The whole "gaming culture" has turned incredibly toxic.
As an avid gamer, I am a member of the gaming culture. Therefore you are insulting me alongside every other gamer.
This part of the comment has been removed. It's completely unnecessary. --Invariel
If something is indistinguishable from free will, does it really matter what the underlying mechanism is, and whether that mechanism conforms to our definition of "free will"?
De facto free will, which works in practice, is what matters.
Asymptotic complexity usually considers the worst-case scenario, ie. the upper bound for the complexity (although some notations may instead consider the average scenario, but this needs to usually be stated explicitly.)
Thus it doesn't matter if in some situations you could find a solution much faster than the worst-case. That doesn't change the complexity of the problem.
People have been touching on this topic for the past few years, but it's obvious to me that the gaming industry as whole is in a very precarious state. Seems to me that it's heading for a crash that's not too dissimilar to the one in the early 1980's.
I don't think the gaming industry is going to crash (unless the whole world economy crashes; in other words, if the gaming industry ends up crashing, it's not doing so alone, and will be just a symptom of a much larger problem than just "games don't sell").
What is, however, most probably going to change is the paradigm of desktop console gaming: I don't think desktop consoles have a future. Their time will soon be over, and they will probably become as obsolete as VHS and C-cassettes. (I wouldn't actually be surprised if this is the last, or second-to-last console generation, in its current desktop form.)
Handheld consoles might still have somewhat of a future, but most probably not in their current form. They'll probably just merge with cellphones.
1. Whats the point of CD's anymore? You put the game into the console and you load the contents of it onto the internal memory. Sure, it makes sense from the point of view that the game will run smoother, but if that's the case. Why not just download the game, or put onto some SD card?
Physical discs becoming obsolete is not going to kill the gaming industry. That's a rather silly thing to worry about.
2. The whole issue of patches. Yeah, I get that you want some annoying and game breaking bugs and glitches to removed from the game, but this aspect has made developers lazy by rushing unfinished products to market. It makes me wonder what's the point in even getting a game at launch if you know it's going to be unfinished.
Patches aren't going to kill the gaming industry either. I think they allow more good than bad.
3. Micro transactions. I understand it from a money making point of view, and especially for games which you can obtain for free on your Android, but for a game you already spent $50-60 on?
Microtransactions plague almost exclusively mobile games. On the PC and desktop console side gamers just can't be bothered.
But on that note, mobile games use microtransactions because it sells. They wouldn't be using them if it didn't sell. It may sell because casual players are stupid, but that doesn't change the fact that it sells. Thus it isn't exactly something that will make the gaming industry crash.
4. Games today seem to treat you like idiots. Some of those FPS games of today are not a whole lot different from an on-rails shooter of the past. I don't mind a lot of back story and tutorials at the start of the game, but having it like that throughout a game is stretching it.
This is mostly a delusion. Sure, some first-person shooters may be highly linear and simplistic, but others are really complex and smart. For each Call of Duty you have an Alien Isolation.
Video games haven't changed in this respect much in the last 30 years. If you think it has, you are simply filtering the bad games from your nostalgia.
5. Game companies are being run by people who don't know anything about gaming. They tend to be either accountants or marketers who just seem to copy what sold well last year, or what has historically done well. No creativity or risk taking whatsoever. I must admit this situation must be very moral sapping for games developers.
Citation needed.
6. Game budgets have gotten ridiculous. Whenever I hear a game costing $100m+ I don't even bat an eyelid anymore. Even when you factor in inflation. Games cost many fold more to make compared to what they did in the late 90's.
Something we agree on. The game industry has become too large for its own good. Just ten years ago a game selling 2 million copies was a ginormous success. Today we have reached a point were a game selling 2 million copies is considered by the investors to have "sold poorly". The investor money would be there, but if a game doesn't sell hundreds of millions of copies, then it doesn't, and there's nothing that they can do about it.
