I'd say that if you're going for speed, anything that triggers the credits counts as a win;
inb4 the site gets tons of submissions of games that allow you to view the credits from the options menu? :P
Also in this game you beat 8 gyms and then the elite 4, then the credits roll.
... then you go to the other continent and beat the other 8 gyms and then beat Red.
So there's two examples why concrete definitions like that don't work around here, the second being the more important one to this discussion since Red is not just a bonus boss, there's actually a whole other continent of content between the first credit roll and fighting Red.
One of the reasons Gen 2 and the remakes are my favorite pokemon games, the amount of content to beat.
But anyways... Red is, indisputedly, the last boss of the game. He's a boss (special battle music, leadup, last in an area), and you have to beat all 16 gym leaders and the elite 4 just to gain access to him in a normal play, so he will always be the last one fought, and when you beat him he vanishes and the credits roll.
The TAS uses bugs to skip to the final boss's room, activate the boss, talk to the boss, then insta-end the boss fight (making him vanish and rolling the credits). This TAS beats the game as far as I see it!
Hell yeah, was waiting for a TAS of the normal mode of this game for a while. It was pretty entertaining, even before getting the speed/flying glyphs there were multiple movement methods used, and I never realized that the bat form's ability to attack without stopping forward movement could be so useful.
This was quite fun to watch, and skipping the end boss is always a LOL for me. But...
[...]
I'm sorry but I'm voting reject.
If you found the movie entertaining, then vote yes.
Nice cutting out the context to my reasoning in my first post.
I really feel like this branch is like 16 star or 1 star is for SM64, I am not against branches in general, but this one feels like it's been out-dated, if the current any% TASes had been here I would have voted yes.
Also I think that many of the things seen here will be seen in a future MST or 100% TAS as well, meaning that the remaining tricks that will be seen mainly in this branch gets a lower count. If I am wrong on this, I will change my vote.
You said that you found it entertaining, then said you were voting no.
But the poll is asking, and I quote...
Vote: Did you find this movie entertaining? (Vote after watching!)
If you found it entertaining, vote yes. If not, vote no. If you think it should or should not be published, voice that here in the thread, but that is separate from the poll (and is not what I'm contesting, what I'm contesting is voting on the poll differently than what the poll is actually asking for).
LINK, ICE SKATING CHAMP OF RUINED KAKARIKO
"Hey lady thanks for the egg, here have a bomb gottagobye!"
"Link, we need you to carry this frog. You're the only master of acute angle dimension hopping we have!"
Then Link runs off to his local fiery arcade to play Hyrulian Whack-A-Mole.
And everybody lived happily ever after.
Yes vote.
Warepire wrote:
This was quite fun to watch, and skipping the end boss is always a LOL for me. But...
[...]
I'm sorry but I'm voting reject.
If you found the movie entertaining, then vote yes.
Voted no for multiple reasons.
1 - The run is very short, but not because of anything related to a TAS. It's because the game is so short. There's not much room for entertainment here in the terms of normal gameplay. VERY few levels, no bosses, etc. The game itself is not very different or entertaining, so normally it'd be up to the player to do things differently or break the game to show that this is not just a normal playthrough, but...
2 - No attempt was made to entertain the viewer during times of "simple" gameplay (that is, a straight run or carrying an item from point A to B), something that could easily be done by somebody that has complete control over the game. Check out things like this for an example of what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmpbFDc8ZCA
Auto-scrolling level, normally one of the most boring things, but made plenty entertaining here. Shows off skills and minor bugs.
On the contrary, no attempt to do fancy tricks or close-calls was made in this submission beyond the bare minimum to move past certain points.
3 - As far as technical entertainment... it scores negative in my opinion. There's a notable lack of shortcuts, glitches, or other such time-savers that go outside the realm of normal gameplay (which is something considered important in a TAS since the point is to show how fast the game itself can be beaten regardless of the player). So there's no points there, but it also doesn't use the well-known tricks, most of which are documented on this site (including animated gifs, even), many of which could be used to speed this run up and are notably lacking (as already pointed out), so it's pretty negative there as far as I'm concerned.
