OK, I think your example may have helped. The idea is that it's not about the setting, it's about people. That the story needs to focus not on your wonderful fantasy world/fictional future, but on the characters that inhabit it. While I'll certainly agree that this sort of thing is a problem that crops up a lot in speculative fiction, it's not nearly as widespread as you propose, and certainly not an issue with the Harry Potter series.
So, in the likely case that the above is also incorrect, all I can say is that you've done an excellent job of telling me what this "semantic meaning" is apparently not. Now how about telling me what it is. From what you've been saying, it seems to be complaining about inconsistencies you don't like. In fact, this was my original assumption about its meaning, but I had wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt.
As for the apparently continued Harry Potter topic, the fact that they already changed the past is explicit in the book, so you can't claim otherwise. Harry's realization of that fact when he saves himself from the dementors is made quite a big deal of, so it's also not something that should have been easily overlooked. The only inconsistency is the one that you've imagined must exist because Rowling is a hack.
Also, the Nolikov self-consistency principle is not "entirely fictional". It was formulated in regards to closed timelike curves, a potentially pathological feature in the very real theory of General Relativity. Perhaps you should actually read the article I linked to. And BTW, it's really not that hard to spell correctly, especially considering you could simply look at my post to check. Unless you're doing it to be clever and subtly dismissive, in which case you've actually made yourself look like an idiot.
I'm decently sure having 20 missiles makes Omega fast enough to justify another expansion. 20 is the minimum needed to blow off all of his plates with rapid fire missiles, since there's no refills. Switching to the plasma beam and using charges from it takes time, probably about 5-6 seconds, and we have to make sure Omega doesn't start trying to absorb it. Ridley takes 22 missiles (well, 21 + 1 for the lock on Artifact Temple), so a 15 missile route would need 2 refills. And then there's the Phazon Elite, who needs 24, and thus also needs 2 refills if we go with 15 total.
Watery Hall Access and the one near Frigate Crash Site are practically givens, and the infinite speed one is a given too should we choose that route. Otherwise, MQA and the one in Tallon Overworld near the elevator to Magmoor (the aforementioned "root cave tunnel") seem super fast to get. Sparky's run (which I'm kind of using as a baseline here) gets both of those, BTW. They're in segments 11 and 8 respectively.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AE49401E4A8E6B9A
As for the other things, Space Jump obviously saves time. I think charge beam speeds up enough bosses (especially Ridley, Prime, and Chozo ghosts) and other things to be worth it. Boost Ball seems like an overall timesaver, and we're obviously getting it if we do an infinite speed route.
Thermal Visor is pending an investigation of the Prime Core fight.
Ah, the problem is PBs don't instantly force him to teleport. In fact, Omega goes through a fairly lengthy animation while he reels from the PB hit. This animation is definitely longer than a full charge of the Plasma Beam.
Also, which missile expansions to get. Looking through sparky's run, there are 4 missile expansions which stand out as being extremely fast.
Watery Hall Access
Root Cave Tunnel
Crash Site Tunnel
Metroid Quarantine A
Also, if we use the infinite speed glitch to collect Sun, we get one of the Phendrana Shores expansions for free.
I'm thinking that 20 missiles total is justified, meaning picking up 3 of the above.
EDIT: OK, I've timed the Prime fight now. Skipping a wave form saves 5.5 seconds. This is lower than my initial estimate because I managed to hit Prime with both a FC and UC Ice beam before changing color, saving a charged Wave beam. The Ice Spreader does save time on Ice phases, but in order for the Ice Spreader to save overall time, it would pretty much need to be used 4 times during the fight. And if we take 20 missiles, the only way to do that is to manipulate Prime into using his orb attack twice, and even that assumes we come into the fight fully stocked, which is unlikely considering the Ridley fight.
So...yeah, Ice Spreader is out. Such a shame. And pretty much entirely because of its collection delay.
