I don't know if I'm finding everything I should on page 7.  MonsterERB said some of my points already, if that's what you meant.  Also, you said you changed your opinion a bit.


1) It's not your responsibility, you are taking upon yourself to try and make it as such.  And then complaining about it.

2) You have no right to tell another authority what they should and shouldn't do, save the freedom of speech.  I hope you don't intend to be taken seriously as an authority figure, or as "asserting / recommending".


Are you joking me?  Do you seriously think this way?  Are you the messiah of the entire internet?  It's "necessary" that you get involved?  You are so arrogant.  The only people I can imagine making pleas for your help share the same short-sighted view of tool-assisted speedruns that you do.


What confuses me is your "proof" that you are the majority.  No one can prove what type of speedrunning is more popular.  Yet you base your entire theory and intrusion on the fact that you think console speedrunning is the majority.  Well, I think TASing is the majority.  So why am I wrong?  Because you googled?


I don't see this as the epidemic that you do, so I don't think anything is severe enough to need any sympathy.  We were all uneducated about TASing at one point, and we used our ability to learn and the materials available in order to educate ourselves about the difference.  Those who choose to waive this right do not receive sympathy from me, because they alone have the ability to fix this.


Says the moderator of a completely different website.


It's pretty close to trivial.  If you can run the movie in an emulator, all you have to do is choose "record to AVI".  It may not be compressed as fine-tuned-ly as the runs found on TASVideos, but it's still an unmarked copy.


As I said earlier, those who are ignorant to the material and actually would care about the difference (group 2 I believe) have the burden themselves of educating themselves.  We cannot be expected to spoon-feed everyone who doesn't wish to learn things, we can only be expected to provide the information and hope that people will educate themselves on it.  What you are hoping for is as impossible as stopping the possibility of unmarked AVIs.


I felt this way several times from comments in the thread about my TAS.


How can you say this when your views on TASing are so extreme?  I've heard many people from your site say they've tried to talk you out of being closed-minded to TASing.  And earlier on the thread, when people were divided into three groups:

1) People who don't know, and don't care.
2) People who don't know, but would be interested in the difference.
3) People who already know the difference.

As (I think it was you) said, (1) is a permanent problem, and (2) is being remedied more every day.  So what course of action should you take?  I believe you should sit back and let the TAS website continue to inform people as we always have, and over time, the idea will become more and more familiar.  We aren't corrupting the world as you say we are, and the two types of speedrunning are much more distinct than they were when TASing was first presented.  There's no reason the situation won't continue to head in that direction, even if you don't intrude.


I hope you realize this is merely an opinion.  You almost sound like a dictator.

[Deleted]

So the way I see it.
The majority is pure speed running, because it's more well known.
Cheating falls under AR, gameshark ect..
Tool-assistance is almost like programming/reprogramming.
Emulator assistance only means playing on emulator (see smokeys 14%).

Then there's just loads of stuff about communitys and 's.

If you ask me, cheating doesn't work, so what about fake (or some sort of rewording).

EDIT:Forgot to mention instead of a "splash screen" how about a mini-clip, like at the start of scarlets nbmb or ekards or sess's run

When I posted that run everyone laughed at me for using such a word. How could such an amazing run be "imperfect" they thought. No one would ever beat it! Clearly they were wrong and I was right. So maybe they should. Every run can be beaten.

Wow, somehow I overlooked this thread. Oh, well...

I must warn all of you, though: this will take a time to read. Also, I will most likely repeat myself in different forms a few times throughout the post to make sure my message will be interpreted adequately at least once. Also, now that I've read the whole thread and especially the 7th page (actually, I started writing this post long before that), I've realised I will also repeat some of 13M13's, Maur's, Purple Lizard's and SABER's points of view, because my point is mostly the same. I think I'll cut the explicitly redundant text now.
...Ok, done. It's still kinda too much, though. :)

First, several notes on Nate's earlier words.


Majority, minority, demands, prevail... Prevail in what?
This is not a war, and isn't meant to be one. I'm not expecting anyone to be all good and friendly until the "demanding and prevailing" part is dismissed. I understand this is only terminology, but it doesn't change the meaning of expressed intentions.


See above. Starting the solution paragraph with that kind of statement is what someone may call oppression, and that must be avoided at all costs. Both communities should walk forward together instead of demanding or driving each other to do the first step. I'm glad you've understood that (hopefully) and now making an appropriate paragraph at SDA.


