Started collecting TASer's / people in this thread commenting on each technique.
- Will use this list only to define at least 3-4 different views so I can iterate down my forbiddentechniques list through these.
- Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kEjJk6uFgubSlqcFp2IntZvbrW7VsjI6KKuWiRfPMRI/edit?usp=sharing
- Color legend: Green: OK, Orange: Maybe/With conditions, Red: NO, White: Neutral/Undecided
- Most of the answers weren't straightforward, so don't blame me for marking an answer as "YEAH DO IT xD!" when you actually just theorized about it..
edit: you will probably want to decrease font size (CTRL+MouseWheelDown) to get a bigger area of answers at a glance, and clicking on an answer to read someone's insight rather than finding the original post in this thread.
edit2: it's actually done. will recheck colors (identifying the response's views) and then I try to write down the different, most popular views (seems to be 4 so far)
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
(work in progress post)
According to the posts in this thread, here are the views/concerns divided to distint categories:
(I simply choosed a name by the most information provided per view)
(still thinking about what should be the format...
1 - Warp:Only intended and expected actions allowed that required for the gameplay
While Warp mostly used different metaphors and terms, I believe the keypoint here is that all your actions are limited to interacting with the game through the way the developers intended it.
- Resetting/Switching discs/Pullout, plug in controller/etc only if it's required but otherwise no (and never).
Unfortunately this is nearly impossible to "consider" for video games in general, where your input actually becomes a variable that will be used for different calculations, ultimately ending up as a parameter for a set of codes that will be interpreted/processed by the platform.
This only could work if all games (at least the ones published here) would have a 100% correct and detailed manual and walkthrough, which is absolutely not the case.
2 - "Only gameplay"
- L+R/U+D is the developer's task to make a good design against misuse, so it's OK to abuse it.
3 - Bismuth's view
- Art, Sculptures... freedom creativity as long as it's not dangerous... reword...
4 - MESHUGGAH/p4wn3r: Valid as long as it's technically possible and could have been defended against
- L+R/U+D: Valid, just because normal controllers don't allow it doesn't mean it's impossible, it's all possible user input anyway, and some other controllers provide that functionality.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
1 - Warp:Only intended and expected actions allowed that required for the gameplay
While Warp mostly used different metaphors and terms, I believe the keypoint here is that all your actions are limited to interacting with the game through the way the developers intended it.
Phrasing it like that sounds a bit misleading, as it may give the impression that I support abusing glitches being banned as well. Certainly things like going out-of-bounds is not what the developers intended. However, for speedrunning purposes that's A-ok (unless we accept some form of "glitchless" or "low-glitch" category for a particular game).
I suppose the ambiguity comes from that expression "interacting with the game", which exact meaning is unclear, especially when coupled with "the way the developers intended".
It's ok to do things the developers didn't intend, but I'd prefer it if it were done via gameplay, not via non-gameplay methods (such as the reset button). With many consoles, especially the older ones, this would be a rather simple thing to mandate: Controller button presses only, no other buttons on the console, or any other way of affecting the game. (If in some consoles it can be reset with the controller buttons, then that particular combination could be banned as well. Although I wouldn't lose much sleep if that particular console is made an exception. No big deal.)
If a particular individual game makes the reset button a gimmick, then by all means make an exception with that one game. Press the reset button all day long if you really want. However, that should be exactly that: An exception. (Not extremely different from other exceptions that are sometimes granted for some particular individual games, such as not requiring the TAS to contain the last input to dismiss the end credits, or the TAS given the permission to have an unusual goal that's not fastest completion. Just because a few individual games are granted these exceptional permissions doesn't mean that they are automatically granted to all games.)
With Windows TASes, and if we ever get to TAS modern consoles, these "no external influence" rules become even more relevant. For example in Windows "no alt-tabbing away from the game and launching a hex editor to change the savefile of the game". Or killing the game from the task manager. Or pressing ctrl-alt-del to reboot the system. Or running a background program that allows you to jump to the end of the game with a button press.
With many consoles, especially the older ones, this would be a rather simple thing to mandate: Controller button presses only, no other buttons on the console, or any other way of affecting the game. (If in some consoles it can be reset with the controller buttons, then that particular combination could be banned as well. Although I wouldn't lose much sleep if that particular console is made an exception. No big deal.)
