I'm surprised no-one has mentioned BlueMaxima's Flashpoint. For context, the Flash engine is going to be discontinued this year and web browsers will stop supporting it over the coming years, so some people have formed a conservatory for Flash games. If there are issues with using it, you could ask the people involved with it. I don't have any technical knowledge over how it works, but I'm mentioning this because it seems relevant.
Related to the current discussion here is a conjecture I made back in the year 2000 while I took Calculus in high school.
Conjecture:
dn/dxn x1/x has exactly n positive real zeroes, all simple.
It is probably provable that there are at least n roots by abusing Rolle's theorem, as there are essentially always going to be 'roots' (or something close enough to roots to enable Rolle's theorem to work) at 0 and infinity, and there are n-1 roots for n-1 (as an induction hypothesis).
1)
However, even after this simplification I'm stuck. Basically I need to calculate all the possible ways of choosing 5 cards from a deck of 44 in such a manner that three of them are A, J and 10, and divide that number by the total number of ways to choose 5 cards from a deck of 44. That second number is 44 choose 5, but I'm stuck with that first number. (Complicating things is that one or two of the aces, jacks or tens may be in the hand of the fourth player...)
By division into cases (8 cases for combinations of either having or not having an Ace, a Jack, or a 10), it can be calculated by taking 44 choose 5 (all the hands), then subtracting the number of hands where an Ace appears, where a Jack appears, and when a 10 appears (including double counting); then adding the number of hands where neither an Ace nor Jack appear, neither Ace nor 10 appear, and neither Jack nor 10 appear, and then removing the cases where none of them appear.
Flogging it out gives me 41,584 possible hands with an Ace, Jack and 10.
You can't use just a uniform distribution. (ie, Ceil(U((0, y]))) If we check on the given 2.5 sided die this will give E = 1.8 vs 1.75 ideal.
At least, you can't use a uniform distribution from 0 to y.
Also, what is that variance formula? It gives a variance for a dice with 1 side equal to a quarter, when there is only 1 output value (and hence zero variance).
The prime number theorem proof outline on Wikipedia is somewhat understandable (this is coming from a person who hasn't yet started uni), and involves the zeros of the Riemann zeta function (subject of the Riemann hypothesis).
I have the impression that the viewers (at least those more in the know) are more critical of TASes in the stream than regular speedruns. They are more ready to give leniency to human speedrunners and allow for mistakes and somewhat boring segments, but are much more critical of TASes and expect a lot more entertainment and "value".
They want TASes that make them laugh, they want TASes that impress, that do something impressive, rather than just looking like a regular speedrun that they have already been watching for days.
The run being tool-assisted needs to be blatantly obvious, rather than subtle. TASes that absolutely break the game (eg. Megaman) look more impressive than TASes where the tool-assistance is more hidden and would need to be explained (such as random drops in Castlevania).
The TASes would likewise be preferably relatively short. I have the feeling that viewers are ready to watch a 2-hour regular speedrun, but if a TAS goes for more than 5 minutes they get bored. I might be completely wrong here, but that's the impression I have.
Perhaps a mix of the two? First show like three short TASes that just break the game (as in are complete glitchfests, rather than taking over the console) and are quite short (5 minutes absolute maximum), and then perhaps a longer one (maybe 15 minutes at most).
It seems like the SNES Family Feud would be good, as it is quite short (6-7 mins. with plenty of opportunities to cut the ruun short), very obviously abusing glitches and very entertaining.
The Riemann Hypothesis was always a bit weird for me, as unlike other famously unsolved conjectures of its kind there doesn't seem to be a heuristic reason why it should be true. I understand what the question is asking but it just doesn't seem at all obvious that the zeroes of the function have any reason to all line up as they apparently do.
You don't seem to be the only one thinking that. Apparently, John Littlewood, an expert in mathematical analysis in the early 20th century, said that he believed it was false for practically that reason (there was no real reason for it to be true), and Eric Landau, an expert in complex analysis, once posed why it should be true to another mathematician.
