Congratulations Samsara, you turned a thread made in remembrance of a great person into a pile of trash by acting like a complete asshole. I hope you are happy about yourself and your perceived higher moral ground.
Do you really think that discussing video games is disrespectful to his memory?
Turning a celebration of a wonderful man into "Hey, did you guys know I bought The Talos Principle!?" is about as disrespectful as one could get without outright insulting Satoru Iwata himself. Talk about that game all you want anywhere else. This isn't - and won't ever be - the place for it.
Then we'll have to agree to disagree.
Mr. Iwata and everybody here shared the same passion, our love for video games. If you think that discussing video games in honor of his memory is disrespectful, then I don't know what to say.
Do you honestly think that he would have minded? Do you honestly think that he would have felt insulted at the idea of people discussing video games in memory of his passing? Are you completely seriously saying that mentioning one particular video game is "as disrespectful as one could get"?
I don't think it's me who is insulting his memory, and his love for video games.
Can we get back to talking about how awesome a CEO Iwata was, and how tragic his sudden passing is?
Do you think he would have minded if people talk about the state of modern games compared to classic games in a thread created to his memory? Do you really think that discussing video games is disrespectful to his memory?
I still love video games even though I have been playing them from the early 80's.
While, of course, my standards have risen significantly compared to the times when video games were new and fantastic, every once in a while a new video game comes that's really exciting, wonderful, addictive and inspiring.
For example, when I bought The Talos Principle I wasn't expecting much, but the game surprised me positively. Among a barrage of average games, it felt like a breath of fresh air. It was beautiful, it was deep, it was really interesting to play, and it was inspiring. It's certainly a gem among the cruft.
(I'm also quite a sucker for graphically beautiful games, and I often enjoy new games based solely on their graphical prowess and beauty, but that's not the only reason. Sometimes a game is awesome because of its contents.)
Some commenters have indeed speculated that the current console generation might be the last (of traditional desktop consoles, not necessarily gaming platforms in general). I recently wrote myself some thoughts on that:
http://grindedgear.blogspot.fi/2015/06/is-this-last-console-generation.html
(Note that it doesn't mean the death of video games, just of traditional desktop consoles.)
It's because he has posted this kind of stuff for years, and has seemingly been completely serious about it, and never given any kind of indication in the past (at least that I have noticed) that he's just pulling our legs.
His posts in this thread are so over-the-top that it indeed makes even me think that he is actually trolling, at least in this particular instance. Maybe he got a sense of humor suddenly. Who knows, perhaps he has always been trolling with these things and done a really good job at it, and never exposed himself as just a prankster.
But yes, I am willing to give nfq the benefit of the doubt and assume he is just joking in this particular thread (unless he explicitly states in all honesty that he's being serious).
Four years later, I think I have the answer for you! I met the friend I talked about and he remembered exactly which game I was talking about.
The game is almost certainly Wizball!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizball
Knowing your past history of postings, I think that you are actually being serious. Which is sad, really.
(If you actually made that post in jest, then congrats on a successful troll, I suppose. If the post had been made by anybody else, I would have immediately assumed it was just a joke, but since it's from you... well, Poe's law is in full action. I can't make the difference between satire and seriousness.)
I think that it's sad when conspiracy theorists and their believers don't have actual curiosity about uncommon phenomena. They want to believe in their fantasies and made-up stories rather than trying to find the real physical cause of things. These causes are often much more interesting than the fables they come up with.
Both the atmosphere and cameras have all kinds of physical features that cause all kinds of unexpected visual phenomena. When light traverses through matter, it can behave in all kinds of unexpected ways. And since pareidolia is an essential part of our brain (it's basically essential for our survival), it can trick us, especially with a little coaching, to see all kinds of things and interpret things in completely incorrect ways.
Weird atmospheric effects are quite common, such as phantom suns and subsuns. And of course with cameras we have all kinds of lens flares, bokeh effects, etc. etc.
And this isn't even going into the fact that a picture on the internet is 100% unreliable, and if you have still not learned that, then shame on you. I can launch up the Gimp and make in a couple of minutes whatever fake sun image you want.
When I saw the episode's ("Amending Fences") intro I thought that the episode would suck. I was, however, pleasantly surprised. It was actually quite an enjoyable episode.
