Ok, so there were two main disagreeing replies, I'll take them one at a time. For magnum's post:
Your parallel of a race track is interesting. Here is a model race track, for my hypothetical example purposes. (% is the start and finish, the > is a ramp, and the 8 is a place where a walk through walls glitch has been discovered.)
___________________________
( _______________________ )
|__________________ 8 | | |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| | | |
| % _ _______ > _______ )__| |
( ___________________________ )
Your objection to strategies on the racetrack are based on those that were intended to be used. The ramp in this race track was intended only for the aesthetics of flying high. However, a keen player notices that if you hit the ramp from a right angle, you can skip a series of sharp turns and land roughly on the other side of the "8". This is a shortcut, not a glitch. It uses intended game mechanics, intended physics, and intended controls to skip a huge amount of track, though it wasn't intended itself. Taking the shortcut doesn't put you out of bounds, just over walls that are there to prevent you from skipping that area.
On the same track, a keen player discovers a "drive through walls" glitch where the 8 is located. It takes extensive game knowledge to figure it out, and is also an unintended result of intended game controls. It saves less time than the ramp trick does. It however, requires that someone breaks through a wall, rather than fly over it. The sense of being "natural" is lost. Though saving less time than the ramp trick, and just as unintended by the programmers, this wall glitch is highly denounced.
But why so? It's less significant than the shortcut is. It still requires extreme knowledge of the level. It still requires unintended use of intended physics.
Glitches are simply taboo, despite often being just as harmless (or harmful, if you look at it that way) as practices more widely considered legal.
You brought up a point about game developers disallowing glitches in online play. I believe this happens for two reasons. First, game developers often don't want people to be doing the best they possibly can. Unlike TSC, WOW is based off the idea that anyone can succeed. Where TSC's goal is to have ultimate sonic playing through innovation and technical skill, Blizzard's goal is to give everyone a fair shot and enjoyable game experience. They are selling WOW, and fewal er people are going to buy it if they automatically lose to players that glitch. That vested interest is crucial in keeping glitches out of well known MMOs. Second, game developers dislike the use of glitches because it proves their game was imperfectly designed. If you welcome the use of glitches in online play, you are openly displaying the fact that your game was poorly programmed. Glitches look bad for game developers game-making abilities, so as long as they are in a power to prevent glitches from being used, they will.
It is understandable that you feel unclean when using glitches; I occasionally do, too. I often feel like it would be more fun to ta a level had a certain glitch not been discovered. But the ultimate goal of competition is to do the best. Alondite compared the use of glitches to the use of steroids; I find this an incorrect comparison. A more apt parallel to steroids in sonic would be super sonic, or "sss" (a sa2 trick that allows sonic to gain speed up to a degree of 7, I believe), increasing sonic's performance. Interestingly enough, both of those tricks are banned. What I feel, time and time again, is that a player doesn't have to use glitches. If they feel soul-less to you, don't use them. Or you can use them, and personally recognize your more natural time attacks. I often have more respect for a glitchless time that is outstanding than a glitch time that isn't. TSC, however, allows glitches. So when simply comparing the best times on levels, we go by the best times on levels. Period.
To alondite:
What -is- the difference between a trick and a glitch. I asked that during my post, and you didn't respond. You simply started your post by saying tricks and glitches are different.
So right now, what -is- a glitch? Until you define it, I am going to continue using my definition is "an unintended use of a programming error". The CP2 "gain tons of speed and jump, somehow pushing you through a wall" falls into this. Knuckles's superglide falls into this (at least until you can give me evidence that the sonic physics were intended to shoot you really high in the air when you glided when bouncing on an opponent). GH1's loop jump is certainly unintended, and the argument can definitely be made that it was a programming error (it's hardly intuitive).
