In another forum I participated in a discussion about the dot-product of vectors. I commented how serendipitously and usefully, from the point of view of geometry problems and computations, the dot-product of two vectors is the sum of the products of their components, which is also the same value as the products of the magnitudes of the vectors and the cosine of the angle between them (a fact that's sometimes really useful in many geometric problems, and is really handy because you don't need to do any trigonometry to calculate it).
Somebody commented about the "law of cosines." I commented that the law of cosines is something else entirely.
However, a couple of seconds later I started to doubt. What was the law of cosines once again? When I checked what it was, I started doubting even more. Perhaps the law of cosines isn't actually completely unrelated to the dot product? There are some similarities.
Is there a relation between the two?
I think the poll should be retained, as it's valuable, but its results shouldn't be dismissed so lightly. I think it should be taken more into consideration.
If the poll and the discussion in the thread agree with each other, then there's little problem in terms of judging. However, if there seems to be some kind of disagreement between the poll and the discussion, this could induce the judge to consider the tier decision more carefully, and perhaps even ask the community some questions in the thread if necessary, and ask for more opinions and clarification.
I have in the past suggested a slight change to the meaning of the poll answers, to be more like:
* I see no problem in this being published, and I liked it.
* I see no problem in this being published, but I found it unentertaining.
* I see no problem in this being published, and I have no strong feelings one way or the other with regards to entertainment.
* This shouldn't be published (explain in the thread why).
If the there are any votes on that last one, this ought to catch the attention of the judge.
If I understand correctly, the current server-side code, which uses that antique version of phpBB, is heavily modded with custom code, making it very hard to update to the latest version. (This is one of the main problems with taking an open source project and essentially creating a fork of it with tons of custom modifications of your own: It may become extraordinarily difficult to merge updates to the main branch into yours, especially if the main branch code changes radically in design and implementation.)
It would be theoretically possible, of course, but require a lot of work, unfortunately.
Extremely disappointed to see this run - by my view, the most historic TAS ever - getting vaulted.
For years I have opposed this widespread notion that "vault" should be considered some kind of garbage dump where all the "boring" runs are shoved into simply out of pity, because we have to publish it if it conforms to the rules. That it's some kind of shame to be published in vault, as if your run is boring garbage that doesn't deserve any attention or prominence, and thus it's a huge disappointment if a run you like gets dumped there, as if it were some kind of ignominious stamp of shame.
For years I have sporadically tried to suggest a change in attitude in this, to no avail. People still consider vault some kind of garbage dump for "boring" runs. If anything is a shame, that is.
IMO it should be considered a great privilege to get a run published in vault. It means you have the any% or 100% world record for that game. It shouldn't be much different than getting to the top position in the speedrun.com leaderboard for a particular game. That's not a shame. It's an honor! Your run is the best in the world! Nobody else has a faster run than you. Why should that be shameful? It's not.
That being said, if the distinction between Vault and Moon is entertainment, let's face it, this run doesn't really qualify for entertainment because it has no gameplay at all. A person cannot possibly be entertained by something that doesn't exist. The only entertainment that can possibly be derived from this run happens at the meta level (in other words, by studying the technical details of how the run was made, not really what the run looks like on screen).
If nothing else, the amount of entertainment per second of runtime is absolutely off the charts.
That's a rather useless, and if you allow me, nonsensical measurement stick. You cannot measure subjective feelings like that.
Even if we were to humor this kind of measurement method, I would argue that the "entertainment per second" value of this run is zero, because of what I said above: It has nothing to be entertained by, during the run. If there's any entertainment to be had, it comes after the run, not during it, and thus you cannot measure "entertainment per second" for something that doesn't even happen during the run. You are completely free to disagree (and you will most certainly do so, and that's fine), but that's my opinion, and this whole "entertainment" thing is 100% subjective opinion anyway, so there's no one correct answer. My opinion is as valid as yours, because there is no "correct" opinion.
- Be fast-paced.
This run achieves this goal better than any other in existence. Perfect by this metric.
No, it doesn't, because nothing is happening on screen. A "fast pace" doesn't refer to the length of the run. It refers to things happening on screen at a fast pace. But nothing happens on screen here.
