It's definitely only an issue for turbo users. Mashing won't be affected unless you're some kind of superhuman mashing at 30hz. Worst case scenario there is you lose a frame every now and then because your mashing lines up with the exact frame needed for this to happen. The only way in which it affects the TAS is actually positive, speeding up any text before the initial menuing session that changes the text speed. Not a huge gain, but still a gain.

Turbo would end up losing several minutes over the course of the run, actually. If X is pressed before a textbox finishes displaying text, it will display only the next few letters of the text, even if you're at fastest text speed since fastest speed doesn't actually display text instantly (it takes a couple frames, and if the turbo pattern lines up with when it starts displaying, then you're guaranteed to have the whole textbox advance slower). At best you're losing 10-20 frames per affected textbox with this, at worst you could be losing 1-2 full seconds on longer textboxes.

I did some extensive testing on this back when I was still doing runs and managed to get it maybe once or twice out of a few hundred tries. As far as I could tell, it's just some weird quirk in RPG Maker's follow AI that randomly causes it to go off path like that, pure RNG and not something that can be easily or reliably manipulated. My testing was done on an edited copy of the game, though, with Phillip's start position set to right before the screen transition, so it's possible that something done in the earlier game on a normal run can affect this.

[quote]What's the issue with me posting in a thread about TAS' having a section on Speedrun.com? I heard some things about TAS Videos, someone brought it up, I posted what I heard. I even ended the post on that it was just stuff I heard, but you seemed to confirm it's accurate.[/quote] I don't see the point of having separate TAS leaderboards here when we, as a site, are a TAS leaderboard. I'm reaching out as a staff member to promote cooperation and collaboration. The entire point of my post was that we do have these rules, but we are absolutely subject to changing them if there's enough community interest in doing so. Our community, myself included, see nothing drastically wrong with the current ruleset, which is why it hasn't changed much over the years.

I do want us to start accepting more games, but at the point we're at now, we wouldn't reject any games that anyone would actually care enough about. It's exceedingly rare that we even have a game-based rejection because no one's bothering to TAS the kinds of games which we would reject in the first place.

If you want my opinion on something we're doing wrong: ROM hacks. I honestly think we need to relax our rules on them. They're probably the most strictly judged things on the site, and having to follow our totalitarian rules on them is starting to make me sick. It's something I could bring up to the admins, but I would still just be one voice compared to an entire audience of people. As I've said a thousand times, if our rules don't make sense, come over to the site and inquire about them or ask for a few changes. You're likely to get a crowd of people agreeing, and it's likely that we'll change the rules in the near future.

There are, however, slight issues with drastic rule changes at the moment, things that are completely out of our control right now (aging site architecture, lack of access to critical site code features, lack of web programmers that would be able to help build a new fully customizable site), but as long as the inquiries and requests are on the forums, we will definitely see them and discuss them, and when the time comes around where it's possible to implement everything, they will definitely be considered.

..."They will be considered" always sounded really dismissive to me, so let me rephrase. I don't mean it in that way at all. We'll most likely implement any suggested and popular changes to the rules that wouldn't be an absolute nightmare to implement... and being TASers, we have a very high tolerance for nightmarish projects, so it's highly likely there could be a lot of changes as long as they're brought up to us in the first place.

[quote]You say "wrong on both accounts" then proceed to verify and confirm that they do actually impose their own rules on games, and that you do reject runs based on if they're interesting or not.

I don't care what you do, as this isn't TASVideos. I posted the merit for allowing TAS' on Speedrun.com, as Speedrun.com is a central hub for Speedrunning content. There is no reason they should not be allowed here because you say so.[/quote] Just as TASVideos is a central hub for TASing content. Why overshadow and obsolete a long-standing site like this? It doesn't personally make sense to me. This isn't my community, so I ultimately have no say in what you guys do, but I personally think it's an idea that only benefits your community while completely crushing ours. My words here mean nothing in the long run, but I'd like to think I'm not the only person in the TASVideos community that would feel hurt and alienated by an entire new site of TAS leaderboards that already eclipses us in popularity, just because so many people are misinformed on our practices and our attitudes about said practices.

