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Revisiting categories and organization - Page 1

Revisiting categories and organization

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-02-24 11:52:15
A good conversation emerged recently on this talk page about the importance (or not) of natural glitches. Would anyone else care to weigh in?

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Couldntthinkofaname
Date: 2019-02-24 12:32:37
I would call intended behavior resulting in unintended behavior as an oversight, I'm personally not fond of the term "Natural Glitch".

That's my $0.02

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Zowayix
Date: 2019-02-24 13:06:23
Yeah I kinda agree that the term "natural glitch" isn't really intuitive. As someone who's horribly out of touch with all this stuff, I had to read all that talk page to figure out what it all meant. I think oversight would be fine: the actual definition we're going for here, if I'm understanding this with my accidentally-woke-up-after-just-5-hours-of-sleep brain, is any sequence of events where only intended programming has occurred (e.g. not having space in the bag) but has an undesirable result (e.g. softlock).

As for whether they're "important" or not: Well, I think they should be interesting enough to be worthwhile content, if that's what's being asked. Saves the trouble of having to figure out what counts as a glitch and what counts as an oversight.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-02-24 14:10:55
To clarify: natural glitches are ones that don't require another to be performed beforehand. "Where the program goes wrong" is a good way of phrasing it.

For instance, the Safari Zone exit glitch is natural, Glitch City RAM manipulation isn't…but the latter one only requires walking to a certain tile after performing the first one. We all seem to agree that it's up to common sense which to term as what, and that we could separate them, but I think it's a superfluous category on a wiki that needs organizational cleanup before discussing what to add.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2019-02-24 14:46:56
I'm with Bbbbbbbbba personally, I feel they are worth having, from a programming perspective you know exactly which bugs to fix to prevent all of the related sub-glitches, and even if the categories are not necessary I feel it's "something rather than nothing" in this case.

However, maybe we could start a poll to get a clearer view of what we think, so if there is a consensus we could go with that.

Also I'm wondering if "natural" gives the wrong connotations and if "core glitch" sounds like a simpler term to use.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-02-24 15:05:31

Also I'm wondering if "natural" gives the wrong connotations and if "core glitch" sounds like a simpler term to use.
I feel that might be construed as "most useful" or "core-game-only" in meaning.

I'm all for a natural glitch category, I said so in… that other thread along these lines.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-02-24 17:58:17
So I have been scanning through the entire Generation I glitches category. From what I have seen, there are about equal parts of natural glitches, non-natural glitches, and results, in terms of number of pages (I think number of pages is important because Sherkel mentioned that non-natural glitches that have their own pages are few, and also because number of page determines visibility on the category listing). Some observations:


I think maybe we need a clear criteria for the "page-worthiness" of non-natural glitches and results. In the process we might split those categories into smaller categories (not necessarily non-overlapping, so hopefully ambiguity would not be a problem).

By the way, "glitch technique"/"glitch exploit" seems to be an existing term for non-natural glitches with desirable effects. It still doesn't distinguish between the two types of "natural glitches" though, and it takes yet another factor (desirability) into account…

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-02-24 23:08:59
Evolving Raichu was a translation error. So was Coin Case ACE, technically, so does that not get glitch strategy because of it? Does the translation error category supercede the glitch category, or are they equal? If they're equal, do we give it both a "yes, this is a glitch" AND "no, this isn't a glitch" status via adding both categories? If they're NOT equal, would glitch status or translation error supercede? If glitch status supercedes, does that mean translation issues that lead to issues not get the translation error tag? If translation error status supercedes, is Coin Case no longer categorized as a glitch, since having both makes them equal?

my point is as of now the tag system is not totally fucked so why change it?

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-02-25 01:18:26
On one hand, you have a point that they are caused by the same error. On the other hand, I think the impact on gameplay matters when classifying glitches. For example, I believe the "Hidden Safari Zone entrance Nugget glitch" should be counted as a natural glitch simply because there is one square on which the itemfinder responds to it. If the hidden Nugget were one square away, then it would be either a non-natural glitch that has to be triggered by walking through wall, or not a glitch at all, simply some unused content.

Although my own example does raise the question whether misinformation is enough impact to consider something a glitch. Evolving Raichu and Introduction Nidorino both cause misinformation too, although on different levels…

Your unwritten implication is that changing the tagging system necessarily cause problems. But the current tagging system (especially the system including "natural glitches") already cause the same sort of problems, where similar things get different categorizations due to ambiguous boundary. (And I must say, not being able to say for sure whether "natural glitches" is a supported category is in itself another problem with the current system.) In that case, why not change it for the clearer and the better?

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-02-25 06:21:26
that's fair. Continue.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Missing? NO!
Date: 2019-02-25 22:58:41
You could use a term like "base glitch" for any glitch that's naturally occurring or doesn't need another glitch to be performed beforehand for setup purposes. Something like the Old Man Glitch would be what I have in mind – since the Old Man Glitch is the base that a lot of glitches grow off of, it'd be a perfect fit as a "base glitch".

