Ok, this isn't really a novel idea, as it has been discussed to death over the years, but I just got an idea which I think could work, and which should summarize what people really want.
As we know, many people, while they might like overly glitched runs, would still like to see a version of the run which doesn't abuse glitches. They would like to see the game *played* with perfect accuracy rather than *broken* to smithereens. In some cases a "100%" run of the game achieves that goal somewhat, but might still not be the perfect solution (it can be way too long, or the game doesn't have a good concept of "100%" completion).
Defining a "non-glitched" run is extremely difficult because it falls down to the definition of what is glitch abuse and what isn't, and what is an "acceptable" glitch in a "non-glitch" run and what isn't. It quickly becomes too arbitrary to be any good.
So how about this category: "Uses intended route"
The idea is that the run plays the game using the (minimal) route intended by the creators of the game. Everything is allowed (eg. luck abuse) except glitches which allow skipping relevant parts of this route (or allow traversing the route way faster than the creators intended, by abusing a glitch). Also glitches which give the player objects too early (or without having to go get them from their actual location in the game) are prohibited, because that was not intended by the creators.
Of course there might still be controversy about what is "a relevant part" and what isn't, but I believe it should be less ambiguous than a "doesn't use glitches" category.
Not everything which the creators didn't really expect has to be prohibited. For example beating the boss clearly faster than what the creators believed would be possible would still be ok, because it's not a route change nor a glitch per se, just regular play but with superhuman accuracy and skill. After all, the idea is to show how the game can be beaten with superhuman prowess (without breaking the game).
The good thing about this category is that it can be applied to most games (of course it's relevant only for those which do have glitches which allow skipping parts of the intended route). For example creating a run of Super Mario 64 under this category would mean that it has to collect those 70 stars intended by the creators of the game. A run of megaman would mean that no glitched warps nor zipping (especially no zipping through walls). It would also be a good category for SuperMetroid and LoZ:OoT runs because it's less controversial than other suggestions.
I could get behind that. I'd personally love to see a new S3&K run which doesn't glitch through half the game. (I also don't think Nitsuja's run should have obsoleted SprintGod's, but that's neither here nor there.)
Joined: 4/21/2004
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Nice write-up but I think the idea is bad. Enough as it is.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
I'd like to see first: a speed only, entertainment-be-darned category and a non-speed superplay category. But this has potential as well.
If everybody feels that we shouldn't publish more movies because we have "enough" then really the current catalog should be trimmed down.
Nice write-up but I think the idea is bad. Enough as it is.
You are entitled to your opinion, but some arguments would be nice.
Currently the two customs in regard to this subject are:
1) We just *don't* accept any "intended route" (or "non-glitched") runs. Those who would like to see one will have to live with the fact.
2) If the demand for such a run is *way* too big, then we invent some completely arbitrary rules for the game in question in order to basically just achieve "uses the intended route". (Eg. I think this is the case with Super Metroid, and the newest OoT submission.)
Would it be so bad to even attempt to formalize this a bit and establish some consistent ground rules (or even rules of thumb) which most people can agree with?
Unfortunately, it's much more controversial than you think. The reason for that is "intention" in most cases where the situation might arise, is completely hypothetical.
For one, you list Super Metroid as an example. Programmers included the "attract mode" cutscenes into the intro, that show various gameplay demos. As you play through the game, new demos appear. The last two batches outright show you basic sequence break tricks. In other words, the programmers knew the extent of allowed freedom very well. That brings the main question: in games with open routes, who's to decide the intended ones? Who's to decide programmers' expectations? We can but speculate on that matter, but that spawns more controversy than it solves.
Another point is using potentially gamebreaking tricks (not even glitches) to traverse the environments without breaking their local rules — but faster. In other words, limiting the use of certain techniques. How to decide which of them should and shouldn't be used, and where/how?
Unfortunately, with the degree of freedom allowed by using tools, it has to boil down to rather arbitrary speed/entertainment tradeoffs decided by author and/or the expert community on a per-game basis, dramatically complicating judging and appraisal of technical quality. Sorry, but I don't see it any less controversial than most controversial ideas brought up over the years of the site's existence.