I could agree that it's weird to reject games or categories based on entertainment value alone, but I still think there's no issue with TAS timing, by the way. It's a unified start point and end point for every game on the site, it makes it easier to compare runs to each other, and it means our timing is precise down to the frame in every case. It makes much more sense for us, and it's not an imposition at all. The run is automatically and precisely timed by the length of the input file without the need of the author or the Judges to manually time it, so what makes it sound like an imposition?

Limiting categories and games is primarily based on user experience: Showing off as much of a game as possible without making the user watch 10 different mostly-similar runs, and only allowing new categories based off of our audience. In theory, any category can be accepted if the userbase finds it to be entertaining enough. As for actual games, it's primarily the same thing. Would anyone want to watch a TAS of a game where the character does nothing but move right, unimpeded, for several minutes? Especially when they could watch an RTA runner do the same thing in the same time? I wouldn't, I doubt anyone would. It wouldn't make sense to us to host that sort of TAS, when the definition of a TAS is to deliver an extraordinary experience to the viewer when compared to a normal speedrun and especially when compared to casual play.

When I see people complaining about us not accepting a category or a game, it's always after we reject the category/game. If so many people felt strongly enough about us accepting a particular category/game, then where were they during the voting process? Even if you can't vote on submissions without making 2-3 forum posts (which prevents registration/voting spam), a good post in the submission thread outlining why a run should/shouldn't be accepted is much better than an actual submission vote. You'll find we're much less dictatorial than you think we are about what we can/can't accept if you just come over and participate in submission discussion yourself.

[quote]I apologize if you got offended, I meant nothing by my post though I may have read your post the wrong way. But I don't see an issue with TAS' being on the site.[/quote] I'm really only offended by the general negative consensus toward TASVideos that seems to be based on rumors and misunderstandings. My issues with TASes on this site are all personal. I'm not speaking for the rest of TASVideos, but I wouldn't hesitate to think that other staff members are similarly uncomfortable with the idea. If the admins here decide to implement TAS leaderboards, there's really nothing we can do about it.

All I want is to come here, clear up any misunderstandings, and hopefully try to reach a collaborative solution where everyone's happy. I don't mean to offend in return, I just had to make my feelings known as a representative of the TAS community.

[quote]I just want to say: "LOTAD: Low Optimization Tool Assisted Demo. This is not a TAS. It's a good resource for RTA runners, but it's not a TAS. The fact that it is "low optimization" is the key here." and this is the reason I will not use tasvideos. Way too much emphasis on things being 100% optimized drains the fun of TASing for me entirely.[/quote] That's the entire point of TASing, though. It's as much of a competition as normal RTA running is. TASVideos is a records site, so of course we're only going to accept new records. SpeedDemosArchive has operated on the same model for years.

"Way too much emphasis on things being 100% optimized" isn't all that accurate either. We've accepted plenty of runs with known improvements as long as they're faster than any other TAS out there. Every TAS on the site can be optimized. Think of it more as we have a baseline of optimization and tech quality that a run must reach to be published: If it's the first run of a game, it can't look sloppy anywhere. If it's an improvement to a previous TAS, it can't avoidably lose time anywhere compared to the TAS it's obsoleting. Nothing can be 100% optimized, so we're not too strict on things.

The issue here with LOTADs is that they're not meant to be serious TASes, so they're going to be noticeably suboptimal from a TASer's perspective. Imagine a segmented RTA test run that only aims to lock down the basic route without bothering with RNG manipulation or getting things absolutely perfect in each segment. That's what a LOTAD would be to us. It's a test TAS. They're still valuable resources to both this community and us, and they're perfectly allowed on our forums, but they would likely be rejected if submitted to the site proper. I don't think anyone who makes a TAS test or a LOTAD actually has the intention of submitting it to the site anyway, so it's not really an issue at all.

[quote=BlueInfinity22]From what I understand, TAS Videos forces their own rules onto TAS'. Like their own timings, and restrictions. Additionally, I've heard they flat out reject TAS' for games they find "too boring" (apparently this happened with Metal Gear Ghost Babel).[/quote] Wrong on both counts. All TASes are timed in the same way: Power-on to last input. If we receive an input file that's 36000 frames long, then we count that as a 10 minute TAS. This is information the input file tells the submission parser. There's no enforcing of timing rules unless you count the actual way that TASes are made as "enforcing" timing rules.

