Posts for upthorn


upthorn
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How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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It occurs to me that I never posted my results. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/by30id8nd0yk1xg/AAAFysQgY4t48qhiyKSFp5Wna?dl=0 I was intending to work out hitboxes but the ring collision logic wasn't make any sense to me, and then I got distracted by a new game.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Both of the two small projects turned out to be less small than I expected, and I'm having some motivational issues with them. I should reprioritize and do the Sonic 3D maps first. I'll start work on that next week.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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If the only thing that comes out of this whole mess is that an official Staff Code of Conduct is adopted and enforced, it will still be an extremely valuable and important step forward. So long as it is actually enforced.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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My father is dying, of a combination of ALS and Leukemia. Both of which are miraculously slow in progress as he has had them both for longer than I have been alive, and he is still alive, still just barely above the line of wheelchair bound. Observing him physically destroy himself to take care of my basic needs as a small child, has left me with the persistent sense that my mere existence is actively poisonous to those around me. He is on hospice, and I am living with him and my mother, partly to provide support with basic menial tasks like grocery shopping, and partly because of my own financial situation being unable to afford to live elsewhere. He is dying, and I can't stop it. But it's slow, and nobody can even guess if it's on the order of a couple weeks or a couple of years. We are all emotionally exhausted, and trying our hardest to help each other, rather than hurt. But we keep failing, so badly, and I don't know what to do.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Finally found the time to watch this incredibly ambitious run. Amazing performance. This is the first new Sonic TAS in years that I've actually enjoyed watching.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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One of the most difficult things about depression is that, even when there are clear environmental causes, if they last long enough, the brain will physically adjust to expect them all the time, which can make recovery a hard process even once the root causes are no longer present. This does not, however, mean that recovery is impossible. It just means that you should not hesitate to seek out professional help if you find that getting into a better situation doesn't make you feel as much better as you expect it to.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Memory wrote:
As someone who hasn't played the game yet nor really seen much of it before the TAS, yes vote. Honestly I don't see why people are raising a fuss over using B-sides to complete some levels faster. It seems like a perfectly valid way to play the game to me.
I wasn't intending to criticise this submission. I enjoyed it and voted yes. However watching the celeste tas run at gdq caused me to expegt something different, which I think I, and possibly others, would enjoy even more, so I was trying to encourage the people behind this to consider that category as a future TAS. I apologize if either of us came off as critical or derisive of their work on this run.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Keylie by a mile.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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fishmcmuffins wrote:
Regarding playing 5B and 6B over the A-sides - our goal for this run is to finish the game as fast as possible, and thus we picked the fastest route. in terms of entertainment, it’s impossible to have an objective argument over which would be more entertaining (both versions of these levels have some really flashy screens and some relatively boring basic platforming).
I don't think either of us is arguing that A-Sides only should be the default any% goal, just that we personally, (and perhaps the majority of viewers) would be slightly more interested in a different goal that's more directly comparable with the RTA run (or the older TAS that was directly comparable.) In my case it's just cause I remember cool tricks being in those that aren't quite replicated in the B-Sides, and I'd love to see those taken to the absolute limits of optimization, (under assumption that they were close bot not quite 100% there already). You're correct that this would be covered by a 100% branch, but wouldn't that also deviate from any% routes by collecting all strawberries? If so, A-Sides only would effectively be low% to this run's any%.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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I agree with EZGames that a hyperoptimized A-Sides only run would likely be more interesting than this one, but I also feel that this one still merits a weak yes.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Is the video in the first post an encode of the current submission file, or the original one? Edit: Spikestuff informs me that the differences are minor enough not to warrant a new video. So here are my thoughts: I was surprised in the first round when I saw a one-hit KO, bored by the third when I saw that that was all that was happening, and then really entertained the last two rounds when input ended early. Good job! Voting yes.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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I think "max%" is a better branch name than full inventory for this run, and I think "100%" is justified due to the fact that the game does not track skipped items uniquely from collected ones.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Aji's watch file has the most important RAM values for a map-dumping project: Camera X and Y. Unfortunately for Sonic 3D, I have a couple of projects I'm working on that I'd like to finish first. They should be fairly small, but with christmas and AGDQ in the near future, I can't promise any activity towards S3D MapDumping until mid-late January.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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greysondn wrote:
upthorn, at one point, posted some maps. I don't know if these are the half-resolution ones that are easy to find, but I was hoping for full resolution with the objects in, labels neither here nor there. Unfortunately, those images seem inaccessible now.
