In my opinion speed should be a goal (even if not the *main* goal, but at least *a* goal) even in a dual TAS.
Not aiming for speed *at all* makes, IMO, the dual video boring pretty soon. Yes, there may be cool and funny synchronization, but if it doesn't have any set goal (eg. complete the games reasonably fast) then it's just a show-off which gets old in a minute or two.
There was one excellent thing about the Megaman X1+X2 video: Both games were ended in the exact same frame, and it tried to complete the games reasonably fast, without unneeded delays in both games at the same time (IOW the shorter game may have to "wait" for the longer game in order to get a perfect ending synchronization, but the longer one was nevertheless done reasonably fast and there were basically no needless delays).
Another approach would be, of course, trying to end each game as fast as is possible (in such a dual run) even if it means that one game ends much sooner than the other. However, there's a virtue in trying to make both games end at the same time.
So, once again, IMO speed should be a goal. Needless delays (except for one game waiting for the other to "catch up") should be avoided and the games should be completed as fast as is reasonably possible. If speed is not a goal at all, the videos become boring quite fast.
You are reading more to it than there is. I was contrasting "speed" vs. "non-speed", not "speed" vs. "entertainment". I was suggesting a new category for the very few videos where speed is not a goal.
You talk as if aiming for speed would not be aiming at entertainment. I find this view rather puzzling and incomprehensible.
It is a burden because the client sends a HTTP request and the server sends a page as a reply each single time. It consumes bandwidth and, depending on the lag, it may take time before the answer arrives. In javascript the answer would always be immediate and it would be burden the server in any way.
And... if you're omnipotent, CAN you make something so heavy you COULDN'T lift?
Lift it from where?
An unlimitedly heavy object would collapse into a black hole, and such a thing cannot be anywhere where it can be "lifted" from. You certainly can't have a black hole on the surface of the Earth or anywhere else where it could be "lifted".
In the end, all these "paradoxes" can be reduced to: "Can you prove that 0=1?" or "can you do something without doing it?" First we set up a frame of reference, a set of our own rules, where something is not possible and then we say "can you make it possible without breaking these rules?"
That's just a moot task. It's just saying "I define that 0 is not 1. Can you prove that 0 = 1? Of course since I have defined that 0 is not 1 then whatever you do will not convince me. You can't demonstrate that 0 = 1 without breaking this rule I set up."
I think it would be better to do it in javascript because then it would be done completely client-side and there's no need to burden the server each time you want to calculate it.
Bisqwit mentioned the unavoidable desyncs too. Seems like this game cannot be recorded in current snes emulators without desync happening? Wouldn't this be a place for a bug report or something?
The formulae are in the perl code I wrote. Deduce from there.
Wow, thanks. That's very helpful.
I don't understand. You said you know how to divide by 60 in that program, buy didn't know how to do the other, slightly more complex calculations. These other calculations are quite clearly shown in the short perl script I posted. What else do you want?
Having a speedrun of a game for one platform does not make a speedrun of the same game for another platform obsolete. There are some speedruns at SDA of the same game for different platforms (such as Tomb Raider 3 and Splinter Cell).
Personally I think that the idea of gradius/lifeforce bigame movie was great, but one thing in this choice bothered me: The fact that the fire button is different in the games. It's somehow confusing that the spaceships move synchronously but they don't shoot synchronously.
It would make a great dual playaround, but I wonder if there would be some other similar game where the fire button would be the same. Or perhaps one of the games could be configured to have the same fire button as the other?
For a more in your face example, how many video games do you know made good movies?
Most movies made of videogames suck precisely because they are way too different, they don't have the same mood and too many things have been changed.
Just check the Doom movie: They changed basically everything. About the only common thing between the games (well, Doom3) and the movie is that they happen in Mars (but even how the marines get there is completely different in the movie) and that there are guns. Everything else is different.
Both of those games have been ported to SNES (a rather admirable feat in itself, even though the graphics and framerates are understandably not comparable to the original PC version).
Even though SNES Doom is quite weaker on the graphics side and Wolfenstein3D is a rather boring game (at least to watch) they might make more or less interesting TASes. Has anyone tried them?
It's the price to pay for simple GUI development...
