Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Nach wrote:
You cannot disagree. We literally have rules for how to use the technical rating. Wiki: VotingGuidelines.
The rules don't mention it depends solely on how hard it is to achieve, but rather it's several factors. Those factors included things like amassing knowledge or were bots use to optimize parts of it which may be related to difficulty, but it's not about the difficulty.
note that this list is not comprehensive, and every TAS should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis
This explicitly leaves room for additional factors one feels like considering.
Wiki: VotingGuidelines wrote:
Amount of work: How much work was necessary to make the TAS? For example, was a considerable amount of background research (such as route planning or extensive RNG reverse engineering) necessary before even starting the run?
This is exactly what I'm describing. Why would anyone invest serious amount of work into something that's not so hard to begin with? People work hard and work a lot, because they are not satisfied with their achievements. You may have to invest tons of work into pulling off a trick that saves a lot of time. But some people (like Tompa or MESHUGGAH) invest tons of work into things that only save one frame. This is amount of work. And it is how hard it was to achieve.
And the problem with it, it's impossible to understand how much work actually stands behind a run. Less so when we're talking about a game that obviously looks complicated. One doesn't know the game too well, but they notice something that required a lot of work (reportedly). Yet for some crappy simplistic game, with tricks that required also a lot of work, no one will give a damn. Bias.
Nach wrote:
People are free to make up whatever scale makes sense to them for what technical qualities they consider important for a TAS. But everyone should use some kind of global scale which is not rewritten for every single game.
As I said, it's impossible to enforce any global scale that is supposed to resemble something objective. People are too different, unless the question is "Is this number greater than 10?", but even then some will give nonsensical answer.
Nach wrote:
I don't see how combining things solves anything.
Right now you have 182 variations. 91 for each criterion. 10 fractional parts for everything other than integer 10. It is absolutely impossible to enforce any global scale with all the variety of people's perceptions, opinions, knowledge, experience, moods, sanity, reasonability, etc. The simpler the question is, the more reasonable and sane the answer is. Objectivity is out of the question given all the variety of people and options they have. So it has been suggested in the past to only ask people how much they were entertained, which would imply a subjective answer to a subjective question. Yet I'm sure that when you just give too much options, you force them to invent their own scale and their own criteria that only make sense to them (and probably their friends?).
The submission poll asks a question with just tree options. Yet it's completely impossible to take the answers in the poll seriously when we're dealing with a borderline case. Why do we have to rely on the posts? Because the poll is almost useless. And even then posts alone love to trick you into thinking Moons, and then it gets 4s for entertainment when it's published.
So we actually have several possible decisions:
- reducing the rating to just "+/-" like youtube,
- reducing it to the same traditional "Yes/No/Meh",
- reducing it to traditional for real world movies 0-10,
- reducing it to 91 only for entertainment,
- reducing both factors to something similar to above, and finally,
- not reducing it at all.
Of these, I like 0-10 the most, because it would be similar to something already well known and very similar in nature: you can enjoy all sorts of aspects of a motion picture, you can basically invent your own scale, but when you see a movie with rating 8+, you know it's something nice. And movies with rating like 5 are not really worth watching.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
People please give me direct links (now and in future) with timestamps so I could instantly download the relevant segments we want to have on TVC!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Nach wrote:
Technical rating is not about how hard it is to achieve something.
I disagree. TASing is all about puzzle solving, and I always say that puzzles we're solving haven't been invented by anyone specifically for us to solve. Our puzzles appear out of nowhere when we decide to get on the top of the tree while riding a bike (figuratively speaking).
So with these objectively unique and unpredictable puzzles, we love TASes that solve them in ridiculously creative ways. You use all sorts of tools to assist you, available from others or created by yourself. You use your brain power to come up with a solution. You challenge your own solution and look for all the absurd ways to improve it until you can't improve it anymore. And then you still try again!
These are by all means factors of technicality, and they clearly answer the question "So how hard was it to achieve this?" Loosely speaking, in some games you have to spend 100k rerecords just to beat an existing records by one second. This is clearly relevant to technicality.
Nach wrote:
It's how much technicality you see went into something versus other things that you've seen with technicality in it.
I don't need to know a game to see the player is using their own health to get damage boots, and ends up trading damage boosting for picking up extra health, and also walking around half the time with a single unit of health in their power meter.
When I see the player does stuff like this, they get a point. If it appears to me they're doing this really well, then I can give them two points for technicality. If the run in question doesn't use health like this, then they're not awarded for making use of this technique, and the tech rating suffers appropriately.