What this may cause is that investments and budgets will get smaller, which will lower the overall quality and production values of video games. There will simply not be enough money to create top-of-the-line games taking advantage of the latest hardware innovations.
7. This relates to my last point, but there is no middle ground when it comes to gaming. Either you get shovelware or an AAA game.
I don't understand what you are trying to say here.
But what I want to know is, why is there such a significant teenage/adult population who enjoys MLP:FiM so much that they become obsessed with it?
- The character design has this certain kind of cuteness that appeals to a wide audience. (I know this is not something that's usually brought up in this kind of discussion, but IMO it's one of the most significant reasons. If the character design where quite different, the show might well not have such a wide audience appeal.)
- The scriptwriting is surprisingly professional and, in many cases, surprisingly deep. It's the kind of scriptwriting that appeals to little kids, but also has hidden depths. It's the kind of intelligent kid-show scriptwriting that doesn't make teenagers and adults cringe or get bored, that doesn't feel stupid, that doesn't feel like the show creators are patronizing their audience and talking down to them, like they were little kids who don't understand anything. The scriptwriting has found this extraordinary golden line where it's easy for kids and adults to like at the same time (which is often very hard to pull.)
- The voice acting is superb, and what I wrote in the previous paragraph could be repeated almost verbatim here as well.
- The stories are surprisingly engaging, even though they are often simplistic (after all, it's a kids show, not Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad.) There are of course good and bad episodes, but on average they tend to be quite good.
- The characters are relatable. Almost no character is unlikeable, stupid or cringeworthy.
- Most characters show personality flaws, and there are essentially no Mary Sue characters, which is a sign of good scriptwriting.
- It helps that the creators are very fan-friendly and have embraced the fandom. (Of course this happened pretty much after the fandom formed, so it's not one of the original causes. But it still helps.)
To name a few points.
That's strange. I have never had Win10 do that. All updates have always happened when shutting down the computer. (Maybe it's because I don't have the computer running non-stop 24/7?)
I don't understand how that works.
Single names do not fall under copyright. Trademarks cover only the use of a name in a particular context (the archetypal example given is the name "Windows", which is trademarked but only in relation to computer software; it's free to be used for products and companies in unrelated fields, such as construction).
Other than those two, what else is there? Names are not patentable either.
Surprisingly, with my 3D glasses that I have on hand, there is not ghosting for either image
I must confess that I got my glasses from a cereal box. (Yes, seriously.)
They might not be of the highest quality possible. But they work well with the dark blue version of the images.
Why restrict team based sports? Time based I understand, but why team based? Something like NFL street (where it's possible to complete the career mode with all games being manipulated to be first to 3 points instead of best score when time runs out) seems like a valid enough game to TAS.
Repetitive strategy, then, so it would still be rejected regardless.
Doesn't "repetitive strategy" dwell into the realm of entertainment, which I thought was rather inconsequential in the Vault tier?
On a tangent, I'm a bit ambivalent about the concept of banning sports games where each game round lasts the exact same amount of time and cannot be sped up by gameplay, and thus there really isn't a wallclock time to beat. On one hand I understand the reasons why this is not Vault material; on the other hand, I wouldn't exactly protest if they were accepted regardless.
I have a question: Is there any sports game franchise which is eligible for Vault, but which has multiple games in the series for the same platform, and thus only one of those games would be accepted at a time? (All the examples given so far seem to be fixed-time sports games, such as NFL.)
Your version looks even better with red-green glasses because the image is not as reddish, and it's thus clearer. Except perhaps for one thing: The cyan coloring is not filtered as well by the red filter as the original dark blue. This easily causes ghosting.
(And btw, the technical term is "magenta".)
I realized that since the only thing I have posted in this thread has been criticism, it may give the false impression that I'm unappreciative of this change. That couldn't be farther from the truth!
Please allow me to repeat what I wrote in the gummibear submission thread. I know it's just a repetition of what I said there, but I would like it to be here as well, rather than buried in a submission thread.