Unfortunately no, it isn't that simple. As I said, without any exaggerations, probably half of all video games don't have an up to date manual especially not with walkthroughs or any standard to follow which would detail the developers/designers intended way to beat the game.
Just a little list that's definitely missing in most of the manuals, only for older consoles:
- A manual... yes, many video games were released with literally 0 information, example: NES Metal Force
- Debug leftovers... developers never said you are not allowed to use it. Example: Genesis Kid Chameleon
- What does "beating the game" requires / consists of.
As you can see, vital informations missing in order to make this view as a standard. This could be only applied to games case by case.
Edit: Forgot to say, I'm trying to explore these views with multiple different things.Like my forbiddentechs page, the compatibility and likeliness of TASVideos' published movies updating with an understandable tag.
That's because I think there would be so many exceptions and we can't really settle down on a set of rules since wr didn't had a chance to try newer games and such...
I guess it is inevitable to not go through all latest published movies and properly assign these, if someone would like to apply it.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Unfortunately no, it isn't that simple. As I said, without any exaggerations, probably half of all video games don't have an up to date manual especially not with walkthroughs or any standard to follow which would detail the developers/designers intended way to beat the game.
Why are you clinging to this "what the developers intended" thing? Nowhere have I ever argued about what the developers "intended". I don't even remember using either word prior to this (at least not in this specific context).
With some games (especially those where glitches allow skipping significant portions) it could be an interesting category to see the game beaten using the "intended" route, without unintended skips (I'm sure a consensus could be reached with many games on what's the "intended" route). However, this is a completely different and unrelated subject. I have never argued for this, especially for this to become somehow mandatory.
Abusing glitches is most certainly not something that the developers ever intended, but that's just fine. (Sometimes it would be nice to see "glitchless" or "low-glitch" categories, but that shouldn't be the mandatory main category.)
My idea originally was to understand TASer's view and see how those tricks noted in this thread apply to those. However I can't find the correct words for a definition,
mostly because they could be interpreted differently.
I use the "developers intended/expected" because I'm trying to differentiate gameplay glitches from programming glitches.
Expected by developers - Something they knew will happen and probably designed against misuse. (resetting while saving the game)
Unexpected by developers - Something they didn't knew. (hardware bugs and quirks like NES DPCM glitch)
Unintended developer mistake/error - Something that allows the player to abuse a glitch, which goes against the nature of the intended gameplay.
Intended way by the developers' - Something they planned as the way of completing the game.
Now you can see, that developers intention has an important role in understanding the game ending problem (Witnessing the ending without completing the normal game's objective & Getting a game beaten state in memory but without witnessing the normal ending).
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Pressing the reset button on a console is not the same thing as exiting out of a PC game via tools that the OS provides, such as alt+tab. A console is a closed system where every button, including the ones on the console itself, should be considered an intended mechanic. I would only draw the line at things that get close to physically manipulating the console, such as opening the disc tray or removing peripherals.
Insisting that using a reset button is going against the purity of TASing seems pointless to me. I run Diddy Kong Racing, a game where we use the reset button not to perform glitches, but to skip long cutscenes. Not pressing the reset button would add zero value to the run, no extra gameplay, only more time spent watching cutscenes.
Again, I get it that people want to keep resetting out of a TAS if it allows to destroy a game to the point of Pokémon Gen 1. But these games already have separate categories published for exactly that reason, so this shows that our current system is working well. Allow pressing the reset button / turning the system on and off for TASing and if it breaks the game to much, we can always split categories. Just like with any other technique.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I could argue with the console being a closed system with all parts being an intended mechanic. The SNES (and other consoles with an) expansion port is not intended to abuse, see judge verdict @ #5447: Masterjun's SNES Super Mario World "expansion game end glitch" in 00:41.75
edit: I guess that's what you meant under drawing a line.
Also we can't split categories because of the tier system. Some games will only have 1 TAS, so it's understandable to discuss this and somehow come up with a solution that everybody likes.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
I run Diddy Kong Racing, a game where we use the reset button not to perform glitches, but to skip long cutscenes. Not pressing the reset button would add zero value to the run, no extra gameplay, only more time spent watching cutscenes.
Compare that to something like: "We use a gameshark to skip long cutscenes, but nothing else. Not using gameshark would add zero value to the run, no extra gameplay, only more time spent watching cutscenes."
Would that justify using gameshark to skip cutscenes?
