Talk:Tool-assisted speedrun

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Tool-assisted speedrun article.
To-do list for Tool-assisted speedrun:
  • Write the history section
    • Write a subsection about Doom; see Doom competitive play.
    • Write a (larger) subsection about Bisqwit's site
      • Note that a Zelda speedrun got featured on Slashdot [1]
  • Write the techniques section
    • Explain PrBoom for Doom runs
    • Explain emulators and their capabilities
    • Make a terminology section (perhaps as its own paragraph)
    • Explain the emulator input movie files better and separate them clearly from video files
  • Write the controversy section; prevent it from being POV (and thus having the article flagged as such). See GNU/Linux naming controversy for a good example.
  • Add more resources to the external links section
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Contents

[edit] Tool-assistance outline

o History
o Why and how
----o Goals
----o Emulation
o Controversy

[edit] Some links that should be linked to or otherwise used

[edit] Some images that may be used

Route planning sheet for the Bomb Man stage in Joel Yliluoma's Rockman tool-assisted speedrun
Enlarge
Route planning sheet for the Bomb Man stage in Joel Yliluoma's Rockman tool-assisted speedrun


A more definitive version of the above image; redundant routes have been scrapped and the most feasible one has been noted down in greater detail
Enlarge
A more definitive version of the above image; redundant routes have been scrapped and the most feasible one has been noted down in greater detail


[edit] Some resources for citation

Citation is important for this article. See Wikipedia:References to find out how to use the <ref> tags.

[edit] Sandbox

<ref name="ToolsAssistedSpeedrun">Doom tool-assisted speedrunning is sometimes referred to as "tools-assisted speedrunning", with the plural of "tool". This was the name of the site about Doom tool-assisted speedrunning by Esko Koskimaa, Peo Sjoblom and Yonatan Donner. A news post after the creation of the site, however, read "Indeed, I was wrong and the site should be called 'Tool-Assisted Speedruns' rather than 'Tools-Assisted Speedruns'. I'm not going to redo the logo though."</ref>

[edit] Checking In

Hi, I got your "invitation" to work on this page. I don't know what kind of time I hae this weekend but I had to point one thing that struck me right away by the opening: As such, the makers of these speedruns are not competing in terms of playing skill due to its complete absense. - this seems to imply that the filmmakers have no playing skill at all. This is obviously not the case! I'm going to try and reword it. --Do Not Talk About Feitclub (contributions) 16:01, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it was difficult to word that sentence. I meant to imply that something such as "skill" isn't even relevant, but it's wrong to make it seem like the TAS authors have no skill. Quite the opposite if you look at who started Doom tool-assisted speedrunning. I'm very glad that you're helping out, by the way, since you know a lot about this and you're also probably the most active Wikipedian around here. Maybe you could also shed some light on how active the Japanese speedrun community is. It seems to me that they're pretty enthusiastic about it, since a lot of visitors of Bisqwit's site are Japanese, and they've produced some amazing speedruns (Takeshi's MGS2 run!) —Michiel Sikma, 19:02, 8 April 2006 (UTC) PS: I always get "humanly" wrong.
To say that tool-assisted runners don't need any skill does no justice. They need to be above-average players of the game they're running to be even able to pull off some of the most difficult tricks that are needed in TASes. Wikipedian06 09:00, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
You're right, and I never meant to imply this. Tool-assisted speedrunners actually usually are good players. The starters of the Doom tool-assisted speedrun community actually were seasoned veterans from the larger speedrun projects, for example. That's something that should be added in... —Michiel Sikma, 14:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re-recording

I made a short article about re-recording. It might be worth checking it out to correct any mistakes, even though I doubt there will be any, seen as how it's such a small article. —Michiel Sikma, 09:55, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this should have been made a section of the tas article. Bob A 18:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Maybe. I think that it's best to briefly explain re-recording here and leave the article around for more detailed explanation. You forgot to add the {{mergefrom}} tag, by the way. —Michiel Sikma, 06:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I've just thought it over, and I think it's best to explain it in this article in addition to re-recording having its own article. My rationale is that re-recording is or can be linked to from other places as well where it would be inappropriate to write an inline explanation. In this article, it's necessary to mention it (under a "techniques" paragraph, most likely) but it would not be very useful to link all pages to Tool-assisted speedrun#Re-recording.
In short, I think it's best to keep the article, but also put useful information in this article about re-recording. —Michiel Sikma, 18:49, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't get it. Why wouldn't it be useful to have it redirect to Tool-assisted speedrun#Re-recording? Bob A 01:22, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Because those links are confusing, most of the time. Browsers don't jump to the anchor until the page is fully loaded. You'll be shown a page that's about something completely different, and when the page finishes loading, you'll scroll to a small part of that page, emerged in unrelated context, that explains what you've been trying to find. I personally find that very ambiguous, and I therefore like to mirror things (not verbatim, but depending on where the information is located). —Michiel Sikma, 10:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Endurance

