Maybe the description of these runs just have to be edited to contain stuff like "This run can be improved by approximately 34 minutes applying tricks that were only discoverd after its publication." Then maybe hint at the forum.
I'm assuming d10 range from 0-9 and I'll also asume that 0 is smaller than 9. (even though rolling two zeros results in the largest number if i'm getting this right)
The average number that will be rolled is 65,35 then. 2% chance of rolling each of any two-digit numbers with the first one being higher, 0% chance of the opposite, 1% chance of rolling each of any numbers with equal digits.
In regards to the bounty points I brought up earlier, the bounties can be decided as an automatic process involving the following formula:
bounty = (publ. uptime in days) / (avg. tech rating)
Additionally, it would only kick off when any two of the following conditions are met:
1) 2 years of uptime;
2) average tech rating below 6.0;
3) the resulting bounty is above 100 points.
Thus, it is designed in a way to promote large improvements (and to get rid of substandard movies in a correct way) in favor of frame-shavings on movies that are old but already deemed good.
Unfortunately, this is also designed to encourage delayed submissions of improved runs.
If the author TASes at a slower pace, they will receive more bounty points, as long as nobody beats them to it.
Started a new Earth game as Rome. Did some scouting, reloaded. Changed my production for Rome to maximize science (needed to get pottery asap) and then went to make my second city in the west.
Selected no the first time, then hit yes. I had already sold my palace so the city should've came with another one to sell, but instead of a Palace I saw a bunch of gibberish in production with 999 days to complete.
I selected production there was nothing there and then my city instantly had every world wonder in the game. So I said okay, lets just roll with that and see what happens.
So I end turn and it says the population of Ephesos is over 100,000!
A military I had that was moving north turned into a weird black and red color and the new city I had just made vanished.
Then the game went black and froze up.
As someone who liked to play the game when it came out, but never bothered to look into speed running tricks that are involved in this game, I think the run is really good. Definitely worth publishing imo! It involves the one or the other interesting sequence break or time saver and I don't see any major mistakes. The author's description makes the run actually sound worse than it really is, imo.
The level of precision could easily be improved though (at the beginning). And one thing I really hated about the run was Goemon's muscle training. For some reason, the author made absolutely no effort at all to make that entertaining.
I still think it should be published, as a 100% run will probably obsolete this one anyway once it has been made.
Oh, and thanks for the encode! ^^
Hope you can somehow remain motivated until you finish the run! I'm just saying because you seem to always set yourself pretty high goals. But that's also why everybody loves your TASes so much. ;)
But instead, the TAS solution would just go through from one corner snaking through the board marking every square properly on the way until it painstakingly filled in every square correctly since there was unlimited time to figure out the solution beforehand.
Snaking through the board in a unique way for every picross. On the SNES, there are also two pointers that will work together starting from opposite ends. Also, the SNES version has two buttons for marking a square - that means going zig-zag (or like left+up in frame one and then down in frame two) you can mark one square per frame, but if you go in straight lines, it's only one square in two frames. I think this creates very exciting problems, that I'd be very entertained to see solved.
I would get "Wtf, this is really the fastest way for this one? I'll watch that in slow-mo again." and "Wow, this one looked kind of cool" sensations from watching it. I'd probably save state and watch every solution a few times until I "get it". I'm sure it'd be fun to me. I didn't know I was that unique of a person in that regard though, lol.
Picross games (Snes, GB or any other version) would be a horrible TAS to watch.
I disagree. The path for the fastest solutions are very untrivial (at least on the SNES version) and just seeing it solved in patterns which seem semi-random, but in the end turn out to be the single fastest solutions would be very entertaining to me. For some reason the majority disagrees.
I was looking to make the TAS of my choice somehow stand out between others to provide more entertainment than just the average one. Also, it should be fun and challenging to actually make the TAS. Those guidelines may be rather bad though, as they caused me to never finish one.
As my first game I chose Super Mario's Picross because I thought it would be cool to see all the pictures solved in strange patterns. However, the general viewer didn't seem to find that concept as entertaining as I myself did.
As a second idea, I chose to run 4 Sonic games at once. I stopped because it was too big of a challenge for me, consuming way too much spare time.
As my last idea, I picked a not so well known game with interesting glitches (Saint Sword). I indefinitely delayed that project though.
