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Memory wrote:
I understand that people want movies to be appreciated for their technical accomplishments, but I don't feel a technical rating is the right way to go about that. Ultimately, only those who understand the ins and outs of a game can truly appreciate the amount of effort that goes into making the TAS. Ultimately what actually gets appreciated is the documentation of said process rather than the actual achievement.
This is exactly why a technical rating doesn't provide much information to a casual viewer or even another TASer unfamiliar with the game.
Speaking of casual (non-member) viewers of our publications...they aren't even given an option to rate movies. They can see the rating value, but can't contribute to the rating. Thus only members can have impact on the resulting rating; and when most members do actually contribute to how a movie is perceived, it's in the pre-publication discussion/voting.
I'd speculate that a fair number of our members simply feel that going back and rating a run post-publication is an unnecessary extra (if not also tedious) step, if they've already given their opinion on a particular run. This also explains the possibility that most of our members don't care much about the post-publication ratings to begin with or they'd do them.
Further, if a particular member has shown no interest in providing a simple yes/no/meh vote, how can we ask/expect that individual to want to provide an even more complex assessment of a run that they were never interested in to begin with?
So the question becomes, who/what are the ratings intended for?
If for displaying generalized perception of entertainment value: a simple 5 star rating system (as has been already brought up) would be sufficient to display this metric. And there's little reason to restrict this assessment to only members; we could allow the general public offer their entertainment perspective as well.
If for rating technical prowess of runs/authors...this accomplishes little more than stroking the egos of our members while providing little to no pertinent information to a casual watcher. A technical rating based on anything other than what's visible to a casual watcher is meaningless to that casual watcher. I'd suggest that even for other TASers, the technical accomplishments/ratings of movies are rarely the reason they choose to watch a particular run over other reasons such as entertainment or general interest in the game being TASed.
We claim that the underlying purpose of this site is entertainment. People don't want to have to work to be entertained. In general, people simply want entertainment provided to them. So doing (or even understanding) a technical rating takes extra work that most people aren't going to mess with when they're simply looking to be entertained.
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To add to Radiant's list of how to rate a movie:
The voting/rating guidelines tell viewers to consider the technical production of the run not just how technical it appears on-screen.
Therefore, There are additional steps required to do an appropriate technical rating.
*Click to open a new web page with the authors comments/submission notes to see how they made the TAS to begin with.
*Hope that those comments are fully developed and not simply a reference to an earlier version's submission notes (which would then require opening yet another web page to read those notes, or even more if it's the run's been updated multiple times)
*Read said note to hopefully understand what the author actually did to make the TAS from a technical standpoint.
*Have enough knowledge of the game to know if what the author did really was very technically impressive or not. (While this may not truly be a requirement, many viewers will feel this way in regards to rating technical quality.)
*Return to the original movie rating spot to actually do the rating itself.
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Memory wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
Who actually cares and pays attention to these ratings other than those doing the ratings? (legitimate non-rhetorical question)
It's one of the factors used in determining tiering. In fact it's pretty much the only factor post publication that can result in a tier change. Of course you could argue about how much tiering matters, but it very much affects whether or not certain TASes can be published here at the very least.
EDIT: I would not be against the idea that ratings should be phased out and other methods be used to determine tier.
Ratings are also used in calculating player's points but your mileage may vary on whether or not those matter.
I mostly understand what the ratings are used for regarding the site. But if so few are concerned with the ratings to begin with, should we really be using them to determine these things on the site?
Disclaimer: I don't have any other suggestions for tier changes. But I don't like the idea that ratings affect player points. I personally feel player points (as a quantitative value) should be based more on the quantity of currently published content that person has produced, not on how others qualitatively perceive the content that's been produced; I have no problem with losing points due to obsoletion.
Minor Side Note: You're accurate in assuming that the player points don't mean a whole lot to me either.
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Memory wrote:
I've been talking and wondering why exactly people haven't been rating as much. I would like for people that don't rate post-publication to explain why.
I enjoy creating TAS content much more than I enjoy simply watching TAS movies. Therefore, I'd rather spend my free time creating new TAS content or updating an old one than watching runs of already published games simply to rate them.
