I got another idea: A sandbox style game such as Fallout 3, and a golf game such as the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series.
But not just regular par 3-5 golf courses. Have the tee at one corner of the outworld, and the hole at the other corner, and the objective is, naturally to get the ball in the hole in the least amount of hits. This could be something like par-100 or such holes. Online leaderboards could keep track of the best scores.
I understood your explanation, and it makes it clear what A is measuring using its own clock. However, I still have hard time deducing the answer to the original problem: Let's assume there's a visible clock on the bow of ship B, which A can see during the entire experiment. What does someone located at the bow of ship A (or at some other point in ship A) see as the value of this clock at different times, and how does this relate to what someone on ship B sees (when looking at his own clock)?
I just hope this can encourage more HD encoding...
Sorry for asking this, but I still can't really understand what the idea with the HD encodes is. It's not like the HD resolution adds any info to the video.
I know that I myself once started a thread suggesting HD encodes (and with 5.1 surround sound), but it was a joke. I never realized someone would actually start doing it for real.
I was thinking: Someone sees that a run (like this one) has got an award, and then clicks on the award icon and ends up in the award page, which simply lists which runs got which awards. Not very informative about the run in question (in other words, the user still doesn't know why the game got the award).
So I was thinking: Perhaps it could be a good idea if the award page also had a brief explanation of the reasons why the run got the award. It could be a synthesis of the main opinions stated in the voting thread, or some kind of mini-essay of why the run deserved the award.
I don't know if this idea would work in practice, but just wanted to throw it for discussion.
(Btw, currently the award icons link to the award page with a html anchor, but the anchor in question doesn't lead anywhere, so the page will always just stay at the top. I don't think this is the intention, and ought to be fixed.)
I have to confess that I have hard time getting my head to understand the diagram and how the locations and times work from the perspective of the different observers... :/
Thinking about it independently, the answer might lie on defining more precisely some of the things which were imprecisely stated in the original problem description.
As you mentioned, the precise location of the visible clock on ship B may, in fact, have a radical influence on the outcome of the measurements ship A is making. I didn't precisely specify where the clock is located because I didn't think about it.
The logical place for the visible clock on ship B is the bow of the ship. This way when the bows of both ships coincide, everything should be completely "synchronized": A sees that its bow coincides with B and starts its clock, and B sees that its bow coincides with A and starts its clock, and the visible clock on B should at this moment read 0 from both A's and B's perspective (if I have understood correctly, because if we think of the problem as a one-dimensional one, both bows and the visible clock are at the same place at the same time).
Another probably important detail which I inadvertently left out in the original problem is where exactly A is making the measurements from. The logical place for A to make the measurements is at the bow of ship A (because that's the place where it can see when both bows coincide, as well as when A's bow coincides with B's stern).
So now when A sees that its bow coincides with B's stern, and looks at B's clock to see what it reads, this clock is actually a half-ship away from where A is making the measurement from (ie. A's bow). Here's probably where the relativity of simultaneity kicks in: A is seeing these two events as simultaneous:
1) A's bow coinciding with B's stern
2) B's bow being at half of A's length, and B's clock reading something (0.5 seconds?)
However, from B's point of view these two events are not simultaneous, so even if its clock does read 0.5 (or whatever it should read at this point), its stern is not coincident with A's bow (from B's point of view). This is because the place where A is making the measurements is not coincident with where B is making the measurements, at this point in time (and because they are in different frames of reference). One could perhaps say that A is getting a "false reading" from B's clock (because A is not compensating for the relativity of simultaneity that is happening, but taking the reading as-is).
Your diagram is probably telling this same story, but as said, I have hard time understanding it... :/
Edit: This raises another interesting question: If ship A had a measurement device at the half point of the ship which looks what the clock at B's bow is showing (at the moment when B's bow is exactly at this half point of ship A), would it see a different value than the measurement device located at A's bow? If yes, what would the two readings be?
Actually there is more to the ending, if you press start some text does appear as shown in caitsith2's encode. Since it wasn't part of the input to press start, I didn't add it in the encode. Maybe I should have...
It has been an informal custom with NES Rygar that the run can be ended when the last boss dies, and the encoder then presses a button after some time to get the ending text.
If anything is unclear, please say so and I will attempt to explain it better.
I'm having a bit of difficulty in interpreting the diagrams. (I read the wikipedia page about them, which was some new info for me. I learned something new, which is always nice, but I have a bit difficulty with your diagrams.)
