If the script is allowed to search a path by using savestates to rewind, this introduces a conceptual problem:
Typically you would create the script so that you enter some kind of checkpoint. In other words "run this heuristic and search for a path until the character is at this location". After it has succeeded in that, it would then try to find a path to the next checkpoint, and so on.
Obviously the farther away the checkpoints are from each other, the longer it will take for the script to find a path to it, no matter what heuristics it uses. Conversely, the closer the checkpoints are to each other, the faster the script can find paths between them.
Are these checkpoints, which are hard-coded into the script, allowed? If yes, where do you put the limit on the amount of checkpoints used? In the extreme, the coder could, in theory, put a checkpoint at each frame. Or if we put that in other words: He will be able to hard-code a movie-file into the script and basically make the script just run it.
Ok, so no direct movie files are allowed. But where do you put the limit? What if the author just hard-codes each second frame of the movie into the script and then uses a simple heuristic to make the script find the keypresses for the in-between frames? Still not good. What if he hard-codes each 10th frame? Each 50th frame? Basically these hard-coded frames are checkpoints. Where is the limit where checkpoints become ok?
I'm honestly not sure - is this way of rating movies OK?
In my opinion there are no incorrect answers in the ratings, as long as you estimate the quality of the movie honestly and express your opinion. (Some people might use the rating system for malicious purposes, to try to undermine the system, and eg. always give 0 to everything or whatever, but those are exceptional cases.)
If you found a movie extremely boring and couldn't find anything enjoyable about it, then you should score lowly for entertainment. Some other person might enjoy the same movie immensely and give it a high entertainment rating. If both rate it honestly, both are correct. They are expressing their own opinion of the movie. I don't see the technical rating any different from this either.
Maybe it's because every argument has been refuted or nullified many times, and the current arguments are just variations on the old ones. It gets annoying after a time, you know.
I think I didn't express myself clearly in my post.
It's not a question of believing or not believing something, or proving or refuting something. It's about respecting and listening to other people.
These, what I could call "atheism activists", are not content with simply having their own views of the world and leaving everyone else have their own opinion, but they actively pursue preaching their atheist views to others (for example via youtube videos, which I admit are sometimes very thought out and clever, although usually fall into straw men argumentation nevertheless). The actively attack christianity and anyone who believes in that "nonsense". They insult people by calling them delusional and believers of fantasies.
They rationalize their activism and their direct attacks as some kind of counter-movement of religious preaching. However, by doing that they are only doing the exact same thing they accuse religious people of doing. They are preaching their own views, and they do not respect people nor listen to them, but rather just insult them and their views. Regardless of whether they are right or not in their views, from a behavioral point of view they are in no way better than religious lunatics.
The worst thing is that they claim they use rationality, logic and science to argument their views in these videos and other material. However, most often than not they are just distorting what christianity is teaching so badly, that they make a mockery of it (which is the very definition of straw man argumentation). In my opinion if you need to distort and ridicule what the others are saying in order to promote your own views, you are no better than the lunatics, no matter how much you preach "rationality" and "logic".
I find it hypocritical that they do the exact same things they accuse religious people of doing. When they are confronted with this, they will rationalize it with a "but christians do it too", as if that was a rational excuse.
The "10 question" video, for which I posted a link to my response, is a perfect example of this. It sounds all logical and rational... to the ears of a layman who doesn't know too much about the Bible and christianity. It lures the viewer into logical traps, which the viewer might not realize. If the viewer is already biased towards atheism and anti-christianity, the video is music to his ears. He will swallow it whole, without even thinking about it. Yet, the video is full of distortion, exaggeration, fallacious argumentation and outright lies about christianity. In this respect it's no different from all those whacky conspiracy theory videos about the Moon landings or 9/11: Might sound convincing to a layman, but are nothing but distortion and lies.
I have no problem with atheists. I'm a big skeptic myself about all that is non-scientific and which cannot be measured. I do not believe in aliens, ghosts, supernatural mind powers or anything like that, for the simple reason that there just is no credible evidence. I could very well have deep and interesting conversations with atheists, in both scientifical and philosophical subjects, as long as the atheist is willing to talk and listen, rather than just preaching his views on others, like those videos do.
If there were only one rating to hand out, I'd probably rate a lot more stuff.
