No, I mean the second hardest. I just don't remember its name and don't have a game with me at the moment. I wouldn't bother going full pacifist on Ultimortal, that's just too much.
I found Ultimortal easier than the second hardest difficulty, primarily because without upgrades, I wasn't hanging around trying to collect nano. I was just getting the job done with a minimum of fuss.
• Iji (this one is a bit underrated; got stuck playing a perfect pacifist on the hardest difficulty after Ultimortal)
Huh? Do you mean reallyjoel's dad difficulty? The one that's a joke difficulty level which is pretty much physically impossible until someone enables TAS conditions?
If my memory serves, there is a flag indicating whether you are playing in NewGame+ mode, and if you do, your have bonus chance on getting souls. That flag must be the 0x020000a1 value.
Aha. I think it's hard mode rather than newgame+ -- if you freeze the value to 0x10 in a normal game, you get all the hard mode goodies (Kaiser Knuckle and so on). I may fix this at some point -- or someone can clone my gist and do it for me :D
So far, the only uncracked thing about random drops is heart.
And coins. But while noone cares too much about coins, hearts may in theory be useful in a TAS.
Excellent stuff, rhebus! Kind of unfortunate you came up with this already after every major category has been largely covered with technically superior submissions, but, in case something big comes up in the future that will warrant another iteration of improvements, this will definitely be useful.
Yeah, but it was those improvements that motivated me to do it. :/ This script is like experience - you get it right after when you needed it most.
In any case, it makes non-TAS play more fun by reducing the grind for That One Soul.
Further to my item drop script, I have made a new lua script: soul drops. Displays upcoming random numbers which will yield souls.
There are a few caveats:
1. it doesn't display bats, because I don't yet know how to distinguish between null enemies and bats.
2. it assumes you don't already have the soul. As written below, if you have a given soul, its drop rate is lower.
3. it assumes that location 020000a1 >= 16 (that is, it assumes the target value is always 7). IME it is always exactly 16. Please put a watch and let me know if this assumption is ever wrong. I have no idea what 020000a1 codes for.
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Soul drop mechanism
Soul drops aren't as complex as I thought they were.
Each soul has a rarity. The probability of getting a soul drop is T/(32 + 8*rarity - floor(LCK/16)), where T is the target value. Possible values are:
You already have the soul: T=3
You don't have the soul and 020000a1 < 16: T=6
You don't have the soul and 020000a1 >= 16: T=7
If you are wearing the soul eater ring, then the target is increased by 8, more than doubling the soul drop probability. Once again the LCK stat is almost useless, and if a LCK boosting item doesn't boost your LCK beyond a 16-multiple boundary, it won't change the probabilities at all. One point of rarity is worth 128 points of LCK.
Some notable rarities: Bone Pillar:180 Catoblepas:50 Lightning doll:56 Valkyrie:50 Nightmare:20 Lubicant:80 Gargoyle:180 Ectoplasm:150. Rarities are at index 0x12 in the monster data tables.
You've probably misunderstood the first mover argument.
No, I haven't. It is based on a false premise, that movement can only be caused by moving objects. As I already said. You, however, neither understand the first mover argument, nor logic, nor the arguments that we're making. You don't even show any attempt to understand them. You agreed with me that motion is not caused by moving objects but rather by forces (which in turn are caused by objects, which do not have to be in motion) but you still claim the first mover argument holds, despite the fact that it is based on a flawed model of the universe which you yourself disagree with.
I'm not going to reply again until you show any interest at all in listening to people, rather than spouting more garbage. We have shown you repeatedly, and in diverse ways, exactly why you are wrong, and you ignore it or brush it off. It's simply not good enough.
you mean two objects could just appear out of nowhere a distance apart from each other? that's not what the big bang theory says at least. it says it all just started with one object, so what you're saying seems to contradict established science (big bang).
Let me spell this out step-by-step.
You brought up the first mover argument. The premise of the first mover argument is that "an object in motion must have been caused to move by a previous object in motion". I set out to prove this premise false.
This premise would not be sound if a situation were possible where our physical theories predict an object began to move, and at all moments previous to that moment, there were no moving objects. In that situation, an object cannot have been caused to move by a moving object, because there were no moving objects to cause it to happen.
Two objects beginning in a motionless state will begin to fall towards each other. This is a thought experiment, demonstrating such a situation which is a counterexample to the first mover premise. Both objects are caused to move, despite both objects starting at rest. Motion was created without requiring a first mover.
The premise of the first mover argument "nothing moves without a previous mover" is therefore false by counterexample. The first mover argument therefore falls apart.
Gravity, on its own, doesn't need any such thing. Two bodies at rest will start to move due to gravity. They are each other's first movers.
but they will just move towards each other and then the motion stops. and something had to move them apart from each other in the first place, for them to be able to move towards each other.
