Joined: 12/26/2006
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Location: United States of America
Bisqwit wrote:
Judging from the comments, "I can't read the text" was actually a noticeable issue in my Star Control II submission…
Game text should be a non-issue because skipping text is expected; therefore, a TAS of a text-heavy game should be entertaining without any text at all.
As for Star Controll II (and others, like the Mega Man Zero runs), the text can be read if either the .avi playback or emulation is run in frame advance.
Using the English instead of Japanese text is a nice courtesy, but the decision (and the consequences of that decision) should be the original author's.
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From reading the thread, it seems that the problem with Bionic Commando is that there are both aesthetic differences and gameplay differences; although, evidently, not enough gameplay differences to justify having two movies published on the site.
If you want strict rules, I propose the following:
When a game has no movies published, the first author of the first run for this game may choose any ROM for any reason, or for no reason.
Authors of subsequent runs of this game, whether obsoleting the first published movie or not, must use the same ROM as used in the first published movie unless:
the subsequent run obsoletes the fist published movie or is to be published alongside such,
and the subsequent run uses at least one method of play that is impossible or not reasonably feasible (meaning that the method(s) cannot be reproduced without a significant loss of time, as determined by the judges on a game-by-game basis) on the ROM used by the first published movie,
and the author of the subsequent run thoroughly documents the method(s) used and demonstrates the impossibility and/or unfeasibility of such method(s),
and judges and members of the TASVideos community generally agree, as determined by site administration, that such method is impossible or not reasonably feasible on the other ROM.
In the event that the first published movie for a game is obsoleted by a run using a different ROM in accordance with these rules, authors of subsequent runs of the game, whether obsoleting the new movie or not, must use the same ROM as used in the new movie, except as described in these rules.
In the event that a new movie is published alongside the first published movie that uses a ROM different than that used by the first published movie in accordance with these rules:
The author of any run that is to obsolete any published movie must use the same ROM as used by the published movie that the new run is intended to obsolete, except as described in these rules.
The author of any run that is to be published alongside the currently published movies may use any ROM for any reason, or for no reason.
Except for the reasons listed above, a run of a game with a published movie that uses a ROM different than that used by the published run may only obsolete the published run on the vote of a three-forths (75%) majority of TASVideos community members or on the agreement of three (3) appointed judges.
At the discretion of the judges and/or site administration, "alternate" runs of a game that use a ROM different than that used by the official, published movie for reasons not permitted by the conditions herein (such as different language or graphics) may be distributed supplementary to the published movie, but such shall be considered official, published movies and shall not be subject to obsoletion.
These rules give the first author the ability to choose whichever ROM is deemed approriate for speed or entertainment or whatever, while providing clear guidelines for what is allowed for obsoletion and what is not, and also allowing for exceptions to be made as seen fit without stepping on too many toes.
My opinion, however, is that this kind of rule set is stupid, and that people shouldn't need them to settle disagreements. But then again, the "human nature" point does seem to be a valid one here. : (
Joined: 12/26/2006
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Seems like it. As I understand it, the changes required to make DOSBox fully capable would make runs on this version incompatible.
Sad, but understandable.
Joined: 12/26/2006
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Just my own two cents... I think an .avi is a good idea. It doesn't have to be the final, publishable .avi (although that would be nice too). It's just that I'm technically clumsy, and setting up four emulators to play the same key input at the same time sounds like something I'd easily mess up.
Plus, we don't want to fill the submission thread with "How do I get the four emulators to work?" questions.
Making a torrent for the .avi might work.
Joined: 12/26/2006
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moozooh wrote:
Hmm… Maybe instead of summing up anonymous voters, list their votes separately without naming them?
I agree with moozooh now. ; )AKA wrote:
Just wondering wouldn't it be better to ask users "Do you wish this rating to be made public Y/N?" Instead of having a generic question,
Eh... I'm not so sure on this one. Would enough people really use it to justify the implementation time? Also, out of possibly hundreds of ratings, keeping track of which ones are private and public and which ones a user wants to be private and public could cause quite a headache.
AKA wrote:
then again after seeing certain ratings I'm tempted to march up to certain people and "why did you rate the movie in the way that you did?", but that attidude simply discourages people rating at all so its not to be encouraged on the forum.
I really don't want to reopen the peer pressure debate, but I think that the other site users can help out by emphasizing how lame it really is to change one's rating just because one is "confronted". Like when moozooh wrote:
The thing is, there is no tool to forcedly "depressurize" people
We, as a community, have that power, truthfully. I thought about writing, "We're the tools," but that could have been easily misinterpreted. : P
Finally, Deep Loner wrote:
I want to hear Bisqwit's and others' opinions on the "ratings abuser flag" idea!!!
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
RT-55J wrote:
Deep Loner wrote:
I think that displaying the names of those who gave non-public ratings is a bad idea, since those users had wished to be anonymous. I suggest something more along the lines of: "n users' ratings are hidden by request."
I agree that the anonymous voters' names shouldn't be shown, but I think the average of their scores should be on a row on the table like so:
hero of the day 10 9
ideamagnate 10 10
Neofix 11 11
Kyrsimys 7 10
moozooh 9 8
Anonymous Voters (23) 8.8 9.1
Average 9.1 9.3
Good idea, since rating averages are already shown on the profile pages.
I want to hear Bisqwit's and others' opinions on the "ratings abuser flag" idea.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
Bisqwit wrote:
svn co <repositoryaddress>/<path>
I guess I should have asked if there was an easy to do this on Windows... I know, I know: "You should switch to Linux!" Oh, the peer pressure! ; p
upthorn wrote:
RapidSVN.
I believe I made that repository world readable.
