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KusogeMan wrote:
Is any of these runs remotely interesting? Is this what the site is trying to achieve with the bizarre SRAM rulesets? Nobody has ever made any category for this in an actual speedrun of the whole MK series, so i have to guess the answer is no.
[...]
I believe the game dev's intended gameplay modes and speedrunning community choice divisions should be a focus of TASVideos main categories when it comes to racing and fighting games TASers. The SRAM division is interesting for adventure and RPG games, like banjo kazooie whcih has a data carryover glitch, or newgame plus categories which exist in rpg to make new versions of the adventure, but shouldn't affect competitive games in which unlocking content was the only way devs could expand game hours. The respective game community should be the standard, this works for most games and when the time comes for a game in which it doesn't, you can use your other rulesets or entertainment value. Wanna make up some weird category that doesn't exist?
KusogeMan wrote:
To me this site is like an archive of sorts, if a speedruns exists, it should also have the corresponding TAS to show the audience what perfect play in the speedrun would be.
These 2 posts are quite remarkable because they highlight the misconception about our goals while also guessing them almost right and self-contradicting.
The site is an archive of TASes indeed, because our goal is being a service for TASers that remains relevant over the years. If we are not useful for various TASer groups, they split away and we eventually become useless for more and more such groups. And to remain useful we want to educate, encourage, and inspire people to become skilled TASers, and then to meet their requirements with our policies, like the Judge Guidelines now say:
Above all else, treat our community with care. Be kind and courteous to them, always respect their work, encourage them to continue, and use your knowledge and skill to help them improve.
Always adapt to the needs of the community. Consider every angle of a problem, and work together with the rest of Staff to provide the best solution.
The site should change to fit the community. The community should never change to fit the site.
Service-based leadership even happened to be adelikat's vision for the new admin team and I independently happened to have a bunch of pagesabout it and they got Samsara's approval back in 2021.
So we absolutely want to give TASers more freedom and safety for their experiments, because only then they can create truly powerful things.
What we've never done though is considering developer intentions when deciding on policies (or anything ever), because creativity means doing the unexpected. The only thing we have is the product itself (the game) and content that exists objectively, and that's the main purpose of the Standard class. There is a category that is subjectively closer to intended gameplay, but we've never questioned the fact that it may also be glitched to death in its own regard, and heavy glitching is very much not what the devs intended to present to the world. Sure some people may not be entertained by such movies, but developer intent is never brought up as a complaint. We simply don't care about it.
What speedrun communities do may be relevant in cases when we want to allow some branch based on how supported it is, but lack of support in speedrun communities has not ever been brought up as a factor when arguing that we should not support it either. We have our own community for such decisions, and our own site goals that I explained in details. Telling our own community to "deal with it" because some people who have never posted here don't speedrun a given category yet, is ridiculous level of arrogance.
And the self-contradiction part is where an archive is meant to feature achievements while also limiting them in some specific case because suddenly it doesn't matter at all what can be achieved there.
KusogeMan wrote:
Once again, TASers prefer to do slower movies than go through SRAM verification movie hassle.
This claim lacks any statistical data across any amount of TASers other than like 2 people, and it assumes intentions of everyone else in a very specific illogical way. There's no way to measure how many people on the site considered making a savegame movie and decided to do a power-on one instead because of the "SRAM verification movie hassle".
Savegame movies always existed and they were always fine. If someone looks at how hard it would be to make a verification movie, yet they don't mind making a full TAS, they somehow consider the verification movie harder to make than the entire power-on TAS? That's ridiculous to imagine, because I don't know a single game where a full TAS is easier to make than a verification movie. Sure, making a verification and a full TAS is harder than just the full TAS, but the verification movie usually kinda fades compared to amount of work that goes into a well research and optimized movie regardless of verifications.
If someone is so afraid of making a verification movie, it sounds like they just don't have enough energy to TAS at all. So if we try to force them to TAS harder by obsoleting the easier-to-make thing, it feels bizarre to expect that they will make a proper savegame movie just out of obedience.
On the other hand, if we have room for both branches, everyone could pick a project they currently feel the energy for, and be tempted and encouraged to work on harder things because it's cooler, not because they have to. Creativity and inspiration are incompatible with involuntariness.
To be continued...
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.
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The post is becoming impossibly long so I'll break it into several...