I'm imagining p0r secretely reading this thread and everytime somebody says he'll return for sure, he thinks to himself "Ha, I'll show them!"
Then, the more he doesn't allow himself to rejoin this forum, the more he will want to do exactly that. Probably once people have stopped posting in this thread, he'll be like "I wonder if they realize now, that if I say I'm going forever it really means forever!" This kind of wondering will eventually cause him to make up an excuse for coming back and prove all of our predictions right. If on the other and he doesn't, we'll forget about them and never realize how wrong we were. :p
Do we really need an objective solution, though? So much of the judging process is subjective, and rightfully so, that I don't think much is gained. It's a judgement call. That's why we call them judges.
If you ask me, I'd say we don't need an objective one at all. But several coments seemed to call for it. Maybe somehting like "very apparent/obvious luck manipulation" would be a better name for the tag then. I don't think those particular names are good, but people wouldn't go raise the question of what actually constitutes a heavy one then.
This is just another suggestion. I don't really have a problem with things as they are though.
I could figure out algorithms or come up with unconventional ideas if the game's concept is interesting to me. Would be fun.
Edit: @Derakon: I realize nobody wants to do the programming for somebody else's ideas. That's why I, for example, will only start programming out the games I have in my head once I'm old (and have enough spare time to waste for a thing like that). But if there's already a project going and a really good idea pops up somewhere, sometimes the programmers will modify it and sell it as their own. So, good ideas can be useful. But it's hard to come up with good ideas if you don't know how to program in the first place (or if the programmers hide away their code/progress and don't make demos). xD
It's also true that a good team of programmers will only very rarely need ideas from other people.
I still think calculating (or at least guessing) the probability of the run actually happening like that, leaving out unimportant events, is the way to a more objective solution.
I seem to recall this trick being mentioned in a walkthrough on Gamefaqs. In any case I've known about it since forever and assumed it was common knowledge.
Maybe instead of a "heavy luck manipulation" tag a run could have a luck manipulation quotient or something like that. It would indicate how probable it is for the rng (if not manipulated) to spit out the numbers needed to make the run possible. That doesn't include random events that don't influence the run's time. It should, however, include luck manipulations for entertainment purposes. For games where it isn't understood how the rng works, this value would have to be approximated.
The higher (or lower) that value and the shorter the movie, the more densely luck manipulated it is.
Just a suggestion, as I don't see people ever agreeing on what constitutes "heavy luck manipulation".
It would mean a lot of work, so my bet is that nobody will actually ever calculate these values. ;)
I have lucid dreams about every day, before I fall asleep. It's a semi-conscious form of dreaming and for me it works at a much faster pace (more stuff per second happens) than regular dreams. I guess it's called hypnagogia, though I don't agree with the way the wiki article describes it. I can control about 20% of the things that happen and that value gets lower and lower as I get towards real sleeping.
Those dreams are really as surreal as they can get. Thoughts get randomly mixed up in ways they're normally not supposed to, including many occurances of synesthesia. Most of the images I see during that period would make for good paintings and I also come up with some awesome songs every now and then.
I can consciously stop the process at any time during the initial stages and I will retain most of my memory of what has happened. When I touch my eyelids while they're still closed I can feel my eyeballs unconsciously moving into random directions at high speeds.
During real sleep my dreams get much more realisitic, but they still make less sense than average dreams for the major part. Also, often I have some kind of "enhanced reality dreams". During those I make experiences that feel more real than real reality. I've had very intense feelings where I've never felt anything comparable during the state of being awake. I've also seen more prettier things than exist in real life and tasted the best taste I've ever tasted in those dreams. >_>
The areas I visit during those dreams are very complex and some of them would make pretty cool, but expensive, real buildings. People during those dreams can sometimes act surprisingly realistic, to a point where I at first can't make sense of their actions, but after giving it some thought I can figure out their motivations behind them. They really seem to have their own minds and I can't access what they are thinking.
All that gets mixed up with very surreal stuff again though.
For the record, that article was not written by me.
But you agree with the sentiments, or else you wouldn't have posted it.
I guess he only posted that link to point out how you can't just say "Merry Christmas" or anything to a general mass of people while being perfectly politically correct..
http://www.mediafire.com/?jd4yzwjymyy
This is the longer and more difficult version.
Beat it with 35 deaths after a bit of practice.
There is already a thread about it on here.