Posts for todd

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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
For what it's worth, my MAME roms directory is about 22 GB. It's complete as of MAME 0.81. 11.8 GB of this is CHD files, so if you don't count those as roms, it's around 10 GB. I haven't checked to see if it's been updated since then, but if it has, it's likely the size of the whole romset is even larger now.
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
I'd like to see a video of Ys Book I & II, although it'd probably be long and boring in a few places due to some forced leveling. Still, as far as RPGs go, this one is great for speedrunning due to its combat system. To damage enemies, you run through them! Legendary Axe and Ninja Spirit would probably make for good-looking videos. The pinball games (Alien Crush and Devil's Crush) would be fun to watch for a while, but they might get too repetitive. It depends on how quickly they can be beaten with near-optimal play. And I suppose it'd be tough to control 5 players at the same time, but a well-done 5-player video of Dungeon Explorer or Dungeon Explorer II would look great. These two games are extremely similar to Gauntlet.
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I'd watch a video of the whole game. Go for it!
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
Bionic Commando would probably be good.
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
I'm 23.43 (Feb. 24, 1981). Bisqwit, if you ever add a birthday feature, it'd also be interesting to compare the ages of the users who registered earlier (when this was a NES-only site) to those who registered more recently. I figured I'd be around the median for the early joiners but slightly older than the later joiners.
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
Now you've got me curious about Kasparov and the KID :) I spoke as if it was a fact that he felt the opening was unsound, but now that I think about it, I've never read what Kasparov himself said. It's funny how our brains can let secondhand rumors eventually morph into facts! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything conclusive about Kasparov giving up the KID on the web. Anyway, I'm glad you still follow chess (I can tell since you're familiar with Moro :)), and I am looking forward to the Sonic runs and quick ChessMaster kills! Good luck!
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
Alright. I'll continue if it doesn't bother anyone, 12Motion! Since you ask, I was the Illinois high school state champion in 1998 (my senior year). xebra: Yes, you're right about Kasparov. He's also played the Evans Gambit. And another interesting thing is that Kasparov played the King's Indian Defense (1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7) against d4 for most of his career, but he now considers this opening to be unsound. So perhaps Kasparov, as reigning world champion, has played a bad line in hundreds of games as black :) The King's Indian remains a popular line outside of the world's top 10 despite Kasparov's opinion, though. I guess my point about Na3 and black's many responses are not that the moves are good or the very best, but that they are more than good enough to be able to play in a serious game. To illustrate this, I think a good analogy can be drawn between speed runners and chess players. Some people will spend tons of time and use any tools available to create a theoretically optimal speed run, whereas others will spend tons of time improving their game-playing skills because they are more interested in playing well. And of course, some people are interested in both and will spend some time on both kinds of runs. Similarly, in chess, there are theoreticians who will spend hundreds of hours and use computer analysis, databases, and other tools to try to unearth the underlying truth about chess. Others, however, will focus their efforts on becoming stronger players so that they can win more games. For these players, 1. Na3 can be a good move if they are playing against a theoretician who has memorized a lot of opening lines. And for the tournament player, which move to play against 1. Na3 is mostly a matter of personal comfort with the position rather than some underlying truth. But that underlying truth still exists for those who wish to search for it! As with speed runs, chess has some people (like me) who are both theoreticians and practical players :) As for beating CM in 13 moves: I'm impressed! I didn't expect it to be so bad, either. A long time ago, I had an 8088 PC (probably not far off from the computational power of a NES) and ran ChessMaster 2000 on it. I recall it being stronger than that, but then again, I was a much weaker player then.
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
"Master" generally refers to someone who has received a FIDE title (FM, IM, or GM) or met the criteria for becoming a master in one's home country (usually a national rating of 2200 or higher). So these players are not the very best in the world and usually not GMs, but they are still well within the top 1% of serious tournament players. Welling, Grund, and Schlindwein are 3 players rated above 2400 that have played Na3 in the last 10 years. Grund played it against another near-2400 opponent in 1996, and the game was a draw. By the way, those 26 games are in a database of over 2 million total games, so yes, Na3 is still very rare. This database is Chessbase's Megabase 2003, in case you're interested in finding out more about it. However, often even strong grandmasters don't have very rigid ideas about opening moves. Pavel Blatny is an American GM who regularly plays openings like 1. b3 2. Bb2 3. g3 4. Bg2. You can see him in action if you ever visit a major tournament in the US! Also, I don't believe that preventing Nc4 should be a motivation for black's move choice. Instead, I feel black should welcome white's knight to c4, whereupon black will soon chase it away by playing d5 or b5 (with Bb7 to follow), or perhaps even simply leave it there to block white's bishop from accessing c4. A more harmonious plan for white seems to be to play c3, Nc2, and make a strong point at d4 by advancing the pawn there. I do agree, though, that 1... e5 does not threaten to play Bxa3. Indeed it's rather difficult for black to threaten much of anything in the first few moves if white doesn't place his