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I have been doing some work for other online communities in terms of archiving pieces of media (such as books, images, movies, etc.) that have fallen into the public domain (meaning that they are now free of any copyright restrictions) due to expiration, failure to renew, etc.
Because of the (relative) newness of the video game medium, I assumed for a long time that it would have been impossible that any video game would have fallen into the public domain in the United States accidentally. By "accidentally" I mean, "due to failure to comply with required formalities". But then I recently learned about this from [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Hirtle_chart the Hirtle chart] that I may have skimmed over before, which reads:
"[Works first published in the US, that were published from] 1978 through 28 February 1989 [that were] published without a copyright notice, but without subsequent registration at the copyright office within 5 years [are] in the public domain due to failure to comply with required formalities."
In other words, it is quite possible that, if I could find some obscure games without copyright notices that were released before February 28, 1989, and do some research to confirm that they were not registered with the copyright office either, that we might be able to consider them among the rare examples of public domain video games.
So, since I'm admittedly no expert on games from the 70s or the 80s, I wanted to appeal to you guys to find some possible candidate games for me. To reiterate, the requirements I ask for are:
* The game must have been first published in the US before the exact date of February 28, 1989. If it was first published elsewhere, such as Japan, it doesn't count.
* The game must lack a copyright notice within the game itself (at least), or on the cartridge art/box art/etc. if it was ever sold with those at all.
* Please also verify that if there are other versions of the game, for example if there was one version released for Atari and another for Commodore, that there is not another version of the game that includes a copyright notice. This would in effect make the public-domain status of the one version of the game without a notice moot.
If you know of or can find any games that meet these requirements, please let me know here and I can do the rest of the research (if you hadn't already done that yourself). Thanks!
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I very strongly disagree with using "Disney" as part of the game's title here. One might argue that that is this game's full name, and to that I say it is not. Just because the Disney logo appears on this game's cover above the title does not mean that it is part of the title. On the bottom left corner of the Super Mario 64 DS case stands the Nintendo logo. So should we here call it "Super Mario 64 DS Nintendo"?
Furthermore, until now this is the first time I've ever heard the game referred to as "DISNEY Adventures in the Magic Kingdom." Whether or not this is the full name of the game, which I disagree that it is, it's still not nearly common enough to warrant a publication under that name. Even its own Wikipedia article doesn't use that as the article title, or even list that even ONCE as the game's full name.
It is simply called "Adventures in the Magic Kingdom." Nothing more, nothing less. It bothers me that it is referred to under this name at all, anywhere, much more that it happened on this site.
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I liked the fast pace of this TAS, and I also enjoyed the messing around you did during the autoscrollers. Plus, just a cute little game in general. Because of this, I voted yes. Great job!
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What a surprise! Of course I found this very entertaining, well done, and I definitely support this run's publication on the site.
But for some reason the category name "jumpless" seems less appropriate than "no B button". I would suggest to change that category name.
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I want to say THANK you 100 times over for making this TAS! I was gonna do it myself, but coulda woulda shoulda. This was one of my favorite games as a kid.
Awesome job, yes vote!
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This is a quite interesting question to pose here. This is something I have thought about for a long time, but never bothered to bring it up.
It is quite possible in this community and many similar gaming communities that most female members wish to keep their gender a secret, or sometimes even lie and say they're male, and they would presumably do this out of the fear that they will attract unnecessary attention to themselves, or worse face literal discrimination, just for being female. I'm not saying that one should give female members unnecessary bias or attention but I could definitely see that kind of thing happening. So I would say that there are probably a lot more female TASers than we think there are. But regardless, even with that approach, I can surely say that the male population here greatly outnumbers the female population, because as was said above, whether it's good or bad or whatever, this activity is much more likely to be appealing to males.
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Well, I was going to TAS this game actually, but you beat me to it. It's a game from my childhood. Congratulations on completing this, I must say. Voted yes.
