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Well, be glad I can't get promoted any further, because this is the second and last time I get promoted and then immediately stress test the system.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur
  • Colors a dinosaur

Comments

Well, yeah, you're seeing this correctly. Color a Dinosaur as a submission that could be taken as "legitimate". Is it? I dunno, I'm only an administrator of this Web Site and the primary point of contact for matters regarding what is and isn't acceptable. What do I know? God, I wish that was sarcasm.
Inspired by internal discussion of #8191: warmCabin's NES Color a Dinosaur "four color theorem" in 08:11.72, and at the incredible persistence of Samsara, we attempted to figure out a standard ruleset for the ultimate TASVideos meme. As a result of that discussion, I decided to make and submit these runs as a way of taking the discussion directly to the community in the most blunt way possible. By the way, you're damn right I copy-pasted this submission text over to the other run with only minor changes!
I'm going to try and make a case for these runs, because I don't think there's a single thing about them that isn't "controversial" in some way, meaning there's a possibility that I will be cancelled over Color a Dinosaur.

The Game

Is Color a Dinosaur a video game by our definition?
  • A video game is audio/visual. It presents its content on some electronic device in audio and/or video form.
  • A video game is interactive. It requires repeated user input to progress.
  • A video game poses a virtual task. It requires the player to accomplish some in-game job.
  • User input is transformative. Which set of suggested in-game choices you make determines optimality level of your play.
  • A video game is finite. It has an objective end point, or a community vetted one.
This is definitely an audiovisual experience in that it has both audio and visuals, there's an interactive element in that it receives, process, and requires user input, the virtual task is quite literally the name of the video game, input is transformative and gameplay can be optimized since certain colors take longer to fill in than others, and even if there's technically no objective endpoint the community can always figure one out.
I think it counts, miraculously.

The categories

I've submitted an any% and a 100% run. Any% colors the fastest dinosaur, while 100% colors all 16 dinosaurs. One of our discussion points was over whether or not any% can even be achieved in a game that has no ending. Personally, I think any% serves a secondary optimization challenge in finding the fastest dinosaur to color, so I think it can stand on its own. 100% should be acceptable either way, in theory.

The, um... "Coloring"

This is where I expect things to fall apart for these runs.
Here's a sentence that, surprisingly, I am not shocked to be typing, but only because it is not the first time I have done so: How do we define coloring? If we all agree that the goal of speedrunning Color a Dinosaur is to, well, color a dinosaur as fast as possible, then we need to define coloring. There are three ways of going about this, from my testing:
  • Actually coloring the dinosaur
Everything starts out white, so for the dinosaur to be considered colored, the player needs to actively add non-white to the dinosaur in order to consider it colored. This is extremely time-consuming, so...
  • Coloring the dinosaur the same color it already is
This game offers 4 color palettes (8 if you count the duplicates where some colors are obnoxiously flashing), and the third color in each of those palettes is the default color that everything uses when a dinosaur is dino-selected. If you try and paint over a section that's already the color you're trying to use, the game will audibly recognize that you are trying to do so, meaning you are essentially applying a new coat of color to your dinosaur.
  • Counting any change of color no matter how it's achieved
Switching off of the starting palette changes the default color off of white, essentially "coloring" everything on screen in one smooth move:
So that leaves us with the question of whether or not this actually counts as coloring the dinosaur. Color is being brought to the dinosaur, yes, but are we coloring it, actively? Or are we merely altering our perception of the dinosaur? Am I really, unironically, getting this philosophical on a tool-assisted speedrun videos dot org submission? The answer to at least one of those questions is yes!

Final thoughts

Yeah, I have no idea what's going to happen here. There's, weirdly, a lot to consider for a game that we initially thought could never be published, and I could see any decision being made at any point in the discussion because of that. Hopefully we come to a conclusive one. As a family. A family of colored dinosaurs.

nymx: Claiming for judging.
Samsara: Clearing the branch, as people in the other submission seemed to be in favor of this one being the actual any% run.

nymx: For reasons, mentioned in #8191: warmCabin's NES Color a Dinosaur "four color theorem" in 08:11.72, I am also dropping out of this submission as well.
Am I scared that my boss will demote me? Yep!
The one point, brought up by feos, is the concern over the following rule:
  • A video game poses a virtual task. It requires the player to accomplish some in-game job.
The fact that this game doesn't really provide feedback or an indication that the goal has been achieved, is a consideration that needs addressing. The object is "Color A Dinosaur", but now I'm in a position where I have doubts. When a player is done with each dinosaur, you press "Start" to end that screen. If a goal was met, the game would be able to determine that it was successfull.
I'm out.

