Posts for Warp

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Posted: 6/13/2009 9:43 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Rridgway wrote:
Guys, how exactly does this thread keep attracting religion talk?
Whenever someone is openly religious (and I'm not using the word in its derogatory sense here), there will always be people who cannot resist the urge to argue back. It doesn't help if the person in question is always willing to answer all "questions" presented to him. That only fuels the phenomenon.
Posted: 6/13/2009 9:28 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
My (perhaps slightly obfuscated) solution to the problem. It doesn't need the modulo operator nor sizeof (or strlen). Assumes C99 (although making it C89-compatible is completely trivial). #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { 　　const char* str = "Hello, World! "; 　　const char* startPtr = str; 　　for(int i = 0; i < 30; ++i) 　　{ 　　　　const char* curPtr = startPtr; 　　　　do 　　　　{ 　　　　　　printf("%c", *curPtr); 　　　　　　if(!*++curPtr) curPtr = str; 　　　　} while(curPtr != startPtr); 　　　　printf("\n"); 　　　　if(!*++startPtr) startPtr = str; 　　} 　　return 0; }
Posted: 6/11/2009 7:53 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
I'm going to pose some difficult questions
Those questions are not difficult. The people who came up with that video, and people with the same attitudes, mistakenly think they are somehow "difficult" for Christians to answer for one simple reason: They refuse to listen to any answers. Even if someone tries to answer those or any other similar questions, they simply refuse to listen or accept the answers as "valid". They dismiss all answers as "rationalizations", regardless of what the answers might be. They have decided in advance that all possible answers are just "rationalizations", and they will not accept anything. That is why they have the misconception that the questions are somehow "difficult" for Christians to answer. They are right in a way: Yes, it's difficult to answer the question in a way that will convince them, for the simple reason that they are not listening to anything. If you happened to be interested in my answers to those questions, I have written about them here: http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseTo10Questions.html
Posted: 6/10/2009 3:32 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Bisqwit wrote:
That's when you get something like Nietszche's writings.
AFAIK Nietszche's writings are often misunderstood by most people. Most people seem to think that Nietszche's "God is dead" was a direct attack against Christianity in particular and religion in general, that Nietszche was an atheist and expressed his atheistic views with such blunt statements. However, from the context of the expression it's clearer that what Nietszche meant was that modern western society has abandoned religion as a driving force, and doesn't consider it in any way important. In other words, while in the past Christianity has always been one of the major influences in western society, eg. in its culture and laws, modern society has abandoned that, and instead embraced science, logic and humanist ethics in place of religion. In other words, when Nietszche wrote "God is dead", he probably meant "modern society has abandoned God, and thus God is dead to modern society". That was just a statement of fact, not necessarily an expression of personal belief.
Posted: 6/8/2009 7:56 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
So given that it's clearly possible, why wasn't it done with the publication?
Posted: 6/8/2009 7:47 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
I think this is a perfect example of a game which should have been encoded with a larger lower screen and a smaller upper screen, so that the lower screen becomes larger when the video is played fullscreen, as suggested in a thread in the DS emulator group. How hard would it have been to encode it like that?
Posted: 6/6/2009 8:14 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Derakon wrote:
Speaking of which, Kyman is (was?) working on a BLJ-less 70-star run, which seems to be what Warp was looking for. It'll be a lot longer than the 16-star run was, but it has that nice unambiguous "no BLJs" rule.
I'm not so absolutely sure 70 stars really is what "I was looking for". Ok, it may be somewhat shorter than the full 120-star run, but not that much. It's still pretty long. After a certain critical length it doesn't really matter that much if it takes a bit longer to perform the 100% run. I would watch a 70-star run if it was published, of course. I'm just not sure it would be so different from the 100% run that it really deserves its own category... (Disclaimer: In no way am I an expect in Mario64. I don't know how much different the 70-star run would be from the 100% run.)
Posted: 6/6/2009 3:11 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Btw, personally I would like to see a fully optimized "mid-ground" Mario64 run (meaning eg. 16 stars collected). However, I think that to make this a rational category, there has to exist some limitation which forces a minimum of 16 stars to be collected. In the case of Super Metroid there's a logical concrete limitation which can be applied in order for a "mid-ground" run to be performed: No save glitching. It's a simple, clear, concise, logical and unambiguous limitation which automatically causes the desired effect. However, is there such a concrete limitation applicable to the Mario64 run which would force 16 stars to be collected? Unless I'm mistaken, a "no backwards long jumping allowed" would not achieve that goal because it's necessary for the 16-star completion (please correct me if I'm wrong). And if the BLJ is allowed, then there's no reason to not to do a 0-star run. A "this run collects 16 random stars, just for the sake of it" is not a rational goal. It's completely arbitrary. Why 16? Why not 25 or 9? And which 16? Why those 16 and not some others? Unless some generic limitation can be imposed which forces those certain 16 stars to be collected, I'm not sure any such category is possible for Mario64.
