Posts for sgrunt


sgrunt
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I have some familiarity with Super Metroid, but not with any of the hacks associated with it. As I have stated before, I think a good run of a good hack should push the game engine to its limits and demonstrate good content that can not easily be shown within the confines of the original game. There are clearly differences in the basic nature of gameplay here (the quirk of jumping that Derakon mentioned is one), but the hack as a whole does not demonstrate much of interest that can't be done with one of the runs of the original game (and we do have a lot of Super Metroid content already). When I see things such as graphical glitches (broken countdown timer, anyone?) and obvious slight reworks of areas in the original game, I am skeptical if not downright disappointed in what I am watching. I vote No.
sgrunt
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I will say this again: a good run of a good hack, for the purposes of this site, should showcase pushing the game's engine to its limits in ways that are not possible within the context of the original game. This hack does not appear to allow for that, and the playing isn't particularly optimal to boot (missed shots, pause abuse during zipping which may not be necessary, inconsistent use of techiques such as death abbreviation, etc.). This is not a hack worthy of publication, and I vote no.
Post subject: Screenshot descriptions
sgrunt
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The site has had the capability to display descriptions for screenshots (currently set to be displayed as alt text) for some time now, but up until recently a bug prevented descriptions from actually being entered for screenshots. I have now fixed that bug, although this obviously doesn't affect that no screenshot presently has a description of this nature. Do you think it would be useful for screenshots to have alt text for screenshots, both in general and in any specific cases you can think of? If so, what sort of description would you like to see for them? Discuss.
sgrunt
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To be clear, this has nothing to do with cropping - the actual video data in the file is unchanged, and you are just setting a flag to indicate that the video file needs to be displayed at a different resolution than the actual video data. This will not result in black bars of any sort; the video player will normally simply stretch the video to the appropriate resolution. You should not need to do any more work than use one of the commands I gave you. EDIT: For the record, the resolution of the final video file is indeed intended to be 320x224 for a Genesis run; it is meant to display at a different resolution, but the actual video data should be the same size as in the emulator.
sgrunt
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Thanks! Your encode looks good for the most part but there is one small problem - the display aspect ratio is incorrect. Runs for consoles intended to display on a TV are supposed to have a 4:3 display ratio. I am not sure how you obtained the file mkv but you can pass --aspect-ratio 4:3 to mkvmerge if that is what you are using to mux the video and audio tracks, or mkvpropedit <file>.mkv --edit track:v1 --set display-height=240 to fix the file as it currently exists. If you can do that and reupload the movie then I will add a link to it from the publication.
sgrunt
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I have watched this a couple of times now. I conclude that there is technical merit (it is far from easy to solve a Rubik's Cube, and even a small amount of luck manipulating for one that is easily solvable is far from trivial), it's just not that exciting to watch - the action on the 4x4 especially just goes on and on and on without any variation, and you know more or less what's going to happen during any given frame. I vote Meh.
sgrunt
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
I suggested, the screenshot and the description and the categories to Flygon, can I be a publisher too?
Have a look at the Publisher Guidelines; we'd also need you to have a strong grasp of what constitutes a publish-quality encode to do that. If you're interested, have a look at the Encoder Guidelines for our requirements, and the Emulator Resources / Making AVI page for some tutorials, and get back to us after you have encoded some recent submissions. (Or, you could look through Unmirrored Movies for ideas of older movies that need encodes too.)
sgrunt
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That is the list considered highest priority for the purposes of this project. Overall, high priority for encoding is given to accepted submissions followed by other current submissions.
sgrunt
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Can you provide us with the specific error message that resulted when you tried to submit? That should help us figure out the problem...
sgrunt
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I would favour the acceptance of English translations, possibly in the same vein as hacks or demonstrations if nothing else. Also, don't forget that we have at least one published run which can be argued to fit into this category. EDIT: I would like to add that this should be allowed only where there isn't a (U) ROM; we would still prefer the official game where possible.
sgrunt
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Yes - simply play back the movie, save a state at the point where you wish to start re-recording from, ensure that Movie -> Read Only Mode is unchecked, and load the state - recording will resume from that state.
