Okay, I actually dug up a copy of the game and checked that second point myself. You can return up whenever you want. As long as you move to the second screen, the mermaid will spawn on the first. You never actually need to collect the treasure, period. It advances you to the next stage whether you do or not. All collecting the treasure does is give you some points. It's entirely optional.
As this is categorized now, it's trivial to beat in real time, and I don't think any sort of 100% criteria fit.
First, a lot of things seem incredibly arbitrary, especially any bits of sacrificing time for entertainment when the end result is still dull as hell.
Second, from a casual check on Youtube, it looks like there's a glitch that lets you skip stages. Have you looked into that?
I posted something in the thread regarding the rule change a while back that's relevant here. If this is aiming for fastest time, it doesn't achieve it. The celebration for holes in one are just under 10 seconds long. It takes about 3-4 seconds to take a shot plus 3-4 seconds for the lesser Albatross or whatever fanfare. Time could be saved by adding a stroke to those holes. Since this is (presumably) under consideration for the Vault, there's a rule clarification/exception needed, unless the goal really is lowest time for these kinds of things.
What's the policy on intentional suboptimal play within the game's rules in order to save real time?
Example:
Kirby's Dream Course plays a long animation when you get a hole in one. It'd be faster to two-shot every hole. I can imagine other golf games doing similar things or just special celebration crap for rare 'amazing' plays across various other games.
In Kirby's Dream Course's case, I can't see there being much support for two-shotting each hole and/or playing them optimally for time instead of low score, but such a run would be acceptable to the vault under the new rules.
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Unrelated to the above. Since tennis games were brought up and declared to be ineligible for the vault due to triviality, there already is one in the vault that is the epitome of basic. The judge's comments on accepting it lay out a bunch of remarks about how tennis games are acceptable and what the criteria for them being accepted in the future will be.
http://tasvideos.org/4577S.html
You can't manipulate how fast lines come. When you turn in your tray, it erases lines from your end. If there are more lines to erase than you have, the extra ones overflow to the opponent's side.
Given that almost all of his matches are high score full straights, I'd assume that the long waits before cashing the tray is for luck manipulation. He should really confirm that though.
Some of the levels are longer and boring (e.g. the dance minigame), but others have additional content (playing through the full level 1 and 7 and 8). The easy mode skipped major portions of those levels.
Can you explain why playing through full levels rather than skipping through them is better?
To make sure it's clear, it's skipping levels (or removing objectives such as "reach end of level") BECAUSE it's on Easy, not a choice separate to that. Compare stage one for example. On Easy, it's one room. On Normal and Hard, it's that same room followed by two more. On the fish stage, if you die on Normal or Hard, you lose a life and have to try again. On Easy, you're automatically advanced to the next stage.
Also, the judge's decision on the previous one included:
the next run for this game (if it's done) should be on the hardest difficulty, and would obsolete this one.
Not that it should be the final word in matters, but I really didn't like that the previous one was accepted despite Easy mode skipping entire stages, removing nearly all the stage objectives, and handing out most of the powerups for free, so I definitely think this should obsolete the old, even if there are a few iffy spots, especially if this shows the old run had similarly iffy ones.
I think that categorizing a completely unbeatable game as "TAS-proof" is a bit of cheating. Of course it's "TAS-proof" if it's impossible to complete. That sounds like a complete triviality.
What I'm thinking with "a TAS-proof game" is one that is perfectly well beatable, but its game mechanics are such that TAS tools do not help beat it any better. In other words, TASing it offers no advantage over playing it normally: It's exactly as difficult either way.
It's hard to imagine such a game existing. I think it would have to be a kind of game that is not skill-based.
That's easy. Just make difficulty and input time trivial even in a non-TAS setting.
eg
A QTE-focused game like Dragon's Lair, for example, except with the button prompts being put up for 5 seconds and not proceeding until those 5 seconds are up. Trivially easy to do normally. TAS doesn't change that. Same argument can be made for sufficiently easy quiz games or Warioware-esque minigames that operate on a timer, or even certain auto-scrollers on the lowest most laughable difficulties. The advantages that TASing provides are irrelevant or even a burden in producing an equivilent run.
I explained the SRAM stuff above. It's completely irrelevant to the submission. I'm not sure why he included it.
I am, however, pretty skeptical that Shadow's the fastest character to clear Challenge Mode with. Stages/Opponents aren't random. It's always to 10 KOs, no matter how many opponents.
For Shadow, the opponent distribution is:
Stage 1: 2 (5 loops)
Stage 2: 1 (10 loops)
Stage 3: 2 (5 loops)
Stage 4: 3 (3.3 rounded up = 4)
Stage 5: 3 (4 loops)
So if we're counting loops of kills to reach 10, Shadow needs 28.