No, time travel didn't change anything. Nothing was said about what time travel could or could not do, as there was no "scientific" basis for time travel given in the books. Readers had nothing to go on. Rowling introduced a concept that absolutely wrecked the entire story, and gave no explanation for the glaring inconsistencies that resulted.
Time travel didn't actually change anything. People in the universe don't use time travel to go back and change things. This is consistent with the idea that time travel can't change things. So where's the inconsistency?
Really, all I'm seeing here is a massive hate-on for Rowling.
I don't believe the excerpt from Lem was vague in the least, what is confusing to you specifically? Cite whichever part you don't understand and I will try to explain it to you.
kk
As in life we can solve real problems with the help of images of nonexistent beings, so in literature can we signal the existence of real problems with the help of prima facie impossible occurrences or objects. Even when the happenings it describes are totally impossible, a science fiction work may still point out meaningful, indeed rational, problems.
This paragraph suggests that "semantic meaning" requires that the work be an allegory of some real life problem. Which is all well and good, however...
For example, the social, psychological, political, and economic problems of space travel may be depicted quite reliastically in science fiction even though the technological parameters of the spaceships are quite fantastic in the sense it will for all eternity be impossible to build a spaceship with such parameters.
This paragraph suggests that the problems be treated realistically, as if actual people were in that situation.
So which is it? The two are very much not the same. If the first definition is what we are going with, so be it. I've never found an allegory that didn't beat me over the head with it's message, though, so I won't claim this is a desirable quality.
If the second definition is what we're going with, then you're going to have to give me an example of such an empty game. Because I don't see it. Any problem can be treated realistically. The fact that I have never encountered the problems the characters face, and may never encounter them myself, does not mean I cannot relate.
So, you know what helps in this situation? Examples. And that's a plural, so I don't want more of your vendetta against Harry Potter. If 98% of Science Fiction is merely an "empty game", you should have no shortage of examples to give me. So produce them.
Yeah, I remember that site, too, and I couldn't track it down either. It would be pretty helpful, though, even if only to compare notes.
Anyways, I've been looking into a more detailed analysis of the Ice Spreader. From what I can tell, there's three important comparisons.
-Shore Tunnel with and without picking up Ice Spreader
-Metroid Prime wave form vs. wave form skip.
-Omega Pirate Ice Spreader + 2x Plasma + PB vs 4x Plasma + PB
I've checked the last one. The difference comes to 120 frames, or 2s. The reason it's a bit smaller than I initially quoted is because it doesn't take 4 full plasma charges to kill him. 2 full charges + 2 38-damage charges are enough (plus the PB, of course).
It's kind of a shame if the Ice Spreader ends up being slower. It's a rather neat item, and this is pretty much the one place it's not wholly outclassed by the Super Missile.
Well, no, it will cost you 20. You use charged Ice Beams during the Ice phase, as, tbh, they're not all that much slower. The two Ice Spreaders are used to skip Wave phases. You might be able to sneak a 3rd Ice Spreader in by manipulating missile drops.
That all said, sparky's run got 35 missiles, which is one missile refill away from 40. However, in-game time loses a ton less time getting the Ice Spreader and missile expansions, and the Prime fight is really quite nasty to do quickly unassisted. So it's much more justifable there.
At any rate, I'm starting to agree that the Ice Spreader isn't really worth it. If it is, it's pretty close.
Also, while every one of Prime's phases has 110 HP, they are also capped at 110 HP. So if he's lost 109 HP during this phase and you blast him with a Super Missle, he takes 1 damage. I believe the next phase is considered to have started after he finishes charging, which is why we can skip Wave phases at all.
OK, after testing against Prime, here's what I'm coming up with...
Miles is right, Prime's forms have about 110 HP (definitely no more than 112). Now, from what I can tell, Prime takes 1.5x damage from ice attacks. This includes both the Ice Beam and the Ice Spreader. And on hard mode, it does take 2 Ice Spreaders to go to the next form.