- Have lots of action.
A lot is certainly going on at once, though it is in fact impossible to follow.
Quite obviously "lots of action" is referring to things happening visually on screen. I doubt that the the "action" is referring to things happening behind the scenes, unseen to the viewer.
Finally, I'd like to appeal to variety. This site has countless runs of various sorts of traditional gameplay, as it certainly should. At this point, it even has a decent collection of "traditional ACE" runs, as incredible as it is that such a thing can even exist. There is nothing else like this, it seems to me that TASVideos could only benefit as a site from not excluding such a complete gamechanger.
Uh... Last time I checked, this run was accepted, not rejected. What do you mean "excluding"?
Why do you consider being published in Vault as being "excluded" in some manner? You seem to consider Vault as synonymous with having been rejected.
All tool-assisted speedruns published here are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license. This license allows to:
- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially,
as long as proper credits are given.
Is there a closed-form expression, or elementary function, that takes as parameter a nonnegative integer and gives as result an integer such that the binary representation of that integer has a given amount of 0 "bits" appended (or prepended) to each of the original "bits"? It doesn't matter if the 0-bits appear before or after each bit (as long as it's the same for all of them).
So let's assume we want to append (or prepend) three 0-bits between each of the bits of the original value. Thus (all these in values in base-2):
02 becomes 00002 (ie. just 0)
12 becomes 10002
102 becomes 100000002
112 becomes 100010002
1012 becomes 1000000010002
etc.
Or, alternatively, if it's easier,
02 becomes 00002 (ie. 0)
12 becomes 00012 (ie. 12)
102 becomes 000100002 (ie. 100002)
112 becomes 000100012 (ie. 100012)
1012 becomes 0001000000012 (ie. 1000000012)
etc.
The formula should be modifiable so that rather than three 0's, it could be some other amount.
In that case the search field at the top of the page would greatly benefit from improvement. I didn't even know that page existed, even though I tried searching for it. When I search for "super mario bros 3", the vast majority of the results on the first page have actually nothing to do with that game in question, and none of the results are for that page, even though logically speaking that should be the very first and prominent link in the results.
Apparently, reading at least The Verdict is required before one feels like arguing against it, and it looks like you haven't done so.
No matter how many times I read it, it still says the same thing: "Accepting to vault as an improvement to the published run."
What "published run"? How many SMB3 runs are there in vault? What does that mean?
Big part of all this confusion is that it's so hard to even find all the SMB3 runs and its different categories. I'm not even aware how many of them there are, or which one is (or which ones are) in vault.
I still dream of tasvideos.org being redesigned with something more akin to what speedrun.com has done. For example, consider https://www.speedrun.com/smb3
There's brief info about the game on the left, and on the main list all the categories are clearly listed in tabs. When you click on a tab you get the entries for that category, and you can also click on the "view rules" button to see what that category means. (Obviously at tasvideos.org this exact design couldn't work because don't have a top list of entrants, but just one entry for each category. However, it could be something similar, perhaps listing all the categories vertically in boxes or something.)
I've been telling you foryears that no one is taking down direct successors of superplays you've liked in the past. Branches you seem to be (or supposed to be) proud of keep existing just fine, alongside new glitched to death ones. You keep making it sound like we're obsoleting "regular any%" runs with "game end glitch" runs, over the course of many years. It's been explained several times that it's not true, and it's trivial to check for yourself.
Am I misreading the judgement? It says: "Accepting to vault as an improvement to the published run."
Vault contains exactly two types of run for a game: Any% and 100%. That means that this run has become the official, and only, any% run for this game, obsoleting the old one. Or has this rule changed some time along the line without me noticing it? Are there now different "branches" of any% for a given game? What does "as an improvement to the published run" mean, if not "this obsoletes the (one and only) existing any% run"?
But you seem to only want to whine and complain that the entire community doesn't follow lockstep with your opinions.
I'm frankly getting completely tired of me not being able to express a dissenting opinion without some a-hole immediately starting to accuse me of wanting "the entire community to do what I want". Nowhere did I say anything of the sort. I was expressing my opinion. Are you capable of understanding that someone can express a personal opinion without it being a demand for the community to do something?
