Posts for rando

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Posted: 1/26/2009 5:43 AM
Post subject: Guantanamo Bay is going to be hay
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that I am severely excited about the executive order to close Guantanamo Bay and to review the status of all current detainees. This has been a very notable human rights issue that is hopefully on its way to what I would call an honorable resolution. I'm firmly in the "camp" of wanting to see an end to indefinite detentions in any form, in any country. If anybody else has any opinions on this I'd be happy to respectfully discuss this complex issue since I am somewhat familiar with the general history of the whole thing in the thing.
Posted: 1/26/2009 5:30 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
I love all this freaky running and flying and look forward to seeing more of it, but where is my new 0-star run, guys? Get on it!
Posted: 1/18/2009 2:04 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
duksandfish wrote:
I was just testing the C^ glitch and made this, which I though was interesting, and has gained me 2 subs in the last hour :p
Surprised nobody's commented on this one yet! It's great seeing Mario stuck in the walking animation and watching the game try to catch up as he slows down. Definitely one of the most "broken" animation glitches I've seen in the game!
Posted: 12/27/2008 3:38 PM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
Derakon wrote:
The small matters of the red coin stars and the 100-coin stars come to mind...
You'd omit all those, of course!
Posted: 12/27/2008 12:19 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
If you made a full coinless run at some point, wouldn't it still have to be a 5-coin run because of Mario Gets The Coins in the Sky one? If so, I would do that level first off the bat and just get it over with.
Posted: 12/27/2008 12:16 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
This is a weird game! The run is really, really solid. A lot of nice glitches and smart playing. Good work!
Posted: 11/5/2008 12:37 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
My general impression is that you guys are either being trolled or you're dealing with somebody who simply cheated and is lying. The best way to disprove this would be to try to replicate his exact input (with and without the codes, preferably), and I think I am seeing people say that they've tried this, then I would say it's almost certainly a hoax. He probably did not realize he would attract the attention of the TAS community and simply wanted to post a cool YouTube video. Once again, from his replies, he's either immature enough to be flat-out lying or he's playing that up to get a reaction, in which case he's still an immature jerk. I'd still like to remind people that finding a way to get through that door is currently the most obvious way to cut down the run time by a huge leap, so don't let one (likely) hoaxer completely discourage your efforts to get through there.
Posted: 10/12/2008 8:59 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
Once again, very impressive! I gave you a 9.5 on technical skills last time assuming that there might still be some improvements left to come, but I've got to give you a solid 10 for this one. I'll also bump the 8.5 for entertainment up to 9 since I find usually the shorter, glitchier runs to be the most fun to watch. Great work.
Posted: 10/8/2008 1:22 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
alden wrote:
The numbers on the right are the number of votes, not the average value of the votes... yeah it confused me at first too.
Ah okay, thanks! I guess I thought of that but somehow eliminated it from the range of possibilities :P
Posted: 10/7/2008 9:21 PM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
It should be noted that the voting seems to be messed up. I should have taken a screenshot earlier, but when the bars were clearly displaying something like entertainment/tech ratings of ~7 and 9.5, the numbers on the right said something more like 4 and 5. They're still clearly messed up, which means there is some error with the new voting system. I once actually had a message board where I hacked in a similar voting system and it really is a little tricky to make sure the tallies stay correct if you also allow people to edit their votes, since any discrepancy in the total points awarded or number of votes counted can cause inaccurate averages. Could somebody who is more familiar with the hierarchy of the board's managers please bring this to somebody's attention if it's not already been noticed?
Posted: 10/7/2008 9:15 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
This is exactly the type of run I like to see: short, very technical, very glitchy, and indicating a serious understanding of the game. I also appreciate that you took the time to write up a thorough explanation of how you made the run and what we were seeing. I gave this an 8.5 for entertainment value and a 9.5 on technical quality, assuming it's perfect or almost perfect.
Posted: 10/1/2008 8:43 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
Okay, ignore that last post. I was able to get it working after installing what was apparently a different copy of Mupen64 Rerecording v8. I just watched the run a couple of times and it was pretty cool seeing this played out in "real time" on my own system after just having the encodes for so long. Here are my thoughts: I like the improvement to the BLJ in the BitDW. That always seemed to really be the only sluggish moment in his movement during that level. The solution you found demonstrates some creative problem-solving and some advanced knowledge of the game's workings. The BitFS improvements were pretty cool, and I bet that 1-up can sleep soundly tonight after finally catching Mario! Although I liked the old moves on the zig zag ramp thing (can we come up with a name for this?), the new solution seems very efficient. I'm also sad to see those quick little hops on the falling bridge blocks go, but I've grown accustomed to seeing entertainment value sacrified for better times in these runs (remember how much people whined about the drop in entertainment value from the 16-star runs to the 1-star ones?). I have a feeling that BitFS still has a lot of a potential for improvement, and I bet there will be some interesting speed-up found in here soon. Mario dropping into the lava without getting burned was neat. I forget if that been in any other runs, but could you explain what's going on there? The shortcut past the elevators at the end of BitS was easily my favorite new trick, and just goes to show that a lot of time a quicker route is staring you right in the face. The improvements to the final Bowser fight were also pretty good, and I have to wonder if that might not finally be optimized... Overall, I think this definitely deserves to be published and (once again) makes me wonder where else people could possibly find places to improve. It seems like a lot of the biggest time savers have been unexpected glitches and chance discoveries, so I'd encourage all of you who are working on this game to keep thinking outside the box and experimenting as much as possible. I'd really love to see another huge game-changer come along, and it doesn't seem like it'd be an obvious one. As far as superficial details, the camera work was pretty standard, though the last submission that was just put up showed there's a lot that can be with the camera to keep things fresh (even if it doesn't always come out perfectly). If I had to to rate this run I'd give it an 8 for entertainment and a 9 for quality.