Samsara: The more I think about it, the less sense any of it makes to me. There really can't be a goal for this game that isn't user-defined, so trying to make a standard publication for it is most likely impossible. I may have been blinded by my dream of making sure every game can be published here, when there really are just some games out there that can't be.
The meme may officially be dead, now. (EDIT: haha oops whoops) Cancelling this run.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8258: Samsara's NES Color a Dinosaur in 02:07.46
nymx
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"Open the door, get on the floor. Everybody color the dinosaur!" There's enough for all...well, 16 of you at least. :)
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Post subject: The Fine Arts of Dinosaurs
Technickle
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Color a Dinosaur is quite possibly the most intriguing game out there. Think about it, the absolute nature of the coloring tool to Dinosaur ratio is immaculate. The way the coloring tool flows from head to toe, and the ability to fly around the screen had me on the edge of my seat. The color choice had me tearing up, both from the way it was used and from chuckling a little. The dinosaurs, now, don't get me started on those creatures. They stare at the screen yelling internally to be colored. The Color a Dinosaur fandom is crumbling, if you are a true Coloring expert, please pay your respects to the millions of Dinosaurs lost from the extinction years and years ago. If anybody says this doesn't deserve publication (because it does deserve it), quite possibly doesn't like Dinosaurs or Coloring them for that matter. yes the top text was satirical if it wasn't noticeable
GamesFan2000
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Oh god, the new admin is attempting to seriously submit a TAS of Color a Dinosaur, lord help us all...wait, no, they're trying to submit TWO TAS's of Color a Dinosaur!
Patashu
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"Is White A Colour" - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
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whenever i order a pizza online, i usually put "color a dinosaur" in the additional instructions prompt results are generally pretty decent
Samsara
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mobilisq wrote:
whenever i order a pizza online, i usually put "color a dinosaur" in the additional instructions prompt results are generally pretty decent
do you order the luncch special or is that more of a duck a l'orange thing
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Any type of "fill tool" is primarily passive coloring and does not count. It was obvious from the video that you did not color each individual pixel of each dinosaur, so this will have to be a No vote from me.
Patashu wrote:
"Is White A Colour" - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,
IMO, you're very optimistic if you think that such a thread will last that many pages before getting locked. This is the Internet, after all.
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I posted my thoughts about this game in the other submission, but since it was canceled, I'll paste them here for the sake of continuing the discussion.
This was my main question with this game:
Wiki: Glossary#VideoGame wrote:
A video game poses a virtual task. It requires the player to accomplish some in-game job.
so I was curious how it's resolved in the submission, and the solution is
the virtual task is quite literally the name of the video game
While I can definitely see how this game does its best to suggest a task to the player, the secondary sentence of the definition (meant to elaborate on the first one) says "It requires the player to accomplish some in-game job" and I can't agree that there are any kinds of requirements in this game whatsoever. It gives you some tools to use, and then basically leaves you on your own. You can invent indefinite number of your own goals and definitions, and the game won't object, its tools will just retain their limits. The game does nothing to tell you what is considered actually coloring a dinosaur, and there's no explanation of what isn't. So players are on their own here, and we can already see how we can define it in several relatively natural ways. Now if we consider that TASing it about pushing games to their limits, beyond natural limitations, it would be strange to stop on what feels obvious to us after having read the title of the game. Why limit ourselves (and our creativity) with how real world is organized? We don't emulate the real world and we can't TAS it, not even as a part of a videogame. So why do we need to rely on English language when determining in-game actions? This goes further. We rely on English language literally when we interpret the game title as the only objective of the game. Then we vaguely rely on it and vaguely reinvent it when determining what should be considered coloring. And then we refuse to rely on it when deciding that coloring a dinosaur is objectively the requirement of this game. And we outright contradict English language if we say that whatever community is going to agree on, is objectively the goal of the game. The only objective reality with video games is in-game reality. All the rest is human's subjective convention. Okay so subjective human convention is not something bad in its nature. We still need to achieve community agreement on major subjects like policies, or on subjectivity-based movie goals when deciding whether a playaround is entertaining. We encourage subjective feedback on movies in general, and we work with that data as an objective fact. But we should not use community agreement as a substitution for an objective fact. We should not operate in a paradigm like "if enough people consider this color blue, then it's objectively blue". Even if we wanted, we do not have reliable sample size here. And we don't even have a consensus yet, and I'm not looking forward to a consensus picking from several logically equivalent options. White is definitely a color, and the game allows you to color everything white. But do we agree that the goal is the game is us coloring everything white? Of course not. The goal of the game is, maybe, us coloring everything in some way. But on the other hand, can we agree that us changing absolutely nothing is the goal of the game? I don't think so. The game's documentation goes out of its way to show us example pictures where dinosaurs are colored by applying different colors to them. It even has all those different colors available! Of course the game's goal is that we use those colors! But this is when we decide that we're too creative to care about the game's expectations, and we ignore them by not changing anything in the game. Yet we care about its title's wording and use it as a command. Sounds inconsistent.
If this game ends up fitting our definition of a video game, then I don't think it will be our current definition. It will have to be changed to fit this game. And of course it's not a problem in itself, because we can't predict everything. And we only evolve if we're ready to change. But when a definition has to be changed to the opposite of the one we agreed on as a community... then why do we even need definitions? If the goal is tweaking them in a way that everything ends up fitting, why have community discussions on where to put a limit? Photoshop is a game. It gives you tools and the goal is that you use its title as a command. You just have to photoshop. Once you've photoshopped, you've completed the game. Can we have a community consensus on this one please? Wait we first need a community agreement on what is considered actually photoshopping...
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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om, nom, nom... om, nom, nom... nom nom
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Didn't we go down this route with Pictionary? (btw, I saved another 10 frames off of that a while back) Also, did you see the poetic edition from 10 years ago? "Notice how even without colors, he is happy, for he is truly blessed with divine grace." A commenter invoked rods and cones and metamers to justify that white is a color.
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warmCabin wrote:
Didn't we go down this route with Pictionary?
Which route?
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.