Error: Error while performing action: PROPFIND request failed on '/projects/Gens_Rerecording/browser'
PROPFIND of '/projects/Gens_Rerecording/browser': 200 OK (http://home.ryanc.org:8088)
On a side note... no offense, but this is quite a bit of trouble just to download the source code. I don't doubt that the web service and RapidSVN tools are useful, but all the other emulators' source code have easy-to-use download links...
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Warp wrote:
I coded something like that and Bisqwit added it to the site engine.
Bisqwit wrote:
And it is found by clicking the "(# users)" link in the movie entry.
Awesome! Just one piece of constructive criticism: I think that displaying the names of those who gave non-public ratings is a bad idea, since those users had wished to be anonymous. I suggest something more along the lines of: "n users' ratings are hidden by request." Additionally, perhaps each user profile could have a boolean "Ratings Abuser" flag that would cause ratings by that user to be treated differently, perhaps adding to the bottom of the page, "The ratings of the following users were ignored due to past abuse:"
Of course, if that were implemented, such an "abuser" flag would naturally only ever be set by Bisqwit or very highly trusted site administrators...
Besides these, very nice work with the implementations, Warp! Thumbs up!
Also, I'm curious as to whether this "MovieWatcher" is a human or a bot...
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Thanks for answering me before. My main interest for now (since I'm quite new to programming) is to study the source code to see how programs like this work. Is there an easy way to download the entire source code to my hard drive?
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Maximus wrote:
I'm sorry to say, but for windows users in this day and age, I don't really see why you wouldn't have .NET installed. I doubt disk usage is an issue, and if you're just getting into development, it really is a pretty good RAD tool.
I do have it installed, and I agree that it's an excellent tool; my only concern was platform portability.
Eventually I would like to write some tools for the nice people on this site to use. I know it would be a lot of work, but I imagine a TAS Movie Maker Studio suite integrating the emulator, input editing tools, memory search/watch, and even macros and bot scripting (calculating input based on memory values) all integrated into one software package. That's also why I'm studying a lot of existing source code (particularly for the emulators on this site) to see what other people's code looks like. My idea is only a pipe dream if I stay at my current level of programming ability.
Back to my previous question: how do the emulators here acheive portability with the many Linux users on this site?
Joined: 12/26/2006
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Bisqwit wrote:
For me, I found the switch to Linux to be a great helper for programming. Suddenly I had access to programming tools that worked, were stable, and did exactly what they were supposed to :)
I knew that somebody was going to say that. : )
Bisqwit wrote:
Sure you can program in Windows too… but MFC and Windows APIs in general are somewhat of a deterrent to me.
i aJUST vCan not vRead cnSOURCE_CODE that vLooks aLIKE this :P
C# is a good language for Windows programming that avoids a lot of that... but unless the .NET Framework becomes cross-platform (I don't see it as likely; having a .NET Framework for MacOS, for example, wouldn't be Microsoft's smartest move), it's obviously not very portable.
DeHackEd wrote:
That's where wxWidgets, GTK+ or things like them come into play. But honestly, very few people do stuff like that. It's just too easy to write for a single OS and leave others hanging. Which sucks...
I don't like the look or feel of GTK+ (as in the Windows version of GIMP). Writing a Windows-only program certainly would be easy, but I'm looking toward developing sound programming skills.
So, instead of libraries, let's talk about good ways of decoupling (a buzzword?) the UI from the rest of the code. A lot of people on this site use Linux; how well do the open-source emulators here do that?
Edit:Bisqwit wrote:
But it took years to learn the basics of writing code that [...] ⒉ works like typical programs do instead of sporting wild-coloured MS-DOSisms.)
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I've self-learned a lot about C++ but have mostly done nothing useful with it. I'm going to write a simple computer program (per Truncated's suggestion on the IRC channel) in order to sink my teeth into something concrete.
I remember using Visual C++ 6.0 and writing various "test" programs using the MFC framework. Eventually, I found that my "test" programs were writing things to the registry that I had no idea about! When I tried to correct for it, I ended up crashing the entire computer, requiring a clean reformatting of the hard disk. That pretty much ended my exploration of programming Windows using C++.
Right now, I'm using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition with the Platform SDK installed to write native Windows code. (Since I have no interest in using the .NET extensions with C++, the graphical windows builder included in that IDE will be of little use.)
I'm seeking suggestions for the best way to access the Windows API with my C++ code. I understand that the "raw" API is mostly procedural and doesn't allow for very good object-oriented programming of the user interface. I've had bad experience with the MFC, as detailed above. Additionally, I want the program to be portable, so that the UI can be written for another operating system; thus, the UI code would be abstrated away from the main program logic.
Essentially, what would be the best way to code the user interface code?
Please keep in mind that I am a beginner, but Bisqwit gave me the great compliment that I do think like a programmer. Don't be afraid of being technical as long as you can explain it, and all suggestions and discussion is welcome.
Thanks!
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Now that players' ratings are (optionally) public, how about the ability to query individual ratings on a game-by-game basis? The page could start out with the average entertainment and technical ratings and the number of public and privite votes, followed by a report of each individual (public) voter's entertainment and technical ratings. Ratings are already shown for a user-by-user basis, and I'm sure this added information could be found useful in many respects.
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Truncated wrote:
I am very confused about where everything is located at the moment.
The options for the rating (such as wether to hide them or not) should be on the ratings page.
I don't know where it's "supposed" to be, but the option is located on the forum profile options page.
Truncated wrote:
I wish there was a way to reach other people's rating short of going through their profile, which usually means you have to find a post they made, or do some magic on the ULR bar.
But some sort of link from the ratings page isn't a bad idea. : )
Edit:
[/URL]
Every time I use the URLs:
Deep Loner uses a different kind of tool assistance. : p
But some sort of link from the ratings page isn't a bad idea. : )
Edit:
