Sorry for making another lameass topic with a lameass title. >_>
Reason I created this is because I was assigned to deal with the topic of science fiction in an American cultural studies class (on borders and conflicts/other problems that are going on in those areas). And I've found lots of literature on science fiction and its relevance to real world matters, but I still feel like I lack somewhat of an overview.
As I have no idea whom else to ask for a basic overview (the first works on science fiction that would come to anybody's mind and their relevance to that specific topic), I decided I should probably create a topic here. I'm sorry! :/ I've chosen that title so people could discuss about other matters too in here. And I'll probably delete this post once I feel like I know enough. Again, I'm very sorry. I have a very bad feeling about doing this, but this is the only forum where I feel there's a chance I could get serious and smart replies, so yea. ^^
Mainstream science fiction, in my opinion, seems to touch the more serious topics only very lightly. Though I think Avatar, for example, has a more serious message hidden in it as well. With most of the stuff like Star Trek, I feel it's very black and whitish for the most part though. :/ I could maybe still use it to go into more subtle stuff though, such as how the alien is presented, or how the crew is made up of people from different human races, which was a kind of revolutionary idea at that time.
I don't know any of the works of Stanislaw Lem, but I guess it would be a good idea to have a look at them, right?
Sorry, I'm really a bit clueless on this. :(
Now I realize that this post gives some people a convenient excuse to point fingers at me for other topics I'm interested in. At most, I chuckle, because I've done way too much explaining and I've seen what it accomplishes.
It's good to see you're still so confident. ^^ But I myself have found that chuckling at others does me less good than trying to understand them (until I can imagine me acting in similar ways if I was in their shoes). If you're surprised why your explanations won't work, that probably happens because of a lack of understanding for how these people (or you yourself as opposed to others) think and feel. I'd rather if nobody replied to this post. I don't feel like discussing about it, just felt the need to post this.
Do you find real life unfulfilling?
Do you have a tendecy to avoid problems?
Do you look for ways of escaping from stressful situations?
How long is the average speedrun?
Why do you speed run?
I'm currently doing a paper on video games and would like to gather from data.
Speed running isn't some kind of product of our fantasies, is it? It is part of real life. Just like other kinds of competitions imo.
I think most speed runners wouldn't have the tendency to avoid problems, rather to search and solve problems and make up problems of their own. They're in fact looking for problems to show others and themselves how good they are at solving them.
Again, I don't think speed running is really much of a way to escape real life stressful situations. It's more of a thing so you can prove to yourself that you can get something done or to test out where your own limits are. Or just train yourself for the sake of getting better (at something that is essentially pointless, except for that it provides entertainment, making it a form of art), while it's still kind of fun.
I don't speed run anymore (unTAed).
But I did speed run because I was interested in all these glitches and timesavers and in how/why they work. Also in figuring out ways on how to train yourself, to get certain parts right everytime even though they require very high levels of precision.
I find my real life very fulfilling, but I don't really understand why it's so popular to consider stuff that happens on the internet as "not part of real life". Playing card games is part of real life, isn't it? Well, I don't see much of a difference with computer games, unless we are talking about MMORPGs. But those are never speed run afaik. >__>
And really, an essential part of speed running is to break the laws of the game, so you aren't really engulfed in a fantasy world of any kind. Instead, you're solving very complex not-np-complete puzzles (finding the fastest way to beat a game), where you'll never know if your solution is the absolute best one. The second part is to train yourself to execute that solution as best as humanly possible (except with TASes, duh).
So no, it has nothing to do with escaping real life at all imo.
Maybe it's an artificial way of giving speed runners the feeling of being successful, while they don't really accomplish anything that'd really have any kind of a big impact on the world. But that's true for most forms of competition.
MrGrunz, is there any chance you'll do a low% OoT run after you've finished your MM one? I'd be more excited to see that than an improved any% run, and you seem very familiar with the route and tricks involved. I realize the MM one won't be finished anytime soon, just asking.
After having played Syobon Action for hours and hours, I was so annoyed by the way too similar design of 1-1 and those problems with the audio that I had to stop playing, sorry. I'm sure you did a good job on the game generally speaking though. xD
Well, I'm not a big fan of SMB TASes either, but I think the quality of the level design in this hack is almost up to par with the original.
So I think it has good chances of being accepted here.
I was a bit disappointed by the 4x4 solution. It seems to have used a suboptimal algorithm for solving it. I'd vote meh if I knew for sure that a faster solving algorithm has already been found, but I don't.
I'm thinking that's very good, especially for first tries. And I'm also thinking that you should post those gp5s. ^^
Also, why did you use mp3 instead of midi files?
So the best example of the game you're talking about is Super Metroid. But such game would be impossible for TAS-newbies to... oh, I think I misunderstood the purpose of the topic. I thought we were talking about a game that would be easy to TAS even for inexperienced players. My apologies.
Oh, yes, now that you mention it, it pretty much fits the description. Super Metroid actually seems to be TASable to some newbs, but the reason TASing it seems so hard is just because of the insanely high standards of the community imo. And because of annoying stuff like lag, door transitions etc.
