I didn't really want to get in a big argument with you, OminpotentEntity, because it only engenders ill will, but you just keep talking and talking when you both have no expertise and are clearly incorrect. Let us examine your dubious claims:
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
For a Super Nintendo Game, there are 2^12 possible button combanations for every frame of play.
For a short game, like Super Mario World, we can search the first 10 minutes or so to find the fastest path based purely on button combanations.
Without intelligent pruning, this means that you'll have to search 36,000 frames over 4096 combinations each. For a grand total of about 4.12 x 10^18662 different movie files. Then it's just a simple matter of emulating them all and finding the one that produces the quickest time, which is several million operations each easy.
There is no way ever, even with a quantum computer, that that would happen.
I don't know where you got that final number from, but if there are 36,000 frames of input and 4,096 button combinations for each frame, that's less than 150 million movie files total. A search that small could easily be performed on modern equipment. Let's say you have a setup whereby you can emulate 10 minutes of SNES play in 1 second. That seems like an unbelievably conservative estimate to me. It would take you less than 5 years to test 150,000,000 movie files. Clearly this problem is not intractable. Since it's no doubt possible to test movie files orders of magnitude faster than that, say, through distributed computing or hardware emulation of the SNES, it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that perfect movies are not beyond our current reach.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Assuming a quantum computer running at 1 GHz ... I winnar is yuo!
I'm not really sure where any of that is coming from. Your comparisons of the methods of operation of classical and quantum computers are very ignorant, and are not remotely applicable or even meaningful. The reason I formulated my first response the way I did was because I didn't want to provoke the kind of response I got from you, and also because I was making a number of assumptions that I didn't wish to explain, hence my argument of "you are probably wrong, go read up on it if you really want to know." If you read up on it, you did a poor job.
Anyways, there exists a quantum algorithm for performing a fairly general type of search more efficiently than the best classical aglorithm. The quantum algorithm is O(N^1/2) while the storage space required is O(Log[N]). That's decent though it's "only" a quadratic improvement over the classical algorithm. As we have been discussing it in this thread, "the perfect movie problem" has not been formulated (as I understand it) in a way that can exploit a more efficient search algorithm. I am assuming there is some way we can formulate "the perfect movie problem" as the type of search that can be performed quickly by the quantum algorithm. Since we are discussing a problem that is easily solvable on classical equipment and seems like it could be formulated as a search, and since the limits of quantum computation are not well understood, I think it's a reasonable if optimistic assumption.
As for your misgivings about building a many qubit computer, keep in mind building an N-qubit computer isn't the same as building a classical processor with an N-bit register, and that the reason we don't build classical processors with ten thousand bit registers isn't because we can't. Though it's true we have a long way to go from a 7-qubit computer (which has been built) to one that can do anything practical, quantum computing is still in its infancy, and the sky's the limit. You need only look as far as an LCD to find an example of a technology where arrays of millions of components are manipulated both rapidly and simultaneously. Granted, the pixels in an LCD don't represent the superposition of many states and don't need to be entangled, but really, the sky's the limit.
Oops! You are Error of Ruto.
Those who are commenting about quantum computers not being able to perform such a search efficiently are probably wrong. I don't want to provoke another dick measuring contest a la MF and his MK64 times, so I won't give one of my usual lectures. I will just say comments like the one above convince me you probably haven't read more than the Popular Science course on quantum computing, and it is worth examining in detail how decent sized quantum computers and their algorithms will work if they are ever able to be built.
But you didn't say something equivalent to "This is the only move." You gave a reason. An incorrect one. If you had simply said, "Sacrificing the rook is necessary," then we wouldn't be having this conversation. You said, "Sacrificing the rook is necessary to give black a legal move," which is false.
That's a nice glitch. It's safe to assume I don't know any glitches for this game (since I don't), so keep me up to date in that respect as we progress through the game.
I understand that about what xebra said but didn't get the point. Was he suggesting that he knew Ouzo was slow but didn't say?
I don't see how you could draw that conclusion from what I said. The point was you said the ring box slowed him down. I gave my opinion, which disagreed with yours.
