Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Svimmer wrote:
Nach wrote:
Tiles is used in the level editor, because it's tiles!
Block is used in the official documentation.
I think what "block" means in the manual is the editor feature that allows mass populating/copying and things. Otherwise it talks about bricks and steel barriers and things.
The hintbook uses the terms interchangeably. In fact it even has an instance of "tile block". I'll just give both alternatives on the RP, but I'd like you to admit that it's not always 100% clear what the "official" term is.
My point was that both are official terms. Therefore both are perfectly legal.
Svimmer wrote:
Nach wrote:
It's better to use an official term instead of each of us making up our own.
I get it you agree that creating conventions (whatever it's based on) is an ok idea. However, what if the official word is a)difficult to tell what it actually is?
When the official term is very difficult, then there's definitely room for improvement. Hence I said earlier I agree with your Spikes (spinning) -> Spinners.
Svimmer wrote:
or b) counter-intuitive? I feel like you're not giving me a lot of credit here. And I'm trying hard to avoid making it seem like I wanna impose my opinions on anyone, but aren't your opinions of the same weight? I know people can be used to expressing themselves differently, e.g. I know I'm always a bit wary about making statements that sound categorical.
Stick to official where you can, if it's problematic, bring it up.
For example, the game has "barriers". I find it perfectly understandable what they are. I don't find it being confused with other things in the game. Therefore, we don't need to make up new terminology for it.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
slamo wrote:
Level 3 (glitched sound):
Link to video
Watch as I come hilariously close to dying multiple times. I tried Nach's route but it wasn't faster, it was off by about 0.8 s.
Grabbing the center gem above the door later like this turned out faster than the other way though, right? Or was that not tested?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Grabbing the center gem above the door later like this turned out faster than the other way though, right? Or was that not tested?
I didn't test it, since the gem is 4 blocks away if you get it on the way down instead of 5 blocks away if you get it on the way up. It's gotta be faster, especially since the gem hitbox is biased towards the left side (I should post this on the RP actually).
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
slamo wrote:
I didn't test it, since the gem is 4 blocks away if you get it on the way down instead of 5 blocks away if you get it on the way up. It's gotta be faster, especially since the gem hitbox is biased towards the left side (I should post this on the RP actually).
Well, those are my thoughts too, hence why I suggested it. I'm just wondering if due to acceleration and so on, perhaps you were right originally?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Guys, we just actually had simultaneous-editing mishap with Ilari. I was wondering why he had reverted certain changes I had made until it dawned on me. This is why I suggested adding that headline to the top and maybe stating how long until you're going to finish (better to reserve some extra time in case you need to make a couple of revisions), and doing it the long way like that. Wouldn't you agree? Cause it's gonna be stupid if you don't notice at first. To be clear I don't know if anyone has taken to doing that yet, but since I got no feedback on that idea, I never was too careful about it myself which is why it happened.
I can't imagine it becoming a problem if the tag was used. You can always make notes first about the changes you want to make, or even write them out to be ready whenever it's your turn. So now I'd really like to hear your thoughts.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Svimmer: In the IRC channel, every edit is reported, so if we see two edits back to back, we know to check to see if the latter accidentally reverted the former.
You can join us on IRC too!
Edit:
We make use of this: http://tasvideos.org/pageinfo.exe?page=GameResources%2FDOS%2FJetpack
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Well, those are my thoughts too, hence why I suggested it. I'm just wondering if due to acceleration and so on, perhaps you were right originally?
It's just a matter of distance traveled, nothing weird with acceleration going on. If anything, I'd have to slow down to get over the big wall if I got it on the way up.
Here's a WIP of level 4 (glitched sound)
Link to video
I'm going to test other routes so I don't know if this is going to be the final version or not, but I thought I'd post it anyway. I thought it was kind of funny how I dealt with the trackbot.
Ok thanks for telling me. You can tell I haven't been around so I have no idea what the standard procedure is, you actually have to tell me these things. Ok, I'll join you once I figured it out.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
slamo wrote:
I thought it was kind of funny how I dealt with the trackbot.
:D :D :D !!!
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
slamo wrote:
I'm going to test other routes so I don't know if this is going to be the final version or not, but I thought I'd post it anyway.