I do not consider this a TAS intended to set a record. This is just a recording of normal gameplay that uses save states every so often to erase normal gameplay mistakes. This means that it could easily be beaten by anybody that's familiar with TASing, it's not going to set a very strong record.
EDIT: Edited spacing and some words and added another end sentence to clarify what I feel needs to be taken into consideration for the next submission.
Games acting differently depending on uninitialized memory is known in other situations too, and is sometimes part of gameplay.
1 - My favorite example (and the one I think most relevant) has to be X-Men 2: Clone Wars for the Sega Genesis. It starts right to the first level, not the title screen, yet there's selectable characters. So for the first level it selects them randomly. My little brother and I, on our Sega Genesis Model 3, would simply reset the system until we got the choices we wanted for the first level. If you're on an emulator that starts all types of memory in a set state (like Gens), then I hope you like Wolverine or Beast because you'll end up with one of them on each cold reset, depending on if you have a 6-button controller or a 3-button controller set up. However on emulators that seem to do a little randomization first (like Kega Fusion), you're properly given a random char, like you would be on a physical system.
2 - Another example is how Super Mario All-Stars inherits SM3's debug mode stuff, but unlike SM3, neglects to wipe/reset that specific address. So you could, depending on the last game played on your system (or entropy/chaos/whatever as some articles mention), start up SMA:SM3 and find the debug mode enabled on a physical SNES. But not so on an emulator that sets all ram to things other than 0x80 each and every time.
EDIT: Oh, whoops, the above post already mentioned example 1. Oh well, at least it's known then.
Yes vote.
I've never played through the single-player myself, but I've played many rounds of multiplayer on this game. The mechs have a lot of momentum (especially the ball/flyer and excepting the spider) and their attacks usually have some forced downtime or limit your speed/movement in some way (especially the spider and tank), so while the movement may seem clunky to those not familiar with playing the game, this is pretty well-done from my point of view.
It's kind of funny to see just how much damage you still have to take (what with the visual damage indicators in the form of palette and tile changes on the sprite) when blazing through it like this even as a TAS, since this game's pretty hard.
I loved the pi TAS, but I don't know it should substitute the poney TAS.
As much as I dislike ponies, the other TAS makes a matrix-style screen, draws a pony and plays a music. That's kinda more than drawing pis and writing its name.
The other movie takes multiple times longer to actually start the custom program, which draws a static image and plays a custom tune.
This TAS is much quicker to get to the custom program, and has multiple animations at once (timed to the existing music showing that he's taking control of the game instead of rewriting it totally, which is more TAS-like), with the bottom screen even showing off things like Tetris shapes, a game of Snake, the Game Of Life, Arkanoid, and possibly more references I didn't get or can't recall at the moment.
The concern there is that the differences may or may not be up to the emulator used instead of the input created by the TASer.
Here, the input and subsequent result is obviously quite different.
Oh, of course. So I can try to obsolete a playaround that uses a less accurate emulator with the exact same emulator used because....well, this run did it so why not?
If the newer playaround is much more entertaining, shorter to get to the fun stuff, and shows off things the previous one didn't... why would it not be accepted? That's how it already works with playaround TASes, right?
Itsbrown4606 wrote:
Patashu wrote:
FractalFusion executed a program that allowed him to write directly from the game's input into RAM, so he could have rewrote Pokemon Yellow into anything but settled for making pi-themed graphics.
So, you're basically saying they did the exact same thing, albeit with different results.
From what I've read they used the same strategy to set up, but the program they input was different, and FF's program took input to modify the screen as well.
Ok. Still..what's the point of "Masterjun's GBC Pokémon Yellow in 01:11.06" which according to the comments, is pretty much identical to the current published run but done in BizHawk if VBA is totally fine with GB(C) games?