sgrunt
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For the record, the "mistake" is that there's a Gens message visible other than "Movie playback finished"; specifically "50%" and "100%" at around 2:17 into the encode. Since the submission file is soon to be replaced, though, we will need a new encode anyway! :p Anyway, I feel that this run is a good and novel demonstration of how to play a game as fast as possible; there's clearly a lot of thought that needs to be given to every stroke in order to complete things as quickly as possible. This gets a Yes vote from me.
sgrunt
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As I alluded to in the other recent submission, I find this game boring. That having been said, there's a clear if minor time-wise improvement here. I am thus confused about why any mention whatsoever is made of the score - if the intent is a primarily speed-based run (which I am under the impression this is), then this should be published as an improvement, but if it is primarily score-based, it doesn't actually improve the old run!
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creaothceann wrote:
320x200, 640x400 etc. should be stretched to a 4:3 ratio, but that could be done by the player.
We normally set the aspect ratio to 4:3 in our encodes; it's still our policy to leave the video data alone where possible.
sgrunt
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For the most part, "notable publication" is meant for the benefit of relatively new runs so that they are highlighted on the main page, since it's not really categorised in any other fashion (other than being in Movie Publishing History). That having been said, setting "notable publication" is also meant to be at the discretion of the publishers, so it would be fairly easy for me to go and make that change.
sgrunt
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There is a (UE) ROM floating around which I used for the encode (also verified good); I would expect that this was what was used.
sgrunt
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Should this be over in the awards forum? What's the purpose in award funds? If it is to motivate people to seek awards, perhaps we should consider whether it is serving as that motivating factor. I am not much of a TASer myself but I personally would not see it as a strong motivation (if it is a motivation at all).
sgrunt
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The 30fps there is a result of the game itself as opposed to anything else. Generally we want every frame to be displayed; in cases of duplicate frames it is fine to reduce the fps there (this is what -deldup does, for example). Every unique frame should still be present.
sgrunt
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Looking through the changelog linked from there it looks like the only change is in one of the command line options as opposed to anything in the algorithm. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, though.
sgrunt
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I don't think that combining these three movies into one is an adequate solution to the stated problem, as doing so is based on a flawed assumption - that it is number of movies rather than type of content that would motivate a new similar run being accepted or rejected. The playaround should really stand on its own as its own submission (which I would support), as it is indeed different and innovative, but presenting the old movies as new content is just a thoroughly bad idea. By that logic, this combined movie should not be published and I would vote no.
sgrunt
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This is extremely difficult to follow. Normally I'd think this is a good thing, but as far as I can tell the entire point of this game is to win at a series of largely trivial minigames. To me, this is not at all impressive to watch if not downright confusing (and not in a "what the heck just happened?" fashion so much as a "why am I watching this?" fashion). I vote no.
sgrunt
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Hooray, this was accepted! Here's a (pre-optimised) screenshot for whichever publisher wants to handle this:
Proposed description wrote:
Snood is a blatant rip-off of puzzle game inspired by Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble with very similar gameplay; originally released for the PC, it has since been ported to several platforms. This movie plays the time attack mode; you won't believe the author's luck as he clears them so quickly you will wonder what is going on.
sgrunt
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Brushy wrote:
OmegaWatcher wrote:
Weatherton wrote:
Why didn't you use the North American version? Just curious (haven't voted)...
It doesn't exist.
What's this then?
Read carefully - it was never released in cartridge form in North America.
sgrunt
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There are several problems I can see with publishing this. Before I mention those, one thing I should mention which I don't think is a problem is the ROM image (a1 -> "alternate 1", which can still be considered a good dump). Problem #1 is that this shows gameplay of a remake of a game we already have a perfectly good run, not to mention the very large amount of other Rockman material on the site. In conjunction with that, problem #2 is the relative level of gameplay; on the face of it you can see that this is a significantly slower run than the alternative. This may just be me, but a lot of the fun I see in watching the Rockman runs is the myriad of ways in which the game can be broken. Either this port doesn't have those glitches available to it or they just aren't used, defeating what I view as one of the major highlights of the other published material and just leaving the same core boring gameplay over and over again. In light of that, and the occasional questionable gameplay decision (why fire at Yellow Devil from across the screen with a laggy weapon, causing needless delays?) I must vote no.