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Very cool run. I like how this run lets you see more of the game, while still preserving some cool glitches, such as the wall-jump and through-wall glitches. Definite yes vote.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
I see my yardstick was unnecessarily harsh. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Don't worry about it, man. These borderline cases are always tough to judge. I want you to know that I don't think any less of you as a judge, and never did. A friend of mine worried this whole thing may make you lose confidence for this position; please do not lose confidence because of this. I hope most that this controversy helped those involved learn and helped the community and its understanding grow. I don't see it to be a negative experience. I hope others can agree.
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Alyosha wrote:
I do agree that this run is trivial in the sense that it does not stand out from unassisted play, but I'm glad for the opportunity to have more clarification on what aspects go into deciding that.
In partiuclar, does performing glitches that don't save time (supposing they are very difficult to perform real time) make the run 'stand out' in the sense we are interested in here? This seems to be a large part of the disagreement here, from what I can see.
It's not just glitches that don't save time; there are glitches that save time too that are nearly impossible to perform non-TAS perfectly, especially in one single sitting throughout an entire playing session from start to finish, such as the four mushroom trampolines where you can hit under them if from the right position and with the right jump height. This has to be extremely precise, and cannot be replicated. Like I said, I tried doing it without savestates/slowdowns, and after many, many attempts I wasn't even able to bounce from the bottom of a mushroom as the TAS does even once. Not even once! Also, the glitch with the train.
If the entire run is really trivial, then try taking out all the trivial parts, and only judge the parts that aren't trivial. It would be accepted if the run only consisted of these non-trivial parts. Thus, the trivial sections of other games, such as games with a few autoscrollers in them but also having legitimate platforming sections, such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Potion Commotion (http://tasvideos.org/3520M.html), do not lead to them being rejected. So, with this argument, even if trivial sections are most of the run, as long as there are some parts with actual gameplay then the run would not be rejected.
I think most of the arguments for rejecting this run are due to lack of understanding of the game. This is understandable, since the run has the mask of a basic game, but still has non-trivial elements nonetheless. Also, the elements that look superhuman are parts of actual gameplay; I'm not counting any of the menuing that might look superhuman (which surprisingly, most of the text-scrolling in this game is one of the LEAST superhuman-looking things about the game).
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xy2_ wrote:
And, if it's not clear enough what I am really arguing against here: I'm arguing against TASing bad games in general. It goes against the spirit of TASing, and has no real point. The rules we have (notability notably) are a nice cutoff point now, because if we accept games that just have some things different enough in TAS, that have some cool tricks, as in, we follow RSY's definition, then what stops me from making a game that just walks right on a platform with some holes in the ground, and then say "but this TAS is different from a would-be unassisted play, because my jumps were optimal"?
What stops me from taking a hundred garbageware games with a same engine and different branding, one or two glitches that make them "stand out" according to RSY's definition, and them submit them in droves? It's actually worse than useless, because people might expect something useful and waste 30 seconds of their lifes. People looking at submissions may not even see good runs because of all the bad games. And if they get accepted because of some dumb "following the rules" because, well, technically, these are games for RSY, then we just end up with a bunch of wasted time encoding and 100 new TASes that nobody has interest about, not even the maker. This is hyperbole, but it illustrates my point a little.
Apologies for posting twice, but I just saw you edited the first post with this.
Once again, TASVideos has a system. That system is meant to be impartial. The argument you're giving to me here is actually an argument against the Vault itself, not an argument that makes this game ineligible for the Vault. The Vault is known for containing games than people would generally see as boring, but still have impressive technical qualities. The "flipping through submissions just to find good ones" thing is why we have tiers separated. You can see by the icon of the moon or the star icon that a TAS is deemed both entertainingly and technically impressive by our standards. I don't see this becoming a particular problem.
