Posts for Xerophyte

Post subject: Proper job!
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Yes vote from me. Though I agree that Lagoon isn't the most enjoyable game to watch for someone who has never tried it, I've played this game through and very much appreciate watching it suffer. Pity there's no speedy way to off the 2nd form of Thor, it really deserves it. It should be noted that, although it doesn't always look like it, this run is very different from what you'd get playing regularly. Getting the slashing rythm perfect on regular enemies is *hard* and the bosses in this game are just plain murderous. Regular play also involves a lot of getting lost in labyrinths (Lagoon is the only SNES game I ever made hand-drawn maps for, which is a "feature" I actually like), keeping away from nasties to properly smite them with magic and standing around regenerating all the MP spent on said smiting. Oh, and I love the bass lines. Amazing what a few sine waves can do if you try.
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Xebra: You're both right & wrong. The effects you mentioned (clocks in orbit, clocks at black holes) are present in special relativity and are caused by the relative speed of the clock compared to that of an observer causing time dilation. In general relativity, there is a separate effect that has mass stretch space-time so that time moves differently near it, regardless of relative veloctities. Me actually doing some reading before posting and not going from vague lecture memories says this causes time to slow near mass - so, yeah, I was right the first time. :p Since it should by now be clear that I'm embarrassingly bad at general relativity, I'll just [URL=http://fy.chalmers.se/~rico/spacetime2.html]link you[/URL] to someone who isn't for the details.
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Highness wrote:
I feel all bludgeoned in my head now. You really over did it.
Yay, mission accomplished! :D Sadly, I apparently had my general relativity hat on backwards when I wrote that - being near a strong source of gravity speeds up time for whatever is placed there instead of doing the opposite like I said. Err ... Oops. Also, to cease hijcacking for a second, I'd like to say that Adventure of Link & Link to the Past are my absolutele favorites in the series. I really enjoyed the runs made here so far - great job Boco & Arc! - and would cherish any improvements.
Post subject: I wonder if Newton had this much fun figuring it all out...
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As the local physics student, I feel compelled to chime in on this one and go all scientific on the discussion. First, the solution somewhat depends on what you mean by a day. If a day is one day-night cycle, just living at a pole is enough to lengthen it considerably - the poles spend half the year in darkness and half the year in light due to the earth's axis being inclined. Now, admittedly, there're short transitional periods around the equinoxes so you can't get a full year, but a day-night cycle still lasts 6 months if you play your cards right. It's notable that running around the pole won't help you at all, since the entire top 10% (approximating off the top of my head, here) of the planet spend some part of the year in complete night or day. 'course, with a faster vehicle than just your legs and a position closer to the equator you could spend an indefinite amount of time in day or night. However, this is a rather silly definition of day, since it makes the concept very subjective and quite prone to geographical variation. Typically, we just define a day is the time taken for one revolution of the earth, which is the same for everyone (well, everyone on earth, at least - but more on that later). You can therefore make the day longer by slowing down the earth's rotation. This is sadly not an easy thng to accomplish. The potential energy of the earth's rotation is given as
E_p = L^2 / ( 2 * m * r^2 )
where L is the Earth's angular momentum, given by
L = 2/5 * m * r^2 * w
W is the earth's angular velocity, which can be derived from the time of a single revolution as
w = 2 * pi / 85 823
85 823 is the number of seconds in a day. This gives us a final expression for the potential energy in the rotation as
E_p = 8/25 * pi * m * r^2 / 7365587329 = 2,606361399*10^30 J
with good values for m & r Now, assuming we're going to slow down the rotation from earth and not start slamming asteroids into the planet, something that would make living here uncomfortable, we're going to have to accomplish our task by discharging mass from the surface in the opposite direction to the rotation. For example, we could use the world's oceans as rocket propellant. So, let's say we make two large rockets on opposite sides of the globe, connect them to the nearest ocean and start blasting water out into space. Let's also say that we're shooting it away at the good, nippy and totally unrealistic speed of 3 000 m/s. If we had our rockets thus drain the world's oceans of all their water - 1,4 * 10^21 kg, all in all - and eject it into space, we would have spent 4,5 * 10^27 J slowing the earth down, according to the
