collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Here's a TAS of Clock Works that was made with lsnes rr2 beta23 [bsnes v085 (Compatibility core)]: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/49448298356770274
- - -
About the game:
The game has 50 stages (10 rounds for each of the modes ''tutorial'', ''carousel'', ''typhoon'', ''cyclone'', ''vortex''). Other than this, the game also has some Time Trial mode in which one tries to get as far as possible within 5, 10, or 30 minutes. Select, Up, Left, Right, L, R don't do anything in the game (past the initial title screen and savefile select & game start phase).
It seems that every stage provides 7000 score points for beating it, and that one gets additional 100 points for every remaining second on the HUD at the end of a stage, except sometimes it seems it is 100 less than that (so that 1 second left on timer gives 0). The initial default High Score is 00315200 (which moves up alongside the current score once the High Score is surpassed). A small score point vertex adds 1000 score points if it is a grey vertex and otherwise 2000 (for a red, green or blue vertex; probably because they are more dangerous to walk onto, since pointers could attach to them). The goal vertex of a stage can at the same time be a score vertex aswell, and the starting vertex too (and it needs to be revisited in order to add its score points).
On GameFAQs ( https://psxdatacenter.com/games/J/C/SLPS-00387.html ) it is said that there exist 100 stages, but I only happened to come across 50 until the credits were reached, and the HUD only shows 2 digits (in particular, the first stages are shown as stage 0X, not as stage 00X), and the TAS synchronizes through the game perfectly fine if I let it run through the Normal (which takes 2 frames less due to skipping the need to change the difficulty setting, and provides me with 3 minutes for every stage) or Easy difficulty (4 minutes for every stage) instead of Hard mode (which gives me 2 minutes for every stage) with same inputs otherwise.
Some list of different objects that exist in the game (and states in which they can be):
Player character's actions:
- rotating around a vertex clockwise or counter-clockwise
- turning around on a vertex
- switching from 1 vertex to another
- sliding alongside platforms (which have intermediate, invisible vertices in their interior)
- automatically moving around the screen from 1 wormhole vertex to another of the same colour
Down and B presses (at any point in time) change the character's rotation from clockwise to counter-clockwise while staying on the same vertex, and vice versa (and they have priority over vertex switches if inputs for both happens at the same frame).
A presses (for swinging) switch the character from a vertex to another and swap the rotational orientation, and has priority over X and Y (works only in singular frames in which the character is at the far top, bottom, left or right of a vertex and if a neighbouring vertex exists in that direction).
X presses (for flipping) switch the character from a vertex to another and keep the rotational orientation (works only in singular frames in which the character is at the far top, bottom, left or right of a vertex and if a neighbouring vertex exists in that direction).
Y presses swap the rotational orientation while staying on the same vertex (works only in singular frames in which the character is at the far top, bottom, left or right of a vertex and if a neighbouring vertex exists in that direction).
Apparently only if one's moving clockwise (not counter-clockwise), one can press Down 1 or 2 frames before moving onto the next vertex (only if it is a step done with A), and then one can get the same effect as what X alone would do (to make a step with flipped rotation), without any frame delays.
Pickups:
* travelling clock (stays in place until one touches it, which makes it move towards exactly 1 existing building zone after a small delay, and if the character touches the clock or its explosion while it is moving, he will die, but otherwise it will explode and vanish together with the building zone once it reaches it)
* POW sign (provides temporary invulnerability, which also allows to move through mines)
* sand clock (adds 1 minute to the timer for the current stage)
* oversized character head (adds 1 attempt/life upon collection)
Environmental objects:
* yellow oil drops (explode after some time and turn into yellow rings at a neighboured vertex, and it will slowly chase the character (not always in the most straight forward manner with its random movement that is time-dependent and can be manipulated with inputs)
* cannons (shoot every time at which the character or a pointer moves over a green button that corresponds to the particular cannon, unless there's already a cannon projectile on screen)
* green cannon switch (triggers a corresponding cannon to fire a projectile if the character or a pointer moves over the button, unless there's already a cannon projectile on screen)
* silver flag vertices (are checkpoint-vertices from which one can spawn/restart a stage in case one dies in a stage, provided one reached such checkpoint-vertex beforehand)
* pairs of colour-coded wormhole vertices (move the character over the screen to the corresponding other wormhole vertex if one moves onto such vertex, without being able to get hit and while keeping the current angle relative to the previous wormhole vertex)
* grey walls (don't allow pointers or the character to move through them and repel them)
* coloured gates (which are basically walls which switch between opening up and closing again every time at which the character or a pointer moves over a keyhole symbol of the same colour, but gates also close on their own after some time)
* score point vertices
* red mines (they just constitute small obstacles that kill the character if he touches them and sometimes block off paths, but pointers ignore the mines)
* goal vertex (is indicated by 3 yellow stars rotating around it and ends the current stage if the character attaches to it)
* checkpoint-vertex (has 1 yellow star rotating around it and triggers the existence of further vertices that can be coloured or grey)
* invisible vertices (are vertices that exist in some stages and become visible once one attaches to them, as opposed to the triggerable vertices from attaching to a checkpoint-vertex)
* platforms (linearly connect vertices either vertically or horizontally, and allow pointers and the character to slide alongside them as if they were extended vertices)
* coloured vertices (together with coloured platforms they are the paths that pointers of the same colour can travel along)
* coloured pointers (they exist in green, red, and blue, move as fast as the character, except there's also 1 rare faster type, and can either move around coloured vertices as if they moved like the character while either permanently holding A, or X, or Y, or no button (and hence ignoring neighbouring vertices of the same colour); but the colour does not determine which of these is the case for a given pointer, but a given pointer in some stage will not switch between movement types)
Getting out of wormholes also provides (short) temporary invulnerability. And even though moving yellow rings from oil drops look like colour-coded wormhole vertices, they don't share the teleportation mechanic. Pointers can only move alongside visible or activated vertices. Pointers, when they move alongside platforms, can also (but don't need to) identify and react to intermediate vertices that are part of the platforms, and it seems that no pointer's movement depends on the own character actions or movement. However, there is some odd instances in which pointers (consistently) can attach to some grey vertices aswell (e.g. in stage 6).
- - -
Optimization aspects:
Sliding on platforms is much slower than swinging between vertices. All wormhole vertices and all invisible and triggerable vertices (in particular those that don't necessarily have to be activated) have been considered for finding the fastest paths. Shortcuts that make use of temporary invulnerability (from POW(er) pickups or wormholes) also have been checked. Pressing Down to switch the rotational orientation immediately after a vertex transition with A costs 4 frames at the next vertex (if one is going along 180° angles). In stage 42, I tested if the few saved frames from wiggling past the initial pointers earlier would allow to avoid having to go the long 270° angle later on (or if it'd allow to take the 90° angle past the last pointer near the end), but this turned out to be impossible in my tests. Apparently, doing multiple 90° vertex switches (if possible) on the way downwards doesn't lose any frames compared to just going straight downwards in fewer transitions at 180° steps each. At some of the instances at which pointer's had to be dodged or barely passed without touching them, 1 or 2 frames could be saved by not initially rotating towards the wrong direction just to turn around with 1 Down press as soon as the pointer that is to be dodged allows, but to instead press Down quickly multiple times (like a wiggling process) to get past a pointer slightly earlier.
Apparently there's different kind of wiggles around pointers that can work out:
(i) instead of doing the (usual) 1 turn, one adds a turn 2 frames later and another one 2 frames earlier (for a frame t, one puts turns at frames as follows): [t] -> [t-2,t,t+2]
(ii) [t] -> [t-4,t-2,t+2]
(iii) [t] -> [t-3,t-1,t+2]
Regarding score point variation for the goal to reduce lag during stages (which only exists in the stages 24 and 31) later on, the following is possible (and can also be combined):
* Round 2: 1 additional 1000 score vertex is near the end on the way down and can be taken or not, but has no influence on lag.
* Round 11: One can choose to either trigger an oil drop or avoid it, but this has no influence on lag.
* Round 12: One can choose to either trigger an oil drop or avoid it, but this has no influence on lag.
* Round 13: One can choose to either trigger an oil drop or avoid it, but this has no influence on lag.
* Round 14: Either the red central score vertex can be taken, or it can be avoided (by going above it), or the left 2 blue score vertices beneath can be taken, or all 3 bottom blue score vertices can be taken, but none of this has influence on lag.
* Round 18: One can either trigger the lower oil drop or the upper one, but this has no influence on lag either.
* Round 20: One can either take the left grey score vertex and the bottom 2 red score vertices, or the left 2 grey score vertices in the middle and the bottom right score vertex, or the top left grey score vertex together with the left 2 grey score vertices in the middle and the bottom right score vertex (but in any case one would take the bottom right grey score vertex), but none of this has influence on lag.
* Round 23: One can take or avoid the bottom green score vertex, and one can take or avoid the bottom right grey score vertex, but this has no influence on lag.
These are almost all score or object trigger options in stages before stage 24, but even though there exist different cases of lag amounts in those 2 stages, nothing of the above seems relevant to it.
Input spam during load times shortly before stage 24 and additional button spam mid-stage seems to not have an influence either. Delaying frames after the previous score confirmation screen before stage 24 seems to not change lag either. Changing the character's movement between flips and swings doesn't affect the lag either. Adding turns (with Down inputs right after A or X) does change the lag but seems to just get worse since the rotation is delayed so much.
Ending the previous stage 1 frame later (with 1 frame delayed wiggle) changed the lag pattern of stage 24 and 31 in both cases to the known better kind (with 2 less lag frames in stage 24 and 1 less lag frame in stage 31).
Here is a file that contains a list of timestamps for milestones (usually the first or last frames of stages, and score screen fade-out frames) throughout the TAS:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483750350126448670/Clock_Works_level_timestamps.txt
As opposed to the time that it takes from the end of a stage to the the corresponding score screen, which seems to be 188 frames always except for the score screen of the final stage 50 (which might be a special case) with 187, even though the time that it takes from a stage's score screen to the start of the next stage appears to be much more variable, there have not even a single time been desynchronizations (due to longer or shorter load times) happening at the beginning of a stage when changes were applied in earlier stages, so it seems even though these time periods have individual lengths, they are stable in size.
- - -
Some (ordered by stage) route & strategy comparison movie material (of which there's none remaining to be implemented into the TAS, given how synchronization-friendly the game is regarding edits):
Round 6:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746765494026243/Clock_Works_round6_platform_sliding_through_pointer.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746776999002142/Clock_Works_round6_slower_path.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746789170872330/Clock_Works_round6_slower_path.lsmv.backup
Round 8:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746821970329610/Clock_Works_round8_wormhole_route_slower.lsmv
Round 9:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746833135566888/Clock_Works_round9_2nd_slower_approach.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746845240197153/Clock_Works_round9_slower_approach.lsmv
Round 10:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746857546285056/Clock_Works_round10_faster__lag_reduction.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746868631961631/Clock_Works_round10_laggy_1st_try.lsmv
Round 19:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746880363167744/Clock_Works_round19_faster_wormhole_routing_than_red_warp.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746891587125249/Clock_Works_round19_improved_red_wormhole_i-frame_path_still_slower.lsmv
Round 22:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746903222124554/Clock_Works_round22_invisible_tile_improvement.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746914165325824/Clock_Works_round22_left_invisible_path_faster_than_right_one.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746925334757387/Clock_Works_round22_right_slower_invisible_path.lsmv
Round 26:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746937317621763/Clock_Works_round26_slower_left_path.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746948587847701/Clock_Works_round26_top_right_path_faster.lsmv
Round 30:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746959346237471/Clock_Works_round30_alternative_wait_option.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746971086094349/Clock_Works_round30_bad_blue_gate_timing.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746982288949276/Clock_Works_round30_bad_no_gate_approach.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483746993630478351/Clock_Works_round30_fast_red_gate_trigger_path.lsmv
Round 31:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483747004657303573/Clock_Works_round31_slower_bottom_path.lsmv
Round 35:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483747015390658571/Clock_Works_round35_last_part_bottom_route_2_frames_slower.lsmv
Round 36:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483747026153111562/Clock_Works_round36_right_side_much_slower.lsmv
Round 49:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483747047233814540/Clock_Works_round49_far_left_path_fastest.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483747061183938570/Clock_Works_round49_middle_path_slow.lsmvhttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483747072579993610/Clock_Works_round49_right_path_slower.lsmv
- - -
Observations:
If one presses the Reset button after the credits like in the following movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483744506869579796/Clock_Works_past_credits_strange_scoreboard_messup.lsmv
and moves to the screen where one can view the high scores, then it can happen that the screen messes up and puts the high score list over a different screen as shown in the following screenshot:
With the following movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483744591225552897/Clock_Works_Time-Trial_TAS.lsmv
I tested what would happen if one finishes the Time Trial mode (30 minutes option, since in the 10 or 5 minutes option it is impossible), and it turns out that the game just freezes in the moment in which one attaches to the final goal vertex (but the movie keeps going):
So maybe this wasn't intended or expected to be possible by the developers.
