TASVideos

Posted: 12/29/2007 11:27 AM

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Randil

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Looked good! Avoiding damage is a wise choise for this game, at least in my opinion. About the emulator change: I didn't read through the author's comments before starting to watch, so I first watched this in version 19.3. The movie actually reached around frame 10 000 before desynching, so the timing differences seem to be present in version 19.3 too, at least some of them. Anyway, this was a nice improvement and fun to watch, so here's the first yes-vote.

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Posted: 12/27/2007 1:44 PM

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Randil

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Maximus wrote:

Randil: I thought I added an option that allows you to append input (so it doesn't overwrite the frames that already exists, but adds the input you want to it.

Oh! Well in that case, never mind that idea. :)

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Posted: 12/26/2007 11:16 AM

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Randil

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Very interesting article about Batman, Warp. I never thought about the neck thing, ut now that you mention it, it's kinda lame. I personally think Batman is pretty cool too. I had a comic book where Batman actually manages to sneak up on Daredevil without being noticed! That takes some serious ninja skills... Also, someone with authorities to do so, might want to split these last few posts about Batman into a separate thread, since they have nothing to do with userphotoes. It's still an interesting discussion, so I don't think that this new thread should be locked or anything.

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Posted: 12/25/2007 12:47 PM

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Randil

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Hello fellow Swede, and welcome to TASvideos! :) I watched your run just now, and here's my feedback on it: First of all, the game itself. Talespin is a game that is fun to play, but because it's an autoscroller, there's not anything you can do to speed things up. This means that you have to try to do entertaining things pretty much all the time to keep the viewer entertained. The goal "aims to be entertaining" instead of "aims for fastest" time is a hot subject nowadays, because entertainment is subjective and isn't someting that can be easily measured. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with a movie that aims solely for entertainment, if you can make it very entertaining. Examples of this is "River City Ransom" Unfortunately, I think there are two problems with this goal in this run: First of all, the game itself isn't extremely funny to watch as playaround. It's not terrible or anything, just nothing special. The other problem is that if the only goal for this run is to aim for entertainment value, I personally think it can be done somewhat better. I think you stand still a little too much and fly too close to the edge of the screen a little too much, which is impressive when played on normal console because you have very little time to react to when enemies appear, but in a TAS, it just makes it more dull since the only thing you will see is the player shooting down things before they appear. I would personally like to see you keep the enemies alive longer, and fly around them, dodging them and their shots, like in the Gradius movie, although somewhat slower. :P On the bonus levels, you stand still for the last few seconds, which would have been a good oppurtunity to fly around some, perhaps in a certain pattern or something, in order to avoid such down times. So to sum things up, I think the game choise is what brings this down, autoscrollers generally don't make very entertaining TASes, even when aiming solely for entertainment. And even if a TAS of this game aiming for entertainment was to be published, I think it could be done somewhat funnier. For a first TAS, this was good, and I hope to see more from you in the future. :) My vote is "meh" - it wasn't that bad, I enjoyed it somewhat, and I might vote yes on an improved version if I find it entertaining enough. :)

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Posted: 12/24/2007 7:25 PM

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Randil

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Here's a (really) small step by step guide on how to begin, if you want to record a tool-assisted SNES movie: 1. Make sure you have SNES9X v1.43 v9+. 2. Also make sure you have a good Mega Man X ROM (we do not distribute ROMs here, nor do we post links to ROM sites, so how you get the ROM is your business). 3. Open the MMX ROM with SNES9X. (File->Load game...) 4. When you have loaded the game, fo to File->Movie record, when the "Record movie" window pops up, just click OK. 5. Put on frame display to see what frame you're currently recording (go to Input->Customize hotkeys to see what button is bound to frame display). 6. Make a savestate somewhere in the movie, and then load the savestate. You'll see that your movie is rewinded to the point where you made the savestate! This way you can redo stuff over and over until you get it right. You should also try recording input with frame advance, to get a hang of it, and it might be fun to try recording at lower emulation speeds too. Just fool around with these tools, and you'll get a hang of it for sure. :) Perhaps you already knew all the stuff in point 6, but I hope this post made some sense to you. :)

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Posted: 12/24/2007 1:54 PM

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Randil

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Here's the deal with why the download stops at 98.7%: The one who encoded this run, adelikat, had some computer issues, with his computer dying before anyone could completely download the .avi file. So we have to wait until adelikat gets his computer back up, so he can share the last 1.3% that are left. :)

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Posted: 12/24/2007 1:41 PM
(Edited: 12/27/2007 1:44 PM)

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Randil

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Sounds great! I'm using this program on a daily basis, and it works very well. There are a few things on my wish-list, and I'll try to sum them up (I've mentioned a few of these things before, but I guess it won't hurt to have them all in the same post): Ideas: *The possibility to edit the rerecord count. I'm aware that this could be exploited, but let me explain why it could be a good thing: Let's say you make a TAS of a game and submit it, but some huge improvements are found, and you redo the run. However, you use the same movie-file as in the first run you submitted, so when your new run is done, it has the rerecord count from the old movie + the new rerecords. This is why it would be nice if there was an easy way to subtract rerecords from a movie file. If there is too much of a worry that people will increase the rerecordcount before submitting, I guess you could make the tool so it can only reduce the rerecord count. *Easier access to the "jump to frame" field. It works well in the editing console, but I would personally like it to be next to the frame data window, because I use it quite a lot. And here are the bugs and errors I've found so far (none of them are big, overall the program works very well): Bugs: *"Undo" does not undo added input. If you select frame 1, add A button input to that frame, but regret it, pressing "Undo" does not delete this input, which I guess it should. *Pressing "Cancel" crashes the program, both in the Splicer window and in the compare input range window, after selecting load source or load target. That's all I can think of for now, perhaps I'll add more things later on. Please don't get me wrong because of all the bug reports, TAS movie editor is in my opinion a great tool and one of the greatest things to hit the TAS community, I just want to inform you of these small bugs and some new ideas, so you can make a perfect and flawless version on day. ;) And merry christmas and a happy new year to you too. :)

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Posted: 12/24/2007 12:09 PM

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Randil

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Merry christmas from Sweden! Today in Sweden, we celebrate christmas by exchanging christmas gifts, baking gingerbread, decorating the christmas tree, and watching a Disney christmas TV program. (These things obviously vary, but these are some of the things most families do). In some families, mine for example, we put carnations in oranges and hang them above our doors. They smell very nice, like christmas. :)

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Posted: 12/23/2007 9:17 AM

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Randil

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Dammit wrote:

I'm not happy about this run because it's possible to glitch through the exits without rescuing the prisoners. (That has been done before, right?) The run should either be with glitches or without, or publish both. The way it is now is arbitrary. I understand this game has a very long history on tasvideos so that may be the reason, but it is still inconsistent.

I already thought about this, and tested it too, and here's what happens: It's true that you can glitch through the walls without rescuing any Goonie. However, if you don't have all 5 Goonies when you reach the door that would normally take you to the boat, you will get warped back to room 1. So I have to have all 5 Goonies in order to reach the boat. And I have to get to the boat to rescue the last Goonie, thus beating the game. EDIT: I think I'll add this information to the comments too, so other people don't get confused.

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Posted: 12/23/2007 12:05 AM

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Randil

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mmbossman wrote:

Where the hell did this come from?? You're a machine Randil!

Actually I finished this run about 10 days ago or so. After that, I've been looking for potential improvements in this run (with no luck), but mostly working on other stuff, as you know. ;)

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Posted: 12/21/2007 9:17 AM

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Randil

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Here's something you can think about (perhaps you've heard this proof before, otherwise, it could be quite a challenge): Prove that √x exists as a real number for all positive integers x.

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Posted: 12/19/2007 10:20 AM

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Randil

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xenos wrote:

A problem I came across a while ago. Calculate the average distance between two points on the surface of the unit sphere. That is, if two points were placed on the surface of a sphere with a radius of one and a chord drawn between them, the average length of the chord if the points were selected at random.

Completely intuitively (I hope that's a word), I feel that the distance should be Pi/2. All possible distances between the points is half a circle with a radius of 1. Because of symmetry, it's equally likely to appear to the left of the middle point of this half circle, therefor the expectation value should be on the middle of this half circle, thus the average distance is Pi/(2*2) = Pi/4. Don't throw rocks on me if this is wrong!

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Posted: 12/19/2007 10:01 AM

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Randil

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Kudos to adelikat for all the great TASes he's made this year, and for all the other hard work he's been doing on this site. :) I'm also glad to see so many new active TASers this year. And yeah, I know I choose obscure games to TAS, sorry about that. But I'm trying to better myself on that point, and not choose too weird games... :P

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Posted: 12/17/2007 2:01 PM

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Randil

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You seem to have submitted the same movie twice. (check the workbench and you'll see). So it's up to you which one you want to cancel. ;)

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Posted: 12/17/2007 11:06 AM

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Randil

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Perhaps if you posted the exact error message you got, Bisqwit could tell what the problem is (or was, if it works fine for you now). I'm trying out several pages on TASVideos now, and all of them seem to work fine (FAQ, Guidelines, etc.). It might have been just a temporary error.

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Posted: 12/15/2007 10:35 PM

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Randil

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Here's another (hopefully not too easy) problem from me: Say you have a wooden rod that is exactly 100 centimeters long. You cut the rod in two random places (the two coordinates where you cut are independent). You will now have three wooden rods. What is the probability that you can form a triangle of these three parts? The width of the rod is insignificant.

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Posted: 12/15/2007 10:30 PM

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Randil

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Bisqwit wrote:

mudlord wrote:

http://vba-m.ngemu.com/personalfiles/TAS_Movies_Collection_11-16-07__M992_.7z

404 Not found:

$ wget http://vba-m.ngemu.com/personalfiles/TAS_Movies_Collection_11-16-07__M992_.7z
--23:33:39--  http://vba-m.ngemu.com/personalfiles/TAS_Movies_Collection_11-16-07__M992_.7z
           => `TAS_Movies_Collection_11-16-07__M992_.7z'
Resolving vba-m.ngemu.com... 70.84.108.116
Connecting to vba-m.ngemu.com|70.84.108.116|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
23:33:39 ERROR 404: Not Found.

The link works fine for me. Perhaps it was just a temporary error.

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Posted: 12/14/2007 8:54 PM

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Randil

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The submission text reads: "Note: I didn't use this trick in stage 8-3 otherwise I would have had to decide whether to waste 42 frames in watching three fireworks or not to by wasting 19+ frames somewhere else to miss them...." Is this what you're talking about?

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Posted: 12/13/2007 7:43 PM

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Randil

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The published Adventure Island run plays without desyncs on all versions of FCEU, so it's a ROM issue. As mmbossman said, check the ROM checksum and make sure it's a match.

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Posted: 12/13/2007 12:05 PM

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Randil

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I have heard that the codec used when encoding .avi files to FLV isn't very good compared to newer codecs, such as H264 (I don't know if this is true, it's just what I've heard). Would it be possible to encode .avi files into FLV using H264 codec to increase the quality/filesize ratio? Sorry if this is a silly question, I don't know much about these things...

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Posted: 12/12/2007 9:40 AM

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Randil

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That's quite a lot of lag reduction for just one boss fight. Great job. :) Have you tested if this trick can save as much time on the other bosses yet?

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Posted: 12/11/2007 8:50 AM

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Randil

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DK64_MASTER wrote:

Why do theorists get funding to do research in areas of math and science that have no practical application? For example, the search of the existence of the largest prime number, or other theories that have no obvious, or even subtle practical implication (from my amateur eyes). Obviously I understand the interest factor, but why do such projects get funded?

I actually had this exact discussion with my room mate some time ago. I think the reason these kind of projects get funded is that although they're not any use to mankind right now, these mathematical models may prove some use to us in 100 years or so. There are several examples of mathematicians who researched in mathematical areas that they never thought could be used practically but are now used quite often in quantum mechanics and other areas. Maybe the search for the largest prime numbers won't prove to be useful, but other mathematical projects without obvious purposes can work to increase our understanding of mathematics. Or something like that.

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Posted: 12/11/2007 8:41 AM

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Randil

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<--- About 10 minutes in MS Paint. As you can see, I'm quite skilled in the art of MS Paint. And yes, I can switch back to my original avatar if this one hurts your eyes.

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Posted: 12/8/2007 4:44 PM

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Randil

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You can't play smv files with ZSnes, you need the emulator SNES9X v1.43 with the record reset function, which you can download here. To play the smv file, just open up the emulator, load the ROM, go to "File" -> "Movie Play" and select the smv file. Good luck! EDIT: Wow, people responded really fast, while I was writing this. Oh, nevermind then.

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