Are you having trouble with the lava bounce in M1, Ouzo? I had no freaking clue how lucky I was in the first two versions of my video, it worked on the first try in both cases. But for the life of me, I can't get a long enough lava bounce when I do the first half of the level quickly. I've tried 2000 (no kidding) different approaches to this one jump and they all either bounce me backwards, or not far enough forwards, and I get crushed.
Oh, and speaking of the very first version of my Sonic video, what a steaming pile of feces it was. It looks like a speed run. Here's to newbs!
I suppose since it's better than the existing video it should be published ... unless getting rid of the already published video is an option. I've watched this movie twice now just to justify my no vote, and I can't see why anyone in their right mind would want to play this game. It's somehow more boring and pointless than SNES Prince of Persia. (To me.)
Sorry FODA :/ .
In the context of the puzzle, that statement is false.
Ok, how about this: "It was necessary to make this post for my life to continue." Because within the context of this post, it was certainly necessary that I make it for my life to continue after making it ... right? That's precisely equivalent to your argument. But clearly whether or not I am alive has nothing to do with this post. You can't arbitrarily restrict overgeneralized comments to a specific context when you didn't explicitly state the restriction, especially when the context you purport your comment was restricted to was made invalid by the very fact that you mentioned anything at all in the first place!
I do not appreciate your sarcasm. You are clearly targeting me with that comment.
Oh, Deviance, you give me too much credit. How could I have been targeting you with that comment and the posts that led up to it?!?! I'm just not that clever, and surely you're not that predictable.
Oops, I mixed that one up big time, didn't I!?!? I should have said one thing and I said something else!! It's so difficult to just admit mistakes though, maybe I should invent some bullshit and argue about it all night.
The puzzle doesn't state that it is white who mates, so it could also be 5. ... NxR#.
Do you mean that the anecdote about the puzzle is ambiguous compared to my perfectly explicit instructions? If that's what you mean, then you are right. If it pleases you, you may try to solve for 5. ... NxR#, even though it's insoluble. Don't take my word for it.
I agree with Deviance, what he said was correct and not misleading at all. If someone asks for the solution to a puzzle and someone is responding, it's assumed that he's talking about the solution. If I ask "how do you do that flying trick in SMW" and Flagitious says "it's necessary to press the button X number of frames after Y happens", nothing is wrong or misleading about what he said.
Your analogy is not apt. What Deviance said is akin to Flagitious saying, "it's necessary to press the button X number of frames after Y happens," and then giving an incorrect reason why the timing must be thus. Deviance's solution is simply the list of moves, which I have no problems with. What I take exception to is the incorrect reasoning he gives in his pseudo-explanation. Sacrificing the rook is not necessary "to give black some legal moves." This reasoning is exactly what Deviance said. It is incorrect. Sacrificing the rook is necessary to solve the problem, which is both pretty damned obvious and not at all what he said.
In other positions you may be right, but in this particular one, Rf5 is the ONLY move that solves the puzzle. In this case I am justified in saying it is necessary.
But you didn't say the move was necessary to solve the puzzle. You said the move was necessary to "give black some legal moves." You were wrong, as there were many other moves for white that did not stalemate black, though it is likely you were just being unintentionally inaccurate. Furthermore, it's meaningless to say "this move is required for the solution" in an explanation of the solution. Not only was that was not the actual meaning of the words you said, but such a thing would never be said, so it couldn't have been the intended meaning of your words. Why are you arguing about this when you are clearly wrong? Is it so terrible to have someone correct a minor linguistic inaccuracy of yours in the correct solution of a chess puzzle for the sake of not confusing other members of the forum? You've blown this way out of proportion by choosing to argue about it.
So the obvious solution is to call them "infinite-segment" runs.
But there aren't really infinite segments, or even anything comparable to the number of re-records. Suppose there's a movie that's 1000 frames long, and you do 5 frames at a time, and you retry each 5 frame segment 100000000 times. It's still only 200 segments.