During the test of the Time Trial mode, there also occured a strange beeping sound in stage (or round) 5:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483749450037329930/Clock_Works_Time-Trial_round5_strange_beep_sound.lsmv
Apparently, it can happen that a pointer attaches to a grey vertex:
Stages without invisible vertices other than activated ones from checkpoint-vertices: 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,23,24,26,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,38,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,48,49. The following screenshots show stages together with the invisible and triggerable vertices:
Stage 7 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 22 (has 6 invisible vertices):
Stage 25 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 27 (has 1 invisible vertex):
Stage 28 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 37 (has 15 invisible vertices):
Stage 38 (has 7 unused triggerable vertices):
Stage 39 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 47 (has 5 invisible vertices):
Stage 50 (has 9 invisible vertices):
Here's a video for the TAS:
Link to video
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Here is an updated Test-TAS of Bugs Bunny, The - Crazy Castle II (for Gameboy, made with Bizhawk's version 1.12.1.1, and the same holds for the other movie files):
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/49309440532276193 . There is also my older slightly different Test-TAS, http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/49200451424783435 , with the difference in the second to last stage (stage 28), where I moved Bugs Bunny over with an upwards arc midair during a jump from a jump plate to grab onto a rope, which takes slightly longer than bonking onto the ceiling right above to move down during the jump and directly grab the rope without the slow arc movement (which is fixed in the updated movie). Any (comparison) statements about the Test-TAS below also apply to the updated Test-TAS.
- - -
About the game:
The game has 29 stages (4*7 stages plus 1 final boss stage), and there's 1 WR speedrun on twitch of the game that I used for a quick overview of the individual stages. One starts with 5 lifes, and every finished stage adds 1 additional life. There exist passwords for the stages, and there also exist maps of all stages on VGMaps: http://vgmaps.com/Atlas/GB-GBC/index.htm#C
Some list of different objects that exist in the game (and states in which they can be):
Player character:
* Bugs Bunny
(can be
- stationary standing,
- walking sideways (on ground but also with a walking animation midair which sometimes can add lag),
- going up or down stairs,
- entering and exiting doors or pipes,
- initiating or ending a teleportation (using warp plates)
- exploding/dying from enemy contact,
- jumping (from a jump plate) or falling,
- moving sideways in an arc motion midair (with or without walking animation meanwhile; and only if there's a platform at that side)
- in exit door entering animation,
- blinking due to an elixir,
- having a protecting sphere around him (using the sphere item)
- pushing an object (like a treasure box or 10 tons weight)
- turning around)
Other characters:
* Sylvester (cat),
* Yosemite Sam (cowboy),
* Wile E. Coyote (coyote),
* Floghorn Leghorn (rooster),
* Tweety (bird),
* Sniffles (mouse),
* Barnyard Dawg (dog)
* lamb
* Sam Sheepdog (dog)
* vulture
* Daffy Duck (duck),
* fire flame
(can be
- waiting,
- walking (including downwards on slopes and on dirty floors) or climbing along ropes,
- going up or down stairs or using pipes or door stairs or ladders,
- dying from getting hit by a bomb or arrow or moving object or by touching an invulnerable Bugs Bunny with elixir effect (with explosion animation),
- falling and can turn around with a turnaround animation)
Pickups (the collections trigger specific short sounds):
* elixirs (for temporary invulnerability and killing any enemy upon body contact; its effect starts at collection but it is only active outside key rooms),
* spheres (for temporary invulnerability but without killing enemies upon contact)
* keys (all 8 of them per stage are meant to be collected in order to advance; when the last key of a stage is collected, a sound occurs),
* arrows (of which multiple can be collected to have more than 1 simultaneously, and they can be fired sideways and then either hit an enemy or some wall from where they'd fall straight down and then either hit an enemy or explode and vanish),
* bombs (of which multiple can be collected to have more than 1 simultaneously, and they can be planted at Bugs Bunny's position or dropped midair and then they can either be recollected or they stay there and possibly hit an enemy when it is about at most 1 tile away from it; and for a given stage there can either be arrows or bombs but not both at the same time),
* hammers (allow to desstroy rocks)
* pickaxes (allow to climb over boulders)
* clocks (which freeze all enemies in a stage temporarily)
Weapon objects:
* treasure box
* 10 tons weight
(which can be
- stationary,
- moving sideways,
- falling straight down,
- hitting an enemy or a wall or the ground and vanish)
Environmental objects (of which some have different graphics in different stage types):
* stairs (for some of them one can walk past them at their bottom)
* door stairs (2 doors close to each other on different floors connected by stairs that one can either go up or down)
* ladders (at which one can stop midway and walk off them sideways and one can also turnaround midway)
* pipes (within which enemies don't interact with Bugs Bunny; and in these, it seems one is forced to keep going the same direction without turning around or taking a break inbetween)
* horizontal ropes (which Bugs Bunny and enemies can climb along or drop down from)
* jump plates (which will only force Bugs Bunny to execute a jump on them if he's standing on such a plate without holding Left or Right, and in this case, he moves up either until he bonks a ceiling and moves down again or Bugs Bunny holds sideways inputs to land on a platform or climb along a rope; enemies cannot use these)
* key rooms (they are entered through doors; in those rooms, by which I don't only refer to those that actually contain a key but also the cases when they are empty or contain a different item, the rate of non-lag frames generally is much higher with roughly every 2nd frame being a non-lag frame than in the rest of a stage, and sometimes there's even 2 non-lag frames in a row; they also serve as method to temporarily stop the movement of any on-screen or off-screen enemy)
* warp plates (which come in pairs and work like jump plates except they slowly teleport Bugs Bunny)
* exit doors (which require all 8 keys to be collected in order to finish a stage)
* grey rocks (that can be destroyed only by Bugs Bunny and only with a hammer if one was collected previously in the stage)
* black boulders (which only Bugs Bunny can move over and only if a pickaxe was previously collected in the stage)
* diagonal slopes (like 1-way stairs) that one can only walk downwards
* dirt floors (on which only Bugs Bunny moves with roughly half the usual walking speed)
* walls, floors (of which there also exist fake floors) and ceilings
* outside of stages there's also an overworld map with the stages and the fixed path through them
- - -
Optimization aspects:
In some cases if one moves Bugs Bunny to the bottom end of some stairs from beneath, one is forced to wait shortly before one can approach/use them.
The most important part of the optimization seems to lie in the order in which one collects the keys together with which paths one uses to do so (basically a Travelling Salesman Problem with enemies chasing Bugs Bunny).
Micro-optimization & finetuning that can still be done and tested out:
- some other routes can still be tested and optimized and compared with each other in the stages where the best route isn't as obvious (even though in almost all stages there's only 1 predetermined path that one can go, sometimes with doors spread throughout a stage that lead into empty rooms to confuse the player)
- maybe dfferent directions should be pressed in some cases to make Bugs Bunny move forwards to reduce lag/change the lag pattern (since Up, Down, and Forwards make Bugs Bunny move forwards, with Up and Down also making Bugs Bunny move/transition up or down whenever possible); or one could also leave some directional inputs out since not all of them are needed for movement
- in some cases when enemies generally don't need to be manipulated to be out of the way, one could anyways mess around and test different manipulations of their movement (by pressing directional inputs), since this most usually leads to lag differences
- maybe some strange effects could be achieved by using left+right or up+down; or maybe lag differences could be induced by adding more new button presses to the usual ones (like select or holding multiple directions at once); or holding some buttons instead of releasing them could reduce lag
- it probably would also be useful to figure out the general AI that the enemy types use, and memory addresses for the frames in which they check for inputs could be useful (aswell as further memory addresses for all kinds of other aspects)
- maybe there'd be ways to climb up walls or keep the falling state or prevent falling to hover over gaps or to prevent death when running into an enemy, or maybe there'd be methods to interact with an item that is further away (above or right below Bugs Bunny for example) to collect them from different places
- one can also play around with the timing of using bombs or arrows for influences on lag, or maybe it could be possible to kill multiple enemies with the same weapon/attack (and maybe even short detours in some stages might be worth it to kill another enemy early on to reduce the accumulated lag for the rest of a stage)
- maybe some glitches with different events happening simultaneously could be possible (by combining elements of the list of objects and states from above)
- - -
Some (ordered by stage) route & strategy comparison movie material (I didn't test many different routes yet and almost always just took a look on what the stages were like and estimated which route would be best if there were no enemies around):
1. In the following ''stage 5 slow bomb rush'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479701879430053888/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_5_slow_bomb_rush.tasproj
I tested the case of not slowing down to keep 1 more bomb for later and instead used all of them up before getting to the last, right-most part of the stage at which I then was seemingly forced to slow down by waiting for an enemy to move out of the way, which turned out to be slower than keeping a bomb for this part but waiting shorty for an earlier enemy passing by.
2. In the following ''stage 7 no shield'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479703773489397760/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_7_no_shield.tasproj
I skipped the 2 steps to take a sphere/shield that protects Bugs Bunny temporarily from dying upon enemy contact, which worked out for a while but would eventually at the top of the stage get me into a situation in which I'd need to take a slight detour to avoid running into a cat, so that taking the sphere was faster.
3. In the following ''stage 8 bow skip test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479705651887472650/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_8_bow_skip_test.bk2
I could locally save time due to avoiding a 2 step detour that would get me an arrow to kill 1 enemy on my path, but realized that this wouldn't let me progress quickly past the Coyote, since an enemy afterwards is stuck and right on the path that I'd need to take.
4. In the following ''stage 8 jump over mouse test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479709523117080599/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_8_jump_over_mouse_test.bk2
I free the caged mouse as soon as I reached it and used the jump platform to move above it to get past it, but this turned out to be slower than delaying the freeing of the mouse a bit in order to bounce up and down past it.
5. In the following ''stage 9 manip test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479711638149398540/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_9_manip_test.bk2
I tried out the initial approach of going as far as I could without delaying any local progress for planning purposes, until I ran into the problem of going around a duck at the bottom of the stage on the way leftwards, and found a quick manipulation to lure the duck into turning around away from me. However, right afterwards already the next enemy would be in my way and slow me down significantly.
6. In the following ''stage 9 arrow skip test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479713151391367172/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_9_arrow_skip_test.bk2
I tested if I could avoid the duck (since I didn't have a way of quickly killing it otherwise) on the far left near the top without delaying my movement to manipulate the duck, which was not the case.
7. In the following ''stage 9 arrow skip, duck manip'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479714608509353985/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_9_arrow_skip_duck_manip.bk2
I skip getting the arrow at the far right near the top of the stage's last section, but ran into a problem near the bottom afterwards with a walking flame enemy being stuck and on my path without me being able to kill it quickly.
8. In the following ''stage 9 initial arrow & fake floor shortcut improvement'' movie,https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/479722930524127271/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_9_initial_arrow__fake_floor_shortcut_improvement.bk2I additionally took the first arrow (and didn't have to wait as long anymore afterwards to manipulate the movement of an enemy for later), and kept enough arrows afterwards to reduce detours for arrows, and I fell through a fake floor as shortcut which I overlooked in the Test-TAS, which allowed to locally save 149 frames over the Test-TAS in this stage. This improvement remains to be incorporated into a future TAS (probably alongside further bits of improvements and possibly adaptions in later stages to keep the timesaves).
9. In the following ''stage 13 ground right block early slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481230623256870920/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_13_ground_right_block_early_slower.bk2
when I get to the lowest floor above the ground, I immediately took out the rock to the right of Bugs Bunny before continuing leftwards, which turned out to be slower than taking the block out on the way back afterwards.
10. In the following ''stage 13 left blocks 3 frames slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481231687376830474/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_13_left_blocks_3_frames_slower.bk2
I took out the blocks to the left of the pickaxe which was barely slower than taking the blocks out on the right side.
11. In the following ''stage 13, 48 frames improvement'' movie,https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481535742066294789/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_stage_13_48_frames_improvement.bk2I took the 3 keys above the black boulders and went back all the way left first and then all the way right, which (as another path-routing test that I overlooked) seems to save 48 frames over the Test-TAS and remains to be implemented into a TAS.
12. In the following ''stage 14 bomb rush approach'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481233391866347550/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_14_bomb_rush_approach.bk2
the main difference to the Test-TAS is that all bombs are used up when enemies blocked my way at the bottom of the stage, instead of dodging them, which left me without any bombs for the final part where one would then have to slow down considerably.