Your previous idea with splitting the site into two distinct sections (anything-goes result-oriented and playaround entertainment-oriented) was way better, and it actually was a good attempt at bringing controversy to logical minimum.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 2/28/2006
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Yeah, and for some mysterious reason I always believed it was "cathegory", with an H in the middle... whhere the heck did I get that...?
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Warp wrote:
Defining a "non-glitched" run is extremely difficult because it falls down to the definition of what is glitch abuse and what isn't, and what is an "acceptable" glitch in a "non-glitch" run and what isn't. It quickly becomes too arbitrary to be any good.
This type of category would be a hundred times more difficult to define.
Warp wrote:
The idea is that the run plays the game using the (minimal) route intended by the creators of the game. Everything is allowed (eg. luck abuse) except glitches which allow skipping relevant parts of this route (or allow traversing the route way faster than the creators intended, by abusing a glitch). Also glitches which give the player objects too early (or without having to go get them from their actual location in the game) are prohibited, because that was not intended by the creators.
This entire paragraph pretty much demonstrates why it wouldn't be a good idea to implement something like this. There are simply way too many vague notions, not to mention assuming the intent of the creators would lead to all sorts of controversy. Also, what happens to games that have more than one path through the game?
I agree with Angerfist 100%.
I think on the whole this category is just too fuzzy. It's impossible to know what the creators intended and what they overlooked. Someone in the Super Metroid thread put forward the theory that the mockball (a trick that lets you maintain full speed while in morphball form) was a sort of "intentional oversight" - some programmer noticed it, liked it, and decided to just not write in any checks to interfere with it. Which, to me, sounds ludicrous, but of course there's no way of knowing.
Now, some games have a stronger claim towards a "standard route" than others...but those tend to be the games where this category is less useful, too. A standard route in a 2D Sonic game would just involve not using zipping glitches, which is a much more specific and useful category, IMO. "Standard routes" in Mario 64, regarding the star doors, would mean not using backwards longjumps (but what's a standard route to get an individual star?).
In short, I'd say that trying to apply this category to any game where it would have any meaning would just result in a lot of arguing on the forums about whether or not the run qualifies for the category and how to tell that other runs don't.
Frankly, I say that we need to just allow for more runs, period. If someone makes a run and other people find it entertaining, it should be available on the site somewhere - not necessarily along with the fully-published runs, but linked in somewhere. Alden's been going on about this for ages, and I agree with him pretty much 100%. Then if there's demand for, say, a Sonic run that doesn't use zipping glitches, someone can make it and, if it's well-received, it goes on the site. Maybe it doesn't get an encoding, but at least it's there.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I think that the question of what is the "intended route" or not can be decided by the judges/voters. It's no more controversial than "contains entertainment/speed tradeoffs". One could argue to death what is an acceptable "entertainment/speed tradeoff" and what isn't, but that seldom has caused too many problems. In the end it's the voters and judges who decide if it's acceptable.
My goal with this idea is to give a clear category for TASers. Someone could go and make a submission of a game under this category, so everyone would know what is it all about. He wouldn't need to present too many arguments why he is making such a submission which is neither the fastest possible nor a 100% run. It's then up to the voters and judges to decide whether it fulfills the category properly or not.
Some generic rules of thumb (not necessarily strict ones) can be formalized so TASers will have an idea of what to do and not to do. They can then argument their choices in their submission text.
TASers aren't too afraid of submitting runs with "entertainment/speed tradeoffs" because it's an existing category and semi-officially recognized as acceptable in many cases. I think "uses intended route" should be such an acceptable category as well.
The thing is, your idea is a glorified speed/entertainment tradeoff that may or may not contain additional speed/entertainment tradeoffs per se. A nested controversy, if you insist.
One might just as well make a run with speed/entertainment tradeoffs without applying any additional labels to it, and have it judged just as well.
But I think the big point behind this idea is this:
Derakon wrote:
Frankly, I say that we need to just allow for more runs, period.
Justifying it this way won't work with the current submission judging process, where the process itself is the main limiting factor. The idea itself, however, pertains to the current process. In other words, not a solution, but a very awkward workaround.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Frankly, I say that we need to just allow for more runs, period. If someone makes a run and other people find it entertaining, it should be available on the site somewhere - not necessarily along with the fully-published runs, but linked in somewhere.
