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Well, if it makes you happy.
If I were to give your poll any weight, you should also better explain the issues with each one.
This has to be most easily accessible to a newcomer as not being some kind of hacked game.
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Who decided that a poll should decide it, you?
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Overall, I think this year's AGDQ block was our best ever. Although our explanation wasn't as good as last year's.
I wrote up a summary of the various opinions, discussions, and feedback I found all over, as well as what kind of improvements we saw with this "advertising".
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I just wanted to highlight that with all the extra content added, this run is still faster than a non "ACE'd" run of this game.
Also, the version shown at AGDQ which had Mitch playing around a bit at the end still took up less time than a normal person beating this game as fast as possible.
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I'd rather take Warp's approach with something that was never done before as being the goal for everyone.
If it was say Megaman, it might be, you must play the levels in a certain order, and you must not use Rush Jet, and you must collect the energy tanks in each level, and you must not collect any refills.
That would make it a bit too "out there" to have been tried before. Although I think this style with Megaman is still too close to norm and can take too much advantage of existing knowledge to be viable.
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I'd point out that we shouldn't necessarily look to NES games or so here.
There are plenty of high quality freeware DOS, Windows, and web based games that we would have no issue obtaining and TASing (some of them might require the creation of new tools before viability, but it would still satisfy other requirements).
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If I were judging this, I would reject it, because it's quite clear that there's ample room for improvement.
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Enterim wrote:
Goes beyond the traditional ACE payload for some quasi-Mario-Maker shenanigans.
No, that's the next Mario run up.
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Very nice!
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Maybe add some lines in back of MM to make it look like he's moving?
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Nach has managed to update the website with GDQ banner (in case it wasn't obvious yet).
Nach also has the front page ready to handle additional load that the site generally takes on when mentioned at these events.
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Just a minor update. I fixed the ~8 year old front page bug that we had, so we no longer need fully static pages there for AGDQ events.
The front page is now static for users not logged in, but regenerated every 10 minutes or so.
This is now a permanent change, and hopefully will never need to go fully static on the front page anymore.
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a1s2d3f4 wrote:
It was something I noticed the python based uploader offered.
I don't even know what that is. I've never uploaded a video to YT except via ytu. Since you have experience with this other one, what made you decide to use mine?
a1s2d3f4 wrote:
Yeah, a big PIA for you, I am sure. Through some intuitive clicking I was able to set it up as you require per the PDF, but the interface is completely different now (as compared to all the screen shots in the PDF)
You have no idea. The one that's in the PDF in the latest package is my second edition of these instructions since March. I redid the screenshots again ~3 weeks ago because I'm about to make another release which fixes the subtitle/caption code for the changes Google made to the APIs a little over a month ago. Then when I was about to release it, they completely changed the interface again! I haven't yet had a chance to update the screenshots which is why 2.1 isn't released yet, and Google kind of killed my motivation with two huge sweeping changes inside of a month.
Google could also make everyone's life easier if they would just provide a button in your YouTube setting's somewhere to just download a key for it to use. But no, they want everyone to jump through a 15 step process.
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I see.
I could look into that. Unfortunately though Google changes their playlist APIs constantly, and I'd rather not get into an arms race with them.
As is, I have to keep updating the initial stages documentation because Google restructures their authentication console constantly (4 times! since March when I wrote this documentation).
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I'm not sure what that means.
How does one upload a playlist as opposed to just uploading a bunch of videos?
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Pokota wrote:
Two and a half, really - the two hitsquad versions only appear to differ between whether the copy protection is there or not. The one with the copy protection is assumed to be the floppy disk release (1.07 Hitsquad, or Hitsquad 3.5") and the one without is assumed to be their CD release (Hitsquad CD).
CD writers weren't on the market till several years after Dune 2's release, and even then were out of reach price-wise from consumers till 1999 or so. Making the ability to copy CD's during Dune 2's release and several years after not possible.
The CD launch itself checks that its contents are in the root directory of the drive that its on, and that there's another drive on the system which isn't a floppy disk. This makes running the contents of the CD on a hard drive unlikely unless you have multiple partitions that you're willing to use for this or you know how to work the DOS subst command. Both of which no one but the most savvy of DOS users would know how to accomplish, and therefore no copy protection is needed for a CD release.
The contents of the CD also contain files too large to fit on a floppy even with compression. So unless you know how to use PKZip with disk split/spanning you won't be able to copy the contents to floppies. Again something outside the realm of the abilities of your average DOS user.
Perhaps Westwood felt this was enough to not require copy protection on their CD release as average users wouldn't be able to duplicate the install media or its contents in any way. However, even a less advanced user could copy the installed on HD directory to multiple floppies and reassemble on the target machine, as none of the files there are too large. Since the CD uses its own loader for launching the game, maybe Westwood figured no one would ever be looking to play the game directly from the installed directory, and hence no copy protection for a CD release is necessary.
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So "HitSquad" was the EU publisher? How is that different than just "EU" version?
Edit: Pokota above seems to be saying there are at least 3 different "EU" versions which are not differentiated by the version number.
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What is this Hitsquad you keep mentioning?
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Truncated wrote:
I think everyone has a Construction Yard in mission 2 in the version i have, 1.07. At least Atreides does when facing them on Harkonnen 2. I think Nach said the maps we have on wiki are from 1.00.
When you tested harvesting victory, did you play on Fastest game speed?
Yes.
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Pokota wrote:
Nach wrote:
That's a windows launcher.
That's not a Windows application, it's a DOS one.
And it's not so much a launcher as a combination game manual / install program / launcher. This is the first CD game I ever got, and it's also the first application of any kind that I got that included an electronic manual instead of a printed one.
Pokota wrote:
Can you post up the copyright text that's on the CD? The whitetext that's near the outer edge of the label.
I just buried that CD with my 5.25 floppies last night, I'll see if I can go dig it out again.
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Pokota wrote:
Watching your video, it seems the game is moving somewhat slower for you than it is for me, yet I think the time it computes for me is larger than that difference, considerably so. I haven't timed it yet, but I think the game is computing time elapsed at level completion ~1.5-2 times greater than real time for me.
Entirely possible. Do the three-refinery solution for mission 3 and report back your results.
I actually normally do 4...
I just tried with a fresh install on DOS Box with high CPU settings, used the keyboard for attack/move so I don't have to drag my mouse to the side, got myself a carry-all right away, and used early return to more quickly to get a 3rd harvester in play and also for the last group of returns once I deemed enough spice must've been gathered based on the % of each. Turned out to be 5 minutes! I'm wondering if with more optimal management with 4 instead of 3 like I just tried, if it's possible to shave another minute off...
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Pokota wrote:
Nach wrote:
WTH is the Mentat asking you about the IX facility?
Version 1.0, I think was the version I was using. It's just the copy protection. To my knowledge the only official version that doesn't include that is HitSquad CD, which is based off of EU 1.07
This is the CD I have, which is from the US:
What's "HitSquad"?
Edit:
This is what the official game menu looks like (which can be bypassed):
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What's "HitSquad"?
Edit:
This is what the official game menu looks like (which can be bypassed):
