Okay, let's assume we can change the speed of light and yet have everything else still work the way it's supposed to (including e.g. neurons firing properly, electrical devices working, etc.).
Did you complain when Super Mario Galaxy had 10m planets with gravity equivalent to Earth's? No? Same deal here.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Seemed enjoyable enough. It'd be nice if we knew more about how the RNG works, since there's a lot of apparently-suboptimal play because it won't give you the colors you need. As it is, we basically just have to take it on faith that you put the time in to find the best possible setups (which is, I think, what all the arguing over rerecord counts is for).
One thing I noticed:
Here it would've been slightly faster to move the orange balls down one row; they'd have less distance to fly. However, I don't think this is significant enough to block publication.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I rather suspect that the Auto-Save zones are really just a chance to load the next area's data.
I'm inclined to agree with Satoryu -- it's nothing that isn't done better (that is, more entertainingly) by the X1 and X2 runs, through no fault of the runner.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
This seems like a fairly mindless postcount++ thread...why not make it a thread for music recommendations instead? For example, I recommend The Beatles' Abbey Road, the soundtrack to Einhänder, Nightwish's Wishmaster, Solas' The Hour Before Dawn, and George Winston's Autumn.
...that's a bit of an eclectic set of genres there.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I suspect that player vs. AI fighting games are going to be more interesting for people who are familiar with the games (and thus can recognize the manipulation being performed and the quality of the combos), which player vs. player is more entertaining for those who aren't familiar with the games. After all, curb stomps only retain their appeal for so long; eventually you want to see an impressive-looking fight.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Infinite invincible sliding does seem to kind of defeat the point of all those enemies the game throws at you. Speaking of which, this game looks vicious, even worse than the SNES Valis game (which is itself pretty damned hard).
Maybe your next WIP could avoid using the slide and we could see how it compares?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
On the last stage of Aries, you spend some shots clearing out the small red area in the center instead of clearing the large red section on the left. Why not take out the red and white sections immediately and drop the constellation?
Because it is faster to shoot without angles. Removing that part allows me to get direct shots.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your current method uses one angled shot and three straight shots (one to finish clearing the center, two more to drop the constellation fragment). Is that really faster than two angled shots? That would mean that an angled shot is at least twice as slow as a straight shot, which seems implausible.
For the rest, fair enough.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
On the last stage of Aries, you spend some shots clearing out the small red area in the center instead of clearing the large red section on the left. Why not take out the red and white sections immediately and drop the constellation?
It seems like manipulation of stars will be a big part of the gameplay. How frequent/hard to manipulate are they? For example, at this point you only have yellow balls supporting the constellation:
If you could get another star, then the level would end right there. Of course, "starring" your way through every level would be rather dull, but it seems likely it'd be faster than taking all those segments out one by one.
Right here, you're spending a star on red:
Wouldn't it be better to use it on orange or purple instead? The star does basically the same thing that a normal red ball would do.
In general, I suspect even if the gameplay is optimal, you won't be able to convince people it is unless you can describe exactly how the RNG works. "I fiddled with it until I got a result that seemed good" doesn't seem to fly very well these days, especially when by your own admission you occasionally have to spend shots to no purpose. :\
Edit: however, there's clearly some potential for solutions that come out of left field. I found several of the levels to be entertaining; if you can do more levels in a way that doesn't involve just clearing out layer by layer until the last supports are exposed, I think you'll have a solid movie on your hands.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Derekan you are pretty much wrong about most of that what you just stated. You are ignoring absolutes. [or you simply don't acknowledge they exist in the first place.] But I don't feel like arguing about it.
As I said, this isn't a debate; it's a shouting match. :)
I'm done.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
You can't have a debate in which one side simply discounts the other side's points out of hand. That's just a shouting match. A debate involves presentation of arguments, and their reasoned consideration by the other side, using logic and evidence derived from an accepted source (which could be, e.g., the Bible in a Christian religious debate, or Shakespeare in a literary debate, or Feynman's papers in a quantum mechanics debate).
You cannot use theories as evidence in a debate. Because theories are ideas that lack factal backing. And we are talking about facts.
Using what you say here, we cannot know anything. Things happen, and there is no use trying to speculate why they happen, because after all, we can never do better than a theory that might one day be disproven. Why do things fall? Who knows! We can theorize that there's something called "gravity" which attracts objects together, but after all, that's just a theory, never mind the amazing predictive power it gives us. We've used our theory of gravity to detect the existence of planets by the way their influence the motion of their stars, and then later seen those planets directly.
In short, facts are useless except in that they inform theories. You cannot, in fact, make an argument from facts without in the process creating a theory. Your theory in this case is that science is bunk; I'm not certain what facts you're operating from though you appear to be very certain of them. It's a pretty nihilistic theory, though, especially given the astounding improvements in quality of life that science has enabled for you.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Given that every single flame is converted into a missile and you end the fight with no ammo, I can believe that. I don't think you could get more missiles without getting Phantoon to drop more before becoming vulnerable, which (since he drops flames at a fixed speed) would mean delaying the point at which you can shoot him.
In short, holy crap dude!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Arflech: dunno; there's multi-megabyte text files for some games (e.g. Final Fantasies). A text file containing 20k lines of 26 characters each, in contrast, is only 527KB.