That's why I suggested a limit larger than 1 for runs of the same game.
The other extreme is that if we liberally give stars to everything that's popular, then some game might get as many stars as there are TASes of it... (*ahem* Super Metroid *ahem*)
I'd suggest two stars being the absolute maximum for one single game, and even then only for good reasons.
I was also thinking if the same principle should be applied to game franchises as well (although perhaps with a number slightly higher than two.)
We all know that, for example, Mario games are great, but we probably shouldn't be assigning a disproportionate number of stars to the franchise.
I suggest you take up a hobby, preferably one that requires or leaves room for a lot of social interaction. My first suggestion would be a book club.
Does a weekly session of MtG count?
Casual MtG is a nice hobby, and there's quite a lot of social interaction involved. You communicate with people and there's a lot of smalltalk. The thing is, all this social interaction is limited to the game sessions. It results in zero interaction outside them.
Tabletop RPG's are also another good example of this. Every week you are in a room with a group of other people for many hours on end, and there's an enormous amount of social interaction. You have to communicate with the other people a lot (both in-character and OOC). There's a lot of smalltalk and banter, there's a lot of planning, etc. But all this is, once again, limited exclusively to the game sessions. It results in zero social interaction outside the game.
Both are "nerd hobbies". It may be that nerd hobbies don't usually lead to any actual social contacts, especially for a person who is not that young anymore. But on the other hand, they are the only hobbies I can be interested in. If I'm not interested in a hobby, I won't be able to do it for long. Motivation must exist to keep doing it, or it will stop.
I suppose I have already pretty much given up, and I will live the rest of my life alone. I don't actively push people away (why would I?), but I have pretty much given up trying to find anybody as well. I suppose relationships are not for everybody. There are something like 7 billion people on this planet. Not every single one of them can have a relationship, even if there's nothing physically or mentally wrong with them that would be an impediment. I suppose I just happen to be one of those unlucky ones. At least I can take solace in that my situation could be a lot worse. (Still doesn't help the depression that solitude brings with it, though.)
I had a similar event happening here to the one that initially made me speak out in this thread. I'm practically in the same situation as I was before.
My life is going to keep being shit as I get older and older. I will be alone forever and die in my regrets. I hate this.
This would go better in that other thread, but I don't a solution to your problem (if I had, I would use it myself), except for a small suggestion: When people invite you to events and such, say yes. You might get bored out of your skull, and you might even leave more depressed than you were before, but nevertheless, just go. Don't let the opportunities that present themselves pass by. You don't need to try too hard there, or be overly sulky, but if you keep going to such things, you might get something out of it. If nothing else, a modicum of social interaction with other human beings. Better than absolutely nothing. Beggars can't be choosers. Take what little you can. Who knows, maybe with time you'll learn to enjoy yourself in those events, even if you don't get anything lasting from them. You don't have to abandon everything.
One desirable feature of stars is variety. Giving multiple stars to the same game is dubious in this regard (unless the different TASes really are so different that they deserve it.)
I'd suggest two stars being the absolute maximum for one single game, and even then only for good reasons.
My "increment an integer and read its bits" solution only works up to the number of bits in the integer type (unless the programming language supports integers of unlimited size). If more bits than that are needed, then one would have to implement the increment operation on a table of bits manually, but it's not a difficult thing to do. (It's essentially: Increment the least significant bit, and if it wraps back to 0, go to the next bit and repeat until a bit doesn't wrap. It works with any base too. It's basically the odometer algorithm.)
Recursive implementations of these types of things are often sweet and short. Another possibility is to notice that you essentially have all possible combinations of (n-1) bits (where n is the number of elements). This means that if you increment an integer from 0 to 2n-1-1, then you can output each element and between them either a comma or "and" depending on the correspondent bit in the integer.
OTOH the recursive implementation is probably more beautiful.
Time rewinding as a game mechanic is relatively common. (Although in many such games you don't undo what you did; instead you start over doing something in addition to what you did previously, and solve puzzles that way.)
In more modern consoles with flash ROMs and support for firmware upgrades, would you consider it valid to use a custom firmware (that allows doing things that are not normally possible)?
