I'm just going to pop in here and say that you're painting with an awfully broad brush here, Warp. There are plenty of atheists who don't behave the way you're saying atheists behave. Originally I kept quiet because you were talking about a specific subset that you had had discussions with, but now it looks like you're talking about the entire group in your last paragraph.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Hasn't Bisqwit already done this with Lunarball?
I think the easiest game to play programmatically (without trying for optimal play) would be Arkanoid -- track the ball's current position and velocity, and even if you only account for wall bounces, you should be able to get the paddle under the ball most of the time. Then you just let the bot run until it lucks into removing the last brick. Powerups can all be ignored.
Much more complicated would be a game like Mario, where even basic terrain navigation is tricky -- you have to recognize enemies and pits and jump the right distance over both; time the piranha plants, and eventually, learn to swim.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Err? The point is that TASes usually aim for realtime, not in-game time, which means that TASers are penalized for pausing the game, which means that any time when a pause to switch weapons gains you less than the cost of the pause, the TASer would not switch, preferring to spend more time in-game at the cost of a higher in-game timer.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
My experience of atheists making publications and videos which attack christianity with "logic" is that they are not trying to express their unbiased views, with the intention of seriously listening what others have to say about the subject.
Basically they are absolutely and completely convinced of their atheistic views, and there's absolutely nothing you can do to make them listen to anything else. They might pretend to listen in a friendly and open way, but the underlying reason is always the same: They listen to your responses only to try to find flaws and counter-arguments to them, not because they are honestly interested in what you have to say nor open to alternative ideas.
I found this post interesting, because I lurk on Slashdot to read the "discussions" there (I view it as a kind of study of a particular subculture), and that kind of argument is almost word for word what you'd commonly see whenever religion is brought up -- people from religion X (typically proponents of intelligent design) are close-minded, unwilling to listen to logical counter-arguments, and out to attack people who oppose their viewpoints wherever possible.
What this says to me is that a lot of people on both sides of the argument are not accomplishing anything useful. How do we get people to participate in informed debates instead of just screaming across the divide?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I think that if you want your rating system to be reliable, then you have to curve peoples' rankings based on their past history. Not everyone rates every movie; is it fair if, say, the only people who rate $obscure_but_awesome_game are unusually harsh raters, while those who rate $popular_game_that_makes_bad_TASes practice rampant grade inflation? So you look at each person's past rating history, and use that to adjust the range. If a given person only ever uses the range 8-10, then you rebalance their 8 to a 1, 9 to 5, and 10 to 10, for example.
Obviously this is hideously flawed for a number of reasons (not least of which is the number of people who only rate one or two movies), which leads me to the conclusion that we're just reading way too much into the ratings.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Max: the rule here is that we play on the hardest difficulty. We only break this rule when hard isn't more entertaining than normal/easy. This is usually the case for games where hard just means that the player takes more damage or the enemies have more health. I haven't actually played this game, but if there are more enemies, or the enemies move faster, or something like that, then it's worth playing on Hard.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
That's what we're doing right now, but I agree, it's repetitive. So how about "Sega Megadrive / Genesis / CD / 32x"? Or swap the Megadrive and Genesis; this version orders them by release date but more people are familiar with the Genesis.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I loved playing this game back in the day. Seems like a TAS of it would be rather like a longer version of the Minesweeper TAS for a lot of people. I wouldn't mind seeing it myself, but I don't know how entertaining it would be for people who haven't played the game.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The U vs J thing is mostly (entirely) for purposes of language - English is much more widely-spoken than Japanese, and games are generally better when you can understand what's being said. Since there's no significant dialogue in either game, I wouldn't worry about being censured for your choice.
I'd be leery of getting missiles at all - they don't contribute significantly to your offense, and they add a lot of extra sprites to the screen, which creates lag. Have you watched the Gradius TAS? The same logic applies here. This is especially true when you're playing with two players -- which isn't to say that you should only play with one; I think the extra entertainment from having two players available more than outweighs the increased lag. However, you definitely won't be faster in the long run with two players, so you should try to take advantage of having two controllable sprites around for being entertaining. Again, watch the other Gradius TASes for ideas.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The question really is, how much time do you save by using the more powerful gun? Because if it saves less time than it costs to get the powerup, then it's not worthwhile. This is why the Magic Sword is skipped in Legend of Zelda TASes, for example.