13. In the following ''stage 14 killing bottom right guy slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481236094923571200/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_14_killing_bottom_right_guy_slower.bk2
I killed the enemy at the bottom right of the stage instead of dodging it, and also killed the enemy afterwards at the warp, which turned out to be slower than the approach in the Test-TAS.
14. In the following ''stage 14 ladder going lower 1 frame slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481237018760708116/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_14_ladder_going_lower_1_frame_slower.bk2
near the top of the stage, on the right side, I went the ladder to the Coyote fully down to the ground before moving sideways, which turned out to be 1 frame slower compared to the Test-TAS.
15. In the following ''stage 14 late 1st bomb slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481237758652710912/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_14_late_1st_bomb_slower.bk2
I killed the 1st Coyote after getting the 1st key, which turned out to be slower than doing these things vice versa.
16. In the following ''stage 15 down first & keeping & using bomb'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481240646837993473/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_15_down_first__keeping__using_bomb.bk2
I wait for the lower bird to not have to use a bomb on it, which allowed me to keep another bomb after the bottom cat which is used for the next cat to reduce accumulating lag, and finally use a bomb for the top left bird, which however took too much time compared to the Test-TAS. And in the ''stage 15 down first & keeping bomb'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481242024557674506/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_15_down_first__keeping_bomb_.bk2
the same is done, except that the remaining bomb wasn't used on the later cat, which caused more lag during the rest of the stage.
17. In the following ''stage 16 bad pipe route test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481245669986926602/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_16_bad_pipe_route_test.bk2
I took the long pipe near the end of the stage, which ended up being slower than the Test-TAS, and got me into a problematic situation with an enemy on my path without a method to quickly get rid of it.
18. In the following ''stage 17 thunder with door switch'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481252067550167040/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_17_thunder_with_door_switch_slower.bk2
I switched the order of entering 2 doors on the left side of the stage for keys after using the lightning item, which was slower than the Test-TAS.
19. In the following ''stage 17 without thunder slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481253012677853185/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_17_without_thunder_slower.bk2
I skipped entering a door for a lightning item, and hence some enemies stayed alive and kept accumulating lag which ended up being slower than the Test-TAS.
20. In the following ''stage 18 reroute case speedrun order test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481256509653778452/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_18_reroute_case_speedrun_order_test.bk2
I delayed taking out a block with the pickaxe so that I would collect the 8th key beforehand, which turned out to be slightly slower than the Test-TAS.
21. In the following ''stage 18 reroute slightly behind but good RNG'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481258220602785793/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_18_reroute_slightly_behind_but_good_RNG.bk2
I changed the order in which the 6th and 7th key from the Test-TAS are collected, which turned out to be slower.
22. In the following ''stage 18'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481258931142787112/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_18.bk2
I changed the order in which the 2nd, 3rd and 4th key from the Test-TAS are collected (namely to taking the 4th first, then the 2nd, then the 3rd) which was slower, and afterwards I went for the Test-TAS's 7th key after the 5th key, which go me in front of an enemy that would take long to dodge.
23. In the following ''stage 19 test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481269011074646046/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_19_test.bk2
I changed the order of taking the 5th and 6th key from the Test-TAS, which ended up being slightly slower. And in the ''stage 19 another test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481269759216844801/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_19_another_test.bk2
I tested the same, but took a different pipe which also was slower than the Test-TAS.
24. In the following ''stage 19 same speed'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481271116195954698/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_19_same_speed.bk2
I took another pipe after the 6th key, which was just as fast as the Test-TAS.
25. In the following ''stage 22'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481274917501927424/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_22.bk2
I skip going into the first door to take the 1st bomb (and take the 2nd and 3rd key from the Test-TAS in the other order), and end up with an enemy on my way that I could not get past in any quick manner compared to the Test-TAS.
26. In the following ''stage 23'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481279111797538816/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_23.bk2
I switched the order of the 6th and 7th key from the Test-TAS, and ended up having to wait for a bird enemy to move out of my way, and hence this was slower than the Test-TAS.
27. In the following ''stage 23 faster door order slow test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481286294497132559/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_23_faster_door_order_slow_test.bk2
I took a sphere after the 7th key to be able to move through the dog afterwards, but this already took too long compared to the Test-TAS.
28. In the following ''stage 24'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481279960099586059/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_24.bk2
I skip taking an arrow before the 2nd key, and get 2 enemies coming my way on my way to the right after the 2nd key, where I'd have to slow down considerably compared to the Test-TAS.
29. In the following ''stage 24 arrow & slow teleport'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481288628883030036/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_24_arrow__slow_teleport.bk2
I skipped the key in the bottom left corner of the stage early on, in order to get it near the end using the teleport from the far right back to the left corner and teleporting back, which however was slower than the Test-TAS.
30. In the following ''stage 27'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481304238727888919/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_27.bk2
which has it's difference to the Test-TAS in stage 26 and just reaches stage 27, I first take the keys at the center of the stage together with the pickaxe before continuing to the bottom of the stage for further keys where the pickaxe is needed, followed by the keys on the right side, and then the far left side and going back to the top, but this route turned out to be slower than the route of the Test-TAS.
- - -
Observations (partially with corresponding movies):
1. Bugs Bunny moving sideways, backwards onto a platform during upwards movement from a jump (near the end of the movie):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/481243168822657034/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_II_USA_WIP_TAS_stage_15_moving_over_during_jump_facing_other_way.bk2
2. It seems that whenever Bugs Bunny enters a key room, the direction that Bugs Bunny is facing is swapped (basically to give the impression that one's seeing the door from the other side), but for a split-second, both sprites (the previous one from entering the door and the new one depending on the direction one's walking) appear on screen:
3. The following screenshot demonstrates the possibility to climb past a temporarily stunned enemy next to a black boulder without dying:
4. In the following screenshot, the instance is shown in which it seemed to be impossible on the way back (from the right to the left) to move left with an arc midair on the way up from a jump (induced by a jump plate)
5. There's a stage that has an exit door right next to a destructible rock, and there's a frame during the animation that Bugs Bunny does when he enters this door in which one can trigger the animation in which Bugs Bunny destroys the rock (which delays the end of the stage):
Apparently in some cases it is impossible during a jump on the way up to directly grab a horizontal rope when it is right above Bugs Bunny and instead (in order to grab the rope) one is forced to move forwards in the (slow) arc motion.
Edit: Here's a video for the TAS:
Link to video
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
r57shell, I'm not claiming for any given question that corresponds to a poll, that one can answer it with respect to some objective truth or logic that underlies or comes together with the question. I'm just saying that there can be special cases in which this is the case.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
[quote Nach]
Do you think human beings are ever entirely objective for any kind of poll?
[/quote]
Obviously there exist situations (mainly regarding the design or type of a poll) in which humans can give objective (and as such independent of personal views) answers, for example when you ask them ''Is 1+1=2 true (in ZFC)?'', they can conclude an objective answer to this which will be correct or wrong with respect to the logical system underlying the poll independently of personal views or subjectivity. So since you were asking about ''any kind of poll'', which means (provided I interpreted/understood the question correctly) the above type of cases would be included, your question could be reduced to e.g. if such type of poll was ever made and answered according to a logical system (that leaves no freedom of opinion or choice about its own matter anymore), and I am rather certain that such happened (or I would assign a high probability to this having happened by now, which maybe also might depend on what one would define or declare being a poll and at what point it isn't a poll anymore). So chances are extremely likely that the correct answer to your question is ''yes''.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Here is a Test-TAS of Bugs Bunny, The - Crazy Castle (for Gameboy, made with Bizhawk's version 1.12.1.1, and the same holds for the other movie files):
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47805327914991989
- - -
About the game:
The game has 80 stages (and there exist a few speedruns of the game on speedrun.com, but they didn't seem to be so insightful, at least Bugs Bunny in the current WR run dies about 30 to 40 times). After finishing a stage (which gives you 1 extra life every time a stage is finished (possibly only if it is done with the 1st attempt); and one starts with 5 lifes), one can choose to view a replay of how one finished the last stage (unless maybe if the stage took too long).
Some list of different objects that exist in the game (and states in which they can be):
Player character:
* Bugs Bunny (obtained score points from enemy kills: 100 via elixir, 500 using the glove, 1000 via bucket or 10 tons weight or rolling strongbox or wooden box)
(can be
- stationary,
- walking sideways,
- going up or down stairs,
- entering and exiting door stairs or pipes,
- dying from enemy contact,
- falling,
- in victory animation by picking up the last carrot,
- blinking due to an elixir,
- pushing an object,
- turning around)
Other characters:
* Sylvester (cat),
* Yosemite Sam (cowboy),
* Daffy Duck (duck),
* Wile E. Coyote (coyote),
(can be
- waiting,
- walking (including against a wall),
- going up or down stairs or using pipes or door stairs,
- dying from getting hit by a glove or moving object or by touching an invulnerable Bugs Bunny (with explosion animation),
- falling and can turn around)
Pickups (the collections trigger specific short sounds):
* elixirs (for temporary invulnerability and killing any enemy upon body contact; its effect starts at collection),
* carrot (gives 100 score points each; all of them per stage are meant to be collected in order to advance),
* gloves/flying punches (of which multiple can be collected to have more than 1 simultaneously, and they can be thrown to fly sideways and then either hit an enemy or some wall from where they'd fall straight down and can be recollected)
Weapon objects:
* buckets,
* wooden box,
* rolling strongbox,
* 10 tons weight
(which can be
- stationary,
- moving sideways,
- falling straight down,
- hitting an enemy or a wall or the ground)
Environmental objects (which have different graphics in different stage types):
* stairs,
* door stairs,
* pipes,
* walls,
* floors and ceilings
- - -
Optimization aspects:
In some cases if one moves Bugs Bunny to the bottom end of some stairs, one is forced to first walk away from the stairs before one can approach/use them. But if one approaches the bottom of some stairs from beneath them, one can warp up onto the first part without having to move away from it first.
The most important part of the optimization seems to lie in the order in which one collects the carrots together with which paths one uses to do so (basically a Travelling Salesman Problem with enemies chasing Bugs Bunny).
Micro-optimization & finetuning that can still be done and tested out:
- some other routes can still be tested and optimized and compared with each other in the stages where the best route isn't as obvious (especially at the early easier stages, I didn't pay so much close attention to all the options one would have to progress through them, and wasn't aware yet that enemy movement could be manipulated with own directional inputs at certain frames)
- maybe dfferent directions should be pressed in some cases to make Bugs Bunny move forwards to reduce lag/change the lag pattern (since Up, Down, and Forwards make Bugs Bunny move forwards, with Up and Down also making Bugs Bunny move/transition up or down whenever possible); or one could also leave some directional inputs out since not all of them are needed for movement
- maybe triggering diag. upwards stairs as early as possible when Bugs Bunny is approaching those stairs isn't the best option when moving onto stairs without a turnaround (since there's multiple frames in which one can trigger the use of stairs to make Bugs Bunny go up)
- in some cases when enemies generally don't need to be manipulated to be out of the way, one could anyways mess around and test different manipulations of their movement, since this most usually leads to lag differences
- maybe some strange effects could be achieved by using left+right or up+down; or maybe lag differences could be induced by adding more new button presses to the usual ones (like select or holding multiple directions at once); or holding some buttons instead of releasing them could reduce lag
- it probably would also be useful to figure out the general AI that the enemy types use (and there seems to be at least either 2 types of cat AIs or they behave differently in groups than solo), and memory addresses for the frames in which they check for inputs could be useful (aswell as further memory addresses for all kinds of other aspects)
- maybe there'd be ways to climb up walls or keep the falling state or prevent falling to hover over gaps or to prevent death when running into an enemy, or maybe there'd be methods to interact with an item that is further away (above or right below Bugs Bunny for example) to collect them from different places
- one can also play around with the flying punches and their timings and influences on lag, or maybe it could be possible to kill multiple enemies with the same weapon/attack
- maybe some glitches with different events happening simultaneously could be possible (by combining elements of the list of objects and states from above)
- - -
Some (ordered by stage) route & strategy comparison movie material (I didn't test many different routes yet and almost always just took a look on what the stages were like and estimated which route would be best if there were no enemies around):
1. In the following ''stage 30 not shooting glove is slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459024423182401536/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_6_stage_30_not_shooting_glove_is_slower.bk2
there is gloves on the way but they aren't needed to get enemies out of the way, and in here I tested the option in which I'd just not use the glove(s) rather than optionally getting rid of 1 enemy anyways, which though turned out to be slower than killing it.
2. In the following ''stage 40 slow safe option'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459030692148412436/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_40_slow_safe_option.bk2
the stage's structure is almost symmetrical and Bugs Bunny starts barely closer to 1 side of the 2, but on the other side right next to him one can get an elixir for temporary invulnerability which I took in this route test for safety, but it turned out to be slower.