Wikipedian06, please stop adding in "endurance" in the top paragraph. There's good reason why it's not in; obviously, endurance is a factor when speedrunning which is eliminated with the use of tools, but it's untrue that it's important enough to mention. Afterall, there has never been made a tool-assisted speedrun that's longer than about 3 and a half hours, but there have been gigantic single-segment speedruns (such as the Ocarina of Time run by TSA). It's untrue that one of the main points of tools for tool-assisted speedrunning is to overcome human endurance. —Michiel Sikma, 14:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV/Weasel

There seems to be a lot of negativity towards TASes in this article.

  • There is skill in TASes. Some tricks are just very insanely difficult to pull off. You don't see the average n00b trying to make a TAS, do you? Most TASers, especially those who're speedrunning FPSes, are above-average, if not the best players, in those games. In fact, the reason the 16:17 TAS record in Doom II wasn't beaten for so long was that after Marijo Sedlic retired, nearly no one had the skill to perform the insanely difficult rocket jumps on some of the levels. It was asked on the Doomworld message boards.
  • What the hell is "official world record keeping?" There is no "official" recordkeeper as far as I know. The closest to an official WR authority on video games is Twin Galaxies. The point of having TASes go in a separate category is so that there can be two world records for every game -- the fastest unassisted time and the fastest tool-assisted time.
  • "today's tool-assisted record holders have less fame and association with their run." Not true at all. Most speedrunners don't become "famous," period. One of the most well-known speedrunners is Mike "TSA" Damiani, but that's because he holds impressive unassisted records in many LoZ games. If one TASer broke as many records as TSA did, I'm sure he'd be well-known as well. Marijo Sedlic and Andrey Budko are two DOOM TASers who are well-known in their community.
  • "Some purists believe this is the only real way to do a speedrun, even going so far as to describe tool-assisted speedruns as "fake" or "cheating"." This is a narrow-minded, conservative viewpoint that is fading away. Many are beginning to recognize TASes simply as another category that deserves as much respect as traditional, unassisted runs.
  • The positive aspects of TASes need to be brought out. People appreciate TASes because they allow one to see the theoretical human limit in a game, without having to waste time watching errors in gameplay. Unassisted runners, when appropriate, often use TASes as standards for comparison (of course, this depends on the game and how wide the differences are between the unassisted and TAS routes).
  • It should be mentioned that the two communities often help and cooperate with each other. For example, recently the TASer for Mario 64 discovered a new trick via emulator that allowed one to get a star without using a cannon. It was later discovered that the trick was reproducible on a console, and now the unassisted speedrunners have a new trick up their sleeves too.

69.181.79.72 01:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

As a dude who has three TAS's published, I feel compelled to reply:
  • With proper tools (particularly frame advance), any amount of skill can be reduced to knowledge and patience; The knowledge to know how to do the tricks, and the patience to pull them off. That the most skillful players are generally the ones making the TASs is a result of having the knowledge to do so.
  • I'm tempted to say there is no "official world" anything, given that it's nearly impossible to get the entire world to agree on anything. Merely a bad word choice, I'd replace "official" with some other adjective. "Recognized world records", perhaps.
  • "The positive aspects of TASes need to be brought out." To me, this says, "I want to replace the article's current bias with my own."
  • Statements about fame and "what (xyz group) believe" are better off cited than removed, but either is better than uncited.
I haven't been watching the article too carefully, but I do sort of see what you're talking about, though. I'll tag a few choice phrases with {{fact}} Nifboy 04:49, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry. I haven't worked on this article much. I agree with some of the things you say. I'm a big fan of speedruns, both tool-assisted and unassisted, and would like this article to become a featured article after I'm done with speedrun. I will need the help of other people, though... I hope there can be another main contributor on this article. —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 14:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
PS: I'll be busy with speedrun for quite some time. I do suggest that if anybody is interested in this article at all, then please go ahead and edit! I've been the only actual active contributor to speedrun articles for a while now, and it feels lonely. —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 06:35, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Glossary

Do we really need a glossary like that? Wouldn't linking to articles describing the subject be better? Amaurea 17:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I intend to write more elaborately about some of the items mentioned in the glossary later, similar to Speedrun, § Common techniques. What I think is that it's probably very useful to keep a quick glossary in the article as well for easy reference; I want to do this for the Speedrun article at some point, too. Whatever the case may be, I personally don't think that it's a good thing to just link to other articles in these cases; some of the techniques don't really need their own article nor should they be explained in a section such as § Common techniques. —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 18:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Goal of TAS

