A few years ago I bought all 34 (?) episodes of Captain N off E-Bay. I only watched a few, and the video quality wasn't that great. Still, though, I think you won't be able to find any better. I know I'm never going to watch them, and that some of you are probably harder-core video game fanatics than I am. If anyone is interested post, and we can work out a deal, maybe.
The best chess variants I've seen are Capablanca Chess and Fischer Random Chess. Both are created in response to chess becoming too simple or more a matter of memorization than ability. Anyone who's memorized a 20 move main line in the Sicilian Defense can probably sympathize. :|
Haha. I was wayyy into chess a few years ago. I came up with Fischer Random Chess and thought I was brilliant. "Why hasn't anyone else thought of this before?" I wondered. Well, then I found out that someone had, and his name was Fischer.
At one time I thought I possessed great skill at the game. It's because I had a computer chess program... Well, I used to be able to beat it up to level 3 or 4, and then stopped playing it. I just played real people. After a few months of playing a friend, he told me he beat level 27 (the highest.) Skeptical, I set the difficulty to 27 and won. I couldn't believe it. I was brilliant. We found out that we could be the game on level 27, but we couldn't on Level 5. You could imagine how funny it was for us, to think that we were grandmasters because we could beat it on the "hardest" setting, only to find out a short while later that we couldn't beat it on the medium setting.
Chess still intrigues me because of the math and AI behind it, also the brilliance of the structure of a grandmaster's brain. Those interests kinda subsided when I found out there were more possible moves than number of atoms in the universe. So it could never truly be solved. Correct me if I'm wrong about it. In the Zelda thread, I recall, a discussion of something similiar. Are there any possible heuristics to be discovered in the future to "solve" chess, or is it proven that it cannot be solved? I'm not a mathematician (or very good at math, period) but what do they mean by NP-hard. I had the notion that it meant unsolvable. Am I right?
What an amazing run! Wow. A sub-26. Wow. Wow.
I never thought that would be possible.
I'm a bit rusty. You saved some time with the keys, but what else? I noticed you had only 1 rupee for Ganon. Did you save time on rupee collection?
If all that time was saved on fighting, I wonder what the theoretical fastest time could ever be. If every action affected the game somehow... (Like, whether to shoot a sword beam in the time it takes for the tornado to pick you up or not) then there has to be a specific right set to get the theoretical fastest time. I don't think our technology allows us to do that yet. :-P
Hey, someone's doing a Z1 run again? Sweet.
There was that 10-second loss because of the key, I remember. I didn't think anyone would redo the whole run just for that. But I think it'll be cool to be able to say "The fastest..." rather than, "The fastest, except for..."
You've caught my interest. I'm having trouble finding anything on the Qohelet. Do you have a website or a book or something?
I am skeptical. I imagine if nihilism had been solved, our modern philosophers wouldn't have had such difficulty with it. :-P There will probably be a difference in the Qohelet's definition of nihilism, and my own. And if not, I imagine there would be an aspect of the process which I take issue with.
I agree with you about your statement about source. I think he meant that religious texts usually place a lot of emphasis on faith, whereas philosophy texts try to show the steps to the conclusion they make. One would rather see than to believe.
Boco: Happiness or success is not what a philosopher is looking for. He's looking for truth, even if it's painful. The search usually ends at nihilism and progresses no further. Read this page: http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm
I only point this out because you said: "Besides, what does it matter the source of wisdom if it can be shown that such wisdom is accurate?" Accurate in what sense? It seems to apply to your life? It makes you happy? Very well.
Sorry Bob, I read, "I am nihilist," rather than, "I am not..."
As for proving that nihilism is true... Um. Basically nihilism says there is no truth. It's tricky, semantically. I think most philosophers agree that nihilism is the conclusion of total open mindedness. (I made this: http://staticzero.org/modernartillery/poster.jpg)
I read a lot over the summer. Most of the time I was nihilistic. I proved it wrong, (I think.) I plan to write a book explaining what nihilism is, how one becomes a nihilist, and how to escape from nihilism. I also have an idea for a book for life post-nihilism. Because my ideas are so lengthy, I will not type them here.