3. In the following ''stage 43 normal route slower'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459032489592225802/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_43_normal_route_slower.bk2
I took a carrot route that (neglecting enemies on the way) seemed to result in the shortest path connecting all carrots (by picking up the central top carrot early on to afterwards clean up all remaining lower carrots on the way to the left without having to go back far to the right). However, in order to so, I had to wait a few times due to enemies, and this route unexpectedly ended up being slower than the one from the WIP (in which I go and take the bottom left carrot early with an elixir on the way, to then go back to the right for the previously skipped carrots).
4. In the following ''stage 48 2nd route'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459038505222406157/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_48_2nd_route.bk2
on the way down I collected the bottom right carrots first and went back up and left for the last carrot, which ended up being slower than getting it earlier on the way down and taking the remaining lower placed carrots afterwards.
5. In the following ''stage 49 2nd route'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459039961765773362/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_49_2nd_route.bk2
I went to the right at the beginning to collect all carrots on the way left afterwards, but the enemies ended up being in my way a few times if I wouldn't manipulate their movement, which costed too much time compared to what is done in the WIP.
6. In the following ''stage 50 test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459042616697290793/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_50_test.bk2
I just checked for the very last carrot which of the 2 stairs was faster to get up to the carrot, and took the right stairs in this test which ended up being slower.
7. In the following ''stage 54 2nd route equally fast'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459044665275187212/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_54_2nd_route_equally_fast.bk2
I took the carrot to the right of the wooden box right away on the way up when I pass it, instead of delaying its collection until the end, which turned out to be on the frame exactly as fast as taking it at the end which is done in the WIP.
8. In the following ''stage 56 equal speed'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459046745452707871/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_56_equal_speed.bk2
I didn't kill the upper cat at the end (which isn't in my way), which appeared to be equally fast as throwing a glove at it to get rid of it alongside the rest.
9. In the following ''stage 56 early attacks test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456938873243697153/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_56_early_attacks_test.bk2
I tested at the end of the stage how the early use of flying punches influence the lag in the game, and it turns out (as expected) that it does add some lag for the time-span in which the additional sprite is drawn, compared to the case in which the flying punches connect to enemies as soon as possible after having been fired.
10. In the following ''stage 68 impossible top carrot first, test'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456938601373237269/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_68_impossible_top_carrot_first_test.bk2
I went to the top right away (and then continued further for the remaining carrots), but at this point already it seemed unavoidable that 1 specific cat among the lower two enters the bottom right pipe. And once this happens, the cat will be stuck in there and prevent the collection of the final carrot (unless getting there with invincibility which however would cost too much time already).
11. In the following ''stage 68 2nd test, cat gets stuck'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456938721313554453/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_68_2nd_test_cat_gets_stuck.bk2
I proceed to the right immediately (without hesitating slightly), which also got the cat stuck there and prevented fast progress.
12. In the following ''stage 74 right pipe is faster'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459053365381431307/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_74_right_pipe_is_faster.bk2
on the way down after collecting the carrot at the top left corner, in this test I took the left pipes instead of the single long pipe to the right, which turned out to be slower.
13. In the following ''early left carrot route for the stage 77'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456938428005875726/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_77_early_left_carrot_route.bk2
according to this rough draft of the stage's structure which consists of 5 separated blocks only connected via pipes,
--------------
|1|2|3|4|5|
--------------
corresponding to
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Yosemite Sam (cowboy)|Daffy (duck)|Wile E. (coyote)|Sylvester (cat1)|Sylvester (cat2)|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the route (2->3->1->3->4->5) I used was as follows: I take the carrot and the flying punch item at the bottom of block 2 (the one with the duck from which there is no pipe connection to block 1), take a pipe back up, and take a pipe to the bottom of block 3 for the carrot there, and then continue back to block 1 to snatch the carrot there and go back to block 3 to continue towards the right for the remaining carrots, instead of having to go all the way back for that carrot in block 1 at the end. But unexpectedly it turns out that the latter option (namely leaving out the single far left carrot in block 1 out until the end even though one starts in block 2 among 5 blocks) turned out to save more time.
In stage 78 it seems that (provided one moves to the right at beginning) taking the lowest carrot first and then going right instead of up is faster (instead of going up).
14. In the following ''slower stage 80'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456939038054547456/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_Test-TAS_3_test_slower_stage_80.bk2
I did the final stage differently (and as it turned out slower), by taking the carrot to the left of Bugs Bunny before the one to his right and then waiting on the next higher floor for the cat to go out of my way (so I could take the carrot on this floor to the far right before progressing to the left).
- - -
Observations (partially with corresponding movies):
1. Bugs Bunny standing offset midair next to stairs (at the end of the following movie):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456882593036763146/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS3_Test1_floating_at_stair_with_normal_approach.tasproj
The situation from the movie looks like this:
2. Bugs Bunny falling onto ground and hovering above it at the beginning of stairs (at the end of the following movie):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456926708914978818/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_standing_midair_falling_onto_stairs_beginning.tasproj
The situation from the movie looks like this (and is similar as above, but not quite the same due to Bugs Bunny not walking from the left onto it but falling to this height):
3. In the following ''select inputs can change lag pattern'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459025809445879812/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_select_inputs_can_change_lag_pattern.bk2
I observed in stage 31 that even a single Select press can heavily change/increase the amount of lag that is happening throughout further parts of a stage (compared to if one would take the Select press out in the movie).
4. In the following ''stage 48, cat surviving glove shot'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459037357736198146/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_48_cat_surviving_glove_shot.bk2
I fired a glove against a wall and then (as usual) the glove would fall straight down, and it did so by going straight through an enemy without hitting it, even though in a similar situation it can still hit it. And it seems that the difference is caused by the enemy at the time of contact yet still being on ground walking (so it can get hit) or already falling midair (in which case it can dodge it).
5. In the following ''stage 38 interrupting stair climb'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459027850683482113/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_38_interrupting_stair_climb.bk2
I observed (near the end of it) that in some cases in which one is approaching stairs, it is possible to barely walk onto them and then turn around and go off the stairs again (without being forced to go all the way up automatically).
6. In the following ''stage 73 pipe ledge grab bug'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459051362122989578/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_73_pipe_ledge_grab_bug.bk2
likely due to the walking pattern with which the pipe was entered, after the pipe spits out Bugs Bunny downwards, one can ''finish up the final step'' that Bugs Bunny did before entering the pipe, and can do so midair while falling, in order to land elsewhere.
7. In the following ''2 consecutive non-lag frames at 40426'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459056704701726721/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS3_2_consecutive_nonlag_frames_at_40426.bk2
there (as the title says) occur 2 non-lag frames during a stage in a row without any apparent reason for this happening (since it seems to have only happened once here or at most very rarely if at all, outside of pressing Select).
8. In the following ''double K.O. at 45102'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459055842046640148/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS4_double_K.O._at_45102.bk2
I stumbled over a case where I killed a duck with a bucket at the same time as when it killed Bugs Bunny.
Apparently, buckets can be kicked differently far (only by Bugs Bunny), and the distance seems to be depending on the movement speed of Bugs Bunny or positioning/walking pattern. If an enemy character falls onto a bucket, then it will not automatically die to the bucket (so that it matters if Bugs Bunny interacted with such an obstacle or not). For most enemy types (if not all) it seems that one can manipulate them to turn around and walk the other way using the bunny's own movement (with the last direction, left or right or none, that one pressed at some specific frame), and more precisely: By moving 1 full tile to the other direction (or pressing directions where they have no influence on Bugs Bunny's movement, e.g. while walking on stairs or using door stairs or falling or using pipes) it can happen that an enemy turns around (even if the enemy is far off-screen and those enemies seem to always exist move around aswell), except that this seems to not work at just any time and might have some cooldown time until it can work again after an enemy turned around. It seems that select presses aswell can influence the lag frame pattern (regarding inputs and when the game doesn't accept them), and they seem in general cases to add another non-lag frame right after the current non-lag frame (in which Select was used), however apparently without this allowing to speed up the gameplay progresses (by doubling non-lag frames using Select every 2nd frame). There also seem to be (at least) 2 different types of behavior that cats can use (i.e. there's basically at least 2 types of cats that look the same but behave differently). It seems that ducks camp at door stairs instead of taking them to get to Bugs Bunny (when Bugs Bunny is near the other side of the door stairs). It seems that the coyote cannot use stairs or door stairs. If one's going up or down a pipe/stairs/door stairs, then one in general can already hold the opposite direction before the vertical input (for triggering the use of pipe/stairs/door stairs) happens (and the transition can still work out, since not all input-accepting frames contribute to Bug Bunny's movement). Apparently if one moves through a carrot while Bugs Bunny is in a pipe, the carrot will still be collected. Apparently if Bugs Bunny is in the right kind of walking animation when he enters a pipe and gets spit out downwards by the pipe and falls long enough, then he can walk midair 1 step sideways (to finish up the previous movement) which can allow Bugs Bunny to land on ledges of platforms that end next to the pipe exit beneath it (instead of falling past them). Within pipes or door stairs, enemies don't interact with Bugs Bunny (and the same holds for the entering and exiting animations). It seems that sometimes when Bugs Bunny falls onto a pipe leading downwards that one wants to enter right away, his movement is fluid and continuous and at other times there's a short stop before the pipe is entered.
(There's probably many more enemy<->object interaction observations or observations on the AI/behavior of the different enemy types that one could make, which I didn't investigate as much as of yet.)
- - -
Game elements for which one probably can find corresponding memory addresses:
- current stage number
- number of Bugs Bunny's remaining lifes
- total number of still existing enemies in the current stage (and their x and y positions and the direction they are facing and if they are midair falling or dying or using stairs or door stairs)
- number of currently existing enemies per type
- x and y position of Bugs Bunny (and all pickups and weapon objects)
- number of invulnerability frames left for Bugs Bunny
- number of remaining carrots to be collected
- game frame timer (globally and per stage)
- current score points
- game mode (if game is running in a stage or e.g. paused)
(...)
- - -
Here's a video of the Test-TAS:
Link to video
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Adelikat, was this occurrence in the past such that the usual no/meh/yes poll was not part of submissions anymore and instead the rating system was put in its place, or was it a case in which both types were present, side by side? I assume the former was the case, but considering these points I'm not sure if the latter should be given a chance or not. This probably would be something to be decided by the staff, I think.
Edit: Oh and in this context I also want to point out that in the former case, the audience would be forced to provide such precise rating (for those that do want to contribute to this evaluation process), whereas in the latter case I could see a rating to not be required to be provided by a user, and just be there as an optional additional choice to take or to leave empty.
2nd edit: At least I think that if one would see both parts present at submissions, then this could serve as distinguishing indicator between the purposes of the 2 systems (poll & rating).
3rd edit: Or one could put up some disclaimer that informs evaluators that their ratings aswell as the average rating stays hidden/unknown (to maybe the audience or also including the judge or judges in general) until (at least) the end of the submission (when it was rejected or accepted), so that they might understand that the ratings are not meant to have any influence in the voting process in the way that adelikat described.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Actually I can see some potential downside of substituting the no/meh/yes poll with the rating system, or allowing ratings to already be done during the submission phase (so that the ratings will automatically be applied once the TAS is accepted, if it does get accepted). Namely from the perspective of providing premature/overhasty evaluations:
Since it usually takes some time between voting with respect to a submission being done and the time when the submission is accepted and on the site so that one can give it a rating, there's some forced ''cooldown phase'' that might act like a puffer, so that people can do their rating evaluations with a clear head and not maybe be potentially biased towards one direction or the other, depending on various possible factors. So from this perspective, some consideration time about what rating one really would want to provide for a movie can make sense, compared to already providing a rating while the discussion is still going strong or while information relevant to the movie is still being updated/provided, and then later realizing that something actually was different about the movie than what one thought.
But then this would come down to knowing (or being aware of) roughly on what aspects one's own rating is based on, and how certain one is of the stability of those aspects being as one thinks of them, or one could just ask about the uncertain aspects. And then again, the same issue could be a problem for the normal no/meh/yes voting too, except when the impact of some change in how someone views a TAS (due to new information towards its technical quality or entertainment) is low enough, then it might not yet make the difference between yes/meh or meh/no (or even yes/no), whereas it could make already a difference of 1 or 2 or so rating points away from one's initial rating.