Well, two words. Even if you are the representative of the so called majority, you cannot fully disregard the minority, otherwise this is just plain fascism.

------------------------------------

From this point, there will be no objections and causting criticism, but a wordful and somewhat constructive attempt of... no, not settling the conflict -- this will be an attempt to find all the obvious causes that make that very conflict merely a sleeping volcano instead of removing all the dangerous elements that, if driven to some extent, will inevitabely make it erupt once more. So, let's begin.

One thing that cannot be underlooked is the fact that some speedrunners often get upset when some ignorant or mischievous people toss the TASes in the same league with the legit runs. It hurt their feelings, and although I'm not in favour of caring for the stupid (note: not just ignorant, but plain stupid) people, nor am I in favour of being jealous (when that's the case), I can understand that.

But Nate, I think you failed to see the real problem here, or at least find an appropriate way of perceiving it, up to this very moment. You mostly try to oppress TAS community and make it conform to your vision (not even the community's vision, just your own!) of reality. But the real problem, as you already know, is not the existence of tool-assisted runs, but the other people' ignorance of their very existence and purpose, that makes them believe they are deceived. Labeling TASes as cheated movies or whatnot, in fact, doesn't reduce the ignorance. So, the question is: what should we (the [both types of] speedrun related folk) do to reduce the ignorance? That is kind of a problem you should have been trying to find solution to. To my sincere amusement, that really reminds me of some neverending topics concerning the harm of using psychoactive drugs where people scatter some ridiculous arguments dangerously similar to "if people get killed with kitchen knifes, we must prohibit the use of kitchen knives". The lack of information, ignoring that information and giving wrong information is what kills people and spreads the panic. Not the drugs. "And knowledge is half the battle", as would a GI Joe character say.

By claiming (note that you may not claim that as well, but the impression is still what matters, as you have said yourself) that TASes are cheated, you spread even more controversies and misinformation. "Cheated? Oh, that bastards must be trying to deceive us by claiming their runs are legit! Maybe they even try to submit their runs here to make us look like fools! Let's spread the word!" I believe this isn't what you really want. Moreover, I think this is the worst "solution" possible. Even more, it is not a solution at all. I would like to stress the fact that feeding the ignorance with misinformation won't do any good to both communities, and the mutual disrespect would only grow stronger. Note, that as of now, there's (well, almost -- I can't say for everyone) no hate nor disrespect from the TAS side towards speedrunners themselves (I'm not talking about personal relationships, etc.), but the latter sometimes don't hesitate to show it every now and then (BTW, there's an example right in one of your footnotes) -- even in this thread that was supposed to result in a friendly debate (yes, StarmanHaxor, I'm talking about you).

So, instead of filling your (and others') head with some inane thinking categories like prevailing, the majority rule, the laws of democracy (an internet democracy? Oh, come on.), making the world better (the world isn't getting better or worse, but rather closer to or farther from your own ideal conception of the world itself) and the like, you must search for a constructive solution that will possibly benefit both communities, and not just one of them at the expense of another, initially. Note that I address you, and not say, Bisqwit, mainly because: a) it is you who claims to percieve the problem; b) it is you who claims to represent the "suffering" side (a.k.a. m2k2sda speedrunners community); c) it is you who at least tries to make some initial (not always successful, though) attempts in debating and, to cut a long story short, of all persons involved in these debates, you seem to be the most concerned. But if you raise the problem, then you deal with it. Making other people do what they don't want to, while blatantly disregarding the fact that it may even hurt them, isn't the right way to go. Period.

So, to [attempt to] prove myself useful, I will try suggesting more open and clear (not entirely fresh and unique, though) set of actions to inform the people of the difference between normal and tool-assisted speedruns, also inform on how both sides make their movies and all that kind of stuff. There was a discussion there at Nesvideos/Tasvideos recently, about making a short video introduction on how these runs are made and what make them so different, yet so similar to normal speedruns.

Given that a person knows what speedrun is, they probably know what SDA is, as well. Simply because it is the most popular site about speedrunning in the whole web. Even if they don't know, they will eventually stumble upon it. So, there can be something similar there! There is a lot of unused space at the SDA index page, that could be used to fulfill that purpose.