E_k = 1/2 * m * v^2
formula for determining kinetic energy. Assuming all this energy went were it should, instead of generating heat by friction or somesuch (and ignoring the effect of changing the mass of the earth by removing all the water), we would then have created a change of 5% in the angular velocity of the earth - not much to brag about, really. We'd need our water rockets to fire at about 30 000 m/s to halve the rotational speed, and 60 000 m/s to stop it. There are other physically possible but more esoteric methods that can slow the rotation down. Special relativity has time dilation, which basically states that observed time slows down for things that have a high velocity - nearing the speed of light - compared to your own. You can also use an effect of general relativity that has time slow down when space-time is bent out of whack near strong gravitational sources, simply place the earth near a black hole or similar object and place yourself very far away from any such strong gravitational forces. Finally, quantum uncertainty allows you to be at multiple points in time with varying probability when at low energy levels, so freezing yourself to near absolute zero could concievably work as well. However, these methods are solutions that would only serve to make longer days for you and not the rest of the earth - indeed, one of them would probably destroy the planet - and thus I cannot recommend them. Edit: D'oh. Code tags didn't really work as intended, but I'm too lazy to fix it :p Also, I take no responsibility for embarassing calculatory errors. Those were all made by my evil twin.
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So, make a set of movies. First one records from reset, new ones from relevant savestates. It's not perfect, but better a cumbersome movie than no movie at all
Post subject: *laugh* that was a very well-timed level up in there.
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Not much for me to say about the run quality. There were a couple of times where I saw what I thought was a suitable two-tile drop and wondered why you didn't glitch, but I assume you've tested all possible drops to death. Basically, this is a large improvement to what was one of the most entertaining runs on the site. Proper job!
Post subject: Re: Big O' List, Gameboy-Fu
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Emptyeye wrote:
Both, I would argue, are harder than the NES game(The first one in particular).
I don't think any level in any video game has gotten my character killed quite as often as level 5 in Battletoads GB. Pure, undiluted evil, complete with bouncing brain. I eventually got to the point where I could play it near flawlessly, in part because that was the only way to survive it.
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Hey, those sites where surprisingly good. I expected amateur night but some parts were - far as I can judge guitar playing, at least - technically challenging. Too bad it's almost exclusively guitar-centered rock ensemble, but I suppose that's a matter of taste.
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For me at least, movies made with the 1.43-WIP - most of what's on the site - aren't at all compatible with the released 1.43. That's the only major, controllable desync factor I've suffered.
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I actually played (and even finished) Rad Gravity back in the day. I never imagined 20 minutes was even approachable, much less passable. x thumbs up, where x approaches /infty
Post subject: If it's less than 10 years old, I prolly haven't played it
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Well, I'd love to offer construvtive commentary, but I don't know enough about the game. About all I can say is that the run was fun to watch, but hopefully you knew that already :p
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Desynced when going out of Gold Cave for me, but what I saw alarmed me. You seem to be avoiding foes rather than kill them. As with the Rygar time attack, that's a bad idea. Getting XP & levels is going to be important, more MP & higher attack power is going to significantly decrease time spent killing bosses. Since killing something in your path doesn't cost any time, you should try to manipulate enemy movement so that they often do stand in your path and especially use the escort sequences to carve up everything nearby. Edit: Watched it again without the desync, which resulted in a lot more killing during the escort parts, very good. Sadly, there're still plenty of missed opportunities in the regular dungeon romps. Also, you drained all your MP on a regular kill in the area of Philips Castle just before Natela instead of using it to speed up the boss fight - why?
Post subject: English translation packs - yes or no?