For Cream, the opponent distribution is:
Stage 1: 2 (5 loops)
Stage 2: 2 (5 loops)
Stage 3: 2 (5 loops)
Stage 4: 3 (4 loops)
Stage 5: 2 (5 loops)
Cream needs only 24.
Emerl, even with his terrible default moves, may also be in play (26 loops)
Stage 1: 3 (4 loops)
Stage 2: 3 (4 loops)
Stage 3: 3 (4 loops)
Stage 4: 1 (10 loops)
Stage 5: 3 (4 loops)
Sonic also has a better opponent distribution than Shadow (27).
Stage 1: 1 (10 loops)
Stage 2: 2 (5 loops)
Stage 3: 3 (4 loops)
Stage 4: 3 (4 loops)
Stage 5: 3 (4 loops)
How much faster would using Emerl be in comparison to use Shadow?
The description's really confusing and contains a ton of irrelevant stuff. Emerl's gimmick is that he's a custom character that's made up of other characters' moves, although also has unlockable super moves unique to him. Each move has a Skill Point cost to equip it. You gain Skill Points by playing the game. When you use Emerl in Challenge Mode, he uses whatever attacks he has equipped in Story Mode. What all that stuff about SRAM is just saying is more or less "doesn't use maxed out NG+ data."
The other glitch requires playing Story Mode for a very long time (IIRC, the required Virtual Training only unlocks right before the last boss, some 80ish fights in) and then switching to Challenge Mode. So again practically using NG+ data.
Those aren't relevant improvements any more than using NG+ would be a known improvement to a Chrono Trigger run, or using an unlockable super character would be. Certainly there's a very good argument as a separate category, ala the Metroidvania's bonus/super characters, but completely irrelevant to the standard setup for TASes.
How do you believe someone should provide evidence showing if a claim is incorrect or inaccurate in the future?
Let's assume that someone makes a claim. eg "In Mega Man 2, I chose Normal because bosses on Hard have 10 seconds of invincibility between hits." What do you believe is an appropriate way to show this is incorrect?
Coincidentally, Mega Man 2 is a good example of a platformer with an Easy mode that'd clearly be faster than the current run which I would hate to see obsoleted due to a difficulty change.
It depends on how much difference there is between the difficulties. I can't myself really think of any example game where runs of separate difficulty modes are sufficiently different (and where one does not completely obsolete the other in terms of content) to consider them distinct categories. So I'm inclined to say that difficulty settings would in most (if not all) cases not be considered separate categories, and the preferred difficulty run would obsolete the other difficulty run, regardless of which one is faster.
I can give an example. Valkyrie Profile. Its difficulties are a clusterfuck.
Easy:
Only Bad/Normal endings available
Easy dungeons only (some dungeons also shorter and/or begin with puzzles already solved)
Characters start at preset levels
Normal:
All 3 endings available
Easy and Normal dungeons available (~8 extra over Easy)
Characters start at preset levels
Hard:
All 3 endings available
Normal and Hard dungeons available (~9 extra over Normal)
Characters start at level 1
There are a bunch of further differences that happen because of those changes, mostly related to the pool of items available because of them (hard mode's collection is powerful enough to make its endgame much easier than other modes in regular play), but those are the core changes. Of course, for the Normal ending in any difficulty, you'd abuse a mechanic oversight and skip straight to the final dungeon and use various glitches/manipulation to kill the bosses.
An any% Normal Ending would probably be on Easy (shorter intro dungeon, everything else identical to Normal and not meaningfully different from hard (characters on level ~5 instead of 1), but a 100% Normal run and a 100% Hard run would feature about 30% different dungeons between them, more if you count 100%ing Hard Mode to include clearing the gigantic post-game Seraphic Gate that has the actual hardest bosses in the game. The Gate can be unlocked on Normal, but it's impossible to 100% (items from Hard dungeons are needed to unlock various chests and characters). I have no idea what you'd do re: 100% Normal Ending. I'd say it's not worth it personally, although that does mean an entire dungeon isn't in any 100% runs.
It'd probably be a messy mess.
Besides, considering the points you've been making in this thread, wouldn't it be more entertaining to challenge yourself to do the research and provide the evidence instead of just waiting for it to land in your lap?
To respond to both of you, in that thread, it was literally posted "I don't care how much evidence you post" after videos showing damage rates on different difficulties were posted. I have a hard time believing that the situation there was going to be improved by posting more evidence. Furthermore, "time saving skips couldn't be used" is the very definition of vague. People had to ask what those skips were, and when they were stated, the justifications for why they couldn't be used appeared to be incorrect because, as you said, health was never an issue and that was the only real limiting factor. To my knowledge even now there aren't any skips that couldn't be used on a higher difficulty. It was also stated that "more enemies spawn", which is only true for the few Mode 7 stages. Those statements were absolutely too vague and/or inaccurate.