I smell BS semantics again! Since infinity isn't even a number, your numerical comparison was meaningless before you even started. (Nothing is comparable to infinity ... it's not even a number. And please, no one respond with unrelated BS about the extended complex plane or transfinite numbers.) Boco's qualitative comparison is an apt one, though. Emulated runs are indeed infinitely segmented, or have the potential to be so, since they can be segmented to the maximum temporal resolution attainable by the hardware being emulated. Despite the technical accuracy of Boco's nomenclature, however, it's still probably a poor choice of a name since it doesn't mean anything to someone the concept hasn't been explained to yet.
yes, there are other moves, but the puzzle asks specifically to mate in four and nothing else. Thus, the only lines that should be considered are those that achieve this goal. The rook needs to be sacrificed to solve the puzzle; it's not an overgeneralization, it's a matter of fact.
My mother always taught me not to argue with semantic bullshit. You made a somewhat misleading statement in your solution. I corrected you. Case closed.
Ramzi wrote:
How did you guys learn to do this? Is there a methodology or do you just look at it for a long time? And for computer solvers, is there a methodology or is it brute force?
If you examine a large number of chess puzzles and their solutions, you will begin to get a feel for how the vast majority of them are constructed. You will notice certain pieces which are blocking other pieces in a particular manner and are thus very unlikely to be any part of the solution, allowing you to narrow down the "actors" in the puzzle to 2 or 3 pieces.
If you want to learn to solve more chess puzzles, there are endless websites devoted to them, and many great books. Nunn is probably the most famous writer of chess puzzles. In fact, one of Nunn's puzzles is the most notorious in the world, having stumped literally the best players in the world:
1. e4 ... 2. ... ... 3. ... ... 4. ... ... 5. NxR#
Fill in the blanks. An amusing anecdote about this puzzle can be found at http://www.chessbase.com/puzzle/puzz05d.htm .
necessary to sacrifice the rook in order to give black some legal moves
Well, it's necessary to force a mate in 4 but there are plenty of other winning moves, and some losing ones, too, as Goroh proved. I think it's a bit more proper to avoid overgeneralizing things, to prevent confusion amongst people who might not have your understanding of chess.
Some experimentation has revealed that the pistons in M1 aren't always synchronized across runs. I've managed to spawn them within a range of 4 frames so far. (With a minimal time of 14:51 from first motion to the second piston first rising a pixel after coming to a resting state on the ground.) I don't know what causes this variability, though it seems likely they are spawned when you pass a certain point early on, and if I simply waited at the beginning of the level I'd be able to spawn them as late as I liked.
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.
In a torus or a sphere, going off the left or right of the map puts you on the other side of the map.
In a torus, going off the top or bottom of the map puts you on the other side of the map.
In a sphere, going off the top or bottom of the map moves your x position to (width of map)-x, and you reverse direction.
Sorry for using unfamiliar mathematical terms. What I was saying is that the map is not a torus. It's a subset of the torus, specifically, a grid of lines at 90 degree angles to each other. I am fairly certain there is a way that you can lift this grid off of the torus, bend it smoothly, and transplant it to a sphere. It is even allowed (and probably necessary) that you bend the grid "not smoothly" at a finite number of points, as long as you can prevent Sonic from actually going to those problematic points. For example, if you needed to not-smoothly-bend the grid at any particular point, you could just put a bouncer there and not worry about ever encountering that point that ruins the transformation.
I'm not suggesting that the game designers thought about any of this stuff when making the game. I'm just saying that I don't think the bonus levels are a priori incorrect.
In the game it looks like a sphere, but acts like a torus, thus defying the laws of physics.
The only hint that you are on a sphere is the curvature of the horizon, and like I said before, light can be bent. Bizarre optical effects are no excuse for crying wolf. Additionally, there are directions you can look on the surface of a torus and see the same kind of horizon you see every on a sphere.
I think the music makes the man. Why was Star Wars such a crazy huge blockbuster 30 years ago? I blame the music. It's unfortunate George Lucas isn't as good at his job as John Williams is at his. God, Revenge of the Sith was terrible.
