Main Entry: dwarf
Function: verb
transitive verb
1 : to restrict the growth of : STUNT
2 : to cause to appear smaller or to seem inferior <has dwarfed the achievements of her predecessors>
intransitive verb : to become smaller
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
Particularly, its history (if any) and why you chose the avatar you did.
Rocket Knight Adventures will (eventually) be my first submission to the site and one of the games I most enjoyed for the Sega Genesis. My avatar for a while was simply a transparent GIF of Sparkster flying.
While studying the game in frame advance, I noticed that Sparkster's "boost forward" animation looks a lot like he's sneaking somewhere. Stealth action (more towards Splinter Cell than Metal Gear Solid) is another one of my favorite game generes. So I modified the sprite to give Sparkster a balaclava, to tuck his tail behind his legs, and change the color of the sword. The avatar was originally set in Rocket Knight Adventure's level one castle, but I later decided that, since the space station is one of the most visually impressive locations of the game, that I should use that instead. I had experimented with many variations of Sparkster sneaking past Axel Gear and later a space pig, but I couldn't find a design that worked, so I ditched the second character from the avatar. The finished design is what you see now.
The space background isn't taken directly from the game, but uses the same colors and some elements from the game's space background. The in-game background was too sparse for the small space I was working with here.
The sprites were captured using a sophisticated technique involving Gens and the use of the Prnt Scrn key under windows. ; )
There's also a watermark of sorts with my name "Deep Loner" on the walls above and below Sparkster's sword. It's almost impossible to see without enlarging the image, but it's there.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
According to the more knowledgable people on this site, NES sprites are limited to three colors at a time. Maybe you can combine different sprites together, but then the whole image is still limited to 12 colors.
Try dithering your hi-res images to a 12-color palette and see if you like the results.
I'm afraid that what you're suggesting is just not possible.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
primorial#soup wrote:
Not to derail the topic any further... but Microsoft (I only know this from friends who work there) has a policy of never using plural of 'mouse' in any documentation, but rather when it's needed, 'pointing devices'. I'm not sure what their stance on 'virus' is though.
Well, the topic's already finished anyway: either use another computer or else there's nothing that can be done.
So...
Pointing devices is a smart move because not everyone uses a mouse. Some people use trackballs. Or touchpads. Or those red things on ThinkPads. Or those pen and tablet things that graphics artists use. Or styli (or styluses). Or even touch screens. Someday we might even have a device to track eye movement.
Microsoft knows that using just mouse and mice will increase the support load from customers who use other pointing devices. Like the funny joke about customers who can't find the "any key". Which is funny until it proves to be true.
I always thought the "What's the number for 911?" was a joke until I worked a brief stint as a directory assistance operator. Some customer in Florida actually lectured me that there was another number for 911 (besides 9-1-1), and I'd better find it because he's paying for the call...
Big companies have policies like that because some people just appear to lack common sense.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
Sprites are palette-based. Expanding the palettes would mean reprogramming the entire game. Plus, the maximum number of colors on-screen is limited by hardware. So it's not possible.
Edit: Not possible on the 8-bit NES. On the SNES it might be possible, depending on the game. Rare used a similar method for the Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct games.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
Most references works would characterize "virii" as nonstandard rather than colloquial, but it's not that important. I only meant to give a quick FYI, not derail the entire topic.
Mice, not mouses. Cacti and octopi are considered acceptable. I don't know why anyone would have trouble declining pointing device into the plural though. ; p
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
Take it easy, JXQ. He's young.
Computers like numbers like 2^8, 2^16, 2^32 because computers operate in binary, and the number of possible combinations with x bits is 2^x.
What JXQ was (not really) pointing out is that 2^8 is 256 and 2^16 is 65536.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
I think a lot of good points were made here. I'll just offer my proposed definition of a "pride movie" as it relates to this site:
A pride movie is a tool-assisted speedrun created for ego or for "showing off" that is irreparably lacking fundamental qualities of a publication-worthy production.
"Irreparably" refers to being able to make a "fix" within the scope of the original submission, not within the global scope of the game. For example, the one-lap MK64 run that was recently rejected falls into this category, because it will never be a publication-worthy movie no matter how many improvements the author makes to that one lap.
Of course, there are many "fundamental qualities" required for publication, like fastest time, technical quality, completion of the game, and you can probably think of more. Also, no definition of a pride movie is going to make any argument go away, because nobody's going to admit that their submission is a pride movie.
The idea of "ego" or "showing off" is fundamental to the idea of a pride movie. Someone could make an unacceptable movie by simply not understanding the purpose of the site, like the full-speed, no rerecords submissions that occassionally pop up. Rather than being pride movies, those are simply unacceptable submissions. Needless to say, the accusation that one has submitted a pride movie should not be thrown around lightly.