Just my two cents. I'm also pretty out of touch here.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-02-26 01:22:55
Well, the old man glitch itself is actually based on another glitch, the left-facing shore tile glitch, hence my uncertainty on whether it should be counted as a natural glitch. But other than that, the name "base glitch" (or maybe "basic glitch"?) does make some sense.


What I have been thinking is that, while it's not necessarily suitable as a way to categorize the glitches, it would be useful to think about the different levels of "brokenness" we could put the game to.

0. Non-broken. This is the normal state of the game. Some glitches are "non-game-breaking": They begin at a legal game state and end up at another legal game state, although the transition is incorrect in terms of game logic. That would include misinformation glitches (Evolving Raichu, introduction Nidorino, hidden Safari Zone entrance Nugget, etc.), some soft-locking glitches, and a few miscellaneous glitches (Gen I miss, NPC walking behavior, etc.).

1. Broken assumptions. A minor example is getting a level 1 Pokémon, which can enable the experience underflowing glitch. The NPC collision bypassing glitch can cause NPCs to overlap and go through each other; though this don't seem to have any application, it's still an assumption broken. Other more serious cases include encountering and obtaining glitch Pokémon, getting glitch items and moves. Technically expanded party and item pack are also just some broken assumptions, although they are just one step away from…

2. Mass RAM corruption. Here "mass" doesn't necessarily mean a lot of addresses are corrupted, just that a lot of addresses could be corrupted (i.e. we can still do it in a pinpoint way). Switching items around and tossing them in an expanded item pack causes mass memory corruption. I added the "mass" qualifier because corruption to a single address tend to be interpreted as a single broken assumption by the game.

3. Arbitrary code execution. This is pretty much self-explanatory, although even ACE methods can differ by the code length allowed, the code bytes allowed, and timing constraints (e.g. OAM DMA hijacking allows "all-time" ACE).


The consequence of this "level system" is that glitches that increase the "brokenness level" are probably automatically page-worthy (this includes all game-breaking natural glitches, although I think non-game-breaking natural glitches should be automatically page-worthy anyway). On the other hand, glitches that go back in "brokenness level" are likely to be trivial. It's not exactly interesting that with ACE we can corrupt the RAM anywhere, and with mass RAM corruption we can break a lot of the game's assumptions.

Now, there are pages that are "ACE tutorials" or "corruption tutorials", and I understand those pages have a reason to exist on this wiki, but I do think that those should have a higher standard for inclusion, and maybe they don't even belong to the "glitch" category: They are strictly glitch exploits that should have their own category.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-02-26 15:19:36
What I have been thinking is that, while it's not necessarily suitable as a way to categorize the glitches, it would be useful to think about the different levels of "brokenness" we could put the game to.
I agree with this post. A couple of points: as I see it this is mainly an organization issue. Those four "levels of brokenness" are what have led to the categories of "Major glitches", "Minor glitches", "Oversights", "Natural glitches", "Curiosities", "Miscellaneous glitches", and so forth…but already, isn't the problem becoming pretty clear? With how blurred those lines are, the categories have started to lose their meaning, especially with most of them formed nearly 10 years ago. Hence my temporary suggestion (which was met with unanimous agreement, originally) to narrow it all down to "Glitches by generation" with a small handful of especially notable glitches singled out. If we were to categorize them again, it should be along the lines of those four levels, but we should make it easy to find what someone's looking for as well. Also, any exploit documented the site that involves ACE is only due to notability, and the definition of that changed with the advent of speedrunning; thus, people are going to come looking for how to skip to the Hall of Fame, "catch 'em all" faster, and related things. There are some arbitrary code execution programs listed, but they were never placed alongside other glitches (i.e. levels 0-2) in the first place.

Basically, if/when we make a hierarchy of sorts for articles, it should be somewhere along the lines of those levels.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-02-26 20:51:39
I feel it needs to be more verbose, maybe 5 instead of 4, due to Level 2 in the 4-tier system having some ambiguity due to varying glitch use/unintentional-damage potential/strength.

Re: Natural glitches

Posted by: bbbbbbbbba
Date: 2019-02-27 06:31:57

Also, any exploit documented the site that involves ACE is only due to notability, and the definition of that changed with the advent of speedrunning; thus, people are going to come looking for how to skip to the Hall of Fame, "catch 'em all" faster, and related things.


On that note, can we have pages on glitched speedrun routes (they are public domain, right?) with detailed analysis for the glitches? Not only would that be useful to people new to speedrun, having those detailed analysis may also help with finding alternate routes (maybe backup strats) or even improvements. Plus, for some glitches we would be able to just link to examples in the speedrun, instead of putting overcomplicated examples in the glitch page.


I feel it needs to be more verbose, maybe 5 instead of 4, due to Level 2 in the 4-tier system having some ambiguity due to varying glitch use/unintentional-damage potential/strength.


Of course there will be different "sublevels" in each level (as I mentioned, even ACE methods can be different in application), but the line can be really difficult to draw. If you can come up with a relatively clear criteria to split my level 2, then sure. Otherwise, I think it's best to keep it simple.