Really, if you think about it, it's the developers' faults. If they all wanted these games to be good, it's them who should have made good games. TASVideos is only meant to show off gameplay of the result of the end-process of making a game, which is the game itself of course. TASVideos is not MetaCritic. We're not here to review games; only to show them being played. But of course, by this argument, maybe I shouldn't have filled my submission text up with shocking complaints about how bad the game is, and instead only focused on the technical aspects. But I had to publicly vent somewhere.
And do you really think that any game with the word "Noddy" or "Bob the Builder", for instance, in the title would actually be expected to be good? Not a chance.
The opinion presented here against TASing bad games just to TAS them is not going to cause them to be rejected because of this. The whole process doesn't care why something was TASed. It only cares that it was submitted, and evaluates the TAS and not the player.
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xy2_ wrote:
Then, let's clarify my position.
The question: is this game eligible for vault? Even a simple glance could tell you that it is not entertaining enough to be in Moons.
To answer this, it's interesting to look at why Vault was made. Before Vault, TASes were made to show mastery over a target (as I developed earlier), but there were also TASes which, when made, simply ended less interesting than others. Unfortunately, these TASes were rejected because they were not entertaining enough, by the standard of the judges.
There are flaws with this (mostly that games which a small body can judge non-entertaining can be entertaining to some), which, among other things, led to creation of the Vault.
However, the important thing is that the Vault, as stated, is "for record-keeping purposes."
Even the Vault - which, by its design, is a "dumping" tier for less entertaining games; scary black icon, separate portion for vault and moon/stars - still needs the criteria of the game actually being a game. There's no acceptance of bad games that don't even qualify as games in the vault.
So, our criteria here is a game which qualify as a real game. What's a real game? It's defined a little in the Vault rules, under Game choices. I'll cover some other criteria as well, but the main idea is justifying if this game is a real game or not. Why do we need this distinction? Because otherwise, there is no limit to what kinds of "games" you can submit; whether they be even games or just simple program with no goals, educational games, visual novels (which are not games), choose-your-own-adventure. Or, more closely to this case, games which masquerade as one but are not (Barney's Hide and Seek, for example.)
And, since Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was brought up, I'll try to evaluate it as well along with this game. Let's evaluate the two main points needed for this game to get in Vault:
Game is definable as a game
Both of these are definable as games; they have a start, an ending, with gameplay throughout.
Non-trivial
Here, I'll cover the two other points:
* the game must be non-trivial. That would mean, a game that consists only of going right would be rejected (trivial.)
* the game needs to stand out from unassisted play.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is non-trivial. Can the same be said from this game?
Well, the game is certainly easy, it's certainly slow, but it's also non-trivial. There is no "trivial strategy" that can be used here; it's a platformer with goals, you can die, there are parts with difficulty.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stands out from unassisted play. The majority of the run is very different from even the best speedrun. Is this game the same?
We are answered: it stands out from unassisted play, because there are hard things, and you can fail at doing these hard things. We are also answered: there are tricks you can do TAS-only, therefore it is different from unassisted play.
For hard things that you can fail at: this is a rather weak argument. If I spent some time training at this game unassisted, then speedrun it, I would not fail at those glitch segments, even if they are frame perfect. Because the rest of the game is very easy anyways, with only those parts to train, it would be easy to match a TAS.
So, let's give the author the benefit of the doubt, and say that, the second argument, there are tricks you can do TAS-only (and not without a real human getting enough practice) is true. Does that make the game different enough from unassisted play?
My answer is no. Maybe the judge's answer will be different, who knows? The vast majority of the game is either autoscrollers or very easy movement. The only thing that would distinguish a TAS and a non-TAS run would be these small TAS-only segments. But otherwhise, the runs would be the same! Here there is no difference between TAS and non-TAS.
Conclusion
So, I can say: this game is trivial. And this brings us to the very first point I made in my first post. There is no point in TASing these games. Even TAS does not separate from unassisted play, the games are just too bad to be able to give TASing material, let alone entertainement material. I think it would be better to focus on TASing real games, for improving as a TASer and for the audience. Don't TAS for the sake of TASing, TAS a game instead.
