Posts for sgrunt

1 2
43 44 45
52 53
Posted: 1/16/2010 7:17 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Truncated wrote:
Mega Man X6 is linked to the wrong movie. It should be 1274, not 1247.
Fixed.
Posted: 1/15/2010 11:00 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I, too, have officially passed the threshold of interest for watching runs of this game. There's just nothing new here compared to older runs. No vote. EDIT: Call me paranoid, but this "first" submission bears remarkable similarities to axelito's previous submissions for this game, and considering several "new" accounts have submitted low quality improvements to some of his other runs, I have reason to believe that we're witnessing abuse of the queue with questionable submissions by one person using several different accounts, and see no reason why this should be allowed to continue.
Posted: 1/15/2010 7:16 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
It doesn't look like this version of the run is on archive.org at all, so I've removed the link.
Posted: 1/15/2010 7:19 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Oh yeah! I'm glad to see this in the queue finally. I'll summarise the comments I made to true on IRC earlier: This is a relatively slow-paced game. However, it's also insanely difficult, and the sheer glitch factor makes this run accessible to people who aren't familiar with the game. Even though the music makes my ears bleed, I think this deserves a Yes vote.
Posted: 1/14/2010 9:57 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Happy 9th birthday, you young'un. :-P
Posted: 1/14/2010 9:25 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Atma wrote:
3. 1439 | PSX Mega Man X4 in 36:42.63 (coauthored with FractalFusion)
This wasn't submitted in 2009, so it doesn't actually count.
Removed.
Posted: 1/14/2010 6:34 AM
Post subject: Categories with more than 10 nominations
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Some of you may have noticed that the rookie platform TAS, glitchy TAS and speedy TAS polls haven't opened yet. This is because the current phpBB setup only allows for polls with a maximum of ten choices, and each of these categories has more than 10 nominations. Please suggest what you think should be done to remedy this situation.
Posted: 1/13/2010 9:26 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Here's an encode for you folks: http://www.archive.org/download/SmsKenseiden100ByAngerfistIn1317.02/kenseiden-tas-100p-angerfist.mkv ...and over on DM: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbum3i_sms-kenseiden-100-by-angerfist-in-1_videogames Should this be accepted, I'll probably use something similar to the following screenshot (frame 16626): (...just to demonstrate how intentionally difficult the game is.)
Posted: 1/13/2010 7:33 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Let's start with roughly six months ago, when the first of those was published. We've published 116 movies inclusive since then, of which 7 (the above list less the last one) are over the 4:1 ratio. 7/116 ~= 6%. Again, 6% doesn't really qualify as "many". The trend I see is that the movies which seem to exceed 4:1 are for DS, arcade, or PSX, all of which admit higher resolutions than the site normally sees (although neither of the above PSX runs actually uses a higher resolution, so I must question the utility of ratio-breaking there other than that nobody else provided an encode and that the encoder responsible did not see if lower settings would be acceptable). To be fair, in the case of DS videos at least, I can see there's a fair chance that due to the added resolution exceeding the ratio might be needed to achieve acceptable visual quality. An argument can be made for increasing the ratio, but not to arbitrarily high limits, and not for all platforms; if there is an increase in the ratio I'd advise putting guidelines in place for deeming what is acceptable for platforms where high ratios are absolutely unnecessary (for example, lossless video and acceptable audio can fairly readily be achieved on the Game Boy within a 2:1 ratio).
Posted: 1/13/2010 6:07 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Nach wrote:
Although thinking more about this, the ones that do break it I believe are on PSX or N64, correct?
Actually, these are a minority, as far as published encodes are concerned. Using the movie statistics module, of newer movies that break the ratio, they are for DS, DS, Genesis, arcade, arcade, PSX, PSX, and SNES. Of these, only the first two break a 6:1 ratio, and even then I believe that encodes for those could have been made that were within that if not within 4:1. EDIT:
adelikat wrote:
And many of them as of late have been breaking the traditional 4:1 ratio.
I feel compelled to point out that the above list doesn't exactly qualify as "many", given how many movies we've had published in a roughly comparable time period (if you want to restrict it to just 2009, knock the last item off the above list). Oh, and if you're confused as to how I managed to get the above movies from the statistics module: the module shows compression ratio as (seconds per MB), whereas 4:1 is MB per minute, or one minute per 4 MB, or 60 seconds per 4 MB, for 15 s / MB, so any movie on the module showing less than 15.0 on the statistics module exceeds the 4:1 ratio. Look down at the bottom of the sandbox if you want to see the worst 100 compression ratios using this module.
