Depends on the source of randomness. If it's deterministic, it should always (?) sync unless the mechanism that generates the numbers required for a run to sync is emulated inaccurately. Such as, if a randomness depends on absolute frame timer, a difference of one frame during a fadeout, laggy scene, or some kind of loading, throws the synchronization off completely.
You are missing the point. There is a certain hierarchy of objectives accepted on the site to determine consistency of the goals an author chooses. Let me illustrate.
Scenario #1: game X, which contains an insignificant amount of text, has a trick on the Japanese version making it faster, with no other differences. The author would be encouraged to use the Japanese version. Why? Because speed is more important.
J > U. Case in point: Contra: The Hard Corps.
Scenario #2: game Y, which is long and contains significant amount of unskippable text, can be made shorter by the means of choosing the Japanese version as Japanese text needs less time to be displayed, otherwise having no differences. The author would be encouraged to use the English version. Why? Because if the text is unskippable, you may as well have it readable and have the speed be expressed via actual gameplay.
U > J. Case in point: Ocarina of Time.
Scenario #3: game Z, which has a significant amount of skippable text is run on the English version, but the author chooses not to skip any cutscenes, letting the audience read the text, explaining his decision with entertainment reasons.
Now how quickly do you think such a run would be rejected disregarding the version choice? (Three days, duh.) Why? Because speed is more important.
Scenario #4: game Z again, except in this case the author skips the cutscenes but makes a "story" version to complement it. Naturally he would choose the English release then.
U > J. Case in point: Ninja Gaiden II.
If one of the main reasons to prefer the U version is the language (because the vast majority of viewers understand English, only a small minority Japanese), it would seem quite inconsistent to prefer the J versio over the E version when the U one is not an option. Why is the language suddenly not an issue anylonger?
Because letting, let alone encouraging, the audience to read a game's text has never been a primary objective of any speedrun. If that were to be consistent it would interfere with other, more important goals (i. e., speed or precision) and you would then present the carbon copy of this argument with its variables changed to represent the goals that would suddenly not be an issue then. There's no pleasing everybody.
What about the issue of (E) vs. (J)? That's come up in a couple of games that have no (U) version, and IIRC both decisions have been made (usually by the run author). The argument there would be in-English vs. original-timings (PAL ports are generally timed incorrectly; arguably, where the PAL game is the original, it's the NTSC port that's timed incorrectly, but games are rarely released only in Europe and then later ported to NTSC).
So far in most cases J releases have been preferred if only for the sole reason of running faster (or, if PAL counterparts had their speed compensated, at a higher temporal resolution) if there were no other benefits to speak of. I can't really think of a E release being preferred without new glitches or something, only maybe if it were a text-heavy game with unskippable text (but then again, it's hardly a good reason in a speedrun, period).
The most interesting case so far has been [948] NES Shadow of the Ninja "1 player" by klmz in 09:48.32, which is a game that has been released in all three regions under three different names and with different tricks/glitches possible, of which the U version has proved to be the least favorable for TASing.
A policy was needed, otherwise, every thread would turn into Bionic Commando or Hitler no Fukkatsu.
This is a wrong example to illustrate that point (probably as far from the point as you can get). In case with BC, it wasn't obvious at all as to which of the two releases was superior, as both had different advantages going for them. That debacle could have happened now as well since we do allow non-U releases if the author (or the public) makes a successful case for their superiority.
In general the difference is quite clear, though.
In Fabian's spirit, these questions are for anyone who feels that they have something intersting to add.
Well, you've caught my attention then. :)
Mukki wrote:
I remember learning French back in High School and the language was taught as being inextricably tied to the culture itself (i.e. examples would always be set in a stereotypical parisian setup with questions based on widely known French culture). Do you feel that the study of English requires a meaningful understanding of British (or North American) culture, or do you find it to be more worldly than that?
It's largely inevitable, but also very much appropriate. You cannot hope to fully grasp the nuances of any given language, especially with regards to idioms, certain other verbal constructions, details and dynamics of pronunciation, and other similar things without studying the cultural and historical context behind them, basically all the important circumstances of their creation (that is, etymology) and semantic development. I haven't had any specialized education in linguistics, but these things are somehow able to fascinate me to no end. Here's a (spoilerless) quote from House of Leaves that I especially like. Don't you find the conclusion inspiring in some way?
