Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
I think this can be done easily with Lua if there were a couple of more extensions to it.
If there were a mode to "load" a movie file into a table (not actually play it), have the number of frames since the last reset (you can probably track that in lua though), and most importantly; have a way in lua to turn off the background and everything, you can do this:
load movie file as input array
create player state
create movie state
save both here
now for every frame do
save player state
load movie state
do next movie input
get image string
save movie state
load player state
do player input
draw the movie input over the player input with some transparancy (or something to make sure who's who)
repeat
And this would be a ghost, emulator independent (FCEUX can disable background etc as well) and game independant!
You can do the same principle for multiple movies too :)
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
CPL is like any boardsport, many can get good enough to compete but only a few can actually make a living of it. In tournaments you can usually win prizes, in CPL those rewards can go up rather fast.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Now, before you create a complete movie again. Maybe it's a good idea to post a wip, a work in progress, after the first fight. Put it on youtube please :p
I think the recipe used in other MK movies was to use a different character for each match. But that's up to you :)
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberathlete_Professional_League
I still think there's money to be made in a website that streams coverage of people playing games. Much like TASses or SDA runs but more like a TV station.
Have a CPL match of CS, watch somebody crush C&C, an LP marathon of Doom3, whatever. I've somehow always been fascinated with looking at people playing games. Face it, that's why we're all here :p
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
:p
Btw; with ditching us I was kind of referring to the mayhem which I think this site will be in when control is transferred to somebody else. But that's just my two pessimistic cents about that...
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
I may be paranoid myself, but may I suggest you remove the comment about logs? If she reads the forums she can certainly read where you post. If she reads that, she might get furious. Something about a womans privacy... Just a friendly warning. I'll edit this as well :p
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Bisqwit wrote:
Intellectual pursuits the kind of that is programming are a filler in the life, entertainment among other kinds of entertainment, and sometimes hard work. However, ultimately it is a complete waste of time.
I have come to the conclusion that everything in life is useless. You might as well make the best of it. That's why I think the persuit of happiness is the only goal.
Bisqwit wrote:
This is not a sacrifice I'm making with sad minds. Programming has left me unsatisfied for quite a long time ...
Now there's something else. Something I didn't know. And if that is the case, please say so and don't make it look like you're "ditching us" (;)) for your mission.
PS. quoting the bible never works as an argument when talking to atheists :/
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
PS: "Oh, you seem to be a follower of the "the entire universe might just be an illusion and nothing really exists at all, but you can never know" principle."
I am and it's called scepticism. Academic scepticism to be more precisely. "We" don't think you can have "certain truths" at all but we'll settle for what we think is most likely (for else we couldn't live in this world). Well, it's a little more complicated but that's what it comes down to :)
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
To be honest, I'm not quite sure how to respond.
First of all, I did not mean to offend anyone. I feel rather strongly about atheismish, which is why I warned about that beforehand. It's also why I usually try to avoid these discussions and why I didn't want to go deeper into it.
I really did feel disappointed though. Especially after your remarks about how you thought some country won some war because of God. That kind of struck a nerve, I guess, because that's something that goes into everything I "believe" and (I feel strongly that) it gives false hopes when relying on such things. I see it as somebody thinking he's invincable because God protects him or (maybe a bit far fetched) a terrorist doing what he does because he thinks there'll be 37.5 virgins waiting for him.
Now believing in God isn't a bad thing per se. It can give a person great confidence and all that other stuff. But some drunk in a bar once told me people need to believe in something, anything. I think he was right. And I don't mind that at all, as long as you keep it to yourself. However, acting on something God supposively said or made you do is something different entirely with respect to believing in something.
The reason I posted what I did was because I was trying to make sure you've checked your actions with some other persons. Real persons (so not over IRC).
You know, it's like with Idols. Ever seen it? Ever seen people perform extremely awefull? You must've because they'll only send out the worst and the best of the auditions. Ever wondered if those worst contestants were ever warned by their friends that they'd make a complete ass on tv? This is similar. No I'm not saying you'll fail at whatever you're gonna do, I'm (hopefully obviously) refering to the warning part.
Like I said, as long as you're happy (and not wreaking havock in the process ;)) that's all that matters. But giving up something like TASVideos just doesn't seemed to be right course to me to that goal. And sure, I hardly know you, certainly not personally, but still...
I hope that cleared things up.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Xkeeper wrote:
At one point in time, I ran an experiment on my forum (relatively well-behaved, sort of a less technical TASvideos), by making all of the usernames and such "Anonymous". IDs were hidden, there was little that could be done to guess what user was what.
...
The experiment was supposed to last for a day, or about 3-4 if it went well. I ended up calling it off within an hour.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Ok so... yeah. I've been a little reluctant to post this but it seems like nobody else is so I'll just give it a shot.