Posted: 1/13/2010 4:57 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
From the original post, you would think that our current encoding guidelines result in videos that are full of artifacts and unwatchable. This is far from the case. It is not particularly challenging in most cases to achieve an encode with, say, 95% of the quality of having a lossless video stream (putting the audio issue aside at this point) while having a substantially smaller file than such a stream would entail. Past that point you're basically dealing with an exponential increase in size for a minimal at best increase in quality. Spending an extra several hours downloading a marginally better video just isn't worth it. I must also point out that not everybody has connections that allow for streaming from video sites, whether this be a speed issue or some other technical issue preventing the site from streaming properly. The torrents are invaluable for our viewers that would like to be able to watch our videos uninterrupted. Having our torrents only be of the high quality variety is an exceptionally bad idea. I can accept there being more than one torrent where one conforms to our current guidelines and one is of the high quality sort, but I cannot emphasise enough that only having one is a bad idea.
Posted: 1/13/2010 5:32 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I'm sorry, but this game is nigh impossible for me to watch - it's simply too slow-paced. There's absolutely no way I can think of for anyone to enjoy a run of this game. You also make obvious technical mistakes such as missing coins during the first level, and don't, say, hit enemies as soon as possible (if I remember correctly, you don't some enemies at all) in the second or use as few eggs as possible (you admit all of these points in the submission text, for that matter). In fact, some digging suggests that your score of 693 is beaten unassisted (at least one location reports a score of 711, though there doesn't seem to be a way at first glance to confirm this). Kill it with fire.
Posted: 1/13/2010 5:11 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I have to echo MUGG's concerns about the technical quality of this run. I also don't think the game itself is very interesting to watch, seeming to me to be just another slow-paced platformer. No vote, but if there's interest in seeing a run of this game I'd encourage you to polish this with some input from people so interested.
Posted: 1/12/2010 4:37 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
As surreal as this game is, it strikes me as being just another shooter with no real redeeming features, and it didn't seem to me that much thought was given to entertainment under these constraints (in comparison to, say, adelikat's Gradius run). I do not believe that this game allows for that level of entertainment - or even a sufficient level of entertainment - and I must therefore vote no. I will also, however, give this an encode: http://www.archive.org/download/GenesisSuperFantasyZoneBySonikkustarIn0557.93/superfantasyzone-tas-sonikkustar.mkv ...and on DM: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbtuvj_genesis-super-fantasy-zone-by-sonik_videogames
Posted: 1/11/2010 8:16 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
By request, an encode: http://www.archive.org/download/Batman-ReturnOfTheJokerByVentuzIn0401.77/batmanreturnofthejoker-tasv2-ventuz.mkv ...and DM: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbtq7x_gb-batman-return-of-the-joker-by-ve_videogames Also a belated yes vote for an obvious improvement.
Posted: 1/11/2010 4:09 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I have done an encode using the Midas sound plugin (idea conveyed to me by Aktan, apparently originally suggested by Atma); this yields slightly better sound than the TAS sound plugin. Given the difficulty in getting Eternal to sync for any length of time, this might be the best result we can hope for. Anyway: http://www.archive.org/download/PsxCrashBandicootByMukkiIn4529.5/crashbandicoot-tas-mukki.mkv EDIT: Here it is on DM: (part 1) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbtnia_psx-crash-bandicoot-by-mukki-in-452_videogames (part 2) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbtmyj_psx-crash-bandicoot-by-mukki-in-452_videogames (part 3) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbtmob_psx-crash-bandicoot-by-mukki-in-452_videogames
Posted: 1/10/2010 11:33 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Using the same character twice is, sadly, not particularly entertaining and doesn't add much to the game over and above having one player. If there were larger time savings, I might be able to let that slide, but I think that using two different characters would show off the game better. Also:
Submission text wrote:
There are many parts that can be improved, the main reasons: [...]-We didn't use the Glitch Combo in some segments that really required it, or just we did it late or in a non-effective way.
