I've submitted a TAS of
Pokemon Black. This is an "Any%" run, defined under the same ruleset as RTA.
Like other Pokemon games, the game features a "Round 2" for the Elite 4 and Champion. However, most Pokemon games, unlike
FireRed/LeafGreen, do not actually place any extra conditions in order to fight this round 2, other than the possible pseudo-requirement of getting better Pokemon due to the levels jumping up dramatically. As such, you can just directly fly back to the Pokemon League and immediately fight the harder second round of the Elite 4 and Champion.
In this game too, round 2 is slightly more interesting as it is the only time you fight the Champion, as he is not fought in round 1, due to plot reasons, and is also the only time you would enter the Hall Of Fame that traditionally ends Pokemon runs. However, even with this... Round 2 ends up only being 5 extra fights after Any%, leading to a potentially nearly identical TAS compared to one purely aimed at Any%. However, also despite this, Round 2 has extremely interesting routing, and is possibly a miracle if a run aimed for Any% can even complete Round 2, due to the massive level difference.
I've already made such a round 2 TAS, continued directly off my Any% run. I would want to possibly submit it, however, the run has 2 rather conflicting goals.
- A goal for this run is to be continued directly off an optimized Any% run, not having some arbitrary amount of time to just overlevel my own Pokemon before completing Any%, as that would trivialize the goal.
- A goal for this run is not be a new definition of "Any%", I do not want such a run to just "obsolete" my Any% run, despite the beginning of it just being identical. Any% could very well end up developing strategies which result in being unable to complete "Round 2" (noting that my own Any% run is more a miracle in being able to beat Round 2 due to the massive level difference).
For the second goal, I wouldn't particularly mind if this run was changed so it just start off SRAM (would need some time to resync but that's somewhat trivial), so the content of the entire movie is rather the unique round 2 fights. However, that of course starts conflicting with the first goal, since the goal is again to not have some arbitrary amount of time "preparing" for Round 2 (since that trivializes the goal). Or in another way: the goal requires optimizing the verification movie along with the save anchored movie, as if the verification movie is "suboptimal" that can compromise the routing potential of the final goal. Would this goal be able to be ensured in such a case, and comparisions for obsoletion made with consideration with the verification movie?
If such a category including entire Any% within the submitted movie does not result in obsoleting pure Any%, I would not mind too much if I just submit my movie as is, with Any% included. However, I would want it to end up potentially having just an encode for just the "unique" Round 2 fights (i.e. everything after the soft reset after first round of credits). Would this be able to be done, even if as some secondary encode.