I run Diddy Kong Racing, a game where we use the reset button not to perform glitches, but to skip long cutscenes. Not pressing the reset button would add zero value to the run, no extra gameplay, only more time spent watching cutscenes.
Compare that to something like: "We use a gameshark to skip long cutscenes, but nothing else. Not using gameshark would add zero value to the run, no extra gameplay, only more time spent watching cutscenes."
Would that justify using gameshark to skip cutscenes?
If you consider pressing the reset button to be the same thing as using a gameshark, you could do the same thing with ingame cheats and menu options. Why should any time-saving option from a menu be allowed in a TAS, if you could just as well activate an ingame cheat from the very same menu and use it to warp straight to the final level?
If we want to have a functioning rule set about what TASing techniques should be considered legit, we have to find something between the extremes of "anything goes" and an absolute purist approach. It is inevitable that some arbitrary lines have to be drawn for that.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
If you consider pressing the reset button to be the same thing as using a gameshark
No, I don't. I was simply pointing out that your argument for allowing the reset button could just as well be used, as-is, to allow any other way of skipping cutscenes, even those that are genuinely considered cheating and generally disallowed. In other words, it's not a very good argument for allowing the reset button.
If we want to have a functioning rule set about what TASing techniques should be considered legit, we have to find something between the extremes of "anything goes" and an absolute purist approach. It is inevitable that some arbitrary lines have to be drawn for that.
As I have been saying many times, I think that a legit speedrun/superplay ought to consist on actually playing the game, using normal controller input, not breaking the game with things like the reset button or other means. I think it wouldn't be a very ambiguous rule to forbid the reset button (with an exception granted to those three games where it's mandatory in order to advance in the game at certain points).
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Warp wrote:
In other words, it's not a very good argument for allowing the reset button.
It depends on what argument you compare it to.
Warp wrote:
As I have been saying many times, I think that a legit speedrun/superplay ought to consist on actually playing the game, using normal controller input, not breaking the game with things like the reset button or other means. I think it wouldn't be a very ambiguous rule to forbid the reset button (with an exception granted to those three games where it's mandatory in order to advance in the game at certain points).
How many people also find such a rule unambiguous and share your notion on "legit" speedrun/superplay, "actually" paying the game, and using "normal" input?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
How many people also find such a rule unambiguous and share your notion on "legit" speedrun/superplay, "actually" paying the game, and using "normal" input?
I have never maintained the illusion that my opinion will have any effect on speedrunning (either tool-assisted or unassisted). I have since long resigned to the fact that certain speedruns of certain games are simply too boring for me to even bother to watch because of the sheer amount of what I consider illegit techniques being used. (As an example, I haven't watched Half-Life 2 speedruns in many years. I stopped watching some time after speedruns just literally spent several minutes doing nothing more than quick-saving and quickloading repeatedly hundreds of times, which is boring as hell.)
The same is true for many TASes that overly abuse things like savedata corruption (especially if it happens via the reset button).
I suppose that I can take some solace in the thought that your only answer to my arguments seems to be "nobody thinks like you", which is an argumentum ad populum at its finest. Popularity doesn't make an argument correct; it only makes it popular.
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Warp wrote:
I suppose that I can take some solace in the thought that your only answer to my arguments seems to be "nobody thinks like you", which is an argumentum ad populum at its finest. Popularity doesn't make an argument correct; it only makes it popular.
I haven't answered anything. In the world of subjective feelings there's no correctness, only popularity. Playing a game with resets is not correct. Playing it without resets isn't correct either. Because there's no objective truth in either of these approaches that one could scientifically verify. And when that's not possible to verify, people's priorities do matter. They matter when there's a way for lots of different people to have some collaborative fun with something they all enjoy. Of course there are contradicting opinions all the time. They have to be balanced by relying on more common priorities. Enforcing someone's opinion on everyone else, no matter how "correct" it looks, is bad for the whole community and the hobby.
As a site, we end up with a combination of objective and subjective things, but still our policies rely on the most fundamental priorities regarding TASing that the majority shares and stands by: TASes should be creative, impressive, cheat free, and all other priorities expressed in Movie Rules. Sometimes it's possible for a single user to be so convincing that the majority agrees on a change. But without community approving it, there won't be a change. And people have brains in their heads to assess the hell out of anyone's ideas, and we allow such things to be discussed and participate in these discussions. There's no spherical popularity in vacuum that magically makes the community's decision invalid if someone's feelings get hurt. Rationality is also one of our fundamental priorities, and you can't convince rational people without it.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I think it helps to notice the need to define what the "closed system" is in which TASing takes place.
