How about these categories:
- "any%" TASes: The only goal here is minimizing the number of frames needed to complete the game. "Entertainment" (however you want to define it) is irrelevant. No voting needed: Whenever someone submits a run which uses less frames than the currently published one (and someone verifies that the run is valid) it automatically obsoletes the existing one. This is just the *absolute minimum* needed from game reset to see the end of the game, without any regard to anything else.
- "Entertainment" TASes: These would be runs which aim for a different goal than "any%" for entertainment purposes, while still completing the game as fast as possible while achieving that goal. The goal should still be rational and sensible, in the same way as currently (for example "uses no death-warp", "collects all items", "uses this alternative route" or "uses this character only").
- Superplays: The goal is not to complete the game as fast as possible, but to complete it while achieving some other goal. These obviously can be done with just some games where it's sensible to do so. Examples of such goals include getting the highest possible score as fast as possible, or demonstrating the largest variety of complex combos and finishes in a fighting game. Fixed-speed side-scrollers where the idea of the video is to show superhuman precision (instead of completing the game as fast as possible) could also be put into this category.
- Machinima videos: The aim of the video is something else than completing the game. A "just for fun" video made with the game.
The "uses a hacked/unlicenced game" and "starts from a savestate" could perhaps be additional tags instead of being their own categories.
My thoughts on why a princess-only run was published way back when is because she was the only character that didn't get any screen time at all in the old runs of SMB2.
Now Mario doesn't either. However, Mario is an average character who plays normally. Mario isn't a very good choice. A princess run is good because she's terrible at everything but has an interesting quirk.
So, in this case it's probably a bad idea for a Mario run, a Toad run and a Luigi run is pointless because they already have screen time.
You put into words more or less what I was thinking much better than I could have ever done.
What NES game has the largest ROM file? I ask because I noticed that AD&D dragon strike has 512 KB, which is the same size as Super Mario World for SNES.
Would the same go for the color tag, which can be used to hide text as well as creating annoying emphasis?
No comment. Never seen an annoying abuse.
How about ?
That's much more useful. No need to remove it.
How about [quote]?
It is also used annoyingly sometimes.
Definitely extremely useful, and in fact quite indispensable in a forum like this. I don't remember any annoying abuse of it.
The question is: Is being able to change the text size so useful that it deserves being supported? Abusing it is relatively common.
Optipng is basically pngcrush but with more options, and it also can perform a more exhaustive search.
AFAIK advpng, optipng and pngout use slightly different approaches and different types of tests in order to try to reduce the size of the png. While pngout usually wins, there are a few cases where optipng actually produces a smaller result. I have also noticed that for some odd reason pngout doesn't support all types of pngs while optipng does. (In those cases it's enough to run the png through optipng first and then through pngout because optipng "fixes" the png so that pngout can read it.)
I suppose that to get the smallest possible size, all three programs should be run. The resulting png will be the one from the program which produced the smallest result.
Why are the Zelda games named after Zelda and not after Link? Imagine if Super Mario Bros was called Super Princess Peach (after all, the basic premise is the same).
(Yes, I know there's a game named Super Princess Peach, but there you play the titular character, which kind of proves my point again. :P )
I agree. The vast majority of cases where the size tag has been used, it has been extremely annoying. Either it has been abused to print overly big text (for absolutely no good reason), or conversely it has been used to print ridiculously small text which is extremely hard to read. (They may be easy to read in the poster's computer, but that size probably depends on browser settings and such, and in some people's computers, such as mine, they can get so ridiculously small that they are impossible to read without making the font bigger or copypasting it somewhere else.)
The size tag has no useful purpose IMHO, only annoying ones.
Why are some people so obsessed in "we don't need this run", "bisqwit once said this run could be obsoleted", "someone said this run would never be obsoleted", blaa blaa.
Who cares? It's entertaining. Does it hurt to have such a video here? Why are some people so opposed to this?
And yes, NesVideoAgent's automatic screenshots are not always best possible compressed, though I occasionally manually crunch them (about twice a month).
Couldn't it run them automatically through optipng or pngout?
Also, capturing is not the primary goal in Go. A game may well progress to the end without a single capture taking place.