Posted: 6/4/2009 7:57 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Nitrodon wrote:
When the ball is released, its speed is sqrt(2*r*g*cos(pi/9)).
How did you come up with that formula?
Posted: 6/4/2009 7:48 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
DarkKobold wrote:
When klmz discovered the flag pole glitch in Super Mario 1, it could have been considered a different run from all previous iterations of the video, and therefore not obsoleted the older run.
I think that the key point is how much different the run becomes compared to the "non-glitched" run. The flag pole glitch in SMB1 makes the movie only extremely slightly different from the run which doesn't use it. Other than that, the runs would be completely identical (probably over 99% of the contents would be the same). Thus there's definitely not enough variation to warrant a different category, no matter how much you try to stretch the definition. Now, if a run of some game abuses a glitch which allows it to complete the game 10 times faster than the non-glitched version, that is a huge difference and certainly at the very least warrants considering creating two categories. This is quite especially so if the glitched version can be considered significantly less entertaining than the non-glitched one (again, something which certainly does not apply to SMB1). In the case of this "low-%, non-glitched" Super Metroid run the main question would be whether it's different and entertaining enough compared to the others to warrant its own category.
Posted: 6/4/2009 9:26 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
klmz wrote:
Er, I guess it's assumed that the radius of the ball is negligible, isn't it?
That's correct.
Posted: 6/4/2009 8:23 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Sir VG wrote:
I'd rather see this run on the site and the 6% run obsoleted.
I disagree. The 6% run is the "official" record for completion of the game as fast as possible using any means available, and thus should be preserved. There's nothing wrong with it. Do you think that eg. the Guinness Book of Records discards records if they are "too boring"? No, even though, after all, also it exists basically for entertainment (there's little practical value to the book other than that). What IMO should be removed is the distinction between real-time and in-game time. I suggested new categories in a previous post. The number of categories wouldn't be increased from the current.
Posted: 6/4/2009 8:15 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
How about a physics problem for a change? Consider the following scenario: A small and heavy metal ball (negligible air resistance) is attached to the end of a rod (of negligible mass) which other end is attached to an axis (with negligible friction) so that the ball can swing freely. In other words, it's a pendulum. The ball starts at zero velocity from the position depicted in the picture. There's a mechanism in the rod which releases the ball exactly at the point depicted in the picture. The observer is located at the initial position of the ball. The observer has no visual contact with the system, but he can detect the sound of the ball hitting the ground, and measure exactly how much time passes between the initial position and the sound of the ball hitting the ground reaching the observer. Assume that g = 9.8 m/s^2, and the speed of sound = 340 m/s. As depicted in the picture, the altitude of the ball (and thus also the observer) from the ground in the initial position is 50 m. Exactly 5 seconds pass between the initial position and the sound reaching the observer. The question is: How long is the rod (measured from the center of the axis to the center of the ball)?
Posted: 6/3/2009 9:17 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
As I commented in the SM submission thread, I suggest changing the four Super Metroid categories to the following: 1) Fastest completion. (As it happens, this is also the lowest-% completion, but that's not very relevant.) 2) Fastest completion without using the save corruption glitch. 3) Lowest-% completion without using the save corruption glitch. (AFAIK this would be 14%) 4) Fastest 100% completion. (Preferably without abusing the save corruption glitch.) There would still be 4 categories, but I think there would be more variety like this, and the distinction between the categories feels more natural and logical.
Posted: 6/3/2009 9:13 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Personally I don't find the idea of a non-glitched minimum-% run an absolutely abhorrent idea. I think we could have these Super Metroid categories: 1) Fastest completion, period. (As it happens, this is also the lowest-% completion.) 2) Fastest completion without using the save corruption glitch. 3) Lowest-% completion without using the save corruption glitch (AFAIK this would be the 14% completion). 4) 100% completion. Would still be 4 categories like now, but with a lot more variety.
