Posts for Scepheo


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Huh. Would you look at that.
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MUGG wrote:
User commented on my video (GB Volley Fire TAS).
Chained Unfree22 wrote:
i used to own this game (Volley Fire) in a 2in1 cartridge. It came with another game where you are a chibi knight and you gather coins and deposit it in your house in order for your stats to increase. Then you have to fight a stationary dragon with 3 heads and one tail. You have to kill the 3 heads separately and the tail too. Please if anyone knows the name/title of that game, a reply would be awesome.
Sounds like Dragon Slayer.
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I can't check it out myself right now, but reading through the publications, it appears to be based off of [456] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Atma in 27:45.57.
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I was there for during the 2014 discussion, as you've already observed. There's no need to repeat it to me, I've been asking you to explain how it relates to my points, which you still haven't done. But nevermind. There was a big discussion about two options. A very small group of people decided that there was to much discussion about those options, and a third one was enforced, without any discussion. The only reason there's no flame war in that thread is because everyone who disagreed with its content had given up on arguing. And I'm not going to give you any examples of what you do label, because that is entirely unrelated to my suggestion. I'm going to stop discussing this here though, as the only points you're actually addressing are the ones I'm not making.
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feos wrote:
Scepheo wrote:
42%, to be exact. 44% don't. That's close enough to perfectly 50/50 to make the argument that "it is an issue" invalid.
Ah, so you're fine with ignoring half of our audience? OK. You've just been ignored as the unlucky half.
I'm not the one using it as an argument: you are. You are ignoring half of TASVideos' audience. I'm just calling you out on it.
feos wrote:
You've clearly skipped the second thread I linked.
Still haven't.
feos wrote:
You've clearly skipped the second thread I linked.
Got it the first time. Still not actually responding to my points.
feos wrote:
Seeing is not enough. You will have to read it. Especially when you try to pretend it has nothing to do with this conversation.
And again: I read it. You claim that thread somehow invalidates my earlier point that "clarity beats management difficulty". It doesn't: it has absolutely nothing to say about that point. If it did, you'd be able to quote the part where it did, instead of ignoring all my points.
feos wrote:
Okay. Now please go and read the second thread.
That's the fourth time you're ignoring my points. I'm starting to think you don't actually have any arguments at all.
feos wrote:
I will. But I'll need you to post a full definition of the approach you defend, so I don't end up arguing with a false interpretation of it.
It's very simple, really: don't label goals that aren't actually goals of the movie. All that means is that if a movie aims to do A, and it happens to do B, but only because doing B helps with A, you do not label the movie B. And an example to round it off: if a Super Mario Bros. movie aims to do "fastest completion", and it happens to do "warps", but it only does "warps" because that helps with "fastest completion", you do not label the movie "warps".
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feos wrote:
This is known. As I said, unfortunately, 40% of the audience do consider this an issue.
42%, to be exact. 44% don't. That's close enough to perfectly 50/50 to make the argument that "it is an issue" invalid.
feos wrote:
Where are you getting this from? It's not what the Judge Guidelines say.
It is my opinion, which is shared by many of the other people that feel any% runs should be the default, unlabeled one. Yet another point where opinions are divided about 50/50.
feos wrote:
Thanks for your binary opinion. Are you sure that if it doesn't matter for you, all other people should be forced to stop caring?
And again... It's the opinion of 50% of the people.
feos wrote:
I guess you've missed this thread then. Which is strange, because you've posted there.
Please point me to the part of that thread containing the evidence that "it ends up in unmanageable nightmare", because I can't find it.
feos wrote:
I guess you've missed this other thread then.
I've seen that thread too. It has nothing to do with what I said. You seem to have misunderstood the point of my post: you keep bringing up the same points. Almost all of them are subjective, and the exact thread/poll you've posted prove that opinions are divided 50/50. This renders those points useless to the discussion. The only other point you bring up is that it would somehow be impossible to maintain the labeling system I (and many others) prefer. However, it's been done like that before, so it's clearly not. You've also failed to provide any evidence as to what has changed to make it impossible now. In short: I have yet to see a valid argument for the current system from your side.
feos wrote:
Thanks for sharing your feelings.
It's like therapy.
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feos wrote:
It's only equivalent to any% until a major skip glitch is found.
Many people (or at least I) don't consider this an issue. In fact, this is a good thing: a any% run using warps should be obsoleted by a warpless run, if that somehow was faster.
feos wrote:
And only for this game. For other games, any% is equivalent to other goals.
Any% is "as fast as possible". Any other goals it overlaps with are incidental and don't matter.
feos wrote:
As mentioned in the first post of this thread, if we always drop the label of any%, and label all other branches, it ends up in unmanageable nightmare.