First of all, I'm a hardcore atheist (ok, maybe a flavour of that aiming toward solipsism, but whatever), just so you know what direction this is coming from. I'm by far unbiased so I won't try talking you out of this myself.
I'm just wondering whether you have some unbiased (RL) friends you can talk to about this step. It seems to me like you're a great coder and know your stuff. Tbh, I've been a little disappointed to learn you're so much into your religion. I wouldn't have guessed that myself before.
Point is, you've got a great thing here. A lot of people would love to have a site with an active userbase. There's so much more potential in TV than the site is at now. This also seems to be something that's up your alley, being a coder and all.
I obviously don't know what you'll do next since you don't seem to know this yourself, but I'm a little afraid you're throwing your current life away for this "mission".
Now, to each his own. If you're really happy doing this then whatever. As far as I'm concerned that's all that matters in life (happiness). But all I'm trying to say is to please talk this move over with somebody that you trust that's not so biased (one way or the other) and not afraid to tell you the truth.
Meh.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Bisqwit wrote:
Warp wrote:
Bisqwit wrote:
Nach wrote:
For the sites we develop at work, all our code is stored in a version control system...
That is an immensely interesting idea. I have never heard of it before
Knowing your usage and expertise of versioning systems, including git, that comment rather surprises me. Clearly I didn't understand something here.
It only surprises you because you misquoted me. It was not "all our code is stored in a VCS" that was immensely interesting to me, but the notion of "the site itself via its admin interface allows telling it to update itself to any particular revision (usually the latest)."
So, a CMS with CVS? That can hardly be any news? Heck, wiki's sorta work like that...
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Ok, my two cents after watching half of it.
It's boring.
Did the snes not already have a shapeshifter? Use him, otherwise there's nothing you can do about this.
Weren't there multiple fatalities in the snes?
Furthermore, in a TAS it's basically not accepted to fail at anything because you can always rewind and try again. In this movie you often jump away from the enemy for no other reason than to avoid something. Change tactics so you don't have to. Never let the opponent block you (unless game mechanics force you, and even then, find another way). It looks silly because you're doing a TAS.
One more thing, I think you failed a fatality once. If that is the case you may not have gotten the point of what a TAS is supposed to be.
I mean this in the nicest constructive way I can think of! :)
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Bisqwit do you want to release tasvideo's completely? That's sort of what I'm reading. Or are you going to continue hosting the server but nothing else to it?
There's also the possibility of making it open source somehow. Making a few lead admins. With source control and publishing rights and whatever. Well, as far as the site goes anyways. The open source community can then decide on their own what they do and do not want. If somebody fucks up, you simply revert.
The distribution can be distributed and those can be dynamically added to the site as you proposed earlier with the streaming flv.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
No but the local server can. A local script can check this and act uppon it. Hence the ping back to the master server indicating no more connections are accepted for now.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
That sounds good except for the manual disabling. I can't keep tabs on the bandwidth 24/7 and when my cap is reached I want to disable the uploads completely until the next week starts.
I think php can track bandwidth just fine. Whenever it feels it's gonna exceed the current limit it can finish whatever it's uploading, reject new connections, ping a notification to the master server, run a crontab to re-enable uploads next monday. Or something...
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Actually, we'll skip gens for now since there is no actual release of gens with Lua yet and I don't want to push them. And the first release of it is bound to have some Lua problems, etc.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Now, if you could just hack the NES version to allow the bot to be controlled by a script ;) But I don't think it'll be as easy as to just manipulate the RAM at frameborder time.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
qFox wrote:
DeHackEd wrote:
Wow, anonymous fceu savestates are discarded immediately upon loading? Snes9x savestates persist forever. (Not true since once the savestate object falls out of use, the Lua memory garbage collector eats it, but it's close enough)
That's how they used to work in fceux. But now states are kept in memory unless you call persist. But I still think it's not so great that the states are destroyed on load. So I'd want that not to be the default behavior (but optional).
Due to some miscommunication this was not a feature but a bug and it has been fixed :p In retrospect it was a silly idea anyways. So FCEUX savestates also persist until the script exits, they just persist in memory and not on disk unless you call .persist() on them.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
Ok and the final big addon for the site is a rom/ram map database. Currently free for anyone to edit but soon you'll need to login to add stuff to it (viewing it remains public).
There are still a few things I need to finish up before we can start, but I want to know whether you guys think these game choices are good, to prevent another fiasco like with Tennis.
NES: Super Mario Bros
SNES: Super Bomberman
Genesis: ??
For smb I might use a random level generator as proposed and created by DarkKobold. If it can generate a suitable level, that is :) Nothing too difficult though. So single player points or speed.
For bomberman I'm thinking 4 players (2 bots and 2 cpus). Multiplayer win and points.
And I have no idea about genesis so if anybody has any ideas please say so.
I think I can get things ready by next week. I need to add some small features to the forum, player profiles and allow multiple contests at the same time (the site currently asumes only one). I think :)