However, on the other hand-side, one might want to consider that in the alternative scenario (the current one, where the rating system is separated from submission processes), the costs of keeping it this way might involve that one will be missing out on many more ratings towards movies in general that might have otherwise been made.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Looks like there's no direct response yet to the observations and suggestions that I mentioned earlier at the beginning of the 3rd page (and that is why the matter was not entirely resolved yet before this point). Explicitly, I'd want responses/feedback to this suggestion:
[quote Aran Jaeger]
Well in this case, I'm lead/forced to question why it does ask this specific (entertainment) question to begin with, as opposed to an acceptance question, considering (what I would deem to be a fact) that the rating system covers this more precisely. However, I'd admit that the latter, the rating system, might be less often frequented for this purpose, and in view of this situation which might come over as some sort of dilemma situation, I would suggest to allow already in the voting process to have a rating (on technical quality aswell as entertainment, the same way it is in the existing rating system) to be additionally but also just optionally done by voters (maybe hidden for the majority until the end of the voting, or very well also beyond that, considering how it is done with the existing rating system), such that as soon as a movie is accepted, (provided a movie does get accepted) the pre-existing ratings are immediately, automatically carried over to the existing rating system (where they might belong to).
[/quote]
And I'd also want answers to these questions:
[quote Aran Jaeger]
So, if the rating system anyways covers entertainment and technical quality with more steps between the extremal options, then why even ask the voting question when it (provided this is true) isn't meant to cover the question of support for site acceptance?
[/quote]
[quote Aran Jaeger]
If one intends to check out a TAS and rate it (from 0 to 10, both ends included), then why let them in the voting process initially choose between the 3 options ''no'', ''meh'', ''yes'' (which maybe could be interpreted to cover the respective ranges 0 - 3.333... = ''no'', 3.333... - 6.666... = ''meh'', 6.666... - 10 = ''yes'')? And if this is not meant to have any meaning for acceptance (or also technical quality, which though the voting guidelines page makes it seem as if the technical aspect also is meant to be part of this), then why have them first do this rough estimation of the personally viewed entertainment before they can or would evaluate the entertainment with the more precise rating system?
[/quote]
From the perspective of the broad information laid out over pages on TASVideos (in particular given the voting guideline page, the submission guideline page, and the rating system), from a perspective in which one assumes redundancies are meant to be reduced and various TAS evaluation aspects are meant to be covered, to me it makes more sense (with respect to a list of pros and contras, site-consistency-wise) to think of the TASVideos guideline pages (aswell as some TASVideos users' statements) as indicating that the no/meh/yes voting is (at least also) meant to cover the decision problem on if a movie should be accepted or not.
Otherwise, since the no/meh/yes poll seems to be meant to cover both, technical and entertainment quality, then why not at the very least have the poll question ask ''Did you find this movie entertaining and technically optimized? (Vote after watching!)'' (or something along that line)?
- - -
Other than that, I want to respond to the following.
[quote feos]
Untying the poll from entertainment criterion won't help judges in any way. Entertainment value of the movie still has to be assessed. With quite a few exceptions, 80%+ support is most likely Moons. But:
- Should this boring movie be published?
- Yes! To Vault!
You're not getting useful feedback that helps with the judging if the question is changed to that.
I know you didn't suggest it to change like this. But this is still stuck in people's minds very hard.
[/quote]
As I explained before, under the assumption that the general audience would not be reluctant to provide evaluations in case that they would have to do so in a more precise manner (using the integer range from 0 to 10), the rating system would be objectively more suitable for evaluating the entertainment of a movie than the no/meh/yes poll, if the rating system would be put in place where the no/meh/yes voting happens to substitute this, since it would come closer to potential needs or voting option desires that the audience (or parts of it) might have. And my suggestion above with the rating system being put in place of the no/meh/yes poll would include a resolution of this problem:
[quote feos]
But:
- Should this boring movie be published?
- Yes! To Vault!
You're not getting useful feedback that helps with the judging if the question is changed to that.
[/quote]
And even though the no/meh/yes poll does help in this regard, the rating system would cover even more options and is already an existing, implemented system.
[quote feos]
If there's not enough entertainment, your run goes to Vault if it fits into the category limit. If there's enough entertainment, your arbitrary branches can be published. For any% and 100% that are entertaining, this is just a way to reach out to the viewer easier and to get more feedback as a result.
[/quote]
The same could be achieved more directly with the rating system though (or extended versions of it if forcing voters to be too precise in their rating constitutes a problem), and I think the rating system would do this job better. As related question, I wonder how many ''entertainment'' votes there are so far accumulated at no/meh/yes polls compared to how many ratings have been accumulated for entertainment so far, but I assume there's far more for the former than the latter.
- - -
Now I also want to go into some detail into the matter of potentially existing and maybe to be addressed cases in which reluctance towards providing an entertainment (or also technical quality) evaluation due to an answer having to be more differentiated (which one could see as a higher demand on a person's confidence in the person's decision or could also see it as higher effort barrier on the person that does the evaluation) if one would be required to do an evaluation according to the rating system instead of the more coarse no/meh/yes poll, since a person might then entirely refrain from doing such evaluation whereas the same person might have been fine with providing a vote.
An example:
Someone person might be certain that the (same) person would put the entertainment value for a given movie within {8,9} and would be sure to exclude {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10}. Now, this person might be unable (or might not want) to decide between the 2 options in the case that the person has to decide between the two. Now in the case if one would interpret the ranges for no, meh, and yes to be as I mentioned earlier, namely from 0 to 3.333..., from 3.333... to 6.666... and from 6.666... to 10, then in this case the same person that couldn't decide earlier between the 2 precise values might in the coarse case have it easy to decide which (of the there present 3 options) to take (or rather: which to exclude), since independently on which the person would choose, 8 or 9, it would in any case be placed in the range that corresponds to a ''yes'' (but then again, one maybe could claim that this would fall into Nach's case of being ''mediocre'' and being not or less faithful with one's own judgement, given that the differentiation allows for more lenience). So I can see how a more coarse differentiation might help to get people to vote that might not vote if they were required to provide a more exact answer to the entertainment question, especially on a site like TASVideos where people strive for optimality and correctness. However, a drawback of a coarse poll would probably be that one doesn't get such a precise idea of the perceived entertainment (provided by their evaluations) from the general audience as one could get it via rating system evaluations.
- - -
Suggestion of some ''extended'' rating system for movie evaluations:
So in this case, I think in theory, an entertaining system that would even be better (in the aspect of participation by the general audience for an entertainment evaluation) than both, the entertainment poll and the existing rating system, would be to allow any subset of {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} to be chosen as entertainment value that a person can assign to a movie (going by the principle that this would give the person a hand, would ''come closer to a person's needs'' when the person is to some degree unsure which to choose, so that instead of having to be precise with an answer, one can at least still apply some exclusion of options of which a person is confident in excluding, aswell as to choose a range of which a person is confident that the person would put its evaluation in that given range).
Now, allowing all subsets of this to be options to choose from would probably be too much asked for (from a quantitative but also qualitative perspective) and probably more than one would in any case reasonably have a need for, and regarding the qualitative perspective one probably could still be safe if one reduces the options among which one can choose to those that consist of ''intervals'' or connected integer ranges, since it probably doesn't make much sense if a person is certain that the person would put the rating within {4,5,8}, since what could even be a reason to make sense of a gap in a range within which a person would put its rating for some movie? I guess a possible explanation could be that a person isn't sure if some decision that a TAS made was the better choice (among 2 or more options) or not, and the person might give the correct decision some weight (or a corresponding difference) in the evaluation, and due to not knowing if it was done correctly or not, but knowing or thinking/estimating that the answer to this decision should make out a difference of ''some amount of points'', a hypothetical choice of {4,5,8} as entertainment evaluation could be seen as reflecting such uncertainty of an aspect that has significant weight (to the evaluator). But if there is uncertainty left over like this, then such an evaluator could ask the movie's author on this to get a better idea on which of the 2 ranges {4,5} or {8} to choose.
Another (qualitatively different) example situation:
Imagine a situation in which a person is unsure where exactly to put its rating, but is certain that the person would know that the person would put the personal rating in the range 6.666... to 10, but isn't sure where exactly to put it. Now, for a person like this, if the person had to choose between rating via the no/meh/yes poll (if one would interpret it the way as I mentioned before), or via such extended 0 to 10 (in step size 1) rating system, then the person might strangely enough have a reason to prefer the no/meh/yes option due to the following:
If the person would have to use the extended rating system, then the person might see himself/herself in a position in which he/she would need to decide between taking the range {6,7,8,9,10} and the range {7,8,9,10}. The latter would cut off the range from 6.666... to (close to) 7, but maybe the person only feels as confident that the person can only say his/her vote would lie within that range from 6.666... to 10, so the person might be disinclined to choose the slightly more strict, more cut off option, and would then as next best approximation of its evaluation-confidence-range need to choose {6,7,8,9,10} which the person might be not agreeing to choosing, maybe because the person would feel that this would be too large of a range, whereas with the no/meh/yes case, this case (provided it were for this thought experiment interpreted as above) would (maybe by luck/chance) be more suited for the ''personal, individual needs/wants'' because it has its range-cutoff closer to where a person's evaluation-confidence-range would have its cut-off. However, I'd say this would be quite a specific, picked case, and in general, an in such a way extended rating system should fit the confidence-needs of a person more than the no/meh/yes option (namely if the confidence-range of a person would start at any integer from 0 to 10 and end at another integer, then such extended rating system would fit better with its range cut-offs laid out like that, so I'd argue in the general case the latter would be better). And of course, one could technically go more and more extreme and add more and more finer cut-offs (by introducing steps of size 1/2 or 1/4 etc.), but this might come with other complications (maybe implementation wise or going too far with the precision into realms of precision that might be unnecessary).
(Now, I could also go into some of the statements that have been made about things that to me seem off-topic, but so far I'll refrain from doing so.)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Okay, Nach, then I assume that (the post of which I think it is what you are referring to in your current response) is (maybe all, or maybe not all, I'll leave both options open) what you might have wanted to say towards this topic, and that is fair and alright, but I was assuming that maybe other users might still want to continue discussing this matter in here and thought what they might have to say about it could maybe be useful and or relevant to this. In particular there's some further aspects I'd like to talk about (regarding the topic) which contains some things that I haven't worked out fully and have not yet formatted into a proper readable text for a forum post.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
You two (to be precise, I'm referring to p4wn3r and Nach, considering feos' posts seem for me to be on the thread's topic), can we please stop this now and get back on the topic ''What is the point in submission polling?'', unless I'm misunderstanding and this is related to it? Or we could also split the thread up, which I think would also be an option.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
[quote r57shell]
So, my point: if you take some assumptions, then it's exhaustive with assumptions.
It's no longer purely exhaustive. And thus, you may miss something.
[/quote]
It comes down to provable statements that can as additional information contribute to cutting down options that a brute force algorithm goes through while keeping the assertion that ''the end result is proven to be optimal''. So yes, I agree with the 1st part of what r57shell states in this quote, but now assume you could or would go through some specific for some statement or assumption relevant part in the game's code (maybe large enough that nothing else can influence it) and go through it and understand it and deduce from it that the information that this part of the code provides is enough to prove an assumption. Then it is valid to add this new trustable information to your search procedure without any risk of ending up with a non-optimal solution. So yes, using assumptions carries the questionable aspects over from a possibly incomplete search (incomplete with respect to not explicitly going through every input pattern option, even if an option has no chance to be successful to begin with) to these assumptions and how much of these are valid. And if some of the assumptions are invalid, then this might already allow for a faster TAS to exist, or this might aswell just mean that the assumptions could be ''repaired''/extended and adapted to a new situation and the TAS that the information-based search resulted in stays optimal. Generally, it can be the case that one took a stronger assumption than what one was able to prove about the assumption (i.e. one proves a weaker form of some assumption and then maybe by misconception or by overlooking something, one states the assumption in a stronger form and uses the strong version to reduce the number of options that a search process goes through), and in this case there's 2 things that can happen. Namely either this unproven part that makes the difference between the stronger assumption and the weaker assumption was crucial, was a key point for some different branch of inputs that would lead to a faster TAS than what one obtains, or one was ''lucky'' and taking the stronger assumption was harmless/inconsequential.
Edit: In such a situation where one wants to tackle a game with information-based brute force, one might want to prefer going for easily provable statements that have far-reaching implications.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
[quote Memory]
EDIT: AranJaegar: It seems clear to me that it clearly means "support the notion that the movie is entertaining" given that the question asks about entertainment. There is no inherent meaning to "Support" that it automatically refers to acceptance.
[/quote]
Well in this case, I'm lead/forced to question why it does ask this specific (entertainment) question to begin with, as opposed to an acceptance question, considering (what I would deem to be a fact) that the rating system covers this more precisely. However, I'd admit that the latter, the rating system, might be less often frequented for this purpose, and in view of this situation which might come over as some sort of dilemma situation, I would suggest to allow already in the voting process to have a rating (on technical quality aswell as entertainment, the same way it is in the existing rating system) to be additionally but also just optionally done by voters (maybe hidden for the majority until the end of the voting, or very well also beyond that, considering how it is done with the existing rating system), such that as soon as a movie is accepted, (provided a movie does get accepted) the pre-existing ratings are immediately, automatically carried over to the existing rating system (where they might belong to).
Edit: In short, my main point is, if the voting question asks about the entertainment, and the rating system already covering this in a more differentiated manner, then there's a redundancy, and the latter fits better for gauging how entertaining a viewer finds a TAS. So, if the rating system anyways covers entertainment and technical quality with more steps between the extremal options, then why even ask the voting question when it (provided this is true) isn't meant to cover the question of support for site acceptance?
2nd edit: To go a bit more into the detail on what I mean by the above redundancy: If one intends to check out a TAS and rate it (from 0 to 10, both ends included), then why let them in the voting process initially choose between the 3 options ''no'', ''meh'', ''yes'' (which maybe could be interpreted to cover the respective ranges 0 - 3.333... = ''no'', 3.333... - 6.666... = ''meh'', 6.666... - 10 = ''yes'')? And if this is not meant to have any meaning for acceptance (or also technical quality, which though the voting guidelines page makes it seem as if the technical aspect also is meant to be part of this), then why have them first do this rough estimation of the personally viewed entertainment before they can or would evaluate the entertainment with the more precise rating system?
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
[quote Memory]
"Do you think this movie should be accepted?" is absolutely NOT the point of the poll.
[/quote]
Well, on the other hand side, by TASVideos' explanation on this page ( http://tasvideos.org/Subs-521up.html ), the voting (also) stands for the community's ''support'', and hence, if this implies a discrepancy (tier estimation versus acceptance), I would suggest to make the target of what this concrete support on that page means clear, i.e. to make clear that this means not the support for the TAS in general in whatever broad range one could think of when reading 'support', but for support of solely it's entertainment aspect (for the purpose of the tier aspect).
Edit: If the voting aims at the purpose of getting feedback on the tier under which a TAS should be accepted (or not), then I expect this to be explained on 1 (or more) of the many forum guideline pages, and it might be helpful to make it more clear that it is for this purpose (among other purposes which are suggested by TASVideos to exist, as follows).
( http://tasvideos.org/VotingGuidelines.html )
[quote TASVideos]
This page gives guidelines on how to effectively rate movies and vote on submissions. The guidelines are intended to maximize effectiveness of one's vote and to (with submissions) maximize the help towards a judge's decisions.
[/quote]
It says ''decisions'' when it comes to submissions (not necessarily already accepted ones), so I am inclined to think this is meant to point at more than a decision on 1 aspect for a given TAS, but multiple instead. In this case, which all is it (and in particular which decision questions are explicitly not meant to be part of this)?
2nd edit:
[quote TASVideos]
Post constructive criticism. If you think something is improvable, suggest it or ask why the author did/didn't do what they did.
[/quote]
This statement regarding the improvability (for which it is more clear what it means when it comes to the technical quality rather than subjective entertainment) makes me think that also the technical quality of a movie is part of what the question encompasses which I'd also deem to be a parameter relevant to the question on if a movie should be accepted.
[quote Memory]
A movie might not be acceptable for other reasons beyond entertainment.
[/quote]
I don't see how this would collide with my suggestion regarding a change of the wording of the voting question.
3rd edit:
[quote Memory]
We use how entertaining a movie is to decide what tier to accept to
[/quote]
The potentially especially for this implemented, separated rating system might very well aswell cover this question (tier for a movie) and help for this decision (and might even be more precise in this matter, I would think).
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Actually, now that I think of it, considering that the rating of technical quality and entertainment (as a separated option from voting, and in a more differentiated, with many in between steps from 0 to 10 fine-tuned manner) exists, one might want to change the question ''Vote: Did you find this movie entertaining? (Vote after watching!)'' to ''Vote: Do you think this movie should be accepted? (Vote after watching!)''. And if it had been this question, then I think in HappyLee's & Mars608's (sorry for initially forgetting you there, but I guess people mostly referred to it as HappyLee's TAS) case, the voting process might have been more towards what HappyLee anticipated, while there'd after a potential acceptance of the movie still be the option for the voters (and others) remaining to go and rate the movie according to their personal view, with respect to technical quality and entertainment. By asking if someone found the movie entertaining, one gets an overlap with what the votings (might) stand for (or might be interpreted as) with what the rating system as separate option already covers, while leaving out any question on the technical quality of a movie in the question ''Did you find this movie should be accepted?'' (and at most have it intrinsically/implicitly be part of the question). At least, when I read the voting question, I see it as ''Vote: Do you think this movie should be accepted? (Vote after watching!)''.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
For what it's worth, I always viewed 'Meh' as an option between 'Yes' and 'No'.
From the perspective of the symmetric formula, as its center that is where it belongs to, yes.
[quote klmz]
The page only explains how the voting data are being used to calculate a "support" score, whose purpose hasn't earned consensus among the staff members. It doesn't explain what every voting option is intended for. It won't help with the fact that the term "Meh" means "I don't care" in daily language contradicts the usage for a "Mediocre" option, and I am pretty sure that there have been existing "Meh" votes used according to their literal meaning.
[/quote]
Part of my point is that whatever actual meaning the ''meh'' is meant to have, I think this should coincide and be reflected in the formula's shape and behavior (and at that point it'd switch over to the question which of the 2 things to possibly adapt to the other, which might be part of what the topic of this thread is about).
[quote Scepheo]
Entertainment isn't a binary thing. Sure, you could mentally rate everything 1-10, and then decide that everything below 5 is a "no", and everything else a "yes".
[/quote]
I think that is what movie rating is for (regarding the 2 components, technical quality and entertainment), which however only might make sense to have people rating on these aspects for movies that are accepted to begin with (as opposed to movies that don't even make it there and then rating their entertainment and technical quality).
[quote Scepheo]
But considering that "meh" means "so-so", is commonly used as "average" and is literally counted as half a "yes" vote, it's perfectly reasonable to say that some range around the middle constitutes a "meh" vote.
[/quote]
I'm just double-checking here, but I hope you're aware of what I was explaining in my 2 earlier posts in this (new) thread. Namely that yes, ''meh'' means 1/2 of a yes vote, but it also means 1/2 of a ''no'' vote in regards of this concept of ''support''. The coefficient of the ''meh'' part in the denominator of that ''support'' formula is 1, and this weight distributes as (1/2)*0 + (1/2)*1 in the numerator, where 1 represents ''yes'' and 0 represents ''no''. Something like
[quote no one]
2 * ''meh'' = 1 * ''yes''
[/quote]
is generally not true (with respect to the provided ''support'' formula). And in the usual case (hereby I assume that the usual case is one in which there's more ''yes'' votes than ''no'' votes, which I think is the case, but might take a long time to check), a ''meh'' vote would come closer to a weak form of a ''no'' vote than a ''yes'' vote. And for different example situations one could calculate how many ''meh'' votes you'd need to make them have (close to) the effect of 1 ''no'' vote (or ''yes'' vote but this can only be the case if there's more ''no'' votes than ''yes'' votes).
(Note that I'm not putting quotation marks around the word support because of not agreeing to it or anything, but just to indicate my slighty unsureness of its intended, exact meaning or what aspects it is meant to encompass, to leave others their freedom in thinking of it in what they feel fits for it. So when I write ''support'' I mean the general concept or range of what a given picked concrete idea of support can or might mean.)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
That is a nice video, Flip. When I saw the bald guy in there with the red clothes, he reminded me of someone that I had seen before, so I checked another video, and indeed, he took part in this World Science Festival discussion :)
Link to video
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Also, I thought it'd fit to go ahead and explain an approach to my earlier challenge/puzzle that I posted on the previous page, before it maybe is forgotten and just sits there:
For a function g: U -> |R, x |-> g(x), to have a graph that acts as such symmetry curve, one can derive the condition for this as follows: For every point (x,g(x)) on the function's graph, the function's slope at the corresponding x coordinate is given by the derivative (which exists by the differentiability assumption) g' of g at the point x. Now in order to get the (unique) slope for an affine function h_{x} through the point (x,g(x)) such that its graph intersects the tangent of g through the point (x,g(x)) orthogonally, we solve the corresponding condition for this to be true, namely g'(x)*(h_{x})'(x)= -1, so the slope of the affine function h_{x} (which is constant since the function is affine) would need to be (h_{x})'= -1/(g'(x)). So the affine function h_{x} which goes through (x,g(x)) has the form
h_{x}: |R -> |R, t |-> h_{x}(t)= -t/(g'(x)) + x/(g'(x)) + g(x), g'(x) =/= 0.
Now the next step is to determine where it may intersect the hyperbola f, and the corresponding condition for this reads as 1/t = -t/(g'(x)) + x/(g'(x)) + g(x)
or equivalently (t^2)/(g'(x)) - (x/(g'(x)) + g(x))*t + 1 = 0 or t^2 - (x + g(x)*g'(x))*t + g'(x) = 0. Now one can apply the quadratic formula (or equivalently the pq formula) to solve this for the variable t to end up with
t_{1,2}(x)= (1/2)*( (x+g(x)*g'(x)) -+ sqrt( (x + g(x)*g'(x))^2 -4*g'(x) ) ).
Now we want that the distance between (t_{1}(x),1/t_{1}(x)) and (x,g(x)) is the same as the distance between (t_{2}(x),1/t_{2}(x)) and (x,g(x)), but instead (for simplicity) we can also compare the squared distances. The squared first distance is given by the expression
(t_{1}(x))^2 - 2*t_{1}(x)*x + x^2 + 1/(t_{1}(x)^2) - 2*(1/t_{1}(x))*g(x) + g(x)^2
and the second squared distance analogously:
(t_{2}(x))^2 - 2*t_{2}(x)*x + x^2 + 1/(t_{2}(x)^2) - 2*(1/t_{2}(x))*g(x) + g(x)^2.
For their difference we get
2*g(x)*(1/t_{2}(x) - 1/t_{2}(x)) + 2*x*(t_{2}(x) - t_{1}(x)) = t_{2}(x)^2 - t_{1}(x)^2 + 1/(t_{2}(x)^2) - 1/(t_{1}(x)^2).
Now we can make a few observations on some of the expressions to shorten them:
t_{1}(x)*t_{2}(x) = (1/4)*( (x + g(x)*g'(x))^2 - (x + g(x)*g'(x))^2 + 4*g'(x) ) = g'(x),
1/t_{2}(x) - 1/t_{2}(x) = (t_{1}(x) - t_{2}(x))/(t_{1}(x)*t_{2}(x)) = (t_{1}(x) - t_{2}(x))/g'(x),
1/(t_{2}(x)^2) - 1/(t_{1}(x)^2) = (t_{1}(x)^2 - t_{2}(x)^2)/((t_{1}(x)*t_{2}(x))^2) = (t_{1}(x)^2 - t_{2}(x)^2)/(g'(x)^2).
Now if we multiply both sides of the equation for the equality of the 2 distances with g'(x)^2 and insert the above abbreviations for the corresponding expressions that appear in there, we get
2*g(x)*g'(x)*(t_{1}(x) - t_{2}(x)) + 2*x*(t_{2}(x) - t_{1}(x))*g'(x)^2 = (t_{2}(x)^2 - t_{1}(x)^2)*g'(x)^2 + (t_{1}(x)^2 - t_{2}(x)^2)
Now we can substitute some more expressions as follows,
t_{1}(x) - t_{2}(x) = - sqrt( (x + g(x)*g'(x))^2 - 4*g'(x) )
t_{1}(x)^2 - t_{2}(x)^2 = -(x + g(x)*g'(x)) * sqrt( (x + g(x)*g'(x))^2 - 4*g'(x) ) = (x + g(x)*g'(x))*(t_{1}(x) - t_{2}(x)),
and insert the latter one to get
2*g(x)*g'(x)*(t_{1}(x) - t_{2}(x)) + x*(t_{2}(x) - t_{1}(x))*g'(x)^2 = (t_{2}(x) - t_{1}(x))*g(x)*g'(x)^3 + (t_{1}(x)^2 - t_{2}(x)^2),
(x*g'(x)^2 - 2*g(x)*g'(x))*(t_{2}(x) - t_{1}(x)) = (g(x)*g'(x)^3 - x - g(x)*g'(x))*(t_{2}(x) - t_{1}(x)).
Since we need the 2 intersection points to be different, we require (t_{2}(x) - t_{1}(x)) =/= 0 and can take this factor out of the equation to end up with
x*g'(x)^2 - 2*g(x)*g'(x) = g(x)*g'(x)^3 - x - g(x)*g'(x),
0 = g(x)*g'(x)^3 - x + g(x)*g'(x) - x*g'(x)^2 = g(x)*g'(x)*(1 + g'(x)^2) - x*(1 + g'(x)^2) = (1 + g'(x)^2)*(g(x)*g'(x) - x).
