Posts for Derakon

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Posted: 4/14/2010 3:31 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Gruefood Delight is a list of movies that were rejected, but were still entertaining to some people. You can see it here.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/13/2010 5:22 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I would strongly recommend, when submitting a hack run, stating how the hack is different from the original game and what makes a TAS of it stand out. There's tons of good-quality hacks of Super Metroid out there; why should a run of this be published, instead of, say, Redesign, or Cliffhanger, or Eris? (For what it's worth, Angry Fire Chozo's main feature is that when you do a standing jump, you can rise indefinitely and fall slowly. Personally I mostly just found it to really slow the game down. I also ended up beating the hack without clearing a good half of the map, since it wasn't really required. I haven't watched this TAS, but I'd say the three games I listed have much better chances of getting a TAS published here than Angry Fire Chozo does).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/12/2010 7:07 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I suggest you use Google Translate to help you explain your run. Some information is better than no information. People giving critiques: please use simple sentences to help woabclf understand you.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/12/2010 2:57 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Looks like the same glitch that can be used to go to Wily 1 while still in...I think it's Bubble Man's stage. It's useless; the game still considers you to be in the stage you started out in, so you can't use it to skip beating any of the first 8 stages.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/11/2010 11:23 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Aww, Bisqwit's new angry icon is cute.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/11/2010 4:32 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
That's noted on the map of the game; it requires inputting a button code (down+right+A+C) to do the warp, and we ordinarily don't allow button codes. This is different from the "rainbow warp" that this run uses; that's more of a "skip the early parts of the game" warp for skilled users since it requires obtaining 100k points very quickly.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/11/2010 4:24 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Did you happen to notice if the cropping made any difference? Any content that doesn't change throughout the movie should have a negligible impact on the filesize.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/10/2010 6:45 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
To my knowledge, the original Mega Man game has only been made for NES (and rereleased on the Virtual Console, which is basically just NES emulation). That's presumably a handmade animation showing what Mega Man would look like on an Atari. I don't think the early Atari series would be powerful enough to do a decent job of Mega Man anyway.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/10/2010 4:13 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I think that test driven development is used far more often to sneak tests past lazy management (or rushed management, or management that cares far more about new development than maintenance) than lazy programmers. I've seen far more examples of "Man, I'd like to write some tests, but I really don't have the time" than I have of "Ehhh, I don't feel like writing tests." That is to say, I've seen a dozen or so examples of the former, and none of the latter. And yes, I'm basically saying here that test-driven development is better than non-test-driven development if it means the difference between having some tests and having no tests.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/10/2010 6:52 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
DarkKobold wrote:
(btw, wth are a bunch of DS Castlevania games doing with an RPG tag?)
I would assume this is because later-generation Castlevania games include what is generally called "RPG elements", a.k.a. character statistics that can be improved by leveling up, equippable items, hitpoints and mana, and so on.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/10/2010 6:48 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
If you upload the movie file to Microstorage, it should give you some statistics on the movie, which in turn will help make certain that you're following the submission guidelines. This is your first submission, right? I strongly recommend posting it in this forum or the SNES games forum for people to look at before making a submission. That way we can help you make it be more optimal, which will improve its chances of being accepted. However, I should caution you that Super Mario All-Stars, since it's just a clone of the NES SMB games, has difficulty getting accepted; generally we prefer using the original game unless there's a good reason not to (for example, I think there's a new glitch in the All-Starsr version of SMB3 that isn't in the original game).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/10/2010 6:41 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Having played this game a bit, honestly there's no way it's going to look as polished as the NES versions, simply because the controls are clunkier. Megaman's also a lot more willing to walk off of the edges of platforms, which means that you have to jump well before it seems like you should need to. And then of course there's the lag. So honestly I'm not certain just how unpolished this run is. Frenom posted WIPs in the Genesis section, and I was able to make valid suggestions for improvements, which, given my relative lack of experience as a TASer, suggests that Frenom's not necessarily the tightest optimizer around, but he still does good work*. Just not the kind of work you'd expect from someone with tons of experience, which is what we normally get for Megaman TASes. I don't call that a reason to censure him though. And while a full run of all three games plus the bonus content would be nice, it'd also be very long and a heck of a lot of work. I think there's room to publish each game separately, perhaps building on the same savefile, and then use those runs combined to access the bonus content. * Holy convoluted sentences, Batman!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/9/2010 9:47 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