It is perfectly possible to make a windows binary which performs that operation, full GUI and all, in less than 10 kilobytes.
However, using a separate binary for a division is still an overkill IMO.
Determining time from frames is not as simple as "dividing by 60." That will give you a crazy decimal number in terms of fractions of seconds, which, at least in the US, is not how we keep time. We keep time in terms of hours, minutes, seconds, so a tool that easily and clearly informs us in those terms is useful. If you'd rather divide by 60 several times and convert from decimal to base-60, then I guess you like math more than me, and I'm a math major.
My point was that making a 300k+ windows binary in order to perform such a simple operation is total overkill.
Here's a short perl skript which does the same thing:
The fact that Sin City so closely followed the content (and limitations) of its source medium speaks only of the screenwriter's and the director's limited imagination and lack of ability. Sin City was a terrible movie, and the creators of said movie are surely the ones to blame.
You are contradicting yourself. You are saying that the movie was bad because it followed so closely the original comic books, because the makers of the movie didn't have enough "imagination" to create something new, something better. But wouldn't that mean that the original comic books were bad, then?
So, instead of attacking me for not liking Sin City, why don't you tell me why I should like it?
I didn't object to you not liking the movie/comic. I objected to your comment that sounded like the movie was either not based on anything or had radically changed the original story, making it a lot worse. You blamed the movie for a weak storyline and excess of violence even though the movie is not really the one to blame.
For now, it only converts from frames to time, using a 60 frames per second basis. The next version will also allow to convert from time to frames, and support different FPS timings.
I haven't tried your program and that's probably why I just don't get it. Why would people want a 380k executable in order to divide one number by 60? You don't need a specialized program to divide a number by 60. Just use the calculator. And don't tell me it's because "it's too much trouble to write or click on '/60'."
Even if this tool made sense (which I don't understand why it would), wouldn't it be much easier and much more portable to make eg. a page that uses javascript to do the operation? No need to download a 380k windows executable to run a simple divide-by-60 calculator.
Warp: I know Sin City is based off of a graphic novel. For anyone that isn't a fan of them, though, the movie was very poorly made. I never said that Sin City was a terrible series, I said that it failed as a movie.
You talk as if there was something in the comics that help explain the whole plot and which was not included in the movie. Care to specify exactly what is it?
I have read the comics and while some scenes were certainly shortened (for the sake of keeping the movie under 2 hours) I didn't see anything important missing.
Sure, when reading the comics you can do it at your own pace, and sometimes there are lengthier textboxes, but I didn't see any relevant difference between the movie and the comics.
You talk as if they had made the movie different from the comics, took only a small part of the story in the comics and stitched them together without too much thought, added something of their own (you specifically mentioned "violence and visual effects") thus creating something different. However, as far as I could tell the movie was a quite faithful replication of the comics. Nothing was added (especially not "violence and visual effects" not appearing in the original comic), a few things were shortened, but everything relevant was there.
I told you that you wouldn't like it. It's a pretty terrible movie. They basically took a lot of shaky and poorly supported storylines, threw them together, and then coated it all with violence and visual effects.
You either are not talking about the movie Sin City or you are rather ignorant.
I assume you know that Sin City is a comic book series by the acclaimed artist named Frank Miller. The comics are really dark in content and use a rather unique drawing style (well, unique for a best-selling comic) and many consider them classics.
The movie is a pretty accurate recreation of the comic series. In fact, they used the comics directly as storyboards (instead of drawing their own, as is usual in movies). They tried to closely match the comics in both contents and visuals (although the visuals are really difficult to match due to the unique style used in the comics).
Your post shows just pure ignorance. They did not "take a lot of shaky and poorly supported storylines and threw them together", they did not "coat them with violence and visual effects". They just replicated more or less faithfully Miller's comics.
You might not like the comics themselves, and if you want to blame the comics for having "shaky storylines" then you are entitled to your opinion, but blaming the movie for it shows just ignorance.
Get your facts straight first, blame the movie then.
I think you should have named Charmander with a more meaningful name than just "-". I understand that you wanted a 1-letter name to save time, but I think that instead of "-" you could have used eg. "C" which has more meaning. (After all, it's not unusual to nickname someone after the first letter of his name.)
