Segmented and TAS boards
7 years ago
United States

It would be neat to have a segmented and TAS board for all games built into the sidebar at the left somewhere (along guides, forum, etc) since most games have these and should be showed on the site somwhere.

Buffet_Time, HowDenKing and 13 others like this
England

Yeah I 100% backup Cyberdemon531 on this one.

United States

backing up cyber

Québec

oh shit its peterafro

Kollin7 likes this

Wouldn't that be kind of stepping on TASVideos' and SDA's toes?

YUMmy_Bacon5, Gaming_64, and Noice like this
Québec

@påc technically yes but last time i checked they didnt have priority over the word "TAS", + it wouldnt hurt to have some up to date TAS that are not on TASvideos or SDA

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Bavaria, Germany

I'd imagine the vast majority of TAS runs added would be links to TASVideos anyway.

United States

Maybe just add a social icon for account settings that can link to tasvideos? (No this is not me just wanting more icons OpieOP )

Spikestuff likes this
New Jersey, USA

Does it need to be an individual leaderboard? Are there enough people creating TAS's and SEGs to justify adding a ranking system? Could "TAS" or "SEG" simply be added as a category to those games that have enough of a TAS/SEG community? Would a SEG board essentially be the sum of a runner's IL submissions (or is SEG not necessarily by level?)?

Also, do SDA and TASv have leaderboards? Their priority seems to be documentation. In that case, creating leaderboards here wouldn't seem to encroach on their territory.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
United Kingdom

I don't really agree with having TAS "leaderboards" - in my experience they are not created with any sense of competition, and there is generally only ever one relevant TAS for a category at any one time. That said, a place to host links to them (maybe under resources?) could be cool.

FitterSpace, Deln and 2 others like this
New Jersey, USA

I agree with the two posts before me.

I always saw the "guides" tab as a place for TAS's to be posted. "Featured runs" would be interesting, for more than just TAS/SEG. I've seen many people come up with category ideas that are consensed to be not worth adding, and a featured runs tab would enable those types of runs to be demonstrated.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
United States

Agree that TASes should be under resources or similar.

TheKombatKing likes this
Czech Republic

I think this will be solved once mods will be able to create multiple leaderboards (I think it was promised).

Newfoundland, Canada

One thing that I think people might find useful is to put a blurb on the landing page for a game, and to otherwise customize that page beyond the default category. However, just having a place to put a link to a segmented run offsite isn't great. Ideally, they should be a part of the database, so that they can be associated with runners and all other nice things that come with being a run.

Just having a flat link to the most recent TAS, whether as a guide or a resource just seems like a waste.

United States

The problem with having game mods design a home page is that that sort of thing takes a set of skills most mods might not have.

Maybe having a "game home page" as a ¤standard¤ thing beyond the default leaderboard, would be a benefit though. Have a set of blanks the mods can fill in, rather than giving them a free-form page which will just be a disaster.

Ohio, USA

i think having a subsection for TAS and segmented runs is a pretty good idea. Even if just under the "resources" section, as pres said.

OmegaFallon likes this
North Carolina, USA

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).

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.

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.

And yeah, a segmented board would be nice too because some games actively still do that.

Just my opinion based on what I've heard.

OmegaFallon likes this
England

Segmented would be nice, they're kind of a dying breed of run and there's no real central repository for them at the moment, so speedrun.com could do well to fill this particular niche.

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.

FitterSpace likes this
San Francisco, CA, USA
Samsara
She/Her, They/Them
7 years ago

[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.