This topic needs to be reactivated, dag nabbit.
Notice the triple jump up the TTM slope:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFb2GPDJB4Q
Much faster than the backwards jump kick thing TAS players have been using.
Myles
Actually in the CCCless TAS Mario jump-dives up the side of that slope, which is a bit faster. =P
Agree with you 100% that this topic could be a little more lively though.
-- How were the pyramids built, really? Why are there pyramids in South America as well?
Basically through slopes. According to the quite reputable physorg.com:
During excavation, massive dolerite "pounders" were used to pulverize the stone around the edge of the granite block that needed to be extracted. According to Redford, 60 to 70 men would pound out the stone. At the bottom, they rammed wooden pegs into slots they had cut, and filled the slots with water. The pegs would expand, splitting the stone, and the block was then slid down onto a waiting boat.
Teams of oxen or manpower were used to drag the stones on a prepared slipway that was lubricated with oil. Said Redford, a scene from a 19th century B.C. tomb in Middle Egypt depicts "an alabaster statue 20 feet high pulled by 173 men on four ropes with a man lubricating the slipway as the pulling went on."
Once the stones were at the construction site, ramps were built to get them into place on the pyramid, said Redford. These ramps were made of mud brick and coated with chips of plaster to harden the surface. "If they consistently raised the ramp course by course as the teams dragged their blocks up, they could have gotten them into place fairly easily," he noted. At least one such ramp still exists, he said.
As for South American pyramids, I assume you mean Central American (ie, the Aztecs and Mayans), as South America isn't as well known for it's surviving pyramids. Many Central American pyramids were built as tombs for rules (like Egypt), and many others were built for religious and ceremonial purposes. What architectural similarity between the Egyptian and American pyramids there is is coincidental; all they really share in common is a basic shape (and not even that: generally, American pyramids have flat tops).
Hope this answered something.
I object to the rejection of the Japanese movie....Voting no.
I also strongly oppose the J ROM rejection. It would be one thing if there were no other improvements and the only timesaver was switching to the J ROM, which anyone could've done, but there are other improvements as well.
However, if the judges persist in their refusal of the J ROM, that leaves this as a normal improvement to the published movie, and there's no particular reason to vote No.
MrR: Unlike the person who asked me yesterday the same question, you probably already realized, that knowing a foreign language grammar and vocabulary and being able to apply it into daily use in a textual media is far different from speaking it aloud. If one's tongue is not used to making those phonemes, it will definitely sound like that. Rhythm and intonation also takes time to learn.
Voice samples by me speaking English, Finnish and Japanese, can be found on the previous page.
Comparison of the lists of phonemes used in Finnish, English and Japanese (in IPA, source: Wikipedia):
Vowels:
-.Finnish.:.a.ɑ.....e.....i...o...u...y.æ.ø
-.Japanese:.a.......e.....i...o...ɯ
-.English.:.a.ɑ.ʌ.ɒ.e.ɛ.ɜ.i.ɪ.o.ɔ.u.ʊ...æ...ɚ.ə
Consonants:
-.Finnish.:.m.n.ŋ.p.b.t.d.k.g.f.ʋ.....s...ʃ.........h...l.j.r
-.Japanese:.m.n.ŋ.p.b.t.d.k.ɡ.ɸ.......s.z.ʃ.tʃ.ʒ.dʒ.h.ɰ...j.ɺ̠
-.English.:.m.n.ŋ.p.b.t.d.k.ɡ.f.v.θ.ð.s.z.ʃ.tʃ.ʒ.dʒ.h.w.l.j.ɹ
Diphthongs are not listed (I broke them apart and listed their individual vowel components instead), because I don't consider them relevant. Similarly, vowel length markers (ː) were removed.
Phonemes listed in orange color only occur in foreign loan words.
Note: Period characters do not indicate phonemes. I inserted them to ensure spacing. For some reason, Firefox/phpBB does not let me post nbsp characters, and
does not allow me to enlarge the text.
As you can see, English (and Japanese) contain many sounds that are quite foreign (or impossible to distinguish) to a Finnish speaker. It takes a lot of practise to get them right and natural. Japanese being a little bit easier than English.
(In comparison, learning Finnish pronounciation should be easy for an English speaker because of the lesser number of phonemes. In practise, that assumption fails, because English speakers tend to think in terms of diphthongs, so when try to read "ee" /eː/, they produce what sounds more like "ii" (/iː/) or "ei" (/ei/), for example. And there's the consonant aspiration thing as well. English reader's "kit" sounds like "khit" to a Finnish person. It seems to be very difficult to eliminate the aspiration if that's how you've learned to do since childhood.
For Japanese speakers, the biggest hurdle seems to be that they're taught in the syllabylary. Consonant clusters, or words ending in a consonant, magically get that "i" or "u" in them, and it is really noticeable to non-Japanese people.)
This was very informational; thank you. Another interesting thing are accents, and what/how much of it constitute "fluent" English. For example, your voice and mine sound quite different, but I can't think of any criteria to determine which is more "fluent" or perfect, or whether they are both equally linguistically accurate.
Actually, Chuck Norris has admitted to being flattered by them. =P
D. Bq.:
It's pretty obvious that you know how to read and write in English, but can you speak it? If you can, would you consider yourself fluent in it? (apologies if this was answered before)
No need for this to be in Off Topic.
What you described seems to be a problem I used to have when Mupen shut down improperly (ie, it froze). Anyway, if Mupen is open (you can see it in your taskbar) but it doesn't pop up when you click on it, try right clicking on the taskbar button and clicking either "Maximize" or "Restore". Keep trying combinations of these until the window pops back up.
I have to give this a Meh vote because you didn't take advantage of the Japanese ROM, which, by utilizing it's shorter text lengths, could've saved you countless seconds. Better luck next time =(
(Yes vote)
I like Mushroom's movie better in general, because it's way more entertaining...
But I like the "way faster" concept of this one...
I'm confused. Therefore, Meh vote.
I don't see why this shouldn't be accepted. The Japanese option clearly saved a justifiable amount of time. Even if it does say in the guidelines that choosing a different ROM for a new improvement isn't always right, the author of the currently published movie (ie, Soulrivers) admitted that choosing the J ROM would've been better in the first place.
The less text the better (so I'll stop here).
And voted Yes for a badass improvement, with or without the text stuff.
Speaking of which, is it possible to BLJ in there to skip opening the wooden door? I know it's already very tightly optimized in there to open the door as quickly as possible but none of the tasers ever mentioned that a BLJ attempt was made, I think.
It would be too slow; in the time it takes for Mario to actually get into a good position for BLJing, do the first BLJ, then do more BLJs to grab on, and then run backwards all the way up the staircase, he'd already be at the door with the other method. That is, if the BLJ works at all on those stairs.
IMO the hand looks very small, but the stretch is impressive.
Also you only have one TAS hand 0_o
Bad angle (sort of)...I was standing up and holding the camera at about shoulder-height. From a small calculation, the stretch is about 10.4 inches.
My other hand tragically got replaced by a book of sheet music, as you can see in the pic.
