Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Why not in the meantime use some filter that takes the color values on the pixels on the edges of the gap, and fill in the gap by using those? It's sometimes used to "remove" watermarks from pirated TV shows, etc. It would make the gap look like opaque glass instead of a black bar. It's not much of an improvement, though.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Wow, that's a surprise. Uh, nice job, I guess! It's a good run because it's almost identical to mine. :) Although to be honest, you could have made your movements more TAS-like. ie make a little dance at the end of bosses, never walk in a straight line for long, never jump unless it is necessary, etc. It's more aesthetically pleasing and makes the game feel more pwned.
But really, very good job! I thought I had squeezed every last frame out of this game, but I guess I was wrong! This must have required quite a lot of patience.
I'll now give you 5 or so years and then get this below 7 minutes. :)
Youtube'd for the lazy. I hope you don't mind.
Damn, this is amazing. Awesome job, MUGG! What a ridiculously elaborate series of maneuvers for one gap!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
flagitious wrote:
Edit: figured out your trick for lvl xx. That is really clever but the super low time makes it easier to figure out since there are only so many things you can do in that time. If you really wanted to boggle there mind you could have made it purposefully like 30 seconds slower :)
I know! I should have made it as little fster than the #1 record as possible, then just repeating if it was ever retaken. :) Unfortunately I'm not that slimy, and didn't realize that until afterwards anyway.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
roxahris wrote:
Doesn't the original Half-Life use a different engine to Source (Like GoldSrc?) I think it does...
Wikipedia agrees. It's a modified version of the Quake engine. (I thought it was a modified Quake 2 engine, but apparently, Wikipedia disagrees with that).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Okay, I'll try
4.) Pious - Religious
7.) Ubiquitous - available everywhere, common
8.) Superfluous - redundant
10.) Cacophony - the opposite of "symphony"
11.) Deprecate - if something is deprecated, it should not be used anymore because something better is available, but it still works it's so not exactly the same as obsolete
25.) Obfuscate - Clutter up to make impossible to comprehend
33.) Egress - Leave?
Those are some obscure words. Many of them I have seen before but I just now realize I don't fully understand what they actually mean.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
You can disable all the dialog for finished levels in the options. All the delays are removed, including all dialog and mini-cutscenes. The game is very very speedrun-friendly.
Edit: Alternatively, you can press enter to instantly skip the current dialog/cutscene.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
nitsuja wrote:
Temporal definitely deserves a mention here. Not only can you travel back in time to a specific time of your choice, but you can directly interact with your past selves (like push them around or jump on their heads) and they can interact with each other. Each one is just playing back its old input track, so you can get desyncs and usually you want to avoid that, but you can also do incredibly tricky things where you record input that doesn't make any sense yet and guess/plan where your future self will lend a hand to turn that input into meaningful actions. The game allows but penalizes time paradoxes, where you prevent your other selves from returning to the past, but it's also possible to change what they did in such a way that the resulting alternate reality still isn't a paradox. I think it's even possible to kill yourself in the past and then go back in time again and rescue yourself from your other self.
That probably isn't the best description of its gameplay, but this game is quite challenging, a real mind-bender. And it has many things that remind one of the tools used to make TASes (more than I've described here).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Swedishmartin wrote:
Blublu wrote:
My old computers tend to sicken me by the time I get a new one
Well, don't get new ones then.
That's like saying don't buy new food if your old food goes bad.
throw the old ones on the dump
I fail to see how that's any different from not throwing them away, environmentally speaking. They'll be thrown away or recycled eventually either way, so what's your point?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
I remember a time when an extra computer meant something to me. I could set up Linux on it, or something (not that I ever actually did that). Now computers are everywhere. We're drowning in old computers. Even laptops aren't special anymore. *sigh*
My old computers tend to sicken me by the time I get a new one, and I can't stand having it around. Even my current computer is now ancient. What a loud, weak, hulking beast. *shudder* What's worst about it is that I usually recycle at least some part of my old computer into my new one, so it's not even a usable computer anymore, which means it turns into useless junk which I still don't want to throw away. It's very depressing.