It is good to have some feedback (this is not sarcastic). Considering the little planning and design that went into it (this was made from Microsoft Paint), I don't mind that much; it is the only way I could contribute with minimal programming experience (none of which is in C, C++ etc).
Spikestuff wrote:
I'm pitching ideas here.
Considering my lack of artistic ability (as demonstrated), you would probably stand a better chance making a good logo than I would (the logo was the best I could think of...)
PS Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc.
We already researched and concluded on IRC that those games are 16-bit, and therefor not possible to support in Hourglass. Hourglass operates on 32-bit only as it is now. 64-bit is possible, if someone puts the work in.
For 16-bit games, you need Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 installed in JPC-rr.
Tomb Raider 2 is 32-bit game from year 1997.
I'm struggling to see the relevance; he mentioned 3 games (that can be individually Googled checked), and Tomb Raider 2 is not one of them.
[*] In Super Smash Bros Melee,
- a Pokémon out of a Pokéball will not appear twice in a row.
- Mr. Game & Watch's side-B (Judgement) will not show the same number twice in a sequence of 3 numbers. See here for more information. This behavior is the same in Brawl but it was removed in Smash 4.
- Mewtwo can be unlocked depending on time played, I think. And it accounts for all controllers plugged in. So if you have 4 controllers plugged in, you can shorten the time until Mewtwo is unlocked considerably. See here.
Something similar to the property of Judgement and/or the Pokeball: Peach's forward-smash is randomly selected out of a tennis racket (with more knockback), a pan (with more damage) and a golf club (more range). You cannot get the same one twice in a row, meaning that doing a forward-smash can make the desired weapon become a 50-50 chance rather than 1 in 3 (or impossible if you just used it). I do not know if this is constant throughout the series.
Something else this reminds me of: for both Ike's Erupt and Donkey Kong's Giant Punch, the attack power increases the longer you charge, except when fully charged, where it gets substantially weaker. Another interesting property is that the KO Upppercut is charged with 100% damage to Little Mac or 333% dealt by him.
Here's a problem I thought about recently.
If you take the last digit of 102564 and put it first, you get 410256, which is 4 times the original number.
Similarly, if you take the last digit of 142857 and put it first, you get 714285, which is 5 times the original number.
Problem: What is the smallest positive integer such that if you take its last digit and put it first, you get a number which is 6 times the original? (As usual, numbers don't start with leading zeros.)
Spoilers contain explanation of working and notes on why it is so large (which makes no sense without the explanation).
Solving ax10n+b=6(10b+a) gives 59b=a(10n-6). Solving mod 59 (and removing the factor of a, a single-digit number and hence not divisible by 59) gives 10n-6=0, or 10n=6. Solving for n gives n=57.
Solving the resulting equation gives b=16949152542372881355932203389830508474576271186440677966 times a, and substituting a=6 gives the smallest value when it works (if a is smaller, b would not have enough digits):
1016949152542372881355932203389830508474576271186440677966 times 6 equals 6101694915254237288135593220338983050847457627118644067796.
The reason why it is so big is that 59 has no smaller divisors, whereas the similar numbers for 4 and 5 (39 and 49) have smaller factors that can be contained in a (3 and 7). the one for seven does (69(LOL) equals 3 times 23), but 8 and 9 are both prime, making even bigger numbers. 3 and 2 have smaller primes (19 and 29 respectively).
PS: When I started, only Mothayrays's post was in the forum. By the time I finished this, BrunoVisnadi posted the answer, so... nice to see we have the same answer.
L-cancelling (and possibly wavedashing) seems to fall into this category, as it definitely was intended, but remained unnoticed for a while and is very often used.
Interesting thought: If someone comes up with a way to modify the Xbox itself to record/run TASes (and people allegedly have modified Xboxes before), then the legalistic issues become moot (he would be using an Xbox to play the game, which is fully legal) and the software would be getting executed in the Xbox itself.
