Segmented and TAS boards
7 years ago
Gelderland, Netherlands

I think you should have a nice chat with Pac to see what can be arranged as collab samsara (y)

United States

Allowing TASes to be linked here (I am okay with mine being linked here), and in a resource section because a leaderboard makes no sense given the nature of being able to improve an input file works because there are a number of categories that will be rejected for various reasons at TASVideos (I have one), and it would be nice to have a place for them, as well as the ones that are accepted.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Spikestuff and kobepilgrim like this
North Carolina, USA

"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. "

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.

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.

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.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
AndreaRovenski likes this
New Jersey, USA

"I apologize if you got offended, I meant nothing by my post though I may have read your post the wrong way."

I think Samsara was just being direct and thorough :D

United States

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.

New Jersey, USA

@BlueInfinity22

"There is no reason they should not be allowed here because you say so."

What do you say toward that type of reasoning when it comes to certain games not being hosted on this site, due to there being other sites dedicated to those games? It may be a separate issue, but is it a separate concept? (This is a legitimate inquiry, not a rhetorical question.)

Edited by the author 7 years ago
San Francisco, CA, USA
Samsara
She/Her, They/Them
7 years ago

[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.

Spikestuff and Trollbear666 like this
United States

In response to your response to me, this is why I'd like an alternative on this website to host things, most notably "Theory tases" and segmented runs in general. Also, there is fun competition with "LOTADs" that I've engaged with within the Doom community several times, coming up with random ideas on how to do a particular run and then making a quick tas to showcase how it can be done et cetera. Which would work perfectly in a leaderboard scenario and would not work at all on your website, sure you can say "post in the forum" which is a makeshift fix but still.

Anyway the point of this thread wasn't really to talk about tasvideos policy, moreso to expand the possibilities of this website. I don't care if someone wants to go through the rigorous verification process of your site and then redirect a link here, all I want is links to be easily available here since it would make this objectively easier and better for everyone involved.