Posts for Derakon

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Posted: 3/1/2013 4:37 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Actually another common situation with water flow in pipes is when you have mineral buildup in the pipes, which creates basically a maze of near-blockage that the water has to thread its way through to reach the faucet. This will greatly reduce pressure and flow, even though the water is not actually blocked; presumably due to friction as amaurea says.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/28/2013 11:21 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
This is reminding me of the waterguns I used to make as a kid -- take a section of PVC pipe, glue an endcap on one end (or use threaded caps and a threaded pipe), drill a small hole in the endcap, and then use a plunger (made from a dowel and a piece of leather) to suck water in / shoot it out. It was pretty clear to me that smaller holes got you more speed, but at some point you had to start working a lot harder to get a decent distance. You can buy commercial waterguns that work on the same principle but what fun is that?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/28/2013 7:37 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
My perspective on the whole version thing: With a (not-current-gen) console game, releasing a new version is expensive. You do your best to try to fix the most visible and game-breaking bugs in v1.0, because if you need to distribute a patch to your players, that means recalling the old disks/carts and sending out new ones. That's not something you do lightly! Of course bugs still slip through, so when you do a new "print run" of the game (e.g. when releasing to a new country), you take the opportunity to fix what you can. But the release cycle is slow, and there's typically going to be only one or maybe two versions for any given locale. As a player, you can be pretty confident that any bugs that slip through were either deemed "not worthy of fixing", or else managed to sneak past a fairly rigorous QA process. In contrast, with modern games and especially with indie games, there often is no rigorous QA process. The expectation is "release early, release often, players will play the most recent release." Sure, you fix bugs when you find out about them, but you don't sweat it too much if you find out about them due to player reports rather than from your own bugtesting, because the cost of pushing a patch out to your players is small. Thus there are lots of versions of any given game out there, and many of them have bugs that, in the old days, would never have made it to production. In short, we have a qualitative difference in the bugginess of new vs. old games -- new games are a lot more likely to have versions with "simple oversight" bugs that are rapidly patched with a new version release. I have to admit that to me, it seems a bit like cheating to use a version that was only the official release version for maybe a week. The version of the game you are playing is not the version that anyone realistically played for any significant length of time -- it was "retracted" by the developers, except of course that once you put something on the Internet it cannot be truly retracted. Imagine a hypothetical game in which a version is released that has not removed debugging shortcuts -- when you start up the game, there's a teleporter that will take you straight to the final level. You don't have to enter a cheat code or perform an obscure action or anything like that, the game just straight-up gives you a free pass to the endgame. A couple of hours after release, the devs realize what they did and release a patch that changes 1 bit in the executable so that the teleporter isn't generated. Should all the speedruns use the version of the game that provides the teleporter? (EDIT: what if it takes a week for the devs to release the patch? A month?) The problem we get into here is that at some point, a given version of the game has been released for long enough that it does qualify as an "official version in good standing" even though it has these bugs. Instead of being retracted by the developers, they just have to deal with that blot on their history and release the next official version. But there's no real way to quantify when that change in the nature of a release happens.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/28/2013 4:55 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
They even adjust the room name to suit: Imagine Spikes Here, If You Like.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/27/2013 11:21 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
This seemed interesting enough, but as a relatively unknown game it's important that the description include some information about how the game is played. In particular, what is the significance of the bomb blocks, and does the snow / rain / whatever have any effect on gameplay? Regarding the play, I'm not a huge fan of the bits where the camera was vibrated back and forth very quickly, but otherwise this seemed solid.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/27/2013 1:24 AM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Presumably anyone who has the skills to do this is already interested in this kind of work as a hobby, so the cash reward is just to encourage them to do something that they might do anyway. Kind of like commissioning a drawing from a hobbyist artist.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/24/2013 4:02 PM
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Derakon
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That's cool! You can see where in memory Samus's vertical position is tracked since it changes every time she jumps / falls. I'll have to show this to some of my programmer buddies.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/24/2013 6:16 AM
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Derakon
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Turn 2015? So 15 turns after the class quest unlocks, the game will be won? Holy crap dudes.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/23/2013 10:16 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
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CoolKirby wrote:
Very interesting game. Looks like one of the old DOS games, almost. I haven't played it, but I still found this really fast-paced and entertaining. Yes vote!
It's actually in many ways an homage to the Commodore 64k, including using the same standard font. I think it also imitates the palette, though the analog way in which colors were handled back then makes this an imprecise proposition at best.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/23/2013 4:57 AM
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Derakon
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Misattributed as usual, but oh well. Congrats on the recognition, and congrats again to Lord Tom for the TAS.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/22/2013 8:39 PM
(Edited: 2/22/2013 8:40 PM)
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Tangent wrote:
Intentionally playing a specific version of a PC game instead of the most up to date because of a bug in that version and only that version is really dubious to me.