Left+Right on controllers: It depends if the controller is supposed to be part of a closed environment with the system, but in most cases systems have external ports that are designed to work with third party controllers which may or may not have the same limitations. So I'd say this should generally be allowed.
Pressing buttons that don't exist on real controllers yet are still read by the console: See above.
Streaming arbitrary data through an external port: this should be allowed depending on entertainment value. A huge number of games are vulnerable to ACE, so if you're going to pick a game to do an ACE movie with it should be for a very good reason. It should be allowed more generally in Vault unless movies are way too similar on the same console even across games. The controller port isn't the issue here.
Partially Disconnecting a cartridge: Cartridges are like components in modern computers, they're part of the closed environment in which to start any TAS. I don't see how allowing this would be viable.
Swapping discs when not prompted: See above
Swapping discs with a different game: See above
Witnessing the ending without completing typically required objectives: this sounds like an entertainment value issue. If a run that skips straight to the end movie is uniquely entertaining from one that gets both the victory conditions and the resulting movie, why not allow it? But I suspect this specific scenario causes a lot of entertainment issues.
Getting a game beaten state in memory without witnessing the normal ending: This sounds more ripe for uniquely entertaining movies than the above issue. A movie that gets to the ending the normal way would qualify in any event, and then a movie that perhaps skips straight to post-game content could look hilarious in comparison.
Resetting during a save operation: The power button is part of the closed system for TASing, it's basically a controller input for most speedrunners. Even being told directly by the game not to turn off the console should not inherently prevent this from being used. This has the potential though to end up like the streaming controller port issue because it very often leads to ACE. So it should be allowed but heavily regulated around entertainment value of the specific outcome compared to other movies that use the same trick.
Starting a run with dirty memory: I think the closed system should be seen as a new, previously unplayed one to eliminate several problems about the possibilities of TASing on deteriorated consoles. If a certain console can contain dirty memory from the factory, it seems reasonable to allow it, otherwise no.
Streaming arbitrary data through an external port: this should be allowed depending on entertainment value. A huge number of games are vulnerable to ACE, so if you're going to pick a game to do an ACE movie with it should be for a very good reason. It should be allowed more generally in Vault unless movies are way too similar on the same console even across games. The controller port isn't the issue here.
Hey, if you know any examples not listed in here, please post; trying to make a list of them (although I'm not sure if the wii/3ds/swtich exploit counts).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
In the world of subjective feelings there's no correctness, only popularity. Playing a game with resets is not correct. Playing it without resets isn't correct either.
I wasn't using the word "correct" in this context to mean "a mathematically provable absolute fact", but more like "valid" and "legit". It is possible for the majority to hold an invalid position or opinion. (I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm just saying that popularity all by itself isn't a good argument.)
But as said, I don't hold any illusion that in this particular case my opinion will sway the majority (or anybody, for that matter). I'm just expressing my personal frustration and disillusionment over the situation. Many speedruns (tool-assisted and unassisted) have become something I'm quite uninterested in, and either boring or annoying to watch (often both). I find this especially sad when the speedrunning of a particular game used to be extremely enjoying to watch, but then it degraded to a point that I cannot even watch a single run to its completion without getting so annoyed that I just stop watching (the previously mentioned Half-Life 2 being a quintessential example of this).
Sometimes, especially on the unassisted side, the rules can be pretty arbitrary, yet the community accepts them nevertheless. (Even on the tool-assisted side it can sometimes feel that way. For example, using a cheat code in a game is generally banned, even if it can be entered via controller input alone, because of it having been specifically programmed into the game as an easter egg. However, if the exact same cheat can be triggered via a glitch, then it's for some reason accepted, even though the end result may be exactly the same. Why one is banned while the other isn't, even though the end result is exactly the same, is beyond my comprehension.)
Streaming arbitrary data through an external port: this should be allowed depending on entertainment value. A huge number of games are vulnerable to ACE, so if you're going to pick a game to do an ACE movie with it should be for a very good reason. It should be allowed more generally in Vault unless movies are way too similar on the same console even across games. The controller port isn't the issue here.
But the question is: Is it even a speedrun anymore?