Warp wrote:
This might be a bit sappy, but I would like to show my appreciation that the staff of tasvideos does listen to their visitors and seriously consider their ideas, suggestions and questions. I have had way too many experiences at other sites where the staff is too stubborn and arrogant and full of themselves, and consider their own rules too holy and too rigid to ever change, and somehow seem to consider the visitors too stupid to be even being considered seriously. It's really refreshing and warming to participate in a site with reasonable and down-to-earth staff.
Thank you.
Consider it from another perspective:
Let's assume that game series were eligible. Also let's assume that a fan of the series were to make a TAS of every single one of those games. What's the amount of "harm" that would ensue from publishing them?
There are currently 1675 published TASes according to the statistics page. Those 9 games would increase that number by 0.5%. I somehow fail to see the harm done by this.
I don't really understand why we are being so conservative about this. I would understand it if the number of currently published movies were 30. I don't really understand it when the actual number is 1675.
Why does the rule apply only to sport game franchises and not all game franchises?
Maybe rather than have a strict rule that's blindly applied to everything, it should be considered on a franchise-by-franchise basis (and perhaps even game-by-game basis)? Clear rules are nice, but not if some games get unfairly hit by them.
Since pi is irrational, every finite decimal sequence will appear in it
That doesn't sound correct at all.
A number which decimal expansion lacks completely the digit '3' can still perfectly well be irrational. Or if the digit '3' appears, it's always followed by the digit '5', without exception; and this can still be irrational.
I thought the question would be about whether the possessive of proper names ending in S should use a single apostrophe or an apostrophe and an S. In other words, should it be eg. Fitts's Law or Fitts' Law.
The most common consensus is that with proper names, 's should be used regardless of whether the name ends in S or not. With common nouns only the apostrophe ought to be used. Thus it's properly workers' rights but Fitts's Law.
Your question doesn't seem to apply to this, though. Unless "Kings" is supposed to be plural, in which case it would be Kings' Hope. If it's supposed to be singular, then obviously King's Hope.
Ah, so if it were several kings, it would be without an apostrophe.
I thought that this was a "math challenges" thread, not a "help me with this problem that nobody has ever solved before and can't be found on google" thread.
I understand "challenge" to mean "can you solve this mathematical brain teaser without looking it up?"
If this is not that kind of thread, then perhaps it should be renamed, to avoid confusion and people throwing sarcastic remarks to those who misunderstand the nature of the thread?
What I actually meant was why you keep bringing up your philosophy stuff when there are already several people that clearly tried to explain how philosophy makes no sense here.
So I ask once again: Some professional mathematicians are ok with the concept (of divergent infinite sums having a finite value) while others are categorically against it. What would you call that other than different philosophies of mathematics?
I don't quite understand why you keep talking about some philosophy stuff.
"Philosophy" doesn't just mean some bearded old guy sitting on an armchair pondering about concepts like the human condition and what is beauty.
One of the dictionary definitions of philosophy is: "the critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge, especially with a view to improving or reconstituting them"
Philosophy deals with things like what is the proper scientific methodology that minimizes biases and errors, and tries to maximize the accuracy and validity of results. It deals with things like logic, logical fallacies, and biases.
Many concepts in mathematics have required a shift in thinking, in the philosophy of mathematics. For example, for a long time mathematicians at large discarded the concept that the square root of a negative value had any kind of significance or use in any calculations; they just considered any calculation that involved it invalid. Of course this changed with newer developments, and now dealing with them is considered pretty much universally non-controversial.
The same can be said of infinities, and their different "magnitudes". Heck, even the concept that the set of real numbers is "larger" than the set of natural numbers was controversial at one point. (If I'm not mistaken, a few professional mathematicians to this day are not comfortable with the thought, and have objections to it.)
Mathematicians seem very divided on the question of whether you can say that eg. "1+2+4+8+16+... = -1". Some are ok with it, others are categorically against it.
How would you call that other than a different philosophy of mathematics?