No, something did not have to move them apart. They could have started like that. The first mover argument is based on a false premise - that motion cannot come from non-motion - and the thought experiment demonstrates this falsehood.
Finally, all of the planets have elliptical orbits. None of the orbits are perfect circles. So, based on your argument, should all of the planets have already hit the sun or left the solar system?
i think if only gravity and speed is holding them in their orbits, they should have all crashed or left the solar system (lol), because it would be too big of a coincidence for the speed and distance to be just right for them to stay in their orbits for billions of years.
You're not listening to our arguments -- that the solar system is a stable system. You haven't attempted to address them, yet you still claim the solar system is held together by "coincidence" and the speeds have to be "just right". Wrong and wrong. This is what I meant by saying I suspect you may not wish to learn about physics, but rather complain about your perceived problems with it.
The fragility of planetary orbits comes from the fact that the solar system is an n-body system, which is quite unpredictable and easily unstable.
A general n-body system is unstable. The solar system is not, because the attractive forces between the planets is negligible compared to the attractive force between the sun and the planets. The planetary orbits are not fragile.
Good point, but if you can't accept such perfection, how come planets are a perfect distance away from the sun in this gravity based solar system model? If the speed was slightly more, the planets would be thrown out from the solar system and if they were slightly closer they would spiral/fall into the sun (like in your example about the ball).
No. Warp had it right, and you seemed to agree with him. Then you contradict him by saying something completely different.
As Warp said, if a planet in a circular orbit moves slightly faster, it will have a slightly larger and more elliptical orbit. If it's slower, it will have a slightly smaller and more elliptical orbit. Neither of these situations is catastrophic.
To leave the solar system, a planet (say, Earth) needs to reach escape velocity, which is far greater that its current orbital velocity. A slight increase would not be nearly enough to send any of the 8 planets out of the solar system. Similarly, a slight decrease in velocity will not cause the Earth, or any other planet, to spiral into the sun; you'd need to kill almost all of its momentum to get that to happen. A slight perturbation ain't gonna do it.
IOW, the planet's orbits are not so delicate as you seem to think. Look at the orbits of comets: they are highly elliptical, but they are in no danger of either leaving the solar system, or of hitting the sun. If earth's speed slowed down by half - not just a slight perturbation, but losing fully half of its speed - its orbit would look more like one of these comet orbits. It wouldn't be in any danger at all of hitting the sun.
Finally, all of the planets have elliptical orbits. None of the orbits are perfect circles. So, based on your argument, should all of the planets have already hit the sun or left the solar system?
Another problem with gravity is that you need an intial cause/bang that causes everything to move.
Gravity, on its own, doesn't need any such thing. Two bodies at rest will start to move due to gravity. They are each other's first movers. This is true in GR and in Newtonian gravity.
The "first mover" argument is often used by intelligent designists to try to somehow "disprove" physics. However, it is wrong for many reasons. For one, it is now known that it is quite possible for there to be an unmoved mover as explained above.
(I hope that, whether or not you believe in ID, you are posting in a thread called "physics questions" in order to learn something about physics, and not just to try to prove physics wrong. I have no interest in showing you why the ID arguments are false unless you have an interest in learning something about physics.)
but gravitons have never been observed and there is no quantum field theory of gravity yet. This means that, for now, your question would still make as much sense as it does now if you substitute "invisible pink unicorns" for "gravitons" :-p.
But spacetime curvature hasn't been observed either, so couldn't that be called "invisible pink unicorn curvature"? We have observed effects of gravity, like gravitational lensing, but not the curvature of spacetime.
There is no practical meaningful distinction here between "observing X" and "observing the effects of X". We haven't observed electrons, only the effects of electrons in bubble chambers and other detectors. We haven't observed Newtonian gravity, only its effect on sticking my bum to the seat.
The difference with gravitons is that we haven't observed any phenomena which are better predicted by a graviton theory of gravitation than by the alternatives. The evidence we have gives no reason to favour gravitons over other explanations of gravity. We have observed phenomena which are best explained by curved spacetime.
Btw, shouldn't the orbits of planets be circular, and not elliptical, according to the spacetime curvature theory (because of the uniform curvature of spacetime around celestial bodies)?
I don't think that spacetime is uniformly curved around celestial bodies. It is more strongly curved the closer you get to the body.
The problem is to find the radius of the circunference that contains the vertices of the triangle ITT' (I don't know the term in English, circunscribed?).
Circumscribed. In full, the problem is to find the radius of the circle which is circumscribed around the triangle ITT'.
Nice work.