Now, during the actual Ice form, the Ice Spreader probably isn't saving much time over 10 + 30 + 10 + 24. Where the Ice Spreader saves time is the Wave form that comes after it. By nailing Prime with the Ice Spreader just before he changes color, we can skip having to do 5 charged wave beams. If we only use a full charge from the ice beam, we still have to use 3 wave beam full charges.
And we get to do this twice; once in subchamber 2 and once in subchamber 3. That's 6 fully charged wave beams we save, which is about 16 seconds.
About the only other places the Ice Spreader could save time is that it one-shots the invisible security drone and that and Ice Spreader can be used as one of your 3 hits on Omega. That second one saves a fully charged Plasma beam, which is another 3 seconds.
On the other hand, by my estimate, collecting the Ice Spreader loses 19 seconds (14 of which are cutscene). If the collection cutscene is skippable, we can cut that down to more like 13 seconds. So, yeah, Ice Spreader is close to breaking even.
...Or it would be, if it weren't for one other consideration. Assuming bartendorsparky's 1:01 route as a baseline, leaving out the Ice Spreader allows for a route change. Namely, if we get Sun with infinite speed, we can get Strength on the way to Plasma, then go straight to Tallon Overworld.
So, the question is, does using infinite speed to get the artifact of sun and thus not have to go back for it save time?
I have a feature to request: RAM watch.
The cheat search is all well and good, but it's really not sufficient. What I need is the ability to go to pretty much any place in the RAM and watch (and preferrably be able to edit) that value.
Also, I've noticed the cheat search doesn't support a 64 bit search. If there are things stored as doubles, that would make them rather difficult to search for. Of course, the cheat search also doesn't support searching for values in float format either, which would be rather nice.
moozooh: I've had trouble finding addresses in Dolphin. The cheat system has a tendency to not work, and MHS can't find anything. Which is really odd. Also MHS doesn't work on 64-bit Dolphin.
EDIT: Hmm, and now I think I have found the charge counter. But without RAM watch I can't actually do anything with it. Dolphin doesn't have RAM watch, and as mentioned, MHS isn't doing anything.
Miles: 14 damage charge? Hmm, I'll look into this more once I can find addresses. None of the stats should change too much, though.
EDIT: well, I still haven't really found the charge counter, but I did manage to get a 14, 17, 11, and 28 damage charges on the Power, Ice, Wave, and Plasma beams respectively.
Graveworm: The power is just the damage divided by the number of seconds per shot. Though, I'm not sure what you mean by the delay from the freeze animation. You can fire another Ice Spreader well before the ice from the last one has gone away. Unless it actually works differently in the Prime fight, which I haven't checked.[/list]
OK, I checked my Dolphin numbers by booting up my real Metroid Prime and pulling out a stopwatch. For the most part, they check out. Here's the final data I'm getting
The / after a number indicates multiple damage sources. The Wave Beam fires 3 shots at once, while the Wavebuster and Flamethrower use missiles continuously to do damage. 180 is the time it takes for bombs to refill. Power bombs do an unknown amount of damage, but it's very large. I suspect that rather than a single hit, it's a continuous stream of damage. Either way, it takes out a 400HP Sheegoth in a single blow, so the damage is huge.
TBH, all the charge times are approximate, as it's really hard to judge exactly when full charge is. I probably can't justify 2 decimal points of accuracy up there, so take those with a grain of salt.
Interesting points
-The Flamethrower has a massive damage output equalling rapidfire Missiles
-In each element, the charge combos have the highest output.
-The Wave Beam is terrible, with its full charges barely outstripping the uncharged Power Beam. Despite this, the Wavebuster is pretty awesome.
-Super Missiles are better than full charges from the Plasma Beam. I'd always wondered if that was the case.
-Unlike the other beams, the Ice Beam should be weakly charged. This is due to the high base power of normal Ice Beam shots.
Charge combos actually take significantly longer. About 210 for the Super Missile and about 250 for the Ice Spreader. Of course, you don't use them for their continuous damage output; you use them when you need a ton of damage done all at once, such as skipping Wave and Power forms in the Prime fight. Though, that said, the Super Missile still has a very high damage output.