The concern there is that the differences may or may not be up to the emulator used instead of the input created by the TASer.
Here, the input and subsequent result is obviously quite different.
Before I comment, can somebody clear something up for me...
I know it's slower in "realtime" because the emulator used is more accurate, but is that the only difference? Without this difference would they both be the same speed?
Isn't that what this discussion has been about since the start?
Yes, that is exactly what I was commenting on.
RachelB wrote:
And i am sorry, but there is just no requirement for something to be "distributed through official channels and listings from the originating company/entity" for it to be considered released. It may not be an official release, but an unofficial release is still a release.
Complain all you want, but the TASVideos published runs/suggestions and ROM dumpers disagree (which is what I was pointing out, and what pertains to this run).As I have linked multiple times, both groups have different standards and practices for software released through the original person/channel, and patches/updates released through other means. When it comes to TASes this generally only comes into practice with translation patches, but user-created bugfixes for ROMs are out there as well (it's just TASvideos generally likes more bugs so I don't think I've ever seen anybody complain about that).
Both groups can release programs and patches, but in the ROM world there's a distinction between official releases and non-official ones. This distinction (and subsequent categorization) is important for preservation, and it's what TASVideos goes by. ROM hacks of official games can be included on TASVideos if they are popular and well-made enough (obvious Super Demo World mention here), but they're put up as different games because they are not official releases by the people who made the original software it's based on.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
(my guess is that some people, like me, find the use of easy suicide to be sketchy and are trying to find a rules loophole to ban it instead of saying that stylistically it's just bad)
Which is why I'm making sure to bring up plenty of examples from already-posted speedruns, often of games people particularly love. That way, hopefully it's harder for them to lie to themselves since more would potentially be at stake if they took an actual stance, 'ya know? It's easier to post "This game I don't like should not be allowed" than "This game I don't like should not be allowed, and you should also remove these four runs of this game I personally like too".
Also inb4 "No TASes that show less than five colors on screen at once." :P
Definite improvements, the side-by-side was a little confusing at first until I realized that the right half was waiting for the left one to catch up between rooms. The ice was a nice touch as said, but there were some "entertainment" parts that looked a little sloppier due to the faster movement (later skidding/stopping area), but it's not a large tradeoff for entertainment or anything, and likely wouldn't even be noted without a side-by-side.
PKFC wrote:
It seems to me that every Castlevania TAS has a new movement, but it beats Jonathan/Charlotto anyway :P
That is not what the word means. Something can be unofficially released. Or it can be released for free and not sold. There is no requirement for the release to be commercial, or even legal for it to be a release.
The fact that tasvideos prefers official releases, or that game companies don't recognize unofficial releases is entirely irrelevant to the meaning of the word "release".
edit:
but it's not an official release.
the fact that you need to modify the word release with "official" proves my point.
Because semantics rule all, eh?
I clarified my previous post and added more examples. "Released" includes "being available" as one of it's aspects, but it has more criteria than simply "being available".
$made_available = array("exists", "made available to public");
$released = array("exists", "made available to public", "distributed through official channels and listings from the originating company/entity");
Does ($released == $made_available) evaluate to true or false? :P
"Released" and "made available" are identical in meaning.
The TASvideos policies on ROM hacks and fan translations beg to differ (Cave Story and Star Ocean being the examples that come to mind immediately being TASed in their original release form despite the translations having been available and finalized for years), as does the suggestion on older/buggy versions where the bug is not crucial to the gameplay.
As I stated "released" refers to a commercial/official sense, "made available" means available in general (often via test releases or alternative dumps). They both involve a user being able to obtain the version in question, but one is official while one is unofficial, and that matters in many cases.
For example, you will never seen the Chrono Trigger prototype up on any official US or Square/SE game listings because it is not a "released" title (it was only given to certain demo places, not for retail sale). Nor will you see "Mother" for the NES on official Nintendo listings, because it's not a "released" title, even though it was like 99% finished.
