Considering that there are now Flash TASes that allow the bounds to be exploited as if it was a typical flash player window being adjusted (and acceptable depending on the game) Sniper Assassin 3 returns with probably a branch name that's suitable for an exploit like this.
Input uses, and exploits the current publication. Major differences in Mission 1, 4 & 10^, everything else is retained.
^Reminder that there's a glitch that allows you to skip past missions which exists in the flash player as well.
It's not a new branch, because there's no significant difference in entertainment (and the other movie is not notably superior in that regard), and off-screen input doesn't result in a game-breaking major skip glitch, it only improves some missions by skipping the waits.
feos: I asked for opinions one last time 18 days ago, and majority preferred obsoletion. I also talked to Spikestuff regarding preference, and their only preference is having both movies alongside each other. But there's not enough difference between the 2 runs for one of them to be in Alternative, and the current publication is not glitchless, so it can't go to standard. Even from a generalpoint of view publishing both versions is questionable. So like before, I'm accepting this over [4923] Flash Sniper Assassin 3 "inbound mouse" by Spikestuff in 02:37.50.
A note to future encoders, if the SWF you're using is the exact same one that's catalogued in the game entry, the shape to delete for removing the scope view is "DefineShape2 (1935)".
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I didn't initially ask the community about this movie becoming its own branch or not, so here it goes.
Here's what off-screen shooting allows you to do. You have several missions where you have to wait for an object to appear on the screen so you can shoot it, skipping the forced wait. Or you can shoot it right away outside the screen.
My initial impression was that off-screen shooting only skips the waiting time, and the change is not visible to the viewer anyway. But there's also an argument that the wait is skipped by shooting, in a shooting game, so it's a direct part of normal gameplay.
So the main question is, do we make this a new branch or do we obsolete [4923] Flash Sniper Assassin 3 "inbound mouse" by Spikestuff in 02:37.50? If new branch, then what's the defining criterion? There's no visible difference so it can't go to Alternative, but maybe results of the off-screen shooting can be considered a major skip glitch, hence making both movies go to Standard alongside each other? If the argument is that glitchless can be a new standard branch, both movies abuse a glitch that skips some levels due to fast shooting (tho I'd personally be interested in a glitchless branch).
#8110: Spikestuff's Flash Arsenal in 01:31.36 is in a pretty similar situation, barring glitch usage in the current publication: Post #521966
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.
Okay.
While not necessarily applicable to these two TASes, I feel that it's worth talking about the limitations of off-screen mouse input in the official Flash Player, as this seems to have been the main argument used for allowing it. While you can indeed click things before they appear within the regular bounds of the screen in Adobe's offline Flash Player, you can't really do so along diagonals. Expanding the window in two dimensions at once merely causes Flash to expand things up to fill in the gap. So while it's possible to click things that are off-screen in one dimension, it's not possible to do so for things off-screen in both at once. It's also not possible to see anything beyond the normal bounds, at least in the games I tested.
Entertainment-wise...frankly I don't find much of a difference in this case. I found the previous Sniper Assassin 3 movie pretty unenjoyable to watch, partially due to a lack of visually interesting gameplay but admittedly mainly due to the fact that I find the torture sections intolerable to watch. It would be nice if we were talking about a movie able to skip those sections instead of the shooting gallery waiting times, but alas, this is not that scenario.
That being said, I am still not against the idea of having these as two separate branches. While I can't say I find its usage here to fall under the category of a "major skip glitch"...I would prefer it if TASers had the option to submit movies that specifically choose not to exploit this kind of thing. It feels...cheap? Unintended? Unentertaining? It's hard for me to pinpoint anything in my gut reaction that makes for a coherent point here, and it seems the few of those who have participated in discussions about this agree on accepting it, but I'd very much prefer to be able to keep making TASes that choose not to use it, without such things being treated as an "optimisation error" or "not in an entertaining enough movie". Frankly, the most I've been able to see myself using this is choosing a female worker in the Papa's games where a male worker would otherwise be faster to select. Perhaps L+R/U+D is worth considering in this discussion as well, if it's considered a rather similar issue to this.