Also, I checked the Wavebuster and Flamethrower. Both seem to use missiles at about a rate of about 8/second. I might need to recheck the flamthrower's damage data, but if so, this means the wavebuster does a respectable 40 per second and the flamethrower does an astounding 80 per second.
EDIT: OK, this is weird. The game claims that the Wavebuster and Flamethrower take 10 missiles to start up and use 5 missiles/second after that. I booted up my 100% file on my real copy of Prime, and it indeed took 48 seconds to blow through my 240 missiles. This would suggest that the Wavebuster has a damage rate of 25/second and the Flamethrower has 50/second. And yet, in Dolphin, I dumped the frames for using the Flamethrower, and it took ~4 seconds to go through 34 missiles. This requires more investigation.
With your data on the charged versions of each beam, did you remember to add in the damage of a single uncharged shot? Before you can charge a beam, you have to fire it, and the time it takes to do that was included in the frames there.
The main advantages of the charge beam are...
1) Greatly improves the damage output of the Ice Beam, which is important against Prime
2) The charged Plasma beam can set things on fire as well as instantly kill them
3) You can charge the beam while the opponent is invulnerable, greatly increasing damage output
4) Without the charge beam, you cannot do the Ridley flyby skip
5) The charge beam draws in pickups
6) And of course, no charge beam = no Ice Spreader.
And yeah, the wave beam sucks ass in this game.
Oh, BTW, I have health data for the Omega Pirate
Armor: 75 HP each
Omega: 300 HP
Omega teleports out of his pool when he has taken more than 50 damage. Power Bomb damage has a weird cap on it where it can't make the damage done in that pool more than about 115. This only applies to Power Bombs, though. A fully charged Plasma Beam followed by a Super Missile still does 140.
Although I haven't actually started testing the Ice Spreader vs Prime, I did come up with something rather useful. A Damage chart
Power Beam - 1
Full Charge - 25
Super Missile - 90
Wave Beam - 1/wave
Full Charge - 20
Wavebuster - 5/missile
Ice Beam - 10
Full Charge - 30
Ice Spreader - 75
Plasma Beam - 6
Full Charge - 50
Flamethrower - 10/missile
Normal Missile - 15
Weak charge - ~60% of full charge
Power Bombs - At least 120, and really could be up in the 200s.
Additionally, frame data. The total time for a weak charge shot is about 90 frames, and the total time for a full charge shot is about 140. For the Plasma Beam, it's more like 110/180. For uncharged shots...
Power Beam - 7 frames
Wave Beam - 33 frames
Plasma Beam - 21 frames
Ice Beam - 62 frames
Missiles - 18 frames
So, if you have the charge beam, both the Ice and Plasma beams give excellent damage output. If you don't have the charge beam, the Plasma beam is easily the best beam. Rapid Fire Missiles has nearly 3x the damage output of any beam, but obviously doesn't have unlimited ammo.
Warp: Have you ever read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman? It deals with exactly that sort of thing. Although it wasn't quite to my tastes, I still recommend it.
moozooh wrote:
petrie911 wrote:
If you'd been paying attention to the book, you'd notice that in the Harry Potter universe time travel can't change anything. Everything that Harry and Hermione went back and did had already happened.
Actually this rule relies entirely on circular logic, as everything that Harry and Hermione went back and did had already happened because they went there and did it. Saying it can't change anything is like saying "I won't go back in time at some point in future to fix a vexatious mishap of Dumbledore being shot to death, but something as important as saving a hippogriff must not be skimped upon, by all means necessary". I dislike this kind of inconsistencies too, in fact, so any book or movie involving time travel that tries to be serious about itself and fails to, is an entirely failed attempt in my opinion.
You can certainly go back in time to try to change something, but you'll just fail, because you've already failed. See the Novikov self-consistency principle.
If time travel is possible (and indeed, so cheap and easy that grade school students are allowed to make use of it), why is it not used by everyone to accomplish everything? Why are Harry's parents still dead? Whenever anyone fails at anything, why don't they just go back in time and correct it?