And the reason version 2.0 is still the version of VVVVVV that Steam users are getting is because 2.0 is the most recent official "release", which is what pertains to this run.RachelB wrote:
There is no requirement that it be sold to be considered a release.
Selling is the most common way that the games people TAS were originally obtained, but no, that's doesn't mean there's no differences. For example Cave Story for the PC is free, but TASvideos still insists on using the Japanese version because it's the release, whereas the translation is what people would call "aftermarket". It's available, but it's not an official release.
TASVideos is not the only place that makes a distinction between official/proper releases, and ones that are simply "made available". Take the ROM dumping scene in general (which is someting TASVideos is highly dependent on).
This is the DS scene ROM dump info for the "Arseus Distribution 2010".
This is a dump of a physical DS game cart that was send around to places like GameStop and such, who would put it in a DS, set it to distribution mode, and then leave it running somewhere in the store, so people who came in with a pokemon game could pick up the event via the DS's local wireless option (nifi). There is no release/dump number (XXXX) because it was never an official release, it was meant to be sent out to participating shops and then sent back (and seeing as how only a few of these have been dumped, we assume they were strict about getting these special carts back).
This is something that was never official released... but it's available, so the info on it (and the dump itself, not available at the site) is recorded for preservation.
EDIT: Prettied up the URLs and spacing and clarified junk.
Exception: People have been known to TAS unreleased versions of a game in the case where the game was never released.
I guess "Made available" is a better term than "released" since it also covers ROM hacks like Super Demo World?
"Made available" is exactly what released means.
If it was, then I and others would not have 2.0 installed on our machines even though 2.1 was apparently made over a year ago. :P
"Released" means an official commercial sense, generally retail.
"Made available" means available but not through the commercial channel.
In the case of VVVVVV you need to hunt out and download the beta update on the forums. Steam and such will not update for you.
In the case of Minecraft you need to download the weekly snapshots and install them manually (file replacement). The launcher will not update to snapshots, only to official releases.
See, TASvideos doesn't give a shit about development.
This statement is very misleading.
BizHawk is living proof that TASVideos cares about development. See also BizHawk vs. FCEUX, BizHawk vs. lsnes vs. Snes9x, etc.
(Even when restricted solely to "video-game development", I would avoid putting forth such a generalization.)
Alright, I'll clarify.
"You can't TAS something you don't have, so versions that were never released are not of technical concern. In any game's development there's tons of intermediary builds between the releases, but if we don't have those they're not of concern to the naming and selection scheme."
Zelda: OOT alone has more versions than most Windows games that are TAS-able (in general, not referring to Hourglass's progress).
There are always outliers, especially if you're going to pick from the very top of the pile in terms of re-releases and ports
OOT, an outlier? Right. You might want to go actually check out the contents of this site some time.
Donkey Kong Country
http://tasvideos.org/3075S.html - Version 1.0, out of seven (2 JP, 2 EU, 3 US).
Donkey Kong Country 2
http://tasvideos.org/3578S.html - Version 1.0, out of seven (2 JP, 1 EU, 2 G, 2 US).
http://tasvideos.org/3259S.html - Version 1.1. Same game, different goals so a different version.
Final Fantasy 2 (VI)
http://tasvideos.org/2033S.html - Version 1.1, out of three (1 JP, 1 EU, 2 US).
Killer Instinct
http://tasvideos.org/1338S.html - Version 1.0, out of three (1 EU, 2 US).
Mortal Kombat II
http://tasvideos.org/1637S.html - Version 1.0, out of five (1 JP, 2 EU, 2 US).
Speedy Gonzales
http://tasvideos.org/3650S.html - Version 1.0, out of two (2 US).
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
http://tasvideos.org/3312S.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/3865S.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/2282S.html - Version 1.0, out of seven (3 JP, 2 EU, 2 US).
Yes, all three TASes by different authors, all three accepted. They use the first US release, which was after the THREE Japanese ones (1.0, 1.1, and 1.2), but before the two EU ones (1.0 and 1.1).
