Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Ferret Warlord wrote:
I suppose I'm the only one who thinks this is no longer fun to watch?
Maybe, but what do you suggest as an alternative? A "glitchless" run? Define "glitch" (especially in this case, where the amount of major, and especially very minor, glitches can probably be counted in the dozens, if not approaching the hundreds). Whichever list of "banned" glitches you might come up with, it will be completely arbitrary.
Besides, many people do enjoy seeing the game completely broken. We go beyond the normal. We are the Matrix.
We talk about this on IRC on occasion. Basically, my belief is that we should allow separate runs for some games based not on basics such as 100% completion/any% etc., but simply on route.
Basically, if a game allows for several different feasible routes, we should be allowed to record one run for each. "Feasible" means that it's not just any arbitrary route, but one that defers to regular speedruns.
As an example, a separate Mega Man run would not use zipping, but it might still use pause to do stuff like hit bosses multiple times, because that's an easy technique that speedrunners themselves can perform. Some tricks that involve "escaping the screen" through ways other than what was intended might be perfectly feasible too if it's doable during a regular speedrun.
We could always just resubmit Morimoto's old runs to the site again. :)
This is sort of a separate discussion though, sorry for clogging up this topic.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The Sacred Grounds level in Cave Story (single hardest set of levels in the game that even put the "hidden" last cave to shame) followed by a regular boss and then the real big bad of the game (who has three forms), all without saving, surely that qualifies?
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
exileut wrote:
It's frame perfect so far. I went with not stealing since I don't know how. (Good reason I know) Who knows maybe manipulating the steal and going into the menu to equip it takes the same amount of time as not using it. When you find out how to steal quickly we can compare runs!
What's the alternative to stealing? I thought a Mage Masher steal was pretty much required to be able to use Tidal Wave on the first Black Waltz.
edit: also, you have a lot more to work with for that one first steal. Try to see if there's a difference between waiting a frame before starting a new game (hex edit one frame into the movie file). That might change things. Otherwise, I couldn't really say. One of the memory search gurus should take a look at this.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hey there, I was wondering if you could possibly release the source code for the [.video] tag? A forum I mod has recently switched to SMF2.0 (which is very nice forum software by the way) and now that it's workable again we'd like to start improving it. A tag like [.video] would be a brilliant start.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
I once read a wonderful introduction to special relativity (IIRC from a book) which was surprisingly easy to understand. It started with the simple assumption that the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all (intertial) observers (which I think is a fair assumption to make because it's a measurement result rather than a mere hypothesis), and from that single assumption it deduced the Lorentz transformations in a logical and easy-to-follow way. It was rather illuminating. (Of course this was many, many years ago, and damned if I remember any of it now.)
If you ever happen to remember what book that was, I'd be interested in knowing.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
It depends on what sort of monsters drop them. You can most likely use the South Winds for it and then finish off the remaining monsters with regular (manipulated to be perfect) combat. If you can spawn 99 Kaiser Claws, you could easily buy 99 potions after that, of course.
edit: oh, of course it would probably be faster to just use up both South Winds when fighting the Landturtle guarding the crystal. But I'm pretty sure we can manipulate a battle to easily beat the group that drops two Eye Drops.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
It's not so much the staff that scares me as much as it is the members themselves in general.
We've got people asking and answering complex physics questionsfor fun, someone's programming a script to be able to spam a computer's BIOS with up to 500 keystrokes per second so we can beat Nethack in the blink of an eye, and according to that personality test most of us conform to the "rational mastermind" type which normally only accounts for about 2% of the population...
We truly are a ragtag bunch of misfits.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Thanks for figuring all this out. It's too bad most stuff is event driven rather than item driven. I still really wonder if upgrading items is the only thing we can do with 99 potions, but for the moment it seems this is the best possible route.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
I didn't bother with fiddly bits like "Talk to Cid to get airship", or sort out any final details like party configuration and how to go about getting the needed stuff for bugging the game.
Yeah, finding the fastest way will be a little tricky. But I imagine that the fastest way is to manipulate at least around 25 potions from the Goblins, and then to fetch the rest from Ur, Kazus and Sasoon. There's 4000 gil laying around for grabs, and those South Winds and Zeus' Rage will each net you about 500 gil. I'm pretty sure the Wight Slayer is worth 500 gil too. Ideally, I'm guessing we'd have to buy 60 Potions and obtain the rest from manipulation and from collecting them around the towns. 60 Potions cost 7212 gil to buy.
