Is there some special bonus for getting a tetris composed solely of red pieces?
I have to admit to being amused at how many times you blocked off the leftmost column only for a red piece to immediately show up to mock you.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
* Iirc you can switch between the two in the menu without wasting any additional time and the differences between the two don't come into play anymore, so Ziggy probably did it for aesthetical reasons.
That still doesn't change that I'm pretty sure you could skip the last pause (which does take time) if Popolon's health had been refilled earlier. Unless contact damage with Galious is really ridiculously high, Popolon should have plenty left to take that last hit.
Thanks for the link to the NES run.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Neat! Overall the run looked good, but I have a few thoughts:
* First off, it seems likely that getting the dagger will save time. In world 9 you have to kill a bunch of bats and the delay here seems very likely to be longer than what would be required to get the dagger earlier on. It might also simplify resource management since you'd be able to kill bats en route, but I don't think that's needed for the dagger to pay itself off.
* Secondly, you switch to Aphrodite to grab the last key. However, this means that Popolon's health isn't replenished for the Galious fight. I'm pretty sure that if you just grabbed the last key with Popolon you'd be able to eliminate the last pause for both of the last two boss fights.
Otherwise, this looked very well-executed. Nice work!
EDIT: it'd be neat to see the NES version run as well. It's more or less a completely different game with multiple conceptual similarities.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
VVVVVV is fairly easy to optimize, since IIRC there's no acceleration. I wouldn't be surprised if unassisted runs are within a second or two of the theoretical max speed.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It has nothing to do with the availability of information. Burzynski is free to publish his methods by any means he likes. He just can't apply them (outside of strictly restricted test cases) without the FDA's approval.
Exactly. So why release them? So the methods can be stolen by other people in other countries exactly like the FDA tried to do? Sounds good to me.
Why release them? Maybe so that people in other countries can be cured of cancer? Little detail, that.
And you can't steal methods. His name will be attached to this procedure/medicine/whatever, for good or ill. If it works, then he gets the fame. If it doesn't, then he gets the blame. "Theft" is really not an issue for this kind of thing. The ultimate goal for research doctors is to come up with new procedures and publish them so that practicing doctors can start using them. Where those doctors are located should be a trivially minor secondary concern.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Uhh, excuse me? Did FDA cut off his tongue and fingers?
He is trying to make his methods known by getting things done legally through the FDA. If the FDA won't cooperate, then his methods will never be publicly available throughout the US.
Because clearly it's impossible to publish results without going through the FDA.
The FDA's job is to make certain that medicine (and procedures?) are not provided if they don't pass a rigorous battery of tests. It has nothing to do with the availability of information. Burzynski is free to publish his methods by any means he likes. He just can't apply them (outside of strictly restricted test cases) without the FDA's approval. This is why the FDA is completely powerless to stop the spread of his work -- he can always publish somewhere else, get another country involved, and start performing his procedures there instead of in the States.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
So let's suppose that the government doesn't force companies to provide healthcare to fulltime employees. Immediately, every company stops providing that healthcare, because healthcare is leeging expensive. Sure, they pass on the savings to their employees in the form of higher salaries, but now that each employee has to buy their own healthcare, economies of scale go right out the window (everyone has to deal with health care companies on a one-to-one basis), not to mention each employee is now at the mercy of the healthcare insurance system, which has consistently shown itself to have all the empathy and caring of a brick through your window. Got cancer? Whoops, you aren't covered. Failed to make your payments for a month? Re-sign your contract with tripled premiums. Done everything correctly? They'll still make up an excuse to delay paying.
With employer-provided healthcare, this is slightly less of an issue, because the employer can go to bat for their employees. After all, they need the employees healthy and working! And emeployers are more able to afford the required lawyers to navigate the legal morass that surrounds every contract out there to make certain that the insurance the employees are getting in the first place is actually useful. You lose all that as soon as you go to individual healthcare plans.