If it takes you 16000 frames to get to level 8, and assuming that that means ~2300 frames/powerup (since you start at level 1), then getting that last level would need to save you 38 seconds, which seems implausible for most games.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
What I meant by "bombs count as special gear" is that you can't get bombs before getting to Sanctuary. I'm fully cognizant of the fact that bombs drop naturally from many enemies and you don't need bomb bags or anything like that in this game. I'm just saying that a bombable wall is effectively a normal wall until you've reached Sanctuary.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I like to think that people here are mature enough to be able to accept constructive criticism. I know there's a lot of arguments bubbling beneath the surface, but it's hard to complain about someone pointing out an improvement in your movie when they're right (you can complain about their tone all you like, of course).
The problem is that the Workbench isn't really being used to examine the quality of a movie, but rather to argue over whether it deserves publication. Frankly, that's not our decision - it falls down to the moderators. What we should be doing is finding any possible improvements in the movie; the moderators then decide if those improvements are significant enough to warrant not publishing the movie.
This doesn't address issues of bad game choice; I'm not entirely certain what the hypothetical ideal system would be there. But it's clear to me that a lot of the arguing and bad feelings on the Workbench threads these days come down to people arguing over what belongs on the site and what doesn't. That kind of discussion doesn't belong on the Workbench; it belongs on the Site forum, where, being abstracted from any particular run, discussions should be much less heated.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Are there even 50 rats before you get to Sanctuary? Because they don't drop more than 20 rupees apiece, and I don't remember any rupee chests that don't require special gear to get. Even if the rest of the creatures gave you 100, that'd be 40 rats to get perfect drops from...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Does this game have any potential for damage boosting? If so, then it's worth at least considering getting the heart containers so you can boost more. It's a bit annoying that each one has a moderately lengthy pickup jingle, though, which may make it not worthwhile even if you can damage boost.
In any event, 100% for this game would include a lot of Rupee farming so you can max our your arrow and bomb capacity. I don't think I'd find that very entertaining. I don't think I'd have much of a problem with the rest of a 100% run, though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I haven't actually watched the movie, but from what I understand, it's a matter of making use of the L and R buttons to move the cursor about and insert letters in a nonlinear order. This lets you avoid having to scroll the cursor back to the M redundantly to spell "Maxim" and probably lets you take a more direct route to other letters, too.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
More relevantly, we have TASes of some of the Gameboy Mega Man games, which cover basically the same niche as the Mega Man Xtreme games do -- just for the original series instead of the X series.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
As others have noted, it really depends.
Compare, for example, the Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion 100% runs. In the former, all of the extra resources (barring the superfluous missile tanks) get used. Damage boosting is a vital part of run strategy, the supermissiles and powerbombs both provide useful extra offense, and the various suit upgrades generally all get used in novel ways.
However, in Metroid Fusion, damage boosting is nonexistent, rendering E-Tanks moot; the beam deals damage faster than missiles/bombs do, rendering ammo moot, and all of the suit upgrades are required to be collected to move the game along, which makes their use less novel. The upshot is that the 100% run is largely grabbing things that will never be used, just because you can.
For games where the 100% involves doing things that aren't immediately useful (e.g. getting Chaos Emeralds in Sonic games), it depends on how interesting the detours are and how good the payoff is. So in S3&K, the bonus stages aren't especially interesting, but once all the emeralds are collected, the game speeds up drastically, and you get to see a bonus boss -- that's pretty good. The Sonic 1 bonus stages are more interesting, but they require slowing down the main levels to get rings and the payoff is just a slightly different ending -- not so great.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Because.
This must've required a really bizarre combination of very low-level coding (emulators) and very high-level coding (web browsers). Unless they just hooked into an existing emulator...that'd be kinda lame.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Looking good! My only question is how the speed of that rolling maneuver compares to that of running. It looks like it's a bit faster but has some cooldown time associated with it; are there any long flat segments where it'd be worth rolling for speed?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
