Any% "no ACE" split clarifying and discussion
7 years ago
Massachusetts, USA

... because everyone who liked it didn't care, and everyone who didn't like it also didn't care enough to make a thread discussing what should change or why it's a bad change, but were still annoying enough to make me care enough to make the thread myself.

With that, I will clear up a few things about my motivation behind doing it in the first place. With any% 'long' being a dead category, and me having better preoccupations than to care about a video game, this went unchecked for a while. KZ_FREW recently started practicing this pre-August version of any% which he had been told could be referred to as "Any%, No ACE" (ACE standing for arbitrary code execution). As soon as I saw this name and realized what it meant, I 1) thought it was much much better than "Any% Warpless", to the point where I'd accept it personally, and 2) wondered if instapasses were actually ACE. Of course that's a technicality, albeit an obvious one, but once people were told that it basically just meant old any%, most of them just rolled with it.

Some time before I made the change (probably a day or two before), Odyssic threw the suggestion out and I realized that yes, this is a thing that should happen and it might get people interested in running VC again, with the "official" reintroduction of a relatively short, enjoyable speedrun. It didn't cross my mind at the time that there was the trend of people ceasing to run things that have no official leaderboard, but doing them if they're a main leaderboard category. In hindsight, that's actually further argument to keep the change, since I've seen numerous people playing the game, which is totally cool.

The way the change took place was that I added a variable called "ACE", set all runs default to the "No ACE" value, and manually edited each new run to "ACE". Variables on the site can be toggled to be subcategories, and I did that, so if you're complaining about this being so huge, then realize that if it ABSOLUTELY has to be undone, it's so damn simple.

Also, yes, I know the name isn't perfect. In its current form, it's alright. The main criterion for a good speedrun category name should be conciseness. It should be short, while also describing what it actually is quite well. If a name is too nondescript and short, you end up with shit like Classic%, but if it's too bulky and long, then Any% No ACE could be referred to as "Any% without doing tricks to start any mission at will". I've heard of "Any% no stack underflow", which is another acceptable name IMO, but it only really makes sense to those who know how the big KYFC warp works. It's still quite short and descriptive and I think it's better than "No ACE" by a bit.

One last point is that the variable might not end up having to be a subcategory division, but I think it makes sense. If there was no division, it'd simply be that every ACE run would be on top, and every No ACE run would be on the bottom, like it was before. The split makes the board a lot cleaner and understandable.

TL;DR, the change is welcome by many; yes, the name isn't perfect, but I think "Any% No Stack Underflow" is a viable name candidate, but discuss this here; and while I very strongly advocate for this not to be reversed, it can be done so easily if the world will end otherwise.

Discuss.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
hoxi likes this
Massachusetts, USA

Also, as of now they are still all under Any%. There definitely should be some separation between these two categories, subcategory or not, and I just thought of the fact that "beat the game, no restrictions" conflicts with "beat the game like it used to be done so basically beat the game with some restrictions". A separate category with a new name could actually cater to that.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
hoxi likes this
Friesland, Netherlands

ACE is a good enough name. The hardware store manipulated glitch is arguably more related to actual ACE than it is to instapasses. Key difference being that this trick can be manipulated into running ANY code. Whereas regular instapasses only jump you to one specific spot and allow you no more freedom to decide which code is ran than you would entering a marker normally.

Can't satisfy everyone with the name, but ACE seems to satisfy most people. However if a plurality votes to use SSU instead, I'd say change it to that. At this point, I'd personally abstain from a vote between ACE and SSU (if it does come to a vote, lets not use FPTP)

As for the subcategory division. This is an issue on SRR's end. There's no 'show both' option. You have to show either one or the other. I'd report this to Pac himself, but quite frankly SRR has better shit they could be working on, so I'll leave that for someone else to do. Until this feature is implemented, I'd vote for merely having them be variables, and not subcategories, as variables do provide a 'show both' option along with a 'show only one', just using a more clunky interface.

I am absolutely against making the two full blown separate categories, as opposed to just subcategories. Although this opposition is also 100% caused by SRR's inability to display boards merged together

Also, subcategories should be treated as "Does this run use X?" and not "Would this run have used X if it was discovered at the time?"

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Mhmd_FVC likes this
United States
  1. No ACE is a functional name and no change is necessary.