You say that shortcuts that arise simply from use of intended physics are allowable. Here are several examples of shortcuts can arise from unintended use of intended physics. I will reference the direct physics in question, which were certainly intended, in defining these tricks as legal shortcuts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRJlj1x1w5I&feature=channel_page At :39 in this video, sonic hits a shield monitor from underneath, triggering the intended fall of the monitor. (Monitors are programmed to do this, as one could find out playing other sonic 1 levels). The monitor then falls on top of sonic, pushing sonic out to the side. This is another intended game mechanic, otherwise sonic would be inside the monitor. Sonic then pushes left, which is a movement into a wall. The wall then pushes sonic in the opposite direction. This is a phenomenon that exists in the real world, known as the "normal force" in physics. To prevent sonic from being easily able to walk into a wall, the game naturally ejects sonic upon collision with a wall. The result: a legal game trick that was entirely the process of a smart player who knew sonic's physics very well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be9-JA0-agw&feature=channel_page This video has several tricks/glitches in it, but I will focus entirely on the first one. In this trick (starting at :09), sonic builds up his momentum by charging a spindash. He releases the spindash, creating an extremely high rate of speed. While next to a small wall, sonic bounce attacks. The momentum preserved by the spindash gets preserved by the bounce attack, sending sonic extremely high in the air. This, so far, is a case of using intended physics and momentum. Sonic then, with an extremely high height, homing attacks over a wall. This, up to now, had remained inside the boundaries of the level. Sonic then directs himself to a lower part of the level, skipping a large portion of the level between the two points. Legal? The player is a skilled player, with an obvious mastery of sonic's controls, who uses perfect timing and a manipulation of momentum to make a huge shortcut. Though this method of completing the level was later found to be slower, due to tricks in the portions of the level that were skipped, it still will immediately raise that taboo feeling in people, despite being a crafty use of momentum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEVTesjmAnI This level too utilizes the "superbounce" trick, which is just a conservation of momentum from a spindash into a bounce. In this video, sonic changes gravity, and then goes to a high wall on a purple block. Sonic uses the superbounce technique to get to an area that was intended to be unreachable. Gravity still being upside down, sonic spindash jumps to the bottom of the platform containing the goal ring. Keep in mind, the goal ring has a green "barrier" in front of it, so it should be impossible to reach the goal ring without first pressing a switch. Sonic, still upside down on the underside of the goal platform, a place that should not be reachable, walks behind the goal and into a death plane. Sonic then moves towards the goal ring, hitting it upside down from the back (An area that was never intended to be reached, but does not require any wall glitches). This whole sequence of events skips a minute long platforming section that requires to travel to multiple blocks, hit a switch, and reach the top of the goal ring platform. By using momentum and gravity, two very obviously intended physics features, the whole area can be bypassed. Legal?
Another thing you brought up was that glitches, even if they do take a time investment, shouldn't count because they are based on luck. That, in my opinion, might be the most fallacious logic that is screwing up your opinion on glitches. I'm going to state something right now, that might go against your fundamental beliefs on the issue. Glitches are -not- luck. They aren't random either. There is a reason players like DSS and SM consistently find glitches, while other players don't. SM and DSS have such an exceptional mastery of sonic's controls (they really do!) that they are consistently able to find ways to use sonic's intended controls to do unintended things. SM doesn't just have mother luck on his side all the time; he knows how to glitch things, and he knows how to use sonic to do it. Talking specifically about the newly found unleashed glitches, I am certain that DSS did not accidentally stumble upon them. By doing a certain combo, sonic, for a moment, pushes his body forward. Shielding in the game always stops a combo. By shielding at the exact, very difficult to time frame of a certain combo, you can stop sonic as he is pushed forward. DSS noticed this, and discovered that he could use this momentum to push sonic through walls. DSS is hardly a bad unleashed player; he was dominating rankings well before he discovered that you can push werehog through thin walls. He discovered these glitches SINGLE HANDEDLY by having a mastery of werehog's controls and a KNOWLEDGE of how to glitch things. Once breaking out of bounds, he needs to have a MASTERY of level design to get back in bounds at the best place possible. This is not a -chancy- cut. It takes planning and skill. Chance -was not- the reason he found it. Skill was.
I would like you to review another video (lol, so many of them!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P_U3TQ0tYMIf you believe that a random player could "chancily" stumble upon this glitch, or that a player without -pixel perfect- knowledge as to eternal engine's level design could pull this off, you have some very flawed assumptions. SM needed to figure out how to angle tails to jump into a floor panel, and push himself through the floor. That -alone- takes extreme level mastery. But that isn't the hard part. The hard part is getting out of bounds, and knowing the -exact route to take-, while OUT OF BOUNDS, to reach the end of the level and not hit any kill planes. That undeniably takes skill and an extensive knowledge of the level at question.
You compared sonic racing to running on a track. While I have a hard time comprehending your "running on the outside of a track" analogy, and still don't understand how it relates to the argument at hand, I do notice that you compared finding a glitch to cutting across the middle of the track. First, a racing track has specific rules that you are to run a predetermined distance in a specific amount of time. The reason they don't let a runner cut 200 meters off the 400 meter dash is specifically that; he is being measured on his speed at running 400 meters. In sonic games, this isn't the case. We don't measure your speed at completing a certain length of sonic level, we measure your speed at completing the sonic level, period. Whatever distance of running that requires is irrelevant; the goal is to finish.
Even if we -were- to argue that the point of competition is to complete a certain distance in the fastest time possible, glitches aren't the only thing that would be considered "running across the middle". Taking a huge shortcut (that you consider legal) is also skipping a portion of the level. If your objection is to people skipping parts of levels (which I assume it isn't, but which would be the only reasonable running track parallel), shortcuts are just as dishonest as glitching.