Mukki wrote:
What are your opinions on being bilingual? Do you feel that the extra vocabularly has allowed you to express yourself in ways that would otherwise be impossible, or more difficult? Have you found the experience of engaging with those of a different tongue to be worthwhile? Last year, on a whim, I asked a German friend of mine which language she thought in, she said English, as it was faster. Do you find merit in this?
Absolutely. We shape the vast majority of our thoughts in verbal forms (i. e. saying or reading them in our mind) which are thus directly related to the languages we are able to wield (as in, be able to produce thoughts using them, not just translate to/from using our internal vocabulary lookup mechanisms). The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis extends it even further, and I actually agree with its postulates. Consequently, if you can successfully manage two distinct sets of cognitive patterns brought forward by bilingual training (especially if you're trained in that way since early childhood), you can potentially reap huge benefits from that by being able to discern more shades of meaning in various concepts or contexts. Which is another topic that fascinates me to no end. Maybe I should have become a linguist or a neurobiologist or something... :)
When I'm writing my response to you at this very moment, I'm thinking in English, which serves a larger purpose here as the result is supposed to be English for you to understand. But oftentimes I would think in English even if the outcome of my thought process is to be expressed in Russian or not expressed at all. This is likely because I find it easier to deal with the English language's simplified morphology and larger assortment of roots, allowing different shades of meaning of any given concept to be expressed with a single and, in most cases, more simple word, or at least an idiom with no equal meaning in Russian.
Then again, you can consider artificial languages such as Ithkuil created for the very purpose of optimizing thought processes by compressing it and ruling out inconsistencies in formal logic, abundant in pretty much every language. At one point I was seriously considering actually learning Ithkuil, but quickly realized I had neither comfortable means of romanization (the current romanization system is anything but useful) nor anybody proficient to talk to for practice. In contrast, pretty much all of my accomplishments with regards to English have been achieved through practice on this very forum (and IRC channel) for the major part. If you'd looked at the posts I made in 2005, you would notice how I purposefully avoided complex sentences, Perfect tense, and other things I wasn't comfortable with. I can't say I'm fully comfortable with all of that now, but it's manageable. My grasp of written English is now rather close to my grasp of written Russian, and I find that pretty cool considering I received no special training on the matter, and in fact no training at all for the past six years.
Warp wrote:
But perhaps he wants to learn British English instead of American, in which case it would be "utilisation". (Although I heard some rumors that Britons are slowly shifting towards American spelling as well... Nothing is sacred anymore.)
Eh, you all need to relax a bit. Nothing criminal is going on.
A newcomer didn't get what the site was about and hadn't had the patience to read the FAQ and rules. That's not a good thing, but remediable. Some other guys poked fun at it. Not a good thing either, of course, but it's not like there was no reason for such behavior.
Now what a good thing would be is for both sides to come to their senses and become more considerate towards each other. Which is for sirstarmagic to stop being lazy and read up, and for others to stop making a laughing stock out of a bad first submission.
I agree with Derakon. A shortest route with 2 players and an "exhibition" route (akin to Umihara Kawase) with 1 player, for instance, would look completely different.
I dont hink this can be considered an "in-bounds" run because it still uses door warps which still go OOB.
They don't go OOB. They transport you to the "wrong" location. OOB means disrespecting the physical boundaries of the level layout (in this case by sinking into walls), which this run doesn't do.
The rule is instated to avoid savestate tampering. If you have a verification movie that generates the exact conditions for your savestate, you're in the clean.
Also, I should probably say this beforehand: unless you manage to do something fresh for over 35–40 minutes straight, people would only like to see one loop. I know from experience with this exact game that so many stuff going on on the screen makes the experience rather tiresome. But going by the logic and common sense, second loop is the harder one, so it allows more opportunities for cool tool-assisted tricks and gimmicks, so if there is a choice between which loop to submit, it should be this one.
What lead you to that decision? Second loop is much harder than whatever the dip switches can change on the first. Compare: 1-1, 2-1. Besides, you'll be missing one of the most hilariously over-the-top boss fights in the history of arcade games.
As for the entertainment value, I'll put it this way. A playaround would likely be interesting, and may be appealing to non-shmup fans. A scorerun will only appeal to shmup fans insterested in DoDonPachi, which is only a couple people here (including myself), but there is a huge audience outside of TASVideos for this kind of thing that would piss themselves if you score over 780 million, let alone 800. It will most likely be harder to do than a playaround, though, as a lot of research is involved.
Also, most of the chaining routes through the game are actually some of the safest routes you can travel. They're designed that way so that full chains could be possible. DDP is a very polished game.