If you'd been paying attention to the book, you'd notice that in the Harry Potter universe time travel can't change anything. Everything that Harry and Hermione went back and did had already happened.
On the subject of time travel, a lot of works use the rule that you can't interfere with your own timeline. And that works perfectly well. And until you build a time machine and prove otherwise, you can't say that that's not realistic.
But even at that, would a small inconsistency like that really ruin the entire series for you? You seem to be really fixated on that one thing.
Also, I'd like you to define "semantic meaning". If I'm going to be arguing against a vague literary term, I'd like to at least have some idea of what it is.
However, there are certain games with unlockable modes that can only be accessed if a save file (or an otherwise "dirty" SRAM) is present. If you really wish to submit a movie made on such mode, you will need a verification movie first. Any input file that starts from power-on (for example, a previously submitted or published movie for that game) and creates the exact circumstances for your submission to sync will generally do. Note that you don't have to optimize the verification movie: it only serves as a save or SRAM generator that makes it possible to claim the legitimacy of your effort. A good example is this submission.
We're going to want the save file the any% generates to comply with the above.
Any% should really be done on Normal mode, simply because the Normal mode any% is kind of the iconic run for Prime. However, once that's done, the save file it generates could be used for other catgories to have hard mode/cutscene skip.
I also checked how much time not being able to skip the Omega Pirate cutscene loses. Aside from the time it takes for the cutscene to play, in any% and 100% it would lose no time at all, as rapid fire missiles still breaks off his armor before he can even act. It takes 20 Missiles to do this, which might be a good minimum to aim for. It would also give us two shots with the Ice Spreader should we choose to take it, which should be enough.
However, 21% doesn't have enough missiles to do this. I suspect that not having the cutscene skip would lose quite a bit of time in 21%. Since, as mentioned, boss fights take a lot of time in 21%, hard mode seems like it would just make the problem worse.
100%, meanwhile, has Samus' entire arsenal at its disposal, and should be able to make short work of any boss. It seems reasonable for 100% to be on hard mode.
So, the categories I'd go with are...
any% from a new game
100% on hard mode
21% with cutscene skip
@Graveworm: The Ice Spreader saves time because it allows you to skip Wave and Power forms in subchambers 2 and 3, which I don't think is possible with just the Ice Beam. If it is, though, then the Ice Spreader is definitely out.
I don't think it's even possible for Thermal Visor to save time.
Oh, that crosshairs. Yeah, that shows up fine, and I never had a problem with it. However, if you had tried to look around without the crosshairs showing up (a lighter press of R), the crosshairs still show up.
Also, the small + that shows up when you press L never shows up in recordings for me.
Now, looking through that file format, it is quite simply wrong. The L and R buttons need to be recorded separately from the triggers, as they are on the real gamecube. In fact, section 9.2.2 here (http://hitmen.c02.at/files/yagcd/yagcd/chap9.html) gives the exact input protocol of the GCN controller. I'd suggest that Dolphin should use that.
[000SYXBA] [0LRZ^v><] [Analog X] [Analog Y] [Cstick X] [Cstick Y] [L Analog] [R Analog]
Where 0s are unused bits and ^v>< are Dpad directions.
Played the movie back on r7166M. It went through everything you described, except the crosshairs didn't show up.
Also, I think I've finally got the LLE working, so I'll probably switch over to that for TASing.
Atma: I was under the impression we already could do L and R, but apparently not. And I had kind of forgotten about Wii TASing entirely. Yeah, that one's probably going to need some sort of TAS input plugin, and also sounds hideously complicated.
And one more thing. In Metroid Prime, it's possible to lock onto a scan target without scanning it. To do so on an actual Gamecube, you simply hold down the L-button, then unplug your controller and plug it back in. After doing that, pressing L will lock onto scan targets but not scan them. I can't seem to reproduce this functionality in Dolphin. Does Dolphin allow you to press the "button" part of L without pressing the analog part?