  2. "stack underflow" is a software engineering term. "ACE" is a speedrunning term. Using "stack underflow" is a really great way to make our community look anal retentive and inaccessible.

  3. Splitting the leaderboards is an excellent choice and should not be undone. "But it's arbitrary!" Arbitrary categories exist because they're fun and fun is the entire reason speedrunning exists in the first place.

  4. Why are we still talking about this? It's really quite ridiculous at this point. Further change is unnecessary and would continue to confuse casual and frequent viewers alike.

  5. Warpless was a bad name, and I apologize for my advocacy of it. In that regard: No ACE is functional, concise, and uses jargon that is often found in the speedrunning and TAS communities.

kompowiec2 and Mhmd_FVC like this
Friesland, Netherlands
  1. Because disagreement exists on the subject matter. Ignoring that fact is not just really quite ridiculous, it's ridiculous period.
United States

ACE is a term that's already used at large by the speedrun and TAS communities, though.

@S. - I've grown fatigued of this discussion because we're all up in arms about the category split and/or name, meanwhile no one is actually running either category. It feels like an echo chamber of arguments for no particular reason. The silver lining is that No ACE has seen activity recently, perhaps in part thanks to the leaderboard split.

S. likes this
Russia

I'm mostly a 'casual' runner and was pretty sad that Vice City looks dead with this new strat. First of all because the lack of gameplay. Pure glitching, random, frustraiting. Have no aspiration to run and not fun to watch. I understand that any% means any possibility and those runs are legit. But this looks like zero fun for me.

So, I think admins should try to find some way to 'renew' Vice City. To set rules that will be as simple as possible and result in interesting gameplay runs. I'm not an expert in all those glitches. But can we avoid the critical ones with something simple like "no saves" or "no replays". Will it prevent critical glitches that kill gameplay or not?

I wonna say that important thing is that rules should be simple and understandable by everyone. Also, ideally lead to interesting runs for viewers and runners. Can we do that?

Edited by the author 7 years ago
United States

Might as well go ahead and weigh in with my opinion here since it seems like the appropriate place to do it.

There is a huge lack of consistency in which way the GTA boards in general lean when it comes to which categories are acceptable to annotate on the leader boards. Every time a thread gets made about how we should have No Duping/ No Replays / Allow Cheats categories, the majority of our community simply explains why we are unwilling to do this.

Typically its something along the lines of, "We aren't going to cater categories to people that want to use slower strats." If not that, then it is something about how the existing main categories are goal-oriented and not strat oriented. All in all, if that is the community decision then so be it. It works.

Now when it comes to VC Any% No ACE, I understand WHY people want it to exist but it goes against the grain of what members and moderators have preached for a long time. Since I don't run VC Any%, my opinion is wholly irrelevant. However, in the interest of the GTA Leaderboards as a whole, I would ask the moderators to decide what they believe the primary function of these boards should be. As I see it, this could be either:

1.) A list of times for the most popular and primary categories that the community has deemed to be "official categories."

or

2.) A collective database of ALL speedruns for each respective game.

TLDR - If we are going to open the floodgates in the interest of what route is more fun, let's be ready to swim.

S. and KZ_FREW like this
United States

In lieu of what Joe has said, I find being purist about categories to be a mindset that completely misses the mark of what speedrunning is all about: having fun. If banning certain aspects of the game makes a speedrun more fun or interesting, that is something that should be celebrated instead of chastised.

S., Patrick_ and 2 others like this

as I've said before, (imo) if a leaderboard is popular enough there is no need to complain. It's hilarious arguing that ACE is bad while we have an ingame NG+ 100% leaderboard. If it's about the name, suggest something better and focus on that particular discussion, otherwise accept that it's a crappy name that still does the job

The only thing I personally think ¤could¤ be changed if people wanted is to change No ACE to it's own category rather than a variable. If that is done, I don't think it should be a misc category however.

I can argue my point further if there's any reason to

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Mhmd_FVC likes this

Just making a quick post as it's late and I'm tired. I'll probably make a better one during the weekend

I consider CP skip with pw2 as ace, but I don't really mind if the name no ace is used as a category for former any%

What I do mind is that the leaderboard separating runs from before kyfc warp with runs done afterwards I believe there should be a primary category called any% with every single PB that competed as any% at the time (from K9 to antistreak/Xample) and a new category (placed between any% and AM as a non-misc) called any% no ace or no stack underflow or no Uber-Large-skip glitches (as it's usually called on SDA), the name doesn't really matter as long as it's clearly defined in the rules.