The bottom line you have to keep in mind here is that companies are basically sociopathic. The government's first job is to keep a gigantic herd of powerful sociopaths from trampling roughshod over the entire country. This results in some weird rules sometimes, and doesn't always work that well. But most regulation (that isn't bought and paid for by a powerful sociopath, c.f. continuing farm subsidies long after the 1970s corn crisis) has good reasoning behind it and was introduced to solve a serious problem.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The system that Jetblade uses for detecting if a point P is inside an arbitrary convex polygon ABCDE... involves taking the cross products of PA x AB, PB x BC, PC x CD, etc. If any of those cross products points in a different direction from the others, then the point lies outside; otherwise it lies inside.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
If you project XY into the plane defined by ABC, you should be easily able to test if any part of that projection is within ABC (standard line-line intersection tests and "is point in triangle" tests). If it isn't, then clearly XY does not pass through ABC -- in order for that to happen, there must be a point on XY that is within ABC, which would also automatically be within ABC when projected.
If some part of XY projects into ABC, then that defines a new line segment (call it UV) which is the set of possible points that could intersect ABC. Find the projection direction for each endpoint of UV (i.e. if the endpoint is "above" or "below" ABC). If the directions are opposed (one is "above" and one is "below") then UV intersects ABC.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Just remember that there's a difference between keeping an open mind and believing any random old thing. :) I can accept the possibility of there being sentient planets out there without believing that there are any. Agnosticism, basically.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I'm a bit tired, so I only watched the first third or so of the run...here's my thoughts, based on that:
* There was minimal playing around during waiting times. 2P runs are usually a great opportunity to have interaction between the two players, but here they mostly just did the same action in opposite directions.
* We have enough Fang action already. There's no need to pick the optimal characters, especially since the 2P run can't match the 1P run for speed anyway due to the weapon damage reduction. Two new characters is preferable.
* In general, when there's multiple runs of a game on the site, each one should offer as distinct of an experience as possible. That should extend to taking different routes and achieving different endings.
Voting meh; what I saw looked technically proficient but not very novel.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
@nfq: You should be aware that human were never meant to look at artificial light, and that some small portion of the radiation coming from your computer monitor is likely causing cancer in you RIGHT NOW. So, for your own health, it would be best for you to find some way to communicate on the internet without having to use LCD, plasma, or CRT screens.
I just unplug my phone, stick my finger into the line socket, wiggle it to send bits, and feel the electrical shocks to read bits. Who needs photons?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Sorry, I thought by "ledge grab" you meant the Power Grip from MZM. Apparently you meant some Super Metroid TAS trick? I can't find anything on Super Metroid specifically talking about this; I just turn up talk about Smash Bros.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
There's no ledge grab; the game's using the Super Metroid engine, and adding a ledge grab would require very extensive code changes. It's hard enough to implement that kind of thing when you're working in a proper high-level language, let alone when you're working in assembler. Speaking from experience.
There's also no Charge Beamst, no ziplines in Kraid, no screw attack blocks, no morphball shinespark, etc...
That said, the any% run isn't maximally optimized; there were cases where bombs weren't laid as far from bombblocks as possible, and I'm pretty sure the sequence break for super missiles could have been done faster by walljumping off of the crumbleblocks.
EDIT: in response to the below: the any% run skipped almost every bossfight by getting powerbombs early. Remove that sequence break, and Kraid and Ridley must be killed to access Tourian and Phantoon. The other minor bosses are scattered about in various random locations (e.g. Botwoon replaces the Chozo test from MZM).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Regarding fluoridation: broadly speaking, we have two choices here:
1) Fluoride for everyone! Put it in the water so everyone's drinking it. Direct costs: studies before implementing the plan to make certain it's safe; passing the required legislation; about $1/person/year.
