I'm not so sure the situation is that clear. (This kind of thing is not, in fact, nothing new. For instance, when Microsoft first announced their Xbox console, many people predicted that it would mean the downfall of PC/Windows as a gaming platform, as all the gaming development would move to the cheaper, stabler and piracy-free Microsoft console. This didn't happen and PC gaming has been alive and well to this day.)
The thing with PC/Windows (more PC than Windows, even) is that it's not going away regardless of its game library. Virtually everybody has them and will use them anyway. A console without games is a glorified DVD player.
Warp wrote:
Handheld multimedia/gaming platforms have certainly raised to be a serious competitor to traditional consoles. However, they occupy a slightly different niche, and they have their limitations.
Their limitations are gradually going away. 3DS, Vita and modern tablets can show convincing imagery at this point; the consoles have passable controllers built in, while the tablets have external controllers as well as the built-in touchpad/accelerometer/camera/etc. All of them connect to other units wirelessly and generally have everything home consoles do, except smaller. Nintendo's WiiU is the exact point of convergence between a home console and a handheld.
Warp wrote:
A touchscreen is good for many things, but really bad at others. It will never supplant controllers.
Believe it or not, I think the same about gamepad vs. keyboard+mouse for first and third person action games. (I believe, you, too, are on the keyboard side.) Yet it stuck because most gamers, even hardcore (arguably) ones, don't care about that. By hardcore I mean goal-oriented players who learn the game and play it competitively.
Warp wrote:
The major problem is that they can't easily be multiplayer. While a group of friends could ostensibly play around an iPad, it's just not the same thing as them sitting on a sofa playing a party game in a normal console in front of a huge-ass TV, each player with their own controller. (And the iPad was the most capable handheld that could ostensibly be used for multiplayer games. Just forget about it with the ridiculously small smartphones.)
Technically, there's nothing preventing multiplayer there. A lot of people have iOS and Android devices nowadays—it's only a matter of interconnecting them, which isn't hard at all. You don't have to use one iPad—you can use any number of iPads, and each player will even have their own screen others can't see!
Warp wrote:
Also, for example on the Xbox 360 side, quite surprisingly, studies have shown that over 50% of the total time spent using the console, on average, is not for playing games, but for watching multimedia (mainly movies).
Yes, and you can do it on your existing console. That's the thing: the current generation completely fulfills its role as media players for every distribution model present on the market, from Blu-ray to YouTube.
Warp wrote:
There's also a quite funny phenomenon with Apple's AppStore in particular: The vast majority of apps/games are priced in the 1-2 dollar range. Almost nobody will buy a game for 50+ dollars. How many big game companies are ready to sell their games at 1 dollar apiece, when there's a market where they can sell them at 50+? (There's nothing stopping them from selling the games at 50+ dollars at the AppStore. It's just that almost nobody will buy them when they can buy 50 other games for the same money.)
Yes, exactly. That's why the Ouya will trump big-budget publishers into the ground. These days the AAA titles aren't much more fun and don't receive much more play than dirt-cheap titles like Tiny Wings or Angry Birds. And for the price of one AAA title you can buy more fun time—fun that is always with you, instantly accessible, easy to learn and not plagued with ridiculous playtime padding. At the same time, the expensive titles can't be sold cheaper for two reasons: 1) design studios will run out of business, 2) retailers hold publishers by the balls, so they need their share of the pie and presence of retail boxes that cost a lot to produce and distribute.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The Ouya is the ultimate casual console. Nothing bad about that, of course—I just hope it'll accumulate all the cheap transient titles keeping the remaining platforms relatively clean. :P
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Just trolling, man! ;)
But yeah, the notion of "consoles real gamers use", even if jokular, has become rather ambiguous because consoles are dying. They've essentially become overpriced PCs whose main use is to play overpriced games that aren't available on a PC, all the while enduring inferior image quality and sharp framerate drops. Hardcore populace is holding on to previous generations and actual PC games, while casuals move on to iOS/Android, browser games (Facebook apps included), and shovelware Steam titles.
This generation has run out of steam (lol) by 2009, and there won't be any "simple" selling points to make people pay through their nose for new systems once again, like improved graphics, or wireless capabilities, or motion-sensing controls, or stereoscopy, or multimedia capabilities, or touchpads—it's all been done, or at least claimed, this gen. Trying to use any of this to sell essentially what Wii was to Gamecube will not work with the underwhelming game library typical for all of this gen's consoles.
Ironically, Nintendo may still have the chance simply because they waited out before hopping onto the HD train, so they would be able to deliver a real qualitative leap compared to the Wii. Besides, history has shown a new Mario or Zelda would be as good as a killer app for their systems.
Here is a recommended read.
I don't intend to drag this thread off-topic, so if there happens to be some interesting discussion I'll split it.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
This thread is an example of overly pedantic obsession over a minor issue blown out of proportion. As demonstrated by jimsfriend, more can be done than simply rearranging words. Maybe other text elements are in need of a facelift, especially seeing as many of them were written by non-natives.