Regarding your earlier route, keep these possible changes in mind:
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
New level 4, faster by two whole frames:
Link to video
Used the alternate route involving the red switch. This is the first level I've actively luck manipulated the trackbot by doing random phases to make it turn around. If you still wanted to see the trackbot mocked, you won't be disappointed. :)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
Wow. This is the first time I have seen a TAS start from zero and go on it's way to a full submission. It's great. Keep up the awesome work. I used to play the older version of this game and I was trying to figure out why the levels were in such an odd order.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
hegyak wrote:
Wow. This is the first time I have seen a TAS start from zero and go on it's way to a full submission.
Don't forget that you're helping too!
hegyak wrote:
I used to play the older version of this game and I was trying to figure out why the levels were in such an odd order.
There were a few demos put out that have a sample of 10 levels, but not in the same order as the full game.
The game also went through several revisions, where levels are tweaked a bit with different enemies and stuff.
Software Creations also put out a 35 level version, which doesn't have the other 65 levels, those that are there have some order changes, and the enemy tweaks too.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
So, is it even possible to plan this level?
I could make an optimal route and everything, but it's very unlikely that the missiles wouldn't get in the way. It seems like this one will be trial and error. Maybe if I post a WIP it can spawn some ideas.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Unless you can get a stunner or invincibility, not much point in planning optimal gem collection route.
The planning needed here is stuff like go right or left first? (I'm thinking grab left most, middle right, up a level, those two...)
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Yes, but it's difficult for a plan to predict where a missile will be at any given time. I'll either have to go ladder-to-ladder waiting for missiles to pass to do the floors in order, or just go up and come back down later if it's faster. Tough to say right now, I'll have to play around with this.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
slamo wrote:
Yes, but it's difficult for a plan to predict where a missile will be at any given time. I'll either have to go ladder-to-ladder waiting for missiles to pass to do the floors in order, or just go up and come back down later if it's faster.
Indeed. Which is why you need not to plan the level as a whole, but to plan it by segments. The easiest way to do that is to see where there aren't any gems, and ensure to be in that area as little as possible.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
The position of each missile should be a function of time (a piece-wise function?). You could use frame counts to determine that ahead of time, in principle. That sounds like it could be useful in a situation where you realize you could get to a certain ladder a little bit faster than with your current candidate route, but would the missiles block you then?
Could be very impractical though for all I know. I'm gonna resume work on the item/monster png.:s for now.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Svimmer wrote:
The position of each missile should be a function of time (a piece-wise function?). You could use frame counts to determine that ahead of time, in principle. That sounds like it could be useful in a situation where you realize you could get to a certain ladder a little bit faster than with your current candidate route, but would the missiles block you then?
There's nothing random here, so routes and costs could be plotted, it really is just a bunch of math. The simple classic route algorithms won't work though, because cost changes as routes are taken.
So we could do it, it's just a lot of work.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
I guess it won't ever solve the equation of what the fastest route is, but to even be able to predict where each missile is a what time would be useful + I think that's something that's going to be useful in lots of levels. So if someone has time, it wouldn't go to waste to find the missile speed and create a basis for that sort of calculation.
Another approach would be to try to calculate the times when it's ok to go from a certain ladder to another ladder (and make it in time). because that's simply periodic as well. could that simplify the planning? cause in a way it's about making or missing a cycle, except there's lots of alternatives.
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
Here's a quick test AVI I did:
http://www.mediafire.com/?vwu9fv3yx16k530
I made a level where a rocket goes from the top Left (facing upwards) to the far right of the screen and goes back again.
Maby this can be used somehow to determine speed based on how long it takes the rocket to go from A to B and back again.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Level 5 WIP:
Link to video
This could very well be the best way to do this level, but I'm not totally convinced. There are a lot of places I got bottlenecked, and I know some of those are unavoidable but maybe there's a faster way. About the last gem - I did try just falling off the edge and landing on the lower floor to grab it, and that would definitely be faster, but it just didn't work. Sucks that this is how I had to get it.
I could make an optimal route and everything, but it's very unlikely that the missiles wouldn't get in the way. It seems like this one will be trial and error. Maybe if I post a WIP it can spawn some ideas.