2) Let people choose! Create a subsidy for companies to provide fluoride supplements (since the government certainly can't make and market them directly) and a media campaign to encourage people to take those supplements. Direct costs: studies before implementing the plan to make certain it's safe. even given wildly varying fluoride intakes; $X/person/year in subsidies; $Y/year in continual media campaigns to remind people to take their fluoride. Indirect costs: poor people can't afford to buy supplements even when subsidised, cut it from their purchases, get tooth decay, get wiped out by the dentist's bill, and have to go on welfare, thereby costing the country way more in support than they ever would have if the water had been fluoridated from the start.
Look, I'm all for very careful consideration before we mandate any supplement be put into the water supply. There's a lot that could go wrong there. However, in the specific case of fluoride, we have decades' worth of evidence that it works, and I can't believe that a privately-run system would accomplish the same goal with anywhere near the same level of effectiveness.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Wikipedia has an article on water fluoridation that you might want to read. At least the introduction. Short version: it works to prevent tooth decay and it costs about a buck per person per year.
I'll grant that the stance on marijuana is absurd, which just illustrates that everyone's subject to politics. Along a similar line, the TSA is almost certainly doing more harm than good. But fluoridation is a good thing. Remember, General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove was a loony.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
As far as I'm aware, if you have cancer your options at this point are basically surgery, chemo, and death, in rough order of preference. Not all cancers can be cut out of you -- particularly, if they've made it to the bloodstream.
And Brandon: the first goal of every organization is to maintain its own existence, government or no. That said, if you took away the FDA, guess how many people would die every year from contaminated food, poison masquerading as medicine, ineffectual "therapies" (radium water! It's good for you!), etc. Guess what would happen to the economy without the Federal Transit Administration to maintain the roads. Guess how long it'd take working conditions to plummet to 19th-century standards without the Department of Labor.
Libertarian fantasies about the abolition of government in every meaningful form are sociopathically stupid.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
A cure isn't outside the realm of possibility. You need some consistent way to target cancerous cells while leaving normal cells alone, which is tricky because there's multiple ways for cells to become cancerous. But I don't think it's impossible. Chemotherapy, for example, simply targets and destroys all cells that divide rapidly, which includes cancerous cells as well as a number of other cells (e.g. hair follicles).
You could also try to prevent cancer from occurring in the first place, though this is getting into very speculative territory. Cancer usually comes about through accumulated errors when copying DNA. Theoretically, you could make a retrovirus that does more rigorous error checking on each cell's DNA than the body already does during cell division, recognize pre-cancerous cells (having a large number of errors compared to some master copy), and kill them off, to be replaced by normal cell division from healthy cells. This wouldn't be a "cure" for cancer -- more like a "vaccine" (i.e. preventive care, as opposed to curative care).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I'd still like to hear why this guy hasn't gone to another country to do an end run around the FDA. If he actually has a cancer cure then he should be welcomed with open arms just about everywhere.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Ah, you were talking about TASing, fair enough. I was talking about my experiences in unassisted (and indeed, non-speedrun) play. Naturally that's going to be considerably different from tool-assisted play.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Solutions to big problems are worth big money; someone's going to find a way to profit off of them.
And that is exactly what the FDA attempted to do after finding out about this man's research.
Ah, no, you're not understanding what I meant by that. There is money to be made by providing a solution, and the FDA does not have the power to prevent that solution from being provided, because the provider can always go to a country where the FDA has no power.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I always thought that /players 8 was harder for young sorcs than most others, mostly because their offense is rate-limited by their MP and they can't take hits. Meanwhile, a barbarian or paladin, who's already set to tank the enemies more or less indefinitely, just spends 4x longer mashing them into paste, and an amazon just buys a few extra quivers of arrows, and so on.
But yeah, the only real use I see for the /players 8 command is to get access to important skills like Teleport earlier, via increased experience per kill. I'm not certain just how much earlier you'd be able to manage, given the slowdown in killing that that command also entails. The better drops you get are more or less irrelevant in a TAS since you can manipulate drops...I guess if they also increase the boss drop sizes they could be useful if you need to manipulate several items from the boss drop pool though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