Why submit the run with known improvements? I can't support publishing a run where there are improvements of this nature known at the time of making it. This game deserves a two player run, but it deserves a better two player run than this. No vote, but with the recommendation that you improve upon this run (preferably with two different characters for variety's sake).
Posted: 1/10/2010 9:30 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
It wasn't. It was cancelled for, apparently, being a duplicate submission. You might want to refer to the other identical submission, which was cancelled for different reasons.
Posted: 1/10/2010 8:00 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
arukAdo asked that I render another opinion on this front, which is as follows: An "innovative" TAS, to me, is one which demonstrates something new/unexpected to a viewer like me who has pretty much seen everything the site currently has to offer, and, ideally, makes up a significant part of the run. If you look at the most recent SMW run, for example, a good chunk of the improvement arises from a single new glitch; however, much of the rest of the run is exactly what we've seen before time and time again and the run can't, as a whole, be considered too innovative. On the other hand, the glitched SM run shows considerably different gameplay past the point of the glitch - a significant portion of the run. I will agree, then, that the SM glitched run (for above reasons), Family Feud (tackling a new category of game), and the Chrono Trigger glitched run (for applying the relatively unexplored concept of save data corruption for massive obsolescence) can be considered innovative. I can't agree that any of the other runs mentioned here fit the criteria I had in mind, as the overall "feel" of the run compared to either their predecessors or other games of that nature isn't too out of the ordinary.
Posted: 1/10/2010 7:34 PM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
arukAdo wrote:
I have another concern, minor, just for the form. Does accepting this mean theres going to be 9 (or more ?) category, each playing a chapter seperatly, then one with all of them ? Sry if i look jackass, just asking for clarity sake
Excellent point. Having three runs for a game is unusual; having four is practically unheard of and frowned upon. Any more than that is just too much, and also goes against the tenet of keeping the number of branches of a game minimal. This also ties in with earlier concerns that one chapter might not be considered to "beat the game". On reflection, I believe that this run shouldn't be published in favour of a unified run for all of the various chapter of this game, which would avert all of the above issues.
Posted: 1/9/2010 9:37 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I don't claim any degree of rigour in the following, but here goes: Suppose that the nth root of p is rational, and hence expressible in the form a/b for integers a and b. Let a_1, a_2, ... a_m be the prime factors of a and let b_1, b_2, ..., b_l be the prime factors of b. Consider a^n; in the prime factorisation of this there will be n a_1s, n a_2s, etc.; similary in the prime factorisation of b^n there will be n b_1s, n b_2s, etc. Now, a^n / b^n = p (by definition), or a^n = p b^n. This means that p is one of the prime factors of a^n. Per the above, there are n instances of it in a^n. For the equality to hold, there must be one less than a multiple of n instances of p in the factorisation of b^n. It has just been shown, however, that all of the prime factors in b^n appear n times. Where n >= 2, this is a contradiction. Thus, the nth roots of a prime number for n >= 2 are irrational.
Posted: 1/9/2010 4:20 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
By all appearances, there are 11 seeds for DW4 at this point. Did you mean one of the other Dragon Warrior games?
Posted: 1/9/2010 2:23 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Here are some attempts to articulate current thoughts on this matter: "A run should have at least a comparable, if not higher, level of optimisation to any predecessor runs; having a faster time is not by itself sufficient for acceptance." "If there are known improvements that a) were not known at the time the relevant segment of the run was created and b) would require a significant amount of effort to implement (usually involving re-running subsequent segments and/or the run as a whole), they shall not be considered grounds for rejection by themselves." Does that seem plausible and reasonable?
Posted: 1/9/2010 12:10 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Let's see... just by reading the submission text, you're losing time in some levels against a vastly suboptimal run. Just watching the first few levels, I can calculate that my unassisted run of 1-1 with zero effort is only 41 frames slower (the rest of my comments in that post apply as well). You take an unnecessary hit and waste time in 1-1 alone. Yes, it's better than the previous submission, but that was an exceedingly low bar to beat here. Please consider running your submissions by the forums before submitting something of this sort; people will be more than happy to point out suboptimal play and/or help out with route planning, which this run does not possess in any significant quantity. No vote.
Posted: 1/8/2010 8:40 AM
Quote
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
This must be fairly easy to implement, as the times are calculated from the frame count.
1 2
43 44 45
52 53