Boco: You're a smart girl. Did you come to agreement with the Qohelet by intense thought? For me, reading something that says, "You're too dumb to figure it out so stop trying," doesn't quite satisfy me.
Bob Whoops: If you decide that you *can't* know if there's a God or not, I would say that you're agnostic rather than nihilistic.
Nihilism is not pleasant. So long as you believe in an objective reality, trust your senses, and believe in science, I don't think you'd be considered a nihilist.
I forgot about this thread. Sorry I was lazy. I retraced my steps and found the site. Here's the video.
http://fleebo.com/sm64/screenwarp.wmv
As you can see, it's not too impressive. Somehow completing the game without the sword would be. I'm, unfortunately, not an expert at this game. Is it possible to kill the final guy without the sword?
http://www.interactionstudios.com/highscoretablescountry.php
That game is Chicken Invaders. It's like Space Invaders with Chicken. America is in eleventh place. I'm calling on our best men (I'm looking at you Michael, TSA) to make America number 1.
And for you non-Americans. Hey, you're alllright.
Ramzi
I thought it was great. It's amazing how much you have to have memorized. I'm sure most people who watch won't even realize the amount of money, bomb, and key management.
You had many unneeded item changes. Reducing those could probably save some time. Also, setting the bomb further from the wall.
I had this idea that touching the triforce piece with many hearts missing was a bad thing because it takes longer to refill. From what I observed in your video, however, the time doesn't change. There's a little song that needs to play, and the hearts are filled before that song is over. I think after you defeated the Manhandla you got a fairy thinking it would save time, but it doesn't.
I believe you once told me that you only use bombs in Level 6. In this video, it was quite the contrary. You also didn't use many bombs on the blue darknuts. Why is this? In one fight with the blue darknuts, you switched from bombs to the boomerang, which I thought was silly. Keep the bombs, just in case you get lucky and they all get close together.
And you did get the boomerang. I see why... Freezing baddies and walking through them. Do you think this is a necessary time saver though? You probably lose more time switching to it than you save by having it.
You killed a poor keese in level 9 with a diagonal boomerang throw. How heartless of you you cruel sick bastard. He wasn't even near the stairs. HE WASN'T EVEN NEAR THE STAIRS.
After you purchased everything that was necessary, it still seemed that you went out of your way to collect rupee drops. Is that just a bad habit, or did you have a reason. I saw that you used the arrows more than required, but not enough to warrant that kind of rupee collection. I think you had like 7 rupees after you bought the bait, which is more than enough to complete the game. When you beat the game though, you had forty-some rupees. Also, you spent a lot of time walking across the screen to get a heart and walk back. I understand the necessity for hearts in getting the third sword, but after that, they're only for convenience. You had several remaining hearts when you finished. Is life a worry for you, particularly in dealing with the final patras and Ganon?
Lastly, Ganon. You were the one who told me about the techique to kill Ganon quickly for the emulator run. When I played through Zelda 1 a few days ago, I noticed it didn't work for me. So I wanted to see your video to see how you do it. And you didn't do it. Is it hard to pull off, or what?
I like your route choice. I liked this video. There was a certain thrill of watching a real video as opposed to the emulated one. For me, the planning that went into our 27 minute video was the real accomplishment. But in a real video, I get to see your fighting techniques, and split second decisions. And it made me feel that maybe I could play the game.
You're both right.
I would have never thought of getting stuck in the keese room. Heh. I don't know if that counts. I doubt that they ever planned for someone to play the game without the sword. As for Up+A, I think it was a way of saving, rather as a solution to their level design errors.
I imagine if you get to Ganon without the silver arrows you're stuck also.
I found another way to get stuck. If you're doing the game swordless, in level 4 you have to fight this thing. You can't kill it if you don't have any sword, bombs, candle, arrows, etc etc. I'm presuming there are tons more places you could get stuck like this. The one I posted before is more shocking though, since it's done with the sword, and is really a level design error.