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Far as I can tell, I don't have permission to actually post polls, so I'll just have to do this unfancily and ask you guys to reply. Preamble: In the Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy V & Tales of Phantasia discussion threads there has been some talk about what language the runs are to be in. Currently, all of these 4 hour-ish games are being run on their japanese versions. I think this is a bad, bad idea and would like to know what the rest of the boards think about it. Arguments for using the english version: The point of this site is to present entertaining videos and a very large part of the entertainment value in an RPG lies in the story. Not being able to understand what is going on would reduce these runs from 'fun' to 'unwatchable' for me. Unless I am mistaken (Bisqwit, got user stats?), the vast majority of downloaders on nesvideos are europeans and americans who presumably can't read japanese - it makes sense to make videos that entertains them instead of the japanese minority. Arguments made for using the japanese versions, and my counterpoints:
- the texts go so fast that understanding is not the biggest problem
I had absolutely no trouble keeping up with the text in the english-patched ToP test run currently available. If this should be a problem in some other game, I intend to pause so I can read. I can only speak for myself, but for me the story is a large part of these runs. Missing it would be most unfun.
- the Japanese font renderer might be a little faster, because it has less work to do (always 12 pixels wide)
So? Brevity is not the sole virtue of these runs - if that were the case, we'd only have the 2-min Kid Chameleon video, only one Metroid video instead of 3 and so on. Speed is important because it's the only objective measurement of video impressiveness available for a given set of rules and there's no point in using it to compare between two different rulesets. You might as well say that the SMB run is more entertaining than the Megaman run because it's shorter - a ludicrous statement, as the rules for the two runs are entirely different.
- to find and demonstrate which game features were different in USA version
Point, but only applies to those who have already played through the entire game. Most of the times I watch a run, I haven't completed the game and, again, I imagine this is the case for most people. Also, seeing a run with text that you can understand still strikes me as considerably more important.
- site rules don't allow hacks
Arbitrary rule that should be altered when in the way of entertaining videos, which I feel it currently is. Disclaimer: It's Bisqy's site and he can use whatever criteria he wants to determine who gets to occupy his webspace and it's [insert name of runner here]'s run and she can use whatever version she's most comfortable with. I'm just trying to lobby them into making runs that I (and, I hope, most people) like :p Anyhow - discuss! Yea or Nay?
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My apartment lacks stairs, the house said apartment is a part of has stairs. Does that count? Also, there are far too many goons on these forums.
Post subject: I take no responsibility for any debacles incurred if wrong
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I thought twin galaxies' rules measured from start of character control (i.e. when Mario appears on stage 1-1) to end of character control (touching the axe)? That'd place the run at a more reasonable distance from the time attack. [surreptitious winking at Mr. KRF]Oh, isn't there someone who can wring clarity from this great confusion?[/surreptitious winking at Mr. KRF]
Post subject: Besides, the letter-in-water thing is just damned nifty :p
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Very good run and a definite 'yes', but it's missing a critical element; there's no footage of Josh dunking the letter in water! Obviously, a Star Tropics run without drenched paper just isn't complete. On a more serious note, I think I spotted some incosistencies - you sometimes jump over a one-tile piece of water and sometimes go around it, for example - but I'm not good enough at ST to really judge if those were needed for some reason or other. Nothing that detracted from the entertainment value of the run anyhow, it kept me smiling for the full hour. Proper job!
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This is my *house*. Do you want to know a *secret*? Do not *think* it too *not campers*. You are so many *lonely* *juicy* *bubbles*. It is so sad. Now that you are *campers* you will have more *parties* and no more *sad* *lonely* *bubbles*. This is the *secret*. ... now, if we're done with the Star Control nostalgia, can we get back to Metroid? :p まごまごな日本人の客へ。「Orz」と謂う宇宙人は古いパソコンゲームにいる。上の画像はあのゲームから。 (それに、惨烈な日本語を失礼いたしました) (-.-); Edit: *laugh* ... my japanese is bad, I admit, but babelfish is definitely much worse :)
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Michael Fried wrote:
It's about which bit the game uses to decide when to start the ending.
... which you've just arbitrarily defined as Bowser dying. We could pick any given memory state as the start of the ending, it depends on what we feel the ending entails. Entirely subjective.
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FODA wrote:
but dont you think it's easier to tell everyone to make shortest avis than defining game-ending points?
How do you make a run in the first place without knowing where the game-ending point is? If you don't have a defined game ending point, the shortest avi is one frame of play, which 'd be silly. For the time attack to be at all meaningful, you have to define game ending points beforehand - why not stop the movie at them?