So I've reread everything once again to understand what the community thinks (including the non-public chats that spawned these new questions), and it's hard to summarize it all because a ton of different things were used as arguments, and not enough effort has been put into stating problems, questions, and reasons in the clearest way possible. So if I miss or misinterpret some idea, please explain it again as clearly and logically as possible.
I should start with explaining the current direction of the site.
During the first years of TASVideos we were very restrictive in what ends up being represented as publications, because there was a ton of misconceptions in the outside world that had to be disproved, and this new hobby kinda had to prove itself by featuring the most awesome stuff first. The most entertaining movies were preferred, and the rules weren't super strict otherwise.
This was considered too restricting and the concept of tiers was introduced, so in addition to the most interesting movies we could have boring movies that accomplish some very standard and basic goal (initially the only allowed Vault goals were fastest completion and full completion). But since for every single submission we had to decide on a tier, it led to tons of borderline cases where simply based on feedback (or lack thereof) we were unsure how to judge something.
Since people like to be creative and they don't always aim to follow well-established paths, we also had to clarify more and more things in Movie Rules to make judgments more consistent and future-proof. Because old rules and wording would either not solve some new problem, or the solution was worded in a cloudy way that could be interpreted differently by different people.
Those trends would build up over the years and eventually turn into unmanageable mess that was the least future-proof, because it was impossible to keep maintaining. So we retired the tier system and switched to a class system that let us depend on feedback much less for goals that are well-established and standard, and only need feedback for goals that are inherently subjective.
That alone helped immensely, but then we realized there were other problematic trends that failed to make everyone's life better. The most problematic ones were prosecutorial bias and gatekeeping. We were so restrictive that we risked becoming irrelevant, because TASers could eventually abandon the ship that was purely viewer-focused and not creator-focused.
So we reevaluated the main goals of the site, and switched from being an exposition of cool things to being a service for the TAS community. Being too restrictive did result in parts of our community having to go on their own for a bunch of years and currently we're trying to fix that. And for authors in general, we switched from being judgmental about their works to being helpful for them, because that's how we get more people involved and educated, which leads to more content in general, and as a result to more awesome content that the site always wanted to have.
On the other hand, inclusivity on TASVideos is not an entirely new concept. It's the neatest way to have a compromise between conflicting camps if their opinions can't technically be implemented directly at once. We discuss opinions and boil them down to something objective, and then rely on things that are the most objective for all parties.
Allowing different things as different branches used to be the most harmless solution to any kind of disagreement about goals, because different crowds could have something they care about featured on the site and up-to-date. People spent the recent years fighting for acceptance of some goal that used to be rejected entirely, or only allowed under very strict conditions. So we started actually believing that giving creators more freedom benefits everyone long-term, because results of their hard work won't be considered "unnecessary" after the fact anymore, by judges who've never even played those games.
We can definitely afford some extra slots in Alternative for things that are not as stunning in terms of entertainment, unless questionable branches become a problem, which is when we start obsoleting the most mediocre ones. And in Standard, we can have extra slots for movies that shouldn't compete with the most basic and natural (literally standard) goals.
This is why I was surprised to realize that we may have missed something important during the initial discussion half a year ago, and that in fact savegame rules we established failed to solve fighting games. And racing games. And non-fastest-completon movies. We've had a staff talk and couldn't agree on how obsoletion should work in those cases, so the most reasonable next step was bringing it up to the community.
And the result was quite interesting. It wasn't a hard community split between 2 options that can't co-exist where an independent solution was necessary that could work both ways depending on statistics (objective data settling the conflict of subjectivities). Instead it was a request to change the direction and goal of the site for one particular case of fighting games ... two particular cases of fighting and racing games ... three particular cases of fighting and racing games and also non-fastest-completion movies.
And it would have just been a new consensus if the community went "oh! right! yes!" and agreed that it makes sense to change the direction and goal of the site in those individual cases. Or if that extra clause clearly felt like it matches the direction and goal of the site and fulfills it more faithfully, and we simply missed it the first time around.