From my understanding of it, using off-screen clicks can lead to one of two outcomes:
Option A - The technique is used to click a menu option before it slides into frame, saving a small amount of time.
Option B - The technique is used to save major amounts of time by directly interacting with gameplay in some way, either allowing for glitches that lead to major skips or significantly skipping intended waiting sections as happens here.
In the case of option A, I don't believe it's enough for a separate branch. I see it more like language choice - a cosmetic change that might end up saving time but should not be considered an improvement over a movie that does not use it.
As for option B, it absolutely should be a separate branch. My initial thought would be to put both branches in Standard, with the one using off-screen clicks as the baseline, since I believe that's how it currently works with L+R input in older console games? Though doing it another way may be more practical, I'm rather new to the site and don't yet fully understand the decision-making behind how the branches and classes are structured.
In the case of this movie, as well as Arsenal, I think it's more along the lines of option B.
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InputEvelution wrote:
While not necessarily applicable to these two TASes, I feel that it's worth talking about the limitations of off-screen mouse input in the official Flash Player, as this seems to have been the main argument used for allowing it. While you can indeed click things before they appear within the regular bounds of the screen in Adobe's offline Flash Player, you can't really do so along diagonals. Expanding the window in two dimensions at once merely causes Flash to expand things up to fill in the gap. So while it's possible to click things that are off-screen in one dimension, it's not possible to do so for things off-screen in both at once. It's also not possible to see anything beyond the normal bounds, at least in the games I tested.
It's optional.
InputEvelution wrote:
That being said, I am still not against the idea of having these as two separate branches. While I can't say I find its usage here to fall under the category of a "major skip glitch"...I would prefer it if TASers had the option to submit movies that specifically choose not to exploit this kind of thing. It feels...cheap? Unintended? Unentertaining? It's hard for me to pinpoint anything in my gut reaction that makes for a coherent point here, and it seems the few of those who have participated in discussions about this agree on accepting it, but I'd very much prefer to be able to keep making TASes that choose not to use it, without such things being treated as an "optimisation error" or "not in an entertaining enough movie". Frankly, the most I've been able to see myself using this is choosing a female worker in the Papa's games where a male worker would otherwise be faster to select. Perhaps L+R/U+D is worth considering in this discussion as well, if it's considered a rather similar issue to this.
rythin wrote:
Option B - The technique is used to save major amounts of time by directly interacting with gameplay in some way, either allowing for glitches that lead to major skips or significantly skipping intended waiting sections as happens here.
[...]
As for option B, it absolutely should be a separate branch. My initial thought would be to put both branches in Standard, with the one using off-screen clicks as the baseline, since I believe that's how it currently works with L+R input in older console games? Though doing it another way may be more practical, I'm rather new to the site and don't yet fully understand the decision-making behind how the branches and classes are structured.
The tricky part is when this technique results in gameplay difference, but that difference is not enough to go to Alternative. I listed options we have with the current rules at the bottom of this post.
If we want this technique to be Standard eligible (meaning branches with and without it would co-exist regardless of entertainment), we need to come to a community agreement on which standard goal it would represent. If it's not about using and avoiding a major skip glitch, then we need a new standard goal for this. Which is in turn made tricky by similarities with L+R on old consoles: some games only get slightly faster over it, and some just break (there are probably other official intended limitations that we historically abuse, but I can't remember off the top of my head).
I always felt uneasy thinking about having a Flash-only one-off standard goal that wouldn't be applicable to any other platform, just like we're all seeing the similarity between it and L+R. Can "simultaneous cardinal inputs" be a separate standard goal on its own, regardless of its difference? I'm not sure it makes sense to me.
As I mentioned before, I'd be fine with having a standard goal along the lines of "fewest glitches", even if its definition is ultimately subjective. But at least once there's some kind of a definition, it becomes more or less clear what to expect, when watching and when TASing. But the current SA3 publication is not that.
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I've always felt like Standard was missing a goal for something along the lines of "forgoes the use of one common glitch", where the movie can still feature many glitches of various severity, but omits one particular one that would otherwise be repeated throughout the movie.
