"Do you believe that fairies exist?"
"No."
"Would it at least be possible that they exist, but we simply haven't detected them?"
"I suppose."
"So do you believe they exist?"
"No."
There's nothing illogical in this argumentation. Conceding that something is possible doesn't mean you have to believe it exists, and there's nothing nonsensical there.
Right. Nonsensical is your argument with nfq where you specifically imply his belief is wrong, while neither you nor him can prove or disprove it in the first place. There can, however, be particular reasons justifying said beliefs. The only way to be right here is not to argue, science isn't (yet) involved here.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
This was very hit-and-miss for me. Rounds that relied on high hit combos achieved by the same attacks and/or infinite juggling got old very quickly, as did fatalities made after "Shang Tsung wins!". Instead of those I'd like to see more fatalities from rare characters available in the Trilogy. Fast-paced rounds with high attack variety were, on the other hand, quite awesome.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Indeed, that is exactly my point. We don't know or we can't know doesn't really translate to it isn't so. Blind assumptions hurt scientific development in many ways.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
This thread just has all sorts of awesome. I'll even bring up a really good article relevant to the subjects posed here.
mmbossman wrote:
In other, much more sad news, the collective intelligence of this forum has apparently been decreasing quite quickly within the past two years. Apparently logic and reason easily fall to emotion and ignorance.
That's because intelligent people (like yourself) post less, while the others post as usual. It's that simple! Don't draw conclusions from nfq and Kitsune in particular, they have a very long and known history by this point. I suggest not bothering with them.
Warp wrote:
You seem to give nature some kind of sentience and will, like it's a benevolent being who tries to protect and benefit us, as long as we obey nature. Nature/evolution does not "mean" to do anything. Nature is. It doesn't have sentience or will.
Actually there is no particular scientific reason nature (well, the universe or some smaller part of it: a galaxy, a star or a single planet) can't have developed a form of sentience. If you were a sentient microbe living among other sentient microbes on an average human, you would never be able to tell that your host is also sentient. It just is. But since it wouldn't care about you (or even be aware of your existence), you wouldn't have any strong evidence confirming its sentience. Likewise, as a human you also wouldn't be able to confirm or deny sentience in a microbe living somewhere on you. It just is! Having a vast difference in subjective perception of time (which is very strongly connected to total lifespan and physical size) would make any attempts at communication moot, anyway.
At the present science cannot say what exactly can and cannot be a prerequisite for developing sentience. However, considering that celestial bodies are the oldest, the largest, and very often in no way less complex than a living organism (both chemically and physically), it wouldn't be too far-fetched to have them among the prime candidates for sentience.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Sorcs get crowd control and delayed kills (to be able to farm exp without remaining in one spot) much quicker than most other classes, melee especially.
And since getting hit in a TAS is something that shouldn't happen anyway, she can safely ignore everything defense-related, vitality included, and focus on offense power and mana replenishment solely.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Before the confusion gets out of hand, /players n (where n=1 is normal conditions and n=8 is the maximum) is a command that emulates the presence of multiple players in a single-player game. It affects mainly enemy HP, experience gain, and drop probabilities (so you get way more/better loot that way). For characters that have attack power advantage in early game (like Sorceress) the 400% enemy HP is not a problem, while potential exp gain rate is borderline hysterical.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Well, seems like redoing from 1-6 was a good idea after all. However, it does worry me somewhat that after two years of work you're still near the beginning. I really hope we will all enjoy this TAS before the wheelchairs claim us. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Actually Portal 2 jokes were comparatively high-brow for a video game (although a bit lower than the first game, but that's probably the only thing that got any worse). It's generally not easy to find a high budget video game that isn't oriented towards the lowest common denominator.
Edit: Gah, I'm blind, you were talking about Postal 2. >_<
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Haha, I've just realized that the main menu selection cursor is a steaming pile of shit, literally!
That being said, voting yes if only for the amazing amount of enemies you've run through.
— Mommy! Daddy! How does Moses's mom run with him through the river?
— It's... uh... it's totally fine, sweetheart! She's holding him above the water surface!
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I haven't taken a look at it yet, but it seems that ejection speed (which mainly qualifies the bounce as bugged) depends on the combination of wheel pressure angle and force exerted upon the surface. The reason why they're so rare is that the combination(s) probably needs to be very precise, probably a round (thus, exact) value. My hypothesis is that while a "normal" bounce is a result of the suspension being highly contracted and exerting its potential energy as kinetic in a short time frame, a bugged bounce is a result of a wheel getting a little inside a polygon surface and being forced out with a fixed (?) speed.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Ah, arguing with you is truly a pleasure.
sgrunt wrote:
Let me turn the initial point that prompted that line of discussion upon you, then: What do you consider to be a fast-paced run? I presented a definition earlier which hasn't seriously been challenged, and if there are flaws in it I encourage you to point them out.
