As for my first Tristram, chars were a hybrid skel/boner necro and an orb/meteor sorc.
Hehe, I can't help but chuckle at this. In my mind, those are probably the worst possible chars you could have used.
Gorash wrote:
It took us about one and a half hour to get the strategy down, after that Diablo and Baal were no problem. Mephisto took us another 2 hours.
That's similar to what many others have told me, though most people I've heard from actually gave up on their first few attempts. I admire your tenacity.
Judging from what you said earlier (and edited for grammar), "I insulted the run, you insulted the man," I would think that you now have a personal vendetta with JXQ, since now you want to ridicule the man. Which, in your own words, is quite lame, considering the fact that we're talking about a blue hedgehog. Just because you might be the best Sonic the Hedgehog player in the world gives you no right to be a dick.
You meant edited for a typo, not grammar.
My comment was clearly said tongue-in-cheek.
I have never claimed to be the best Sonic the Hedgehog player in the world.
If he did, surely I would ridicule him. Besides, not all the levels have videos on TSC, and of those that do, few are optimal. He's got a fair job ahead of him just matching the best console times, but once he figures out the pertinent strategies he should be able to thrash most of them.
I don't know how you played Übertristram but when I first got there I had a lot of problems (new chars, all my old were expired, no items, level 70, only two players). Each of us died about a dozen times until we brought them down.
I suppose I must have played it well, then. I'm not sure only having two people is detrimental. I've never actually done an über-Tristram run with more than two people (though I've only done it like 9 times, and I traded for the body parts [farming keys, no thanks]), but I've heard stories of full games of 8 people dying a few thousand times over the span of 3 hours before giving up. I'm curious how long it took you the first time.
Chao, I could've sworn you were speaking out against me just one page earlier. Thanks for the change of heart, I guess. Though, I don't recall Sprint and I ever competing at TSC, so I'm not really sure how much I owned him. FoxLuc, on the other hand, did get beaten, but he was a cheater anyways. And Rusty ... well, he no doubt has his panties in a wad over a seemingly impossible time I submitted a few days ago. I'm interested to see how long he lets it stand.
Well, firstly, that's not even part of the game, it's an online-only promotion of sorts to renew interest in D2. Secondly, the main reason I pick Duriel is not that he's difficult, but that no one is ever prepared for him the first time they get to him. I'm a "good D2 player," whatever that means, and on top of it I'm fairly conservative when I am trying out a new game. Duriel still wrecked me the first time, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I've never died in über-Tristram, though. No matter how many tricks Blizzard thinks they have up their sleeves, I've always got a few more.
After seeing xebras attitude in this topic it is no wonder he got banned from soniccenter.
I enjoy how you think you are both clever and knowledgeable, when you are neither. For your information, for speaking out against an abusive moderator, I was banned by that selfsame moderator. The administrator of TSC than unbanned me and temporarily revoked that moderator's privileges. I then left TSC, voluntarily and out of disgust, when that moderator's privileges were reinstated.
I've since mellowed out and decided to avoid confrontation with that moderator altogether by using a different nickname and not participating in the forums there. Either way, the admin knows of both of my handles (xebra and Ghost), and neither of them is banned. The account xebra just hasn't been in use for something like a year and a half. I still periodically update Ghost's times when I get the urge to play on a console and duplicate some amazing trick from a TAS.
JXQ was only responding in kind, he would not have said any of that otherwise.
He was not responding in kind. I was merely critical and blunt about it; he was needlessly abusive, and allowed anger to cloud his remarks.
JXQ wrote:
If that hasn't been your goal, then I don't understand what you hope to accomplish by talking about me so disrespectfully.
I hoped to accomplish nothing since I never did such a thing. That's been part of your bag of tricks in this conversation, not mine. I insulted the run, you instulted the man.
JXQ wrote:
I admit that I got angry in my last few posts, and I'm not trying to justify it, but I did what I did and I stand behind it, as I always do with everything I say. The easiest way I see keeping myself positive and enjoying what I do here is to do what everyone else seems to do when you talk - ignore it. So I'm now leaving it to you to continue to say whatever you wish without reply from me. Now's your chance; enjoy.
You admit you were angry, yet you stand behind it and admit no wrongdoing. And even when you think you are magnanimously gaining some sort of moral high ground, as if clever words today could excuse your atrocious behavior yesterday, you just can't resist leaving with a personal jab or two. Bravo.
