Posts for Dada


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For real, TASVideos is comprised of mostly semi-autistic nerds who play games in frame advance mode for fun, myself included, so it honestly doesn't surprise me. :)
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Warp wrote:
Of course many top-1 songs will be forgotten soon afterwards, and it may even be that the majority (meaning over 50%) of them are such. However, that doesn't mean there aren't lots of counter-examples to this as well. For example Bob Dylan seems to have three albums published in the 70's that got to the #1 in the US charts (in 74, 75 and 76). Now, I'm not such a music enthusiast as to know if those specific albums/songs are still remembered today, but knowing the popularity of Dylan I'd say they are probably at least well-known. And this was not just a trend in the 70's. The latest US chart #1 album by Dylan seems to be from as recent as 2009.
I guess Dylan is kind of exceptional in that way. I'm a big fan of his but I have no idea which albums were so highly ranked. He's different from many of his peers in that he survived the 60s and the 70s to begin with, but also because he successfully made a comeback with a different, more genuine style rather than just a rehash of what made him famous in the past. Few artists can do that.
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I checked a couple of video on Nicovideo but couldn't learn how they made this GTA3 TAS. I'm pretty sure they used Hourglass. Are we sure this is the PS2 version rather than the Windows version? They might have used Hourglass on a PS2 emulator.
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I was wondering what such an old run was doing on top of the published movies list. Nice to see a new encode.
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Saying "this game needs no introduction" is a trope, so saying that and then negating it immediately is a subversion. </endless_tvtropes_discussion> (not really seriously arguing this so don't worry)
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Flygon wrote:
What is this, TVTropes? Besides, that's a Double Subversion!
Not really, because "this game needs no introduction" isn't a subversion to begin with, because giving an introduction to a game isn't a trope.
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Actually, that's not so different from what DarkKobold said I think, Warp. I mean do you know what the #1 ranked song was in 1977? Or the #2? Or ask yourself the same question for any year in the 70s. Top 100 songs tend to be forgettable, while those who consistently make good music, such as Bob Dylan or Frank Zappa or you name it, are remembered long after their music is released. Even though those musicians don't crack the top 100 that often.
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Just subvert the whole thing. "This game needs no introduction, but we're giving you one anyway."
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Orange Claw Hammer wrote:
Hi, sorry to bump this thread without any new info to share or anything. I have a question about a zip route in the Wood Man stage that was found years ago, but is featured in the current speedrun record by nou1. According to this post where Practice/bananaformula/aglasscage first brought it to light on SDA, it requires 1 up+down input. Is this still known to be true, and if so, at what point in the demonstration video of the route (here) is the up+down input required? I would guess around 1:07 but I'm not sure. In nou1's run the same point in that segment of the stage doesn't look like up+down input (here, 12:21 video timestamp, not the timer in the corner of the video feed). I would just ask aglasscage himself if he was around but I haven't seen him online anywhere since January or so.
The easiest way to find out would be to track down the original movie file. You say it's featured in nou1's run? Is his run's movie (input) file available? You can frame advance through the file in FCEUX and press . (I think it's period, might be , or something else) to see the key presses. Then you should be able to see exactly what input is used on what frame. Captain Beefheart rocks by the way.
Post subject: Emulator/site idea: "screenshot frame" flag for movie files
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This is just an idea that popped into my head earlier on IRC. This would basically be a way of automating the screenshot part of a publication. Imagine: you're making a TAS, and halfway through the game something fantastic happens. Could be a glitch or a great example of skillful playing; at any rate, it's a good screenshot candidate. Why not make it so that authors can then hit and record a special input key that marks that frame a "screenshot frame"? That way they can mark any number of frames they want. Then, when they submit their video, our system could (where available) play back the movie file and take screenshots at the frame numbers the author marked, and automatically place them in the topic. Failing that, we'd have a list of frame numbers the author thinks are good screenshots. Anyway, I'm not sure if this is worth the effort, but I think it's a neat idea anyhow. It would require making a modification to the supported emulators, the movie file formats, and to the site's code, so it's probably too laborious.
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I don't think we always need to have introductions for every game, but the whole "this game needs no introduction" thing is overused if it's used more than once.
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Mothrayas wrote:
Made another one: Super Grass Rescue. With Wanted level 6 for added measure.
Surprising how little it mattered that the entire army was after you while you were running around doing a mission.
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On an unrelated note, why does your saucepan say ゆで? edit: ah, that means... boiled, right?
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Just wrote something in Zeupar's topic on branch names that I think is relevant here. Our categories for glitches aren't precise enough, in my opinion. Personally, I'd like to see these categories for glitches: 1. Uses RAM/save corruption glitches 2. Uses out-of-bounds glitches 3. Foregoes glitches infeasible in real time We also assume "regular glitches" are used by default, so there's no need to make mention of that. Now, that third category in particular requires some explanation, because it's something new that we haven't talked about all that much. Basically, this would explicitly allow the submissions of movies that forego the use of glitches that real time speedrunners don't use because they're infeasible (such as the zipping trick in MM1, which is so difficult and luck-dependent to pull off that it isn't used). I realize this is a bit controversial, but I think it's a legitimate concept that warrants some thought. The other two seem simple enough. We should probably assume that runs do not use either type 1 or type 2 glitches by default, since most of them don't, and only add the "uses type n glitches" category when it is warranted.