This is something I, among others, have suggest long time ago: I suggested having (up to) four major categories:
1) Anything-goes any% runs, where the only important factor is minimizing the number of frames. (Priority #1 is minimizing the number of frames, priority #2 is entertainment.)
2) Runs with alternate goals (such as 100% item collection) besides getting to the end of the game, but doing so as fast as possible. (So priority #1 is completing the goals, priority #2 is minimizing the number of frames and priority #3 is entertainment.)
3) Runs where the goal is to complete the game, but not as fast as possible, but achieving something else (for example showing off cool moves in fighting games), but still without sloppy play. So-called superplays. (Priority #1 is entertainment, priority #2 is superhuman perfection.)
4) Machinima videos, where the goal might not be to complete the game at all, but do something else, for pure entertainment.
This idea never caught on. Maybe too much work.
Joined: 8/6/2006
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That's weird, when I was waking up this morning, I was thinking of how I'd like to see a few games played as they were intended, and the phrase "intended route" popped into my head.
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
It's one of those ideas that sound okay at first, but then when you think about how to go about implementing it, you realize it is much harder than you thought. For example, what would be the "intended route" of The Legend of Zelda? Is there even one? How about Super Mario Bros.? Do you use warps? Do you glitch through walls, since it doesn't technically alter the overall "route"? How about a game like Metroid Prime, which has an "intended route", but still has some time-saving trick/glitches for individual rooms? What is allowed and what isn't? Is ghetto-jumping a glitch? If not, why can't you use it to alter the route? Etc. I guess it would be decided on an individual game basis, and the goal would be to play the game as if it were being played by a real person who is extremely skilled but doesn't use any glitches to to their fullest potential.
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
Yeah, and for some mysterious reason I always believed it was "cathegory", with an H in the middle... whhere the heck did I get that...?
It happens to people all the time. Just the other day, I discovered that the word "surprise" has the letter r between u and p. If you read a word wrong the first time, chances are you'll keep doing it because after gaining proficiency in reading, you no longer read each individual letter, instead you recognize the words as they appear as a whole. That's why new long words/names are hard to read the first time, but then they roll off the tongue. Like "Suldanesselar".
If I had to try to describe what's being aimed for here, I think it meets the following qualifications:
* Plays with inhuman reflexes and perfect knowledge of the game
* Follows the generally-accepted standard path through the game
* Does not use glitches
The problem is that, of those three qualities, only one can really be quantifiably measured, and that's the first one. We can tell when a player isn't playing as fast as they could, makes route mistakes, or isn't using a capability that speeds up the game. We can't tell what the "generally-accepted standard path" is, and we can't always tell what is and what isn't a glitch. But the categories (aside from the genre categories) should be strongly-defined, in my opinion -- I grant that I can't think of a good, straightforward justification for that stance, but it's my stance anyway.
Really this is just one more way to make speed/entertainment tradeoffs; it's just to a degree that isn't normally seen on the site (SMB3 and River City Ransom are good examples of tradeoffs made to a similar extent).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It's one of those ideas that sound okay at first, but then when you think about how to go about implementing it, you realize it is much harder than you thought. For example, what would be the "intended route" of The Legend of Zelda?
"Intended route" does not mean "a single fixed route, even in open-ended games with multiple paths". I don't even understand why several people have brought up that. I don't really see what the problem is here that people are seeing.
"Intended route" means, for example, that you don't warp through a wall abusing a programming error, in order to bypass mandatory elements of the level/game. Warping through a wall was clearly not intended to be possible by the creators, and you have to abuse a programming error to do that.
Maybe the confusion is between "the intended route" and "an intended route". I am talking about the latter. A route, any route, which is clearly valid by the regular rules of the game and its level design, is acceptable, of course.
Is there even one?
Of course there is. Anything that doesn't abuse programming errors to go through things which you are not supposed to go through.
How about Super Mario Bros.? Do you use warps?