I found where all the weapons are located in a savestate. Savestates are also different from emulator to emulator, but the processes should be the same.
What do you hypothesize? That there's a number of health and it's multiplied by the ring strength, or what? Why do you become invincible after ring 08 then?
I was playing through today and I got stuck. I mean, without using Up+A.
Normally the right wall is supposed to be bombed, but I came in from the top entrance, and that door isn't opening for some reason. I used all my bombs on the blue darknuts, and I don't have enough rupees to by the bomb upgrade.
Well, to store the 08 ring, it would need to hold up to 256, which is more than 8 bits. It would look like.
00000001 00000000.
The counter, which is 8 bits, spills over when it goes past 255, so it essentially goes back to zero.
It would also be 00000001 "00000000". However, it only compares to quoted section, because that's the area it was told to compare. Because of this, link is indestructible.
But there's something I don't understand. How come it reads more than 8 bits for the ring? It too spills over, but it includes that new memory also. I would have thought that 00000001 00000000 would be treated just like when Link has no ring, because the original 8 bits that are supposed to be checked is zero. And that goes for 512, 1028, and everything past that. Unfortunately, the ring works as powers of two, so I can't make it so he needs to be hit 263 times, for example, before losing life. If I could though, it would look like:
00000001 00000111. 256 + 7 = 263. Do you think that after Link got hit 7 times, he would lose life? I don't, I think it looks at all bits holding the strength of the ring.
I just don't get why it reads more than 8 bits for the ring strength, but it only reads 8 bits for the counter.
When I changed the number to three it doubled again.
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 etc
1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 etc
What do you mean "internally store"? There has to be some way for the game to know that Link's "shield" value is decreasing. Either with a counter that counts up, or a counter that counts down. Or I'm stupid.
Unfortunately I don't have the code to look at. With no error handling, we'd overflow the int and then what do you think would happen?
I thought of something a few months ago and then forgot about it until now...
I was goofing off with a hex editor, seeing what I could change in my Zelda 1 file. I found the location for the ring. When I had no ring (value: 00) say I would lose life in one hit from a certain bad guy. Then when I changed it to 01, it would take two hits. Then 02, would be four hits. It keeps doubling. 02, the red ring, is the highest you could legally get in the game. But if you change it to FF, 255, that would be 2^255 hits. I imagine there is a counter for that, but since the highest value in the game would be four, they probably made it a small data type. Like an int, or short int. My question is, what if you changed the value to FF and then got hit more than 65,536, or whatever the highest value an int can hold is? Would it cause an overflow? Do you thing there's some kind of error handling that would take care of it?
I never tried it, but I was just curious. I guess I could just put it on 999% speed and wait a while. Any guesses as to what would happen?
There's also a glitch you can do with the tiny Bond cheat on. If you crouch and walk slowly off a cliff, like a building at the end of the Dam, you will be able to float. Also, the glitch can be done at the top of the staircase in the bunker. That's probably what your friend was talking about.
I'm just going off memory, though. I was super into this game. I was into it before I found out about speed gaming. I never tried for speed, but I used to do strange things like beating levels with only the pistol, or choppers, and getting 100% accuracy without taking a hit. Stuff like that. The speed runs on the net (www.the-elite.net) are pretty cool, I think, because they save time by doing stuff I wouldn't have thought of. But sometimes the video is mostly just them staring at the ground, since apparently you run faster that way. Because of that, I decided not to do any speed attempts.
http://www.sfcave.com/snake.php
What's your high score?
Right now mine is 13,416. I'll beat it though.
Edit: 16,752
Edit: 17,739
Edit: 20,710
Edit: 26,058
Edit: 33,543
I'm done with this game.
Normally the right wall is supposed to be bombed, but I came in from the top entrance, and that door isn't opening for some reason. I used all my bombs on the blue darknuts, and I don't have enough rupees to by the bomb upgrade.){kind=link}