I'm finding TASes to be more and more boring by the year, as they get more and more broken, with less and less visually entertaining gameplay. This particular TAS is the absolute culmination of this, which is especially prominent that this was arguably the first game that was ever TASed in a notorious way.
It's not this particular TAS that's disgraceful. It's the overall state of TASing in general. The direction where it's heading. This particular TAS is just the pinnacle of it. The absolute and quintessential example. Is this particular run the future of TASing? If yes, then yes, I consider that disgraceful. I consider it pretty much the death of TASing as an interesting hobby to follow.
That's my opinion. Where do you see a demand? Please point it out. If you can't, then shut up.
Once you've expressed your opinion, you don't have to keep repeating it every time someone else shares an opposing opinion just so your echoed opinion is the last one in the thread.
"Every time". Stop lying. I have done no such thing.
The 3-part finale will be this October on Discovery Family. Let's keep that hype train going!
Your enthusiasm puts a smile on my face. I'm not being sarcastic or cynical here; I'm being completely candid.
I just wish I could share your enthusiasm. Somehow this series has lost its marvel for me...
You’re forgetting the fact that a tournament would mean getting to choose one winner, not winners. TASing shouldnt even be a competition.
I didn't suggest holding a TAS tournament.
Excuse me? Did you even remember what you wrote? “6. All subsequent promotions to Stars are nominated and decided as part of the Awards every January.”. This sounds exactly like a “tournament.”
I honestly cannot see where you are getting that from. It sounds to me more like a voting process by the public, not any sort of tournament or competition.
Super Mario Bros 3, and Morimoto's original run of it, arguably started the whole tool-assisted speedrun phenomenon and community. It can be argued to be the first one, the one that kickstarted the whole hobby.
The original run caught the attention of a relatively large public because of how marvelous it looked.
(Back then Morimoto did not make it at all clear that it was created with tool-assistance, in an emulator using slowdown and savestates, and many people mistakenly thought it had been played in real-time and felt deceived and disillusioned when it was "revealed" that it was made with an emulator, not in real-time. This hurt the reputation of TASes, which were deemed as "cheating" by many (including many unassisted speedrunners.) However, years of hard work fixed this reputation, and TASing has been considered a legitimate separate independent and appreciated branch of speedrunning for quite a long time.)
It spawned an entire community around a hobby, and has resulted in extraordinary runs that continue to marvel people all around.
But now it has been reduced to this. What was once a marvelous show of extraordinary superhuman gameplay, with the player seemingly achieving superhuman feats that are essentially impossible for mere mortals... is now but just an ending screen, and that's it. This is what the grandfather of TASing, the precursor, the originator, has been reduced to. Just an ending screen. There's nothing to see in this run anymore but just that. No gameplay, no marvelous superhuman feats, no extraordinary maneuvers, nothing. Just an ending screen.
For this to be done to the original one, of all. I would be lying if I said that I'm not deeply disappointed. What a disgrace.
I must confess that my passion for following TASing is getting worryingly low. Game after game is being broken more and more, until there's nothing left of what made TASing so marvelous in the beginning. TASes are becoming boring. It's like taking something beautiful and extraordinary to watch, a marvelous piece of art, and hammering it into a minuscule boring cube of trash that has nothing interesting to it. When the most "interesting" part of a TAS is reading a miles-long wall-wall-of-text technical description, something has gone horribly wrong.
Meh.
I admit to knowing next to nothing about the field, but this explanation feels... off. At best, it feels like an oversimplification so extreme that it ends up being nonsense. Can someone please explain, preferably not to technically, what this is all about?
I think the delayed quantum eraser version of the experiment is, unlike what it might sound at first (after all, it has such a fancy-sounding complicated name), a better and easier way of understanding the seeming paradox that's happening.
(Note that this is most probably an over-simplification and may be slightly erroneous in details, but should be mostly in the ballpark.)
In the double-slit experiment it's possible to put two crystals into the slits that split the incoming photons into two, going into two distinct directions. In other words, you can have a photon that passed through one of the slits split into two photons, one going towards a detector or film, and the other going towards another measurement device.
This allows knowing which slit the original photon went through: As it has been split into two photons before one of them hits the film, the other can be measured to see which slit it came from. When this is done, no interference pattern happens.
