Posts for Warp


Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Mothrayas wrote:
The rule is written and enforced exactly as intended, you don't need to put all the emphasis on "interpretation".
Then, as said, change it, because in this instance it makes no sense.
Nach wrote:
We definitely do not want non-serious games published, which is typical of those geared for education as the primary control of the game. The question for judges is not whether we are going to alter or enforce this rule, but whether the game in question is not serious due to its primary focus on education or whether the game is a serious game and just has some educational elements thrown in.
If this game used some kind of simple puzzles instead of math problems, would it be eligible for Vault? If the answer is yes, then what exactly is it about math problems that makes it non-eligible? I think the principle of "no educational games" is being enforced too strictly here.
Post subject: Re: #5758: EZGames69's NES Mario's Time Machine! in 07:33.62
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Mothrayas wrote:
Do you consider a virtual equivalent of peg-in-hole a challenge?
So now it's up to how much challenge there is in the game? Where's that rule?
Post subject: Re: #5758: EZGames69's NES Mario's Time Machine! in 07:33.62
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Mothrayas wrote:
What sorts of Tetris or sports games do you play that have eliminated all challenge in gameplay?
You consider solving math problems, or putting objects in their proper slots, not challenging in the least? In terms of speedrunning, reaching the end as fast as possible is in itself a challenge.
Post subject: Re: #5759: qflame's SNES Math Blaster Episode 1: In Search of Spot in 07:53.15
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Mothrayas wrote:
No game is rejected for just having educational elements in them - but having educational elements as a primary mechanic and goal is what makes one an educational game, and fall under the rule of educational games.
Then change the rule. As it is now, and as it is being interpreted now, games like this one are being rejected even though that makes absolutely no sense. A strict ban on "educational games", no matter what kind of game mechanics and level progression they might have, is nonsensical.
Post subject: Re: #5758: EZGames69's NES Mario's Time Machine! in 07:33.62
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
DrD2k9 wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
<a>Mothrayas</a>: .... The player cannot take damage or die whatsoever, eliminating all challenge...
This is perhaps the best argument I've read against TASes of most educational games and likely the most valid way to help in determining when one is not worthy of consideration for vault.
That would eliminate all puzzle games as well. How much damage can you take eg. in Tetris? In the same vein it eliminates all sports games as well, for the same reason (even though sports games were just recently added to the acceptable categories).
Post subject: Re: #5759: qflame's SNES Math Blaster Episode 1: In Search of Spot in 07:53.15
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Mothrayas wrote:
Can you explain how either game features education as a primary game element and purpose? Especially in Bible Buffet I'm not seeing anything remotely like that, it's a virtual board game with some puzzle game segments. Any educational element, if even present, appears to be secondary in that game.
I honestly can't understand why you are approaching this from the perspective of "does it have educational elements?", as if containing educational elements as a major mechanic automatically makes the game unpublishable, and thus it purely becomes a question of whether it has them or not (no matter how much of a "regular game" it is otherwise in terms of game mechanics, playing, level progression, and reaching an unambiguous ending). I doubt that whoever wrote that rule had that in mind. Instead, I'm certain that he was thinking of educational games as an example of a typical "non-game". I doubt the intent was to disqualify all games that may have educational elements in them, regardless of what type of games they otherwise are. I don't think the spirit of the rule is being followed here, and instead its letter is, to an unhealthy degree. It really is looking to me that if this game was otherwise identical, but had some puzzles instead of math problems, there would be no discussion and it would be accepted, but just because it has math instead of puzzles, it's somehow being rejected based solely on that, as if math in video games was banned from the site. This feels extremely strange to me, and makes no sense. I would suggest that the Vault rules could benefit from an update in this regard. A clarification could be made what exactly is meant by "educational games", and in a manner that does not ban games like this one. The intent shouldn't be to ban games just because they contain educational elements to them.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Could it be possible to create a stereoscopic VR180 video using the same principle? (A VR180 video is better than a VR360 in that it requires significantly less resolution and bandwidth, and you are seldom looking back in VR anyways.)
Post subject: Re: #5759: qflame's SNES Math Blaster Episode 1: In Search of Spot in 07:53.15
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
There is a huge difference between solving a puzzle and being required to do math calculations. The latter requires much more concentration and much more learning.
And this should disqualify the game from Vault for what reason, exactly?
