Posts for Bisqwit


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Here's my solution per each level, minified for your convenience: Level 1 cellBlockA: Tip: Change the code that is on black background. Solution: /*delete everything*/ Level 2 theLongWayOut: Tip: Find a way to disable offending code. Solution: if(0) { ... } Level 3 validationEngaged: Tip: Change the location of the blocks. Solution: for(var n=104; n--; )map.placeObject(n>>4, n%16, 'block') Level 4 multiplicity: Tip: The map does not verify something that the other maps do. Solution: map.placeObject(45,20, 'exit') Level 5: Tip: use setSquareColor. Solution: map.setSquareColor(x,y,'gold') Alternative way of thinking: }}{{ // Now there's only one mine. For some reason though, this does not work. I suspect the game cheats somehow. Level 6: Tip: Add obstacles to the bot, paying attention to the route he takes. Solution: map.placeObject(22,10,'block'); // The player moves 8*down, then all the way to the right. Level 7 colors: Tip: Change player's color depending on their current color. Solution: for(var c=['#f00','#ff0','#0f0','#f00'],q=player,n=0;n<3;++n)if(q.getColor()==c[n]){q.setColor(c[n+1]);break;} Level 8: Tip: Try one of the functions. Solution: generateForest Level 9: Tip: --- Solution: map.getPlayer().setPhoneCallback(function(){raftDirection='up'}) Level 10 ambush: Tip: --- Solution: moveToward(me,'reinforcementDrone');me.move('left') |||| me.move('up') |||| me.move(Math.random(0,1)<.5?'up':'right') Level 11: Tip: --- Solution: me.move(me.canMove('right')?'right':'down') Level 12: Tip: --- Solution: if(typeof me.xp == 'undefined') me.xp = 0; me.xp += 1; if(me.xp & 1) me.move('right'); else if(me.xp < 30) me.move('down'); else if(me.xp < 70) me.move('up'); else me.move('down'); (probably not intended) Level 13 robotMaze: Tip: Find a way to tie the bot's movements to things the player can control. Solution: var d=['right','left','down','up'],p=player; me.move(d[(p.getY()&2) + ((p.getX()&2)>>1)]) // Or you could use Djikstra's algorithm as Patashu did :-) Alternative solution that does not involve either polling the player or reading the map beforehand, yet is guaranteed to solve the maze: function c(x,y) { return 'c'+(x+me.getX())+'|'+(y+me.getY()) } if(typeof me.know=='undefined')me.know={} var dirs={'up':c(0,-1),'down':c(0,1),'left':c(-1,0),'right':c(1,0)} var here=c(0,0), k=me.know, next='', best=-99, p if(typeof k[here] == 'undefined') k[here]=0; --k[here]; for(var d in dirs) if(me.canMove(d)) { if(typeof k[p = dirs[d]] == 'undefined') k[p] = 0; if(k[p] >= best) { next=d; best=k[p]; } } me.move(next) Level 14: Tip: --- Solution: greenKey');map.placeObject(24,9,'yellowKey |||| Path: redLock redKey greenLock blueKey and the rest is obvious (This probably wasn't the intended solution.) Level 15 exceptionalCrossing: Tip: --- Solution: )},'onCollision':function(){Math.random( (This is what most people did, I hear. Nevertheless, it is probably not the intended solution.) Here's what I tried first, but alas, the limit is a few letters too short: )}});return;map.placeObject(2,2,'exit',function(){{x( Shorter solution (thanks Warp!) -- probably abuses a bug, or maybe it is even the intended solution: map.x() Level 16 lasers: Tip: --- Solution: color |||| var n=0,p=map.getPlayer(); p.setPhoneCallback(function(){p.setColor(colors[++n%3])}) Level 17 pointers: Tip: Remember setSquareColor? Solution: f(t1.getType()=='teleporter' && t2.getType()!='teleporter') map.setSquareColor(t1.getX(),t1.getY(),'#800'); if(t2.getType()=='teleporter' && t1.getType()!='teleporter') map.setSquareColor(t2.getX(),t2.getY(),'#800'); Level 18: Tip: Remember placeObject? Solution: map.placeObject(player.getX()+1,player.getY()+1,'block') // Instead of jumping, you are creating a bridge... Level 19: Tip: --- Solution: Just press random directional buttons and the next level comes up very soon without need to understand a thing about this level. Level 20 bossFight: Tip: There's a reason why the boss creates bullets y+2 from their own position. Solution: var p = map.getPlayer(),o=map.placeObject; o(30,20,'block'); map.defineObject('freedom', { 'type': 'dynamic', 'symbol': '<', 'color': 'green', 'interval': 100, 'projectile': true, 'behavior': function (me) { me.move('left') } }); p.setPhoneCallback(function(){ o(p.getX()-1, p.getY() , 'freedom'); }); // Use the single block of cover to get the phone. Then move to the top of the screen and begin the massacre. Funny observation: Instead of blocks, which are counted and limited to one, you can create an unlimited number of trees that work the same way as blocks. Level 21: Tip: Open the menu. Solution: Open menu, open objects.js, remove the single exclamation mark. Level 22: Tip: The game ends. Solution: The game ends.