This is the only valid reason I've seen given for the current labeling system. There's two problems with it though: 1. I've yet to see any proof of this. 2. Clarity beats management difficulty.
feos wrote:
I explained above why we can't leave all the fastest branches without labels.
I don't feel you've ever actually explained it, though.
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Nach wrote:
You know those polls where they ask you 1 to 5 if you agree or disagree? I generally fill out nearly all such questions as 1 or 5. For most of the questions of that nature, I don't see the in between, at least not the way the question is phrased. To reiterate, I'm not wishy-washy.
"I have exactly zero nuanced opinions" != "I am not wishy-washy"
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Nach wrote:
I would like to say that I've never intentionally1 voted "meh", as I'm not a wishy washy person. I know if I found something entertaining or not.
That's just being silly. Entertainment isn't a binary thing. Sure, you could mentally rate everything 1-10, and then decide that everything below 5 is a "no", and everything else a "yes". But considering that "meh" means "so-so", is commonly used as "average" and is literally counted as half a "yes" vote, it's perfectly reasonable to say that some range around the middle constitutes a "meh" vote. That's not being wishy-washy or not knowing whether you found it entertaining: you can be perfectly decided on the entertainment being average.
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CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
There's a huge difference between criticism and opinion. Criticism (at least in the sense of artistic criticism) isn't about liking or disliking the end product, it's about showing that you understand what the creator intended, and offering advice about how they could have reached their intentions more effectively. In other words, you can dislike chicken, and you can criticize a cook for cooking chicken badly, but you can't criticize a cook for cooking chicken because you wanted steak instead. In the case of HappyLee, his artistic decisions were fully premeditated and intentional, and you can dislike it if you want, but it's unproductive to tell him that his artistic direction was a mistake.
Yeah, there's some mixed usage of the term "criticism" in this thread: I think it's mostly been about opinion. But it's important to note why there's even a discussion: not because people really want to nitpick this movie, but because HappyLee and some other people were denying them their opinion. Some people voted "no" or "meh" perfectly honestly on entertainment (me included: I didn't know anything about MrWint's submission), and were greeted with comments like these:
HappyLee wrote:
I'm sorry to hear that. I don't know if that's your real judgement or just angry talk.
HappyLee wrote:
Entertainment is subjective, so could you answer the following question in general, just from your subjective point of view? Do you like a TAS to be more like a superplay or a regular real-time speedrun? If your answer tends to be the latter, then why not watch Kosmic's real-time speedrun? It's fast enough, and it's live. Why watch a TAS?
BrunoVisnadi wrote:
Indeed, I think it's pretty obvious most of the 'no' votes are from people who sided with MrWint in the previous discussion, and not from people who truly disliked the movie.
HappyLee wrote:
I'm not happy with some people here who didn't take voting seriously, of whom in this case there are too many. With so many "no" or "meh" votes, I have every reason to believe that maybe our hard work doesn't belong to TASVideos after all. For a maxed out game like SMB, entertainment choices mean everything. Mario could have just run from the beginning to the end, which is so easy. Yet no one takes entertainment as seriously as I do, not even Mars608. I've been tirelessly digging out new entertainment strategies just to make the whole running process less boring. No one can imagine how pissed off I am to hear some people saying that this is somehow less entertaining than MrWint's run without providing evidence or details. Yes, entertainment can be partially subjective, but at least don't let your feelings go over the facts.
... And that's just the first two pages. That's why everyone's in here defending there no/meh votes. Not because we love to nitpick, but because we don't like being told our opinions are invalid.
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WST wrote:
So, if you have 10 frames, why not do the same, just in smaller scale?
Because if you're bouncing around the level for 10 seconds, that looks like showing off, whereas slowing down for 10 frames looks like an oversight or mistake. At least, that's what it looks like to me in this TAS: I know it's intentional, I know it doesn't waste time, but feels slower.
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That was awesome. I don't really have anything else to add. Easy yes vote.
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I'd just like to point out that I don't like the argument about highest/maximum score not being precisely defined for many games. Ignoring games where infinite scoring is possible, "maximum score" is a perfectly precise definition. Whether we know what that score is or not doesn't really matter. "Fastest speed" is subject to the exact same issues: there's always the possibility that better is possible, but unless such is known now, we still accept the movies. Given BizHawk's option for infinite movies, even the problem of infinite scoring could be worked around: an infinitely scoring movie beats a finite one, and infinitely scoring movies can be compared by seeing whichever approaches infinity faster. In the end I don't really have a horse in this race, though. I'm quite content with the current rules, as all of these movies are eligible for moons. I'm more disappointed in the audience response than the rules, but I suppose that just illustrates that "score movies should be excepted" is not a sentiment shared by the majority of TASVideos.
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Tub wrote:
Intuitively, the only strategies where all three areas remain roughly circle-like and convex are those with a point somewhere in the middle and three straight fences to the property border. My solution with ~1.533 is one of those, but I cannot prove whether it's optimal.