Another idea which came to mind when I read that: What if voting on the technical rating was made optional? In other words, you could vote on the entertainment rating and leave the technical rating "blank". Basically it would mean "I have no opinion".
EDIT: And I don't think I'm presenting new ideas, or new material, since I've always seen the "technical" rating as a way of saying how close to perfect I think the current movie is. And you apparently have been thinking your way for a long time also. So neither of us are presenting new material to the discussion.
I apologize if I took your earlier post unfairly harshly. It's just that when you started with "you're the one that has recently been complaining about how new suggestions should be listened to" it sounded like you were criticizing/attacking me using my own previous argument.
Nevertheless, it made for a very interesting study. It is a good idea to assume good faith. In this case, good faith is to assume that the movie represents the author's views of the Christian beliefs and that the author is open for corrections. Bad faith is to assume that the movie aims to badmouth the Christian beliefs by falsely representing its core ideas.
My experience of atheists making publications and videos which attack christianity (why is it *always* christianity? have you ever seen such an atheist video which would attack buddhism, hare krishna or islam?) with "logic" is that they are not trying to express their unbiased views, with the intention of seriously listening what others have to say about the subject.
Basically they are absolutely and completely convinced of their atheistic views, and there's absolutely nothing you can do to make them listen to anything else. They might pretend to listen in a friendly and open way, but the underlying reason is always the same: They listen to your responses only to try to find flaws and counter-arguments to them, not because they are honestly interested in what you have to say nor open to alternative ideas.
Some time ago I wrote this open letter in response to an anti-christian atheist video, criticizing it for its logical fallacies: http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseTo10Questions.html
I sent a link to the admin of the website in question, and we had a short polite conversation by email. No matter how I tried to give alternative plausible explanations to his favorite bible verses, he wouldn't budge from his views (basically he had decided what the "correct" interpretation of those verses are, and wouldn't listen to any alternative, no matter how well I tried to explain), so I just ended the conversation.
You're the one that has recently been complaining about how new suggestions should be listened to, and that discussion and argumentation are good things.
You know, you are rather good at twisting and reversing people's arguments against themselves (even if it doesn't work at all). That may be an effective online flamewar technique, but it's not really a good way to build amicable relationships.
You didn't present any new suggestion or new idea. You simply are shooting down my idea of what I consider should be a better definition of "technical rating". And, rather ingenuously, you are now reversing the whole situation and trying to make it look like *I* am the one who is opposing new ideas from you. Clever.
Fine, let's just remove the technical rating since clearly people DON'T WANT any technical rating which has any rational meaning. They only want a technical rating which means "is it frame-optimal?", discarding any other possible subjective meaning, and will then complain that they can't know if it's frame optimal.
I really can't understand what's so detestable in the technical rating expressing the *subjective opinion* of the voter. What's so wrong with that? Why do people always have to complain about stupid things like this?
I think you are confusing "popular games" with "popular franchises".
Super Mario Bros? Yes, immensely popular. *Everyone* who hasn't been living in a cave has heard of that game.
Castlevania Legends? Uh? What's that? Might be "popular" by number of copies sold, but it's not the kind of popularity I was thinking about.
I was thinking more about mainstream gaming media popularity. Everybody has heard of SMB and Sonic the Hedgehog, most gamers might have heard about Castlevania, but I don't think too many even know what something like "Castlevania Legends" or "Sonic Advance" is. It may be part of a popular/known franchise, but not really a popular *game*.
I think it would be better to list just the most representative games of the popular franchises, plus individual games which can be considered well-known by average gamers.
For me personally, a game's "technical" rating has always been nebulous if I haven't TAS'd the game. How could anyone know how "close to perfect" it is?
I already wrote what I understand "technical rating" to mean in this thread (and also previously some years ago). Personally I don't think the technical rating is about how frame-optimal the movie is.
(Or, more precisely: Seeing clear mistakes in the movie, ie. the movie being clearly non-frame-optimal, should lower the technical rating. However, frame optimality should only be something which reduces, ie. penalizes the technical rating, not something which increases it. The actual score should be based on the other things I gave examples in my post about this subject.)
It would be interesting to see such themed list: tool-assisted speedruns that correspond to unassisted records in terms of time (let's say, unassisted run should have no more than +5% to TAS record). First nominee being SMB, of course.
The opposite could also work: TASes which are enormously faster than their unassisted counterparts.