With how little attention is paid by members in regards to doing the rating post publication, it does beg the question of how important post-publication ratings are in the first place.
Who actually cares and pays attention to these ratings other than those doing the ratings? (legitimate non-rhetorical question)
Frankly, I don't.
If I'm interested in watching a particular movie, a low rating will not discourage me from watching it. Likewise, if I have little to no interest in watching a particular movie, a high rating won't miraculously make me suddenly decide to watch it. My limited viewing of TASes is based on game interest not movie rating.
For that matter, I don't really care much how my own movies are rated (pre or post publication). If they are good enough for publication, I'm satisfied. Even when one gets rejected, I can still feel a sense of accomplishment for completing the project.
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I personally prefer auto-pilot mode.
I like the idea of ending input as soon as possible and letting the game finish itself even if getting to the credits takes longer.
I'd argue that the majority of what we publish here is based on this method (i.e. jumping into an end trigger to allow momentum to carry the character to the end trigger instead of having to have directional input all the way to the end-point). It's not universal on the site; but we're typically focused on shortest input, not shortest time to the credits screen itself.
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EZGames69 wrote:
So it doesn’t seem like a 3rd person is going to sign up to form a 4th team. I haven’t given up on it yet but it’s probably a good time to think of some plan Bs.
So there’s a few options we can choose, and I’d like to know what everyone thinks:
we force two 5 player teams and have one 4 player team
one person leaves their team to join team 4, making two 3 player teams and two 4 player teams
the two individuals drop all together
Personally I would prefer the 2nd option but dont want to force someone out of a team unless they’re willing to do it. So what would everyone think is the best option?
Keep in mind if a 3rd player does sign up (or a 4th player shows up if we’re really lucky), we’ll disregard all of these options.
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I'm in.
NYMX and I are teaming up but open to a couple more teammates. I've asked one other person, but am waiting on a reply. So currently I'd say we have one teammate slot open, which may become two slots.EDIT 1: We have two slots open.
EDIT 2: NYMX decided it'd be better if he didn't do this years DTC. And thus I'm now all alone. Who wants a teammate?
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Svimmer wrote:
Just look at Super Mario Bros and tell me the amount of interesting stuff going on doesn't far outweigh what's present here.
Firstly, SMB is a MUCH more well known and well studied game than this submission.
Secondly, just because it's possible to do all the special stuff you see in SMB doesn't mean it's possible to do similar special things in Monty on the Run (or any other game for that matter).
Thirdly, much of the special stuff in SMB has been developed and found over many years worth of time since it was first published on this site. This submission is the first accepted and published run of this particular game. Future versions (if anyone is even willing to try) may find new tricks to show off. But considering the vast difference in how many man-hours have been put into dissecting/TASing these two games, to expect an equivalent level of 'tricks' or game mastery to be visible on-screen between these two games is absurd.
Fourth, you could make this same argument about SMB having much more going on than numerous other games in moon tier.
If you don't feel the game should be in moon tier, go rate the move as EZGames69 mentioned above. While tier evaluation of runs is based initially on entertainment feedback received pre-publication, the ultimate determination of tier tends to rely more heavily on post-publication rating.
If enough people agree with you that the run is unentertaining and rate it as such so that the overall entertainment rating becomes significantly low, it will likely be moved out of moons and over to vault tier (as it is an eligible submission for that tier).
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Svimmer wrote:
Hmm... totally disagree on the moons tier here: I mean the game has nice music but the run has absolutely minimal tricks AFAICS. Even the luck manipulation is far from flashy stuff.
Svimmer wrote:
This is EXACTLY the same situation when that recent GTA TAS came out: it had one significant trick (which is one more trick than I noticed here) and tons and tons of luck manipulation. I mean... at best this is double standards*.
You seem to be suggesting that a game played without abusing some glitch/gimmick or containing some special flashy visual 'trick' can't be entertaining.
Have you never considered that entertainment can be gleaned by some people through simply watching a game beaten as fast as possible even when it only uses methods of play exactly as the developers intended?
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It is indeed possible for RNG to be completely unaffected by player inputs (at least directly). It's also possible for RNG to be directly manipulable by input. It just depends on how the game was coded.