I'm not in favor of locking threads liberally, but I won't oppose the decision in this particular case. A new thread could be opened with suggestions of possible textual and graphic redesign, including this one. And I encourage all users to just suggest things rather than deflating someone else's ego, attacking others' suggestions, or behaving like monkeys in general. This thread is a failure all around.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I would also like to add that previous Fusion 100%s also aimed for in-game time, and this run is faster than the previous in both in-game and realtime.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Use whatever route is most impressive; time is not the highest priority in fixed-speed shooters, because, lag reduction aside, it's trivial to be as fast as possible.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Low glitch runs particularly avoid certain bugs, rather than doing them differently to achieve other results. Inichi's test run is technically "low glitch".
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Many of the DS TASes we have abuse corruption techniques by the boatloads, owing it to the simple fact that DS has a lid. If anything, I would expect even more breakage in a DS version of any SNES game.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Finally, we'd break the site's (TASVideos) structure by having one movie taking two movies to obsolete it.
Well, not really. In case with Super Metroid, there was once an any% that aimed for in-game time that was the fastest available run. Then an any% aimed for realtime came along and obsoleted it. Then a new any% aiming for in-game time was submitted, and published alongside it as a different category. Then a glitched low% that was also the fastest run at the time, both by in-game and realtime metrics, was submitted and yet again published alongside, with the "long" any% runs being treated pretty much as playarounds/low-glitch runs.
That being said, I'm undecided on the matter. Right now I'd rather see a complete glitched run without the corruption, but then again it might not be quite as entertaining as I expect it to be. This submission should definitely be published though, one way or another. I enjoyed the 20-minute one, but I wouldn't really watch it twice either.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Low-poly look doesn't bother me at all as long as the game is well-designed, and this one is. That's the right priority, imo.
The "I am an enchantress" dialogue instantly reminded me of this, btw. :D
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
they both use save corruption, I don't see how the same glitch used suboptimally grants a new category
Ah, you're right. I forgot what made the current version so much faster.
ALAKTORN wrote:
it's called lag
It's not. Lag is latency, meaning the signal you send goes through the entire chain at some point; it doesn't account for situations when it doesn't go through at all. The emulator, on the other hand, has no intended "windows of opportunity" within a frame, outside of which it doesn't receive any input.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
By the way, I don't think this should obsolete the NewGame+ run because the NG+ one beats the game in (semi-)conventional way, final boss and all, doesn't use the same glitches, and is remarkably different from any other kind of run.
rog wrote:
Er, yes it does?
If the signal reaches the emulator, it is recorded. If it doesn't, it means it didn't reach the emulator in the first place. If that happens, blame something in the chain of "keyboard—port—driver—OS".
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
We would need ludicrously accurate clocks in the hardware and perfectly manufactured components. Neither of those are realistic, or even achievable with lots of resources.
Rather, we need a lot of time for restarts. One of them will eventually sync.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Thanks for the explanation. Aside from verifying the run, can the very concept of mid-frame resets be verified?
That's simple: any keypress, reset or otherwise, happens mid-frame on the actual console. Emulators just decrease input resolution to screen refresh resolution for convenience. On a real console, you can push a button so fast the console won't register it—that wouldn't happen on the emulator.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I mentioned inichi's run right in the first line of the submission text. I assumed most viewers would already be familiar with it. The run was used as reference - strategy-wise, I didn't find any improvements.
Yeah, you did, but somehow forgot to link to it or mention how much did you improve it by, sans emulation differences. People familiar with it were mainly those who read the CT thread in 2008.
turska wrote:
Without inichi's demo run, this run would never have been made, but since he had no direct involvement in making this run, I can't list him as a coauthor in good faith.
Excuse me? Effectively you've contributed nothing new to a run that has already been made, publicized, and explained by a different person, and you can't list him as a coauthor in "good faith"? Meanwhile, a little earlier in IRC you had claimed you had no problem with listing inichi as a coauthor. So which is it?
turska wrote:
I considered approaching him about this. Howewer, I didn't see inichi idling on #tasvideos nor had he posted in over two years - in the time it would've taken for him to react, I could already have implemented the run myself.
I am disappointed with the snatch-it-while-it's-hot mentality. Had this submission been made later, exactly what harm would've been done?
turska wrote:
I also highly disagree with idea of certain games or categories being exclusive to certain people. TASing is about the runs themselves, not the particular individuals that happen to work on them.
Thanks for completely missing the point.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Barb could use Find Item on all non-quest bosses' corpses, so that effectively increased his MF for council members and Hell cows by a very significant amount.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
For those who don't know/remember, inichi has made a test run without memory corruption and mid-save resets, and speculated that more recent glitches and better general optimization could reach 2:30 or so (probably way below that by this point). It was also decided back then that such a "low-glitch" version would be published once/if it was done.
And here is the original version of turska's run. Posting this here because I believe inichi should be at the very least listed as a coauthor, since the only thing that prevented him from submitting it back then was the lack of accepted tools, and turska didn't make any improvements, to my knowledge.
(Actually, I think it would be even better to PM inichi first, asking if he would like to play the run on lsnes himself, but it's too late for that.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
