There's a small section in Gradius 3 after a boss battle where tons of rocks fall. The rocks can be destroyed, and the TAS aims for 100% kills, but there are so many rocks and they fall so fast that it's seemingly a physical impossibility to destroy them all (and thus the TAS doesn't destroy any of them, kind of for consistency).
Small thing, but could be classified as an impossible goal even for a TAS.
You just gave free advertisement to the author of that game because your post gave me the incentive to go and buy it through steam... :)
It's indeed quite a novel game, although quite short (even for its price). I like the artistic, slightly abstract feeling to the entire game (not just the graphics, but basically everything). Also the time manipulation was quite creatively used at places. I especially liked the idea of "playing in reverse, and then rewinding to see what actually happened" (or kind of) in the final level. Really messes up the concept of what is being played straight and what in reverse time.
Actually, doubling your bet every time if you lose is actually a winning strategy if you are betting on a 50/50 game.
Didn't roulette have a couple of spots where the bank always wins and everyone loses? That makes it a non-50/50 game. And of course the mentioned bet limits are there precisely to make it a losing strategy in the long run. They say that in Las Vegas if you have a pattern like the Martingale system, what they tell you is "welcome".
There's one game, though, which does have a winning pattern, but it's pretty complicated: Blackjack. This is the only winning pattern which is both legal and will get you banned from all casinos in the US if you use it. (Not that many people are able to do it, as it's so complicated.)
(OTOH the method works only in classic blackjack where one set of n decks is always played through before a new shuffling. Many casinos nowadays prevent the strategy by shuffling all used cards back into the deck right away, which completely defeats the winning strategy.)
If I did find one, it's not like I could transfer it to my real games, and train it like a legit pokemon. I'd be left with something rare and completely, 100% useless.
I don't really understand why you are so worried about finding one when playing with an emulator. Is this some kind of thinking like "there's a 0.01% probability to find that type of pokemon, and if I happen to find it in the emulator, I wasted my probability there and I'll never find another one anymore in the real console"?
You finding such a pokemon in the emulator has zero effect on the probability of finding one in the real console. :)
Like I (and others) said in the DS group, I think it would be a good idea to scale one of the screens considerably smaller if it doesn't contain relevant information, like is the case with the super mario game. (In this case the screens could also be side-by-side, to make the video widescreen rather than "tallscreen". The extra empty space could be used for something else, eg. input display.)
I really like this idea. When the screen is not meant to be on top of each other, it would be best if they were side by side.
Note that in my suggestion above I suggested putting the screens side-by-side only if one of the screens can be made smaller than the other (because it doesn't contain any relevant information). If that is so, then the main screen can be made relatively larger when viewed full-screen.
If both screens have the same size, then it doesn't matter if they are tiled vertically or horizontally: On a 4:3 monitor their size doesn't change. (On a widescreen monitor there will be a difference.)
Both stripes are the exact same green, but the two different shades of red make them look different. Maybe if one has difficulty in distinguishing between the two shades of red, it affects the perception of the green stripes? I don't know.
Have you checked if you have some type of color blindness? AFAIK mild color blindness is more common than people think. It's often so subtle that many sufferers don't even notice.
The cross-eye video worked surprisingly well for me. In the past I have always had problems getting it to look correct.
I still prefer the inverse: The left and right images are swapped from the cross-eye version, in which case you have to look far into the distance instead to get the single 3D image. What makes it easier is that you can put a paper perpendicularly in the middle so you will only see the left image with your left eye and the right image with your right eye. (The only disadvantage of this method is that the images must be quite small, the distance of their centers being at most the physical distance between your eyes.)
Yeah, in real life, you need the keep the viewer a certain distance away from the illusion so their depth perception doesn't take over and notice that the object is inside-out.
It didn't really help. Even from many meters away the illusion was mostly destroyed by stereo vision. Farther away and it was just so small that it wasn't anything spectacular anymore.
That dragon is great for scaring bad kids. BEHAVE! I'LL LEAVE THE DRAGON WATCHING YOU!
The problem with that dragon is that it only works well when viewed with one eye only (or similar, eg. through a camera). If you look at it with both eyes the illusion is largely destroyed. Stereo vision largely overrides the subtle clues which make it look "inverted" otherwise.
(Yes, I once did print the picture and built that thing. It's much cooler in the video than in real life... :/ )
It's simply unbelievable how bad the "special effects" (for the lack of a better term) are in that movie. Many amateur videos made with home equipment and zero budget (except for the camera) have better special effects.
Oh, mine don't. Interesting.
I also failed to see [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-fYSyb982I]this[/URL] illusion correctly before I was told what I was supposed to see. I'm supposed not to be able to see the hollow mask at all (explained [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHuStlT1RM8]here[/URL]), but I find it a lot easier to see than the illusion.
Interpreting depth perception is different from person to person.
We see in stereo because we have two eyes, and that's one of the main elements the brain uses for depth perception. However, it's in no way the only way. There are tons of other clues the brain uses for depth perception. Even people who are blind on one eye can still perceive depth pretty well. Although there are situations where the perception is a bit impaired for them, they do certainly not see only in "2D".