#7874: GMP's GC Prince of Persia: Warrior Within "zipless" in 24:56.15 is a great example of this in recent memory, though I'm sure there's many others that also fit the description.
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rythin wrote:
I've always felt like Standard was missing a goal for something along the lines of "forgoes the use of one common glitch", where the movie can still feature many glitches of various severity, but omits one particular one that would otherwise be repeated throughout the movie.
#7874: GMP's GC Prince of Persia: Warrior Within "zipless" in 24:56.15 is a great example of this in recent memory, though I'm sure there's many others that also fit the description.
How do we decide which glitch can/should be avoided? In the case of "zipless" movies, they all fit very well into Alternative.
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.
I feel that you could kind of classify L+R/U+D and the clicking-outside-bounds into a sort of "controller-based glitch" category of sorts? They're possible under certain setups, yes, but I think the fact remains that the vast majority of game developers did not intend their players to be able to do this, and they open up a lot of possibilities otherwise not possible, especially in the case of Flash.
Could this be used as a means of distinguishing the difference for the case of Standard? I quite like rythin's proposal in this thread and would be interested in seeing it implemented.
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Edit your quotes to get to the point, you're just quoting a bunch of text and images feos wrote and it doesn't help anyone.
It comes off as spam.
p0008874 wrote:
-s no-scale
Can you actually explain or argue for a solution or any help instead of providing something that's more of a "hack" with no explanation?
Changing a game's boundaries away from the 600x450 would not solve the issue that we're here in the first place which is shooting outside these bounds, as extreme as 500 pixels off screen which is something more major in terms of waiting, the reason why this is now being talked about.
This is an unintended mechanic by the game that can be exploited in other flash titles to insane endings.
The only being discussed now because I was under the assumption when told that it as "No Window Bounds" (or whatever it becomes) would exist alongside a branchless (in bounds) TAS.
So I raised an inquiry about why this movie that's extremely exploit the game's bounds is being able to obsolete the other movie.
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rythin wrote:
I've always felt like Standard was missing a goal for something along the lines of "forgoes the use of one common glitch", where the movie can still feature many glitches of various severity, but omits one particular one that would otherwise be repeated throughout the movie.
I've been wanting something like this for a while, but it does fall victim to being hard to apply consistently. That's not to say we necessarily have to always apply it completely consistently, but at the very least we need sort of an all-encompassing shell to tell people what to go for. The way I put it when feos and I were talking about it was something like a glitch "fundamentally changing the nature of the game", which is something that would have to be determined case-by-case. It could be as obvious as Zelda 2's L+R glitch or as subtle as this run shooting things outside of window bounds just as long as the core gameplay is noticeably and meaningfully changed.
I think a big problem here though is that we run the risk of overpopulating a game with similar branches, which as much as I tend to think "What's the issue with adding more branches?" these days, it wouldn't really make sense to have "any%", "any% that uses a movement glitch but foregoes major skips", "any% that uses major skips but foregoes a movement glitch", and "any% that doesn't use any glitches" all alongside each other. Even in the case of this game, I'm wondering whether or not it actually makes sense to have "any% that uses no window bounds and a level skip glitch" and "any% that uses the level skip glitch but stays within bounds" alongside each other. Were someone(stuff) to make a version that foregoes both, would that be a separate branch as well?
I think we might have to make it a sort of nebulous thing where we can accept any of these kinds of branches as standard, but depending on the game and the glitches there may be cases where we have to figure out what branches are worth keeping published together and what branches might have to go to Alternative or Playground.
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rythin wrote:
I've always felt like Standard was missing a goal for something along the lines of "forgoes the use of one common glitch", where the movie can still feature many glitches of various severity, but omits one particular one that would otherwise be repeated throughout the movie.
Samsara wrote:
It could be as obvious as Zelda 2's L+R glitch or as subtle as this run shooting things outside of window bounds just as long as the core gameplay is noticeably and meaningfully changed.
So yeah, a "zipless" Sonic or Megaman.