What's happening is that you are hacking the console (using bugs in some game to do so) and starting to enter and run your own program. The game itself has ended and isn't even running anymore. The console is now running your custom program, not the original game. The speedrun has stopped, and now it's just some homebrew demo being run.
This is only slightly different from simply creating your own homebrew ROM and running it. Only the method by which it's entered into the console is different (as well as there being more space limitations because you don't have a full ROM cartridge to play with, but that's rather inconsequential in this context). TASVideos has never been a demo compo site, but a speedrunning site. (We could start publishing demos, and this has actually been suggested since many years as a separate part of the site, but they would not be speedruns.)
Of course it becomes muddier when what the ACE payload does is to jump to the end of the game (by some definition of "end"). In this case I would say that at a very minimum if it does anything else besides jumping to the end, it's sub-optimal and thus not eligible for Vault, maybe not even into Moons. (I would say that even Moon TASes need to actually play the game, not run custom demo code.)
Witnessing the ending without completing typically required objectives: this sounds like an entertainment value issue. If a run that skips straight to the end movie is uniquely entertaining from one that gets both the victory conditions and the resulting movie, why not allow it? But I suspect this specific scenario causes a lot of entertainment issues.
This goes more into the philosophical question of what constitutes "completing the game". There is no one single unambiguous answer.
Most consider simply reaching a point in the game that can be universally agreed to be the "ending", no matter how that point is reached, to be enough for "game completion". This could be some kind of ending credits, or whatever the game uses to signal the player that the game is finished (usually accompanied by there not being anything else to play and the game stopping from accepting any input, other than perhaps returning to the main menu.)
But if a speedrun where to do nothing more than jump straight from bootup to the ending in a fraction of a second, showing literally no gameplay whatsoever, not many would consider that very entertaining. It might technically fulfill "game completion" as defined above, but it wouldn't feel very satisfying. No part of the game was played, after all.
But defining "completing the game" in any other way would be difficult and contentious.
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Warp wrote:
feos wrote:
In the world of subjective feelings there's no correctness, only popularity. Playing a game with resets is not correct. Playing it without resets isn't correct either.
I wasn't using the word "correct" in this context to mean "a mathematically provable absolute fact", but more like "valid" and "legit". It is possible for the majority to hold an invalid position or opinion. (I'm not saying that's the case here. I'm just saying that popularity all by itself isn't a good argument.)
It's all the same. Once you start assigning binary categories to subjective feelings of a crowd (this includes priorities), without going out and deconstructing their points, validity, legitimacy, correctness - are all just someone else's subjective feelings.
Warp wrote:
Even on the tool-assisted side it can sometimes feel that way. For example, using a cheat code in a game is generally banned, even if it can be entered via controller input alone, because of it having been specifically programmed into the game as an easter egg. However, if the exact same cheat can be triggered via a glitch, then it's for some reason accepted, even though the end result may be exactly the same. Why one is banned while the other isn't, even though the end result is exactly the same, is beyond my comprehension.
If unfair advantage is being accessed via some code system (input combinations, passwords, etc), it's very feasible to check if the game has this system and enables this advantage through it. There are explicit checks and they are usually clear in the code. If the same advantage is accessed via a glitch, you won't see explicit cheat checks in the code being executed by this glitch, because it's an oversight. So in practice, it's somewhat easy to differentiate glitched advantages from cheated advantages.
But if you want to ban all unfair advantages, you'd have to make sure there's no secret/unknown/forgotten cheat system that gives them. Because without such a system being present, how do you even define a cheat? And truth is, it's near impossible to make sure there's no secret/unknown/forgotten cheat system in a given game, because you'd have to exhaustively analyze it to tell that for sure. This is unfeasible. Therefore, glitched cheats may in principle be allowed, but it's possible to require they don't make the game trivial. For example, enabling easier difficulty via a chat defeats the purpose of superplay.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Without the intent to nitpick/disaggreeing:
TiKevin83 wrote:
I think it helps to notice the need to define what the "closed system" is in which TASing takes place.
Partially Disconnecting a cartridge: Cartridges are like components in modern computers, they're part of the closed environment in which to start any TAS. I don't see how allowing this would be viable.
You didn't really explained why you don't see it viable to allowing it.
- But... "but in most cases systems have external ports that are designed to work with third party controllerscartridges which may or may not have the same limitations."
- Another sentence from resetting that could fit the cartridge swapping, "even being told directly...".