How about this simple idea: TASes of the most popular games ever. I don't think there is such a list yet anywhere. This list could actually be interesting and useful for many.
I suppose it shouldn't be very hard to convert the current code to use the decimal. The good thing is that existing ratings don't need to be changed. Bisqwit will have to give a green light on this, though. (After all, it's his database.) I don't remember if the database stores the ratings in integers or decimals, but I assume it wouldn't be a hard thing to convert it.
There's one problem with this poll: You can only choose one option, even if there was more than one option you consider equally acceptable.
Maybe add a few combined options (like "either private poll or private rating system is ok by me" or the like)?
Given that the Megadrive and the Genesis are basically the one and same thing (with the only difference being, AFAIK, PAL vs. NTSC) is it really necessary to specify both? Also, given that the Sega CD and Sega 32X were not independent consoles but add-ons for the Sega Megadrive (you needed a Megadrive if you wanted to use the CD or the 32X), is it necessary to specify them separately, as if they were their own independent consoles?
Another option would be: Sega 4th generation consoles. (Although that might not be nearly as clear as "Sega Genesis" or "Sega Megadrive". And besides, we are really talking about *one* console here, as I just wrote above...)
- perfection: you can only guess this, and it would give rating boosts to games that are easy to TAS
Rating a run expresses your opinion of that run. It's not even intended to be an accurate measurement of something. Its only purpose is so that people can express how much they value the run. Averaging all the ratings gives a notion of what is the average opinion of that run.
moozooh wrote:
Warp wrote:
Even a frame-perfect run may deserve a low technical score if it doesn't show advanced and well-executed techniques. Perhaps the game in question just doesn't lend itself to awesome techniques, but then it's simply a poor game choice.
Makes very little sense. You're basically suggesting that some games will enjoy the usage of a full scale, but not the other games.
Exactly how is that different from the entertainment score? Some games do enjoy a better reception in the entertainment side than others. Is that "favoritism" or somehow unfair? No, it's just the opinion of people.
I don't see the technical rating being any different: It also expresses the opinion of people. Some games just aren't up to good technical ratings, in the exact same way as some games are not very entertaining. I see nothing strange or unfair here.
How about instead of removing rating categories, we add more of them? Here are a few ideas:
- Perfection: Does it look frame-perfect? Can you spot flaws or sloppy play? Does it look what a tool-assisted run should look like? Is it up to the standards of this site?
- Technique&tools: Are advanced TAS techniques and/or tools used in the run? Are they used efficiently and with expertise? Are they abundant? Are they performed with style? Were unusual tools or techniques used? Think of it as if you were rating figure skating (ie. the important thing is not speed, but technique).
- Overall entertainment: Forgetting about techniques, tools and speed, is the run fun to watch? Is it boring? Is it too long? Is it a good game choice for TASing? Could it work as a music video? Would you recommend this as a first movie for a newcomer?
- Interest for gamers/speedrunners: Would the TAS be interesting for someone who has played the game? Were the game physics broken to smithereens in interesting ways? Does it show things about the game that you never knew were even possible? Are the abused game bugs interesting or amusing? How well did the author explain the game mechanics, how they were abused, his route selections, etc?
Just throwing some ideas.
Personally I still like the idea of boolean rating
That would work well if thousands of people gave ratings to movies. However, the average amount of ratings for a movie is pretty low, so a 1-bit rating isn't very accurate nor descriptive (and would cause many movies to end up having the exact same overall rating value).
Could anyone (particularly Warp) give some reasons why my idea shouldn't be implemented?
I'm not opposed to your idea per se. It could work. It's just that I wanted to point out my opinion about the technical rating, which you had the strongest objections against. I agree that as it is now, it doesn't perhaps work perfectly.
Reimplementing the rating system to remove one of the categories and changing the other from 0-10 to 0-100 (in practice) can have some minor technical issues.
How would the existing ratings be converted to the new ratings? (I'm assuming it wouldn't be a very popular decision to simply drop all the existing ratings.)
How should the web form be changed so that one could enter a value between 0 and 10 with one decimal of accuracy? An editable textfield could work, but it might be slightly confusing to use, as well as error-prone. If the input is invalid, the server would have to do something about it. Maybe javascript could be used to enforce a correct value (but the server would still have to do something if an incorrect value is entered with javascripts disabled).
Also, some people might like having two categories more than having just one. We should hear their opinion as well.
