Note: Oxford comma missing due to maxing out the title.
There are a rather substantial number of facets to SGDQ 2018 and I've delegated various aspects to different people. Here's a who, a what, and a why (or really, the current status, but "status" wouldn't fit in the title).
MediaMagnet: SGDQ Panel submission and organization. When the announcement that panels were being introduced came out I knew I couldn't do it justice and I asked MediaMagnet to lead the charge on this one. He basically got voluntold. He absolutely stepped up to the plate and completed the submission on time. The content would be an overview of the history of TAS'ing including highlights of how it was received in the early days, a description of console verification, and a live demo of some kind. An announcement from the SGDQ 2018 panels committee on what panels will be in the event is forthcoming.
total: Super Metroid payload. We've kept it rather quiet but we do have full ACE. I've delegated what to put in and what to leave out of the payload to total and he has a few ideas. He's recently done a Super Metroid + Link to the Past mashup rando romhack that's spectacular so I've encouraged him to advertise it somehow but it's up to him how or if he wants to do that. We'll inevitably do something with saving or killing the animals, probably by doing both, but we want it to be tasteful. This project is delayed a bit as total has been distracted with his romhack but he reconnected this past week.
DevilSquirrel: Celeste payload. DevilSquirrel is the primary TAS contact for us. We still need a bit of clarification on exactly what can and can't be done but I'm encouraging the submissions comitte to consider allowing us to fastforward through cutscenes and show Celeste directly after the human runners complete the game so we can demonstrate the substantial differences between the two. Depending on what happens here KDT and DevilSquirrel will have to do some amount of rework but it won't be too terrible; the run is already complete and looks good as it is.
illy: Celeste visualization. I've asked illy to attempt to pass button data to one of the replay devices (either the PSoC5 device or mico500's always flexible TASLink device) so we can show a visualization of what buttons are being pressed. We originally wanted to do this part in Linux but it wasn't worth the effort. On my side I'm still trying to figure out how to get PCI passthrough working on my laptop but either way we'll have a way to get this working.
Metaconstruct: F-Zero GX content. I'm very thankful that Metaconstruct has taken it upon himself to organize a rather staggering list of Gamecube coders, hackers, reverse engineering experts, artists, and other interested parties. It's quite amazing how many people are contributing just from a payload perspective. There are a number of roles that Metaconstruct has and he probably has more on his shoulders than almost anyone else as he's also tasked with figuring out what TAS'ed individual levels to show and how to end the segment with some, er, flair. There is some amount of risk for that flair but if all else fails we can ad lib around the existing replay files we have now. I have high hopes for this one even if the amount of work left to do scares me.
Serisium: F-Zero GX console verification hardware. I've asked Serisium to take the lead on creating a replay device so we can press buttons on an actual Gamecube rather than relying on the F-Zero GX in-game replay file method. He is currently working with a fair number of folks to potentially use a GBA along with code from Extrems. This may or may not work and is highly risky (but is far less risky than a much more insane plan that I've made the call to defer to a later event, so there's that). The consequences of failure are extremely low, however, as we can always fall back on the replay files instead.
Timeshifter: Tools. This is a bit vague but we have a lot of random things we're chipping away at and Timeshifter has been doing a ton of architecture work on a number of things that may end up being used or shown at SGDQ. Some of it is the artwork / paint-by-numbers / pbn stuff extended from the original idea p4plus2 implemented while other tools are more generic and are more focused on streaming. It's quite unclear if anything he's working on is going to be in SGDQ or not but I wanted to highlight him as someone I've delegated a rather substantial workload to. This one is surprisingly big, there are quite a number of people helping out with these tools and this deserves its own post to properly provide credit to everyone so I'll leave at this for now.
dwangoAC (me): SGDQ Interview Desk runner praise segments. Just like at AGDQ 2018 I'll be using TAS playback to demonstrate how various glitches human runners attempt are accomplished and praise the human runners for their skill. I've pitched SMB3 and LoZ:OoT along with a third game earlier in the week like Spyro and the committee has responded positively to the idea. We have not yet fleshed out the exact games or what timeslots the interviews would happen in but this is looking good.
I'm also tackling logistics. As in past years I'm still the primary organizer and presenter coordinator but for some of the games we're doing I will be taking a back seat other than introducing the run. This is primarily because the depth of knowledge for a game like Celeste is beyond what I can prepare for and there are others who can do a better job anyway. This means I'll be doing a lot of rehearsal type things at the event this year.
Lots and lots and lots of other fantastic folks too numerous to mention: Random stuff. (Seriously, I'm probably forgetting someone I should be giving top-level billing or have otherwise neglected with those odds higher since I'm typing this up on very little sleep; if I've missed something just let me know.) There are always little jobs that need done, some of which are mostly beneficial during the preparation phase to help organize things and spread the word of what we're doing. One good example of this is pepman who has been helping me with highlights which has given me videos I can point at and say "we need help with finishing this thing". Inverted made an entire suite of tools around pbn management that still blows my mind. There are so many other people doing odd jobs I can't even begin to cover them all, but swing by the
http://Discord.TASBot.net #hangouts channel and you'll see what I mean.
So, uh, I know this may be feeling like it's more like an AGDQ given how much we're cramming into it but believe it or not this is what things look like *after* I toned it down a notch or two. There is a lot left to accomplish so if you have a mind to lend a hand just stop by the aforementioned Discord or swing by
http://twitch.tv/dwangoAC most any Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday evening Pacific time to see what we're working on at any given point. Thanks again to all who have supported our efforts!