The problem is, it's impossible to ensure anyone other than you uses the same well defined scale when deciding on technical rating. As I said, everything adds to bias for majority of the raters. So it just ends up being ephemeral.
In my opinion, this can be helped if we leave only one rating and let people factor in all the things they tried to divide by tech and entertainment, but unite them into a single integral digit.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
I'd rather suggest publishing reencodes with some code-wise delay/timeout. For example, TVC logic could track the reencodes recently published, and only allow one per day for example. You can send it a command to publish 100, and it'd proceed them one at a time instead.
Pro: can't be abused even if we wanted.
Con: requires logic to be written, which might be tricky.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Nach wrote:
That's not the point in tech rating at all. You shouldn't be looking at the game itself.
When you evaluate the entertaining rating, do you need to know everything about the game? Or do you ask yourself how it compares to other movies?
Knowing the game clearly helps with getting entertained, because I can enjoy what I'm seeing better when I understand how awesome and hard it is.
Nach wrote:
When you go to rate something technically, you ask yourself compared to other movies, how well is it making use of things like route planning, item conservation, health management, and so on.
If I don't know the game, I'll fail to notice most of the precision and management, most of the technicality behind what I'm seeing. If I tased it myself, I know how hard it is to achieve something even with tools, so at the same time I see how technical certain achievement is, and it entertains me even more.
Bottomline. Entertainment rating is supposed to be subjective, and it is. Tech rating is supposed to make some objective sense, and it's absolutely impossible.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Setting the level to anything at all for this mode doesn't break movie sync. However setting it to 99 in any level will reset it to 0 upon completion of that level.
I'm trying to find any trace of increasing difficulty after this movie ends, and so far there's none.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
TASeditor wrote:
feos: I agree, and have nothing against getting rid of the concept of player points althogether.
No, I mean only leaving one rating instead of two, and it can mean just how cool/impressive/technical/entertaining/tasty the rater found the movie. It'd also make sense to limit this just to 10 options, like on IMDB.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
This game has a clear and obvious way to skip to the last level, which can also be seen not as gameplay level, but as difficulty level.
The game allows you to rescue the princess even if you haven't played the previous levels, so avoiding them is just a matter of choice.
Since playing through all the levels rewards the player with letters of a certain word, this looks like a good definition of full completion for this game, whoever feels like making it.
This run though, looks pretty acceptable to me. Memory?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
DrD2k9 wrote:
Consistently submitting runs with lots of blank frames may get you limited in your ability to submit.
Wrong. We only disable submission privilege when the author consistently breaks basic movie rules. Ending your movie at the right time is easy to learn when you are already aware of other rules.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
I don't think there's any way to define full completion for this game that'd be officially grounded (in-game rewards, game manual encouraging it, etc). So simply beating all the tracks as fast as possible, while also doing all the needed stuff to upgrade your bike, looks like the only other category for this game.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Guys keep in mind that tech ratings will be terminated at some point. Because it is outright impossible to make any objective sense with it. It ends up being a clueless guess based on how well the rater knows the game, how entertaining the movie is, how nice their mood is, how tasty their breakfast was, and so on. It is impossible to evaluate the technical value of a run. If you know the game, you have certain bias. If you don't you have different kind of bias. If you TASed it yourself, you have yet another kind of bias. And so on.
In that sense, player points don't make as much sense as we'd want them to.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
We can look at this run from the perspective of this movie:
[802] SNES Biker Mice from Mars "final round" by Baxter in 05:12.62
It uses a password to fully upgrade the bike and to skip to the final round at the highest difficulty. It was accepted because it was very entertaining. And it was not a vaultable branch (not any% or full completion).
We have this rule:
http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#WeAllowPlayingUnlockableContentUsingInGamePasswords
So in principle, it's allowed to unlock hidden stuff with cheats or passwords, it just also has to be entertaining enough for Moons as a side branch, Demonstration kind of goal in the case of this run and Biker Mice.
But playing only the first level is not allowed anymore:
http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#MovieMustBeComplete
So from all of the above, I conclude that if you use a password to deliver you to level 5 with this same hidden bike, and you make the movie really entertaining (I haven't watched this one yet), it would be your best chance to get published.
Whether this bike provides for entertaining gameplay we'll find out with this submission. If it does, I think you'd only need to reapply the same ideas to a run of level 5 (increasing the difficulty in any available way, while also keeping the most upgraded bike).
Otherwise, an optimized run with no passwords that just plays through all the levels would be acceptable regardless of how entertaining or boring it will be, since that would be an any% category, therefore vaultable.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Here's what the manual says.
