing 100% map runs if the tile is determined to be a real thing), which makes runs of this category that much more arbitrary.

Temp encode for those who don't like Twitch and/or floating heads: Link to video Voting yes 'cause I (surprisingly) enjoyed it. The 100% overlap is there, but it was still entertaining imo. Tho I admit I haven't watched 100% in a while Plus, it was nice to see the Etecoons (whoops, already in RBO) and Dachora for once, even if you don't save them :P

"It's not something that is measured in-game, and on top of it, you've got a controversy around a tile that may or may not exist (which, by the way, invalidates all existing 100% map runs if the tile is determined to be a real thing)" It is not true that the game does not keep track of every single map square´s state (if it was entered or not). Tewtal / total_ (for example) could prove you wrong on this one, if he would take the time to look up where this happens within the game´s code. But yes, it does not explicitly express this fact to the player (e.g. at the end of the game). Furthermore, the 1 black inbounds square, if one wants to count it or not (but for the 100% Map branch it is agreed upon to not count, since its behavior is the same as any out of bounds map square´s behavior and any other inbounds map square that can be reached otherwise that does not have a pink corresponding state assigned to it), is entered, so this particular potential invalidation arguement that you mentioned, Invariel, is null. However, I have to admit that there are (even if the same route is kept) movement optimization mistakes throughout the run that some former Super Metroid TASers could aswell notice without much effort.

You're correct; I misspoke -- if map visitation wasn't tracked, then the map wouldn't change colour when you visit those squares. What I meant to type is that map visitation (as a fraction of completion) isn't expressed to the player at any point, as you said. If the 100% map completion community agrees that the in-bounds OOB tile is OOB and thus doesn't count, then this TAS shouldn't seek to touch it.

From what I remember nymx saying is that it was faster to visit the tile anyways (on the way back), and it is allowed to visit it since it is inbounds. Edit: It might fit to explain the definition of "inbounds" the way the community uses it, especially because potential future TASes (I could imagine the 100% Items TAS and maybe an RBO TAS), if they make use of incredibly fast, so-called "SuperJumps" (not to be mistaken with the old name for Shinesparks) would have to deal with this definition aswell. So there is four relevant memory addresses: [Directly taken from the bottom of this resources page: http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/SNES/SuperMetroid.html ] 7E0AF6 2 bytes, unsigned Horizontal position 7E0AF8 2 bytes, unsigned Horizontal sub-pixel position 7E0AFA 2 bytes, unsigned Vertical position 7E0AFC 2 bytes, unsigned Vertical sub-pixel position The range that each of those memory addresse´s value has is from 0 to (2^16) - 1 = 65536 - 1 (= 65535). If the sub-pixel position´s value (in vertical and horizontal case) increases past 65535, then it will increase the corresponding pixel position´s value by 1 and keep the rest (modulo 65536), and analogous for an underflow downwards past the sub-pixel value 0. So the sub-pixel values only really influence the "micro-structure", or transition-calculation between sub-pixels and pixels, one could say, but the behavior of the actual pixel position´s values determines the shape of the manifold (which in this case has torus structure). If the (vertical or horizontal) pixel value overflows past 65535, it just loops back to 0, and vice versa, so this effect generates the torus shape (with same vertical extension as horizontal one, as one might note). Every tile is a 16 pixels times 16 pixels object, every "scroll" / map square is a 16 blocks by 16 blocks area. Now, when some room is entered, the game will directly load a certain n map squares times m map squares (for natural numbers n, m) large, rectangular area into this general space (which is exactly the area that one could see and edit in the editor called "Super Metroid Integrated Level Editor" / SMILE), but this area does not cover the full space of available pixel positions in the torus, and in the remaining region, tile remnants from previously entered rooms (or even just previously loaded rooms, as it is the case while watching the intro demos), aswell as other "garbage data" can be located, and the structure (as in what kind of block is located where, for all blocks in that region) of this region outside of what is loaded into the space depends on things like the order of previously entered rooms etc. . So one major difference between the inbounds area and the Out of Bounds area is that the OoB area does (in general) not have a fixed form, but the inbounds area, since it is what the game currently loads into the space, is always the same [technically I would have to mention that this does not hold true anymore if the game´s code is changed via ACE]. An example of such "inbounds" area together with a large portion of the room´s OoB area is visualized in this picture here (by SUPERMETROIDFTP): http://smethack.mydns.jp/?plugin=attach&refer=%B5%BB%B0%EC%CD%F7%2FNBMB%20%25%20Glitch%20run&openfile=maridia_plasma_beam_route_004.png In general, the OoB region towards the right of the inbounds area is obtained by copying the inbounds area to the right, shifting it upwards 1 tile, and deleting the upper most row of blocks that otherwise due to the upwards shift would stick out at the top, and then this process is repeated. More information would be gathered in here (by Kejardon): http://drewseph.zophar.net/Kejardon/OORTravel/FAQ.html For branches that ban OoB, Samus´ body is not allowed to even partially enter or interact via collision-checks (like walljump-check, unmorph-check, and normal checks when bonking against an object) with the OoB area even just for a single frame (but projectiles may exit the inbounds area, as it is anyways often the case when Wave beam is used, so that wrap-around shots can be applied, but so far is also allowed for Grapple-shots which can even off-screen interact with tiles), except during non-loose (i.e. "normal") elevator rides and (door-)transitions, where it cannot be prevented that Samus exits the inbounds area.

very nice work :D definitely YES vote!