We used to reject games for not meeting entertainment standards, however we have stopped doing that four years ago. Now, we'll only reject games that are too trivial to be TASed, such as sports games or board games or any game which, when TASed, could easily be matched by an RTA runner or a casual player. If you still disagree with this practice, perhaps take it up with us directly instead of complaining about it in places where we may never see it.

[quote=BlueInfinity22]Because of these restrictions and such, you'll see that recent TAS' have two different timers, one for TAS Videos rules, and one for how the community would have liked it. And I hear that there's some communities that won't submit their TAS to TAS Videos because of these arbitrary rules.[/quote] As I said, timing isn't something we can control because of the way input files are handled and created. You're always going to have "TAS Timing" when you create a TAS. You have an input file that's X number of frames long, and that's the timing we use for the site, because it's much easier to compare TASes that way. It's much, much easier for us to compare 70000 frames to 69696 frames, as opposed to "70000 frames with an RTA timing of 18:00.00" to "80000 frames with an RTA timing of 17:56.00".

[quote]So I don't see any issue with having a nice TAS/Segmented board/section on a game's page so the Community can be in charge of their own rules, and not an outside party. It'd also allow many more different TAS' like LOTAD, Damageless, No OoB, or as broken as they want without fear of rejection. This could show off games in new ways and encourage experimentation.[/quote] Let me break that down for you.

LOTAD: Low Optimization Tool Assisted Demo. This is not a TAS. It's a good resource for RTA runners, but it's not a TAS. The fact that it is "low optimization" is the key here.

Damageless: This is an acceptable category on TASVideos.

No OOB: This is an acceptable category on TASVideos.

"Broken": This is acceptable on TASVideos.

Showing off games and experimenting: This is precisely what we want to see on TASVideos, though not necessarily as site submissions. Resources posted in our forums or on this site? Sure, absolutely, bring them over and let us see them. The only "fear of rejection" on the site is if you actually submit a run for publication, and even in that case the only thing you're missing out on is not having the run published on the site. We're not going to drive you away at all. That has never been, and will never be, our intention.

[quote]TASes I dunno, TASVideos kinda has the base covered on that one. People apparently take issues with their rules and practices, but I'd take that issue up with them first.[/quote] PLEASE take it up with us. I've seen so many complaints about the way we handle business, and almost none of them are in places where we could actually pick it up and pay attention to it. Most of the time, the complaints are just based off of pure misinformation, misunderstanding our rules and people perpetuating these myths and overexaggerating their "bad experiences" with the site. Like I said before, if you disagree with any of our rules and practices, please take it up with us directly. We listen if people explain their issues rationally instead of just lowkey dissing us. We will clear up any misunderstandings and, if there's a majority vote for one of our rules to change, then we will most likely change it in favor of said majority.

I feel as though the reason why our rules and practices at TASVideos are so unappreciated is because they're so different from what's already standard in the RTA community. We've had these rules set in stone for over a decade (13 years to be exact), and for the most part they've worked perfectly fine for us specifically. I absolutely admit that they wouldn't work in the much larger RTA community as a whole, but for our relatively small site, I personally don't see too much wrong with them. Perhaps if we could attract a larger group of people, then we could definitely consider relaxing our rules over time...

...And I'll tie that last sentence into the actual topic at hand: Maybe it's just me speaking as TASVideos staff, but I would rather not have a separate set of TAS leaderboards over here. I would personally prefer anything remotely tool-assisted to be posted to the TASVideos forums and linked back here in order to properly benefit both of our communities, since we do benefit greatly from RTA runs, as much (if not more) than RTA runners benefit from TASes. I'd love for us to grow as a site and have more of an intertwined relationship with the RTA community, and having a separate set of leaderboards specific to this site would just feel like alienation. I would be perfectly happy with a Resources page that just links back to us, though.

It's all absolutely skippable, if you know what you're doing already then there's no need to check anything in-game.

Would appreciate a namechange to Samsara very much. Thanks in advance~