It wants you to beat all the 5 levels and rewards you with a special screen:
If it is correct that this screen is exclusive to beating all the levels, this may be considered a requirement for any% run of this game.
Since these screens are basically all this game gives you as a reward, and it seems to be doing this after every track, I don't think stopping at any particular level other than 5 can be seen as game completion.
Also it seems the game was not designed with any more gameplay in mind, if it forces you to the menu and then even crashes.
As for the code, if you mean the in-game password, such a thing can't serve as either any% or full completion goal, so it has to be really entertaining to be accepted as a side branch (similar to [802] SNES Biker Mice from Mars "final round" by Baxter in 05:12.62).
Probably if it's that entertaining, we might be decided to allow it to stop after level 1, but this is very uncertain. Since you've already made the run, I think it's best to just submit it and see what happens.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
For games that require multiple discs, of course it's allowed.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
p4wn3r wrote:
This decision is one more reason why speedrun.com needs to add a tool-assisted category in their leaderboards.
Yes please.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Why are you ignoring all the explanations we provided? This doesn't help to have a meaningful discussion.
As for the rest, less attention was payed to how endless games end before this happened. This link was already given in the DK3 thread. Wrong judgments can't serve as an example of applying the rules selectively. The rules about endless games were apparently just forgotten. The Waterworld submission uncovered all the flaws in these rules, and we tried to fix them.
As klmz pointed out in the PM, the rules are still worded poorly! They ask to reach the hardest difficulty, and complete unique content. But the original intention was to require both of these to be completed. This particular submission does what the current rules ask. I acknowledged the poor wording of the rule and apologized to him.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
All the rules about difficulty and unique content only apply to games with no clear ending. Is that the case for Road Rash II?
The name you enter is not required to match the guidelines, it's just nice if it does so. But we won't reject it if it doesn't.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
arkiandruski wrote:
Okay, this has got to be a bug. When you use the update branch button, it should only update the branch that's currently loaded, not the branch that's highlighted, or at least it should warn you that you are trying to update a branch that's not loaded. I've lost a lot of work multiple times because I had a branch highlighted that was different than the one I was working on and I accidently saved the current loaded branch over another branch I wanted to keep. This mistake also seems very resistant to the undo function.
Test the latest dev build (in OP). I made it select a new branch that gets created. See if it's enough to get rid of the problem. If not, tell cases when selection is not where you need it at.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Asnivor wrote:
Kurabupengin wrote:
So that means this core will be TASable in the next BizHawk release?
Thats the plan.
What's holding us back?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Man I can't describe my joy! Does it run at full speed this time? What about Samorost?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
mtvf1 wrote:
Too many old games havn't he real end, and only more difficult stage by stage. So how many stage completed should be accepted?
Just read the movie rules I linked. If the difficulty doesn't have any designed limit, we don't require to max it out.
mtvf1 wrote:
If this game has this problem, this published has a big more problem. [3722] NES City Connection "warpless" by link_7777 & EZGames69 in 04:35.60
You can see this. In fact, in this game, level7 is different from level 1 to 6, just use the same back screen as level1, and level8 is different, too. So what's the real end in this game? It still be published, doesn't it?
Yeah, what link_7777 said. We did the due research. And we will do it for this submission as well.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
Feedback please! Come on people, isn't this run awesome?
I really loved it. Short, glitchy, and clearly superhuman. Yes vote.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1239)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11314
Location: RU
The rules I linked talk about this in details:
http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#GamesWithoutClearEndingEver since the Vault was invented, games without an ending were required to exhaust all their content to be considered beaten. This is similar to banning single level TASes: when the game was designed to last longer than just one loop, and when it explicitly provides more content after that, we can't consider it beaten after just one loop.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
It wants you to beat all the 5 levels and rewards you with a special screen:
If it is correct that this screen is exclusive to beating all the levels, this may be considered a requirement for any% run of this game.
Since these screens are basically all this game gives you as a reward, and it seems to be doing this after every track, I don't think stopping at any particular level other than 5 can be seen as game completion.
Also it seems the game was not designed with any more gameplay in mind, if it forces you to the menu and then even crashes.
As for the code, if you mean the in-game password, such a thing can't serve as either any% or full completion goal, so it has to be really entertaining to be accepted as a side branch (similar to [802] SNES Biker Mice from Mars "final round" by Baxter in 05:12.62).
Probably if it's that entertaining, we might be decided to allow it to stop after level 1, but this is very uncertain. Since you've already made the run, I think it's best to just submit it and see what happens.