Ok, one might thing that the splitting crystals at the slits are somehow interfering with this whole system and destroying the interference pattern. However, here's where a very curious and strange thing happens: If the two possible paths that the photons take towards the measurement device are exactly joined so that it's now impossible to tell which slit the original photon went through, the interference pattern in the film appears once again!
Not only that, but this joining of the two paths can be done at a much farther distance than the distance between the slits and the film. Suppose that the distance between the slits and the film is like 20 cm, and in the other direction where the split photons go through the two paths are joined like 10 meters away, the interference pattern still appears, even though (at least apparently) the decision to join the two photon paths is done much later than the other photons hit the film.
Also, this whole thing doesn't even require several photons to pass through the slits at the same time. The emission of photons from the photon source can be made so dim that only one photon is emitted at a time, which goes alone through one of the slits. When this is done again and again with enough photons, the interference pattern will start slowly appearing (demonstrating that the single photons actually interfere with themselves when they go through the slits). Or if the measurement paths are not joined, only two spots appear on the film (rather than an interference pattern).
Even more curiously, this device can be built so that you can decide whether the join the two paths or not at any moment. And this decision can be done (at least apparently) after the original photon has hit the film. And still, whether an interference pattern appears or not depends on whether the two paths were joined or not, even if the decision is made with a delay, after the film has already been hit.
I don't know why this happens so I can't explain it. (It might have something to do with photons taking all possible paths and essentially being everywhere at the same time, or something like that, but this becomes really esoteric-sounding.)
Firstly, I can't think of a game off the top of my head that fits this description and wouldn't be better categorized by a more descriptive genre than "Action Adventure."
Games like LoZ:OoT and Super Metroid are generally classified as "action-adventure". How would you classify them? ("Metroidvania" is a rather informal term.)
Personally, I think the identifier "Action Adventure" is a flawed term.
I find Action and Adventure concepts as mutually exclusive when considered as the primary driving mechanic of a game.
I wouldn't be so hasty to condemn the term. I think it can be quite well used for a game that otherwise fulfills most of what makes a game an "adventure game"... except that in addition there's a real-time combat element (or other real-time elements requiring timing, reflexes or other kind of real-time skill). In other words, "an adventure game with some action game characteristics added on top of it". A combination of both.
What would you classify such a game as, if not "action adventure"? I mean, let's assume that it has all the hallmarks of a pure adventure game (open world, large inventory, need to find and collect items, need to use those items in a non-trivial manner eg. in puzzles to advance) with the exception that there's also a real-time combat element to it?
The term "action" could also likewise be used with other genres, like "action RPG" (which would describe a type of RPG that uses real-time combat requiring skill and reflexes, rather than a turn-based take-your-time combat system).
...so can we do something about this?
Such as adding an "action adventure" tag to prevent double-tagging all those games as "action" and "adventure" both? Or update the wiki?
What would be the definition of "action adventure"?
Would it be an adventure game that has more (or even primary) emphasis on real-time combat?
Watched these two tases and thought they were both top tier in entertainment and technical aspects. Recommending to stars.
Submission #6154: fmp & Yuzuhara_3's SNES The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past "full inventory" in 52:52.44
http://tasvideos.org/3874M.html
and
SNES Super Metroid (JPN/USA) "100%" in 1:01:47.03 by Sniq.
http://tasvideos.org/4010M.html
We already have 5 starred TASes of the Zelda francise and 3 of the Metroid franchise.
While I don't agree with Arc's note on "credibility", arguably Coca Cola Kid has low enough ratings that it should be moved back to moon tier. There's plenty of other (and higher-rated) movies of the Sonic Game Engine in star tier, already.
Note that starred runs are supposed to be representative of what's so cool about TASing, not necessarily just a list of highest-rated runs. Most often those two things coincide, but that doesn't necessarily have to be so. (In other words, just because a starred run may have a bit lower ratings doesn't automatically mean it should lose its star.)
Without doing any research, my off-the-cuff response would be somewhere between, "Water is naturally blue," and "The oceans are reflecting the sky." Even if you can't really "see" the atmosphere from space, you can still see blue on the planet's surface, and the blue would be reflected outward.