Samsara wrote:
I think a big problem here though is that we run the risk of overpopulating a game with similar branches, which as much as I tend to think "What's the issue with adding more branches?" these days, it wouldn't really make sense to have "any%", "any% that uses a movement glitch but foregoes major skips", "any% that uses major skips but foregoes a movement glitch", and "any% that doesn't use any glitches" all alongside each other. Even in the case of this game, I'm wondering whether or not it actually makes sense to have "any% that uses no window bounds and a level skip glitch" and "any% that uses the level skip glitch but stays within bounds" alongside each other. Were someone(stuff) to make a version that foregoes both, would that be a separate branch as well?
I think we might have to make it a sort of nebulous thing where we can accept any of these kinds of branches as standard, but depending on the game and the glitches there may be cases where we have to figure out what branches are worth keeping published together and what branches might have to go to Alternative or Playground.
I don't particularly mind similar branches, nor "how many is too many". The thing I want for Standard is an explainable system that feels clear and helpful. Of course some cases of its application may be less clear than others, but that's because a certain game decides to do things in a unique weird way, so we rely on subjective things more if we need.
Since it looks like the current system doesn't solve this movie, I suggest we first try to check if it's solved by minor tweaks to the current system.
Are there games where a major skip glitch is a different entity from this repeated gameplay-changing glitch, and we'd want all variations of branches: with both, with only one, with only another, and with none? What if repeated gameplay-changing glitch is treated like MSG if a game doesn't have MSG? Basically, what if we turn the "no major skip glitch" category into "no biggest glitch"?
Another idea is borrowing our definition of skipped gameplay from the "cheats" category and drawing the line there. MSG completely skips gameplay, while repeated gameplay-changing glitch changes it (or maybe even adds more of it?). Of course the question becomes what to do with other glitches that may change gameplay, and also with glitches that skip non-major parts of it. Does the severity usually go like this: one major skip > all gameplay changers > all minor skips? What about glitches that simply make some things faster?
Overall I'm in favor of having a "minimal glitches" category. For games with clear difference between a glitch and a normal mechanic, it would result in an obvious definition of "glitchless", and in more complicated games we'd just rely on whatever has a community consensus.
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I don't see why this can't be handled by currently existing rules. In this case, I think this should obsolete [4923] Flash Sniper Assassin 3 "inbound mouse" by Spikestuff in 02:37.50, and be branchless.
No-window-bounds glitches should be considered on a case-by-case basis. I can see situations where going outside window bounds results in a major skip glitch (such as #8334: Spikestuff's Flash Full Moon "mouse glitch" in 00:01.42), in which case, from currently existing rules, it will lead to a Standard branch that forgoes a major skip glitch. But here, these aren't really major skips, because I think a skip has to skip at least one level to even be able to be a major skip in the first place. And these skips don't skip any levels, they just only speed up waiting within a level. It doesn't really feel like there's much of a difference between outside coordinates being allowed or not.
feos also established in this thread that going outside the bounds can technically be done by resizing the Flash player window, so I don't see an objection from this trick being impossible to do RTA. I also asked him in the Discord about a similar case, the L+R glitch, and he said he doesn't remember any movie where the author explicitly avoided it. So here, I think authors should not explicitly avoid outside window coordinates, unless they have a good reason to (e.g. it results in a major skip and this is a movie that forgoes major skip glitches).
I feel standard should not be "we will accept this branch no matter what". I feel it should be "we accept it regardless of entertainment if it makes sense for the game". What would somebody who has played the game before want to see? What would somebody who hasn't? Would people care about the difference between oob clicking and no oob clicking? If there's too many similar branches it feels spammy and is annoying for an audience to sort through. Given that "level skip" is another, more impactful glitch, which combinations of level skip and oob should we publish, were we to get them? I lean against all four because I feel it would be too same-y for even an audience that has played the game before. I'm hard against allowing every possible combination of glitches for any game in standard. Like oob clicking, sometimes L+R saves a lot of time, sometimes it saves like frames at best. I feel getting your own publication because you use/don't use x known glitch/technique that saves a minimal amount of time would be cheap and could potentially seen as leeching off the initial author if it is a different one. As such my personal leanings are "level skip + oob click" and "no level skip + no oob click" since these are the two most distinct branches.