And I'd still like to know that file format.
Well, to be honest, all we really need is the ability to set the X-axis and Y-axis of each stick independently. A Mupen-style TAS Input plugin would certainly be more convenient, though.
EDIT: Also, it seems that the source of the problem I was having earlier is not the dtm file. Having looked through the files in a hex editor, they clearly recorded the L and R analog components. Thus, it is clear that for whatever reason, the routine that reads them in isn't doing so correctly.
However, just to be certain, is there a place I can find the dtm file format?
Lastly, this has been bugging me for a while. What does dtm stand for? Dolphin ???? Movie?
I agree with you on version choice. As for realtime vs. gametime, generally I favor realtime but I don't know what the tradeoffs would be in this case. Could you give some more details?
The major things I can see are that Elevators and item collection scenes no longer cost zero time. This makes it less advantageous to collect the Ice Spreader and Boost Ball. All of these would require an in-depth look at the route.
There also a lot of minor things. It's faster in real time to skip the first elevator cutscene in the Frigate by leaving the room as you finish scanning, but not in game time. Collecting the Artifact of Sun with the Infinite Speed glitch becomes more advantageous, as it skips the cutscene associated with the chozo statue. Getting the boost ball becomes less advantageous as it has a Ridley cutscene associated with it. Probably a bunch more I can't think of at the moment.
With cutscene skips, there's a couple cutscenes that save game time by not being skipped, as they move Samus forward while the clock isn't running.
Without cutscene skips, the Omega Pirate example above makes for something interesting. If not being able to use the cutscene skip strat on him loses enough time, it might be faster in game time to save in Metroid Quarantine B and kill yourself against him. This would allow you to skip the cutscene when you go back to fight him again. It is a lot less likely this would save any time in real time.
EDIT: removed Charge and Thermal from the questionable items. Charge absolutely saves time, Thermal absolutely does not.
Yeah, I sometimes had a particular desync when playing that one back where Samus would push against the wall to the left of the door and thus not make it through. It usually happened if I messed with the framerate too much. Is that the same one you were having?
Well, with the new developments in Dolphin, I think it's time to take TASing this game seriously. As a demonstration of Dolphin's newfound rerecording ability, I made this demonstration of the iconic Space Jump First trick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpX-E1XRiYY
However, before we can even start TASing the Frigate, there's some things that need to be decided.
Which version should we use?
This really isn't a difficult question, but considering the debate above, I feel I should address it. There isn't a single version difference that doesn't make NTSC 0-00 faster. It is the only version that can go sub-1:00 and I believe the only version that can do 21%. While the Trilogy version could make for an interesting TAS, but it should be alongside a NTSC 0-00 TAS, not in place of it.
Do we go for real time or game time?
This, on the other hand, is a rather important question. I'm honestly not sure on this one. Historically Metroid Prime has always been timed by game time, but the same could be said of Super Metroid and we use real time for that. Admittedly real time vs game time probably makes less of a difference in Prime, but the differences are there, one of which is very early in the Frigate.
Do we start with a save file to allow cutscene skip?
Since all Prime speedrunners have completed the game at least once, cutscene skip has always been enabled and used in Prime speedruns. However, TASvideos prefers to start from a fresh game. This means that no cutscenes are skippable. While Prime admittedly doesn't have a whole lot of cutscenes, it does make one significant difference. I believe that this speed trick against the Omega Pirate can only be done with cutscene skip.
I noticed this while doing that TAS of Metroid Prime. The movie kept desyncing whenever I would do an L jump. Then I noticed that the crosshairs weren't appearing. After I tested it a bit, it seemed that any press of L or R was registered as a click press with no analog component.
OK, new problem discovered. As you know, L and R have both an analog part (how far you've pressed it down) and a digital part (the click). Dolphin's recording only records the digital part. In fact, if you only press L or R halfway, Dolphin records it as a click, but leaves the analog part at 0.
Since several games need the analog character of the L and R buttons, this will need fixing.