Now, if every single word had a bit of text describing what the object was, that'd be a different story...but it also wouldn't be the first FAQ for the game on GameFAQs. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Keep in mind that relativity doesn't just change where things appear to be, but also how fast they're moving, how big they are, and how much mass they have. As your speed increases, so does your mass. Additionally, you get contracted lengthwise along the direction of travel, and your clocks appear to run slower. This is all from the perspective of people watching you, of course; to you, the effects apply to everyone else (as they appear to be moving relative to your fixed position).
So I think that a game of relativistic Mario would need to be done from an observer's standpoint, so we can apply all these neat effects to Mario himself. :)
I seem to recall once seeing a Linux game that basically looked like a Mario clone with a penguin subbing in for Mario. This would've been a good five-six years ago, though, and I don't remember what it was called.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The 99-combo with Chun-Li vs. Juggernaut was awesome. What would happen if you stopped the combo before he died? Would it take a long time for them to reach the ground again?
When you are doing a 2P match, it would be nice if there were more fighting, and fewer long combos. What you do is nice, but every once in a while you just decide to combo a character down from nearly-full life to dead in one go. Save that for the 1P matches.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
You're painting with awfully broad strokes here. Are you at all aware of the demographics of scientists? I'll give you a hint: they're a lot like the demographics of any other group of people. Your average scientist in the USA is Christian. Your average scientist in India is Hindu. In Iran they're mostly Muslim. And so on.
Even if they weren't, science and religion are not inherently at odds. Religion seeks to tell us what we should do with our lives from a moral and philosophical perspective, which, as I noted earlier, is not an area that science deals with for the most part. For the most part, when you see "science" clashing with "religion", you're seeing one of the following:
* A strict interpretation of a religious text that disagrees with scientific observations (Young Earth Creationists, evolution, etc.)
* A moral issue that is being painted as being religion vs. science when in fact it's one moral standpoint vs. another moral standpoint (abortion, the death penalty, homosexuality, etc.)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
People seem to pull shit out of their asses and everyone believes it. Not very scientific.
This is a problem with people, not with the scientific method.
It sounds like you have an issue with scientists in general, not with the scientific method in specific. You have to realize that scientists are people too, and have their own irrational needs, which occasionally lead some of them to try to slip a fast one past the audience. This is why peer review is such a huge part of the professional scientific world, and why people who try to cheat the system are censured so heavily that they basically can't get a job doing any kind of technical work again in their lives.
You do also need to be aware of the role that modern media plays here. A scientist may write a paper that says "Pigs that were exercised in this way and fed this diet were more aerodynamic (as measured by launching the pigs on a ballistic path via slingshot) than pigs that were exercised in these other ways (including no special exercise at all) and fed these other foods", and you can bet that what the public sees will be "Scientist Makes Pigs Fly".
For your specific points:
* Evolution: The theory of evolution is the best explanation we have thus far to explain how different species came to be the way they are. We have tons of evidence, and tens of thousands of professional scientists who have studied it and verified the results.
* Human rights: this isn't an issue for science; it's an issue for philosophy. Maybe psychiatry gets involved at some point, but only tangentially.
* Global warming: the climate is one of the most complicated systems that we've made an attempt to study in depth. We're still developing our models, and scientists routinely suggest alternative interpretations of the data (or uncover new data that needs to be taken into account). There's a number of sources available (like ice core analysis) that show that the climate is changing; the big questions are how and why (at which point we'll be able to answer with authority the what, i.e. what do we do about it?).
* Bullshit. Standard output from healthy cattle. Not certain where you're going with this one. :p
Of course, you're clearly irrational when it comes to science, so I'm not certain why I'm writing this. Can't resist getting into an argument, I guess.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
And how about the one I provided? I did aim to meet the publication rules.
I spot-checked a few points in the movie and it seems to work fine. It's 14MB bigger than the official encoding, but I'd rather have the sound sync. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Bisqwit: Lost Pig is an IF (Interactive Fiction) game in the style of Zork, etc. The secondary program you need is the interpreter for the game content, which is used for most IF games. It's definitely worth checking out. Generally the award-winning IF games are all quite good; in the past fifteen-twenty years, we've identified the stuff that makes IF games unplayable (generally things like "guess the verb" and "you forgot to get the towel in scene 2 so scene 36 is unwinnable"), so you can bet that the award-winners don't have those issues. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Hah! I think that's my favorite bug description ever. :)
On the topic of interactive fiction (including CYOA) games that let you sacrifice your pants, have you played Lost Pig?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Here it would've been slightly faster to move the orange balls down one row; they'd have less distance to fly. However, I don't think this is significant enough to block publication.
It seems like manipulation of stars will be a big part of the gameplay. How frequent/hard to manipulate are they? For example, at this point you only have yellow balls supporting the constellation:
If you could get another star, then the level would end right there. Of course, "starring" your way through every level would be rather dull, but it seems likely it'd be faster than taking all those segments out one by one.
Right here, you're spending a star on red:
Wouldn't it be better to use it on orange or purple instead? The star does basically the same thing that a normal red ball would do.
In general, I suspect even if the gameplay is optimal, you won't be able to convince people it is unless you can describe exactly how the RNG works. "I fiddled with it until I got a result that seemed good" doesn't seem to fly very well these days, especially when by your own admission you occasionally have to spend shots to no purpose. :\
Edit: however, there's clearly some potential for solutions that come out of left field. I found several of the levels to be entertaining; if you can do more levels in a way that doesn't involve just clearing out layer by layer until the last supports are exposed, I think you'll have a solid movie on your hands.