Since the first factor cannot be equal to 0, we can take it out and are finally only anymore left with the condition
0 = g(x)*g'(x) - x
for all x within some (to be determined) region, which has the form of a first-order, nonlinear ODE for which e.g. Wolfram Alpha provides the general solution, g_{c}(x) = sqrt(c+x^2), for any real-valued constant c, aswell as a negative branch which though doesn't correspond to what we are looking for. So this is the 1-parameter set of solutions, and to determine the region in which they are defined, one can set 1/t = sqrt(c+t^2) with t > 0, or respectively t^4 + c*t^2 - 1 = 0.
The quadratic formula then provides the starting point T_{c} = (1/2)*(sqrt(c^2 + 4) - c), so we have g_{c}: ]T_{c},+infinity[ -> |R, x |-> g_{c}(x) := sqrt(c+x^2).
Here's a screenshot of what plots of these ''axial'' symmetry curves (with respect to the right branch of the function f(x)=1/x) look like for different values of c:
All of them asymptotically approximate the identity function for x to +infinity. For negative c they start below and for positive c above it. Notice that if the curve lies above the graph of the identity function, it is closer to the upper left part of the graph of the hyperbola, and to make up for this, the slope (or derivative) at every point on the graph is smaller than 1 but converges to 1 as the curve proceeds to the far right.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
[quote HappyLee]
Not going to happen due to reason I already explained.
[/quote]
This however assumes Mr. Wint cannot or will not change his mind.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Thanks Fred. After testing this over and over with multiple savestates (in snes9x 1.53) in various ways (for some hours) of moving back and forth and trying to have zombies spawn at different spots and timings in relation to what the left Red Skull Flames enemy is doing and when the right one is awakening and the left one despawning, I couldn't find anything, but I have the suspicion that the collection of the green armor which interrupts the gameplay for a short time might be the culprit in combination with the previous aspects, so I will mess around with different timings and ways of collecting this armor and proceeding similarly as it happens in the video. Maybe it is about having the left Red Skull Flames enemy start its animation that makes it fire its projectile some seconds afterwards while still having the normal armor, and then interrupting the gameplay, getting the green armor and despawning the left Red Skull Flames enemy before it can finish its projectile shooting. Something else that I observed was that if the screen reaches just a few tiles further to the right compared to where it is in the moment in which the jump to the credits occurs in the video, then the wolf on the far right can be hurt, and this might mean that the wolf might spawn a bit earlier, maybe around the time when the jump to the credits happens (but it might also just be irrelevant which I also assume to be the case for the zombie that spawns inside the right Red Skull Flames enemy, but that latter enemy might still have a chance to be relevant for the glitch to happen).
Fred, do you know if these kinds of strange audio or sprite glitches as you described them earlier have ever occured in a case in which the green armor (or I guess any armor that interrupts the gameplay with such collection animation) was not collected (let's say at most a few seconds before a glitch occured)?
Currently I'm inclined to say that this credits warp is fake. I've managed to prevent a later wolf from spawning in different ways, and haven't had a case yet in which a Red Skull Flames enemy possesses a wolf like as if it were its fireball projectile, but I haven't tested the latter yet so much and it wouldn't be anywhere as far fetched as a jump to the credits.
Edit: Sidenote: Apparently, in the first (Graveyard) stage, it is possible to enable faster walking movement by releasing a charged magic spell at the same time as walking forwards within 1 of the fire spitting demon caves in order to trigger Arthur's exiting jump out of such a cave.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
I'm interested in this and after some testing, I think the reason for it probably is related to some enemy and or enemy projectile limit, or related to an enemy projectile existing while the enemy that fired said projectile doesn't exist anymore. In particular I think this might be related to the Red Skull Flames enemy to the left, since after Arthur passes some x position (roughly at the right side where the rock pillar is, as soon as Arthur would walk past its edge and fall down, but maybe already a slight bit further to the left), this left Red Skull Flames enemy will be despawned, and in the video the timing might just be right such that it barely manages to fire another projectile before or while it despawns, and on top of this, the game already started spawning the right Red Skull Flames enemy aswell as the leftwards walking zombie (at the same spot), which might be too many objects for the game to handle. Or it could be that the left Red Skull Flames enemy fires its projectile (which one unfortunately doesn't see if there is one), then despawns, then the right Red Skull Flames enemy spawns and starts initiating the process to fire an own projectile of the same type, and maybe tries to take over or possess the previous Red Skull Flame's projectile and some code collides, but I can only make guesses/theories on what caused this.
Edit: If we're unlucky, then Arthur's position or enemy positions or the game timer's value or the score value might also be relevant and play a role in this. Another potential reason for this occurrence might be that the left Red Skull Flames enemy just finished firing its projectile and starts another projectile initiation phase at the same time as when the newly appearing Red Skull Flames enemy tries to do the same (or maybe the number of fireball projectiles is meant to be limited to at most 2 existing or being produced at the same time). Maybe one can get interesting results if one manipulates the left Red Skull Flames enemy (aswell as the right one) to both fire their projectiles horizontally to the right and then keep the screen going to the right with Arthur and reach the next pair of these enemies to try to have as many of their projectiles active or being produced at the same time. Considering that their fireball projectiles seem to add a great deal to the amount of lag occuring, this might be an indicator for them doing some strange things in the game's code, so I'd focus on these. Actually, the rising up of a Red Skull Flames enemy aswell as when it starts it's long animation until a fireball projectile is generated seem to cause more lag than the sole existence of their projectiles once they have been generated. Based on this observation, I think the cause of this strange occurrence is likely correlated to the right Red Skull Flames enemy starting with it's head wiggling animation combined with something else happening or having happened shortly beforehand. Also no, it turns out 3 4 of their fireballs can exist at the same time without problems:
It might also help to kill enemies (to initiate their death routines and explosion animations) around the moment of greatest lag (in order to create a glitch). And I assume one would also want to keep Arthur from blinking/having i-frames (since this probably reduces lag when it doesn't draw Arthur every other frame, makes it easier for the game to keep going). Apparently, the footage is from this twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/267709696
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
For anyone interested, here's the corresponding calculation to make this effect that I mentioned in my previous post visible and more understandable:
Let's assume y > n, and we compare a (previous) situation with m ''meh'' votes, with its ''support'' value (y+m/2))/(y+m+n) to a (later) situation with m+1 ''meh'' votes that has the ''support'' value (y+(m+1)/2))/(y+m+1+n). Then the difference of the latter minus the former is given by
(y+(m+1)/2))/(y+m+1+n) - (y+m/2))/(y+m+n) = ((y+m+n)*(y+(m+1)/2)-(y+m/2)*(y+m+1+n))/((y+m+1+n)*(y+m+n)).
Here, the denominator is necessarily strictly positive (since the minimal number of ''no'' votes is 0 and we assumed y>n, so we have at least y=1 or larger; and if there's no ''yes'' aswell as no ''no'' votes at all, the whole calculation simplifies anyways). So the sign of this expression is determined by the numerator, so let's take out the denominator and check the numerator:
(y+m+n)*(y+(m+1)/2) - (y+m/2)*(y+m+1+n) = (y+m+n)*(y+m/2) + (1/2)*(y+m+n) - (y+m/2)*(y+m+1+n) = (1/2)*(y+m+n) - (y+m/2) = (n-y)/2.
Now since we assumed y>n, this expression is strictly negative which means the expression ''latter minus former'' is negative, so the previous ''support'' was larger than what the new resulting ''support'' value would be if one voted ''meh'' (instead of not voting), in the case that the number of ''yes'' votes is larger than the number of ''no'' votes (and if this is the other way around, the effect is flipped accordingly).
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
There's a page that explains the voting ( http://tasvideos.org/VotingGuidelines.html ), and another page that explains submissions, so maybe some people in here might need to refresh on these again. From here ( http://tasvideos.org/Subs-521up.html ) you can find the meaning of the votes by TASVideos site's own definition/standards:
[quote TASVideos]
The voting data comes from the discussion forums.
"65%" (6/1/3)" means 65% support, with 6 yes, 1 meh, and 3 no votes.
Support is ( (yes + meh/2) / (yes+meh+no) ).
To vote, click on the submission and then "Discuss this submission".
[/quote]
Even if you don't know or don't want it to mean that, this is what it effectively means. Feel free to look around and use the Article Index page link ( http://tasvideos.org/ArticleIndex.html ) to find information on what you want to know or what you need.
Edit: In particular I want to point out the following: If we set the ''support'' function depending only anymore on the number of ''meh'' votes (with fixed number of ''yes'' and ''no'' votes) accordingly, we have f(m)=(y+(m/2))/(y+m+n).
By L'Hopital's rule, this expression converges to a ''support'' value of 1/2 if the number of ''meh'' votes goes to +infinity. This means that ''meh'' votes decrease the ''support'' value and make it come closer to the value 1/2 in case that the situation started above, and in case that one started below 1/2, the ''meh'' votes increase the ''support'' value and make it come closer to 1/2. So for this matter, they aren't quite entirely without effect. In this context, 0 would be the worst possible ''support'' value and 1 the best, with 1/2 being perfectly in the middle, and I guess 1/2 would be corresponding to the most split situation to judge with respect to the votes and this ''support'' formula, if one would judge according to this. (Note that the situation is centered around 1/2 and not symmetrically around 0 with -1 and 1 as the extreme cases as one possibly could have expected.)
2nd edit: On a 2nd thought, if it was possible to apply a change to the formula or how it is expressed without too much effort, then I think I'd be for a change in it's representation, namely to center it around 0 instead (with limits -1/2 and +1/2, or -1 and 1 which though would double the function's range). And my reason for this would be that a layman or even someone that understands the formula (together with the meaning of the votes, how they play into it) but might not go ahead and analyse the formula, or people in general might be mislead to think that voting ''meh'' has a different (maybe positive) effect on the ''support'' value than what it actually does, going by the look of the formula. Or someone that sees the formula for the first time might not be aware of the effect of the ''meh'' votes to always make the ''support'' value move a step closer to the central value. Or maybe instead of changing the representation, one could put up an explanation next to the formula that goes into these aspects (if one wants).
As an example: If the current situation is such that there is more ''yes'' votes than ''no'' votes, and someone wants to support a TAS submission (but maybe not by a lot with a ''yes'', and at most just a little), then one better refrains from voting ''meh'' instead of voting ''meh'', because it will lower the corresponding ''support'' value. However, if the current situation is such that there's more ''no'' votes than ''yes'' votes, then a ''meh'' vote will increase the ''support'' value.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Regarding the case with 4 points on a plane, lets say (0,0), (0,10), (10,0), and (10,10), that are to be connected with a curve (or in graph theory terms it'd look like a spanning tree), provided I interpreted this properly, I first tried out a few options just to see what I get with them. I started with an X shape connecting the 4 corners, which ended up at around 28.284... miles, and connecting them with 2 vertical lines/streets (0,0) with (0,10) and (10,0) with (10,10), together with 1 horizontal line/street e.g. like (0,0) to (10,0) which simply gives 30 miles (and is aswell too much). As next step I thought about a free variable that I had at hand with my latter approach, namely the height or the horizontal connection which I could take more centered so it connects the other street segments from (0,5) to (10,5). And from there, one could take the existing street segment structure (consisting of 5 segments) and take the 2 points at which 3 segments each connect, namely these points (0,5) and (10,5) and then pull them horizontally inwards closer to the center (5,5), and let the street segment angles adapt accordingly. And then I remembered the theorem about the optimal parquetting of the flat 2D plane the way the bees do it using hexagonal structures as shortest paths to decompose the entire 2D plane into disjoint subsets with maximized volume while their boundary is minimized (iirc). And from there on, I thought it'd probably be a good idea to embed the 4 given points with their relative positions into such a hexagonal structure. I took an angle of 60°, or analogously 2*pi/6 = pi/3 between the x-axis (in reference to the coordinates that I gave the points/cities) and the straight line that would be defined as the street connection from the origin (0,0) to the horizontally rightwards pulled street segment connection point (0,5) which would then have some position (p,5) where it turns out that p = (5*sqrt(3))/3 = 2.886751346... (''p'' for the via horizontal ''pull'' gained new x-coordinate of the previous point (0,5)). Then with some trigonometry, one can calculate the length of the 4 outer street segments which is 4 times the same, together with the inner horizontal street segment which for general angle alpha gives as total street length the formula L = 10*(1+(2-cos(alpha))/sin(alpha))). (In here, L means the total length of the street, in miles.) And for the special case that I chose, alpha=pi/3 (which was good enough, but yeah with some analysis and derivatives and zeroes to find minima, one could check this part out in more detail), I get 10*(1+sqrt(3)) = 27.32050808... < 28 (miles).
For the generalized case I'd try to take the hexagonal grid structure and attempt to match it as closely as possible to the given set of points/cities that are provided.