And there's other SNES ones I'm not sure on, like the Street Fighter 2 one, or Wario's Woods...
Anyways that list is just with a quick CTRL+F for "v1" on the SNES Stars/Moons page. If I went through the Vault page and other systems as well I'm sure I could find a lot more examples.
Using the fastest specific version (even if it's an older one) is the norm for TASing.Tangent wrote:
but if you want to compare number of updates from that area for top games, then Civ 2, a game that came out two years earlier than OoT has had literally over a hundred. Starcraft, a fellow 1998 game, has around 30.
Those games are by far fewer in number, and can be handled specifically when they come. The majority of PC games out there have little to no updates.
Tangent wrote:
PC development follows a very different course for this kind of thing than console and I think should be treated differently due to that.
See, TASvideos doesn't give a shit about development. TASers are concerned with the final product. If it's not a release (we don't have public access to a confirmed dump), it's not an option for TASing.
For example if you dive into lots of ROMs, you can actually find hidden build numbers and dates. But we don't use those. We don't look at Super Mario 64.n64 and call it "Build 2852", we call it "1.0". Then the next isn't called "Build 2855", we call it "1.1" (build numbers pulled out of my ass).
Tangent wrote:
I wouldn't mind if it were either the first version or the most recent, but updating to a specific short lived intermediary version rubs me the wrong way.
/$.02
As I just showed, this is not new. TASes have been doing it for ages.
Also...
2.0 is still the current version (and I can use R to kill myself in it). Anything past that is a beta released on the forums. This has already been posted.
tl;dr: There is no problem.
I'd prefer "no death mode" because it's always annoying to see a run be played "perfectly" for 15 minutes, then suddenly take damage at just one part. It looks flawed.
Having eight versions (quite a few of them identical gameplay-wise) is nothing compared to the typical PC game.
What typical PC game? The majority out there get few, if any, re-releases. There are some games that are patched constantly, but those tend to be MMOs and (multi-machine) multiplayer games, which are outside the scope of a TAS (multi-machine TASes do exist, but there is no data link between them, let alone any client-server architecture, they just run different games starting at the same moment).
Even now with being able to TAS some windows games, this is the only time people have brought up opposition, and it's not even due to the number of updates, but due to picking one in the middle.
Some console games that are TASed quite often here have far more updates and re-releases than your average PC game. The whole concept of fixing bugs and releasing an updated edition didn't start with modern PC gaming, and TASvideos has dealt with it just fine.
Blazephlozard wrote:
And, like I said, the huge issue I see is using one specific release, besides the first release, because it has the most bugs. They use 1.0 in OOT because it has the most glitches, as expected.
IIRC they use JP because it has the quickest text, seeing as Japanese uses a phonetabet (or whatever the right word is) instead of an alphabet. This isn't where the concerned timing improvements come from, but it contributes to the overall shortness of the video (ease of watching) which is why it's the version people are running and beating (instead of going back to U).
Blazephlozard wrote:
When it's a glitch not in the previous version, and not in the next version, it's a lot different
Twilight Princess for the Wii includes a picture with the magic meter on the back of the box, and there's one area in the game where you can let a blue chu chu and yellow chu chu mix to make a green chuchu, kill it, and get the magic potion (complete with missing description text since it was dummied out early).
That's a mistake in that version, and that does not exist in the GC version (which spawns a purple chu chu instead). So Twilight Princess for the Wii should not be TASed, and the Gamecube version should be used instead because it's the one that has the proper intended behavior? After all they're the same game (minus the maps being flipped to account for holding the wiimote in your left hand).
A bug doesn't have to be introduced after the initial release in order to be considered a bug. Ports and localizations often have fixed bugs because of the extra time taken, but they can introduce bugs as well. What if U version 1.0 of a game had a bug that U 1.1 fixed, but was not in J x.x and U was a localization after J? I'm willing to bet we can find some games like that that are already on TASvideos...
