Post subject: Rule clarifications regarding codes, version differences
Emulator Coder
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Over the past week and a half or so, our seniors Mothrayas, feos, fsvgm777, and some other staff discussed with me the ambiguity or non-clarity certain rules had. Some points we covered:
  • What do we allow in-game passwords or codes to do in a movie?
  • What qualifies as an in-game code or password?
  • How are such things branched?
  • How do we view different versions of a game when they have significant differences?
  • If they don't what does it mean for improvements?
  • Where do emulator differences fit in?
  • Some updates regarding what we want Judges to do in general.
To this end we added language to our rules clarifying what the rules are for these various cases, according to how we've been handling them till now. If you weren't sure about some of these, please see these updates: Wiki: MovieRules (changes) Wiki: JudgeGuidelines (changes) It is important to note that while these changes do make minor alterations to the pre-existing rules, we for the most part have been handling things recently more in line with the updates anyway. These changes are due to feedback of our viewers in recent discussions, and the greater clarity we've had refining many edge cases through many difficult judgments, where we used the spirit of the earlier rules to deduce how to handle the cases that are now clarified.
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.
Player (42)
Joined: 12/27/2008
Posts: 873
Location: Germany
One thing I would like to see included in the version differences rules is the scenario where the PAL version, which is usually released later, might include additional gameplay than the NTSC one. I don't know if something similar has happened on TASable systems, but at least on PS2 there's Final Fantasy X, where the PAL version has some additions, like Dark Aeons and some bosses having immunity to certain spells that they do not have on NTSC. I think these factors are important for choosing the version. In case we ever get PS2 TASes, in Final Fantasy X I don't think there's a lot of difference between PAL and NTSC if you do an Any% run, but if you go for 100%, the PAL version would have more content because of the Dark Aeon stuff. This is an important point, which the rules do not cover.
Emulator Coder
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
p4wn3r wrote:
One thing I would like to see included in the version differences rules is the scenario where the PAL version, which is usually released later, might include additional gameplay than the NTSC one.
This is already covered in the rules update: "If there are significant in-game differences between different versions of a game, movies which take advantage of such differences can be published side by side"
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.
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2642)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6438
Location: The land down under.
Nach wrote:
movies which take advantage of such differences can be published side by side
Just for the sake of showing an example. [2413] PSX Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (USA) by Hâthor in 29:52.65 [2648] PSX Tenchu: Stealth Assassins (Japan) by NhatNM in 16:34.17 Strategies and methods are different between the two as the Japanese version is lacking two stages (4 and 5 in the US), and when doing the levels onwards, the method can be immensely different due to having a different loadout that you can have selected. And for the sake of mentioning. The Japanese market did get a revision version where it added what was missing/lacking which the US version has including the two missing levels.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
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