(derail) What would you say then about, say, playing the original NA Metroid Prime instead of the Greatest Hits version, which was modified to remove sequence breaks without fixing the bugs / oversights that originally made those breaks possible? I do think that a deathless 100% run would be a good counterpart to this run, though, and there, considerations of the version number would not be an issue. As for the run itself, I enjoyed it. I also find it amusing that Captain Viridian knows something is deeply, deeply wrong and doesn't recover until the third crewmember is rescued.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/18/2013 8:40 PM
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Derakon
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Royal Guard should definitely be shown off, but I can't imagine making it the centerpiece of very many fights because it basically just renders you invincible (in TAS conditions) and gives you the occasional huge-damage attack. It gets worse if we assume that the run starts from a naked Dante, because leveling Royal Guard (to get the really big damage numbers) takes a long time. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that with level 2 Trickster and Air Hike you can stay airborne indefinitely against Virgil 1. So that could be another "stupid boss trick" to do.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/17/2013 4:40 PM
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Derakon
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Posts: 3960
How does the shotgun-cancelling trick compare to jump-cancelled Killer Bees? Obviously that's only available once you get Beowulf, but it's usually the go-to DPS strategy in unassisted runs. Anyway, I always assumed that a DMC3 TAS would basically be one long style showcase; sure, it'd get through the game quickly, but it would definitely sacrifice time for entertainment, and it wouldn't use the same strategy on every boss. Ideally it'd find some way to make their AI degenerate so it could "humiliate" each boss in turn (e.g. the loop against Geryon), though I don't know if that's necessarily feasible for all bosses.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/12/2013 11:30 PM
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Derakon
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Joined: 7/2/2007
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I admit I haven't read any of the commentary thus far in the thread, but here's my thoughts: Normally when a hack is submitted, we're judging not just the quality of the gameplay (i.e. the runner's efforts), but also the quality of the hack, with a lack in either category being sufficient to warrant rejection. I'm not certain how that policy has been affected by the addition of the Vault tier, but in this case I believe the problem is irrelevant. The hack quality is fine, even good. And the run quality is also good. Regarding the hack itself, I could wish for less underwater or autoscrolling levels; fortunately they get subverted very quickly, unfortunately they're still noticeably less interesting than the other levels. The use of switches, and the Bowser fight, are both excellent. I have to wonder what was going on in the Big Boo fight though. Regarding the run through the hack, the creators did a good job of playing around during dead moments (e.g. riding the giant Monty Mole), and it's clear that they have a solid understanding of Super Mario World in general and the hack in particular from the ways they subverted puzzles. Unfortunately the puzzles are complex enough that I (as an outsider to the SMW hacking community) can't always recognize when a puzzle is being subverted and when the run is actually doing exactly what you're supposed to do, but I think I can safely assume that glitching yourself a rainbow shell and then flying through the terrain is not ever intended. For example. If anyone is up to making commentary, some discussion about the intended approach vs. the actual approach would be welcome. I have to admit I was glad to see Yoshi get ditched; he seemed to be the cornerstone of a lot of the more game-breaking glitches, so having segments of the run that couldn't be as trivially broken was a nice change of pace. In any event, I'd say this is worth a Yes vote and a place in the Moon tier.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/11/2013 4:13 PM
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Derakon
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That's some very impressive shading...but what happened to the rest of "Machiavelli"? ;)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/5/2013 5:55 AM
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Derakon
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I'm kind of surprised that the Pink Nu battle doesn't consist of Ayla critting him for 9999 over and over again. Is he immune to physical damage or something?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/4/2013 4:25 PM
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Derakon
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If I recall correctly, this game requires the Wiimote, so no, it cannot.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 2/1/2013 10:13 PM
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Derakon
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I think the big problem you run into is that each room has two back walls which would tend to cover over adjacent rooms. That's why the map you linked has those spacers between rooms. There's also the issue that the map in this game actually is three-dimensional. Representing 3D maps in 2D is always a dodgy business, even if you have access to the code -- there's lots of 3D games with useless in-game maps.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 1/30/2013 8:48 PM
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Derakon
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Presumably as long as SNES9x or whatever emulates the game as accurately as BizHawk does, you should be able to freely convert movie formats without getting desyncs.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 1/23/2013 7:19 PM
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Derakon
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I believe that the buster upgrade is skipped in the current run, since you get it automatically in Sigma 1 anyway. That does mean that charged weapon attacks are unavailable for the normal levels though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 1/23/2013 1:36 AM
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Derakon
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Posts: 3960
I seem to recall that Steam isn't doable (probably to do with the Steam API that the games call), but more relevantly, Flash isn't doable, and VVVVVV is a Flash game.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 1/14/2013 5:52 PM
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Derakon
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If you're always trying to be as fast as possible, then you should just use the "aims for fastest time" goal. Sometimes the fastest run possible requires players to do things that seem slower but actually aren't; using a weaker attack so you can manipulate the RNG is a good example of that. Just explain why you did the things you did and nobody should have any complaints. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 1/7/2013 4:58 PM
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Derakon
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Looks good! :) One question -- what was the purpose of all the falling right at the start?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 1/7/2013 2:32 AM
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Derakon
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Hey, all of S&K done to the challenge! Nice work. :) As I mentioned earlier, Carnival Night Zone would also be problematic, right? There's at least one barrel that you'd have to deal with, and I don't think it can be done just by jumping.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 1/6/2013 7:19 AM
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Derakon
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Bisqwit wrote:
Why did you not complete Black Omen three times, though? Is it not possible to get tabs from each one of them? Doesn't not doing that actually undermine the "collecting all Power/Magic/Speed Tabs" goal?
If I recall correctly, the wall panel enemies that give Speed Tabs can only be done once; even if you start in 1000 AD and work your way backwards they won't be there on the repeat visits. The other Tab-giving enemies are unlimited so you could just duck in and out of rooms on the one visit if you wanted to max out on Tabs, but you wouldn't really be "done" until all your party members had ** stats and there were 99 in inventory...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
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