Does anyone know why the first time I shampoo my hair is just slippery, but the second time I shampoo it gets sudsy? Why do I have to shampoo twice to get all the foam?
DarkKobold: I hate to call you out on this, particularly since you said I was right, but what does information theory being a branch of mathematics have anything to do with the question? Mathematics is a non-physical abstraction (or is at least easily viewed that way.) Telling Warp, "There is a non-physical abstraction called information theory that studies this," doesn't really answer the question of how something non-physical is transfered physically.
Maybe you limit your view of physics too much. Who says physics is simply particles with mass and energy? Given a specific particle, it contains the property of being some distance from a different particle. Is "distance" physical? Is "distance" made out of mass and energy? Maybe not, but you would still agree that it is a property of the particle.
Maybe it would help to view things like "distance" and "structure" as emergent phenomena. For example, imagine the "wave" at baseball games. This is when the stadium of people stand up and sit down at the correct time to make a wave motion. You can explain the wave with reduction; it is simply the result of all of the individual people. But the wave itself now has properties: velocity, wavelength, etc. Do you view the wave simply as many individual people, or do you view it as something all its own?
That's not true. Ink in a certain pattern emits photons in a certain pattern to my eyes in a certain pattern. If my eyes can interpret recipes only if they fit a certain pattern, then I can't interpret recipes if the ink doesn't match one of those patterns. The interpretation of the recipe is a big mechanical system involving paper, ink, photons, my eyes, and my brain. Just like the type writer, if you change it around, it won't work. If you change the ink pattern around, the big mechanical system won't work.
Maybe the structure? For example, if you take a type writer, it has a certain amount of mass and energy. If you disassemble it, it still has the same amount of mass and energy, but it no longer works.
I have a bag of salt, and a bag of sugar. They are of arbitrary size (the sizes of the bags do not matter). I mix the two bags vigorously. What is the best way re-isolate the salt and sugar without changing the state of either (i.e. you can't use melting points to your advantage)? Is this possible without analyzing each grain of salt/sugar?
Do salt and sugar have different magnetic properties? If so, here's what I'm thinking. Divide the pile into say, 2 piles. Then measure the magnetic field or whatever of both piles. You should be able to detect whether they have a higher concentration of sugar or salt. Then split those 2 piles into two piles (such that you have 4 piles.) Keep doing this binary search procedure until you coincidentally get big piles (several grains) of entirely one of them. This will let you ultimately separate them without having to result to measuring every single one. Although, worst case scenario is you do have to measure every one, this way.
I guess you could also randomly split the big pile in two, and coincidentally do it perfectly. So it is possible to do so without analyzing each grain, but not reliably.
Warp: Think of your question like this. You have a paper on which a message is written in INVISIBLE ink. This ink only shows up after some special light or chemical solution is poured on it.
Now, someone hands you the otherwise blank piece of paper. This is all he transfered to you. But then you modify the piece of paper by pouring the chemical solution on it. You see, you're modifying the paper.
Now, just replace "invisible ink paper" with "regular letter" and replace "chemical solution" with "human pattern recognition and cognition." You see, there is not a message on the paper until a human pours his cognition all over it.
To emphasize. Imagine you had a machine which made random pen marks on papers all day. You would agree that most papers have no message on it. But maybe one random mark comes out to look like "Hello world." Was the message intentional? No. I would argue the message isn't on the paper, only random pen marks are. It's your brain which incorrectly finds meaning where there was none. (It just so happens, most of the time our brain finds meaning where there is some.) But the point is, the message isn't there without our brains.
I don't think that stuff that gets replaced or isn't visible should be collected. This means items as white sword (wooden sword :P), wooden boomerang, dungeon maps, compasses and stuff aren't needed. I don't know who mentioned that everything in the overworld should be burned, and every cave bombed... but I don't even remotely see for what purpose this should be done.
It was me. Here's my line of reasoning. If 100% is perfect and objective, there should only be one unique binary for a save file. That is, if two save files have very different binaries, which one is better than the other? If you skip getting, for example, the white sword, it will still be marked as incomplete. I mean, at that time you could still go back and get it, and the binary would change. But had you gotten it before, you cannot change the binary. This was my notion of irreversible.
Of course, then, there are the exceptions. What name entered is "better"? What slot should the save file be in? Why should we even worry about the first quest when the start of the second quest erases all your effort? For these reasons I would have to add constraints. For example, preference constraints. Suppose in Ocarina of Time I wanted to have a perfect save file. Should I have 4 bottles of fairies, or 4 bottles of blue potions? Well, blue potions refill all life and magic, but fairies refill all life after you die. So which is better? I feel that since this is subjective (and also alterable), it doesn't matter. I also feel that the name of the Zelda 1 file is subjective, although unalterable.
Well, the Start menu does show you how many Triforce pieces you have!
Using the start menu as the criteria for completion, a person should definitely finish with more hearts (filled in), more rupees, the meat, and the red potion.
I mean, if you never get the letter, and you never re-get the meat, you have two blank spaces in your start menu. And this is contrary to the SDA definition, apparently.
Edit: Well, I sort of like this. We could either have arbitrary definitions of 100%, or we can have objective definitions based upon some arbitrary standard. For example, if our arbitrary standard is what is visible from the start menu, then the things I mentioned above are true. If our arbitrary standard is "dungeon items" then the letter never needs to be collected.