I do not like this sentance: "The goal of tool-assisted speedrunning is to create entertaining movies." This is no more or less true for unassisted runs as for assisted ones. The real goal is usually to complete the game as fast as possible, sometimes with a few restrictions. This happenes to be quite entertaining, but a run with lots of interesting antics that make it 3 times as slow as what is possible would not be much of a speed run. I'm replacing that paragraph with the definition from the method section. Amaurea 11:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the preceeding section seems sufficient to me, so I just removed the troublesome paragraph. Amaurea 11:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a lot of disagreement about this. That gives us something to write about. :) —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 15:17, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I have removed a similar section from the "seperation from unassisted runs"-section:

While speed is desired in these runs, the focus is entertainment. For example, there is a famous tool-assisted speedrun of Super Mario Bros. 3 by "Morimoto" in which the game is finished in approximately 11 minutes — the fun is in the breathtaking speed at which the game is being played, according to its author, rather than his presumed game playing skills.[2] The video has since been "obsoleted" by a faster version,[3] but this video is still the best-known example of its kind due to how often it was posted on forums on the Internet. (See the Super Mario series paragraph in the Speedrun article.)

That entertainment is more important than speed is no more the case for assisted runs than unassisted ones. I have never seen a slower run obsolete a faster one in either category. It is true that entertainment is desired, but the focus, in both cases, is speed. That section made TASing seem like a less competitive and less serious activity than unassisted speedrunning. Amaurea 11:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

But there's still a sense of truth in that paragraph. We should rewrite it, since it should not go unnoticed that there are indeed a lot of TAS makers that think it's all about entertainment rather than speed. Also, please note that just because obsoletion movies have always been faster than the old versions shouldn't imply that the focus of these movies is definitely not entertainment. Me, I like to think that it is mostly about entertainment, but it just so happens that speed is the primary (not only) entertaining aspect of TAS videos. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 15:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I personally see this "entertainment factor" as a POV guideline imposed by Bisqwit and his site. Speedruns are about speed, and tool-assisted ones are no different. Otherwise, why is it that whenever a run with a faster time is submitted, it obsoletes the slower one?
Also, note that runners are ADVISED (but not required) to entertain viewers during autoscrolling sections. Many highly-regarded speedrunners do not go out of their way to entertain viewers at all. It's really a personal choice.
While it's true that some speedrunners waste a few frames over the course of a long run to entertain viewers, such practices are under great controversy at the site. Look at the "speed vs. entertainment" debates on the forums. Wikipedian06 18:56, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
But regardless, it is true that a lot (some?) speedrunners do these small tricks to try and entertain viewers a bit more, even if it costs a few frames. I don't think that tool-assisted speedruns are all about speed. I think that they're all about entertainment, but it just so happens that speed is the absolute best entertainment factor. Having said that, they're still speedruns, like you say, and it's only natural that faster speedruns obsolete older ones. However, it doesn't really matter what you and I think, to be honest! All that matters is that there are separate opinions about what a tool-assisted speedrun is really about; this is something we can write about. But since the biggest tool-assisted speedrun site (Bisqwit's) still states that the runs are for entertainment purposes (among others), we still must write the article stating that entertainment is said to be the purpose, with some people disputing this. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 20:36, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Although Bisqwit's site is the largest TAS-related one on the 'Net, I don't think his words and guidelines have to be treated as gospel. Nonetheless, some runners who do sacrifice frames for the sake of entertainment have justified their actions using Bisqwit's very subjective guidelines. But yes, I do agree with you---we should present both sides of the debate. Wikipedian06 05:55, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
We don't need to treat it as gospel, but we still have to adhere to the fact that we cannot make our own research. We cannot claim that Bisqwit says something that is biased if we are the only ones to think that it is so. Unless another external (and relatively important) party says so, we cannot really report on it. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 06:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Am I the only one who thinks that the obvious solution to this issue is to make a note that the goals of TASes can vary considerably within the guideline of frame-precision? <Upthorn> 17:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Example image in the introduction

While using a program to automatically search a short optimal path (ie a robot) is cool, it's by no means a common occurrence in tool-assisted speedrunning. There are probably less than 10 runs (from the well over 300) at tasvideos.org where robots have been used in any way. The problem with presenting the robot example image in the introduction is that it can easily give the wrong impression that such programs are used in all or most runs and that it's a very common technique. This may give a rather wrong impression of what tool-assisted speedrunning is. The example image is well worth preserving in the article, but it may be a good idea to move it towards the end of it. In the introduction some other, more representative image could be used. The snapshot of an emulator program (perhaps showing some TAS features) could be a good idea. Wopr 12:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Having it at the top makes it seem ubiquitous, which it isn't. Maybe we should put it further down after better explanation of what the phenomenon is all about, while mentioning that this isn't very often done. I'm not going to do it for a while, though... —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 14:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
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