TASVideos

Posted: 7/2/2006 10:52 AM

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Bisqwit

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Bag of Magic Food wrote:

Sometimes an emoticon says it all. But only sometimes.

Exactly. Now that I have had time to think about it, I think a palindromical run of SMB is highly possible. SMB has a low desync-factor, which makes it possible to design the movie from both ends at the same time. Basically, you would play 8-1 entirely first, and then reverse it and check where 1-1 goes unrecoverably wrong, and adjust, and repeat. When that section is finished, go 1 stage backwards and repeat, and repeat until you're at middle and the movie is finished. Then play it entirely from beginning to end and check where it desyncs, and adjust it as needed, to both ends at the same time.

Posted: 6/29/2006 10:56 AM

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Bisqwit

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Kyrsimys wrote:

I read through the thread a couple of times and could only find 3 points that support banning using fan translations: 1) The games are not authentic. FFV hasn't been released in English. 2) The translations are constantly being updated. 3) It's faster to use the Japanese version. For point 1): We already have movies of games that are not real. Air, SDW and Mario adventure have all been published because it was decided that the movies are entertaining and deserve to be published. In this case (when I don't think watching the original being played is interesting at all for most people) the entertainment value of using the translation patch heavily outweighs any cons that using a patch could have. As for 2): As Simon said, the latest update for the complete FFV translation patch was made in 1998, which leads me to conclude that there are no more updates coming. Even if there were, I don't see how it could possibly be a problem. For 3): As I said earlier, this doesn't improve the quality of the movie at all. The dialogue boxes in the English version are not significantly slower than in the Japanese version. What I mean by this is that it's not any more annoying to watch the English textboxes go by than it is to watch them go by in Japanese. As someone said, we're not going for the amount of frames here, but for the quality of play and entertainment. Since the exceptions for hacks and translations are made on a case-by-case basis, I don't see the amount of hacks and translations as a problem either. Honestly I can't see any points that support the banning of translations at all.

As for point (1), the issue between different translations of the game is different than between hacks that create entirely new games (such as Super Demo World). Translations masquerade as the original game (the player expects to be seeing the original game), but in fact there's no guarantee that something else hasn't been changed too. (2) If you read my post more carefully, you notice that my claim wasn't that the translations are being "constantly updated". Although that I agree that for a 8 years old translation, chances of new updates are quite small. (3) I agree with your argument on this one. "Not for the amount of frames, but quality of play" is an excellent way to put it. However, I do point out that by the number of hits on the web server, over 10% of our audience comes from Japan, and thus the amount of audience who can read Japanese is considerable. Also, the amount of audience who would pause&unpause the movie to read all the English text (that otherwise often appears too fast to be readable) is unknown, but I don't believe it to over 50%. Hence, percentually speaking, the favor/disfavor being done to audience by the choice of language in the game, is not as major as you let us believe.

Posted: 6/29/2006 10:44 AM

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Bisqwit

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I enjoyed the test run that was made with the English version, and I guess this will be even better, at least strategywise :)

Posted: 6/29/2006 10:36 AM

Post subject: About the rule regarding usage of fan translations

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Bisqwit

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The posts about fan translation were moved into this thread from the FFV WIP thread.

Posted: 6/28/2006 2:19 PM
(Edited: 6/28/2006 7:49 PM)

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Bisqwit

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No arguments were raised against the points that support the ban of unofficial translations at this site, hence Samurai Goroh can continue with the Japanese version hopefully with good conscience :) (Actually, I meant that I can continue to maintain that rule with good conscience.)

Posted: 6/27/2006 11:10 PM

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Bisqwit

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DarkKobold wrote:

Bisqwit: How hard is it to add the subtitles?

Add what subtitles? Adding them is not hard (although they still need to be timed), but writing them is another story.

Posted: 6/27/2006 10:35 PM
(Edited: 6/27/2006 10:40 PM)

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Bisqwit

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Xkeeper wrote:

Does the code numbers go...

The only prerequisite is the left-to-right direction, which is indicated by the arrow. Up-to-down is assumed to be obvious. But I wrote it so that it does not matter whether it's counted by rows or columns. Either way gives always the same result.