Edit: Looks like we, me and BrunoVisnadi, got to the same solution :)
Many more edits: Regarding BrunoVisnadi's math problem, the thing that comes to mind first for me would be a the boundary of a perfect circle centered around the origin that exactly uses up the maximum street length, but some star shapes emerging from the origin might aswell be a good candidate (provided the streets all need to be connected). Thinking about it, the solution might be consisting of 3 street lines emerging outwards from the origin at angle 0°, 120° and 240° (like the situation at a corner of the hexagonal grid that covers a flat 2D plane). Maybe one could improve it further by bending the ends of such 3 line segments (emerging from the origin) let's say clockwise by 60° to help decreasing the distance to the corresponding 3 furthest away (from the street system) points of the 2D ball (or city) at the angles (0+60)°, (120+60)° and (240+60)° though (and one might only need to bend those three each in 1 direction instead of splitting up the ends of the 3 line segments at 60° in both ways, clockwise and counterclockwise, possibly because the increasing distance to another new set of 3 points by only bending the 3 line segments all in (the same) clockwise manner probably can be made up for a bit due to the circular repetition so that the line segment that is 120° counterclockwise to a given line segment also bends in that direction), but I'd not be sure at what point it'd make the most sense to do so, and it makes me think of 3 spirals that move outwards from the origin with some maybe constant curvature (adapted to the circumference of the city, but I kind of doubt a constant curvature, which would make each of the 3 spirals end up as circles if one would continue them, fits for this optimization), or maybe rather to 0 decreasing curvature the further one moves outwards (for larger and larger choices of city circumferences), such that the 3 spirals are offset by 120° (respectively 240°), but I'm a bit sceptical about the use of a structure that is curved instead of consisting just of straight line segments. And I'm also not sure at which part one should be cutting off such spirals then (if one would use them).
When I think of this math problem in a dynamical way, then as soon as 3 straight lines grow outwards from the origin like above, immediately 3 corresponding points can be determined that maximize the distance to the streets structure, so one could ''assign tasks'' to each of the 3 outwards growing curves, such that they each "hunt down" or bend towards 1 of the 2 distanct-maximizing closest outer points (let's say the clockwise one among the nearest, each) which will in turn cause 3 new distance-maximizers as points at the circumference of the city to be points that emerge from the initial ones by clockwise movement along the circumference (i.e. the "worst points" should be travelling around the circumference, and be updated every time one adapts to the previous ones by bending towards them).
A reason for why bending might be helpful could be the following: If one takes 3 line segments emerging from the origin at angles 0°, 120° and 240°, and e.g. takes the outer most point at angle 60°, then it will have the same distance to 2 end points of the street system, which means for this 1 point its distance to the street system will not get worse if one only bends 1 of the 2 nearest line segments towards or away from it, and then one can try to continue in this manner (update: but unfortunately the distance to points on the other side that one is bending away from becomes larger accordingly).
So since (in my currently chosen setting) the total length is what one can "spend" for either stronger curvature of 3 spirals that then don't reach as far outwards but bend heavily/quickly towards new updated "worst points", or weaker curvature for spirals that can reach further outwards but don't bend as much towards "new updated worst points that constitute distance-maximizers to the street system", the solution might be about finding the proper balance between these 2 cases.
(Also, one could apply or do this with 2 line segments/spirals with 180° degree offset too, or 4 or more of them, but 3 intuitively seemed like the best choice to me.)
Maybe the best "balance" of these 2 principles (growing outwards, to maximize the distance of the end points of the spirals to the origin; and the other would be to increase the curvature) would be reached when the speed with which the 3 worst points travel along the circumference is the same as the speed with which the end points of the curves grow their distance to the origin?
Okay an update: My brother (using some calculations) think's 4 spirals (with the same approach otherwise) would be better than 3. He also is more inclined to continue the approach using a ring around the origin, but cutting a segment of its circumference off (not quite a half-ring but an almost fully closed ring).
My brother also observed that for the process in which the city's radius diverges towards +infinity, that one is basically dealing with the distance between the all points within the city and the convex hull of the points part of the street system, since if one takes the pythagorean distance and corresponding circles, then the radius of these circles will grow larger and larger which makes the curvature become smaller and smaller and effectively end up being equivalent to straight lines that make up the boundary of the convex hull of the points that make up the street system. And because of this, taking the convex hull (so adding some more points) instead of just the street system doesn't gain one much (i.e. is a negligible difference) in the process of a growing city radius.
Actually, if one takes 4 straight lines outwards from the origin (all 4 of same length, along the 2 axes) and takes the 4 end points, then the connecting of the street system such that one can keep these 4 end points is improvable exactly the way as in the previous math problem stated by FractalFusion. (Which means one then can use remaining street length to expand the end points further outwards.) So maybe the same structure is the solution here, if one sets the origin into the center of BrunoVisnadi's graph's street structure.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
[quote Aran Jaeger]
I just was suggesting it as generally useful mannerism, and not as criterion on how to judge submissions.
[/quote]
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
With the following movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483744591225552897/Clock_Works_Time-Trial_TAS.lsmv
I tested what would happen if one finishes the Time Trial mode (30 minutes option, since in the 10 or 5 minutes option it is impossible), and it turns out that the game just freezes in the moment in which one attaches to the final goal vertex (but the movie keeps going):
So maybe this wasn't intended or expected to be possible by the developers.
During the test of the Time Trial mode, there also occured a strange beeping sound in stage (or round) 5:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/483749450037329930/Clock_Works_Time-Trial_round5_strange_beep_sound.lsmv
Apparently, it can happen that a pointer attaches to a grey vertex:
Stages without invisible vertices other than activated ones from checkpoint-vertices: 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,23,24,26,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,38,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,48,49. The following screenshots show stages together with the invisible and triggerable vertices:
Stage 7 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 22 (has 6 invisible vertices):
Stage 25 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 27 (has 1 invisible vertex):
Stage 28 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 37 (has 15 invisible vertices):
Stage 38 (has 7 unused triggerable vertices):
Stage 39 (has 3 invisible vertices):
Stage 47 (has 5 invisible vertices):
Stage 50 (has 9 invisible vertices):
Here's a video for the TAS:
Link to video
3. The following screenshot demonstrates the possibility to climb past a temporarily stunned enemy next to a black boulder without dying:
4. In the following screenshot, the instance is shown in which it seemed to be impossible on the way back (from the right to the left) to move left with an arc midair on the way up from a jump (induced by a jump plate)
5. There's a stage that has an exit door right next to a destructible rock, and there's a frame during the animation that Bugs Bunny does when he enters this door in which one can trigger the animation in which Bugs Bunny destroys the rock (which delays the end of the stage):
Apparently in some cases it is impossible during a jump on the way up to directly grab a horizontal rope when it is right above Bugs Bunny and instead (in order to grab the rope) one is forced to move forwards in the (slow) arc motion.
Edit: Here's a video for the TAS:
Link to video
2. Bugs Bunny falling onto ground and hovering above it at the beginning of stairs (at the end of the following movie):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/456926708914978818/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_standing_midair_falling_onto_stairs_beginning.tasproj
The situation from the movie looks like this (and is similar as above, but not quite the same due to Bugs Bunny not walking from the left onto it but falling to this height):
3. In the following ''select inputs can change lag pattern'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459025809445879812/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_select_inputs_can_change_lag_pattern.bk2
I observed in stage 31 that even a single Select press can heavily change/increase the amount of lag that is happening throughout further parts of a stage (compared to if one would take the Select press out in the movie).
4. In the following ''stage 48, cat surviving glove shot'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459037357736198146/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_48_cat_surviving_glove_shot.bk2
I fired a glove against a wall and then (as usual) the glove would fall straight down, and it did so by going straight through an enemy without hitting it, even though in a similar situation it can still hit it. And it seems that the difference is caused by the enemy at the time of contact yet still being on ground walking (so it can get hit) or already falling midair (in which case it can dodge it).
5. In the following ''stage 38 interrupting stair climb'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459027850683482113/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_38_interrupting_stair_climb.bk2
I observed (near the end of it) that in some cases in which one is approaching stairs, it is possible to barely walk onto them and then turn around and go off the stairs again (without being forced to go all the way up automatically).
6. In the following ''stage 73 pipe ledge grab bug'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459051362122989578/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS_7_stage_73_pipe_ledge_grab_bug.bk2
likely due to the walking pattern with which the pipe was entered, after the pipe spits out Bugs Bunny downwards, one can ''finish up the final step'' that Bugs Bunny did before entering the pipe, and can do so midair while falling, in order to land elsewhere.
7. In the following ''2 consecutive non-lag frames at 40426'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459056704701726721/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS3_2_consecutive_nonlag_frames_at_40426.bk2
there (as the title says) occur 2 non-lag frames during a stage in a row without any apparent reason for this happening (since it seems to have only happened once here or at most very rarely if at all, outside of pressing Select).
8. In the following ''double K.O. at 45102'' movie,
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/459055842046640148/Bugs_Bunny_The_-_Crazy_Castle_USA_Europe_WIP_TAS4_double_K.O._at_45102.bk2
I stumbled over a case where I killed a duck with a bucket at the same time as when it killed Bugs Bunny.
Apparently, buckets can be kicked differently far (only by Bugs Bunny), and the distance seems to be depending on the movement speed of Bugs Bunny or positioning/walking pattern. If an enemy character falls onto a bucket, then it will not automatically die to the bucket (so that it matters if Bugs Bunny interacted with such an obstacle or not). For most enemy types (if not all) it seems that one can manipulate them to turn around and walk the other way using the bunny's own movement (with the last direction, left or right or none, that one pressed at some specific frame), and more precisely: By moving 1 full tile to the other direction (or pressing directions where they have no influence on Bugs Bunny's movement, e.g. while walking on stairs or using door stairs or falling or using pipes) it can happen that an enemy turns around (even if the enemy is far off-screen and those enemies seem to always exist move around aswell), except that this seems to not work at just any time and might have some cooldown time until it can work again after an enemy turned around. It seems that select presses aswell can influence the lag frame pattern (regarding inputs and when the game doesn't accept them), and they seem in general cases to add another non-lag frame right after the current non-lag frame (in which Select was used), however apparently without this allowing to speed up the gameplay progresses (by doubling non-lag frames using Select every 2nd frame). There also seem to be (at least) 2 different types of behavior that cats can use (i.e. there's basically at least 2 types of cats that look the same but behave differently). It seems that ducks camp at door stairs instead of taking them to get to Bugs Bunny (when Bugs Bunny is near the other side of the door stairs). It seems that the coyote cannot use stairs or door stairs. If one's going up or down a pipe/stairs/door stairs, then one in general can already hold the opposite direction before the vertical input (for triggering the use of pipe/stairs/door stairs) happens (and the transition can still work out, since not all input-accepting frames contribute to Bug Bunny's movement). Apparently if one moves through a carrot while Bugs Bunny is in a pipe, the carrot will still be collected. Apparently if Bugs Bunny is in the right kind of walking animation when he enters a pipe and gets spit out downwards by the pipe and falls long enough, then he can walk midair 1 step sideways (to finish up the previous movement) which can allow Bugs Bunny to land on ledges of platforms that end next to the pipe exit beneath it (instead of falling past them). Within pipes or door stairs, enemies don't interact with Bugs Bunny (and the same holds for the entering and exiting animations). It seems that sometimes when Bugs Bunny falls onto a pipe leading downwards that one wants to enter right away, his movement is fluid and continuous and at other times there's a short stop before the pipe is entered.
(There's probably many more enemy<->object interaction observations or observations on the AI/behavior of the different enemy types that one could make, which I didn't investigate as much as of yet.)
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Game elements for which one probably can find corresponding memory addresses:
- current stage number
- number of Bugs Bunny's remaining lifes
- total number of still existing enemies in the current stage (and their x and y positions and the direction they are facing and if they are midair falling or dying or using stairs or door stairs)
- number of currently existing enemies per type
- x and y position of Bugs Bunny (and all pickups and weapon objects)
- number of invulnerability frames left for Bugs Bunny
- number of remaining carrots to be collected
- game frame timer (globally and per stage)
- current score points
- game mode (if game is running in a stage or e.g. paused)
(...)
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Here's a video of the Test-TAS:
Link to video
All of them asymptotically approximate the identity function for x to +infinity. For negative c they start below and for positive c above it. Notice that if the curve lies above the graph of the identity function, it is closer to the upper left part of the graph of the hyperbola, and to make up for this, the slope (or derivative) at every point on the graph is smaller than 1 but converges to 1 as the curve proceeds to the far right.
It might also help to kill enemies (to initiate their death routines and explosion animations) around the moment of greatest lag (in order to create a glitch). And I assume one would also want to keep Arthur from blinking/having i-frames (since this probably reduces lag when it doesn't draw Arthur every other frame, makes it easier for the game to keep going). Apparently, the footage is from this twitch stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/267709696