"Test-driven development" can also be a different way of budgeting time to get any tests written at all. If you wait until the module or program is ready to be tested, all too often you'll end up going off to work on implementing some new module instead of writing tests for the existing module. In the long run this ends up costing you more time (from increased support costs, bugs slipping through, and so on) than writing the tests early would have. Test-driven development is also a good way to enforce specs in a large organization where a development project is spanning multiple teams. They act to fix the spec in place, giving you more leverage to say "no" when someone says "Oh, can you do this too?" And believe me, the ability to say "no" is incredibly important in those organizations; it's basically the only way anything gets done. I worked on a team that had to dedicate about 30% of its workload (that's one manager and one developer, basically) to prioritizing tasks and saying no, so that the remainder of the team could actually get things done.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/9/2010 6:04 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
We have tons of functional tests. What do you think all the published runs are? That said, unit tests are a different matter.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/9/2010 6:02 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
So what do we do if someone wants to obsolete a run using the translation patch, by using a ROM in the original language? Do translation patches automatically become the "preferred" versions of games as soon as the patches reach the quality level needed to be accepted by the site? Say a stable release of a translation patch for FF5 is created (hell, one might already exist for all I know). Would future runs be required to use that patch? What if we had a published run on the site using a translation patch? Would all future runs of the game be required to use the same patch? Basically what I'm getting at is, does a stable translation patch have the same stature as an official release of the game, as far as what the preferred version of a game to use?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/9/2010 4:56 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
rando wrote:
That's a pretty good point! I guess that I just expect you guys to post encodes of every new time-saving strat on YouTube.
I don't think it's ever reasonable to expect someone to go to the effort of making and uploading an encode of a WIP. It's a pleasant bonus. People will share as much as they're willing to share. So long as they aren't going "neener neener neener I can do this faster than you but I'm not going to prove it", I don't have a problem with keeping new discoveries secret.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/9/2010 1:40 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
DeHackEd: well, even just limiting the rule to "only stable patches" or "only patches we have permission to host locally" would be a step up from the old ruleset.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/9/2010 1:36 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Bezman: skip to a few minutes into this video. The sideways drift is fast enough that you can't get more than maybe 30s of no input. As for how long you can survive without sleep? Not that long. And past more than a few days of no sleep, you start permanently damaging your health...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/8/2010 4:21 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I will freely admit I haven't used Rent a Coder, but it seems like there would be few, if any, programmers in its system with the skills needed to advance emulator functionality and accuracy. You might be able to get some value from it in the way of UI improvements, but that's unimportant compared to having an accurate, syncing emulator.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/8/2010 3:36 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Yeah, you just take a bunch of screenshots, analyze them to determine their predominant colors, and then go through pixel by pixel in the image you want to replicate and find the screenshot that best matches the pixel. It's even easier with Megaman because he's so pixelated, which means you don't really have to worry too much about blending colors or color changes within a single screenshot.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/7/2010 7:56 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
The newer systems are also far more complicated than the older ones. There's a lot more stuff on a Playstation than on an NES, and the timing requirements are tighter; it makes sense that it would be harder to make a usable emulator. I suspect most of the load for the site is the forum and the database queries needed to generate the various movie pages. It's hard to say without access to server logs though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/7/2010 6:20 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Ahh, you have that mystical ability to actually understand song lyrics. :p Thanks for tracking it down.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/7/2010 2:42 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Not that I think all that much of the video content, but does anyone know what the first piece of music in this is?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/6/2010 5:00 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I don't think award money will ever be a significant motivating factor. It could be a way to give something tangible back to the people who make the biggest contributions to the community, though. It's a nice gesture, in other words, and so long as it isn't significantly impacting the site's solvency (and I'm sure Adelikat will make certain it doesn't), I don't have a problem with it.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/5/2010 10:45 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
To be quite honest I found this rather dull; it seemed well executed but a poor game choice. Voting meh.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
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