Posted: 6/27/2006 10:13 PM

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Bisqwit

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samurai goroh wrote:

And I asked Bisqwit if pressing some extra buttons (or just longer time, in this case) would be ok, and he it doesn't mind, so it's not relevant to change them...

Actually, the question that you I understood you asked, was whether pressing buttons longer than necessary is ok when it does not change anything. When it changes something, i.e. does something noticeable, such as changing the character's pose from fighting into running, it's the matter of style. Just doing what happens to work is "no style". The guidelines recommend seeking style.

Posted: 6/27/2006 6:12 PM

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Bisqwit

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I don't agree with your MM3 example, but I do agree strongly with your message, Kyrsimys. We publish movies here for entertainment (at least that's my view), and gaining more speed by exchanging the game completely is a cheap, somewhat despisable, way to gain that speed, when it makes the movie less entertaining to watch. It is not an author's shortcoming to wait if the game simply offers no other way. It is not honorless. But choosing a different game version is a honorless way to gain speed. Yes, I know we have precedents -- precedents where even I'm doing the opposite of what I just said, such as Rygar. But in case of Rygar, it didn't sacrifice any entertainment value. So that's why I'd like if someone could counterargue my reason for the rule Samurai Goroh was referring to.

Posted: 6/27/2006 5:56 PM
(Edited: 6/27/2006 6:35 PM)

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Bisqwit

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samurai goroh wrote:

Well, it has to be on the original, otherwise it couldn't be submitted here

And that's why I asked, if someone could think of a good enough excuse that allows making an exception of the rule. The rule exists to avoid version conflicts, because translators occassionally improve their work and it's not nice if we have here a movie for a three years old translation version. When the translation is superseded, immediately the movie becomes old and without meaning (the video content and timings all change), even if we still have the translation patch on this site, available for download. Also, translation is a very big work, and translators take great pride in their work. A translation is part of the translator's portfolio. If we publish a movie that uses a certain translation, and that translation becomes obsolete some day because the translator wasn't happy with some part of the translation, it means we are still distributing their old work, that they weren't happy with. It's bad publicity for the translator. They would much more likely to be represented with the newer translation. It's not a question of vote -- it's a question of reason.

Posted: 6/27/2006 5:49 PM
(Edited: 6/29/2006 10:43 AM)

Post subject: About the rule regarding usage of fan translations

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Bisqwit

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Kyrsimys wrote:

Sucks it's on the original, I'm just not entertained at all when I can't see directly what's happening. Good luck to you on your run anyway.

Any ideas for alternatives? [Thread parts moved from the FF5 WIP thread.]

Posted: 6/26/2006 6:45 PM

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Bisqwit

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xebra wrote:

I think the "utterly useless" part is why I find the idea so compelling!

Good luck!

Posted: 6/26/2006 6:42 PM

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Bisqwit

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You could probably plan tetris ahead from both ends. It's just incredibly difficult, and utterly useless. The foremost impression would be "this player has too much free time".

Posted: 6/26/2006 6:04 PM

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Bisqwit

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In the European version of SMB, the clock works differently than in the USA and Japanese versions. It is possible to get different results there. Edit: But that doesn't sound like the European version. Ps: who's = who is; the word you were looking for is "whose".

Posted: 6/26/2006 5:19 PM

Post subject: Re: Possible downtime 2006-06-26

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Bisqwit

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Reconfigurations done now. Unfortunately, the modem stopped responding to its HTTP calls... I'll have to fix that some day, by resetting it to factory settings... But hopefully, the line performance has increased now. If not, blame TNSe. ;)

Posted: 6/26/2006 12:53 PM

Post subject: Possible downtime 2006-06-26

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Bisqwit

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Later at evening today, I'll try reconfiguring some settings in my ADSL modem/router. It will cause a downtime that will last for something between 1 hour to 4 hours, depending how lucky I am. :) My modem is currently configured as a router / NAT box, but because its resources are rather limited as we have seen, I'll try to configure it as a dummy bridge or something, and configure the server as a gateway instead, in the hope that it will ease the modem's load; it would only have to pass packets from place A to place B without concerning itself about connection tracking and stuff.

Posted: 6/26/2006 12:46 PM

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Bisqwit

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OmnipotentEntity wrote:

That would require Bisqwit giving someone at least partial control over the funds the site generates.