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Was glad: A Zelda II TAS that lets me see the actual game. Watched YouTube video, became sad at 10:20 when the video title says "no glitch" and yet you fly through a locked door. Read submission message... I see. I'm kind of leaning towards "meh" now. I would still probably publish it.
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I still hold that the defining attribute of this movie is "arbitrary code execution" / "total control". Attempts to make "11 exits" the category is misdirection. And as a "total control" TAS, this does not beat the one that was featured in AGDQ.
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It reminds me of some artificial language. Not exactly Lojban, but something. Might be worth checking out the links at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language . Then again, if this challenge was made to a wider audience, chances are some of them should already know about that language...
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While this is fascinating in that you maintained control of the game despite leaving it running, suggesting you installed some kind of RAM-based TSR in the game, I am going to vote no. The reason is that once you have total control of the game, you have the power to do practically anything. You could have changed the speed that Mario moves in the overworld. You can beat levels instantly. You can warp all over the place. It is arbitrary. Arbitrariness never works well with TASVideos movie goals.
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Spikestuff wrote:
BISQWIT YOU BETRAYED ALL OF US WHY!
Because you forgot to credit Nach, whose idea this whole movie was. And because its entertainment/number of authors ratio is way too low, no matter which way you look at it. And also, sometimes it is better that the perpetrator fixes their own mistakes than that someone else has to go after it.
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Collected 25 coins in the first stage, 26 coins in the second. Was promised it collects 20 in each. This submission is a deception! Yes voting no.
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Spikestuff wrote:
Every so often:
I don't believe you.
Ilari wrote:
Yeah, the site code is full of crap. Would take a full rewrite to fix. Unfortunately, such thing is huge effort.
Sorry to hear that. But it is a bit dated, I'll say that.
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RT-55J wrote:
Bisqwit wrote:
Well, frankly, this suggested business model is not likely to produce anything but mere pennies, if even that.
You're forgetting that speedrunning is more popular than ever. Take SDA's marathons for instance. Their popularity and revenue has been increasing exponentially every year since they started out.
You are right. But I still doubt this kind of business model can be profitable in the end, considering the effects of splitting the community that it inevitably has (and that has already been witnessed here).
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Voted no, wasn't entertained, and the play didn't seem optimal. My favourite part:
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Nach wrote:
You're the one who invented using today as a day to test run new objectives and designs.
Actually, Google did. I just think it was a splendid idea. However, it does not apply in this case, because you need a longer period of time to gauge the interest and plausibility of it than just one day. In any case, I can't help but wish to this project a quick and silent death; if not for anything else, but for that it runs against the very principles on which this site was founded. I do commend your HTTP authentication implementation though. P.S. Thanks for granting me the access. Despite what I wrote earlier, I did enjoy watching the new no-magnetbeam Rockman TAS. I can't wait to see the reaction of the bigger audience -- whenever that day might be. Hopefully soon, when the "pro" site fails.
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Nach wrote:
Bisqwit, I understand your frustration, this started as your baby. But adelikat and I aren't getting any younger, and we have children to feed.
Well, frankly, this suggested business model is not likely to produce anything but mere pennies, if even that. I don't know which CDN you are talking about, but from what I know the subscription fees to high-speed content delivery networks are quite high, and if you are going to use one of those, your membership fees just aren't going to cover it and leave you any reasonable amount of money to cover both of your living expenses. I'd say waste of effort, waste of dividing up the audience, and waste of a good website.
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Gee, talk about elitism. Times like this make it hard for me to be indifferent about the future of TASVideos. Feelings of regret of giving over the site do surface. This website was founded on the principle of content being freely available to others. It grew out of the need to provide content and make it accessible in good quality without extra hoops for people to jump through. I do not approve of this project. I do realize the main TASVideos site is going to remain free for all users, but shifting focus, even if so slightly, towards a pay-site means that less content will be available for the public, and this is not an acceptable direction. TASVideos is about cultural preservation. Compare it to a library, or a school (that focuses in just one topic). Barricading that information behind a paywall is a bad idea; one that certainly will stifle the development of TAS culture in the future, if this project is to grow. TL/DR: I do not support this new "pro" site.
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How long ago did we start working on this by the way? I forget.
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And I... was there.
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Request encoding with proper subtitles.
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That is a rather long topic title.
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Thanks Mothrayas. Yeah, the part of the wiki article that was written by me (i.e. most of it) was written with TASing in mind, and TAS tends to ignore the water alltogether. (Except in Rockman 2, but I did never TASed the underwater sections of the Bubbleman stage.)
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Thanks for the heads-up! Hmm, Hitbox's chat is not loading. I wonder what is the status of Xkeeper's restream now.
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NitroGenesis wrote:
I voted no. It's a long walk to a rather meh payoff.
I concur. The majority of movie brought nothing interesting compared to 4205S, and the payload was abysmal compared to the lead-in.
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JRPGs are strong candidates, but even their battles depend on reaction times, so it's a no-go with the >26 second lag that Twitch has. Still, the idea of overcoming the huge lag with clever inventions is enticing. I was thinking of Super Mario Bros earlier, with a system that allows inputting "hold button X for X frames" type inputs (and possibly cancelling those).
Post subject: Re: Appeal to Re-examine Submission
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jlun2 wrote:
I've been wondering, but does JPC-rr work with this game so this can be done?
It does, but its nasty interface has been repelling me. It is quite unintuitive and hard to run battles with a click-to-toggle-key type input system. Also, it would be audiovisually more entertaining to make a TAS with The Ur-Quan Masters (even though it's a different version with slightly different rules), but it does not work with Hourglass.
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Added a HD encoding... Well, as long as it syncs anyway. I think I hit some kind of copy-protection obstacle, but I can't figure it out. Link to video EDIT: Ilari hinted towards me that the original game has a bug with the Sa-Matra hitbox. Indeed, if I stop the movie and steer towards Sa-Matra, I do hit the ship without sailing through it. So why does this not happen in the TAS, when I try to replay it, when the TAS syncs so perfectly up until that point? I suspect this bug may have been fixed in the version that I TASed. Apparently there are several versions of each of these game files. This is the list of all files accessed by the game during the TAS (until the desync), sorted by the number of times the file is read. I crossreferenced a total of four different ersions of this game and this is the list of CRC for those files in each version.
  #Reads Filename  CRC: VersionA VersionM VersionB VersionC            
      57 supox.shp      98e5eca8 98e5eca8 98e5eca8 98e5eca8 (Ok)
      57 syreen.shp     50fb63fe 50fb63fe 50fb63fe 50fb63fe (Ok)
      57 thradd.shp     5559c736 5559c736 5559c736 5559c736 (Ok)
      57 vux.shp        d7aca01e d7aca01e d7aca01e d7aca01e (Ok)
      57 zoqfot.shp     c52d281c c52d281c c52d281c c52d281c (Ok)
      58 blackurq.shp   702dce1a 702dce1a 702dce1a 702dce1a (Ok)
      58 melnorme.shp   c0e10f68 c0e10f68 c0e10f68 c0e10f68 (Ok)
      58 slylandr.shp   4b3e2884 4b3e2884 cb101050 4b3e2884 (Ok)
      58 urquan.shp     3180a4f8 3180a4f8 3180a4f8 3180a4f8 (Ok)
      59 chmmr.shp      cc64ffbd cc64ffbd cc64ffbd cc64ffbd (Ok)
      59 orz.shp        d4b1c67e d4b1c67e d4b1c67e d4b1c67e (Ok)
      59 utwig.shp      bbc64345 bbc64345 bbc64345 bbc64345 (Ok)
      73 shofixti.shp   500f05fe 500f05fe 500f05fe 500f05fe (Ok)
     114 yehat.shp      c44214ea c44214ea c44214ea c44214ea (Ok)
     140 arilou.shp     efb9c4ba efb9c4ba efb9c4ba efb9c4ba (Ok)
     141 spathi.shp     33702ce2 d7977ada 33702ce2 33702ce2 (VersionM is different)
     149 ilwrath.shp    239b9bf7 239b9bf7 239b9bf7 239b9bf7 (Ok)
     156 human.shp      30d8b80e cca3638e fa82187e 41c18110 (ALL DIFFERENT)
     162 pkunk.shp      d86df1d7 d86df1d7 d86df1d7 d86df1d7 (Ok)
     482 druuge.shp     dfcaac59 dfcaac59 dfcaac59 dfcaac59 (Ok)
     651 mycon.shp      145282da 145282da 145282da 145282da (Ok)
     671 starcon.pkg    d86cf385 d86cf385 96cf899b 96cf899b (VersionA=VersionM, VersionB=VersionC)
     760 con2.pkg       868bd9b3 868bd9b3 16759fbd 16759fbd (VersionA=VersionM, VersionB=VersionC)
     898 umgah.shp      e93ac6cb e93ac6cb e93ac6cb e93ac6cb (Ok)
    1142 con1.pkg       0635d1ee 0635d1ee 1b5003a1 1b5003a1 (VersionA=VersionM, VersionB=VersionC)
    5519 starcon2.exe   e49d9c26 e49d9c26 126d0616 126d0616 (VersionA=VersionM, VersionB=VersionC)
    6443 setup.pkg      a26a1978 8e3c659d 4a1dc644 a26a1978 (VersionA=VersionC, VersionM and VersionB are different)
   71449 ip.pkg         becdca89 becdca89 becdca89 becdca89 (Ok)
Notes:
  • Ok = The file is identical in all versions.
  • VersionA, VersionB and VersionC are different versions I found in the Internet.
  • VersionM is the version I have owned since long times ago. It also includes the lander bug. It may also include my edits to the Human and Spathi ships.
  • The TAS was not made with a lander-bug version.
  • Since VersionA and VersionM are identical in most aspects, I think they are the earlier revision (which includes the lander bug) and VersionB & VersionC are the latter revision (that don't).
  • VersionC matches the files in my backup folder of this TAS, making it the strongest candidate.
However, none of these versions syncs with the TAS. I am truly quite baffled. EDIT: Oh, and a major factor why it didn't sync at all for most people was because the time initialization in the emulator depended on the local timezone. Users in UTC+2 were fine.
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Very nice encoding. However, it appears that chroma supersampling (reduction of color resolution by 2x in both directions) was performed before upscaling the resolution, meaning that despite the HD encode, the colors are as bad as they would be, if it were encoded in 424x240 (256x224 + info). This is easily witnessed by observing the dark "halo" around the outlines of the characters on the king's red matress. Similarly, the colors in Cecil's armor are kind of smudged. EDIT: I like the little details you had going on, such as changing into a girl when going under a bridge.
Post subject: Re: Star Control II TAS for Vault?
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It syncs fine for me on multiple computers, EXCEPT that right in the end, the SIS ship flies right through Sa-Matra (in the interplanetary) without intercepting and without a battle. I have no idea what causes it! I'm thinking maybe there's some kind of copy protection mechanism in the game, but I can't figure it out. EDIT: Added High-Quality Encoding: Link to video It syncs just fine until... well, I just explained it.[/video]