This happens because electromagnetic fields warp space-time in very specific ways in general relativity, and the gravitational field itself is responsible for coupling the charges to the electromagnetic fields; this is easier to see in action in the Hilbert-Palatini variational principle formulation of general relativity.
Wait, wait; electromagnetic fields warp space-time? My (non-university-based) understanding of GR only includes that masses warp space-time; now you're telling me that charges warp space-time too? I've only ever thought about GR in gravitational terms; does GR cover all 4 fundamental forces or just gravity and electromagnetism? *head asplode*
Why don't you freeze in place for 60 frames when levelling up on the Erinys that you get Ronginus' Spear from? Is it something to do with levelling up and triggering the screen transition at the same time? Is it possible to use the same glitch to kill the delay from grabbing souls?
Hi klmz, nice run here, although it's a bit strange. These out-of-bounds ones usually are, though.
Does anyone know if there is an explanation somewhere of the specifics of luck manipulation in this game for getting souls and drops? I think it'd be an interesting read.
Depends what you want to know. I have note-form details of some (not all) of the mechanics, and I made a post describing the drop mechanic with a lua script to tell you which upcoming random numbers will give you the drops you want. I never got round to reverse-engineering the soul-drop code though. Reading ARM assembly code drives you slowly insane. If you have questions about drops, I can answer them.
EDIT: There's also the luck manipulation section of the resources page which describes various RNG-cycling techniques. Incidentally, I think the reason that swinging a weapon cycles the RNG twice when Soma grunts is that the first RNG call checks to see if Soma grunts, while the second RNG call determines exactly which kind of grunt Soma makes.
Get teleportitis. Optionally, get teleport control, depending on how much luck-manipulation you want. (It won't be useful in a turns-TAS, as you'll have zero times after Quest you want to teleport that you couldn't have manipulated on your level change, optimally. But it will help if luck-manipulating your ascent landing locations is too slow for a time-TAS)
Actually, it could help for going upstairs (rather than c!oGL). Something like: c!oGL out of sanctum, land on upstairs; climb stairs, teleport to upstairs; climb stairs, c!oGL. etc etc. This reduces the number of c!oGL needed (but only the spontaneous teleports help; using ^T uses up an extra turn.)
To ease luck-manipulation, get massive intrinsic protection.
What's the best way of doing this? Traditionally, one goes to ludios and loots it for all it's worth, but ludios is probably boring and time-consuming in realtime (all those messages) and turns. I think it's a choice between an early-game protection racket, eating rings of protection, or both.
Intrinsic conflict might save time, but mind your food.
conflict from the invoked sceptre of might doesn't give conflict hunger (I think). So wish for that, invoke it, then bin it. alternatively, given the short time between turn 2000 and the end of the game, just eat enough food to cope with the extra hunger.
So, getting the Mitre of Holiness, the Eye of the Aethiopica, and/or the Orb of WeightFate (you will probably drop this prior to turn 2000)
The eye is the wizard's quest artifact, so no getting that before turn 2000.
Taken from the Wikipedia article:
"However, Clark and Shackel argue that this blaming it all on 'the strange behaviour of infinity' doesn't resolve the paradox at all; neither in the single case nor the averaged case. They provide a simple example of a pair of random variables both having infinite mean but where one is always better to choose than the other."
I disagree here with Clark and Shackel: it is exactly what resolves the paradox. Misusing infinity in expected values is faulty reasoning, and it's no less faulty to say that the second variable in {(1,2),(2,4),(3,6)...} has a higher expectation therefore it's a better choice. Even if the result is correct, the reasoning is faulty.
I have a question though:
Consider the St Petersburg lottery, which pays out $1 half of the time, $2 1/4 of the time, $4 1/8 of the time, $8 1/16 of the time etc. Such a lottery has an infinite expected payout.
If I said I was to run a St Petersburg lottery once to get a number X, and give you the choice of X or 2X, you would clearly take 2X. But if I were to run it twice, and get two numbers X and Y, and give you the choice of X or 2Y, should you choose 2Y? Is it necessarily better than X? Or is there no real difference between choosing one or the other?
We could develop this further with a different lottery: define the "Petrograd lottery" which pays out $1 2/3 of the time, $3 2/9 of the time, $9 2/27 of the time etc. Again it has an infinite expected payout; but is it better to go with this one or the St Petersburg lottery, or does it not matter? Supposing that the Petrograd lottery is better than the St Petersburg lottery, how many St Petersburg tickets would we wish to trade for a Petrograd ticket? Or vice versa?
Hmm, this got me thinking, and I'm probably restating what has already been said, but:
In the original two envelope problem, if you take the paradoxical reasoning, let us define the first envelope's value as X. Then, the second envelope's expected value depends on the probability that the pairing is {X/2,X} vs {X,2X}. The reasoning that leads to an expected second envelope value of 5X/4 implicitly assumes that the probability of these two pairs are equal for all X. But no probability distribution can satisfy this property. This necessarily implies that there exists some X such that the probabilities are not equal, which would affect the expected value of the second envelope.