Everything that you said on the first 3 quarters of your post supports this game being entered into the Vault.
Let's look at your post. First, at the top, you say that "Both of these are definable as games; they have a start, an ending, with gameplay throughout." After that, you negate this statement by saying "I think it would be better to focus on TASing real games, for improving as a TASer and for the audience. Don't TAS for the sake of TASing, TAS a game instead." So make up your mind; don't say two things that contradict each other, especially not in the same post, or else your point becomes less clear.
I would rather say that our definition of what is and isn't a game and what is and isn't trivial actually go hand-in-hand. I would call Noddy: A Day in Toyland a game, for sure. Let's compare it to some other games that I've TASed in the past; one that already has been rejected, and one that was never submitted but definitely would be rejected.
http://tasvideos.org/5332S.html This is DS Victorious: Taking the Lead. It's a game that consists purely of time-based rhythm minigames. Basically the same thing as autoscrollers, except worse. The only parts, literally, that look superhuman are the text and menuing. That's not considered part of the actual game itself; you might as well just click on links on the web at superhuman speeds. Also consider the amount of effort that cannot be taken into this game. I mean we're talking about an almost 45 minute movie with only 2.5k rerecords, and I was seriously doing my best work and effort I could with this game. The only thing that I could have done to put more effort in was pressing the rerecord button over and over for no reason other than just to do it. Noddy: A Day in Toyland took an exponentially larger amount of effort and rerecording than Victorious did.
Another example is the game https://youtu.be/HdYoU_8qr74 DS The Story of Noah's Ark. Ironic how I keep mentioning DS games? Well, this game technically is a game (minigame collection) but the run itself does not even exhibit any of the game's actual gameplay. The only completion goal in this game that you can really do is to flip through the storybook and get to the end. By the way, I also happened to test it out, and you can stop reading the storybook in the middle, but when you bring it back up later you have to start again on the page you left off, so no, there is no real ending skip. This run would get rejected really fast if ever submitted. In fact, I've actually thought about submitting this as an April Fools submission. Maybe this year...
These are both examples of games that are rejected for trivial gameplay or only being non-trivial in skipping menuing and text. Technically the very beginning of the Noah's Ark run exhibits superhuman gameplay that cannot be replicated by an actual person. Pressing the DS stylus twice in only 3 frames to skip to the book is not able to be done by a human being. But again, that's just menuing.
Another thing I want to really point out is the effort it took to make this. As I said above, the final Noddy: A Day in Toyland submission, with 5k rerecords, doesn't even reflect the entirety of the actual rerecord count, as there were parts where I had to route the train level by doing it over and over again 5 times on separate movie files (I always back up my movies anyway to stay safe, and every version of them). But 5k rerecords in itself is more than enough for an 18 minute movie of a mostly easy game.
As for these:
"* the game must be non-trivial. That would mean, a game that consists only of going right would be rejected (trivial.)
* the game needs to stand out from unassisted play."
Just think about it like this. Hypothetical situation: assume that most of the rest of the parts of this game that are trivial are literally taken out, and the entire run consisted only of the non-trivial parts of the game. Would it still be accepted then? The answer is yes, it would be accepted. So, now add in all the extensive non-trivial sections. It's still the same thing. So yes, the run would be accepted. Is the game trivial? No, it's not. I mentioned several examples earlier of glitches and tricks that are almost impossible to replicate perfectly in one single sitting like is done in the TAS. I want to especially stress bouncing up those mushrooms perfectly in the last level. To be fair with you here, when I TAS games, it's often that I'll sort of mess around with the tricks and stuff without using slowdowns or savestates just to sort of get a feel for what I'm about to do in the TAS. So yeah, I know both the TAS capabilities and non-TAS capabilities of every game I TAS quite well; a TASer is supposed to really know their game really well. So, in that particular part of the TAS, I actually kept trying to go up those mushrooms with even a close amount of perfection to the TAS, and not once was I able to bounce on them from below, as is done in the TAS. Not a single time. Sure, you can go up them normally without missing a mushroom, that's easy, but of course it wastes time and it doesn't look nearly as perfect as the TAS does.