Water is pretty much colorless, although I think that when light passes through enough water, it gets filtered so that it becomes slightly bluish. However, I'm not sure that can be an explanation, especially since the surface of water is very reflective (the amount of reflection depending on the angle of incidence) and, I think, the vast of the color you see is reflection. I could be wrong, of course.
If the deep blue color is caused by water reflecting the atmosphere, I don't really understand why the atmosphere would look deep blue when looked from below but not from above. If the atmosphere looked deep blue when looked at from orbit, surely eg. clouds would be heavily blue-tinted, yet they are quite white in all such photos.
So someone who doesn't understand that this is a TAS can't be entertained by the TAS aspect of the video.
With "has no knowledge of what's happening behind the scenes" I did not mean "doesn't know this is a TAS", but I was referring specifically to how this particular one was made.
In order to understand what's happening, even if you know it's a TAS, you need to read some background info on what's happening and how it was achieved. The video alone, all in itself, offers not much entertainment without that technical background info.
One can perfectly well be entertained by eg. the Megaman TAS (knowing it's a TAS) by simply watching it, without having to know any technical details of how the different glitches etc. were achieved, and one can understand eg. that the player is zipping through walls without it having to be explained in great detail (or at all).
In this case, however, any possible entertainment comes from the background info, not from what's happening on screen during the run.
So from what I gather from this discussion, the features of an adventure game are the following:
* Usually relatively story-heavy, with a story narrative being in a significant, even primary role, often with lots of narration, dialogue or other type of information.
* Slow-paced. The player is free to interact with and advance in the game at any pace. Most usually there's no hurry to do anything in a given amount of time, there's no dexterity or skill required (eg. aiming and shooting at enemies), and doing nothing for a long time will not cause any sort of penalty or game over in any situation. If there are any game over conditions in the game, they are caused by wrong choices, not by not reacting soon enough to something or not being physically skillful enough. The difficulty in advancing in the game does not come from skill and timing, but from finding objects and solving puzzles.
* Inventory and puzzle based. Most often the player is required to find and collect items, which are then used to advance in the game, usually in a non-trivial manner. Quite often the items themselves have to be used in some kind of puzzle or other non-trivial way to advance. Usually these objects and puzzles make some storywise sense (rather than being completely abstract and detached from the setting).
* The focus of the game is precisely the collectables, the inventory and the puzzles, rather than them being just a secondary element (which would be the case eg. in RPGs.)
* Often, although not always necessarily, relatively open-world and exploration-based (which directly ties to the player having to find the objects necessary to advance in the game), and quite non-linear in nature (at least locally in each level/location).
* Usually has no combat mechanics of any kind (with the exception of some kind of puzzle dressed up as "combat", or some kind of humorous gimmick.)
Examples of games that are not adventure games because they don't fit into the above categories:
- Sokoban: Consists of puzzles, but there's not story, no collectibles and no inventory. There's no exploration element.
- Super Metroid: Quite open-world exploration, player needs to find objects to advance, but contains almost no puzzles and is heavily combat-based, skill-based and timing-based in many situations. Not very story-heavy.
- Final Fantasy: Open-world exploration, vast amounts of collectibles and a vast inventory, very story heavy. Due to turn-based combat, requires no fast-paced reflexes and skill. However, has a very big emphasis on its combat mechanics and has almost no puzzles to solve, and the inventory is only a secondary characteristic of the game (leveling up being the primary one).
- Dark Souls: Very open-world, and has collectibles and an inventory. However, is almost completely combat and skill based, with almost no puzzles of any kind. In many situations not doing anything is heavily penalized (eg. when being attacked by enemies.)
- Portal: Puzzle-based, relatively story-heavy, has no combat (with minor exceptions, as the player may be shot at). However, has no inventory and no collectibles. Very linear, has no exploration element. Some puzzles require timing and skill.
- "4X" games in general: Very open world, heavily inventory-based (at least if we consider resources to be inventory), and in the case of turn-based games, timing of actions is not an issue. Many games can be quite story-heavy. However, they have no puzzles, and the emphasis is in the combat system, with the collectibles being aimed at better combat, rather than solving puzzles.