Regarding your recordings not playing back: recorded inputs will typically only yield the same result for RNG (and the resulting video) if the recording was performed starting from a deterministic memory state (i.e. power-on), and then the playback is also started from the same deterministic point. Simply being on the title screen when starting input playback often isn't enough as a difference as small as 1 frame in where the input playback is started can affect RNG changes.
Others here can probably provide further information/details on a more technical level.
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Radiant wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
I'm actually planning on doing the C64 version also.
Nice! How about the (non-junior) Jumpman? IIRC that's 30 levels with original gimmicks.
Yep...I'm open to that as well.
I've also got a copy of the DOS Jumpman Lives! floating around somewhere. Might do that someday too....but will be more of a tedious TASing process. Jumpman Lives! contains levels from both Jumpman and Jumpman Junior as well as some original levels.
There is even a 2014 official sequel available called Jumpman Forever. I'm guessing it would take libTAS or Hourglass (unlikely as the game is designed for Win 7 or higher) to TAS it though.
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Radiant wrote:
LOL at completing Sreddal like that. And a frame from that death sequence would make a good screenshot, I'd say.
Well, I grew up playing this on a C64 and in this case the versions look almost identical. You make a hard game look trivial, so yes vote.
I'm actually planning on doing the C64 version also. While the levels are the same, there are subtle differences that force/allow for different routing. I'm curious if RNG will be more easily manipulated as well, but haven't had a change to test yet.
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feos wrote:
Bump. A lot of new TASers have arrived. How do you guys do it?
I'm not exactly new, but have never responded. I do use TAStudio/TASEditor when they are available, but I also do enough DOS work (which doesn't include these tools) that I can say I do a good chunk of TASing without them.
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Thanks for all your work on this. Your v11.2 version with TASScript has been a huge help in simplifying TASing some DOS games for me. I've been heavily using it while working on King's Quest VI.
It's a welcome tool addition to the emulator, and I support this being considered in an official release. I'll try and do some testing on the newer 11.8 code base w/ TASScript over the next few days and see how it works for me.
I would also be interested to see what doors would be opened by a -rr fork of the JPC v2.4 base.
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FractalFusion wrote:
It's good that you don't have to wait at the teleporters now (not that I know how RNG works in this game).
I never did figure out how RNG is initially seeded, but it appears that the RNG seed value used for random calculations is only changed when a random event occurs.
In other words: to manipulate RNG, you have to allow/force a random event to occur. There are 3 ways to do this that I (with a bit of help from Memory) found running this game: two are passively controlled, one is actively controlled.
1) Passively wait extra frame(s) on a screen with a teleportation beam before moving to the next screen. Basically every frame on these screens the RNG value changes.
2) Passively wait for a crusher to drop and raise, resetting the random timer between crushes. RNG only changes when the timer is reset. I saw timer ranges anywhere from like 30ish to 70+ frames, so making this method beneficial was rare.
3) The only active manipulation has to do with the jet-pack sequence. Pressing UP to use the jet-pack causes RNG change every 2 frames. I believe the flame coming out of the jet-pack is randomized. As there are some opportunities to push UP with the jet-pack that don't hinder progress toward the goal point, it's possible to actively alter RNG at will while wearing the jet-pack.
Regarding the final teleportation beam. EDIT:The only opportunity to alter it occurs at the jet-pack sequence. The best opportunity to alter it occurs at the jet-pack sequence. There is a crusher the screen before the beam, but it doesn't make for efficient RNG manipulation. This beam can be manipulated to be white for the first time it's passed through fairly easily, but I was unable to find an RNG sequence that yielded it white for the second pass-through.
This is perhaps where someone could find improvement in the run. If they can find a good RNG sequence that allows white for both pass throughs it would save about a screen's worth of movement.
The problem is that the RNG sequence for this beam remains in-sequence with nothing to alter it on the screen where Monty picks up the key on the ship. Therefore the sequence of RNG values doesn't change regardless of how long Monty might wait on the beam screen before going to get the key. This is the one instance where waiting on the beam screen can't affect RNG in a way to be beneficial. For example, if after Monty goes to get the key and comes back, the beam changes to a particular color on frame 30000, it will always change to that color on that frame regardless of how long Monty waits before going to get the key in the first place.
