isamu wrote:I have been having a field day over at the TASvideo site. I feel like a 12yr kid in the porno section of a video store.
So many awesome vids. Only thing is, like I mentioned in their forums, is the fact that the majority of them are Tool Assisted runs. But I *DID* manage to find quite few skill based only runs in that huge "lets watch you play..." thread. Thing about unassisted runs is, you get to see the player play the game with their true skill. If they die, it was because they genuinely made an error and moved on. I *WANT* to see people make mistakes in their games! I *WANT* to see someone struggle to complete a level with only 2 lives left! I *want* to see them pick themsleves back up and try again harder.
So you also hate 1-credit runs of arcade shooters?
And tool-assisted gameplay takes skill too. It's just a different skill set.
TAS videos just show how the player can trick the emu into getting past the game with re-records, save states, slowdowns, etc. Where's the fun in that?
Trick the emu? The greatest fun there is on tool-assisted runs is that everything you see is something that CAN be done on a real game(barring emulation inaccuracies), albeit in many cases it's very difficult to exploit consistently.
Admittedly, it was MORE amusing in the early days when everything didn't have to one-up a previous movie.
But how can you deny that seeing
Megaman X and X2 both beat with the same input is anything other than awesome? (one of my personal favorites)
Or it's twin,
Megaman 3-6 with one set of inputs?
Or
Family Feud's input processing being abused to hell and back? (saw this one recently, and it's hilarious what the game allows)
Personally, I don't want to see normal gameplay.
I want to see something either insanely impressive, or just flat-out broken.
IMNSHO, "normal" gameplay is lame.
No-hit runs of difficult games are impressive, be they real-time or tool-assisted.
Glitched-to-hell runs where the game has jumped the tracks and kept on trucking are awesome, often comically so.
As far as what I don't like in the TAS runs...
Some games just aren't suited to it. Boring-ass luck-manipulated JRPGs, mainly. Why anyone would want to watch someone else play Final Freaking Fantasy is beyond me. Exception if there are some truly impressive exploits going on.
The other major exception is games glitched to the degree that you can no longer tell what's going on. Again, there's a few exceptions.
I saw a Pokemon video where they effectively use a glitched item box as a hex editor to rewrite their save file. Boring and nonsensical to watch, but the game is broken so incredibly hard that it's impossible to not like after you've
read the author's description. (Dear sweet merciful Althena, Pokemon is poorly-coded)
Then I went to Speed Demon Archive. Now THAT'S more like it! Problem is, they only post actual video files LOL.
I honestly don't mind video files but the problem is the majority of the ones uploaded are usually shit quality and then there's of course the space issue. Who wants to fill up a terabyte's worth of HDD space with AVI files, when you can get as many input replay files for a FRACTION of the space?
Because, if you mean the Speed Demo
S Archive, they don't ALLOW emulator usage. It HAS to be recorded from a real system to prevent cheating and emulator glitches affecting things.
Except when it's recorded from an emulator, they don't want to admit it, and drama unfolds as people argue the fact. Seen it happen.
I am not trying to bash the streamers....not at all. The less than stellar output quality boils down to the nature of the internet and how live streaming works. I fully get that. That is precisely the reason why I love GGPO so much. GGPO is the ideal application for spectating games IMHO. If only Ponder(GGPO author/admin) would spread his wings and add a little diversity to the program instead of focusing solely on fighting games, it would so much better.