However, if the author has a preference towards no oob click in the level skip branch, I feel we should take that into consideration and consider no oob click a speed/entertainment tradeoff. I generally think we should lean in favor of accommodating artistic choices when possible.
InputEvelution wrote:
Frankly, the most I've been able to see myself using this is choosing a female worker in the Papa's games where a male worker would otherwise be faster to select.
This is another example of an artistic choice I'd be willing to accommodate.
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Memory wrote:
However, if the author has a preference towards no oob click in the level skip branch, I feel we should take that into consideration and consider no oob click a speed/entertainment tradeoff. I generally think we should lean in favor of accommodating artistic choices when possible.
I'm just going to provide what I wrote from the previous submission to highlight Memory's comment.
Spikestuff wrote:
So first, the Ruffle exclusive bug I deliberately avoided, as it's only possible within libTAS and that's shooting elements that are off screen*.
This means that I kept to the 600x450 screensize, validated in flash, and found out I can only shoot in a 1 to 599 on the horizontal field, as for the vertical all elements are already on screen, and the scrolling is fixed in the one case it does become a concern.
*Clarification.
I'm referring to the fact that window resizing is not used to shoot elements/targets that are off-screen prior to starting a run.
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While we already have a coupleothers as "glitchless", [4923] Flash Sniper Assassin 3 "inbound mouse" by Spikestuff in 02:37.50 uses a glitch to skip levels, and this submission uses OOB mouse clicking on top of that. The published one doesn't have good feedback, and I can't say it has unique content compared to this run, so there's a question:
While the time difference is 16% (not tiny), there's barely any real action that's being skipped here. IMO restricting mouse movement would fit perfectly under "glitchless", but I don't know of a good way to categorize anything between that and any%. OOB mouse without the level skip glitch could fit into Alternative, but wouldn't that be too similar to "glitchless" anyway?
I have a feeling OOB mouse in this game fits the artistic decision to use or forgo speed techniques for entertainment, but reducing the wait is arguably also more entertaining, so I'm not sure what the current publication could showcase.
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Obsolete the current publication. This submission exploits a something in the realm of L+R presses, as in the actual Flash Player you could just resize the window and that would be intended game mechanics, even though it may actually be unintended by the specific game developer.
I have a feeling OOB mouse in this game fits the artistic decision to use or forgo speed techniques for entertainment, but reducing the wait is arguably also more entertaining, so I'm not sure that the current publication could showcase.
I agree with the classification of inbound mouse as an artistic choice, and that there isn't really much entertainment value offered by it over this one in doing so. That said, I think since both of these movies are made by the same runner, it's important to ask Spikestuff what they want to do about things. (If the movies can't exist side-by-side due to similarities and lack of entertainment, which one would she want to have up? This one through an obsoletion, or the other by sending this to Playground?)
It's even more apparent when the other movie is branched appropriately since the day the pre-mentioned titles had their exploitive ways approved for the site.
This submission has basically been given the green-light to exist alongside the other one.
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Those exist alongside one another because the slower ones are actually glitchless ones, while instead the published Sniper Assassin 3 movie is not glitchless.
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That would make sense, but we can't move published runs to PG currently.
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Interesting idea for obsoleted goals in general.
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.
My initial impression was that off-screen shooting only skips the waiting time, and the change is not visible to the viewer anyway. But there's also an argument that the wait is skipped by shooting, in a shooting game, so it's a direct part of normal gameplay.
So the main question is, do we make this a new branch or do we obsolete [4923] Flash Sniper Assassin 3 "inbound mouse" by Spikestuff in 02:37.50? If new branch, then what's the defining criterion? There's no visible difference so it can't go to Alternative, but maybe results of the off-screen shooting can be considered a major skip glitch, hence making both movies go to Standard alongside each other? If the argument is that glitchless can be a new standard branch, both movies abuse a glitch that skips some levels due to fast shooting (tho I'd personally be interested in a glitchless branch).
