Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I have virtually nothing interesting. I've got a PC game called Normality, which is rare but it doesn't matter since nobody seems to want it (it's an excellent game though).
Hmm... I also have a Macintosh Classic, but that's about it.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
That's strange. Sometimes movies "drift" in that they are played back slightly faster than 60 FPS, causing a slight and to many inaudible pitch shift, but I thought that was only with certain encoding settings that TASVideos doesn't use. (I used to get it after the first encoding pass.)
I'll download these to see if I can reproduce it.
EDIT: they seem to work fine here. Couldn't try the first since it's obsolete and no longer available.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
theenglishman wrote:
EDIT: I've beaten the tank (finally) and I'm now on my way down to B2 to fight Gray Fox. Here's my progress. Also mz, if you could encode what's new (from and including the Ocelot fight onwards) I'd appreciate that, thanks :)
By the way, isn't it faster to hold down the button when inputting a new codec address instead of rapid-firing? (Maximum speed when rapid-firing is 30 per second, whereas after 20 frames or so when holding it down, the speed becomes 60 per second.)
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
nineko wrote:
adelikat wrote:
I didn't realize nineko & shiny were in that group.
I voted a bunch of times when the new system was implemented, but I quickly stopped doing so.
As for suggestions about how the voting system should be, what about if we go with mmbossman's rubric? Each submission can be equipped with a 3x3 grid (or 5x5 to add more resolution, though I would avoid that). Then, for counting purposes, there are two feasible ways: either count the individual votes like a normal poll, or calculate the weighted average and display the position on a graph. Here is a quick mockup:
1) the voting options
2) the results in a poll fashion
3) the results in a graphic fashion
This idea wins the geek award. I kinda like it, even if it may not be all that practical.
As for me, I don't care too much about the rating of movies, as I don't think it is of that much use to the average visitor.
I've found myself never looking at the ratings. I don't think anybody really does, for three reasons:
Most people are probably not return visitors; so they won't understand the concept of speedrunning, meaning the rating of said concept has no meaning either.
Most people probably make their pick based on the game rather than the quality of the run. The game is the only relevant piece of information to them (other than perhaps the completion time) because they cannot interpret any of the other information, let alone a complex multi-variable rating system.
The completion time is already sort of a rating system. People remember how long it took to beat a game, compare that to the run's time, and then conclude it must be very good. Although this is not exactly the same as an actual rating system, it works.
Having the rating information is interesting, but I don't think it is very important information to have on the site.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Twelvepack wrote:
That said, putting known terrorists in a military prison seems like a worthwhile endeavor.
Actually, they were mostly suspected terrorists who were put in there so they could rat themselves out after being tortured. Most of them never became known terrorists because of the lack of fair trials.
Guantánamo is an abomination that should never have been tolerated by the U.N. or any nation against inhuman practices. Its use has sent the U.S. back into the middle ages, where this practice was completely normal to extract the necessary confession from a suspect.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The closing of Guantánamo is an excellent decision. It's revolting to me that there are actually people against this. This prison exists solely to act as legal limbo at which the U.S. can practice torturing people, which by the way has been proven to not work if you want information.
Sure, there are even worse prisons in the world (none of which are operated by the U.S., I hope), but it's disgusting that a wealthy Western nation can have the guts to say that the Geneva Convention does not apply to some people, even though it was made specifically to apply to all people.
It doesn't matter who you are or what you think. It doesn't even matter if you have or want to kill people. Every human being should have human rights. If we step away from that principle, a second holocaust comes one step closer.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Bisqwit wrote:
Vatchern wrote:
If only it had went to the ending credits :(
Still working on that :P
Well, yes, this wasn't just an April's Fools joke, you were secretly hoping to find some way to solve the inability to fight Wily (and subsequently crashing the game), right?
Unless I've been away for too long and this problem already has been solved.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hi there. Just a quick off-topic note: I've deleted some posts by a guy who registered an account with, apparently, the sole intention to cause trouble and accuse ZanasoBayncuh of some nasty things.
Shame on you!
Alright, that's all, ignore this post...
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I still personally feel that this run shouldn't have been rejected. The poll was closed down extremely quickly after it was put up without many people being able to give their opinion. I personally found the movie entertaining, in spite of what others perceived as a lack of action.
When watching Ragowit's run, you see the exact solutions to the puzzles laid out in front of you like it takes no thinking time at all, and that's the beauty of the run.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Omega wrote:
But I'm torn as to whether I should use a trick whereby you avoid battles by entering the menu and giving a potion to one of your team members. It saves a little bit of time compared to running away on the first move, but I personally think it's ugly.
Ugly? Avoiding random battles cannot be ugly, especially with such a funny method!
I usually would agree, but in this case I think people might get really annoyed with such a strange concurrence for three to four hours of gameplay.
By the way, now that I think about it, I realize you're absolutely right. Perfectionism was not the main reason for the existence of this site. Morimoto's movies weren't optimized, even for what was known about tool-assisted speedrunning at the time, but they were close enough and that's what made them entertaining.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Exactly when was "shaving frames" *not* the focus of TASes in this site?
If anything, it's the opposite; it used to be about shaving frames, and is now slowly and carefully inching into a more balanced entity. These days there are lots more players than way back when, and with them came a lot of new opinions. There are people who believe that it's perfectly acceptable to make a few tradeoffs if it can make the movie more interesting to watch.
