Posts for Warp

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Posted: 11/30/2012 6:10 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
HiipFire wrote:
Isn't TAS "Tool-assisted superplay"?
The topic subject line is a rhetorical question. It's not my point.
Posted: 11/30/2012 6:09 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
feos wrote:
http://tasvideos.org/Feos/NewcomerCorner.html
I'm not sure I agree with this style of writing: "Now, we are not going to lie to you, the casual visitor, we have to use speciffic tools for what we do." It makes it sound like there's something objectionable and shameful in that. It sounds like "yes, it's nasty and hideous, but nevertheless we have to do it to achieve our goals."
Posted: 11/30/2012 6:00 PM
Post subject: What is a TAS?
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
I think that the new Pokemon Yellow submission raises the question of what exactly is a TAS wide open. Traditionally a speedrun is a completion of a game, from start to finish, as fast as humanly possible (without the aid of any cheating devices, scripts or modifying the game.) A tool-assisted speedrun removes the human aspect from the equation, allowing the usage of any technical aids that the runner wants to use (as long as he/she doesn't actually modify the game itself or use external cheat devices, even emulated ones.) Some runs may have additional goals besides purely completing the game as fast as possible. The most typical and common one is achieving 100% completion (whatever that may mean in the game in question) besides completing it as fast as possible. Some time along the way the meaning was somewhat loosened, and game completions which did not complete the game as fast as possible, but instead deliberately used slowed strategies for the sake of entertainment, were included. (Most typically this is done with fighting and sport games, at least the ones where an as-fast-as-possible run would be repetitive and boring, while showcasing other things in the game makes them significantly more entertaining.) However, even the loosened definition still requires for the game to be finished, rather than simply ending at an arbitrary point. The new Pokemon Yellow submission is challenging this notion in a big way, as it doesn't go even near to completing the game, yet it's a no-brainer for acceptance. It showcases something quite marvelous about tool-assistance, and deserves its spot in the TASing folklore. However, it's a very, very different TAS. It does not complete the game, and in fact it doesn't even play the game per se (other than what's absolutely necessary to hack a program into the console and make it run it.) This is something else completely. It defies any existing category. I think that it's about time to set up the completely new and separate "demo" main category of TASing, that has been suggested several times in the past. Of course this opens the question of what is and isn't acceptable in the "demo" category.
Posted: 11/30/2012 8:06 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
If a photon were to orbit a rotating black hole at the outer limit of its ergosphere in the opposite direction of the rotation, it would look stationary from the perspective of the rest of the universe. (I'm assuming that this would be a completely hypothetical situation that probably can't happen in practice due to a myriad things, eg. because of quantum fluctuations and whatnot, but in theory it could be possible.) But what would this photon "look like" from the outside (assuming there was a way to measure it)? What would its properties appear like (such as wavelength)? What would the rest of the universe look like from the perspective of the photon itself? (I don't think the obvious answer "it would look normal" is correct because space is bent quite a lot that close to a rotating black hole. Not only is light curving down due to the gravity of the black hole, but it's also curving due to frame dragging.)
Posted: 11/29/2012 2:11 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
xPi wrote:
how many re-records does it take to change a light bulb?
It depends on how frame-optimal you want it to be. In real life the closest thing to a frame would be one Planck time, or about 5×10−44s.
Posted: 11/29/2012 2:08 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Ferret Warlord wrote:
this tree ornament
There's something that doesn't look right. Possibly the snout is a bit off...
Posted: 11/29/2012 8:48 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
funnyhair wrote:
The moon is hollow and Elvis killed JFK who in turn was killed by Chuck Berry.
But I thought Elvis lives!
Posted: 11/29/2012 8:47 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
How about an icon containing an exclamation mark?
Posted: 11/29/2012 8:43 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
I find it curious that the Gameboy would execute anything from RAM at all. I would assume that the most rational design for a handheld console (or any console where the program code is not read into memory but executred directly from ROM cartridges) would be for the game ROM and the RAM being in completely separate address spaces. Does the Gameboy map the game ROM and the RAM into the same address space? Anyway, as cool as this demonstration is, I have to question its validity as a TAS. It does not finish the game, so it's not a TAS in the intended sense. It also doesn't have any well-defined goal. It doesn't actually "play" the game at all (more than what's absolutely necessary to modify the RAM and make the program counter jump there.) However, this is way too cool, way too popular, and showcases too well what tool-assistance is all about (breaking games), that there's no option but to publish it. I suppose that what I'm trying to say is that this needs its own category, separate from all the others. The "demo" category (which has been suggested many times in the past) would be a perfect fit for this. (Edit: Oh, and btw. As much as I love the ending, perhaps a better joke would have been if it had literally been a rickroll. With Rick Astley's image and all.)