So are mine, I just haven't been able to get them any lower.
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Bobo the King wrote:
Okay, my shortest path is 1.635 miles and involves three fences meeting at a central point. I'm annoyed with myself that I once again screwed up a math challenge over a simple mistake, but since Tub got 1.533 miles, it sounds like I wouldn't have gotten it anyway.
I've found two different strategies that result in 1.7524, and have been unable to find anything better than that, so don't be too hard on yourself.
Post subject: How to: upload a userfile
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kaan55 wrote:
How do you upload stuff to the userfiles? I can't seem to figure it out.
From the home page, scroll down to Newest WIPs and click on Upload a WIP... I agree it should be more obvious.
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Dunno if a file is already available, but here's the relevant addresses I've found so far: User movie #42114537143735492
Post subject: Re: Dealing with big numbers (base16 version)
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Mothrayas wrote:
Which may not be enough when you're multiplying two 32-bit integers.
Correct, of course, but it is enough for multiplying a 32-bit number and a 16-bit number. So, split the multiplier 0x41C64E6D into 0x41C6 (high) and 0x4E6D (low), multiply your value by those, drop the irrelevant bits (modulo again), multiply the high result with 0x10000 to get it back in range and add them. My previous post was mostly meant as two hints to a solution, rather than a full implementation thereof. EDIT: Here's some code:
Language: lua

function mul(value) local high = (value * 0x41C6) % 0x10000 local low = (value * 0x4E6D) % 0x100000000 return (low + high * 0x10000) % 0x100000000 end
Post subject: Re: Dealing with big numbers (base16 version)
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xy2_ wrote:
I tried to re-implement this in Lua, but my problem is that the numbers in Lua don't have enough precision to deal with such large values.
They do, though. Numbers are in double-precision floating-point format, which can accurately represent integers up to 53 bits.
xy2_ wrote:
Would there be any way to implement this?
For powers of two, taking the last n bits is the same as taking the remainder of the division by 2n (so modulo). As such, for getting the last 32 bits doing
Language: lua

local result = value % 0x100000000
will work.
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Warp wrote:
Suppose there existed a program that answers this question: Given a natural number (in base 10) and a set of mathematical operators, does there exist a closed-form expression that uses those operators (and numbers in base 10) that is equal to that input number, and that uses less symbols than the input number? (I'm counting each digit as a symbol, as well as each individual mathematical operator.) I'm wondering what the computational complexity of that program would be.
That'll depend on the set of permitted mathematical operators. The only way (I can think of) that such an algorithm could work is brute force: create and test all possible expressions that consist of less symbols than the number until you either find one or exhaust them. This means that every expression needs to be evaluated, which is where the problem lies. After all, the number of symbols in a number is log(n), and the number of possible expressions using x symbols from a set of y is y^x, so the number of possible expressions is y^log(n). If we can evaluate an expression (say, we allow only basic arithmetic operations) in O(1), this gives a complexity of O(y^log(n)). If we allow every possible closed-form expression, however, this quickly escalates to busy-beaver levels.
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Warp wrote:
Both are "nerd hobbies". It may be that nerd hobbies don't usually lead to any actual social contacts, especially for a person who is not that young anymore. But on the other hand, they are the only hobbies I can be interested in. If I'm not interested in a hobby, I won't be able to do it for long. Motivation must exist to keep doing it, or it will stop.
Don't knock it till you've tried it. Which is serious advice; you sound like you've dismissed most options (i.e. everything that isn't a nerd hobby) while you can't possibly have tried them all. Quite a few hobbies have free try-outs, you could always try going to those. Everyone at those is new to the thing being tried out, and to most of the other people there, so chances of talking to someone new are pretty good. This is especially true for paired or grouped activities (like salsa dancing).
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It's probably worth checking out the speedrun communities or SDA threads for games you're interested in. If I recall correctly, someone made "reverse patcher" for the Borderlands games: as long as you keep Steam offline, you can roll back to any given version and use that. It's possible such tools exist for the games you want to run.
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I have the same problem. It doesn't seem to be that you're not logged in when you load the forum, but rather that you're instantly logged out (after all, it does manage to change your post reading history first).
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FractalFusion wrote:
gui.createcanvas(width,height), which, despite being in the code, doesn't even work.
I'm going to out on a limb and guess that you're using 1.9.4 or earlier, in which case: of course. You're looking at the most recent code but using a release that was built from older code. If you've compiled the code yourself it should just work, and you're free to ignore what I said.
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I would like to point out that the issues with sound dumping played only a minor part in my decision to reject this. That said, Pepsiman isn't Windows. Hourglass is a very fickle program and very much an unfinished one, so I feel we should be extra careful with "emulation" issues.