There are no flaws per se, because being fast-paced means different things to different people. It may be dependent on anything including but not limited to: rate of actions carried out per second, speed of screen scrolling, character movement speed, enemies AI or rate of attack, required rate of decision-making, and so on. Moreover, in tool-assisted and unassisted conditions these things tend to change, as is often the case with games like Bomberman. What I consider fast-paced is in this sense irrelevant, and I won't even try to come up with an universal definition because I know it won't even work for myself. Instead I rely on a feeling of speed, and that's, while largely indescribable, works well for me.
In regard to this run in particular, I wasn't bored by it, so it's good enough. (I won't rate it highly either, nor be depressed if it's ultimately rejected.) If it were considerably longer, I could see myself being bored, but it's not the case here, so we shouldn't even consider that.
sgrunt wrote:
If you look back at my past track record on submissions of this nature (where I've bothered to comment, at least), I've generally been opposed to their publication for exactly the reasons I'm citing here - that there's little room for technical innovation or entertainment. Games such as Mega Man are a different story, in that there are additional factors at work such as route planning (for the initial stages), weapon selection, and (in may cases) substantial abuse of glitches (a look at the most recently published Mega Man 1 submission being a wonderful illustration of the latter).
But since Mega Man games are at the upper spectrum of entertainment for a relatively simple platformer (mainly due to glitches involved), a valid question would be: should we still publish runs of games that don't allow as much as Mega Man does? Historically the answer to this has been "yes", but what is your opinion and where do you draw the line?
sgrunt wrote:
I'm not referring to anyone else's argument here, and I'm not sure where that notion came from.
From here:
sgrunt wrote:
but as beautifully pointed out above, that's far from the be-all and end-all of technical quality of a given run.
So... whom it was pointed out by, if not Wak or yourself referred to in third person? I should note that OmegaWatcher's request to quote your references would be indeed warranted here.
sgrunt wrote:
If it is a bad criterion, perhaps the page in question needs to be updated. I'm merely citing a suggestion that has been presented there, which, by its presence, nobody has challenged there up until now.
The criterion on the page in question reads "amount of work", not "amount of time", and I hope you agree that the relation there is not quite direct. I also don't see it even suggested anywhere on the page to speculate on the amount of work in the absence of hard data by the submitter. As you know, speculations make for lousy arguments.
sgrunt wrote:
To turn this on its head: if you don't expect that a game is complex enough to warrant more than a modicum of effort to produce a tightly optimised run, how can it provide for a slightly technically interesting run?
Why necessarily a modicum? The amount of work here is relative to the game length, which I hope is understandable. If the game was longer, say 10 minutes, I would expect it to take more than a few days to TAS (but, again, historically it didn't always require so even with more complex games, so I wouldn't use it as a criterion for anything).
sgrunt wrote:
To carry on with your keyboard analogy, suppose I give you two passages of text to type - one requires two fingers to type, and another that (using normal keyboard positioning) uses all ten. Between these two, which requires more technical skill to carry out?
I'm using the entirety of a keyboard, even if not optimally, but the result is the same. If I have no hard time limits that would make typing either using two fingers physically impossible, you would never even tell how many fingers did I use. To follow up the point that brought out this analogy, what really matters is the result. The method is of use for a reference or academic interest, but is largely irrelevant otherwise.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I've [post 275290]already debunked the possibility of this run being fast-paced[/post].
So you've debunked a subjective notion? :) Or did you debunk this run being fast-paced as per the criteria made up by a single forum member who isn't used to arguing or, indeed, using English? Too early to claim a victory here, try somebody of your own league.
sgrunt wrote:
Gameplay here consists of, well, running to the right and jumping occasionally, which explicitly fails the "be varied" criterion, and as [post 275232]I've previously noted[/post], the one glitch here does not alter gameplay substantially from normal. Thus, I don't really see how the run fits any of our commonly-defined criteria for entertainment.
More weasel words and appealing to subjective notions. 8-bit platformers in general require little more than holding right and jumping occasionally, simply by their nature. Even the revered Mega Man games consist of exactly that to at least 80% of their length (that isn't consumed by get weapon cutscenes, boss appearances and so on), which is why not everyone likes them despite the glitching. Yet we publish runs of 8-bit platformers at least once a month without failure, and somehow the argument doesn't crop up too often. Why is that? Did they suddenly become complex? Before you pull the "past mistakes don't justify the present" card, are you going to use it the next time somebody TASes another exceedingly simple platformer for MSX, SMS, GB, or NES?
sgrunt wrote:
I will grant that the run is probably well-optimised, but as beautifully pointed out above, that's far from the be-all and end-all of technical quality of a given run. This run was thrown together in less than two days in response to [submission 3171]an earlier submission[/submission], so I can't really see that any special tool work would have been done for this run, or that a significant amount of effort was put into its creation.
