Posts for moozooh


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Bisqwit wrote:
And this is what the Super Mario franchise is really about: making tons of money.
I chuckled.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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EgixBacon wrote:
- F-Zero "first track" F-Zero is of a genre (namely, Racing) that requires a lot of skill to optimise, and where (when it comes to time trials, at least) individual-course TASes are generally preferred.
This is false, or at least misguided. The F-Zero single-track TAS was reluctantly published for the reason you'd stated, but at no point in the site's history it preferred single-level/track/course. Had it been submitted at a later time when racing TASes became more commonplace, it would have likely been rejected outright. Individual levels are preferred in respective games' communities and YouTube, for ease of comparison. But those are irrelevant to the topic at hand. (Don't confuse that with individual modes or cups, where levels/tracks/courses are grouped and share a similar set of properties, don't influence each other, and as such can be completed in any order.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Sniq wrote:
Moozooh: I already had a flash suit before starting the .smv (I had a free shinespark stored)
Ah, that explains it. Hence why I asked if that was the complete setup.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Can anybody explain to me what's going on in that replay? Do you just get two free sparks without even having to charge one up as long as you can take damage while inside an object/frozen enemy? Does that require some particular setup other than freezing one enemy and getting a hit from another?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Bisqwit wrote:
But genders are not equal.
I'm no expert, but social equality doesn't mean that as in "men and women are identical", but refers to assigning equal value and treatment of different genders/races/strata/whatever. In other words, the major argument is that biology shouldn't matter in general social interactions except the very specific cases when it should. (Also, feminism AND religion in the same thread... I better get outta here.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Aqfaq wrote:
Bonus question: What would the Bible look like, if it was written by common patriarchal men at a time when male chauvinism was prevalent in the society?
Ohhh, I think I know that one! The correct answer is, it would look the same! :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Post subject: Calling for Super Metroid experts
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Well, it seems the improvements in this game have firmly entered the realm of some esoteric shamanism. Because of this I would like to try (timely, I know) updating the resources page with all the "new" knowledge, most of which by this point is pretty old already. But as it seems there's a 6-something year backlog on that, and there's realistically no way to infer everything from an overlong discussion thread and randomly encountered replays (most of which use different mutually incompatible versions of an outdated emulator, no less!) and YouTube videos, there are several tasks to do: 1) make a listing of all the tricks, techniques, glitches, and otherwise important information missing from the page (if it helps, the last batch of new content was added exactly 6 years ago, and that particular edit wasn't comprehensive even then); 2) gather explanations and/or, if available, existing movie demonstrations; 3) make new or update existing movie demonstrations for every trick to BizHawk's movie format to ensure absolute forwards compatibility (we can convert them to lsnes later if needed thanks to both emulators sharing the same core); 4) sort, reword, and actually edit all the new information in. Thanks to our own negligence, these tasks have grown out of proportions and there's realistically no way to expect any one person to complete them alone. As such, I would like to recruit any help you guys are willing to provide, because no-one else can. There's literally no single more knowledgeable community than the people subscribed to this particular thread. The most help I need by far is with #3 which is the most mundane and time-consuming task¹. I'll attempt to gradually trudge through #1 and #2 on my own, though of course if you can PM me some links to particular posts, or smvs, or anything else like that, I'd appreciate that. #4 I can handle by myself. Ideally I'd like to get it done by the end of the year at the latest, and by getting it done I mean making the page complete and fully up-to-date. ¹ To elaborate on this: — everything must be presented in a way that demonstrates its full theoretical potential as far as the current knowledge goes, so demo environment should be chosen with care (West Crateria, Red Brinstar, and Upper Norfair contain good enough testing grounds); — every demonstration should include a complete trick setup from frame 0. If the setup involves visiting separate locations (such as the ACE/memory corruption techniques), break the movie down accordingly so that only the relevant content remains; — demo setups and environments should contain surplus resources and be as safe and hassle-free as possible, so that different approaches and variations could be tested from the movie savestate. Using the Space/Time beam to restart the game with all upgrades, so that resources are abundant but relevant items and sequences aren't yet triggered/collected, would be optimal for this goal; — tricks and timesavers should be presented in the optimal way; optimal positioning, etc., must be achieved even if it doesn't provide any tangible benefit (so that if a person tries to improve it at a later point, they should have a rock-solid reference). Because of all this I'm not qualified enough to make most of the demonstrations, being woefully out of date with both the new tricks and tools. Why so meticulous? So that neither we nor anyone else had to do it at a later point without a compelling reason.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Do any other 60 fps encodes play back fine? Is any of your CPU cores capped when you're watching this encode? Does it say 1080p60 or 720p60 in YT player settings?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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And that's relevant how? An official(-ly endorsed) game like that never existed. Even if it were to be created by enthusiasts, it wouldn't magically become the "proper" or "superior" Earthworm Jim 2, it would simply be an Earthworm Jim 2 hack. We wouldn't be TASing a hacked ROM just for the changed music, it would set a really unwanted precedent. Luckily there is a Saturn version that does it even better anyway! So if I somehow tripped your SNES protection instincts and you would really like to discuss the matter further (there seem to be merits in doing so), ask me in PM so I could cut the relevant posts out to a separate thread or append them to an existing one.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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...Which it is not. I guess I should have worded that better; I was talking in context of the two EWJ2 versions and their differences. I'm aware of those audio streaming and byuu's video streaming tests, but they depend on utilizing hardware that never existed, so that's completely orthogonal to the topic of choice of which EWJ2 version to run.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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It might also be worth it to look at the PS1/Saturn version. If anything, it has extra horizontal resolution and CD-DA streaming background music (which is nothing short of amazing, easy +1 entertainment point for that alone). EDIT: Added link to the soundtrack on YouTube. Check out the reworked intro and guitar solos on Tangerine and Subterranean, that stuff is mindmeltingly good. Non-synthetic renditions of 1st and 3rd movements of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata are also undoubtedly superior to whatever SNES is capable of.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Warp wrote:
I really can't understand what exactly is the problem you are having. I already suggested using the visible picture to fool the OCR for the majority of answers, and then give one or two answers with a completely blank picture, explaining clearly to the viewers what's happening. (In other words, something along the lines of: "All these pictures fooled the OCR to think it's the correct answer. However, we can go even further and give the answer off-screen, making it look like the program is accepting a blank picture as the answer.") If it's just one or two such answers at the end of the demonstration, I don't see a problem with it. As long as the previous visible-picture-answers were genuine OCR-fooling.
This is the way to go in my opinion (and I definitely agree with the sentiments expressed by Warp and others). First show some genuine OCR fooling, then announce a step-up in breakage and do a series of offscreen stuff showing a deliberately wrong answer, then a pretty but completely unrelated picture, then a blank answer, and explain the "magic" behind those. A bit of a tangent, but to be fair, the audience already knows we break games, and have come to expect nothing less of us. So we need to cater to the entertainment aspects of our gamebreaking just as much, if not more, than the technical ones. Glitches should look and feel fresh, tricks should be executed with style, and so on. Obviously one would be going to run out of things to show if they were only considering technical breakthroughs. Back in 2009 or so, my mother, being an avid soccer fan, had a kick out of the ISSS Deluxe run. Before that, over a dozen of my friends could be seen laughing at Neofix's old Golden Axe run. It doesn't always have to be a technical breakthrough to be an entertaining watch that only TASing can provide.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Crazy idea alright. Very interested in seeing this come to fruition. Not sure if I would be able to provide significant help, but at the very least you can count on me for yay-or-nay opinions on pretty much anything. It would be incredibly interesting to see a game assemble itself in front of one's eyes. Like those quick drawing vids, except a lot more educational and grandiose. I can see this making news on gamer sites easily. Now for the important question: should there be built-in sequence breaks/skips/glitches, or would a honest, no-easy-way-out approach serve the goal better? And, since I'm not familiar with it, how friendly is the engine itself towards TASing in general (luck manipulation, etc.)?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Back when adelikat was TASing this game we were discussing possible categories for this game on IRC (more than 3 was frowned upon at the time). If I remember correctly, we came to an all-around satisfying conclusion that there needs to be a secret ending run, a best ending run, and a fastest non-secret ending run. Coincidentally the latter two ended up with the smallest overlap (A-B and B-A), so the current categories show pretty much the entire game. I still consider that to be the optimal option route-wise. Do note that in order to show off the other two endings, you can just branch the TAS at the second route choice and have that movie encoded and appended to the publication text as a bonus content. We have done that for a lot of other submissions, so it's not a problem. Character-wise there is some merit in showing off other characters like you said. But similarly to the route choice, there is no need for such a huge overlap: one ending can be done with Ray + Sheena for a more traditional Contra experience, the other with Fang + Browny to show the more quirky characters, and the secret could be done with Fang solo or something. This is all my opinion, so make of it what you will. This is one of my favorite Genesis games, and I'd love to see improvements you come up with.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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You can reduce it down to two if you just kinda rip off what IMDB does—a semi-discrete gauge that shows your last input to it and turns into a slider-like selection entity on hover. Just look at it... so simple and elegant. We can repurpose that concept for our needs and circumstances. As I see it un my mind, our gauge requires more precision (down to .5 would be necesary, not sure if all the way down to .1 is feasible in that approach), and there would be two of them (ideally color-coded in a non-garish way), using some stylistically appropriate image as a "full decimal". Moreover, they could combine into one average rating gauge when you remove the cursor and only expand back on hover.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Let's not escalate the mutual feelings of misery. We already have three people in this discussion feeling bad for their own reasons. (Also, if you constantly remind people how much you suck, that's exactly what you'll be remembered by. Just saying.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Between a system that is prone and vulnerable to abuse and an expert opinion I may disagree with, I'll pick the latter. Btw, at one point we had the rating system integrated with submission voting, somewhere around 2006. The results weren't exactly what we intended (I don't remember the specifics at this point though), and ultimately it had to be reversed back to the current question. AFAIR the iterations went as follows : "Did you like watching this movie?" -> "Rate this submission"* -> "Should this movie be published?" -> "Did you find this movie entertaining?" (* Not sure on the exact wording, can't check at this point.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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RobynS wrote:
I don't have access to a computer very frequently, and I did post in the thread, but I had no chance to actually play the game until now. I just decided to test this game myself because it looked off. You'll see after landing some jumps in this game make the character run slower before starting at full speed again? It wasn't meant with any hurtful intention, and I'd really hate for it to be seen that way. : \ I'm sorry if this post is just nonsense. I just don't want to have a bad reputation/be denigrated in general this quickly. I've been trying to make a TAS for ages (staying on task/having motivation is hard enough) and joined to try to help others, not to be a general nuisance that no-one wants around :| I'd feel bad if I made others feel bad, and I don't want that to happen, especially by me being a bit short-sighted.