Warp screens in SMB have been specifically programmed into the game to be used by normal play, so they are very much an intended route. I don't even understand how they could *not* be an intended route. They have been purposefully added to the game by the creators to be used. You don't abuse a programming error to get to them.
Do you glitch through walls, since it doesn't technically alter the overall "route"?
If you abuse a programming error to get through a wall, which you should not be able to do (and not intended by the creators), then you are breaking the route.
I guess it would be decided on an individual game basis
Other categories are judged on a game-by-game basis (such as "entertainment/speed tradeoffs"). My idea was to make a "uses the intended route" an official category so that people could make submissions for it. Whether it's acceptable for that category or not is then up to the judges.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
AngerFist wrote:
Nice write-up but I think the idea is bad. Enough as it is.
Agreed. The idea would be good except for the fact that using an "intended route" for many games is too restricting. I've always thought the best parts of many runs are neat tricks that allow you to skip things you wouldn't normally be able to do. What's fun and interesting in a game is a case by case basis, and shouldn't be lumped into one category, because it just won't work.
I'm a firm believer of TASes showing the games' potential. This is why you might see me voting against a SSB speedrun, yet voting yes for an entertainment run. On the other hand you'll see me voting yes for a speed related Mario64 run, yet voting against an entertainment based one. Depending on the game, the potential can be almost fully expressed in one of the two. While there's a few neat tricks and glitches out there, I feel they're placed better either in the game's forum topic or on youtube, not tossed in the submission queue and definitely not published.
Of course I'm aware there's exceptions to even this where a really fast run might not show everything yet a 100% run might show too much boring drudging along. In this case, I believe arbitrary categories exclusively set for the game are a benefit rather than a problem.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
I'm not explicitly against a run without sequence breaks or glitch/physics abuse, seeing as some of the earlier TASes really didn't do much more than that, and still managed to be quite entertaining. I think giving this its own category would be a bit much, though, especially for the games this would be most applicable to.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Warp wrote:
Raiscan wrote:
In this case, I believe arbitrary categories exclusively set for the game are a benefit rather than a problem.
And then we end up with 8 different runs of the same game, exactly because every runner wants to use his own arbitrary goals.
You misunderstand me. I meant a single category that is discussed beforehand. OoT's "No Major Skips" category was discussed beforehand in the Ocarina of Time game thread. While I disagree on the name of it's category I consider it's rules to be good for such a game.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
I, for one, am in favor of a "no glitches" category.
Think about the S3&K speedrun for example. There is little to nothing to see in Ice Cap and in Carnival Night, because of the glitch used to skip those zones. While that can be good in the "beat the game as fast as possible" department, it's not a demonstration of "how well can you play that game", but rather of "how well you know how to fuck it up".
That's entertaining and all, it's cool to see programming flaws exploited in this way, but I'd vote yes to a TAS that plays Ice Cap as it was intended to.
Sure, this is arbitrary and gives space to discussion, but that's what forums and WIPs are for.
100% completions always have a special feeling to me, which is why I love the SM64 run with 120 stars, the S3&K run with all the emeralds, etc.
Look at it this way. Say you have a movie with the following rules:
- USES L+R
- USES the ladder glitch
- Passes through enemies without taking damage due to crappy collision detection
- DOES NOT use the save corruption glitch
- USES damage boosts to sequence break
- USES savewarping
- USES the select trick
- DOES NOT use the murder beam glitch at the end
In this case, you'd have 256 potential categories for a run.
If we were to implement a "uses intended route" category, it would only be turning off some of these flags, while keeping other ones--making it even more complicated. Which flags to turn off? Which are "acceptable"? Which are "intended"?
I think we should just keep doing what we've been doing: players submit movies, and if they are liked, regardless of the arbitrary rules imposed, we vote on them and publish them, and if not, we throw them out.
I think we should just keep doing what we've been doing: players submit movies, and if they are liked, regardless of the arbitrary rules imposed, we vote on them and publish them, and if not, we throw them out.
It's just unfortunate that the prevailing attitude is against using said arbitrary rules, which seems to discourage people from even attempting to make movies with unique goals.
Oh, and Ramzi pretty much suggested a run like this for LoZ the other day: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7237