You can actually test this by yourself, and it works surprisingly well for most people. Just cover one of your eyes and start watching some movie or 3D computer game for a while with one eye only. After a short period of time it will start looking like having depth. This is especially cool when watching 3D games. While the effect is not as good as a real 3D object would be, it's still surprisingly effective. (This effect works only for moving images, not still images.)
What is happening is that when the brain starts receiving image information from one eye only, it starts to compensate by deducing the depth information from other clues, mainly the speed difference between different parts of the image (and after it has got the "hang of it", from size differences resulting from perspective, etc).
Most of these secondary clues the brain uses for depth perception are learned. We have learned during our life to associate certain visual clues with their distance from us. After years and years of having seen these clues, the brain automatically forms depth perception when it sees them.
Most optical illusions based on mistaken depth perception are based on fooling the brain with those clues to give it depth information which isn't really there (or is different from reality).
An example of a learned clue is lighting: We often deduce from lighting alone what the shape of objects are. Many optical illusions are based on giving the "wrong" lighting for something, fooling the brain to think that it has a different shape than it really has. Other illusory clues are related to shape, the dragon example posted above being a good example.
Of course different people perceive and interpret these clues differently, and some optical illusions may work for some people better than for others.
Well, what I mean is that it displays a photo of a NES controller in the bottom part of the screen, which I assume was similar to what you were suggesting: a photo of a DS. Photos don't really work well as user interfaces and for emulators they tend to clash with the sharpness of the game display.
Well, I made the concept image in the previous page of this thread. Judge for yourself.
Hey, that gives me an idea. If the "DS" is visible, you could show the input on it, too. So when A is being pressed in the movie, the A on the DS would be pressed as well. And so on. It would probably be a bitch to implement, though. But it would make the movie extra 1337. :)
That's actually similar to the idea I wrote in the DS group some time ago. I like and fully endorse your idea. :)
I dunno. Some emulators (like the iPhone NES emulator) do this and I always found it kinda cheesy and distracting.
Are you really talking about the same thing? Knowing how iPhone works (basically it has no buttons, just the touchscreen) I assume the graphical buttons double for real buttons which you use to play. It would feel somehow logical that replaying a movie also "presses" those same buttons (if that's what you mean).
But when the screen are considered on top of each other, then there should be no gap.
I suggest that a line of 1 pixel height should be added here though, to see what belongs to which screen.
Like I (and others) said in the DS group, I think it would be a good idea to scale one of the screens considerably smaller if it doesn't contain relevant information, like is the case with the super mario game. (In this case the screens could also be side-by-side, to make the video widescreen rather than "tallscreen". The extra empty space could be used for something else, eg. input display.)
Hey, that gives me an idea. If the "DS" is visible, you could show the input on it, too. So when A is being pressed in the movie, the A on the DS would be pressed as well. And so on. It would probably be a bitch to implement, though. But it would make the movie extra 1337. :)
That's actually similar to the idea I wrote in the DS group some time ago. I like and fully endorse your idea. :)
How about instead of using a logo in the gap, you used an actual clipped photo of that part of the real device there? Probably less bothering than the logo.
In fact, I think this idea could be taken even further: Add the borders of the real device to the left and right sides of the video as well. This way the center gap will feel less out-of-place. Since the video already has a very vertical resolution, making it a bit wider shouldn't be any problem (and since the added parts will be completely static, it shouldn't even make the video file any larger, at least not significantly).
EDIT: As a proof-of-concept I took a pic of the DS from the net and pasted the two parts of a frame in the current TAS, to see how my idea would look:
The gap seems "too" large in the real device. Does it really look like that in the real thing? Maybe if we do this, it might be a good idea to "cheat" a bit and make the gap a bit narrower by putting the two screens closer together...
Why not in the meantime use some filter that takes the color values on the pixels on the edges of the gap, and fill in the gap by using those? It's sometimes used to "remove" watermarks from pirated TV shows, etc. It would make the gap look like opaque glass instead of a black bar. It's not much of an improvement, though.
That was my initial idea when I first thought about this, actually. For some reason I thought it would be more distracting than what we have now, but actually I think it wouldn't.
With such a big gap I doubt it would work very well. You would end up with some blurred vertical lines there which change according to what happens at the borders of the screens. IMO better something static than something that is constantly changing.
How about instead of using a logo in the gap, you used an actual clipped photo of that part of the real device there? Probably less bothering than the logo.
I was not arguing pro using law to protect your movies. I was responding to this:
The only time someone is going to be unhappy about people 'stealing' portions of their work on this site is if they don't know what the site is about. Priderun etc
I was questioning that position in extreme cases, such as someone outright stealing someone else's movie in its entirety and making just minuscule changes at the end. I don't think it would be fair for such a person to get credit, at least not exclusive credit. That would be unfair towards the person who actually made the movie.
(Of course in practice it would be rare for such a movie to obsolete the previous one, because people would probably vote it down, but in theory it could happen.)
The gap seems "too" large in the real device. Does it really look like that in the real thing? Maybe if we do this, it might be a good idea to "cheat" a bit and make the gap a bit narrower by putting the two screens closer together...