I only brought up Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because you were suggesting that extremely boring games are not worth TASing. I guess DJMH may be viewed as an exceptional case to that theory if you think about it, though, because the game has received a cult following in recent years for being so bad now because of AVGN stressing it so much in his videos. But there are plenty more examples of boring games that arguably are not "worth TASing", such as Postman Pat and the Greendale Rocket, as mentioned in the submission text, but it still got accepted.
I don't agree with your philosophy about which games are worth TASing and which ones aren't. Don't get me wrong, I see where you're coming from; lots of TASers here have given similar arguments to me in other situations. But the fact of the matter is that when I TAS, I'm being impartial. I'm not at all focusing on the quality of the game; only the technical aspects that need to be considered in order to make the most optimized TAS possible. In other words, I'm not even a human being.
...that was a joke. But seriously, complain about the game all you want, and trust me, I know the game is bad, but that doesn't mean it doesn't belong. It also doesn't mean that there is any reason why it shouldn't be TASed. Arguably, to make a more complete TASVideos site, as many games as possible that would even closely pass for Vault, or by a chance get even better than that, should be submitted. Another good thing about this whole thing is that sometimes judges and staff need to be challenged in these sort of borderline situations. This helps improve the accuracy of the judging system and the experience of the judges. It may also challenge certain prerequisites or rules, or perhaps it may cause the rules to be written differently or more clearly; some people have even suggested changing the way they are worded because of this particular situation. So, every TAS, especially ones that can be published here, has its benefits. Also, every TAS helps TASers learn new things and helps them to increase their own experience. This is why a TASer recently submitted a run of an extremely easy game; that Barney game. Even though I think it'd be rejected, it still was a milestone in his own personal achievements one way or another.
But whatever your philosophy is about what is or isn't "worth TASing", that's not really directly connected with Vault rules. The process is different from the result; any runs that are rejected simply cannot be published on this site, but they still can have value elsewhere, such as YouTube.
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xy2_ wrote:
xy2_ was right. It is possible not to be entertained by a TAS you made yourself.
In that case, I don't think there's much point in making these types of runs. Let's take a quotation from True:
True wrote:
The art of TAS has surpassed merely playing a game. TASing is the game itself, and sometimes even that is eclipsed by making things play that game for you too. Metagaming of sorts. The best players of this game know how to break all the rules, and this necessitates understanding the architecture and peculiarities of the target, and of the tools used to work said target.
For people that engage in reverse-engineering, the last part is familiar. TASing is comparable to it in a few ways: you have a target (a fixed program/game which you cannot modify) and exploit/find bugs/glitches in the target. Doing so requires understanding of the target, whether it be just surface analysis (casual 'glitch-hunting' to understand the mechanics of the game) to full-fledged disassembly (requiring an extreme amount of time and mastery). The difference is that the TAS, instead of just stopping at finding exploits, uses this new knowledge in order to make the TAS.
However, the main difference between these two is the nature of the target. For a TAS, the game is of critical importance: even the most optimised TAS will pale in entertainment behind even a less skillful TAS of a high-profile game. Thankfully, the TASer has the choice of the target.
Where am I leading here? In my opinion, TASing games like this is completely missing the point of what I said above: TASing a bad game doesn't make it easier for the TASer; it actually makes it way harder! It is a surface approach to TASing, which amounts to the same thing as just playing the game casually, in my opinion. If the game is bad, but has elements that, in TAS, can make it a good game, then it's worth it. But this game has none of that.