To fill the leaderboard for this new category every relevant runs of it should be duplicated (only pbs as of August and newer ones, maybe with a threshold like only runs post duping or something)

Duplicating runs is the only way at the moment as sr.com can't have the same run show on multiple categories, it should easily doable with a get request to the API to get a json of the runs then use it to do a post request to resubmit them all in one go into the new category lignat0r or PAC or even maybe zoton could confirm this

This way the any% history of VC will be preserved (from k9-S. to Fatzke to m00n vs aceshigh vs ractrot to fill then kz vs mhmd to the current times and how much below it can get in the next years) and it will show the gwind the community as a whole did toward the speedgame through route refinement, glitch hunting and grinding consistency

This post is actually not short but very messy and probably full of bad English nonsense

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Nick007J, Mhmd_FVC, and S. like this
Friesland, Netherlands

Short version: We started calling it ACE now, so lets stick to that. Also SRR is lacking.

Long version: Leaderboard split: As Gael explained while I was typing this, the main problem here is that most No ACE runs were runs of which the goal was any%, not any% slower strats. It just so happened that fast strats weren't discovered then so any% slower strats WAS the fastest any%. Now those people are being torn off and dumped into their own board, somewhere off to the side. (This is also a reason why we wouldn't dump all the pre-bastant runs into 7 assets if it still was a thing, would we?)

Again, this is an issue with SRR site functionality. It should have an overall any% leaderboard display, that combines ALL runs from ALL categories (any%, any% no X, any% pre-Y) and give the possibility to show only one of the categories (as it does now).

Here's an image to explain my point better: http://i.imgur.com/2O4Y9Wj.png Such a feature would fix everything, and although it already exists, it does in a hidden way, tucked off in the corner, with limited control in what would be the default display. I'd not be surprised if many people won't know what I'm talking about here.

Category name: Husho brings up a good point. The category might need relooking at in case similar skips that aren't quite yet SSU are found that also skip the entire game, so neither the term ACE nor SSU might fit for the future. Then again, that's something for us to argue about in the future and is irrelevant now, so I'm tempted to just backspace this entire paragraph.

so is anyone here really AGAINST calling it ACE? All I've seen are people who don't care, who are in favor of ACE, or who can't/haven't properly explained why they are against it. With every day people are continuing to call this ACE, it's becoming more and more rooted as a term in VC speedrunning, so better speak up quick.

Lastly: If speedrunning is about fun, naturally it would only attract people who are actually interested in speedrunning VC. If you can't be bothered to figure out what the letters SSU mean, information which would be (and is) one click away on the board and compacted down to two sentences, then you probably weren't that interested in speedrunning VC anyway. So maybe we should actually be 'anal retentive and inaccessible', so to save people from spending time on something they don't really care about anyway. Tons of other hobbies have complicated terms that I as the spectator am oblivious to, but would actually do research about if I cared enough. Also, it's not like calling it ACE instead makes it any less 'anal retentive and inaccessible', as evidenced by the shitton of people who ask what it means anyway. The only people who could possibly be deterred by the letters 'SSU' and their meaning are people not already familiar with speedrunning, the same people who would also be deterred by 'ACE'. Not that calling it anything would actually make us look 'anal retentive and inaccessible', because as I said, the explanation would be (and is) one click away and would be (and is) two sentences worth of reading. And if people can't find that click, nothing stops them from asking; we have a public discord channel, none of the GTA runners willingly put their chat in sub-only mode, and these forums are fairly active. Meanwhile, I struggled to discover what the T in MST stands for in Ocarina of Time speedrunning, the most popular game for speedrunning with one of the largest communities. Man, that sure scared me off. Unless we literally call this trick 'hardware store trick', complete with its own set of problems, all these issues will persist. (although, 'any% no HST' looks just as scary, and people will still come in asking what it means.) I find this argument so silly I just had to comment on it, I don't even have anything to gain by responding to it. Well, at least I learnt what that T stands for. Probably derailing this thread by doing so.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Powdinet likes this
Massachusetts, USA

Gaël: Not a bad idea, the main any% board is basically a graveyard at this point anyway, so why not make it a museum? I'm just not sure if I'd keep my 19:49 (which was WR for a few hours so I guess it's relevant) or my 53:01 which is an actual good run. I think there's an option on here to separate runs with different variables, so both can be displayed on the same category I think.