You again brought up the concept of ignorance as to glitches being a reasonable reason to ban glitches. I thought I handled this well in my first post, so you can check that again. I'll state a couple things here, though. Shortcuts can often be as difficult to notice for a novice player (I don't expect most people that are just speeding through the level to know about that crazy gadget shortcut I posted above). Shortcuts are equally as unfair to the ignorant as glitches.
Yes, there is a chance that a great glitcher may not be able to compete at a high level in the non glitch route. This is true. There is also a chance that they are, however. And as seen by yoshifan and DSS, who are exceptional 3d sonic players with both glitches and no glitches, skill at both tends to correlate.
"Route planning and speed tricks can be done by playing the game and studying maps, but glitches can only be found by chance in most cases."
Many glitches take knowledge as to where the optimal place to break out and in bounds. Taking DSS's newly discovered werehog trick (here comes ANOTHER video lol), he knows exactly which walls to break out of bounds from. He then knows, from out of bounds, where the rest of the level happens to lie, and breaks back into bounds in the optimal spot. That is unarguably extensive level knowledge, that I would equate equal to the study of maps to find shortcuts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw8Pd1lp2Q0And once again, since you keep bringing up the role of chance in finding glitches, I have to state a fact:
VERY FEW GLITCHES ARE DISCOVERED ACCIDENTALLY. ALMOST ALL OF THE GLITCHES, ESPECIALLY THE ONES THAT ARE MOST EXTREME, WERE DISCOVERED THROUGH EXTENSIVE PLANNING AND KNOWLEDGE OF HOW TO MANIPULATE PHYSICS.
There is -no- other reason that players such as SM and DSS would be able to stumble onto glitches so consistently.
Another quote from you: "If a first time player stumbles across a zip that zips you to the goal ring and suddenly has the WR does he deserve it? That's how the glitches are discovered, and that is why they should be banned, as well as the fact as a rule, glitches cut out parts of the stage, and are easier to do than quickly moving through the cut part of the stage, decreasing the skill necessary to completely the level through artificial, and frequently random ways."
This has a few questions. Yes, I believe that if a first time player randomly stumbles onto a wall zip that skips the whole level, he deserves the record. He has the fastest time. He will also, due to prompting from TSC Staff (probably accusing him of lying), reveal his glitch and allow the better players to beat his times. He will have accidentally discovered an important glitch, and should get credit for it (despite how unlikely this situation could ever even happen is). That's -not- how glitches are discovered, and I've stated that multiple times by now.
Second, you again made the point that it is unfair for a player to take an easier route, because it requires less skill. I would like to redirect you to my hypothetical sonic level in my first post. Do we ban the rollable wall because it is an easier, less skillful route, and make everyone take the top route because it has no skill? No, because this destroys the idea of getting the fastest time. Arbitrarily forcing people to take the tougher of two options is not enforcing competition, it's enforcing imposing limits on people that don't need to be there.
And glitching through a level might take less skill, some times. I debate that this is always the case, however. Marble 3 (
http://www.soniccenter.org/rankings/sonic_1/times/marble_3 ) has an extremely difficult to execute glitch, that requires 3 consecutive frames of pressing alternating directions at the -exact- time. This glitch takes -huge- amounts of skill to perform correctly, and is hardly an "Easy way out" to an uneasy level path. Those who can pull off the marble 3 glitch with such perfection as maggot and sonic62 should be heralded for their skillful playing, not chided because they skipped the normal level route.
Your concern about the morals and personal satisfaction from glitching is a real concern, and I see no reason why you should personally feel differently. That is the question of an opinion of personal achievement, and everyone has a different feeling on what achievement really is. If you feel that glitching through a level is cheating yourself, and you feel more accomplished from skillfully playing the level the normal way, I have no intention of stopping you. I have respect for your ability to stand up for your personal beliefs. However, I also feel respect for those who have the incredible ability of finding ridiculous level routes through glitches, and I don't feel that we should force our personal opinions of achievement on them, either. This website is for the fastest sonic times, and glitches give faster times. Competition is still evident in glitches, and they do not take away from the essence of beating a level as quickly as possible. As such, TSC, and objective community, will recognize the faster times as being faster. It has no morals on personal achievement. If SM doesn't feel like he's cheating himself when he glitches a level, he shouldn't have to restrain from submitting because someone else feels cheated for him.
Man, this post came out much longer than I expected. Thanks for reading, again. I still want your definition of a glitch, which is a very important thing to know in a debate centering entirely around the legality of glitches. I attempted to rebut each of your points thoroughly, and I used evidence to back myself up. That's my two cents on the matter (and the TSC administrative two cents as well, as far as I know). Thanks, again.