Let's take the left diagram, in other words, the situation as viewed from ship A.
At the lowest distance axis (iow. where the bows of both ships coincide) A's clock is started and thus shows 0. Likewise B's clock (which A can see) is started and hence is also 0 (even from A's point of view, if I have understood correctly).
At the second distance axis A's bow coincides with B's stern. As established by the problem, at this moment A's clock shows 1 second. However, I have hard time seeing from the diagram (even with the aid of the right diagram) what B's clock is showing, as seen by A, at this point. (My intuitive deduction, as I stated in the original problem, is that B's clock is now showing 0.5 seconds, from A's perspective, but I don't know how to deduce this from the diagram.)
Maybe if I understood this from the diagrams, I could better understand what B's clock is showing at the different stages from A's perspective as well as from B's own perspective, which could help me understand the answer to the conundrum.
That was actually quite interesting stuff.
I think these types of tutorials would be good in text (because then they would be easier to find and understand to people who don't necessarily understand spoken English so well).
We have the "math challenges" superthread, but questions about physics are not really purely math questions, so I thought about starting a thread about questions about physics. (Either problematic challenges or honest "I'm asking because I don't know" questions are ok.) I have actually several questions, but I thought I'll start with just one:
As we all know, the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all inertial frames of reference, and because of that, movement in inertial frames of reference is subject to Lorentz transformations.
For this reason if there are two spaceships travelling to opposite directions at speed s (from an external observer's point of view), if ship A measures the speed of ship B as it perceives it, it's not 2*s, but something less (and always less than c). It happens because ship B appears contracted in the direction of the movement.
Let's assume that ship A measures the speed of ship B by starting a clock when the bows of both ships coincide, and stops the clock when the bow of ship A coincides with the stern of ship B. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that, while both ships have the same length, ship A measures the apparent length of ship B to be exactly half of its own length (due to Lorentz contraction), and that the time measurement was exactly one second. This gives some speed s' which is less than 2*s, as mentioned earlier.
Now, let's assume that ship A wants to estimate what ship B would measure (by using the same method) for the speed of A in this situation.
Since it took 1 second for the bow of ship A to go from the bow of ship B to its stern, and since A measured B to be exactly half the length of A, it would mean by reciprocity that it would take 2 seconds for the bow of ship B to go from bow to stern of ship A.
This would seem contradictory (as the ships have the same length and are travelling at the same speed). However, this would be from the time reference of ship A, not the time reference of ship B. If ship A wants to estimate what ship B is measuring, it has to use the time reference of ship B, not its own.
If there was a big clock visible on the hull of ship B, which ship A could observe, it would see that it would seem to go at half speed compared to the clock in ship A. Hence by using the clock of ship B, it would take one second for the bow of ship B to go from the bow to the stern of ship A, hence reconciling the speed measurement.
However, by using the clock of ship B, it takes only a half second for the bow of ship A to go from the bow to the stern of the ship B. Since this is from the time reference of ship B, it would seem that ship B is measuring a half second for this, rather than two seconds (which is what ship A measured for the bow of ship B to go from the bow to the stern of ship A, when using its own clock).
How is this apparent contradiction between two seconds vs. a half second reconciled?
(This might be related to the so-called ladder paradox, but I honestly don't know how to apply the explanation to this case.)
In addition to mentioning why the sword was collected, etc. in the description, maybe we can add subtitles at that point of the movie: "It is impossible to hit Ganon with anything but the sword. It is collected at this point to save time but isn't used until Ganon's room..." something along those lines. Basically this is for the casual viewer who may not read the description here or gets the video online elsewhere where the description may not be included.
I think a better (though longer) solution is to standardize the featureset of all the emulators.
I agree with this. Each emulator for each console might require its own special user interface, especially if the console is somehow special (eg. some consoles may have analog sticks or touchscreens), and it can be both technically difficult and from an usability point of view quite awkward to try to cram everything into one single common GUI. It would also mean that a new emulator for a new console may find itself limited by the current GUI.
If, instead, the emulators are independent programs, they can add whatever is needed to emulate the console and add console-specific options and tools. But if common features and settings (including configuration files) are standardized and common to them all, and all the different emulators try to obey this standard as well as possible, it makes using them easier.
I don't know if inline links (even though they are clearly marked as external links) are "disingenuous" or not, but I think that complaining about them is looking a gift horse in the mouth. It's not like you need to pay to visit tasvideos.org and benefit from the resources it provides...
