YaLTeR
He/Him
Joined: 12/2/2011
Posts: 129
Location: Moscow, Russia
Hey! Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the TAS block on SGDQ. The TASes and the commentary were very good and interesting. Could you point me to the discussion where custom Celeste TAS tools were rejected from submission? I'm very much interested in the topic, as we have a similar thing going on with (Gold)Source games at the moment, and it's unclear when libTAS will become viable for these games.
TiKevin83
He/Him
Ambassador, Moderator, Site Developer, Player (155)
Joined: 3/17/2018
Posts: 358
Location: Holland, MI
This should probably be broken off into a different thread but the discussion is here for now. The problem with movie rules excluding relevant content to the TASing scene is not confined to event-driven movies. There are at least two other categories of movies that have come up while I've been here. Human theory TASes where the tools restrict themselves to human viable play/routing, and TASes that follow SRC categories but don't fit movie rules. TheoryTASing has come up with SM64 and SRC category TASes came up when Pokemon Gen 1 No Save Corruption was treated as a single branch. TASing is growing in some really great ways and I'd love to see more of these kinds of movies, but it's hard to spread them without unified curation on all fronts. For the GDQ/ESA/etc movies yes they're being shown to a huge audience at the event, but if they sit in one spot online with the other kinds of TASing then those viewers have an easy trace back to the TASing scene.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
TiKevin83 wrote:
There are at least two other categories of movies that have come up while I've been here. Human theory TASes where the tools restrict themselves to human viable play/routing, and TASes that follow SRC categories but don't fit movie rules.
Should there be some kind of limit on what kind of "TASes" (although in some/many cases I'd use a different acronym, like "TAD", ie. tool-assisted demo) would be published here? Or would it be just an "anything goes" dumping ground for anything that anybody cares to submit, no matter what? If there should be some limits, that exactly would those limits be? Should there be some rules and standards of quality for what gets published? What would those rules and standards be?
TiKevin83
He/Him
Ambassador, Moderator, Site Developer, Player (155)
Joined: 3/17/2018
Posts: 358
Location: Holland, MI
I don't think the existing movie rules are that far off from the type of content being discussed. Looking at the SGDQ TASes, Mario Kart Wii could fit if the course replays are treated as individual levels, Tetris would make sense as a playaround except that the existing movie rules use that word in the context of ACE, and the Celeste TAS fits somewhere between fastest completion and full completion. The movie rules already have to involve notability as a factor for publication, for instance with playarounds, unofficial games, and obsoletions. I would suggest that much of the disparity between the content Dwango and I noted and the existing movie rules could be remedied by adding a third set of allowable content for vault so that it contains fastest completions, full completions, and "notable" completions. Notable could be defined as a goal having a certain number of times listed on an SRC category, perhaps 10 or 20 minimum, would allow for the TAS to follow the human route as a goal (following from it's unique notability), and would open up the notability aspect of GDQ/ESA other event demos. TL;DR there should be ways for these sorts of TASes to still have submission standards if TASVideos wanted them to be publishable here, whether through slightly expanding goals like playarounds or adding notability exceptions to goals with clear standards.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
I think the concept of obsoletion is almost completely incompatible with demonstrations and custom code entered via ACE. With your regular any%/100% TAS obsoletion is rather simple and unambiguous in the vast majority of cases: Is the game completed in less frames than the previous one? If yes, then it automatically obsoletes the previous one. (You can have certain limitations and rules on what constitutes "any%" and "100%" for a particular game, but if those rules are met, then obsoletion is pretty simple and straightforward: Just look at the length of the TAS.) With demos, all of that goes out the window. How exactly do you decide if a new demo "obsoletes" an existing one? It's completely subjective and there's quite literally zero objective measurement you can do to make that decision. I think that even community vote is ill-suited for this because people tend to like new things over old ones, and will most likely vote yes on pretty much anything that's submitted, as long as it looks cool and is different enough from the old one. I'm betting most people would vote for obsoleting the old demo even though in a different scenario they would vote for the old one to be better (ie. if two different demos were submitted at the same time, and the community would have to vote which one is the "better" one. In this situations both would be new, and thus the perception is different.) I don't think obsoletion is a good idea for such demos. It would most probably just end up being a "this is the newest submission for this game", as long as the new one is good enough (but not necessarily "better" than the old one). But then, if obsoletion is not applied to such demos, what's the alternative? Just keep a list of all demos for that particular game, every single one of them considered officially published? Maybe. But I think this would require more development on both the backend and the frontend of the site. But then, that part of the site would just become a collection of "best" demos (by some subjective standard). Maybe it's not a bad thing.
Post subject: TASDBot at ESA: SDW2, VVVVVV, Dr. Mario, and SMB2 July 26th
Moderator, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (907)
Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014
We're still no closer to resolving the side debate about how to represent content that has now fractured off to communities like mkwtas.com and elsewhere but I need to set that conversation aside and get back to events. ESA is upon us! The flight is tonight and I don't have any idea how I'm going to get TASBot to fit in carryon luggage but by golly I'll make it happen *somehow*. Mirbro and I will be appearing at ESA on Friday, July 26th on the main stream showing SteamWorld Dig 2, VVVVVV, Dr. Mario, and SMB2. We have some presentation aspects to resolve for VVVVVV but thanks to help from Kilaye we should have solutions to everything. Note: Changing screen aspect ratios in SDW2 causes desyncs, don't do it. In addition to ESA we'll also be on Rocket Beans in Germany. I'm not yet sure what we will show there but it will probably be existing site content with an overall discussion of TAS'ing and console verification. Stay tuned for details of when that will air; we're only doing a recording session on Monday. Europe, here we come!
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
Post subject: MAGWest is the only guaranteed event pending Patreon support
Moderator, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (907)
Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1014
So I was laid off. I didn't see it coming and had been at the same place for the last 10 years. That substantially affects my remaining 2019 plans and at this time I'm no longer planning to attend AGDQ 2020 unless my funding shores up substantially. I've made a more detailed post at Thread #21256: Laid off; TAS content at charity events full time? Patreon? but the long and the short of it is that I've finally opened up a Patreon and could use your support at Patreon.com/dwangoAC. I'd like to thank everyone for the support in all of these events, especially SGDQ 2019 which was by far the best event we've ever done from a quality and results perspective. Thanks all.
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.