I'm only a TAS fan, not a creator thus far, so don't mind me too much
So you're basically the equivalent of the people watching these runs, telling the organisers (I would say 'us' if I was one of 'them') what you (and viewers as a whole) would find entertaining.
People should consider absolutely every word you have said.
(BTW, searching 'executes arbitrary code' gives no 3D games, i.e. we cannot do an ACE for a 3D game yet; but it would be cool if we could.)
The fact there's a serious paper on a video game of any type amazes me.
In theory, due to NP-completeness, work on Tetris could win you a million-dollar maths prize.
This is basically due to optimizing Tetris for different groups of tiles is as 'hard' (genuine technical term) as other problems, and the 'hardness' can be transferred between problems such that making one 'easy' makes all of them 'easy'. The Mario paper seems very similar, but with level design instead of tiles.
The amusing part is that this means work on TASes could potentially collapse Internet security, by making encryption algorithms 'easy' to break. This is only likely to happen for Mario Maker (due to the different level designs), but it is an interesting thought.
Maybe either the Achievement Unlocked trilogy, Cursor 10 or the Hapland Trilogy?
All of these would need mouse support unfortunately. :(
I second the Achievement Unlocked trilogy, and nominate most other games that jmtb02 has made (more specifically, the This Is The Only Level series, EPIC COMBO!!! (the title is in all caps), and Don't Give Up).
The TITOL series again needs mouse support, and this and the Achievement Unlocked series would be ridiculous to get an emulator for (I am surprised that Flash can actually do some of the stuff he gets it to do).
Also, only NOW do I remember Fancy Pants Adventure 1 (and Fancy Pants Adventure 2), a game so notable it has its own Wikipedia page.
A bigger reason to use the PC version is that there is still no accepted emulator for PS2, whereas Hourglass accepted (although Hourglass Resurrection is being worked on).
"It is said that, to this day, jlun2 is still laughing."
The idea isn't that bad, but it does come with it's own difficulties.
The biggest one being that you need a complete (additional) Windows installation, and higher hardware requirements.
Also going by the state of VirtualBox (the only, to my knowledge, open source VM), there is a lot to do in order to get it running stable enough to TAS with. I base this of VirtualBox not being particularly stable for regular usage today. VMware is much more stable, but not open source.
So basically it could work but the technology is not there yet?
It's pretty safe to say that it is easier to just use something like Hourglass.
However, emulating a platform (eg flash) on a different platform (that Hourglass could use) kinda seems like a good idea...
(I have little-to-no programming knowledge, so... be warned)
The kingdom hearts run could be a one-off. I have actually seen a TAS of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which was released exclusively for the console generation after the PS2 (and Windows); however, he has straight-out refused to give out the emulator is refusing, making verification impossible (no input file to use) and setting back emulator development by about a decade (this may not be an exaggeration; consider that we don't have a PS2 emulator).
TL;DR even if the run is a TAS on a great emulator, it may not mean that PS2 TASing could be done for other games.
Edit: it was a PC TAS (derp), however individual games can use their own emulator... I think.
One point that needs to be touched on: Video games are very unrealistic and augmented reality's 'added realism' with gyroscopes and the like need to account for that. Unless you can parkour like Mirror's Edge, snipe like TF2 and run for ages like Skyrim, then these games cannot be fully realistic (even if you could, Octodad and Kirby would be a buzzkill). Augmented reality would probably limit you to only doing what you're able to do in real life, and then playing those games would probably not be as enriching because of it. Some level of augmentation would be good (like having the camera move with your head), but that, I believe, is already standard with the Occulus Rift.
TL;DR you do not play a person with average speed, strength etc. in video games, so your controller (ie you) shouldn't limit you to those options.
I'd like to see one for Sonic Heroes, if only for the insanely fast team vs. team battles. I defeated Team Sonic as Team Rose in under 3 seconds, and despite it being the easiest battle, the others may also be fast.
(Inset pithy Sanic joke here)