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
I highly doubt that "educational" games were originally included in the rules because of any of those reasons, but because they typically aren't actual games with progression and an unambiguous ending, and instead they just consist of exercises that you can do in any order, as many times as you want, and there isn't really an end goal. I doubt the purpose of adding it to the list was to forbid all games with "educational" elements to them to be banned. Consider a pure jigsaw puzzle game, for instance. Typically you just have a set of puzzles, which you can solve in any order, or repeatedly, and there isn't any sort of progression, or ending to the game. However, that doesn't mean that any game that contains some sort of jigsaw puzzle as part of its progression should be automatically banned. I see little difference.
Post subject: Re: #5759: qflame's SNES Math Blaster Episode 1: In Search of Spot in 07:53.15
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
you'll see yourself how much predominant is the requirement to do math calculations, even with the lowest difficulty set. The calculations require concentration, especially if you're not used to do math (it may differ a lot from person to person), while the skills required to shoot the moving objects or fly around are very basic (assuming you're a common casual player).
I don't think it makes any sense to disqualify a game because of that. "You have to do math in order to progress in this game" sounds to me like a completely nonsensical reason. In many games you need to solve puzzles (such as rearranging pieces to fulfill certain rules) in order to advance. This is allowed. Why is having to do some arithmetic to advance the game an exception to this? It makes no sense to me.
Nach wrote:
If a calculator program exists for a platform (and yes there are such things), would it be valid to TAS?
A calculator program doesn't have progression, game mechanics, nor an ending. This game clearly does. (Heck, as someone pointed out, this game has more game mechanics than some other games for which there are published runs.) The only reason why this was rejected was because of one single word in the Vault rules, "educational", which is completely undefined in said rules, and up to the subjective opinion of the judge. (Personally I would have interpreted the rules mentioning "educational games" as being a typical example of a "non-game", because such educational games seldom have progression and an ending in the same way as typical games do. I wouldn't have interpreted it as a hard rule that if a game has any "educational" aspects to it, it's banned period.)
Post subject: Re: #5759: qflame's SNES Math Blaster Episode 1: In Search of Spot in 07:53.15
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
There are no problems with games containing educational contents; the problem here is that the educational part is actually the main requirement for playing the game. While this game still requires some reflexes and manouver abilities in order to be beaten, these are not the main factor that allows to play through, in either casual runs or speedrunning.
The specific rule disqualifying "educational games" is this: "For the purposes of this tier, a game which is a board game, educational game or game show game is not defined as a serious game." I see it slightly problematic that the rules do not define with any more detail what constitutes an "educational game", or how much of the game must be deemed "educational" for it to be disqualified. Suppose, hypothetically, that for example at the end of each Super Mario Bros level there were a small educational quiz (eg. as a multiple choice question). Would this make it an "educational game", and thus not qualified for Vault? I think most people would agree that it wouldn't. So the question becomes: What exactly is the proportion of "educational" and "non-educational" gameplay that disqualifies a game from Vault? To me, judging from the encode, this game looks more like a regular game than a purely educational one. Sure, the arithmetic problems are the main "puzzles" to overcome, but the game mechanics are mostly those of a "regular" game, and there is even somewhat traditional level progression, and an ending. What would be the harm in accepting this?
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Mothrayas wrote:
Any submission that aims to improve upon and obsolete an existing publication record must come with an actual improvement of the run. It makes no sense to obsolete a movie when its time record is not beaten, only tied.
That seems contradictory to the Vault rules, which state:
Vault Rules wrote:
Opportunities to entertain the audience where it does not affect time is not a requirement. However, it is encouraged and can be used as a tie-breaker for two equally fast movies.
Post subject: Re: #5759: qflame's SNES Math Blaster Episode 1: In Search of Spot in 07:53.15
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
TASVideoAgent wrote:
The run is nicely optimized and beats all known records. However, the game played does not meet the Vault requirements, since it's an educational game.
What? This run was rejected because it contains educational elements? You mean that if it didn't have those arithmetic problems, it would have been accepted? I don't see anything in this run that disqualifies it from publication. It has an ending, and it's played from beginning to end. Heck, it even looks like an actual multi-genre game (a rather simplistic one for sure, but that has never been grounds for rejection). I would like to contest this judgment.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
FractalFusion wrote:
This is why things like 2/(3-(2/(3-(2/(3-(...)))))) and sqrt(sqrt(sqrt(...))) are not well-defined.
This leaves me wondering what exactly is it that makes it not well-defined. Is there some rule of mathematics that's being broken by extending that expression infinitely, or is it just that it's not well-defined because in this particular case the result is ambiguous?