Michael Fried wrote:
Even you you consider the ending of SMB later on, the "game ending now" bit is flipped when you touch the axe, and once you touch it the game decides that there's a certain amount of time before the ending starts. In SMW, even if you threw the koopa already, the game isn't like a chess program and it doesn't look ahead to see whether or not it's going to hit Bowser. Once you hit Bowser the "game ending now" bit is flipped and the game decides that in a certain amount of time the ending will start in a certain amount of time.?
You miss my point. There are no universally defined "game ending now" bits, you just picked those two conditions arbitrarily. They're intuitive choices for game endings, but they're neither more or less "correct" than any other alteration of memory in the course of playing the game. That it's your opinion that the 'bowser is dead'-bit is more important than the 'koopa on inevitable collision course'-bit is largely irrelevant, both can be used as goal posts for the game if you feel like it.
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While you're obviously free to make a non speed-oriented walkthrough run if you want to, I can't help but feel that this is a maybe not the entirely right forum. Everyone expects speed here, it's what the site is here for. . . . Zelda pop! . . .
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MF: All well and good, now you just need to define what "the ending" is for every single game and when said game knows it has to start it. All of which will be every bit as arbitrary as any other method of determining when the game is sucesfullly completed. Your two examples are intuitive, yes, but not indicative of any magic "game ending now"-bits being flipped in memory. I could just as well say that the ending of SMB starts when the final Bowser room is no longer in view or that the ending of SMW starts when the velocity and position of the last launched mecha-koopa is irrevocably defined in game memory to values that will result in a dead Boswer. These definitions are perhaps less intuitive, but equally valid.
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The quickest way to reach the point where user input can no longer affect the game is usually to die rapidly and stop recording at the game over screen. If the object of a timeattack is to finish the game with as little input as possible, this is therefore the optimal strategy. Obviously, this 'd be silly. The point of a time attack is not just to end the game quickly, it is to succesfully complete the game quickly. Exactly what successful completion entails is an arbitrary decision that we have to do on a per-game basis. For SMB, for example, you can concievably define sucessful completion as Mario getting past Bowser in 8-4, Mario touching the axe in 8-4, the outro text having been fully displayed, Mario making his first jump or whatever else you feel like. On this site, the the game is over when the axe is touched in 8-4 but this is only by virtue of consensus. Now, point is, since we already have to define the conditions required for a time attack to be considered succesfull for each and every game, there's no point in ending the recording before those conditions are met. Keep recording until the game is sucesfully completed.
Post subject: I'm an evil, evil Cactaceae, I know
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I feel horrible doing this to such an entertaining run but ... I voted no. Basically, I think this is too obviously improvable to warrant publishing. Notably, three things: 1) Shopping & money-gathering. Especially the small bit where you run in circles and kill mobs for cash breaks the rythm of the run in a bad way. 2) Missed shots. Looks sloppy and easily (if tediously) fixed. 3) I was about to complain about the seemingly useless extra jump after meeting sprite, but decided to try it myself before posting. Good thing, too, as it apparently prevented me from placing my foot firmly in my mouth. :p Again, I must stress that I did enjoy the run. I just think that since there are improvements possible - ones that even a comparative layman like me can spot - I think it should be done better before being encoded and spread to the unwashed masses.
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Bob Whoops wrote:
Oh, and NAMCO did NOT release a four part OVA earlier this year. They released the first one out of four. The next one comes out in two months (minus one week), and the other ones two months apart as well. So we'll be finishing this series half a year from now.
Heh, shows what I know. In my defense, I did go so far as to check the year of release at animenfo, so blame them :p
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This is almost entirely unrelated, but ... NAMCO released a 4-part ToP anime OVA (Original Video Animation, i.e. direct-to-retail release) earlier this year and the fansubbers are now happily translating it. Torrent here for the curious. Pre-emptive answers: I rate the first episode a 2.9264 on a scale from e to pi. Yes, they've changed the storyline a bit. No, it's not as bad as the Eternia anime.