Posted: 10/1/2008 7:46 AM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
Sounds like some great improvements here. This might be the right place to ask this and get a quick response: I'm trying for the first time to replay an .m64 file, but the Mupen Rerecorder v8 crashes with no error message every time I open the Mario 64 rom (and some other games). Some games seem to open fine, and both Mupen 0.5 and MupenPlus work fine for me. I've tried changing around all of the plugins several times and adjust every configuration setting I could, but it always crashes right when the game would normally load. I can't find any information on what might cause this...is this a known error?
Posted: 9/30/2008 1:16 PM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
An impressive series of improvements, although the camera was impressively bad. I appreciate that you were trying to create a different feel for the movie, and there were a few segments where this was nice, but even the camera-changing sounds themselves detracted from my enjoyment due to their frequency. On the technical side, the improvements are very impressive, although I certainly wish you'd been a lot more specific in describing them, especially since the altered camera angles make it harder to spot differences. Here's what I think I see: BitDW: Long jumping from the beginning then diving after the wall kick to get onto the elevator quickly, thus being able to start the BLJ on an earlier rotation of the platforms. Perhaps SwordlessLink can explain this one in a little more detail. I'm sure there's a good story that would shed light on why this obvious improvement hadn't been included in the previous run. :P BitFS: I can't tell, but it seems like you might have made those quick jumps on the "falling bridge" section at the end a little more optimal by spacing them closer together somehow. BitS: I can't see anything different, but it seems like there might have been some optimization on one or more of the wall kicks. As far as the final Bowser fight, you started the last throw spinning in a different direction and threw him on a different spike bomb. Seems like kind of an...obvious...change to make! I mean, only a nub at TASing Mario 64 would miss that one! I'd really appreciate if you went back and explained these in detail, since the optimizations are obviously the most interesting part of any new run and I like to hear what they are and how they were discovered. Anyway, I'd say that this movie should be published, but you should have known that pretty much everybody was going to bitch about the camera angles. There are a few parts where the new camera angles definitely added something to the experience (several spots in BitS, I thought), and I just wish you'd be more selective since I shouldn't be hearing clickclickclickclickwhooshwhooshclickclick unless there's some obvious benefit.
Posted: 9/22/2008 3:48 PM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
Swordless Link wrote:
If I were to vote on this run, my vote would be heavily influenced by the fact that it was made by these people, and since voting on a run based on the author is against site rules (or at least, frowned upon), I just refrained from voting altogether. Had this run been made by anyone else, I would've probably given it a yes without even really thinking about it.
I can definitely respect that, although what I would do (and this is just me) is vote on their run on here and give it a really high score, like two 9's or something, and then go to the YouTube video and rate it a 1 since nobody could track me on that because sometimes they say that success is the best revenge and that's why I would turn this around on them and make an even faster run and rub it in their faces.
Posted: 9/20/2008 9:17 PM
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rando
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/20/2008
Posts: 41
I've been following the Mario 64 runs since the 16-star days, and this is easily one of the most impressive series of improvements yet. While a few people noted that the changes aren't as dramatic as those that caused the drop from 16 stars to 1 to 0, the sheer variety and cleverness of improvements in this movie hasn't been seen in a long time. Although it might not be noticed by those who haven't followed this series of speedruns closely, there are two relatively huge route changes that represent (in my opinion) the most significant overall non-lobby route changes since the drop from 16-star runs to 1-star runs. Not to be overly defensive against the handful of negative or indifferent comments, but I actually registered just to tell you guys how impressive I found the improvements made here. The speedruns of this game have become so technically intricate and precise that I'd be impressed by (and would encourage publishing) even the smallest improvements from this point on. Please keep up the good work and don't stop until the game is optimized! Also, just as an aside, I can't help but notice that SwordlessLink hasn't commented on this movie (that I've seen) or given it a rating. I know he said that he isn't interested in TASing this game any more and I'm not trying to stir anything up, but it does seem like a little bit of a snub for him to not to recognize the passing of the torch here and/or offer his own thoughts on the improvements that were made.
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