No, no, you did nothing wrong. We've had a small but heated debate with Samsara over this exchange on IRC; for the record, I think it's perfectly acceptable to mention potential improvements in submission threads. You weren't an ass about it, so it's okay in my book. I do see how some people might be discouraged by such potentially important information delivered so late, but it's not like you've purposefully withheld it to spite the author. (However, it would be a lot more helpful to post short .bk2 demos next time, just so that no-one doubts your assessment.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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The idea is interesting, but given Nintendo's rather strict anti-counterfeit measures there's most likely some sort of encrypted authentication involved at least at handshake step.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Warp wrote:
So you first spend anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours watching a TAS, but then you can't be bothered to spend a few seconds making "10 clicks". Makes complete sense.
It does though. The difference is that watching a movie is an enjoyable process, going through the hoops to rate it isn't. (EDIT: To elaborate a bit, when you watch a TAS, you know all of its goals and end results beforehand: it's all listed in the submission/publication text. But you're watching it because the process is fun, and it's your fun that you're invested into. Rating, on the other hand, is no-one's fun. You're kinda-sorta doing it for yourself, kinda-sorta for others, but the truth is, neither yourself nor anyone else is really invested into any particular rate. The only reason I'm rating anything at all is because it's less trouble than remembering what TASes I've watched and found entertaining (which is harder than it seems when there are chains of 6+ improvements to a same run category), and which ones seem improvable enough to expect a future version and maybe look into improvements myself. I'm not doing it to do the author(s) or the audience a favor, and I don't expect any of my rates to end up of any use at all.) With regards to rating interface per se, coming up with an intuitive and good-looking solution isn't exactly hard, it's just that 1) there hasn't been any vocal demand for it as far as I'm aware, and 2) it requires implementation that meets the site's standards, and thus hard-to-find volunteer work.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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The above dudes give sound advice. If you haven't got used to Mupen yet, just forget about it and use BizHawk. It's much better in pretty much every respect, and is guaranteed to be supported and developed in foreseeable future.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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I do think it should obsolete the sketch run in any case, as they both follow the exact same goal: rush to the ending using any glitches available.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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I'd love to give it a try someday soon. (Man, I wish I could offload bruting on my GPU...)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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I think you should at least learn where every item is and make a very rough plan on how to get all of them without much backtracking. That way you'll have at least a semblance of route reference that you will compare against in your actual attempt. It's generally a good idea not to enter the same rooms/areas more than twice (except for mainstreets/intersections).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Gamer Maiden Sonia wrote:
Sorry for the bump, but I don't understand why snes9x 1.53 emulates pseudo-hires translucency perfectly but not snes9x 1.52 and earlier.
That's a... weird thing to ask. Might be because it was fixed in 1.53 but the fix wasn't there in 1.52 and earlier.
Gamer Maiden Sonia wrote:
From what I saw on the SNES accuracy tests page, there's no difference between snes9x 1.51 and 1.53 apart from snes9x 1.53 passed on APU and on the Mouse Electronics Test, Mouse Button Test and Mouse Cursor Movement Test. But I doubt any of those is related to pseudo-hires translucency. Can someone explain things to me?
Could be that neither of those tests checked for pseudo-hires translucency. Which wouldn't be completely surprising because this mode is a trick rather than a feature. Certain developers employed really unconventional techniques to make their products stand out, which often meant unexpected hardware/software interactions. I don't think there are tests written for every one of these, aside from the games themselves. (EDIT: I mean using hi-res to emulate translucency is the trick, not the hi-res mode itself. Out of the already few games that use that mode, even fewer use it this way.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.