Is this game good? No. Noddy moves so slowly that you would probably be capable of holding the right button a good 20 seconds without nothing happening. The car levels are slow and boring. There is no way to speed anything up. (In contrast, real games don't just consist of walking left and right.) So, the only thing left to optimize is turning around and jumping. As it turns out, these are basic platformer mechanics; and a frame perfect turning around and jumping.. it's kind of the point of a TAS to be frame perfect, because you can control every single input on every single frame.
Maybe this game has some value for record keeping? Well, nobody speedruns, plays, or even cares about this game at all. In fact, it's hard to find a person that cares about it at all, considering even its maker - the one that probably, out of all the people here, knows the most about this game, considers it crappy.
So, there's not much point in making these types of runs, because the medium is just bad. In my opinion, TASing is a very unique activity, which is hard to master but can create very good runs - but there's no point to bog it down with bad games which make even the TASer look bad. If you don't even enjoy the game or like the run you're doing, then there's no point to make the run.
Taking TASing as an independent activity in of itself, and not as something which is very tied to a game, leads to these kinds of runs, in my opinion - the runner doesn't TAS a real game, or something which they enjoy, but rather something bad (on purpose?) for close to no reason. Maybe it is something that you can do in isolation, and if that makes you learn new concepts, then go for it - on the other hand, if they are just boring runs on bad games done for the sake of them, that you don't like, it's not really good for publication even in Vault.
I see your point. However, as said above, the quality of the game is not really taken into account here. The reason this is a borderline case is because there are some parts of the game that still have to be optimized, and which still differ from non-TAS play. No matter who cares about the game, or who likes it and who doesn't, that isn't a direct decision-making factor for Vault publication.
As for the game, yes it is boring, and yes most parts of gameplay is just walking right/left or autoscrolling, there are some factors in the game that are quite unique to TASes. These include not being hit once on the autoscrollers that have crappy hit detection, knowing every single coin you have to get in order to end up with 49 coins by the Skittle level (which is actually a big reason I continued TASing it in the first place), showing off frame perfect glitches.
Forgive me, let me elaborate more on frame-perfect glitches, as I didn't include one in my last post. The platform glitches, though they don't save time, still pretty major. And I mean you have to literally be frame perfect to get these to work. Trying to replicate these non TAS, it takes 20-30 tries to get correctly on the flat platform and OVER FIFTY TRIES on the elevator (which is a really long time of the elevator going up and down), let alone one single time while just walking like in the TAS. Also, in the last level there are a series of mushrooms you have to bounce up to get up the platforms. I do a glitch here to uppercut on the mushrooms. Doing the mushroom bounces this perfectly I think is nearly impossible to do without TAS tools. LITERALLLY impossible. Finally, the train teleport+jump glitches have to literally be frame perfect or else you take damage (in the train level). This is mentioned in the submission text.
So, the game looks basic, but there are superhuman elements to it that clearly distinguish it from non-TAS play. I would still consider it a game by our standards, though just barely. I and many others think this should be able to make it to Vault.
Also, remember Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
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Yes, I also questioned the rejection before.
I first want to note that in the last level of the game, there's a lot more optimization than previous levels. Particularly the moment where I fall through the branches is a trick that's pretty hard to do real-time. Jumping up several platforms at a time in such a frame-perfect way is also not very easy. The jump heights in this game are not fixed, and literally depend on frame-perfect action to be done just right (and only because this is such a crappy game).
And the platform glitches are certainly not easy to replicate in real time; they have to be quite frame perfect to be done successfully, even though they don't save any time. Those aren't easy.
The level "The Missing Skittle Children" is done based on routing beforehand. A real time runner would have to do a lot of work to memorize all those autoscrollers perfectly to get just the right amount of coins and not to get hit once by any of the objects on the ground. I routed it so that I'd get 50 coins in that level and be able to regenerate my health, allowing me to take more damage later. That's really hard to do with that amount of routing preciseness. The level itself is actually pretty difficult. You say this game is easy. Yeah, most of it is, but not this level. Normally, doing this level would rely on you having to do crazy maneuvering and shit to jump over at least some of the enemies rather than just skipping through them with damage. So yeah, this does differ from real time quite a lot, even though it doesn't look like it from afar.
