agwawaf, I believe you're taking the idea of rating very seriously—more seriously than it deserves and more seriously than it makes sense.
Everybody has a different idea how and why to rate movies, how to appraise technical quality, and so on. For instance, I use it as a personal catalog of movies I have watched, to be able to tell at a brief glance which movies are my favorite, which ones I believe to be improvable, and which ones I find boring. And yes, I also change ratings over time (retroactively) to a lower value when an improvement comes around, if I believe it made the older movie look worse in some way—this is often the case with optimization-heavy games like Super Metroid.
I don't think anybody has got a personal grudge against you so as to purposefully downvote your movies. Again, don't take this too seriously. And, what's most important, always be above petty vengeance.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
In order to create a good "low-glitch" category for the game, I'd suggest banning zips, but also sprite ejections that eject Sonic out a different side of the sprite from which he entered (unless the sprite is destroyed in the process).
Yes! This is exactly what I had in mind with my proposal of respecting solidity.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The point isn't that the particular glitch is bad or anything, it's that the rest of the run sets a certain flow that is, in my and other people's opinion, badly interrupted by such usage. The run is coherent with the goal choice but incoherent stylistically; had such major ejection glitches happened more often and spread evenly in the run, it would be more coherent (but wouldn't be low-glitch anymore, imo).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Unfortunately it doesn't work as intended here: speed changing controls don't change anything. I'm on Opera 10.60 beta, got the same result on Chrome at work. I'm wondering what exactly is wrong.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Can we please not degrade the discussion into sophistry? Arguing what was or wasn't intended is pointless. We should be arguing what is or isn't a suitable goal or a suitable way to conform to that goal.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Hmm, the last two levels were head scratchers alright. They looked... out of place, even though goals were not violated. I am unsure what to vote, because the run was definitely cool, and it set up a very good branch as well, but these glitches are significant enough to break two stages, and they still leave the category open for more abuse in the future if more applications are found, thereby defeating the purpose somewhat.
Maybe we should discuss this is greater detail.
So far I see two more or less feasible solutions:
1) respect this goal choice and base the branch around it;
2) reformulate the goal choice so that glitching similar to SBZ2/3 is forbidden, but the rest of the gameplay stays.
For #2, I propose a goal formulated as "respecting solidity": if a terrain or an object are solid, don't go through. As far as I remember, although spikes deal damage, they aren't solid—is that correct?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I wholeheartedly support the goal choice; will watch the run tomorrow, but I'm sure there's nothing in it that'll prevent me from liking it. Please consider do the same for other Sonic titles (any of them will do).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I'll try rephrasing the footnote.
Btw, as pointless and overly complex as it is in the normal game, 100% map coverage may actually become an interesting goal if one were to start the game with all items. It would avoid item acquisition fanfares and would showcase rooms one doesn't normally visit in a speedrun (or at all).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Remember, first TASes of Contra were 11:30+, and they were considered entertaining.
When I was a little kid, I considered playing TMNT and Felix the Cat entertaining; I don't anymore.
What I want to say is, I'm not against your ideas per se, but I do think the solutions you've proposed either overcomplicate things (#1 and #2 are disconnected from the general viewing experience, as they require the viewer to monitor RAM to verify adherence) or have fuzzy goals (#3, "clear connection" is hard to define, as there is always some kind of critique that emerges in any case).
#4, albeit defined a posteriori, is "don't actively kill, but don't prevent collateral damage either", and it is the only goal that is both unambiguous and easy to monitor. It has no internal conflict, but it does have an external conflict with your desired definition of pacifism and your desired increase in the amount of playarounds as opposed to pure speedruns. I'm not critiquing the notion; in fact I support it, but I'm just not sure it makes much sense with a game as simplistic and straightforward as Contra. Many of the more complex games actually do have playarounds and non-trivial goal TASes published; maybe you should rather open up a thread asking people for interesting playaround goals/ideas for games with(out) published speedruns? Or, well, maybe do some yourself—you're a proficient TASer after all.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Should we also care about enemies who jump into bottomless pits in stage 1? How about those who get scrolled offscreen in stage 3? We know getting scrolled means certain death in that stage. What about item carriers and stuff like spiky walls in stage 6—should we save those? What if saving enemies in stages 2 and 4 from being caught in the explosions cost several seconds per screen, increasing total time of the TAS by minutes? What if we need to "sacrifice" an enemy or two so that more could survive? That's a completely plausible scenario if you really want to push it that far with the pacifism idea.
I think it's not as important to truly live up to some fun idealistic concept such as being pacifist in a shooter, as it is important to make a movie that is fun to produce and, most certainly, fun to watch. It may be closer to the any% that way, but if it means I won't have to wait for meddling enemies to escape with their lives every time, that's totally fine by me.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I think the discord happens because you define pacifist as preventing enemy deaths, if possible, while the runs have so far aimed for not actively killing enemies. The latter is easy to conform to, the former... well, not so. It's ambiguous and somewhat pointless, because in this case the best way to prevent the deaths of the entire island's worth of enemies is to game over at the last boss.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I see no problem with an easter egg like that. As long as it's documented in the movie description, I don't think anybody would have a problem with it.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I seem to remember watching such a run, but can't find it anywhere?.. Odd, must be my memory playing tricks on me.