That would be an idea worth considering.

Posted: 6/25/2006 2:09 PM
(Edited: 6/27/2006 1:13 PM)

Post subject: How do I do it

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Bisqwit

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Currently, I'm taking these measures to protect the forums from spambots: 1. Avoiding having the forums listed at Google and other search engines. 1a. Having the noindex,nofollow robots meta attributes at the forum pages. 1b. Having /forum on the forbid list in robots.txt. 2. Requiring manual account activation. This stops all automatic spambots. I believe that every single case when the account has been activated, has been done manually. Spammers do manual labour, believe it or not. They just lack the moral. (I believe that the fact that spammers often spam also custom-designed BBSes is a proof of this.) 3. Often viewing the MostActivePosters page. Besides that it helps me spot oversize avatars, it also lets me see new registrations, and if they have activated or not and whether they have an URL or not. If it hasn't been activated and it has an URL, it's marked "SPAM". 3a. I view the profiles of users who have registered recently and have an URL in their profile or look otherwise alarming. If they look spammy, I delete them without warning. 4. Having an active moderator base and effecient means of spotting new posts/topics (NesVideoAgent). 5. Once or twice in a year I run a script that purges nonactive users. --EDIT-- 6. A spammer trap link in the registration e-mail, and the mechanism altered from default. 7. Another spammer trap link in the user registration form, mechanism altered from default. 8. A custom-made captcha in the registration form. I heard that the one in phpBB has been compromised. I have made three different versions. Here are samples:

sample 1, source

sample 2, source

sample 3, source (In case you wonder, the "号" symbol in captcha 3 is the Japanese symbol of a number.) The samples are randomly generated and cached for different lengths of time, so they may or may not change when you reload them. Each of them represents a puzzle where a 6-character code is the answer. The code consists of letters and/or numbers. Design goals: - Should not require better English knowledge than an average Japanese person has - Should not be overly difficult for a human - Should be quite difficult for a computer programmer, at least so that it discourages attempting to abuse it - Relatively simple to generate in PHP, without noticeable CPU time usage For reference, this is (an example of) the phpBB default captcha:

Posted: 6/25/2006 2:00 PM
(Edited: 7/2/2006 10:26 AM)

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Bisqwit

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Problem dealt with. [Edit: Tampered a bit with the timestamp of this posting.]

Posted: 6/25/2006 12:14 PM

Post subject: Re: quick question

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Bisqwit

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vorge wrote:

Watching the movie replay with snes9x. Why do you just sit in the first fight after killing 1 of the people?

Often, "quick questions" have their answers in the FAQ (Answers to Frequently Asked Questions). Your question is likely answered in Desync Help: http://tasvideos.org/DesyncHelp.html

Posted: 6/24/2006 6:01 PM

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Bisqwit

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Highness wrote:

It did

What did? Did what?

Posted: 6/22/2006 8:06 PM

Post subject: Re: dual AVI

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Bisqwit

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moozooh wrote:

How about lowering the quantizer value a little bit? There seem to be way much blocking.

This wasn't a final encoding. It was just a quick sampling of the raw AVI I prepared.

moozooh wrote:

Bisqwit wrote:
When watching the dual avi, I notice I'm only watching the camhack movie... to me it's far more entertaining.

Please be more careful in your quotes. I did not write that statement.

Posted: 6/22/2006 8:03 PM

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Bisqwit

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Baxter wrote:

When watching the dual avi, I notice I'm only watching the camhack movie... to me it's far more entertaining.

But in my opinion, it is important to have also the unchanged one, because without it, the audience might be wondering why does Sonic stop and do nothing for a while (which is probably caused by waiting for scenes to be activated or something).

Posted: 6/22/2006 7:48 PM

Post subject: dual AVI

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Bisqwit

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Here's an example how a dual AVI would look like... (except that it still needs the proper onscreen text): http://bisqwit.iki.fi/kala/test1d.avi (4.7 MB) Comments? Edit: Fixed URL

Posted: 6/22/2006 11:44 AM

Post subject: Re: signature tests.

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Bisqwit

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xebra wrote:

Ok, that's ugly. Bye bye!

moved into the right thread.

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