Just try doing all four of the autoscrollers without getting hit once real-time. The autoscrollers are really long too, and the hit detection in the autoscrollers is terrible.
Also, what about Special Delivery from Noddy part 1 (the train level)? That level definitely has a considerable enough amount of action in it to be considered Vault-worthy. That level actually took hell to route. The amount of rerecords in this movie actually doesn't reflect all the rerecords it took to make this. The routing for the train level; I had to try 5 different routes. That's right. Doing the whole level 5 times through, TAS speed. This was one of the fastest routes, as in another one got me the exact same amount of time but whatever I just stuck with this one.
Plus on that level, you have the train tricks which have to be extremely frame precise to work properly.
I really highly recommend that this be rejudged. There's a lot that doesn't seem to have been taken into consideration here. Yes, there are relatively few parts that need to be optimized, but the parts that need to be optimized are solid and hard to distinguish from actual real-time attempts. The train level, the kid collecting level, and the final level in the game where you get the stall are all examples of levels in the game that are technically impressive enough to pass for Vault standards IMO. Even though the platform glitches don't save time, they're also nearly impossible to do perfectly real-time like was done in the TAS. Please, please reconsider this decision.
Not anything against the judge, but it didn't seem like very much time was spent judging this. I know the judge was frustrated by me using an earlier version, and TAStudio kept crashing, so it's at least understandable. But in process, the entire run and the entire game should be taken into exceedingly careful consideration no matter what before the final judgment is made. Please do not be offended by what I am saying, as I'm not trying to attack your position as a judge. I am only trying to be constructive and criticize in a positive manner.
Thank you all for bringing this up, and reading what I have to say. When responding or rejudging, please take all the points mentioned into careful consideration. Please know that this run did take quite an amount of effort to complete. It certainly took more effort than my Victorious: Taking the Lead submission, which definitely is a trivial game. But this game is quite different than that in many respects.
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Meerkov wrote:
While I think bad games have their place on this site... The fact it's a game for small children (very easy) with large autoscroller sections... This is really meh. There's a few times the camera jerks, which I assume had something to do with turning around because you're walking backwards (around 4:21). Or did it hit a wall? In either case, it at least seems like the fastest submission for this game the site will ever see. Giving a "meh".
Yes, the camera jerks every time I walk backwards. I do this quickly for a small shock to the audience, and because there's really not much else to do in this game for entertainment, especially since there's such a huge gap of time when you're doing basically nothing. I end up doing this trick a lot in the level Where Is Bumpy Dog?.
Note that this does not waste time.
There is a shit ton of time in this game where all you're doing is walking left or walking right, so it's really hard to come up with shit to do during that large gap of time. I think it would probably be accepted to Vault though, because there are a considerable amount of small moments when frame perfection does matter, especially when going up some platforms, and there's some routing in the run, such as with the 50 coins trick, and glitching for fun, such as with the elevator glitch.
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Well, that was a pretty big frame war.
Of course I find the run entertaining, as it's fast paced, and beats a really hard game in only (.1 less than) 8 seconds.
Nice routing too.
Yes vote.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/43987665422212528
Here's the 1 frame improvement, plus some added entertainment.
I must say I'm impressed by that improvement. I tried other routes without waiting on the Frogger stage with no success. Very clever!
Anyway, now I can be an author again, but adding Alyosha as an author.
Hopefully this will be the last improvement, so judges, please add this file to the submission.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/43967119220333596
Please replace the input file of this movie with a newer one. This one uses 2.2.1, and it improves the movie by a lot. It also improves Spike's version by 1 single frame, after I did a wall glitch in the Frogger level.