For example, I don't think text like this would hurt anyone:
"Note that this site collects only legit speedruns, made on real consoles and in real-time.
If you want to see the unofficial tool-assisted speedruns [maybe the word "demonstrations" will fit here, too] made on an emulator using slowdowns and other non-legit techniques, please proceed HERE [...to educate yourself on that matter]."

The underlined words should be linked to the appropriate paragraphs either in SDA FAQ, or the one at TASVideos. The exact same thing could be done at TASVideos for the sake of symmetry ("be sure to check the other side, too" principle would get very appropriate here) This would help people who are interested in general speedruns to educate themselves without any ridiculous needs to call TAS what they are not, and all that kind of stuff. The more popular the place, the more quickly the knowledge will spread. That will significantly reduce the amount of ignorance among the still conscious speedrun watchers (and the speedrunners themselves, too), and maybe even help some people make their choice between normal and tool-assisted speedrunning (instead of artificially dismissing that choice).

Nate, I suppose you to be a wise enough person to understand that to ensure yourself that people will read and comprehend something, you need to put that something in the right place, in the right time and in the right form. Why is SDA perfect for that purpose? First, it is the first place to go when looking for any "generic" speedruns without knowing there are actually two distinct types of them. Second, the more you procrastinate (lol, procrasti-nate), the more ignorance and misinformation will spread. Third, SDA has a really solid reputation and if you put some not explicitly controversial piece of information there, it is about to get trusted without any additional explanations. Finally, there are more people that you would like to target at, than say, Nesvideos/Tasvideos, where virtually anyone who have been interested enough to join the community (or at least lurk at the forums) already knows the nuances. Making a useful and correct information source out of a place like SDA would work without doubt. I'm very glad you're up to it.

Now you have to decide, if the average folk's ignorance is something you're fighting with (and if it is worth bothering to fight with it at all), or it is something else that's totally unrelated. Going all that "it's they who must do it [, cause it's their concern]" while stating unambiguously that it is your concern and your initiative is not the right way to do things. Or at least not the effective one. If you prove everyone that you're really concerned with that problem by making the actual steps towards the optimal solution, the others will more likely support you. If you make a demand while not actually doing something that would please both sides (and even more, something that would be a useless nuisance to the "opposing" side), nothing useful will happen. That may sound redundant, but it seems that you need to be told that kind of things quite thoroughly. ;D

There is one more point worth mentioning about tool-assisted runs in a knowledgebase section, though, that a TAS can't really show a player's actual skill at a given game (and it heavily contradicts with cheating, which would get assumed to be exactly the demonstration of the skills the player most likely lacks), but it could very well demonstrate his wits and the ability to invent totally unexpected moves that are not considered worth trying (and in many cases, just carelessly omitted) in speedrunning community due to understanding (sometimes to an extent of being a religious belief) of human limitations.


Actually, it's not the comparison that is wrong, but the purpose of such a comparison. For instance, saying that a TAS beats the world record by 16 minutes may basically mean that the record can still be improved by up to 16 minutes -- that basically indicates the time that was wasted on strategic (planning the route and the moves to perform at a given point) and physical (all of the complete and partial failures/inabilities to perform the desired move at the desired time) inconsistencies of the record owner's run. Will such an improvement ever be made (at least by a human) is another question. But I sincerely hope that it would give some runner who feels himself skillful enough to take such a challenge some additional motivation to break the record.

At least that's precisely what humankind have been doing for all of its lifespan: striving for something unreachable. However, talking about the time difference in context of the "mad skills" of TAS runner compared to the record owner is wrong without a single doubt.

----------YOU MAY SKIP THIS PART----------

To those who are not entirely familiar with a making of a TAS, I can tell that from time to time, it involves tremendous amounts of strategic planning for doing a mere fraction of a second as perfect as it can get. I will not deny the fact that this kind of planning is present in the console runs as well, but the difference is in the precision. If a console player makes mistakes throughout his run, it gets accepted as long as it breaks the current record. In tool-assisted run, even a mere second worth of mistakes can decide the faith of the run, as long as they are obvious and disturbing (and how can obvious mistakes be not disturbing in a movie that strives for perfection!). The virtually infinite amount of time tool-assisted runner has at his disposal has nothing to do with his ability and will to test all the opportunities, routes, moves and basically, every little thing that could save time, no matter how much time it really saves. That being said, what can be considered action in conventional playing, turns the game into a complex strategy that inevitably involves some brainpower, and thus renders it comparable to a game of chess. If the input provided by one TAS player completes any given part of the game faster than another's (assuming both of them aim for speed), it doesn't mean the first one has more skills. It means he has simply outsmarted the second one. Thus, that all-time popular puns (and especially accusations) on the TASers' "lack of skills" cannot have any valid ground at all. This precision and the will to do something new and entirely unexpected is what make good TASes so difficult to accomplish, and makes the process of accomplishing them so interesting and challenging intelligence-wise. But let's proceed.