S: yeh

S. likes this
United States

As long as we preserve a leaderboard that allows new players to rise high in the ranks without having to grind KYFC warp, I'm fine with whatever happens. Most people's interest is piqued for the novelty, but that's where it stops. When someone comes to the GTA speedrunning community, they want to engage in classic GTA gameplay in a speedy fashion.

That's not to say that the KYFC warp is a bad thing. It's always been there, we just didn't know about it. We should always be furthering our knowledge of our speedgame, because it's not like the old categories cease to exist - generally speaking.

@S. to me, the difference is that ACE is already used, and examples of it can be found throughout the speedrunning community (SMW credits warp, Castlevania SotN's inventory abuse, Zelda 1's filename abuse). With SSU, it'd be an exclusive term to Vice City and I think, generally speaking, it's a good idea to keep things consistent with the greater speedrun community. Yes, a lot of people are unsure of what ACE is, but you said it yourself - every hobby has its jargon, including us - Any% is a good example.

It's possible I could be overemphasizing my feelings on this. For me, I'm not exactly the most intelligent person around. With "script stack underflow" I don't know what we're saying, it's just words to me. I get that a "stack underflow" is when something is called from a stack but the stack is empty. I'm unsure on what a stack is; a bunch of similar elements, I guess? So a script is called from a stack but the stack is empty. But what script are we calling? I don't know any of this, and of course Google is your friend, but Google can't help me with comprehension.

I just want to play the game, I don't want to try and wrap my head around abstract coding concepts. If someone asks what ACE is, I can at least point them to digestible, speedrun-related content to help them understand it. If someone asks what SSU is, I can't explain it beyond "no warp to the end of the game" without pointing them to software engineering articles, and that's what I don't want to have to do to help someone understand a speedrun term.

Obviously with the more technical sides of speedrunning you can't avoid software engineering concepts (pannenkoek) but this is something that curious parties are able to explore if it so pleases them. It's different when a casual viewer just wants to understand what we mean.

Lastly: I've just emailed GDQ asking to change the category name of my run to Any% No ACE, so even if people decide that the name needs to change (it doesn't seem like the case, but if so) I'm not going to ask GDQ to change it for a third time.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
S. likes this
Russia

"so is anyone here really AGAINST calling it ACE?"

Actually, I probably a little bit against. Don't get me wrong, just 2 thoughts:

  1. Rules now are not simple. I mean that part:

"You may not use any tricks that skip to specific parts of the mission script to start any mission at will. This is called ACE, or "Arbitrary Code Execution", which is typically done by waiting near the hardware store, then starting vigilante while purchasing a property. Instapasses are allowed, as those skip to fixed points within missions and cannot be manipulated into starting whatever the player desires."

Why the new glitch is ACE and some old glitces (duping to trick game that you did 6 assets, judges instapass, arguably replay glitches at all) are not ACE? And yes, I'm a casual runner. But I don't feel like I don't care or something like that. And definitely want to make my runs if rules will be clear.

  1. Are we safe from full game skip (total lack of gameplay) with that explanation? I'm not an expert, but it looks like not. I was asking a few posts ago, but nobody answered yet. Will something like "no saves" or "no replays" guarantee impossibility of critical glitches. (even if this will bring us back to 1h:30m or so)

In the end I'm in favor to: 1) Simple rules which everybody can understand 2) Rules that will exclude the ¤possibility¤ to skip majority of the game.

Friesland, Netherlands

KZ_FREW: all fair points, I understand your reasoning now. Thanks for clearing up your views

@MicroElf: 1) The key difference is the use of the hardware store. Waiting around the hardware store will affect JF dupe, CP dupe, etc in zero way, whereas it does affect the safehouse + vigilante, causing the warp to KYFC (or CTC, or G-Spotlight, or whatever the player wants.) Perhaps this could be stressed a bit more in the description.