Duriel was really the only boss in D2 that you could get to without being prepared for him, and really the only boss where it was overwhelmingly likely that that would be the case. I guarantee you the first time anyone stepped into that chamber they were slaughtered. Baal is annoying with his cloning and endless knockback and mana drain effects, but he doesn't wreck your @#$% the way Duriel did. That's why he'll always be my favorite boss.
JXQ:
Honestly, you accuse me of being immature and negative, but I believe I have comported myself with much more grace and dignity than you, here. The worst I have done is to be flippant, say I think your run is shitty, which I do, and say that you are being lame for your unwillingness to fully optimize the first level you can't copy. I don't even see how you can argue with that; it's a fact: you aren't willing to fully optimize the first level you didn't copy. Your posted progress through Marble 1 looks sloppy, and at the time it certainly seemed like it wasn't the best that could be done, and you offered no proof otherwise. (And in fact, I know it now not to be the best that can be done, with certainty. Hopefully you figured this out, but I have a nagging feeling that you were not able to.)
You, on the other hand, have accused me of insulting you, which I have not done, and on multiple occasions you have stooped to baseless and offensive insults, name calling, and telling me to shut the fuck up, among other things. Truly, if there is one thing that nobody wants to hear, it's more of that from you.
No amount of violent and vicious exposition on your part is going to change the fact that you picked up a run from an author with demanding standards, and have proven unwilling to conform to those standards on levels that require you to come up with your own strategy. That's lame.
JXQ wrote:
Since you like to reply to only two lines of other people's posts, why don't you pick this question to answer - what makes your opinion that my slow walking after GH1 is "shitty" more valid than my opinion that you wasted 34 frames after GH2?
Waiting after the level is already completed and after the clock has already stopped is immaterial in general, and was not noticeable in that instance. Artificial wobble-like effects, on the other hand, are ugly wherever and whenever they are found, and are despised by most if not all people with taste, including the founder of this site.
I had to press start myself to get it to go to the credits.
I was looking forward to this game since I own it (though I can't recall having played it within the past 10 years), but it was surprisingly boring. The game sucks, what can I say. If you fix the last input, I'll go ahead and vote yes for the heck of it, though.
Here's another movie that doesn't look that great, but just because the game is a bit slow and boring. I own it and played it a lot as a kid, so I can confirm the movie is definitely played beyond mortal capabilities. Why not vote yes?
This is kind of interesting, though a little bit obscure. It didn't make me jump out of my seat or anything, but I don't see any reason why the movie shouldn't be published.
In games like these, with such incredibly accurate ingame clock, doing a speedrun against the CLOCK, and not TOTAL FRAMECOUNT is a very good goal. I believe this is what Quietust aimed for in his Sonic 2 run.
Note that this is not the point of contention at all; this is also what Xebra was aiming for (if I'm not hugely mistaken).
It does seem to be a point of contention, though. JXQ is optimizing aggregate time, apparently, otherwise he would not pretend the 34 frames he "gains" in GH2 due to my antics after the ingame clock stops are significant. In which case he should minimize time bonuses where it is profitable to do so.
Standing on the screen for half a second after the end of Green Hill 2 is a shitty, unneeded delay, especially when going for fastest time. (Hey, I can cuss in bold too!)
If you are truly concerned with "fastest time" then why don't you cross the finish line in GH1 5.05 seconds later? Surely that unbelievably obvious optimization didn't elude someone of your acumen. Oh ... wait, I forgot, you aren't concerned with total time at all, you just sometimes pretend that you are in order to intentionally mislead, so that no one notices the flaws in your arguments. Bravo, Rowling, your red herring almost got me this time!
Spriteless wrote:
Before you say someone needs permision to use your strategies, did you get permission from Sonic Team to use this game to begin with?
In fact I did, when I bought the game 14 years ago.
Spriteless wrote:
It is a bit concieted (imho) to get posessive of your own use of someone else's intellectual property.
It's no more conceited than Perlman not allowing free use of his performances of currently copyrighted music that he didn't write. He and I are both rightfully possessive of things we create that others steal and then bastardize.
So, is it lame or not? When reading this post you disagree with yourself.
If your grasp of the English is so poor that you can't understand sarcasm, go somewhere else and argue in a language you actually understand.