Blazephlozard wrote:
kind of like you're playing a broken version of the game, a mistake.
Oh, hey, what about Zelda: Link's Awakening? The B/W version has a bug that can break the game so bad, somebody made a "playaround" video (yes, of a Zelda RPG), and it got accepted (star tier, no less). So this was the mistake version and the color version should be used instead?
If TASvideos was only limited to the "non-mistake" versions, a hell of a lot of TASes would have to be trimmed from the site. :P
Blazephlozard wrote:
It should be in a category of its own.
Eh, debatable, but no input from me right now.
Blazephlozard wrote:
TAS is about breaking a game, not playing an already broken game, yeah?
What? TASers are encouraged to do research and find all the tricks and bugs that they can and learn how to exploit them. It's the entire reason there's "game resource" pages, and some even include animated GIFs (or video clips) on how to cause various bugs.
Blazephlozard wrote:
And this is an issue that's really only come up in this era of rapid patching. None of it really applies to this run, but, I think these questions are going to have to be answered for the future of Windows TAS, and I don't think the answer should be allowing any version at all.
I fail to see how this is a "windows TAS" issue. Zelda: OOT alone has more versions than most Windows games that are TAS-able (in general, not referring to Hourglass's progress).
Assassin's Creed? 1.0.2.
Assassin's Creed 2? 1.01.
Bastion? 1.0.
Eufloria? 2.0.
Limbo? 1.0.0.1.
Plants Versus Zombies? 1.2.
Shadowgrounds? 1.0.0.1.
Space Pirates And Zombies? 1.5.
Super Crate Box? 1.0.
Those are some of my games on Steam, which I have set to automatically update (the rest either aren't suited for a TAS, or give no version info in their manifest). The majority of them have less releases (note that not every version is a release) than Zelda 64.
Yes, there are some binaries that get updated to like version 3.21.42.24 and junk, but like I said those tend to be MMOs. Single-player games with a multiplayer aspect get relatively more updates as well, but they tend to middle-ground it (like Borderlands 2 is 1.3.1, Diablo II is 1.13d, Terraria ia 1.1.2) and aren't as unmanageable.
Blazephlozard wrote:
Obviously you can't, but I'd hope in 10 years you can! TAS can't be about N64 and below forever!
Well there are DS and Wii(ware) TASes already, but yeah, emulation as a form of preservation is important.
EDIT: Typo fixed.
The whole issue of 2.0 vs. 2.1 here is very important to the future of PC (and newer consoles) TAS I think, as brought up before.
Why? There's no restrictions for any other supported system. People TAS various versions of NES/SNES games all the time. Hell, the current Zelda 64: OOT TASes (both!) use the japanese 1.0 release, which is the first of eight versions (3 JP, 2 EU, 3 US).
Blazephlozard wrote:
But, I think it's important to think about the rules on what version numbers of a frequently-patched game are allowed. And in the case of consoles, could you even get the in-between versions? I know on 360 you can play the version on the disc, or patch it to the current version. It's not like every version of a patched game is stored somewhere. It's different than, "This cartridge I'm holding is 1.0. This other cartridge is 1.1." Patches overwrite the old game.
I don't know. It's something to think about, because I think PC TAS has a bright future. Hopefully this isn't gibberish.
Last I checked you can't TAS the 360. :P TASes are created with emulators and game images, where it's no problem to feed the emulator a specific image. Even when game images can't be played on an emulator, they're still dumped almost as soon as they come out or update (see the 360 scene releases), and even when there's no way to play them people are dumping them (see the 3DS releases).
Playing games on an actual SNES it's hard to get a specific version just like it is on a 360. But with emulation and game images, it's no longer an issue for anything.
EDIT: Fixed spacing.
If you found the movie entertaining, then vote yes.
2.0 is still the current version (and I can use R to kill myself in it). Anything past that is a beta released on the forums. This has already been posted.
tl;dr: There is no problem.