No, that's a bad, bad argument. Referring to Wak's statement here is grasping for a straw that wouldn't even matter had this submission not been controversial. While his words supposedly come from a personal (and likely supported by hard data) insight, they are very very general and hold little weight, so using it to back up your own argument is naive. "Look, that guy says this run is very improvable, so it must be true!" See? That's how your argument looks. Until Wak has presented his improvement, it effectively doesn't exist, and this submission should be judged on its own merits. And saying that a run is improvable is like saying nothing, because any run is improvable and it's not a secret to anybody.
As for the time required to make a run, it's a very bad criterion as well because you have no way to appraise that, and, moreover, shouldn't. People like AngerFist, Nitsuja, JXQ, and other TASers have been known for working extremely quick while maintaining solid quality, and so far you haven't proved it to be otherwise. And keep in mind that it's a 2-minute long platformer. How complex can that possibly be to take more than a couple days of decent work?
sgrunt wrote:
Further, technique here basically consists of "determine which frame to press jump on", unless I am very much mistaken about how this game is supposed to work. In addition, as warned against at the very end, this is a game which is exceedingly straightforward, requires no route planning, and showcases a grand total of one glitch which does not influence gameplay significantly.
You have not only described most of the simple platformers, but also the process of TASing in general. Indeed, it basically consists of determining which frame to press a button on, which in case with platformers is mostly jump and occasionally attack, which, mind you, is used here as well (to pick up baby Moses, for one). That's like saying that your words aren't significant because you type them up with two fingers and not ten.
sgrunt wrote:
In other words, what we have here is a game that fails almost every possible criterion set out by the site for being entertaining or technically interesting. How this can translate into being called "high quality" is beyond me.
Ok, here's some more challenge for you. Do you bring up this argument in submissions that are improvements of already published runs that fail the same criteria as well? Do you also say they aren't high quality and vote No on them, or is this only specific to submissions of new games?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
People seems to forget about general optimization over the obsoleted submission. There have been more improvement than just the glitch, and there will be more improvement as well. This game HAS more to offer than just running right and jumping.
I'm willing to place a bet on these words. History has known submissions that were due to be rejected for bad game choice, but subsequent improvements made them quite competitive and not at all embarrassing (btw, I agree with Warp that the old OoT TAS was pretty much the only one I could consider embarrassing to have published on the site).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
While I admire sgrunt's arguing skills, there's a hole in this argument here.
sgrunt wrote:
It's not the TAS itself that would be considered shameful. As [wiki WelcomeToTASVideos]noted elsewhere[/wiki] (emphasis mine),
Site mission statement wrote:
TASvideos.org is committed to providing the best in tool-assisted speedruns and superhuman play. Our runs are held to high standards, and only high quality runs will be published on the site.
The run itself is high quality: it's indeed tightly optimized. The play is superhuman: there is absolute precision even though the controls are awful, there's complete disregard for danger, glitch abuse, and all that. It's the game that's bad, but the snippet you've quoted says nothing about that.
Thus, there is nothing in this submission that openly contradicts the mission statement, you're just filling in the blanks using your interpretation of it.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Let's start with abusing all bugs there are and going from there. If it indeed gives too much power we can open up another category with stricter rules.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Oughta be renamed "Moozooh and Cardboard Can't Drop Things.".
Yeah, well, apparently I'm a moderator. It's my duty here to come out and say "dudes, you're being off-topic here, get back on topic please".
Cardboard should have known better than paying your posts further attention, as all it ultimately resulted in was a few more vapid responses which we have an abundance of by this point. One more post not about Duke Nukem Whatever (the game, not the circumstances of its purchase, refunding, and whatnot), and all of the 3DS purchase slice-of-life debate will be split into a separate thread and promptly locked, and I sincerely hope it will not come down to this.
Do we have a deal?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
First of all they don't pay you back in cash (but rather allow you to "relocate" it to a different purchase), so your money remains in the shop in any case. I'm sure there are other limits imposed as well. From a consumer's standpoint it's a great business model, though.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
May I ask for your posts to have somewhat more essence than expressing a perfectly mundane intention (which by itself is fine, of course) across three separate messages in a row? I know you like talking and all, but repeating yourself over and over is not the proper way to conduct communication. We understood you the first time just fine.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Back when I used to play Mario Party 4, I could get ~152 presses in 10 seconds using that guy's "vibrating" method. Almost every semiserious gamer I know can vibrate like that, so it's comical he would claim to be the fastest with such poor execution of such a common method.
His vibration amplitude is so high he fully hits and releases the button (you can both see it and hear it click), which is something I don't expect from you or any other semiserious gamers™. And keep in mind that 130 hits video was from 2007 or so. 160 he did before you were even born.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