For example, that happens when some clause has all the traits of a workable solution:
Overwhelming majority of the audience subjectively likes it or at least doesn't particularly mind it
The logic is compelling to people who agree and even to those who don't enjoy it
Even if logic and feelings don't cut it, it still looks like the most fair option given the situation at hand, one that's the most faithful to our top priorities
However that did not happen, and a lot of people were actively against savegame ever obsoleting clear save branches in Standard. I've read all this talk several times by now, and I still don't quite understand logically which problem exactly such obsoletion would solve without causing new problems. And it does seem to contradict the site's goals.
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.
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infinitephantasm wrote:
hello, wanted to ask a question about a movie for beatmania 2ndMIX i was thinking about submitting, but wasn't entirely sure if i should. it's normally an arcade rhythm game, which would usually probably warrant something like a max score run with a lot of showiness in extra keypresses, due how the game works involving scoring and bonuses. but, the movie i made uses a hidden code/button combination in the game's song select to skip playing any songs at all, jumping straight to the ending (detailed more here -- normally, this allows you to play any song in the game).
would something like this be worth submitting, or should i just abstain and try for something a bit more interesting? i'm not entirely sure if using something that technically falls on the category of level select (even though in a rhythm game, you pick the songs freely) such as that would be considered not OK.
Skipping everything and simply calling an ending sounds like skipping any and all gameplay, which then raises the question "what are you even speedrunning?" But yes, skipping straight to the ending has been disallowed for a very long time.
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.
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EZGames69 wrote:
But that not only requires the authors of the old tas to make a submission for level 20 (since the submission I linked isn’t even the current fastest level 20 from my understanding), but it would essentially be the equivalent of taking the last inputs of the movie file after the last resync and using that as it’s own separate publication.
I don’t know if the RNG would be the same after said reset compared to first power on, but if it is then I’m not sure what the point would be other than having two separate publications with one just being essentially an identical segment from the all levels pub. It would be redundant in my opinion.
We have a somewhat recent example (tho in theory it could have gone to Playground if the author was interested).
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Your submission must play the game from the beginning, and must finish the game, or reach the most suitable endpoint the game allows. Level selects, single-level movies, or otherwise incomplete movies are not 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.
The player already provided a movie file that beats level 20 HI speed with the same inputs used in the submitted movie during level 20, and I was also able to do the same with other levels. This means that the submitted movie does include the inputs of a fastest-completion run in it; in other words, by fulfilling the full-completion goal, it does also fulfil the fastest-completion goal.
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So if both movies were played optimally (given current knowledge), one would absolutely not include another, right?
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dwangoAC wrote:
on the basis of it being a different category
Elaborate?
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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.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
I want to make a tutorial(s) for using MAME in BizHawk.
Thanks!!!
CoolHandMike wrote:
Note still have not been able to use the other method of zipping with the same game name successfully. Might skip this unless someone else has a video of this working which I could just drop into this section.
Just describe the steps you're doing and I'll check what's missing.
CoolHandMike wrote:
Do not use SystemBus since it may change values and cause a desync.
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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.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
If someone were going for maxing out a score counter that was retained between songs, repeating a song could be considered a scoring loop; but it would not delay completion. It would speed up the run and thus completion by repeating the most efficient song in regards to points/time.
If all songs were optional, maybe you could only play the optimal ones and repeat them, but in linear games repeating some level means game end is delayed. The goal of max score is not to hit score cap at any cost, but to complete the game the quickest while also getting maximum reasonable score. Score cap is allowed too, but only if it naturally happens while playing without infinite loops.
DrD2k9 wrote:
The "Boost" mode is arguably acceptable for Standard Publication on our site as the code is used to access an even more difficult mode than is normally selectable (as opposed to making the game easier). Unfortunately, I don't feel that having both a normal play publication (even at the fastest scroll setting) along side of a "Boost" mode publication is worthwhile for the site.
So here's my proposal for getting the fastest publication of this game on the site:
I will create a new run using the "Boost" mode code to TAS the hardest/fastest difficulty of play. I'll also use the fastest scroll setting to minimize lag.
While it technically makes the game more difficult, the "Wacky" mode will not be used; because the graphical alterations may be noxious to some viewers.
As I don't want to manually resync every note in the game, nor would I want to offload that effort onto LoganTheTASer (we need to change his name on this submission, by the way), I have already written a Lua script to automatically input the note presses where needed for perfect play.
Ending input early is not an option as a Start press is necessary to progress from the final score screen back to the menu to show the checkmark indicating completion on the last song.