Yes, capturing is a very secondary goal. In a typical (full-board) game one player gets about 50-100 points (assuming the game is approximately even). From these points typically about 5-10 come from captured stones. As you say, in some cases a game might end without even one single capture. Capturing it's not all that important. (In some games, where there are a *lot* of captured stones, they still usually don't matter that much because it's both players who capture stones alternatively, so they cancel out.) Some games may end abruptly (ie. in resignation) when one player loses a huge amount of stones with nothing in return, but this is rare, especially with strong players (who know how to defend). By far the most usual cause for resignation is that you are very far behind in territory.
Ironically, capturing rules are usually the very first rules a beginner is taught. This usually gives at first a wrong impression about what the game is all about. I have more than once even seen people teaching a beginner the basic rules of the game *without* ever explaining about territory at all! The beginner might start playing games without even hearing a single word about territory and the role it plays in the game.
I would say that the *threat* of capturing plays a more important role than capturing itself (although this isn't the main point of the game either, but it's probably more relevant than the capturing all by itself). Sometimes threatening to capture a group of stones is not done to actually capture it (at least not if the other player defends correctly) but to achieve other goals (such as getting influence or forcing the opponent to make slow moves). In some cases this plays a crucial role in the game. For example there are some marvelous professional games where one player invades the opponent's potential territory, and the other player tries to kill those invading stones. But this is also not very usual either (although more usual in beginner games).
The most crucial thing in go is strategy: The balance between potential territory and outwards influence. You can't win by securing territory only (at least not if the players are mid-level or stronger). You have to find the correct balance between securing territory (or at least making potential territory) and creating outwards influence. If you create a potential territory which is too loose, it will be invaded or heavily reduced. If you make the potential territory too tight, it will be too small (because your opponent will make a larger one). Influence helps you both expanding your territory in the future and potentially attacking or reducing your opponent territory. This is very complicated.
This is one of the coolest tases I have seen in a long time.
It could be interesting to see an "anything goes, without restrictions (except no warping)" run which aims for the shortest time (without using warping), but I think that restricting to use the three-ball powerup was a good idea in this case.
Edit: Btw, some people complain that the game is too long for this kind of TAS. Quite ironically I actually felt it was too short! I could have watched that juggling for a couple of dozens of levels more. :)
Warp: You mean, now that nobody is paying attention to your question (which was answered to most people's satisfaction), it's drifting off topic? Or perhaps you didn't notice the other questions which have been discussed until a satisfactory answer has been found?
There's no specific topic in a thread like this, so it's not possible to "drift off topic".
What I meant was that instead of people asking questions and other people answering them, the thread has become a forum where many people express their personal opinions about a controversial subject (ie. they are not asking questions nor answering them, just throwing their opinion in), which is not what this thread was originally about.
Curiously, the same things are said about the various RPG games (slow, boring, have to turbo through most of the game, only people who have played the game can appreciate it...) yet RPG TASes are published even though they are hours long instead of a few minutes like this one.
I find this contradiction rather amusing.
If you were to ban xebra for this, you would reasonably have to ban phil, jxq, xkeeper, zurreco, warp, and myself, who have each at times been more abrasive in behavior than xebra currently is.
I don't remember ever insulting someone's religious faith with swearwords.
Or even better, would you shove a fat man standing by the side of the road in front of a bus, if it ment saving the lifes of 5 people who's car was stalled out in the path?
Suppose you can be sure that the action will save the 5 people but the fat man will die in the process. Also, the 5 people will die if you do nothing.
Sorry to hijack, but I have always found that kind of "moral" questions completely nonsensical. There are several problems with how it is posed and interpreted.
Firstly, it assumes that if you do nothing you are choosing to let the 5 people die. In a real situation that would be *hesitation*, not a choice. You are not choosing absolutely anything, you are just hesitating because you don't know what to do. There's no morality there, just panic. Thus it would be completely unjust to interpret that in the way that you are *choosing* to let the 5 people die.
The situation as posed is just not realistic for a moral choice scenario. It happens too fast. You don't have time to think about it. It happens too fast for you to even realize that there's a moral choice to make. Even if you realized it, there would be too little time to actually think about the actual dilemma and all of its ramifications. It's not realistic.
Even if the situation was different, where every single detail is carefully explained and you have hours to make your decision, it would probably still be quite unrealistic to expect that anyone would make a calm, rational choice. Most people would still hesitate, panic, go to catatonic shock or at the end make a choice based on panic, not rationality and morals. People don't tend to think rationally when they are confronted in such situations where people are in danger. The person's own safety is probably in danger too because he has to make the choice (ie. someone is forcing him to do it).
It just doesn't make any sense. It's not a question of morality.