The restating of the problem with nonuniform probability distribution solves this problem by making the distribution of envelope pairs explicit; this then shows that the expected value of the first envelope has to be infinite in order to get an expected value of the second envelope which is a constant factor larger. But since N*\inf == \inf for all nonzero finite N, this statement does not make the expected value of the second envelope actually larger than the first envelope, and in fact tells us nothing useful.
There is no distribution over all numbers and our concept of median goes right out the window. Without an actual median, the strategies break down.
Yes, there is. The normal distribution is over all reals.
p4wn3r wrote:
However, take Bertrand's Paradox, there are at least three proofs leading to different results that don't have any flaws when you consider classical theory. Determining which value is the correct one would need a counter-argument to the other proofs.
Bertrand's Paradox is no paradox -- just an underspecified problem with three solutions which complete the specification in different ways. They are measuring different distributions and get different results.
Tub wrote:
Calculating the expected gain is valid, but assuming 50/50 to hold the smaller amount is flawed. If there's a limit to the money in an envelope (say between $100 and $10.000), you don't have a 50/50-chance if the envelope contains $190 or $6000. Note that if you pick an envelope with $1000, you're absolutely correct to say that switching is advantageous. But you'll only know after you actually opened the envelope and compared the value to the possible range.
This is a valid criticism of the original problem, but it can be restated such that this argument no longer applies.
If we assume that both players know the distribution of numbers, and we assume the distributions are sufficiently large, then perfect play for players is as follows:
Player 1 picks the median, m.
Player 2 picks m + e, where e can be made arbitrarily small.
In this way, player 1 wins when the number is <m>m.
If we redo situations where player 1 guesses exactly, then player 2 has an advantage for certain small skewed discrete probability distributions. For example, if the distribution is 1,2,3 with probability 0.2, 0.4, 0.4:
if player 1 chooses 2 then player 2 chooses 2.5 with twice the chance of success (0.4 vs 0.2).
if player 1 chooses 2.5 then player 2 chooses 2.1 with 1.5 times the chance of success (0.6 vs 0.4).
All other choices are the same or worse for player 1.
This player 2 advantage becomes far less pronounced for larger distributions. Furthermore, if the distribution is symmetric or continuous then the advantage disappears.
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Things get trickier if we assume the players know something about the distribution, but not the full distribution: say if the players know that only positive whole numbers less than 10,000 will be chosen, and that distributions skewed towards the bottom of this range are more likely than distributions skewed towards the top of this range. Nevertheless I think it reasonable to encode the knowledge the players have as a distribution, by taking an average over all distributions weighted by each distribution's probability. Then once more, player 1 chooses the mean and player 2 chooses m + e.
But basically, player 1 can always, to the best of either players knowledge, choose a number x such that player 2 does not prefer taking one side or the other of x. At this point, I think it can be described as fair.
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Taking things a bit further, if you know the distribution but your opponent does not, do you want to go first or second?
If you go first, your opponent will pick either side of your chosen number with equal probability, so you have a 50% chance of success.
If you go second, your opponent is unlikely to pick the median, so you can pick the larger half and get a greater than 50% chance of success.
This by itself shows that you always want to go second: if you know less than your opponent, he will not be able to exploit it; while if you know more than your opponent, you get an advantage.
can we talk about physics again please?
to people who have studied university-level physics: what is the hardest part of physics to get your head around? I have heard GR and particle physics as being the hardest; did you find this or was there something you personally found much more difficult?
I did 1 year of physics as part of my compsci degree -- personally, out of special relativity, thermodynamics, quantum (schrodinger equation), and oscillations (normal modes etc), I found thermodynamics by far the hardest to get my head around. The Boltzmann distribution for finite or infinite states, and the concept of entropy, were just too much for me. Special relativity was easy by comparison.
Third: In GR, as well as in SR, the unaccelerated ("inertial") geodesics are those with maximal lapse of proper time. If you happen to fall into a black hole, you will live longer by not accelerating towards or away from it. With an unlimited amount of energy at your disposal, you will simply reach the singularity as fast as you want to. Of course, if anyone from outside the event horizon could see anything, the unaccelerated observer would reach the singularity faster.
Starting from 10,000 it's hard to bilk a person for more than 100.
Maybe so, but get 100 people to do that, and you have collected a good 10000 dollars, which is a pretty decent amount of money for sending some emails.
If your strategy averages $100 per victim, then in order for it to be better, you have to be able to successfully scam 100 times more people than a strategy which averages getting $10k per victim.