I also do not agree with that if the outcome is the same, but requires more manipulation, strategy, and effort on a harder difficulty, that is a reason to not use it. That is the very definition of a harder difficulty. It is harder to do things. If anybody tried to use that as an excuse on games like Civilization, Street Fighter, or Gradius, it'd be rejected straight out because the manipulation and gameplay then IS so easy. What makes other games special?
Edit:
I also think "enemies cause lag" should be taken out entirely, as that could be used as a reason to not use the highest difficulty for just about every SHMUP, as well as tons of the crazy-ass things like IWBTG and clones or Princess Pitch ultra difficulties which thrive on screen-filling pandemonium. I'm not sure I can think of any games where I think that would apply well. Do you have any examples of which games in particular you were thinking of with that bullet?
While I completely understand why people feel the way they do about difficulties, in particular with easy difficulty over hard difficulties, I can not stand it when people use the fact that someone chose an easier difficulty as their ONE and ONLY complaint against a run. Nor can I stand it when the difficulty choice is clearly explained, but they still harp about it.
I'm not going to go too far into it because I don't feel like stirring up trouble, but I've had 2 submissions of mine get completely destroyed due to certain individuals not letting this issue go. It's annoying at best, and discouraging at worst.
I doubt at least the RotJ submission would have blown up like it did had the difficulty choice actually been clearly explained instead of met with vagueness, followed by hostility and unresearched claims. Other submissions were treated similarly when questions about the difficulty were asked at all, which ended up being answered by other people, and/or the submission immediately canceled without an author response.
It should be clear from this thread that not everyone shares the same opinion about difficulty choices in games, and that "easiest is easiest and fastest" is not a clear enough or sufficient explanation for a lot of people. Asking for the reasoning behind a choice when it's not well explained or know, and then giving an opinion in response to it should not be held to any different standard than any other choice the author might have made. Why was a route chosen? Why was a goal chosen? Why was a character used? Why was a glitch not used? Stating a justification for a choice does not close the book on opinions regarding it. Why should difficulty be held to a different standard?
Speaking of which, something I'd really like to see a lot more scrutiny given when people say why they chose a lower difficulty. What I see myself a lot is that if the author gave a reason, any reason at all, that is the final word on it and any further discussion or check on the veracity of those reasons is treated as a personal attack.
No. Never. This kind of behavior is what I'm trying to prevent. Difficulty should never be the focal point of a run.
What makes difficulty so special that, unlike every other arbitrary choice the author could possibly make, it is above any discussion or reproach? And what if the author's justifications are incorrect or inappropriate? There's even a case where the author accused an existing Japanese TAS which used a password that sets the game to hard mode as setting a password for a cheat, and it was judged believing that.
The author isn't infallible, and just because they made a claim, that doesn't make it the word of God.
I concur that "vault should be on easy" seems like a very poor guideline. Even for the vault, it should be a superplay first, and fastest run second. Giving yourself every advantage goes against that. It also reeks of a defeatist attitude to me. Like before even starting, you already think people aren't going to like the game or run, so you shouldn't put in any more than the minimum effort and play the game at its easiest. This seems like itd be an especially poor guideline for things like fighting games and shmups (and board games if they ever become eligible).
"More damage boosts" on its own also doesn't seem like a valid reason to me. There are plenty of games where you have enough health on easy difficulties to plough straight through everything instead of having to dodge or manage your health.
"No vote for difficulty without explaining will be disregarded," especially with so many runs that COULD be pretty easily beaten just by setting them to a lower difficulty, even if they're sloppier. If that's the only 'improvement,' or a run is done on a lower difficulty with adequate defense, that seems like a perfectly acceptable and valid reason. Speaking of which, something I'd really like to see a lot more scrutiny given when people say why they chose a lower difficulty. What I see myself a lot is that if the author gave a reason, any reason at all, that is the final word on it and any further discussion or check on the veracity of those reasons is treated as a personal attack.
I'd be really impressed if you figured out a way to 100% the game.
Is the trophy on Fat Bear Mountain not obtainable in any version of the game? There was a PAL N64 release as well as PlayStation release. I can't find any confirmation online that the glitch exists in all versions.
Is there a minimum rewind amount?
I'm curious about the very end of level 3 (1:15) when there are two dots left.
You go left 3, rewind 3, up 1.
Wouldn't it be faster to go up 1, rewind 1, left 3?
The game itself is an autoscroller with a nearly set in stone solution path. If you screw it up, you just go in laps until you die or until you get it right. In a TAS environment, that's pretty close to trivial.
I'm assuming people are mostly voting based on having never seen the game before. It's been done in AGDQ only about a minute longer WITH screwing up and having to do extra laps. The only other differences are a few stray dominos off the set areas and not hitting quite all of the speed boosts.