Personally, my standard would be the UNION of the set of unchangeable things and the set of "preferable" items. What I mean, is... When you burn a tree, for example, you can never unburn the tree. However, if you have the red potion, you can drink it, have the blue potion, drink it, have the letter. And you can repeat that constantly, unlike the tree where your action is not repeatable. In this case, the red potion is better because it is stronger than the blue potion and the letter just by implication.
The designers of LoZ didn't include any sort of in-game counter to show progress, so we might as well stop arguing about what constitutes 100%. It's clear that we won't convince each other.
Well, let's be clear. For example, someone who beat Levels 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 clearly has more percentage of the game done than someone who only got the wooden sword, right? We know this even though the game designers don't have a numeric representation of game completition. Wow, that's an interesting typo. You compete to be complete.
What maybe you mean is that after a certain point in game completion determining who is more complete is difficult/ambiguous/subject/uncertain.
It might be boring for you, but I would be interested to see the fastest route that accomplishes that.
As would I. :)
Dacicus wrote:
Don't you mean 255 rupees?
Depends. One rupee is required for the Ganon-killing arrow, but then he could just go back a couple rooms and kill an enemy to get it...<_<
I mean, sure it would be interesting, but it's impractical. I would be more interested in a proof of the fastest route (with or without glitches.)
If I recall correctly, I don't think you can go back after defeating Ganon.
ShadowWraith wrote:
Imagine doing the same thing for Pokémon.
This is why that kind of 100% definition is bad.
With Pokemon the problem wouldn't be catching 'em all, or even finding all the secrets. It would be leveling them all up to 100, and then maxing out their experience points.
No idea if this is even close to a good idea, due to not really knowing the game that well, but if you really want to do a Zelda run...
Could you do a 100% run? You know, all heart containers, best weapon, all sub items? (And whatever else I have missed.)
Do not think I have seen one for this game, here or anywhere else, so you do not have to be worried with direct competition if that is one thing putting you off. (Though course... still has to be good.)
There might be a good reason for that though, like I say, I do not know the game as well as others.
The thing is, 100% is a definition. I can make a 100% definition that is absolutely unreasonable to TAS.
There are spots on the overworld called "Secrets to Everybody." You can only collect them once. A 100% run would have to collect all of them. Similarly, there are places where you can be fined for destroying an old man's door. All of those would need to be collected also. All burnable trees should be burned. And the game should be finished will all items, (red potion), max bombs, full life, and 254 rupees.
How did you become so smart? I'm always surprised when people talk about how video encoding works, or things like emulators and stuff like that. In fact, the task of taking an NES and a cartridge and turning that into an emulator and a ROM seems impossible to me. So yeah, I've not learned any of this in CS college. How do you pick it up?
I noticed that many games show gameplay videos. Some examples I can think of right now are: the beginning of Super Mario World, the end of Kirby's Adventure, and the beginning of GoldenEye if you don't push any buttons.
How are those videos saved in the game? Is it a playback of a video file, or is it loading a RAM state and keypresses? If the latter, is it possible to exploit these videos, so as to take control of the game at that point, possibly skipping many levels?
Well, I thought about it and maybe I'm about to give the winning solution to the Internet. But, realistically, I'm posting this to get your opinions.
If we use intelligent backtracking, it would see that the order you place the pieces matter. For example, suppose you place:
a b c d
Where you pick a randomly, then choose b sharing the right edge of a, choose c sharing the right edge of b, and choose d choosing the right edge of c.
Well, had you done:
a b
c d
Then when you choose d, you have to satisfy two edges, namely, that of b and c. Because there are fewer possibilities for d, this recursive solution should be faster than the aforementioned one.
There is this arcade game called Stacker. It pays out very expensive prizes, like Wiis and XBoxes. For this reason, I would like to figure out how to beat it.
To get a feel for what it is, watch this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-a6kU7oukwk If you try pausing the video at the right time, it's almost like playing the game.
I have found a manual of the game online: http://www.shafferdistributing.com/manuals/lai_Stacker_SKILL_1st-Ed_manual.pdf
The manual explains that the payout is regulated, such that the minimum payout is 1 win out of every 800 games. But it also says it is a game of skill. Some people claim that at the top row, the piece will intentionally move an extra space. There are many videos on Youtube of people playing the game. Is there a way we can map the sound of the button press to the location of the block to determine if, in fact, the game is rigged?
If we can determine it is not rigged, would it be unreasonable to build a device to beat the game? I'm imagining a laptop with a webcam that analyzes data on-the-fly, and then triggers a piston to push the button.
I would like to get this community's thoughts on the game.
Very nice. I remember a video TSA put out... He glitched by accident attempting his speedrun. It should have occured to me to fuzz test to recreate the glitch, but it didn't.
How did you guys find it? By accident, or by fuzz testing?
How hard would it be to make multiplayer hacks of classic games? I'm thinking of two Links on a screen attacking bad guys. Mario and Luigi stepping on goombas and shooting pirana plants at the same time.
[Edit by Bisqwit: Changed topic title. "Clever tactics to get one to look at the thread" contribute adversely to the usability of the forums. Don't do that.]