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Personally, I'd like to see even more categories: 1. Uses RAM/save corruption glitches 2. Uses out-of-bounds glitches 3. Foregoes glitches infeasible in real time We also assume "regular glitches" are used by default, so there's no need to make mention of that. Now, that third category in particular requires some explanation, because it's something new that we haven't talked about all that much. Basically, this would explicitly allow the submissions of movies that forego the use of glitches that real time speedrunners don't use because they're infeasible (such as the zipping trick in MM1, which is so difficult and luck-dependent to pull off that it isn't used). I realize this is a bit controversial, but I think it's a legitimate concept that warrants some thought. The other two seem simple enough. We should probably assume that runs do not use either type 1 or type 2 glitches by default, since most of them don't, and only add the "uses type n glitches" category when it is warranted. EDIT: crossposting this to the right topic. As far as branch names go, they should follow logically from category names, so maybe we should focus on the other topic instead and then come back here when we reach a consensus there. If we go with something like this, then type 1 could be called "RAM glitched", type 2 could be called "glitched" and type 3 could be called "no glitches". That seems reasonable, but it's really a matter of naming.
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It seems that once every 6 or so frames there's a lag frame. Kind of annoying. Text skipping is also super annoying.
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Since Nicovideo is Japanese, it would be good to try and fit in. It's a really neat website with an active TAS scene, and having more communication between the two communities would be very beneficial to both of us. I've actually been thinking about starting a blog with speedrun/competitive gaming updates that would include Nicovideo content, because too much cool stuff is being released there without anyone outside of Japan knowing.
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sgrunt wrote:
<adelikat> I have no idea how to pronounce DarkKobold <adelikat> so much so I avoided saying your name when we were laying lol
For real that must be the most awkward thing ever.
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Aktan wrote:
Dada wrote:
PS: Youtube's video player is a derivative of the JW Player.
How did you find this out?
Sorry, I went and checked and it seems I'm wrong. Maybe Youtube changed their player since then to an original creation. I distinctly remember reading about this maybe two years ago. In any case the files (Youtube's player and JW 5.7) don't show any resemblance right now. edit: apparently this was true only for the first version back in 2005.
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Slowking wrote:
Just let the TASer of the game in question decide. It's his project so he should know best. Problem solved.
That doesn't really fix the problem in the majority of cases. Most players won't know what the "right answer" is, and frankly, most won't care. This is something we're expected to know. If the players are allowed to choose, most of the time they'll just say "you guys decide this".
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Aktan wrote:
As to why the differences in CPU usage, I really can't say what is the cause. Maybe overlays of ADs, maybe what Dada mention, but regardless, YouTube did not send you some special player. The only thing YouTube added is a GUI to the Flash Player.
It's pretty easy to do things incorrectly in Flash and cause needless CPU usage. But I doubt they're doing that. One major difference between Youtube and other sites is that Youtube's pages are relatively clean and free of other advertisements or heavy content. The only ads they have, other than the ones in the video player, are lightweight ones from AdSense. Flash ads/banners by third parties are some of the most notorious CPU hogs. (Should be noted that DailyMotion also has relatively light pages.) PS: Youtube's video player is a derivative of the JW Player.
Warp wrote:
Wouldn't that affect bandwidth requirements rather than the video decoding/rendering speed?
The quality probably doesn't matter too much for decoding speed. But the size does. The lower quality encodes are simply smaller in dimensions, so they're easier to decode.
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"Low glitch" corresponds to the Forgoes time-saving glitches category, 5 movies in total have it even if they're not all named like that.
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If we're going to not use aspect ratio correction, we should at least allow an exception for when games clearly need it. Like Abe's Oddysee, which doesn't switch resolutions like FF8 does but does have circular artwork in lots of locations that only looks good in 4:3.
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I honestly think we should have published it as soon as the first HD version was ready and then changed it in case it would be necessary. It's time to just do this, regardless of which Youtube version we use.
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Aktan wrote:
YouTube being a light player has nothing to do with YouTube. All flash player are based from Adobe themselves. You did not download something special from YouTube to playback their videos.
It might be that some streaming sites use an actual streaming server to deliver content while Youtube uses actual files. In any case, Youtube loads content very conservatively (it only preloads a small amount of content quickly, and everything else after that is given minimal bandwidth until the user reaches the point where his buffer is starting to get empty). It's partly the loading of the stream that causes CPU usage (you might have noticed CPU usage drastically going down after loading is complete) so this might very well have been due to Youtube's optimizations.