----------YOU MAY CONTINUE READING----------

Some time ago, it was TAS scene who borrowed the ideas from the regular speedruns. Now we have many evidences that TAS community could help the speedrunners as well, mainly because it's TAS runners' duty to test all the possible ways of completing given segment of the game as fast as possible. They have all the means in the world to do that without any additional inconveniences encountered by the console users.

That way, the more games being thoroughly tackled by TASers, the higher rises the overall standard of quality, and the more new opportunities there are to challenge. Again, both communities could benefit from that.

Here, I must add that from the whole vault of the game actions considered to be unique to the TAS scene, most of them are reproducible (of course, not 100% effective, but still reproducible in either way) on the console. I will elaborate now.

As far as I know, mockball glitch from Super Metroid was first encountered and executed on a console. Yet there was some difficulties considering how legit that glitch was, it was still being used and mastered by the speedrunners all over the world.
But the mockball requires much skill to execute perfectly. You can see Red Scarlet going into mockball state from a tiny hop in her :55 run, but if you try to reproduce it without any sufficient experience and knowledge on what to do, you will definitely fail, as the margin of failure lies in a range of only a few frames -- similarly to most of the TAS "exclusive" tricks. As I can see it, only the fact that it was first discovered on a console and used in a console run made others believe that it really is possible and muster it until they were successful.

However, quite often we can see that the general approach of a [not open-minded enough] speedrunner to a new or unusual move shown in a TAS is "bah, it most certainly requires frame precision, I won't even bother trying that in my console run!" See? I consider that ignorance as well. And this is a problem everyone suffers from, too. The aforementioned part of m2k2sda community may not fully understand that, but that initially mistrustful and suspicious attitude is something that essentially makes their movies look much paler compared to TASes even more than the human limitations as they are. Instead of introducing moves that are still new to the legitimate speedrun community, they most certainly would rather try to polish their old fashioned runs or forget that idea as well.

By the way, that is what the TAS scene is actually trying to avoid at all costs: if there's not enough beautiful and unexpected moves, the movie would look much more boring compared to the respective speedrun, cause in this case, the human factor is what makes the speedrun more interesting. Essentially, each TAS strives for perfection, and if it fails to achieve one (or at least leave a corresponding impression), it would be much more disappoining than watching a similar failure, but in the movie where the perfection is absolutely unachievable by definition, and therefore excused. This mission, defined by Bisqwit and established through the community experience, lays a great responsibility that often turns some newbies off, as they see their not good enough attempts being rejected.

This very urge to push the limits even if it seems to be impossible, which is kinda usual to the TAS scene, is what must be fostered in speedrunners community as well! There must be "hey, I think I could do that thing on a console! Let's try..." instead of a snobby, whiny and ignorant "I won't bother myself trying to do that / that is impossible, forget about it / I don't care what they do in their runs, it's easy if you have frame advance" and so on.

Let me show you another representative example of segregating.


There's not many runs at SDA that strictly obey the rules. Each time a sequence break is found, the runners use it, which would make them cheaters by your definition as well. Essentially the same goes for glitches.

So, as you can see, trying to forcedly segregate two essentially different communities by criteria of your purely subjective perception of the "right" and "wrong" sides may turn out in a severe hypocrisy, even if you haven't had any bad intentions to start with. And guess who'll be the one to blame. Oh wait, this is already happening, like, for months. You know why? I can show you one of the possible reasons:

The one thing you've consistedly failed to understand since the very beginning, is that you are yourself, "and nothing more" �. It would be foolish to assume that you and all of the so called majority share the same view -- in fact, this and all the other threads depicting this issue show quite the opposite. Just try to count how many people have fully shared your point in this thread. Would it be representative enough to say that most of the posters have disagreed with you on some (or even all of) accounts? How could you call yourself a representative if it took you several month to understand a though both TASers and your fellow community members tried to promote? I think the time to tune your ambitions, misconceptions and all that rubbish down a bit has already come. I think no one would suffer if you do this ASAP.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the importance of providing the essential, well formed and clear explanation on what's what without ever resorting to oppression, disrespect, misinformation, hypocrisy and all the stuff like that. No one should fight for the audience, the audience -- be it a usual player, a speedrunner or just an average joe -- must make their own unconstrained choice -- be it normal speedruns or tool-assisted speedruns, or even both of them -- that would be based on a simple well-laid fact sheet that no one from either of the two communities is going to hide or distort to make it conform to their personal vision. There must be no jealousy and envy towards each other as well. There must be no invalid accusations as well. The people are all different, so there can't be any majorities you're talking about, especially in the long run. It's so much better to let them decide for themselves what they want to do and watch, instead of generating the peer pressure and assuring them that there is "right" and "wrong", although it's only your own interpretation. And finally, when someone posts a tool-assisted video on YouTube claiming this is a legit speedrun, it is everyone's duty (duty?) to check if that person isn't misinformed, and if they isn't, report this immediately (or at least leave the link and a short description on what's going on).

That being said, the general principle should be: both communities do their job well, both communities benefit from each other's results. As long as it's that clear and simple, there still is something for all of us to hope for.

Now, some of you may object if there is a valid reason for it.

Moozooh, well put, I agree with mostly everything you said. :) Hopefully Nate will take that into consideration.

looking good in here ...

http://speeddemosarchive.com/TAS.html

what do y'all think? (it's not final/posted yet.)

also:


on the contrary, i believe in that fundamental principle, and even used the drugs/sex analogy on the phone to my parents last week when i was explaining what i am doing to them. i have never said anything like "tas is evil".

okay, so what nate just posted seems to help what i already think he thinks. (if i'm totally out of it here, i'll edit this)

nate, as i have seen in for example the "outreach" thread at sda, is looking to bring greater fame and...legitimacy, really, to speed running (he said something to the effect of "we should be getting this too" after a cnn article about the new rubik's cube record, which rises to the front of my mind when i think about this).  i think that from this perspective, twin galaxies and tasvideos don't make this any easier.  twin galaxies obviously because they have some sort of magical claim to being "official" (hey, this is the internet, couldn't we give sda some sort of awesome official-ness-ness-ness?) and some of their records are actually faster (metroid 1 :( ... maybe i'll spend my summer doing that...except my nes doesn't really work.  anyway...).

okay, i still don't know exactly what i want to say about tas.  i think though that it could reflect very negatively in public light like it did on the internet when the smb3 stuff first went around. (i actually missed it, though i remember a forum like a year after where a lot of people were still pretty bitter about it...)

but, i agree with monster.

Now that is really wonderful!

Although I didn't quite get this section: "There is even work underway to write computer programs that make TAS videos, thereby eliminating even more human error from the production process."
If you're referring to BisqBot, then it's still very very far from the actual ability to take on some complex in-game situations. As of now, its only use lies in determining the shortest frame-by-frame input for achieving the desired task (which is expressed by a variable in a certain memory address, as far as I understand), and the actual input length rarely exceed a few seconds, IIRC. Moreover, it was only used by Bisqwit himself, so I think this part could have been omitted without any objections. All the runs are being made by the humans, anyway.

I assume there will be a link from the front page as well as from the FAQ?

My changes in bold.

I'd add another short paragraph saying something to the effect of "of course, this has all been analyzed according to SDAs rules.  Nothing says every other site has these same rules, however, and for one (link to tasvideos), these sort of videos are the norm."  You also don't mention savestates or rerecording anywhere.  Lastly, one short line why SDA tracks unassisted and not TAS vids would work well, I think.

Of course, this is just my opinion, and should be treated as such.

I must confess i couldn't see any hope for this thread ending in anything good, but i am very pleased to see that you made such a fine document about TAS, nate. Of course it's not perfect the way TAS community would want it, but it's in such a state that it's very satisfatory and doesn't hurt anyone. Considering that it's on the SDA site, even nicer to see. kudos.

(i'm one of the people making TAS). I like to make speedruns too, but not much watching them. Come to think of it, i don't watch many TASes either... I just like to make them. 

I agree with StarmanHaxor. CAD or CAS (Computer-Assisted Speedrun/Demonstration) sounds a lot better than cheated, and maybe even drives the message home better than calling the stuff cheated.