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More notes:
The complete notes were put in a single post later in this thread.
Map of Shibaz maze:
I found a useful glitch in Shibaz maze. Normally you have to clear 6 runes that are spread throughout the maze, but by using a bug you can activate one of the runes as many times as you want which gains you 350exp every 1 sec and counts as 1 rune cleared each time.
EDIT:
Video
Link to video
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c-square wrote:
In my last post I was joking. But in all seriousness, the Stage Comparison (Ghosts) encode was way more entertaining than the straight optimized run. There ought to be a way that one can be hosted here on TASvideos, perhaps as a playaround or citing entertainment / speed tradeoffs or something. Also, the comparison run would be one that everyone would then get their names on.
I hope it can be done.
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I deleted the previous two posts that were about a problem I struggled with some weeks ago.
I just came here to leave this link of my current progress. Please feel free to let me know what you think. Level design is not done (the level is basicly a debug level), menu is not done, many other things aren't done so keep that in mind. Use arrow keys to move and jump.
http://mugg1991.altervista.org/v19/21.html
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I now remembered a gamebreaking bug that locked the game once when I was a kid playing the game. Your father is in prison and you visit him twice during a normal playthrough. But the game lets you advance the plot even if you don't visit him the first time - when you vist him the second time, he will say dialogue from the first visit and the game is unwinnable. Or so I remember. (edit: this is not true, more info about this here ) I'm going to find out because I will play through with both scenarios (talked to father and didn't talk to father).
Here are the next notes that I took:
The complete notes are in a single post later in this thread.
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I finished the game successfully. Next playthrough I want to test some things:
- For the djinni isle, can I get all the required items beforehand and bring them all at once?
- Can things be done out of order e.g. can I go to the old dungeon in the capital city earlier than what the gamefaqs guide said?
- is returning the dungeon key mandatory?
- What is the best way to deal damage? Is buying or collecting attack items good or should I rely on sword damage?
Sometimes you can attack enemies but they can't attack you, when you are in certain places e.g. behind bushes or in a corner and the enemy AI doesn't know what to do.
Some quests seem optional for example releasing the cyclops from the dungeon might be optional. Next playthrough I want to see what is the minimum course of action, and I will also see what are the shortest dialogues to reach my goals.
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This is one of the few DOS games I want to see a TAS of. I might make a TAS myself depending on whether I can get JPC-rr to run fine in the future.
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qadimhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qadim:_The_Genie%27s_Curse
Gamefaqs http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/564566-al-qadim-the-genies-curse/faqs
I'm currently playing through this game and I plan on playing it once more after I'm done, then noting down details on where to find gold, where to heal, how much EXP each enemy gives, etc. etc.
There are some nice things you can do in TAS, like always winning in the gambling game to get a lot of money very quickly - although it might not be worth doing that since buying expensive attack items isn't worth the detour.
I like the atmosphere of the game and even though it's kind of a long game, much of it is backtracking or wandering around fighting enemies or collecting items.
There aren't any useful glitches that I know of. There are apparently some gamebreaking bugs that seem to occur when saving your game in bad places but there can apparently also be bugs where plot-important characters or enemies vanish, but I'm not sure.
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Thanks for the quick answer. I shall elaborate on my problem:
I'm coding a game where there is a "plank" item which is defined by two points. But those two points need to have a fixed distance.
fig.1 just calculates the distance at a given time. I want to attempt to fix the distance for P2 in fig.2 (I hope I'm not confusing).
In my example this happened to be the distance:
(((4-9))*1)^2+((9-16)*1)^2)^(1/2) = 8.602
But let's say I want to fix it to 10, then:
(((4-9))*(10/8.602))^2+((9-16)*(10/8.602))^2)^(1/2) = 10
But this doesn't give me the new P2 X or Y either. How can I extend or shorten the given distance to a fixed distance to find the new position of P2?
Maybe do I need to solve these equations?
(((4-X))*(10/8.602))^2+((9-16)*(10/8.602))^2)^(1/2) = 10
(((4-9))*(10/8.602))^2+((9-Y)*(10/8.602))^2)^(1/2) = 10
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I've found a rather serious glitch in my html5/javascript game. If the browser lags, variables seem to be updated not at the same time, or maybe some operations are skipped. This can cause my character to jump twice as high, for example.
Maybe the "request animation frame" thing forces a framerate and if operations take too long it skips some? My question is how to prevent this?
I can share my files via PM if someone wants to look at the source code to help me.
I read that distributing html5 games as files is not good. There is no telling what the javascript in my files would do, theoretically it could collect whatever files it can find on the computer and send them to the internet or something..
So it was said that html5 games should be uploaded to a server and linked to. I think this should be easily possible later, right?
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Nice find, I will look forward to your further testing.
Using the US version, in VBA and Bizhawk I've only been able to make the game reset itself at best.
This might be specific to the VC version so please do test on GBA/NDS/GB Player. I would like to try too but I'm afraid I haven't been active in this game for a while so I don't know how to make Mario into a barrel (this might not be possible in both VBA and Bizhawk btw iirc due to an emulation problem).
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I kinda lost my interest in MLP, I mean I still check out the new fan content occasionally, but I'm just not so hyped anymore. It's been ages since I watched an episode... I think I'll enjoy the new season but it just doesn't feel as it used to (like when I deeply cared for the series and the feeling it conveyed)...
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It's not really worth solving them yourself except as an exercise.
Well, for me this is a good exercise to see if I'm capable of realizing my plans. Google has been my only help and even so I'm making satisfying progress and I don't see unsolvable problems lying ahead yet.
I have figured out how to implement a check that lets my character walk on slopes (I was really happy that I made it work) and I want to see if I can figure out how to implement some physics (speed, acceleration, velocity). In particular, I want to add a "ball" item which will bounce through the room. I will have to figure out how it behaves when it touches left slopes, right slopes, ceilings, grounds and walls so it's going to be interesting. I'm doing this to see if I can do this and for fun. And in future job interviews it will not hurt to be able to show a game I coded myself, a platform game, no less.
I can see this project may end up taking a long time before it's near completion. I think once I finish coding some basic items and weapons, it's going to be all about designing the levels and the character sprite.
I'm going to check out Unity later this week.
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Thanks for the link but I'm not going to stop what I started despite how horrible you say javascript is. I have some high plans and I'm curious if I can realize them. This is going to be just a hobbyist project for now, and a pastime since I barely have stuff to do at my work.
In the school that I attended last year we were taught Java and it was very frustrating. The teacher wasn't doing a good job and the problems/tasks given to us were confusing, we were given too little time or I was not motivated. With Javascript, since it's close to web development and crafting websites, I feel a lot more comfortable and I can see results of my code very quickly. I'm going to have to attend this school again around August this year for more Java and it's going to be about databases; I don't know if I'm looking forward to it.
Thanks. The problem is that I don't have excel installed on this computer and I can't easily get it again.. There was a stupid reason for that but I don't remember. So I'm going to have to wait for another solution, or maybe you will be willing to post the total here every time? But I can only consider video records..
I found a useful glitch in Shibaz maze. Normally you have to clear 6 runes that are spread throughout the maze, but by using a bug you can activate one of the runes as many times as you want which gains you 350exp every 1 sec and counts as 1 rune cleared each time.
EDIT:
Video
Link to video
Wikipedia 
Is fig.1 correct?
What is P2 x and P2 y in fig.2 ?