  1. No, it wont. But I'm fine with not thinking about that unless something is actually discovered (even if it means having to go through this discussion AGAIN at that point.) 2b) Does saving even do anything in the run other than safety + moving the time? All strats involving the save icon are doable without, as far as I know. As for no replays, I am 99% sure CP dupe is possible without replays, just a lot more annoying, and even the KYFC warp might be (just a guess here.). So no replays could work as a category. I might try it actually. However, replays play smaller roles that don't involve duping (like reloading a gun) that I'm not sure people will want to go without?
MicroElf likes this
Russia

Thank you for explanation. I saw that every run use saves and replays for those glitches and thought that they are necessary. If you still can skip significant part of a game without saves and/or replays than it's much more complicated, yeah.

Still think that we should make rules as simple as possible though.

P.S. By the way I'm a bit curious how can you make all those instapasses/duping/etc without using replay/save at least once? Can somebody give me a video for example?

Friesland, Netherlands

Park a cop car so that if you were to exit it, you'd end up inside a save icon. Make sure it has no door. Press submission + look behind, get out and immediately back in so Tåmmy picks up the save icon but gets in the car before the save screen pops up. You will now teleport as would've happened had you picked it up in a replay, so let go of submission. Now youre on OM0 vigilante, so do the phonecall thing.

Derailing the thread again, sorry

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Lithuania

wtf, i didn't read 2/3 of this so take it with a pinch of salt

If naming it ACE doesn't make sense, then don't name it ACE. It's not about what the viewers will find easier to understand (how is ACE even common in speedrunning? First time i see it). It's about naming categories what the most appropriate name for them is especially when it comes to official leaderboards.

And the people that don't like that.... well they can just call it whatever they want to call it.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
MicroElf, Earleys, and Patrick_ like this

Hi, I am from the TAS community. My NES / SNES robot was used to introduce the wider world to TAS console verification at GDQ events. Relating to this topic, my robot was used to display various ACE runs, such as the AGDQ'14 Snake & Pong demo, the AGDQ'15 Pokemon Plays Twitch demo and the AGDQ'16 Super Mario Maker All Stars runs.

I apologize I am late to the discussion but I wasn't aware of this until now.

As someone from the TAS community, and with my understanding of this glitch, I can say confidently that we absolutely would not call what is used for the glitched run an ACE run.

ACE is not just a meaningless buzzword. This is a technical acronym that stands for "Arbitrary Code Execution." This term was coined by the TAS community specifically to address the difference between a glitched run that does not execute arbitrary user code (up to and including executing unexpected but not arbitrary code), against those that do.

To be clear: The first word - arbitrary - is very important and a distinguishing factor. In an ACE run, arbitrary code is executed - that's what the term means. Not just any code, but arbitrary code. You can do anything (theoretically, if given enough instructions) beyond this point. If during a run memory is corrupted, the stack is corrupted, unexpected but present code is executed, or generally unreachable code is executed, but no ARBITRARY CODE is executed, then it is not an ACE run.

Thus the defining point of ACE is the executable payload. And there is none for this run.

With the rising popularity and knowledge of ACE speedruns has come the misuse of terminology. To put it simply: just because something weird happens doesn't mean it is ACE. Likewise, just because something technical happens doesn't mean it is ACE either. Bringing this up has little to do with purism, zealotry or ruining people's fun, so much as it is the simple calling out the incorrect use of a name. It reeks of buzzword bait and simple mindedness. I hope I am wrong and this is merely a misunderstanding.

When I first saw an ACE of this, I was wondering what code was being executed. I was disappointed to see that there is no executable payload with this glitch.

ACE is a technical term, just as "stack underflow" would be. Just because something is the way it is now, does not mean it should always be that way. Please, use the correct term.

Trollbear666, S. and 3 others like this
Game stats
Followers
1,750
Runs
3,959
Players
559
Latest news
Y-Sens Fix is now officially allowed in speedruns

VC Enthusiasts, good news!

The VC Mod Team has decided to allow users to access a y-sens fix for mouse issues. This can be used legally in speedruns from today onwards, with only one rule.

This script w

10 months ago
Latest threads
Posted 2 years ago
0 replies
Posted 3 years ago
36 replies
Posted 3 years ago
0 replies
Posted 4 years ago
0 replies
Posted 2 months ago
2 replies