I was actually more thinking of basic platformers, megaman-, castlevania- or zelda-esque games (even kirby) with an extra TAS friendly touch. The engine could be reused and refined, so yay. A TAS tutorial game might also be a great idea though. ^^
I don't think TASing becomes more fun if it's necessary to beat a game.
I think it's more about using complex algorithms for calculating f.e. speeds (so that it's hard/impossible to find the absolutely fastest solution) and to have lots of abusable glitches (that still can be explained somehow, but require frame-perfect input to be executed or RAM-watching to be abused in efficient ways) or game mechanics that can be abused by TASing such as cancel-able lag after attacks.
Also, if the main character has different forms or other restrictions on using particular moves, the TAS will get more diverse and thus more entertaining to watch and create.
It's a bad idea trying to prevent glitches of that particular kind.
It's almost impossible to come across them even after playing through the games a number of times. If thousands of freaks play your game for years though, they'll always find strange ways to abuse your engine. But does it do any harm if they find those glitches? On the contrary, it adds immense amounts replay value for geeks/nerds. And it doesn't take away from the fun for casuals either.
So the bottom line is, trying to prevent these glitches would not only take loads of time and effort, but it would actually make your game worse. You shouldn't be concerned about glitches which don't have any negative influence on the gaming experience.
I'd like to point out a rather obvious improvement to the first RBA sequence in this run. As is, it consits of
1) Getting bottle B with bombs on C-right
2) Recatching the bug
3) Putting the pocket cucco to C-right
4) Emptying the bottle
5) Refilling the bottle with a bug
Steps 2 and 4 could be skipped though.
Python is easy to get into and easy to produce quick and decent results with, but I agree it's not the best choice.
Personally, I'd prefer C++ too (or C#?).
Java isn't very performative either for tasks like that from my experience.
I'd love to help create such a game. But not from scratch. Too risky.
Flash doesn't strike me as a good choice. It's not very performative nor accurate, is it? I suggest using Python or .NET.
LUA support might be a good thing to have, as it seems to be a language most TASers know. The core engine could then probably be reused for creating similar games.
I think the concept has great potential and more people would be willing to participate, but only once they see first promising results.
Is this the no true scotsman argument vs a straw man?
("Cutscenes aren't part of the REAL run!" vs "So you'd want to skip side-hopping parts too? That's ridiculous!")
I'd greatly appreciate encodes without these cutscenes that I've already seen over a hundred times too. ^^
Something funny/useful might or might not happen if you make the game load more enemies than the maximum expected number per map.
In a best case scenario, it'd cause similar effects to RBA.
Somebody might want to look into [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swzHiBfCYYw]this[/URL].
I've tried to come up with a useful application for it, but I can't think of any. I don't get how emptying Ruto's bottle would work using that (as proposed by Acryte) except if you already had a second bottle anyway.
Something you could do with it is get bottle B, then equip the Master Sword to ISG, then return the bottle to B in all versions. But the problem with that is that once you take out the sword, you can't do a full swipe anymore.
I had a theory that you could permanently link an RBA address to a bottle on a C button with it, but the glitch doesn't quite work like that.
So it seems useless so far imo.
255 is the highest value for items, except if there is an additional severe glitch in the game. You can tell because in memory, it looks like this:
Starting from 8011A638 with no space in between:
8 bits for the item which is on B
8 bits for the item which is on C-Right
8 bits for the item which is on C-Down
8 bits for the item which is on C-Left
The biggest number that can be stored into 8 bits is 255 and there simply isn't more space reserved.
The game can't be glitched into reading a bigger number than that, as it reads out item values only from 8 bits at a time. The surrounding bits don't have an influence.
The items and their corresponding numbers can be looked up [URL=http://tasvideos.org/ZeldaOcarinaOfTimeTricks.html#GettingTheLightArrowsOnB]here[/URL].
Though that list should probably be extended to also contain these numbers, for the sake of completeness.
51 Broken Sword
52 Prescription
53 Eyeball Frog
54 Eyedrops
55 Claim Check
56 Bow/Fire arrows
57 Bow/Ice arrows
58 Bow/Light arrows
The following ones aren't equipable to the C-Buttons [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx5oslAb-A4]except for the Bomb Bag (20)[/URL]. You can RBA keys for the water temple with it.
HSS wrote:
Oh, cool, I didn't know that.
Anyway, here's an old post of mine regarding the empty C-Right byte. Maybe sombeody can finally figure out what it's used for?
Kuwaga (long ago) wrote:
I did some more testings regarding the byte we can reach with RBA and an empty C-Right. It's only 2 bytes away from Water Temple map data (rooms you have already entered before finding the map). And 15 bytes in the other direction is a byte which determines the water level in Water Temple.
So I'm guessing it's just some unimportant byte that has something to do with Water Temple. Or an unused byte because Water Temple needs less space than others, I don't know.
There's still a chance that it has nothing to do with Water Temple, but I'm at least pretty sure that it's temple related.
Never going to happen. Warp song locations aren't dynamic.
Also, afaik empty C-Right is the only RBA address that hasn't been figured out what it's used for. Empty C-Right corresponds to an item with the number 255. That's very far from the other RBA addresses. So it might be an unused byte, and it seems to be, but you never know for sure.