That said, if it is a usable piece of equipment, please donate it to someone who can use it rather than just throw it away.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
In my experience when I was making a semi-crappy speedrun (which has since been bested by someone else), I determined that the missles, and in fact all non-essential guns, are just a waste of time. You can annihilate anything with level 1 sword extremely fast. You can't fire another sword until the current one is gone, but if you are "inside" the boss, or close enough, it'll hit instantly and your firing rate is only determined by the rate at which you can press the button. Boss = very dead.
In fact, in a TAS, you'll probably be wasting bosses in less than a second using the sword.
Also, if you don't have missles, no missle pickups appear, so you gain more xp and life.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
It's kind of surreal to me that he's dead. He has been so much a part of popular culture and everything. I never saw it coming that he could actually die. And so young, too, only 50 years old. I'm not really a fan or anything, but some of his songs are really good. He was very talented. On the whole pedo thing, he was not convicted, so that means we have to consider him innocent. Of course he was fucking nuts! But that much money and fame will make a fruitcake out of almost anyone.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Hmm. If you gotta find some roms, I don't know how to help.
On a totally unrelated note, Google is often very helpful for finding things on the internet. I just have to make sure I include plenty of keywords to make sure Google knows what I'm looking for.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Long before I saw my first TAS (Super Mario 3), this idea had been floating around in my head for a long time. I knew about emulators. I knew about savestates. And in my mind, I put those two together.
I didn't have the idea of input files, but I did have the idea of "continuous play as far as the console is concerned". So it wasn't really hard idea to grasp at first, though I didn't really get the ramifications of it until I tried making a TAS myself (I failed miserably).
Honestly, the first time I saw the Super Mario 3 video, I thought it was someone playing for real, because 1) I didn't know an emulator with this capability existed and 2) I wasn't familiar enough with Super Mario Bros. 3 physics to realize how utterly impossible this would be for a human to do.
When I figured out how it was done, I was ecstatic. I wanted to see every game ever made done with the same method. This was so awesome it almost made my head explode.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Mario Kart: DD is incredibly easy. Just master the slide-boost and you breeze through the game easily. Same with Mario Kart DS.
I honestly don't remember how I fared in Mario Kart Wii. If I remember correctly, you just do the same until you happen to not get a blue shell up your ass on the final lap every time. Yeah, I don't know how you're supposed to get three stars on 150cc. Honestly, it's impossible.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
I think the first post is just output from one of those "wall of text" generators. Anyway, in Iceland the milk comes in boxes shaped like the one on the far right in the picture Bisqwit posted. Other configurations are stupid because they don't stack.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
The MediaFire links didn't work for me until I wend into the address bar and added a space at the end of the url. Will edit with my opinion after I've downloaded/watched.
Edit: Yeah. To be honest, that looked very unoptimized. I'm pretty sure you can go much faster by making loops. Also, you should tap the yellow star boxes before Kirby hits them, that way he won't slow down. Still though, I do see potential in this game. I just think it'll be one of the harder games to TAS, possibly one of the hardest, due to the "looseness" of the stylus input and how the game character reacts to the lines. If you know what I mean.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
BadPotato wrote:
Blublu wrote:
The features should be kept pretty simple, or at least implementable, for us. We can't program an advanced AI that will anticipate your action according to the rules of chess, for example. That's not to say we're *completely* inept.
I don't think such AI would be required... thought, complexe feature are alway interesthing in a maze :)
I was just trying to think of the most extreme possible possibility. But I'll probably have to code in some kind of "path map" thing so that an enemy can find its way towards the player. At the moment, I have no clue how I would approach such a problem... but I'm sure I'll figure it out. Or one of the other guys I'm supposed to be doing this project with,
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(67)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
Yeah, we know about nethack. But we're all pretty inexperienced in game programming (or any programming for that matter) so I don't know. The features should be kept pretty simple, or at least implementable, for us. We can't program an advanced AI that will anticipate your action according to the rules of chess, for example. That's not to say we're *completely* inept. Our dream is to have the game connect to an online database for highscores and stuff, though we don't know who would host such a database. Does anyone know of a free database service thing? Otherwise we'll probably (and actually, the course requires it) set up our own mssql database thing. (supposedly it's easier than using mysql becuase we're using Microsoft Visual Basic).
andymac: Thanks!