My maps are still accessible at http://www.soniccenter.org/maps/sonic_3d_blast They are downscaled because the computer I used at the time didn't have sufficient RAM to process images on the order of 4096x1792 pixels. I've lost all my info on camera ram addresses and code functions to nop out from when I made those first ones, but I think it shouldn't be too difficult for me to recreate when I have time.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Because of the game, I was expecting the goal to be lowest score, rather than fastest time. I think this run is okay, but I think a lowest score run would be much more interesting.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Warp wrote:
Wikipedia defines Joule as "the energy dissipated as heat when an electric current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second." This seems to imply that a resistor of 1 ohm will always dissipate the exact same amount of heat regardless of what material it's made of. That feels surprising and counter-intuitive. Or, perhaps, it could be restated as: It seems to imply that there's a tight unique relationship between resistance and heat dissipation, regardless of the material.
I think your confusion here comes from an incorrect understanding of "heat dissipation." The amount of energy lost to heat (converted from electrical energy to quasi-randomly directed kinetic energy) is only dependent on the amount of current and the amount of resistance. How many degrees of environmental temperature change results from this heat-generation is dependent on the material of the resistor as different materials have different specific heat capacity, and its heat transfer coefficient. The specific heat capacity of a material is the number of joules required to raise one gram of the material by 1 Kelvin. The heat transfer coefficient of a material is a term in the formula which relates the rate of temperature equalization to the difference in temperature between the material and the surrounding air. So the basic concept is that the scientific definition of "heat" (undirected kinetic energy) is not the same as the common usage of the word "heat" by laymen (temperature level). So, while, the temperature change (laymen's definition of heat) caused by running a 1 ampere current through 1 ohm of resistance is dependent on the material causing the resistance, the amount of electrical energy transformed into undirected kinetic energy (physical science definition of heat) is not.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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I'm the meh vote. It's just because I've seen so many SMB3 TASes that I can't tell one from another anymore. Sorry. I shouldn't have voted.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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When I saw the game was going to be a playable McDonald's commercial, I had very low expectations for the finished TASes, but I see I was too quick to judge. The winning TAS, at least, is pretty entertaining (Haven't watched the others yet)
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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EZGames69 wrote:
I have found that [2630] Genesis Ecco the Dolphin by Itresad in 20:44.95 has been beaten by RTA due to a new camera glitch skip that allows you to clip more easily in most walls.
IIRC both nitsuja and itresad knew about that glitch and deliberately avoided using it as it would render the movie too repetitive to watch.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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I actually did enjoy the full fast version simply because I remember how long I spent playing the game as a kid without ever managing to complete it. (I did get past the babel fish, but I think I was on the version with a built in hint-book.)
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
upthorn
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Alyosha wrote:
It’s very disappointing that TASing emulation hasn’t kept pace with the incredible progress of emulation as a whole. I guess it’s to be expected since just making an emulator itself must be much more rewarding then all the laborious work of adding robust TAS tools. I certainly wish there was an lsnes equivalent for genesis, but who would do it? If it hasn’t been done by now I think it’s unlikely in the future. Heck, I was hoping for a TAS capable CEN64 by now, but no such luck. I know BizHawk isn’t a workable solution for everyone , but out of curiousuty what is keeping cam hacks from working ?
Technically, the only thing keeping camhacks from working on BizHawk is that nobody has written them into BizHawk. More specifically, though, the fact that nitsuja wrote game-specific tools into emulators to support TASes he was working on is the only reason that GBA and gens got camhacks at all. That said, because those emulators didn't have any kind of supporting framework for making camhacks, reading/writing arbitrary memory values, drawing on the emulator screen, all the hacks were put together in a somewhat slap-dash manner with an emphasis just on getting something working, and required the emulator to turn on, or off, any game-specific hacks. If there were a well-documented, pre-existing framework for hacks to detect the game being emulated, activate and deactivate at run-time, read and write game memory, etc, they would be much easier to write and distribute. I understand that APIHawk was meant to accomplish this, but it isn't well maintained or documented. I'm hoping to de-rust it, write documentation for it, and port the gens Sonic tool suite to it after I finish my current TAS project.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.