The whole idea of a warpless run is that the viewer can actually see all the levels being played, though, so in my opinion at least, "warpless" means "no use of warping glitches", too.
No, that's a great explanation. This site should be about games that people have actually bought!
So if I received a game for free (for whatever reason), it wouldn't be suitable? :)
Sorry, I do realise I'm playing devil's advocate here, but... what does the goal of the site (which, as far as I understand, is to provide entertaining movies of old-school games played with superhuman proficiency) have to do with whether a game was bought for money or not?
If you replace "bought" with "legitimally acquired", I agree with you - but I'd also say that downloading Super Demo World *does* constitute a legitimate acquisition, as that is the intended way of distribution for this game.
So I still don't see what's wrong with it. As I mentioned already, there are no legal reasons why it shouldn't be used (if the site's getting into trouble for using a hacked ROM, then it's gonna get into trouble for publishing movies of copyrighted games, anyway), and no reasons pertaining to the game itself (rather than its status as a hack), either - it's a good game (definitely better than a bunch of "official" games, too, I'd say, but that's just my opinion), it's popular (at least as popular as just about any random NES game the site has a movie for), so what's the problem?
Although I don't think your viewpoint is hypocritical, I still can't understand it, myself. What difference does it actually make that the game was not sold in stores as a regular cartridge?
The only reason I could think of why one would be opposed to this game in particular is that as a hack, it's legal status is somewhat murky and unclear. However, the same could be said about any movie published on this page - is it OK to publish a movie containing copyrighted game graphics, sounds, music etc.? If yes, then I don't see why patching a legitimally acquired game isn't.
There's also the more general argument that most hacks are rather sucky. That certainly is a good justification for hacks being not allowed in general, but it (arguably) doesn't apply here - Super Demo World is a good game. Similarly, one could say that most hacks don't deserve a movie due to a lack of popularity / fame, but again - Super Demo World seems to be an exception to the rule.
So what's wrong with it? "It wasn't sold in stores" simply doesn't seem to be an explanation of why it shouldn't be allowed, as far as I can tell. You could just as well say it shouldn't be allowed because the sky is blue.
But maybe I'm missing something, and there really is a good reason?
I have just watched it and still have negative thoughts about hacked game.
Why? I don't mean to start a lengthy discussion on the pros and cons of hacked games, but I'm genuinely interested. Sure, it's a hacked game, but it's a good one, so... why not allow movies for it? I for one would have never have seen it otherwise, which would've been a pity - and the same probably goes for many others, too. :)
No, but if you add a line that says "GroupAgent Opera Opera" to the config file, it'll Do The Right Thing(tm). Just be sure to put it before the GroupAgent line that gobbles up MSIE entries.
Thanks, let's see next month if it worked properly :)
You're welcome. :) Nice to see that there were more Mozilla hits this month than MSIE ones, too. ^^
I'll also give it a "Meh" - I honestly don't know whether it should be published or not. The fact that it gets a better time on a harder difficulty normally would make it an obvious "yes", but the old movie was recorded in Famtasia, while this one's done in FCEU, so it's not clear to me if the times can be compared in a meaningful way.
Of course, maybe this should be taken as an opportunity to get rid of a movie that a) is not played on the hardest difficulty (which it should be) and b) is not played in FCEU (which arguably is a better emulator choice than Famtasia), but that's something I think only Bisqwit can decide.
Neat. Why the subtitle prior to the new glitch, though? That was rather distracting - and not even possibly helpful, either, since it wasn't displayed for long enough to read the URL.
I sure hope that other new movies will not get subtitles when glitches are exploited now, too. Put a notice at the beginning of the movie that it uses glitches if you fear viewers might get confused otherwise, but please, don't put them in the middle of the movie like that.
Yes, but not in a way that doesn't allow you to tell it's Opera still. A typical user agent string will look like this: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.01" (when masquerading).
Which Webalizer likely doesn't know.
No, but if you add a line that says "GroupAgent Opera Opera" to the config file, it'll Do The Right Thing(tm). Just be sure to put it before the GroupAgent line that gobbles up MSIE entries.
Yes, but not in a way that doesn't allow you to tell it's Opera still. A typical user agent string will look like this: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.01" (when masquerading).
If it's not masquerading, the user agent looks like "Opera/8.01 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)", but in either case, you can distinguish Opera from other browsers.
Sorry I'm not doing TASs myself, but does that mean I can't critisize them? Does every music critic make music by themselves? Of course not. You don't need to make music to judge music as you don't need to make TASs to judge TASs.
I didn't say that. But if you're not doing these things yourself, then how are you able to judge what's impressive and what isn't, anyway? You still can say "I don't like this", of course, but that's just your own opinion.
The same goes for everyone else who made similar comments, too, like FODA and Walker Boh. I have a lot of respect for you both, but I honestly don't understand you here. Look at it this way:
If there is still room for a big improvement in a game (several seconds, at least, possibly more), then of course, a new movie should try to exploit that, and it shouldn't be published if it doesn't do so despite obviously being able to. However, that's not always the case. It may just as well be that the game does not allow for big improvements anymore; and in that case, 30 frames may actually be quite impressive an improvement.
What I really mean, I guess, is that whether something's a big improvement or not does not only depend on the absolute number of frames saved, but also on the potential for saves that still exists in the game.
The SMB1 runs are a good example of this - even an improvement by a single frame can be a remarkable feat when it was previously thought that the theoretical limit for the game had already been reached.
And FWIW, the site's about perfect movies, anyway, isn't it? It's not about good TAS movies, or even great ones, but *perfect* ones - so if a published movie is obsoleted, then the new movie should definitely be published, unless it's reasonable to assume that an *even* better movie will be submitted soon (in that case, not publishing the first improvement is justified since it'd just be extra work to publish a movie that'd be obsoleted itself again soon, anyway).
For that reason, it's also rather stupid (sorry) to argue that it's "unfair" to another player to obsolete their movies. I mean, come on - that's like saying that it's unfair to the previous record holder if an athlete breaks a world record in sports. If you don't like your own submission being obsoleted, then prepare a better one again; and if that's not possible because the newly-published movie *is* at the theoretical limit, then maybe ask yourself why on earth it should not be published.
It may be a small improvement, but it's still impressive. There is a limit for every game on how fast you can (theoretically) complete it, and it looks like we're getting closer to that limit with this one, so even if it's just a small improvement in absolute terms, it still deserves to be posted.
Of course, if you disagree and don't think that it's an impressive improvement (I'm looking at you, Fihlvein), feel free to go ahead and submit your own, much better version. :) But if you find you can't make it substantially faster, then maybe you should ask yourself whether Phil's new run is really that unimpressive after all.
About 170 to 175 kb/s is the most I've gotten, and that's the bandwidth limit, anyway. In fact, with TCP/IP overhead and so on, I'm always surprised when I manage to squeeze that much from a 1.5 Mbps downstream. :)
Histories can be fabricated. Especially on such a medium as Wikipedia, where anyone who's willing to fill out 15 minutes worth of forms can become an editor and post entries like that to be misleading.
That being said, I lump that into the same category as athiests who insist that science disproves the existance of a god.
You don't need to fill out any forms to become an editor on Wikipedia. Signing up for a user account requires no more than choosing a username and a password; but in fact, that's not even necessary. You can also edit anonymously if you wish.