This amount-of-rerecords issue raises an interesting question: Should the rerecords made by a program be counted in the same way as rerecords made by a human author?
IMO they shouldn't. The number of rerecords (when created normally by a human author) can be thought as a rough number which gives a notion of how much work was put into making the run. However, a program could easily create millions of rerecords, and that would tell very little about how "hard" it really was to create the run. (In fact, I would say it might be the opposite: The larger the rerecord count, the "sloppier" and less optimized the bot program was.)
I wouldn't be surprised that something like this is the reason why Bisqwit never includes bot rerecord counts into the total rerecords of a movie. Including them would only serve to make the number meaningless.
The code you quoted is pretty obfuscated despite the airy and well-commented appearance.
<nitpicking> Not to talk about the C++ standard saying that symbol names starting with an underscore are reserved for the use of the compiler and should not be used by the user... </nitpicking>
Could this be another feasible idea? Make the bot check if there's a whatever wrote:
line in the post, and if there is, make it add to the irc announcement something like "(as a response to whatever's post)".
Ok, maybe that doesn't really add any useful information, but I just wanted to throw the idea.
If we're going to have decimals, I suggest using textboxes instead of dropdown boxes, and make it clear in the rating system description at the bottom of the page what is allowed as input.
IMO the dropdown menus are way easier to use, once you know what they are for. Just a few mouse clicks.
I can think of three possible options:
1) Keep it as it is now. Basic engineer principle: If it works, don't fix it. (Unless people start complaining that the dropdown menu system really sucks and must be changed. ;) )
2) If Javascripts are detected, use the forum voting widget, else the dropdown menus.
3) Allow each user to choose in their user settings whether they want the dropdown menus or the forum voting widget.
I find it somewhat ironic that the very first feedback of the new voting UI is that it must be buggy because now there are two dropdown menus... :P
Does anyone have any suggestion about how to make it clearer that the first dropdown menu is the integer part and the second one the decimal part of the rating?
Maybe it would be enough to add some explanatory text to the rating page...
EDIT: Ok, I added some explanatory instructions to the rating page, which should help clearing up possible confusions.
Have you contacted the admins about your desire to become an encoder?
No
Well, maybe the reason why you haven't been promoted to official encoder is because the admins haven't noticed you?
(OTOH, one could argue that *that* is precisely one reason to give up in the first place... :) )
Here is an encode of this, even though I'm starting to lose the hope to become an official encoder :\
Disclaimer: the encode proposed in the link above is unofficial and hasn't been used for actual publication, despite having higher video and sound quality than the published one.
I want to join the others in saying that I appreciate being able to see the movies without having to go through the trouble of finding roms (from whatever dubious sites found with google), the proper emulator version (which might or might not work in my linux system) and get them to work. This allows me to more easily participate in the voting.
Have you contacted the admins about your desire to become an encoder?
Another idea which that gave me:
- Games based on cartoon TV series.
- Games based on live TV series.
- Games based on movies.
All those may be under one single category page, but divided into those sub-categories.
Edit: Oh, and another one: - Games based on a comic book. I think there are a few of those too (Batman comes to mind, at least).
Could it be a good idea to split that list into three sub-categories:
1) Non-anthropomorphized animals: Gex 64, Donkey Kong, Ecco the Dolphin, Lion King, etc.
2) Anthropomorphized animals: Battletoads, Samurai Pizza Cats, Duck Tales, Felix the Cat, etc.
3) Fictive animals (even if loosely based on real ones): Gremlins, Sonic, TAZ Mania...
Although I must admit in some cases it may be difficult to decide which category the game should go in. For example Chip 'n Dale, Chiki Chiki Machine Mou Race, Rocket Knight Adventures, etc.
That's very strange. I precisely went through that code in order to make it work with decimals, and I tested it. But it indeed is not showing the decimal. I can't understand why. I can't see any problem in the code... :/
I wonder if it might be some problem with caching (if I'm not mistaken the server caches pages rather than generating them every time they are requested). Although I have never encountered such a problem before...
We'll have to see if the problem persists and is repeatable...
Edit: It seems that it was just a problem with versioning. The new code should be in place again soon.
Ok, now if there's no rating for one category in the database, a "-" will be shown rather than a zero. Also the technical ratings should again be visible in the movie statistics page.
I still don't know if there's a bug in the submission of ratings somewhere. Please report if you are sure you have submitted a rating in the submissions forum but a "-" appears as your rating in the ratings list for that movie (when the movie is published).
How can a run have 78.5 votes? Is the 0.5 vote for a vote that rated only entertainment or only technical? Again, sorry if this is the wrong thread.
AFAIK the script counts all the ratings given to the movie (entertainment and tech quality are two distinct ratings) and divides it by the amount of rating types, ie. 2. For this reason if someone only votes for one of the categories, it will only count as a half vote.
(Bisqwit: Looking at the code in question, I think it might have a bug: If everyone voted eg. only on Entertainment and not on Tech Quality, it would not divide the number of votes by 2, but by 1 instead. If even one person then votes for Tech Quality, it will then start dividing by 2.)
I can modify my program to tell you which buttons were held on the final frame (before input ended and everything held was released), but having a separate release counter would be seriously no more informative than what I just suggested.
Sounds good. Might be interesting information for some nitpickers like myself...