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
A) 1=2/(3-1). Obviously because of this equality we can substitute that last 1 with 2/(3-1), so we get 1=2/(3-(2/(3-1))). Can go on substituting the last 1, so we get 1=2/(3-(2/(3-(2/(3-1))))), and so on. We can do so forever, so: 1 = 2/(3-(2/(3-(2/(3-(...)))))) B) 2=2/(3-2). Because of this equality we can substitute that last 2 with 2/(3-2), so we get 2=2/(3-(2/(3-2))), and so on. We can do so forever, so: 2 = 2/(3-(2/(3-(2/(3-(...)))))) As you can see, both expansions are the same, and therefore: 1 = 2/(3-(2/(3-(2/(3-(...)))))) = 2
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Cool research. I wonder how it could be applied to make it easier to have Chessmaster choose a particular opening. Could perhaps a piece of lua code show that "if you make your move at the current frame, the program will respond with move X"?
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
From the little experimentation I have done, it seems that the randomness in Chessmaster is very hard to manipulate. There is no obvious way of doing it (for example delaying your own move by some amount seems to have little to no effect; from just trying this I haven't figured out any way to manipulate the program to choose a particular book move.) I fear that in order to understand how the program chooses a particular book move a lot more in-depth research would be required. And of course, after it goes off-book, I have absolutely no idea whether it always makes the same moves or whether there is randomness involved. That would also require testing and research.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Saturn wrote:
CM's total thinking time is 38 minutes and 11 seconds
I wonder if that's starting to be acceptable in terms of how long the TAS is (assuming it would otherwise be publishable). By the way, how did you find these?
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
In NES Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if you advance the screen so that a step is at the right distance from the screen left edge, and you jump into this gap between the screen edge and the edge of the step properly, you'll glitch through the ground and end up on the top right corner of the screen, and fall to the right edge of the screen (which isn't normally possible to reach). I discovered it by explicitly trying to find that kind of glitch.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
One would think that checking the legality of a move in the "naive" way would be quite easy, and absolutely within the capability of an SNES chess game. I suppose the chess engine uses that array for its calculations in each position, and the programmers decided to reuse it for checking the user's moves quickly and easily. Maybe they estimated that in a normal game there would never be over 110 possible moves.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Just out of curiosity I wanted to see how much of a difference the difficulty level in Chessmaster makes, so I let the level at its default (which is 1), to see how fast Stockfish could beat it. Since I wanted Chessmaster to get off book as soon as possible, I induced it to play the same opening as before (with Chessmaster playing black). The resulting game was indeed much shorter (and in terms of time took just a couple of minutes because Chessmaster was moving in just a few seconds.) 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. c3 Be7 6. Qg4 O-O 7. Bd3 c5 8. Ne2 cxd4 9. cxd4 Bb4 10. O-O Nc6 11. Nf3 Qe7 12. Bxh7+ Kxh7 13. Qh3+ Kg8 14. Ng5 Nf6 15. exf6 Rd8 16. Qh7+ Kf8 17. Qh8# 1-0 But not having Chessmaster play at its strongest is a bit boring, so this was just a test done out of curiosity rather than anything else.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
ais523 wrote:
The Blackburne Shilling Gambit is the sort of thing that lower-skilled computers often fall for but it may well be in the openings book.
Unfortunately that opening is in its book, and thus it doesn't fall for it. (It plays 4. c3.)
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Warp wrote:
How difficult would it be to have the forum login page use https instead of http?
In fact, it would be a good idea to make the entire site https-only. Read here why: https://doesmysiteneedhttps.com/ Please consider it seriously.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Famously, powers of the golden ratio phi, when rounded to the nearest integer, give the Lucas numbers. However, there appears to be another curious property of powers of phi: The higher the power, the closer the result is to an integer. Is this really so? Can it be proven?
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Any programmer with even a modicum of experience of computer graphics programming knows by heart that the length of a two-dimensional vector is calculated with the magical formula sqrt(x2+y2), which comes directly from the Pythagorean theorem. This comes up in geometric problems, especially programming related to geometry (such as computer graphics), all the time. Likewise such a person knows by heart that this same principle generalizes to three-dimensional vectors, the length of which is, likewise, sqrt(x2+y2+z2). By intuition, and perhaps induction, one can deduce that it generalizes to any number of dimensions in the same way (even though going above three is quite rare in practical computer graphics). (I think the fancy term for that is "Euclidean norm".) But this is just a magical formula that such programmers (and most other people dealing with such formulas) know by heart, without actually knowing why it works. They don't know how to prove it. I don't know how to prove it. There are plenty of proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, but they seem to be mostly geometric proofs that apply only to the 2-dimensional case. It's hard to see from them how it would generalize to all dimensions. It's not obvious (at least to me) that it would necessarily generalize as-is. Is it hard to prove the Euclidean norm formula?