- Or from the next one, "if a certain console can contain dirty cartridge from the factory..."
- The N64 was designed with this in mind, games were developed to use this feature but later they changed their mind.
In the Nintendo 64 game Banjo-Tooie, Rare originally planned to create a feature where the player would intentionally hot swap Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie to transfer items between the two games (or, at least unlock new items in Banjo-Tooie from Banjo-Kazooie) called "Stop 'n' Swop". In development on the SGI Indy Workstations, the RAM lasted much longer, I think about seven seconds, from when the cartridge was removed to when the data would be purged. The SGI boxes turned out to be more powerful than the actual retail hardware, and in production a player would have less than one second to perform a successful hot swap. Thus, the feature was abandoned.
- Nintendo DS able to recognize it.
Newer systems, such as the Nintendo DS and above have code in place to gracefully handle improper cartridge removal. In fact, the original DS can actually run if a game is inserted improperly. If the contacts are dirty or blocked somehow, the system menu will load, and a GBA game or PictoChat can run without issue.
Swapping discs when not prompted: See above
Which one above?
Witnessing the ending without completing typically required objectives: this sounds like an entertainment value issue.
Not that simple. Think about ACE or the Pokémon TAS. Simply starting (literally calling the subroutine of) the credits scene or just parts of it isn't the same as completing the game and witnessing the credits scene.
Getting a game beaten state in memory without witnessing the normal ending
Again, not jut entertainment. Even memory corruption can do this but then there will be nothing for the viewer to verify the speedrun finished the game.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Partially Disconnecting a cartridge: Cartridges are like components in modern computers, they're part of the closed environment in which to start any TAS. I don't see how allowing this would be viable.
You didn't really explained why you don't see it viable to allowing it.
We don't allow cheating devices such as GameGenie and similar, which work by sitting between the cartridge and the console, and essentially modify the game data (if I understand correctly, when the console reads the data in the game cartridge, when the data at a certain address is read, the cheating device gives a different value instead to the console. In other words, it essentially mods the ROM.)
Similarly we don't allow modded versions of games (at least not as a legit TAS for that particular game. If a modded version of a game is rarely accepted, it will be considered its own, completely separate game, not the original.) TASes should always run on the original unmodified game.
Consider why we don't accept those things. Apply the same reasoning to tampering with the physical cartridge or the cartridge slot in some manner.
I could debate for years but I don't see how this should move the discussion forward.
Tilting / swapping the cartridge doesn't modify the game. It will interfere the communication between the cartridge and the console. All the "modification" comes from this trick will exactly last the same time as if the cartridge/slot were dirty or one of the game writes over a specific address that the other game doesn't clears but relies on it. It isn't "saved" or written in to the cartridge.
The former one is an indirect manipulation while the latter one is direct.
And then there's memory corruption and other things like ACE that (edit:) could literally modify the game.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
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You could certainly do a TAS that involves cart swapping, but I don't understand why you'd want cart swapping to be part of the closed environment. There's no more value in TASing a cart tilt or cart swap than there would be TASing a PC game and tilting a stick of RAM or disconnecting a hard drive. That's why Rare cancelled their cart swap "feature" for the N64.
With respect to ACE, yes you're modifying data and potentially generating similar outcomes to a cart tilt, but you're doing it starting within a closed environment where you have to find the exploit to do so in the game's software. Then people can say "I find this movie entertaining because it shows X bug in X game under typical hardware." Cart tilting cannot have the same entertainment value because it equally applies any possible result to any game within a given system.
The DS having error handling for this in software does not imply that every console maker prior to the DS expected game devs to attempt to handle cart read errors in software, the same way that a PC developer would not be expected to handle Hard Drive read errors within his game's software.
Tilting / swapping the cartridge doesn't modify the game. It will interfere the communication between the cartridge and the console.
I think you completely missed my point.
And then there's memory corruption and other things like ACE that (edit:) could literally modify the game.
Which is one of the several reasons why I have a great distaste for both.
If it were up to me, they would be banned. We don't allow modded ROMs, therefore we shouldn't allow modded ROMs no matter how they are modded. To me it makes no sense to have a rule like "modding the ROM is not allowed... unless you do it like this. Then it is allowed." It should be "modding the ROM is not allowed" period. That's where the conversation should end.
But I'm the only person in the universe who thinks like this, so there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.