Regarding branch naming:
I feel that an "any %" run of this game should be required to complete all the songs as there's no other good way to define a valid endpoint of the game.
Given the need of a Start press after the last song, there's no real way to end input early. So a "full completion" run wouldn't be any different than "any %" run. Also due to the final Start press, not getting maximum score doesn't speed up the final inputs. So all three branches are effectively the same from a time-perspective; getting less than a perfect score could be considered sloppy play given that it doesn't save time from an optimization standpoint.
Therefore, I feel the "Boost" mode run should be considered the baseline "any %" run of this game and should be published branchless.
Sounds like "max score" is simply the only sensible branch for this game, and the boost mode would be preferred indeed (unless it reduces your score).
Patashu wrote:
I was going to say 'IMO the scroll speed should be at a rate that is comfortably readable by rhythm game players so that they can follow along with the charts' but, well... if it saves FRAMES, rest assured I can't argue with that!!
Well, we tend to skip all skippable cutscenes, and to speedup all cutscenes that can't be skipped, so using a slower mode to make things readable in real time would be something longplays do rather than speedruns.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
I think this run would be better branched "all songs" or "full completion" instead of "maximum score."
Because the game doesn't monitor score beyond one song, there's no real way to determine when to define the endpoint of "Maximum Score." If the game tracked score beyond 1 song, then maxing out the score counter itself would be that endpoint.
If a game automatically resets the score as you progress (for example, in every level), "max score" must be reached in every such segment.
DrD2k9 wrote:
Even if this was the case, replaying the various songs is an option. This means that the fastest method to reach the theoretical maximum score would be to replay the song that yields the most points/time spent over and over again until the max score was achieved.
Infinite scoring loops that delay completion are not allowed.
DrD2k9 wrote:
Considering that the game does checkmark each song once it's completed, we can claim that it does monitor a completion level of sorts. Thus 'full completion' or 'all songs' would be a better descriptor of the run. The run should still qualify for Standard publication.
But does this run go out of its way to maximize per-song score too, or does it just aim for shortest time in each?
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An important question is also how different it feels compared to existing branches: https://tasvideos.org/272G
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What's the difference between characters and why was this one used?
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While those are not official releases by the original author, I feel it's acceptable as long as we can know which exact versions of everything we need, and how to install them. People who maintain Debian packages sound reliable enough to me to count them as official porters at this point, when the original game is dead and hard to setup.
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Loved it, voted yes!
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duuuuude5 wrote:
So far people seem to like it, but there's only 3 votes. Should we perhaps ask in the discord server for more feedback?
Makes sense, tho the judge will most likely do it after claiming.
duuuuude5 wrote:
Also thank you feos for spending so much time getting the movie to sync, I really appreciate it :)
Thanks for not making a movie that's impossible to make acceptable :D
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DigitalDuck wrote:
But then that leaves the question of whether a run that prioritises IGT over TAS time should obsolete, or exist in a separate branch from, one that prioritises TAS time over IGT.
If aiming for IGT only makes gameplay longer without making it faster in more relevant segments, then we consider that it doesn't make sense to aim for IGT for a particular game, at least in standard. For example imagine spamming pause to prevent IGT from incrementing: that wouldn't make the competition more fair (like it does in Sonic games), it'd just add a conflict between different speed techniques.
Also IGT versus real-time is more just a timing method difference when the main content is mostly similar. If the difference is several hours worth of gameplay coming from a whole extra game completion (that is split off into a verification movie), then we can't say it's just a timing difference but a goal difference. And IGT is not a goal that is accepted to standard alongside its real-time counterpart, only to Alternative.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
feos wrote:
If the character is different and slower, that may be argued to be a harder mode/higher challenge.
This argument could be made for a different base roster character also. Would the slowest base roster character be considered a harder mode/higher challenge?
I feel this would potentially make things even more confusing.
Interestingly, since characters represent clearly defined content, at the very beginning I wanted to simply allow all of them in standard. Then I thought about games that have a ton of chars, and those combined with other applicable standard branches made me like this option much less. So the only reason we don't allow all chars to co-exist is mostly logistical.
On the other hand, "savegame" always felt like a clear enough in-game distinction, and since it'd only result in one extra branch for every standard category, it felt much more natural to just allow it to exist even if the benefit is minimal.