Posted: 11/28/2012 9:36 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Bisqwit wrote:
Dacicus = /dɑkikus/
I have always wondered why so many finns pronounce the syllables "ce" and "ci" as /ke/ and /ki/. (For those who don't know, the letter c is completely foreign to the modern Finnish language. It is in the alphabet, but it does not appear in the language itself at all. It only appears in foreign loanwords such as "celsius" and commonly used acronyms such as "CD".) AFAIK that's actually the correct pronunciation in the original Latin (for example the name "Cicero" was, AFAIK, indeed pronounced as "Kikero" in Latin, even though today it's commonly (mis?)pronounced more like in Spanish.) However, what makes it a strange-sounding pronunciation is that I can't think of any example or precedent of any actual loanwords that would be pronounced like that. In fact, the name of the letter in Finnish is pronounced as /see/ (rather than /kee/), and any loanwords and acronyms I can think of are pronounced like in Spanish or English (eg. "celsius" is pronounced as /selsius/ in Finnish, not as /kelsius/, and "CD" is pronounced as /seedee/.) OTOH, "Dacicus" sounds Latin, so pronouncing it as /dɑkikus/ may be perfectly justified in that sense. (Quite ironically, many Finns actually go to the other extreme and pronounce the syllables "ca", "co" and "cu" as /sa/, /so/ and /su/. That sounds even stranger to my ear. But that may be because I grew up in Spain.)
Posted: 11/28/2012 7:27 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Ok, maybe we should start adapting existing, but less known jokes to TASing. Like for example: "My wife told me that either I stop making tool-assisted speedruns, or she will leave me." "But that's terrible!" "Indeed. I will miss my wife quite a lot."
Posted: 11/28/2012 6:18 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
I can't actually make out what it is. Is it a pad of paper? A poster? Something else?
Posted: 11/28/2012 2:51 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Why did the TASer cross the road?
Posted: 11/28/2012 2:44 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
How many TASers do you need to change a lightbulb?
Posted: 11/28/2012 2:41 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
That Nightmare Moon animation was seriously badass.
Posted: 11/28/2012 8:58 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
So, two TASers walk into a bar, and...
Posted: 11/28/2012 8:53 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Oh, there are so many conspiracy theories out there, from small to large. It's difficult to choose one. If I had to to choose one particular aspect of some conspiracy theories that I find particularly amusing and interesting, then perhaps it would be those that are really, really hard to distinguish from parodies (in other words, where Poe's Law is in full effect.) A prime example of this would be flat earthers. When you read their arguments, it really reads like a parody, and a quite poor parody at that. It's not even all that funny if it were a parody. However, apparently at least some people take those arguments seriously and believe them. It's quite amusing to see to what lengths they go to try to dismiss simple everyday experience that any person can experience themselves, and the level of global conspiracy that would be required to keep up the things they claim. Inventing their own fictitious laws of physics is a common staple among most (if not even all) conspiracy theories, but not many go to the absolutely ridiculous lengths as flat earthers. Basically nothing we know about physics is true, according to them.
Posted: 11/28/2012 8:39 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Why do those eyes give me an uncanny valley feeling?
Posted: 11/28/2012 8:34 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Guga wrote:
A good name would be "Mindblown", but I don't know. I think there are better names.
I don't think that name would convey the purpose of the symbol. It's also too pretentious IMO. Something more neutral and descriptive would be better.
Posted: 11/28/2012 8:29 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
slashmolder wrote:
Dwedit wrote:
Isn't it 59.94, not 59.85? At 59.94FPS, the time would be 1:20:46.37. So it's emulation inaccuracy here.
The N64 runs at some magical internal speed which isn't documented or known by much of anyone from what I can tell. 59.94 is the NTSC refresh rate not the N64 rate.
Do I understand correctly that (analog) TVs actually adjust their own refresh rate to the TV signal that they receive (I'm assuming that within certain limits)? In other words, while standard NTSC TV broadcast uses 59.94 FPS, another video source (such as a console) could use a slightly different rate and the TV would simply adjust to it automatically?
Posted: 11/26/2012 11:54 AM
Post subject: Re: SMW TAS Comp
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
amaurea wrote:
These movies will be starting from a savestate from the looks of it. There is plenty of room for cheating there.
Well, don't allow starting from a savestate then. Sounds pretty simple to me.
Posted: 11/26/2012 11:52 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
ais523 wrote:
I've never seen someone thinking memory magically comes out of nowhere in asm. Partly because you have to do the arithmetic yourself for things like arrays.
Sorry, I still find to see the connection between "teaching how to allocate memory" and "teaching asm". It's a bit like: "Why are you teaching chemistry to these culinary students?" "Well, they wouldn't be able to buy the vegetables required to make food otherwise." "Wha?"
Posted: 11/26/2012 11:47 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Currently if you go for example to the Vault games list you get a ginormous page with 354 games that takes quite long to load and longer to scroll through. I think there should an alternative view for game lists such as that one, which is much briefer. For example, just one line of textual info per TAS (name, time, perhaps some other relevant info.) They would be links to the actual game entry.
Posted: 11/25/2012 8:19 PM
Post subject: Re: SMW TAS Comp
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
HiipFire wrote:
- No discussing strategies/route's with someone else - No collaberating with someone else on your run unless specified otherwise
How do you expect to enforce those rules?
- no cheating blablablabla
What exactly constitutes "cheating" in this context (especially assuming that the entries would be emulator keypress files; it's difficult to "cheat" to create them)?
Posted: 11/25/2012 8:35 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
ais523 wrote:
@Warp: You haven't tried to teach an entire room of newbie C programmers who don't see why they have to use malloc.
What exactly does that have to do with asm?
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