Edit: Nope, here it is, albeit an any% and not a 100%. Found it in my smv folder. I think I'll add the link to the published glitched run's description.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Actually CRTs are awesome for low resolution, because instead of ugly blur (or having the fullscreen image reduced to a small patch in the center, if you choose 1:1 mapping) you get sharp graphics with unintrusive scanlines. Unfortunately, gaming is the only thing CRTs are good for nowadays. :\
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I know there are people out there who always want "the best", and that's why the 580/6990 are out there. But I'm not rich (or crazy) enough to spend $400~600 for something that'll be obsolete in 8-10 years. For that kind of money, I'd want it to last that long and I know it wouldn't xD.
8–10? Try 3–4 if you want to be realistic. I'm currently using a factory-overclocked GTX 460 (the 1 GB model) and a 1600x900 monitor; so far the 460 has been quite sufficient for games I've played—which, admittedly, aren't numerous. If I looked for a new card now, I would have happily settled on 560 Ti; I don't use multisampling, it's too inefficient.
I've found that the best time to buy any hardware is after a significant price drop, or at least at some point where the price doesn't considerably fluctuate from month to month. New lineups usually trigger that kind of price drops, so Atma's suggestion is reasonable. Maybe, however unlikely, there will even be something new that performs better than 6870 at the same market price.
Also make sure to keep an eye on comprehensive tests that calculate per-$ efficiency; obviously the formulas will be different for every site, but generally they won't contradict each other. I use iXBT.com for the reference, but it's in Russian. The last table on the page is sorted by per-$ efficiency, with the rightmost column being the average price, and the one in front of it the performance index (all data from October '11).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Your current GPU is stronger than those found inside XBox360 or PS3, so any cross-platform title is going to work just fine on your GPU if you configure the detail levels similar to the console version.
The assumption seems logical, but, unfortunately, it's completely detached from the practice. First of all, most of the demanding games run mostly at 30 fps, often dipping into 15-20 (I'm not kidding, this happens on both the X360 and PS3 even in very mundane scenarios). This sucks on a console you can't make faster in any way, but on PC, a platform where you have total control over performance, this is completely unacceptable. Then, a good deal of the demanding games don't run at 1080p natively, and are, in fact, upscaled. Weren't you wondering why the performance difference between 640x480 and 1920x1080 takes at least an order of magnitude on a PC, but is barely noticeable on a console?
Tub wrote:
There's no need to get a new monitor for each upgrade, nor any of the other things I quoted.
Duh?.. I was talking about building a system from ground up. My last upgrade, for one, consisted of me swapping a GTX 460 in place of a 7600 GS. Instant upgrade!
Using modern consumer-grade hardware for over 4-5 years non-stop isn't advisable, anyway, as it has its own unavoidable wear. This is especially the case with PSUs and capacitor-heavy components, as well as mechanical ones such as HDDs and mice.
Tub wrote:
An average 100$ 5.1 sound system will last more than 10 years and is well worth the price. In 10 years, you'll have bitten through enough headphone cables and rubbed off enough of the ear-protecting foam that the proper sound system may still be cheaper in the long run..
5.1 is a waste of space and money. A 2.0 system bought for the same price will sound much better and will have a broader focus. There are very objective reasons for that, as well as the fact that all professional sound equipment is based on stereo.
And for the record, during the last ten years I've gone through nine pairs of headphones, and not a single one of them died at home. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Of course in order to make such compromises one has to resist the urge of thinking like "it's only half as fast as the best one, that's nothing! It will barely be able to run any modern game!" In reality even the slightly older, but quite cheap, cards are able to run modern games pretty decently. They might get obsoleted faster, but OTOH you only invested on tenth of the money, so you can buy a better one for that same price in a year or two, and you are still way ahead in the benefit/cost ratio (compared to if you had bought the best card right away).
Oh, that's true, but I'm not talking top of the line, far from it. That's only counting the best-bang-for-the-buck hardware that is able to run any modern game without giving you eye cancer. That's just how the two industries are balancing each other, which shouldn't come off surprising in any way.
For instance, an average Sandy Bridge-based system here would cost:
a motherboard — ≈75$;
i3-2140 w/fan — ≈160$;
two 2 GB sticks of DDR3-1333 — ≈25$;
Radeon HD 6850 — ≈150$;
a couple HDDs (one for system and temp files, one for games and stuff) — ≈160$;
a 80+ standard 500+ watt PSU — ≈70$;
a DVDRW drive — ≈20$;
a roomy thick-walled tower case — ≈60$;
a set of minimally-comfortable peripherals — ≈30$;
a set of non-shitty headphones (because it's cheaper to get acceptable sound out of headphones) — ≈20$;
a TN-based 20"+ monitor — ≈150$.
Total: 920$.
That's a reasonably cheap rig made of above-average components that are expected not to fail before the next upgrade. It's not terribly comfortable, pretty, or silent, and the visual and sound quality are average at best, but it gets the job done.
Edit: Forgot an optical drive.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