I simply don't think the category is a good choice. To a layperson who doesn't realize what exactly is going on, it looks extremely suboptimal and incomplete (it will often be misinterpereted as 100% completion) even though it's not. And comparing this to a similar category (100% completion), it just isn't as entertaining. Meh vote. It's a solid TAS, but it's not entirely an entertaining one.

Since you're hitting every room anyway, why not do both 100% Collection and 100% Exploration?

hi, this run is far too close to the standard 100% to justify a new category and looks kinda silly as it does not collect the items. ( in some cases the 100% show more of thoses "item rooms" than this run ) the run is well done and no major mistakes can be seen but as it might make a good gruefood delight, i don't think this should be published. no vote

I was surprised how much I liked this. I would personally liken it to [2593] Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles "Knuckles, ring attack" by TheYogWog in 1:14:55.91 insofar as you do things and go places you normally wouldn't. Enthusiastic Yes Vote.

Yes, I found this movie entertaining, no I don't think it should be published. Too niche. We have lots of Super Metroid runs.

In trying to give this run a fair shake, I jumped to a random part of the video. That part turned out to be 45:42, collecting the Wave Beam and cleaning up Norfair. Here are my thoughts: 46:09: Kills an enemy, fires a super missile to open the door, uses the grapple beam to cross the chasm. It looks like the grapple beam is fastest for crossing the chasm, but the dismount makes it look much slower than just jumping across using Space Jump. 46:45 - 46:48: You re-enter this vertical room and fall on the left side of the platforms, when you are entering a door on the right side of the screen. You don't manage shinespark speed for the next room, so there must be a hidden reason to spend time running across that floor. Enlighten me?

"46:45 - 46:48: You re-enter this vertical room and fall on the left side of the platforms, when you are entering a door on the right side of the screen. You don't manage shinespark speed for the next room, so there must be a hidden reason to spend time running across that floor. Enlighten me?" A potential reason for landing further left on the ground in this case is to gain more running speed on ground (since he has Speedbooster, so the distance required to reach maximal running speed is a lot more space than without it) in order to keep this higher running speed, instead of using a lower accumulated running speed if one would land further to the right, and then in both cases keep (most of) this speed through the upcoming room (in this case via spacejumping and Springball-jumping). Of course it depends on for how long one wants/has to keep the speed that one builds up on the ground, in order to optimize/minimize the required total time. The longer the section is through which one wants to carry a higher speed value, the more it makes sense to initially spend some more time to build up more speed. If he had not spent as much time building up running speed, then he would have had to traverse the whole next hallway with this lower speed (provided one would only consider this strategy of travelling through these rooms, i.e. neglecting alternate methods). This concept of adapting the amount of running/movement speed for an upcoming part, depending on the initial time costs for doing so, is a rather fundamental and often appearing concept, I´d say.

That's done because entering that room the first time doesn't mark it as visited.

s.

Welcome back to the site, Schmeman. You should hang out more, watch some TASes, comment on them. I'm so glad that you mentioned goal choice, because it's not something that has been discussed much in this particular submission. The site (currently) has two categories: the Vault, and Moons.

Goal choice is limited to fastest completion time (any%), or full-completion (such as 100% or best ending). Exception: for games with separate, independent level sets (modes, episodes) officially available from start, each level set can have its TAS in Vault. Other goal choices are not eligible for this category. Goal choice criteria must be clear and non-controversial (a clear consensus on what constitutes full-completion or when a game is completed). Easter eggs are not expected to be a requirement for full-completion

Because the run does not do 100% of the things, nor does it aim for fastest completion, I (if I were the judge) would argue that it would be ineligible to publish under the Vault's rules. Edited to add: It does achieve the best ending, by virtue of clocking in at under three hours, but (to my recollection) every run published on this site manages that, and many of them do so faster than this submission, so it would be pre-obsoleted in the "best ending" category.

Goal choice is not too important in this tier: esoteric and unorthodox goals are acceptable as long as they make for entertaining movies. However the goal choices should be clear, so it's understood what needs to be accomplished in order to obsolete it. Arbitrary goal choices need to offer new TAS material to be accepted. Choices which have no goal other than to create a new game branch are rejected.

It's up to the judge (Samsara, in this case, Mothrayas in the previous submission's case) to determine whether the goal choice in this case is sufficiently esoteric, and if the choice of goal offers enough TAS material to be accepted. It's up to the audience (by way of voting) to determine whether or not the movie is entertaining. To your point about movement, that may be the case, certainly, but:

However, I have to admit that there are (even if the same route is kept) movement optimization mistakes throughout the run that some former Super Metroid TASers could aswell notice without much effort.

For the Ceres run, Taco has performed that after I finished the early parts of my TAS. As you know...TASing Super Metroid is not an easy task, in regards to going back and correcting stuff. It basically invalidates the rest and requires rescripting (RNG and various things change). Good point about Brinstar. I'll have to revisit that idea on my 3rd version. Sometimes things never work out as planned and I have to use an alternate strategy. But it will definitely be reconsidered. The Norfair situation was a bit different. I didn't have wave beam and was unable to shoot the farming pit that you are referring to. The angle of my shot was not steep enough. However, you are correct that a rearrangement of visitation could speed up things.

The movement needs work.