In shorter words: to manipulate any particular teleportation beam, you need any random event other than that particular beam to call the RNG value. Otherwise the RNG sequence will be the same as if you never left the screen with the teleportation beam in question.
I hope that all made sense.
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After lengthy and well appreciated (at least on my part) conversation with feos off-forum, I think I can sum things up this way.
The poll question as it exists makes "meh" an illogical option; because even if the movie is generally super dull or annoying, having just a single entertaining scene means that the viewer has somehow been entertained. In fact, judges as well as most viewers treat the poll as this question: "Did you find this movie generally entertaining?" Treating it this way makes all answer options sane and everything works perfectly. The problem is, that's not how the question is currently worded. So let's simply reword it.
I'm making a final suggestion in attempt to reconcile the various perspectives presented in this thread. I'm suggesting that we simply add the word "generally" into the current poll question. Making it
Did you find this movie generally entertaining?
This makes the question explicitly subjective in nature instead of only having implied subjectivity. It also makes all three current response choices completely valid and reconciles various perspectives of the current poll question.
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feos wrote:
You can't fight human nature. The best thing you can do is working with it to get the least terrible result.
Poll being imperfect encourages people to actually post their thoughts. If a poll is perfect, no "real human" feedback is encouraged. But it can't be perfect because of point 1. So we'll end up having 2 things that don't work instead of just one.
emphasis mine
Regarding #1...I'm trying to improve what the "least terrible result" could be and make it less terrible! Yes, by our nature, humans are imperfect and nothing we do can be guaranteed to be perfect. I'd argue that most other times that this has been discussed, those wanting the poll question changed had the same intent as I do now. Not to make it perfect, but to improve what information we do collect. I never claimed that any of my suggestions were perfect, but I feel that I've well explained why they are better than the current usage.
Regarding #2: This thought process is flawed. Poll votes ARE "real human" feedback even when they are a lie. When someone feels they have to lie on the poll question to yield the result they desire, it shows that the poll question doesn't collect the proper information that we need when making a judgement using that very information.
Unless what you mean by "real human" feedback is 'readable language in the form of a forum post'; which, by the way, could also be imperfect or contain lies.
If the only type of feedback we're going to place a high value on is obtaining people's perspectives explained through language-based posts, we should just eliminate the poll outright. Then there's no speculation as to what the votes meant to begin with. There's no chance of someone lying on the poll. If someone likes a movie and wants their perspective known, they comment. If someone doesn't like a movie, they comment. If someone is unwilling to comment, then their voice isn't heard regrading that particular submission; and they would have no grounds to complain about the result if it differed from their opinion. If you don't want human feedback in the form of a clicked button, eliminate the button.
The other problem with #2 is that the poll question's imperfect nature doesn't inherently encourage feedback. If (by it's imperfect nature) the poll question encouraged language-based feedback in the form of posts, our forums would always be filled with comments. No submission would have fewer people commenting than it did votes, and judges would never have to ask for more feedback on a submission before they could properly discern the poll results. This also solves the potential of having 2 problems from the poll. No poll means no question about its results; leaving only the human nature expressed in forum posts as a problem for a judge to discern when making a judgment.
I realize that (some of) the site staff may feel discussing this topic again and again is a merry-go-round that goes nowhere. But the fact that the topic keeps cropping up suggests that it's a problem for which solutions need to (at least) be considered and (at most) be attempted. You've been willing to try new things before, what's the harm in trying more new ideas? If it fails as the last attempt did, we can always come back to the current method (then we should try and improve it yet again).
We claim that TASes are never perfect because there could always be future discoveries that would make room for improvement in them....why don't we treat our site the same way? The whole point of TASing is doing something better than status quo, why are we settling for status quo on something we know isn't that great instead of trying to make it better?
So let's keep inviting suggestions, and perhaps someone will have a usable idea that might acceptably solve these problems.
If anyone in the community is willing acknowledge that the poll question could be worded better, yet wouldn't want to use any of the suggestions already in this thread; what suggestions do you have to make the poll question itself better? Let's at least try something to make the poll and our site better. If it doesn't work...try again....and again...and again, if necessary.
We should never stop trying to improve our site, nor should we discourage suggestions for improvements.