If the benefit is 0, that to me means it doesn't matter if it's save anchored or not. And if the benefit is negative, I admit I've never thought of it until this new iteration of the talk, but the amount of things to be allowed is still minimal, so it's kinda fine.
Strictly speaking, it's a good point that we don't accept suboptimal chars to standard as "just harder mode", so that argument of mine probably doesn't work. But my main wish is featuring objectively different content with lowest limits that we can reasonably afford.
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If no unlockable characters are faster than the fastest base character and no new content is introduced, then there’s no reason to have a save anchored branch in Standard publication for that fighting game.
I personally only see the problem in "savegame" being an extra standard branch if there's no practical difference at all coming from unlockables. If the character is different and slower, that may be argued to be a harder mode/higher challenge. If the character is the same, there's no point in having both branches. Example: #8775: KusogeMan's Wii Mortal Kombat: Armageddon "Endurance, Kreate-a-Fighter" in 05:18.98
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A public discussion is meant to happen so that people can clearly explain everything they need with no rush and with all the info being available to everyone. Only then we can come up with a proper decision. It's not about proving me wrong about something, because I very rarely have a hard stance on things. But for the sake of community discussion I explicitly request mistakes to be addressed, because without it it's just a dead end.
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Spikestuff wrote:
The difference with how we're looking at it with the Fighting game genre is the new element being an unlocked character.
I don't see the fundamental difference from other game genres with unlockable chars.
Spikestuff wrote:
I can also refer to Digimon Rumble Arena where an unlocked character wasn't allowed, and instead a character that's available from the start would have been preferred instead.
The consensus was to move away from that limitation, so that submission would need to be unrejected at some point. It represents a situation but can't serve as example of how things should be.
Spikestuff wrote:
But we're in the new site era now where we have a new submission that's using an unlocked character in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance which should outright obsolete the Kenshi run and be the preferred run. But isn't for some reason.
Why should it outright obsolete?
I can only see why it should not obsolete:
feos wrote:
I don't want save-anchored movies to compete with power-on ones in Standard, because the former kinda give themselves a handicap which would somehow not count as a part of its completion time. I feel it's fair to instead have more branches.
I don't see what's beneficial for the community from having fewer branches in this particular case, which implies extra rules and therefore more complexity going forward.
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.
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Masterjun wrote:
Maybe more specific examples would help. For example, I thought New Game+ would cover everything, and I couldn't quite understand from the previous post why that one wouldn't work.
Just to throw some ideas around (and get them refuted), couldn't we call it "2nd run" similar to the "2nd quest" things we have? Or are there some situations where you don't actually have to beat the game story?
Yeah if the most optimal unlockable (or combination of unlockables) does not require beating the main game but is locked behind an overly specific combination of completions, it may not be the Nth run through any one particular mode.
Masterjun wrote:
In that case, why not just "savegame" or "saved game" like wikipedia calls it.
Wow I love "savegame"!
moozooh wrote:
I think there is somewhat of a contradiction over the fact that we'd only accept the most optimal default character for Standard while giving a "free pass" there to an unlocked one regardless of how fast it is in comparison. I mean, what if it's the slowest character? Or at least slower than the second-best default one? (Thinking of something like Streets of Rage 3's Roo here.)
While we do indeed aim for speed optimization in standard, restricting content too much makes it a pain on the long run for all participants, because things that make sense to a lot of people still consistently get rejected like they were not worth doing. So while aiming for speed in standard we allowed a whole lot of things that feature some conceptual difference that got a community consensus. Save-based unlockables are an example of this, so the most sensible decision seemed to be to remove the need to compete with the clean-save movies. We probably didn't consider cases where all the unlockables are slower, but if the point of the category is featuring this objective difference, I think it's not a long-term problem if it's the only reason a certain extra branch exists. If there's no clear difference between a clean save and a save-anchored branch, we will only have one.
moozooh wrote:
Would it not be better to accept all characters for Standard?
A lot of people in the community don't want the site to have a separate branch for each character in, say, fighting games, where it could result in dozens of branches, because there are already all the other standard goals that could be combined with different chars.
moozooh wrote:
But to answer the question, if we need a generic branch name, would something like "fully unlocked" work?
It may not be fully unlocked, if only the most optimal things need to be unlocked.
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.