Posted: 6/3/2009 1:34 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Kirkq wrote:
Where exactly would you draw the line for Super Metroid runs? (Glitched = Out of Bounds used.) We have: 100%, Unglitched, Real Time Any%, Glitched, Real Time (also low%) Any%, Unglitched, In-Game Any%, Unglitched, Real Time,
Btw, I have always had the opinion that having different categories for the in-game time and the real-time is a bad idea. The two runs are not significantly different to warrant such an artificial distinction. IMO when counting runtime, there should be only one measurement: The same one as with all the other runs, ie. real time. At the time I didn't understand why it was seen fit to have it split into two categories in this way, and I still don't understand it.
Posted: 6/2/2009 5:59 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
AFAIK any bright color with a significant amount of green color component against a very dark background (or the other way around, although usually black or very dark background seems to be the de-facto standard) is going to be much more visible and survive even heavy compression much better than dim colors with little or no green component against that dark background. Usually green is the color component which is both most visible to the human eye and least destroyed by lossy video compression formats. (Edit: And by this I don't mean the text has to be green. I mean that the green component of the color should be strong. This includes colors like yellows, cyans and, of course, white.)
Posted: 5/29/2009 9:07 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Derakon wrote:
It's still inexcusable that the load times are that bad, mind you. I'm just hypothesizing for a reason they are like that.
It's not just the loading times, but the ridiculous frequency at which it pops up the loading screen. I can't believe that the scenery and data required for the minigame depicted in the video couldn't be loaded and kept in memory for the whole duration of the minigame... I can't understand what kind of developer would think it's a good idea to load before each question and each answer and each result and... I'd hate to see their source code. I bet it has something to do with their program design...
Posted: 5/29/2009 11:38 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naVshTpD9l0 How can a game made in 2006 be so badly implemented? I mean, really. It's just horrible! Did the authors even play their own game? This is completely beyond comprehension.
Posted: 5/29/2009 11:36 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Johannes wrote:
Bisqwit, will you accept these 512x448 encodes for their much better quality or is getting below 4 MB/min all that matters?
As they say, it's not the size that matters, it's how you use it. ;)
Posted: 5/27/2009 7:58 AM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
ShinyDoofy wrote:
Warp, I haven't actually downloaded your encode yet, but is there any reason you chose to upscale the lossy original?
Yes; I don't have the emulator nor the rom, and using the avi which I already had in my HD was by far the easiest way of doing this. I didn't get any advantage for using the avi instead of the raw original material, but I'd say it's the exact opposite. The avi already had some minor artifacts in it, so re-encoding it can only make it worse, not better. Thus if re-encoding the already-slightly-artifacted video preserves the quality, it only makes my point stronger. With the original raw material it might be possible to increase the quality of the final product even further.
Posted: 5/26/2009 8:34 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Warp wrote:
Define "drastically". In my experience it might require something like 20% of bitrate increase, and in some cases not even that.
To put my money where my mouth is (so to speak), I made an actual test: I took the newest published video, ie. the katoken video, up-scaled it to twice the size in both axes (ie. from the original 256x232 to 512x464), allowed myself the about 20% size increase I promised above, and encoded it in h264. http://kapsi.fi/warp/katoken_test.avi (about 30 MB) I honestly can't see any significant decrease in quality or significant artifacts (which weren't in the original). And this was with simple x264 encoding parameters. By fine-tuning these parameters even more I'm pretty certain the file size could be decreased close to the original while maintaining the image quality.
Posted: 5/26/2009 8:10 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Aktanusa wrote:
Hmm I might try this out to see how much of an increase if filesize it would be, but as Bisqwit pointed out, it be more pixelated unless I use something other than nearest neighbor resize. Using a better resizer though, would defiantly increase the bitrate more due to ringing noise introduced.
Are you sure about that? A simple nearest-neighbor upscaling sounds like it would need more bitrate because it introduces tons of hard edges, which are not very mpeg-friendly, while using a filtered upscaling, which smooths the image, sounds a lot more mpeg-friendly.
Posted: 5/26/2009 7:54 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
nineko wrote:
Actually if you double the size you should need 4 times the original bitrate.
That's exactly as silly as saying that if you repeat every character in a text file four times, the resulting file will compress to four times the size compared to compressing the original.
Posted: 5/26/2009 6:38 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Johannes wrote:
I remember moozooh explained this to you really well. Why do you keep insisting?
And I remember having actually TRIED this myself, rather than relying on someone's words. Have you?
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