Of course, could be different entirely, but that's an educated guess. You can manipulate three Potions per fight once you reenter the Altar Cave, which is 450 gil; you're not going to get so much gil any other way for the moment.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Ferret Warlord wrote:
Dada wrote:
You can give Cid the Time Gear as soon as you reach Canaan, I think.
Sadly, this is not the case, it would seem. I just did some testing, and it appears you can't skip as much of the game as I thought.
1. Cid won't accept the time gear until Hyne is dead. Until then he stays in the bedroom.
2. You can't fight Hyne until you've completed the fire cave.
3. You can't get to the fire cave until you've returned the horn to the dwarves.
4. You can't get onto the horn pedestal until you've beaten Guzco. (this one really ticks me off)
5. You can't get to the dwarves until you've completed the tower of Owen.
So as far as the floating continent is concerned, the only sequence breaking you can do is skip Nepto's shrine, ignore the gurgans, and not bother returning to Argass Castle. Otherwise you're just playing the route normally. So disappointing...
Ouch, that's pretty bad. A way to position that boulder, or ourselves and our first airship, sure would be great right about now. Although it seems to be impossible for now, I'm really curious as to what happens when you use the original airship (which is different from the second one which can only land in water) to fly off of the floating continent.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Ferret Warlord wrote:
Also of interest is the potential to skip portions of the game this way. You can glitch Nepto's eye into existence and skip the accompanying dungeon. I'm looking into when you can get Cid to take the time gear, which should let you get off the floating continent real quick like. If everything works out, I believe you can beat the game soon after talking to the water crystal!
You can give Cid the Time Gear as soon as you reach Canaan, I think. Because at that point he's just waiting for you to complete all of your Floating Continent quests. He then gives you a new ship (that can only land in water) and that's when you fly off to the second overworld.
Of course, it would be even better if we could somehow modify the position of the boulder on the overworld, because the only reason you need to do the Floating Continent quests at all is because your airship breaks when you exit the valley. But I'm pretty sure we won't be able to do that. :)
EDIT: you know, I wonder if it isn't much faster to just buy the potions? You can get 2000 gil in the cave when you reenter it, another 2000 in the castle, plus you can sell a ton of other free stuff from the storehouse and the Mithril Cave.
EDIT 2: just gave it a quick try. Unfortunately you can't enter the Mithril Cave's secret room until you beat Jinn. However, just getting all potions in the first cave, the first two towns and from manipulating the first battles to drop two potions each, you should get 21. Give or take one or two that I might have forgotten about. The 2000 gil from the first cave and the 2000 gil from the castle and the money you get from selling everything you own (including the South Winds and Zeus' Rage) should get you about 80 potions in total in the end. Your mileage may vary depending on how much gil you accumulate from beating enemies.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Kuwaga wrote:
Imran Nazar wrote:
JavaScript is often perceived as a Web scripting language, with a specialist purpose of manipulating HTML pages. JavaScript is, however, a general-purpose Turing-complete language: the best way to illustrate this is to emulate another system through JavaScript.
He doesn't really seem to have picked it because he thought it was the most efficient language to do the job. Readers of his blog can learn about js and how to write emulators at the same time this way. I like it. ^^
Yeah, this is really more of a proof-of-concept. Javascript is easy to understand and to program in, and it gives you results immediately, so it's a great language for giving a basic lesson in how things like the CPU work and how one can emulate them.
It's true that Actionscript/Flash is way more efficient for this (especially when using the AVM2 virtual machine) though. He'll most likely use that when he writes the chapter on emulating sound since if I'm not mistaken, it's still not possible to create sound in the browser without it.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Yeah, some guy is actually doing this. And he's documenting every step of the way as a sort of learning tool for programmers: http://imrannazar.com/GameBoy-Emulation-in-JavaScript
This is very neat, and it seems that the latest step in development allows Tetris to run.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
How about the original Test Drive?
Link to video
Awesome game and it probably wouldn't be a very long TAS. All you have to do is make it to the gas station. I'm willing to bet you could do it in 50 seconds of input time.
EDIT - this also raises the question: how long till we can make an actual 