This is of course just a suggestion, and not by any means a "pride suggestion". : ) Criticism is always welcome.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
mmbossman wrote:
virii
Viruses.
One of the worst criticisms I've read about the system is that people will eventually be accustomed to clicking "Allow" without thinking, which is the worst thing in the world to do and of course defeats the purpose. I wonder if it would really be that difficult to infect a Vista system if I simply tell users to click "Allow" because every program in the world requires it anyway. Maybe I won't have to tell them anything.
It's a mess, no doubt, and one that won't be easily fixed. Windows PCs tend to get used by unknowledgable, inexperienced people, which is itself the biggest problem with computer security. Like the kind of people who set their firewall software to "allow all traffic" because they don't understand the idea of a firewall and they don't want to be bothered with the popup windows; then they think to themselves, "My computer's secure now that I've got my firewall software installed." Software makers are always trying to work around ignorant users. I can't imagine what would happen if they made cars that way.
I have mixed feelings about "free software", but I respect its quality, and its amazingly knowledgable users who won't let themselves be taken advantage of.
But that's off-topic. : )
Sorry that there's no easy answer to your AVI problem, Raiscan. Hopefully Vista's SP1 will fix the API problem. My only other suggestion is to "dump" the movie (with a lossless codec) on an XP or other computer and then encode it on the Vista machine. Not an easy solution; perhaps not even possible, but... sorry.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
"Cancel" on the bad joke. ; p
Seriously, if the virtualdub.org link you provided is correct, then it means that it's a problem with the Windows API implementation in Vista.
Sadly, the New Emulator Conditions page of the site reads as follows:
It should be possible to create an AVI from the emulator.
If it runs on Windows, it should use the Windows API that allows codec selection.
The problem with not using the API, of course, would be that the AVI encoding routines for each emulator would need to be reprogrammed from scratch.
I have no idea what a viable solution is here.
Edit in response to your second post: it looks like you don't have the administrative access to your computer that you need. I remember reading somewhere that obtaining "true" administrative access with Vista is difficult. I'm sure that searching the web on this point would be helpful, though.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
I have 863Kbps of upload bandwidth that I finally figured out how to use for seeding torrents. I guess this is an approriate place to ask a few questions...
Here, for an example, I'm attempting to seed all the movies from the Concept Demos page (I intend to eventually seed published movie on the site). I've pointed the torrents to the files on my hard drive, and each one has the green check mark with status "Complete". I see that users can connect and download from me even though that status doesn't say "Seeding".
Is this the same as letting BitTorrent choose which files to seed?
In this shot, I've selected every torrent, right-clicked, and selected "Force start torrent". Now, each torrent is marked with the blue upload arrow and the status reads "Seeding".
Does this create the problem of "spreading bandwidth too thin" that was mentioned?
Finally, I'm a bit confused about Bisqwit's btfriend script. Does it work if the names of the files stored on my hard disk are different than the filenames used by the TASVideos site? Do I have to run the BitTorrent client at the same time or is it independant? Why is it better than the official BitTorrent client?
Thanks in advance for helping me help everyone else...
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
Raiscan wrote:
Did anyone obsess over that tech demo for Dead or Alive Volleyball (I think) where the breasts jiggled WAAAAY too much and the hair looked like string?
Nobody? Anyone? Great.... umm.... me neither... ¬_¬
Edit: If anyone knows what I'm on about and they have a link, perhaps they could post it. For, you know. Example reasons.
What?
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
JXQ wrote:
Yeah, who would have expected that in a thread who's first sentence was "Does anyone have a hidden obsession with certain video game characters?"
Posts that contain pointers [...] to pornography are not allowed.
Do these images (cropped for emphasis) linked to by comicalflop or JXQ count?
JXQ wrote:
Deep Loner wrote:
Kitana's eye shadow ruins everything in this picture.
False. (TM)
Sorry about that. When I see a new person, the face is usually the first thing I look at. That habit transfers to internet pictures. Maybe that makes me a wierdo, I don't know... : p
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
I couldn't even play the original Doom without memorizing the cheat codes (IDDQD, IDFA or IDKFA, and my personal favorite, IDSPISPOPD), and now you want me to try playing it as a text-based game??? No thank you.
Is this the same as letting BitTorrent choose which files to seed?
In this shot, I've selected every torrent, right-clicked, and selected "Force start torrent". Now, each torrent is marked with the blue upload arrow and the status reads "Seeding".
Does this create the problem of "spreading bandwidth too thin" that was mentioned?
Finally, I'm a bit confused about Bisqwit's btfriend script. Does it work if the names of the files stored on my hard disk are different than the filenames used by the TASVideos site? Do I have to run the BitTorrent client at the same time or is it independant? Why is it better than the official BitTorrent client?
Thanks in advance for helping me help everyone else...