(Although a cynic person could argue that some people are, in fact, paying for the site, in the form of voluntary donations, and they are not doing so to see inline ad links...)
This is most definitely not crappy, but in fact one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. It's so cool that I was tempted to make its own thread just to post this video to get more visibility for it. Well, here it is anyways:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1pchpDD5EU
But it will still reflect poorly on our community, because the average youtuber is functionally illiterate.
Besides, the sole reason for using such a hack would be to make the term "swordless" more accurate. Which, IMO, makes little sense. Creating hacks to make category names more accurate is just silly.
Another possible problem with that idea is that there will be politics surrounding which games get subforums and so on
That's what we have admins for. Nobody asks an admin why he eg. merged two threads. Likewise I don't think anybody would complain when an admin creates a subforum for a game which is getting more than a half dozen of threads. (And if someone did complain, then who cares, really?)
as well as fragmentation of the board and increased amounts of clicks to get any good information.
Personally I prefer information being hierarchically categorized than everything at the same level. It's much easier to find information that way.
I prefer the options where you either freeze the game
Why?
The whole foundation of speedrunning is to complete the game. A speedrun that doesn't complete the game isn't. A "speedrun" that just goes half-way through and then gives up is worthless. (In this case it wouldn't be "half-way", but conceptually it would be the same thing.)
It would also raise more dilemmas than it would be worth: Exactly at which point would it be acceptable for the run to be terminated? Why not one second earlier (thus getting a faster time)? Who dictates the exact point of termination, given that the game itself gives no obvious, logical and unambiguous place to do so?
If that would be accepted here, it would probably have to be, once again, considered a unique exception to the rules allowed for this game (in this category) only. We should minimize such game-specific exceptions as far as possible to reduce controversy. (I'm not saying we should never grant game-specific exceptions to the rules. I'm just saying that we should avoid them unless there's a really good reason. "It's not completely swordless" is certainly not such a reason.)
or play a "hack" that is basically the same game but that allows you to hit Gannon without the sword.
That would be even worse. It would go against all the principles of fair TASing. Or put it in other words: It would be cheating, as defined by TASing standards.
We had to fight for years to convince the general public that we don't cheat with the games. We certainly shouldn't start doing so now. Even suggesting such a thing is a horrible idea.
(Note that the above is not a statement against accepting so-called "hacks" which are, effectively, their own independent games, just built on top of existing game code. They are never considered the original game in any way.)
He's free to express his opinion, and all that I really care about is that he does explain his opinion (instead of silently voting no, which is more problematic). The voting system isn't anything more than a rough gauge of how the audience feels about a given run anyway.
Very well spoken. People are entitled to their opinions, and all (rational) opinions are valuable even if they go against the majority. We should not denigrate someone's opinion just because it goes against what the majority thinks, but on the contrary, we should welcome it. That's what civil discussion is all about. As Derakon says, it's much better to hear a dissenting opinion being spoken out than one being silenced.
(After all, publication is not dependent on 100% agreement among all the voters, and all opinions are useful for the judges.)
I still think the guideline of limiting branches to a game is a good guideline to avoid nonsense like "gets blue ring and magic boomerang and kills every bat with aforementioned boomerang", but I think there's a pretty compelling case that adding this category will enhance the site.
I think that the guideline exists to deter people from using completely arbitrary goals. From what I have read in the submission text and this thread, completing the game without a sword doesn't sound like a completely arbitrary goal, but a sensible one, akin to "uses a suboptimal character" or "doesn't use the b button" (iow. a sensible and logical limitation is imposed which makes the game more difficult to complete, and hence more entertaining to watch get beaten nevertheless).
spweasel wrote:
Does not adhere to the the run's stated goal.
I think that's a bit like saying that the Contra pacifist run doesn't "adhere to the stated goal" because it does kill some enemies, out of necessity.
If the only place where the sword is required (and hence used) is in the very last boss, then I would say it does adhere to the stated goal: To complete the game (in the sense of getting to the very end, to the last boss) without using the sword. The sword being mandatory at the very end isn't such a huge catastrophe with regard to this goal.
But what is so earth-shattering about this run that it needs to get a star? It is quite artistic and all, but star material? I think not.
Stars are not an award to innovative runs which show extreme TASing prowess (in fact, they aren't awards of any kind). I think Tub wrote the core reason why it deserves a star:
Tub wrote:
These are the kind of TASes I can even show to my non-gamer friends to make them laugh.
Oh, and this was one of the most entertaining runs I have seen in a long time. Great job.