The main point here is simple. JXQ said he was interested in continuing my run. But it turns out he was not interested in this at all. He was only interested in copying my run in a manner he knew I would find unsatisfactory, and then giving half an effort in the levels he couldn't copy virtually frame for frame. I don't care that he's using my strategies. I made them public so that people could enjoy them. But I do care that he is using my strategies in a shitty run. I subjected GH1-3 to such thorough and meticulous optimization that the best JXQ could do was shave 4 frames across three levels. Compare this to the fact that I shaved 5 frames off of a single jump in his Marble 1 about 2 seconds into the level. If he is not willing to hold his run to the same standards as my GH1-3/SY1-2/L1, then I don't want him using my work! I stopped my run because I couldn't stomach the thought of producing shit, whether or not anyone else was capable of recognizing it. I don't want my work continued by anyone without that same ethic, attention to detail, and demand for excellence.
Point 2: "His" run has a wbble-like effect and it looks like utter shit.
Someone recently posed to me an interesting variation on the classic liar/truth teller riddles that have grown so stale:
You have a liar, a truth teller, and a person with randomized responses. (He does not randomly choose to either tell the truth or lie, he simply responds randomly from the available responses.) You may ask three yes or no questions, determine who is who.
This isn't terribly (or really at all) difficult, but I hadn't heard it before, and it's complex enough I had to get a piece of paper to write down the solution tree (which really only means the solution has more than 2 cases :P), so I figured some of you might like it.
Do you know that those small improvements are harder to find?
Yes, small optimizations in games are so hard to find, that's why it was so incredibly difficult for me to nitpick a lot of Quietust's Sonic 2 run to death. I'm sure Quietust would agree his contribution of actually playing the whole game was trivial, and pales in comparison to the monumentally difficult task I had of furnishing him with minor improvements on some of the levels.
What could I have possibly done for those levels to not make you mad? If I had done exactly what you did stylistically, then why wouldn't I have just continued from your existing WIP? I'm sure you would think that is lame as well, as would I.
I gave Ouzo free reign to use my runs, and did not ask for credit, why not you?
xebra wrote:
You didn't collect all the coins in the loop, either ;) . If you doubt you will be able to improve any of the Green Hill Zones (as I do), I don't care if you just use mine. SY1 and 2 and L1 probably aren't worth redoing, either, unless you really want to.
----
Truncated wrote:
xebra... you're being an ass again. Stop it.
JXQ has produced a good movie so far, and there's no reason to be acting like this. If you're convinced there is some better way which he is missing, why not just make a movie of it?
I believe I already have made a GH1-3 movie that I consider superior.
I wouldn't call JXQ's attempt half-assed, since he did gain 47 frames in the Green Hill Zones compared to your v2 (which I had thought to be perfect).
Actually, he has gained only 13 frames on my v3 run (I assume you meant v3 and not v2.) He gained 1 frame in GH1, 1 frame in GH2, and 11 frames in GH3. That's not exactly what I consider to be a stunning improvement considering 7 of those frames were gleaned by making already known improvements that were disregarded because I consider them to be poor stylistic choices. (Missing a ring in the loop in GH1, not collecting the invulnerability at the start in GH3.) So, yeah, I am gonna come down a little hard when all I see is someone pulling a Phil. Sloppifying a run, adding in egregious wobbles or wobble-like effects, and then not being willing to take the time to optimize the first level for which he doesn't have an existing run to copy virtually frame for frame? Yeah, that's lame.
In my experience the game is not hex edit friendly, which is why I am kind of wary of you just moving on. I haven't tested this extensively, but for example, two hex edits that just don't work are trying to paste my Marble 1 v1 or Marble 1 v2 onto my v3 run. This, alas, is one reason I quit the run entirely. I didn't want to redo Spring Yard 1 and 2, and I especially did not want to redo Labyrinth 1.
Also, I think it's just a little ... I dunno, undedicated/sloppy/uncaring not to want to optimize Marble 1. There is a way to do what I want to do, I guarantee it. Another reason I stopped the run is because I wasn't willing to half ass it. I didn't suggest that you pick it up in my stead only to half ass it for me. That's why I may seem disappointed with what I consider to be poor choices on your part, whether they be concerned with style, sloppy play, or poor path optimization.