I've never made a TAS (I've made a couple of attempts, though) but I've always said that when I get the time for it, I'd make a TAS of FF3j for NES. But I'm torn as to whether I should use a trick whereby you avoid battles by entering the menu and giving a potion to one of your team members. It saves a little bit of time compared to running away on the first move, but I personally think it's ugly.
At the very least, there's nothing wrong with the discussion on how to weigh entertainment and speed.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
AngerFist wrote:
First of all, we changed our beloved initial name Timeattacks to TASvideos, and now, some of you use the term tool-assisted-superplay-videos and whatnot.. Some assholes at M2k2 and SDA complained about the vague title Timeattacks, some even went so far to associate timeattacks with rape..
While I agree that the whole nontroversy about the name "timeattack" was ridiculous, there's a good reason why we stopped using it (Warp already explained most of it). The term "tool-assisted speedrun", and mostly its abbreviation TAS, have become very well-known in recent time.
At some point, in the Japanese speedrun community, the term TAS was mistakenly seen as a player's nickname, which has now led to the joke that all tool-assisted speedrun movies are supposedly made by TASさん (TAS-san). That alone is a cool enough story for me to want to keep the name.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
This sort of thing happens more often. It's not a large scale action against video game movies.
It usually happens when someone mixes in movies from this site along with stuff that gets taken down often, like clips from popular TV shows. If the person has a lot of those, they'll usually close down his whole account.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Bisqwit wrote:
P2) It causes faster image loading times; once a file is loaded, everything that is generated using that file, is rendered instantenously. And since multiple imageries are stored in a single file, it compresses slightly better too. This kind of practice is already commonly recommended in website design. For example, all the graphics at Youtube are generated from a single file.
And if you need to change even one of them, you need to regenerate the image (and force your users to reload the image).
It's not perfect, but it's a nice optimization technique for images that are more or less static.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
This one: http://www.3t.hu/images/Logitech%20MX518.gif
It's ugly, but it works very well. I should not that I'm not really a gamer anymore, though I never used anything too special when I was. I imagine that if I were to start seriously playing games now, I'd at least want a clicky keyboard and a bit larger mouse.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
franpa wrote:
3. The Settlers II (Die Siedler II) - the best of the Settlers series, which (if I'm right about this) would be the first top-down strategy game to grace TASVideos (StarCraft for N64 was never completed, unfortunately).
I didn't mention this because the game is an incredibly slow one even at 2x speed. Unless they used the cheat code to speed the game up to 3 or 4x, it will be a boring tas.
I think that if you use a high DOSBox speed, the game will render quite quickly. It was quite a heavy game with its high-resolution SVGA graphics, which I think accounted for most of the slowdown. It's also probably bearable if you continuously make new military buildings.
franpa wrote:
btw, isn't apogee, 3drealms?
Yeah, 3D Realms was just a subdivision of Apogee, but they're now using it as their official name.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
My list (in no particular order):
1. Jazz Jackrabbit - extremely fast, in fact it's so fast it becomes nearly impossible to anticipate what'll happen next. You can frequently outrun the screen, too.
2. Little Big Adventure 2 - I'm actually not sure if this runs under DOSBox or if it requires Windows. It's been a VERY LONG TIME since I played it. But it's one of those classics that'll probably be done at some point, for good reason.
3. The Settlers II (Die Siedler II) - the best of the Settlers series, which (if I'm right about this) would be the first top-down strategy game to grace TASVideos (StarCraft for N64 was never completed, unfortunately).
4. Screamer - Ridge Racer? What's that? Screamer is the PC equivalent. As far as I'm concerned, this one can be replaced with another classic racing game of choice (maybe Death Rally, even, but at the very least we should do one 3D racing game).
5. WarCraft 2 - this needs explanation? I personally find the lack of competitive WarCraft 2 videos on the internet to be shocking. I know, it wasn't really very easy to upload or indeed even record or store large videos of WarCraft 2 matches during the time when it was being played, but there have been international competitions in which brilliant players competed. Where did all that material go? A TAS of this classic game would be great and might even encourage some of those oldbies to come out of hiding again.
6. Fade to Black - very interesting and quite difficult (the way I remember it) game with full polygonal graphics.
I wish I could name a few more, but I'm sick right now and can't seem to think straight. I'm probably leaving out a few very good or very obvious choices.
Note that I've excluded games that can be TASed on another platform (Prince of Persia, even though it's different, as well as Heart of Darkness and Abe's Oddysee due to PSX emulation) or have already been done via other means (Doom, Quake, and perhaps Hexen).
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I used to play this on PC! It was a really cool game. Nothing too spectacular, but it had replay value.
For those of you who know the Onslaught mode in Unreal Tournament: Z is basically one of the early versions of that concept, except it's a strategy game. It's top-down and uses a map that's divided into several areas, each with its own flag and factory. If you touch the flag, the area will be yours and the factory will start producing units for you. The point of the game, like in Onslaught, is to overwhelm the enemy by fighting for areas.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Oh yeah, I'd like to second Heart of Darkness. Brilliant game, and one of the last "die at least 20 times on every screen" games. What happened to this genre?
I remember having a Supra with over 930HP, but it was very unwieldy
Yes, I had this one too. I used it to beat the high speed competition lots of times. Easiest way to get lots of money. But with tools, such a fast car could be used pretty effectively on other maps as well, I think.
It's also worth noting that you can tune the engine manually once you get the best upgrade, which means you can determine the acceleration/top speed ratio.
1) the voting options 2) the results in a poll fashion 3) the results in a graphic fashion