pieces aggressively. But my motivation for choosing my opening moves is to place my pieces and pawns in such a way that they work well together, not to make a threat that I expect my opponent will see and adequately respond to. You're right that my moves in that game are almost all bad until 11... hxg5?? It's intentional. The whole point of the early play is to (unsoundly) give away material (which computers love to take) to remove black's defensive pieces from the kingside (as Qxa3 does). And the idea behind the later play (putting the knight pointlessly on g5, a square on which it can do nothing if black simply ignores it) is to tempt black to take more material to open the h-file. What makes the h-file attack dangerous to a chess engine is that the mating moves (bringing the heavies to the h-file) are not checks or captures. When it evaluates capture or check, a chess engine will extend its search until the captures and checks end, thus seeing many moves farther ahead. Since the threatening moves are not checks or captures, it sees the danger too late. Of course, playing this way against a human is ridiculous, because humans think much differently :) I don't suppose you play online at FICS (I'm toddmf there) or ICC? Maybe we can meet online and play or talk chess sometime instead of clogging this video game forum with chess stuff :)
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
Wow. I didn't think I'd ever have a discussion about chess on this forum! You're right that ChessMaster does have some very limited book knowledge of 1. Na3, as it responds 1... d5 instantly. I don't actually know anything about the theory of that opening. I only play it against chess engines from around the year 2001 and earlier because almost all of them (even the big names like Fritz!) lose to that attack on the h-file. More recent engines know how to defeat that attack, though. Since I don't really know anything about Durkin's attack, my question is this: why do you feel so strongly that 1... d5 is the strongest response? My chess database has 26 games featuring 1. Na3 in master play. Black's response was far from unanimous - Nf6 and d5 were each played 8 times, e5 was played 6 times, g6 twice, and 2 people with a sense of humor played 1... Na6 :) It would seem to me that black will likely equalize with any of those moves (except 1... Na6) if he avoids playing into a line where the white N proves more useful on a3 than on its usual c3 or d2 squares. But perhaps you know something those players don't if you've studied this line. Anyway, perhaps if I get bored I'll take your hint and try some aggressive openings with white.
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So I ended up trying xebra's NES ChessMaster challenge after all. I set it to the highest difficulty (level 13 - 40 moves in 180 minutes), and left all other settings at their defaults. Despite speeding up the emulation, ChessMaster still moves very slowly, so I think my first attempt will also be my last :) Anyway, here was my game. Anyone who can't read chess notation can safely skip the rest of this post. Todd-ChessMaster 1. Na3 d5 2. d3 e5 3. h4 Bxa3 4. bxa3 Nc6 5. g3 Nf6 6. Bh3 Bxh3 7. Nxh3 O-O 8. Bd2 Qd6 9. e3 Qxa3 10. Ng5 h6 11. Kf1 hxg5 12. hxg5 Qa4 13. gxf6 g6 14. Kg2 Nd8 15. Rh8+ Kxh8 16. Qh1+ Kg8 17. Qh6 Ne6 18. Rh1 Qh4 19. Rxh4 Nf4+ 20. exf4 exf4 21. Qh8# I also tried 15. Qg1 (with 16. Qh2 coming), and that also mated on move 21. I suppose it's quite unlikely that I stumbled across the very quickest win on my first try, so, xebra, how much faster can it be mated?
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Joined: 4/4/2004
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From my perspective (as someone who has watched many videos but never made one), it seems right to stop the movie when user input no longer affects gameplay. When I watch a movie that says it ends but retains the illusion of activity, I start to think things like "Hey! He could've still fallen in that pit or let his time run out! Sure, if he just drops the controller, he'll beat the game, but he doesn't HAVE to drop the controller!". At first, I thought Bob Whoops' "impossible to not beat the game" criteria was best, but I discovered two flaws with that criteria. Michael Fried pointed out one: what if you can prolong beating the game? Another problem is that sometimes it is difficult to determine whether or not it truly is impossible to avoid beating the game. Just as clever ways to save time are often not found until the 5th version of a video, a clever way to not beat the game might be discovered. So now I favor Michael's "input no longer affects gameplay". It's usually easy to tell when input does no longer affect gameplay, but if there's a game where this is difficult, perhaps it wouldn't be bad to fall back on the "no more input required" criteria.
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
As a curious chess player, I'm interested to know just how quickly the NES ChessMaster can be beaten. I'm too lazy to try to figure it out myself, though :)
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Joined: 4/4/2004
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Oops. You're right. The video was even better than my memory of it :) I didn't see a way to improve on that score, either.
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
A while back, I found a VirtuaNES movie of Golf being completed in 40 strokes (-32) on a Japanese time attack site which I can no longer find. So, for now, I put up a copy at http://www.freechess.org/~toddmf/golf.vmv . It'll probably only be up for a few days, so get it now if you want it!
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I've watched at least a few hundred speed run and time attack videos, and before today, I never had a favorite video. Now I do. Thanks, Genisto!
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Joined: 4/4/2004
Posts: 66
Regarding left/right shaking: I most prefer having the character appear to "dance" to the music instead of rapid left/right spasming. Examples of "dancing" can be found throughout the life force video available on another site (sorry, I don't recall which) and once in the Akumajou Densetsu (Castlevania 3) video on this site, at the 26:16 mark (notice that the left/right movements roughly correspond with the rhythm of the music, unlike most of the left/right movements in this video).