Posts for thatguy

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Posted: 11/9/2018 11:38 PM
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thatguy
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Obvious yes vote, this is lightning fast, one of those TASes that's worth watching, reading the notes and then rewatching because you just can't take everything in first time round. You mention that a side-effect of the glitching is to corrupt the in-game timer. So I'm just wondering - what is the official in-game time for this TAS?
Posted: 10/23/2018 10:16 PM
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thatguy
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So, I found this entertaining enough, some of the workarounds were creative, and while it is notable slower-paced as a result of the restrictions, that wasn't make-or-break for me. Certainly it's good enough for Moons, which is just as well as this is clearly not a Vault-compatible goal. Not sure whether it's publishable, though. Super Mario Bros has a no-B-button movie, largely because this was thought to be impossible for the longest time, and it relies on TAS-only tricks. I'm not sure either of these things are true for this game, though I don't know too much of the background, so feel free to correct me.
Posted: 7/16/2018 8:10 PM
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thatguy
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On the time-wasting routine - it really doesn't help the game. And of course, when players want a breather, they fabricate reasons for it. I think the perfect encapsulation of it was the semifinal between Croatia & England. 1-1 in extra time, Mario Mandzukic collapses off the ball with nobody near him. Cramp, obviously. It's always cramp. Fair enough, footballers don't often play 120 minutes, and he is 32 years old. But it looks like the tank is empty. Surely he'll come off. He limps to half time in extra time. As the teams change ends he gets the medic over. Massage, ice pack, all the usual. Gets up, still walking awkwardly. He's totally gone. But apparently he's playing on. Maybe he can hobble around for fifteen more minutes just so Croatia can have him as a penalty taker? Three minutes later, the ball is headed into the danger zone from Ivan Perisic. Mandzukic's eyes light up. He races onto the loose ball, leaving John Stones (who is no slouch) in the dust, and finishes smartly past the keeper. He shows no less energy as he charges towards the Croatian fans and is buried under a pile of teammates. It was an astonishing turn of pace. Some cramp he had!
Posted: 7/15/2018 6:14 PM
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thatguy
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I don't see how France were unsporting. It's not their fault they were awarded a questionable penalty. What are they supposed to do, deliberately miss it? Overall, maybe Croatia were the better team in this particular match, but France have been the best team over the whole tournament and are deserved champions.
Posted: 7/12/2018 6:25 PM
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thatguy
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I disagree. The scary thing from France's perspective is that Croatia have reached the final while playing well below their best (helped, admittedly, by the relatively soft opposition they have faced in previous rounds). If they turn it on in the final like they did against Argentina, France might be in trouble. France are still favourites but Croatia won't be pushovers. As for England, I think you do the players a disservice. They aren't just a bunch of plucky underdogs like the stereotype - they are very good individual players (who also play well as a team). Most people didn't predict England would get this far, but in honesty they shouldn't have been surprised - England's performances in youth tournaments over the past few years have been very good, culminating in victory in the Under-20 World Cup last year. We are now seeing that talent, that the FA has nurtured for years in its intensive youth training programme, finally breaking into the main team. This is a side that has age on its side, and will only get better. Bring on 2022!
Posted: 7/11/2018 9:50 PM
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thatguy
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So it's not coming home...
Posted: 7/11/2018 4:57 PM
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On the golf ball question: Model the hole as a square well. Ignore any rotational motion the ball has (assume it is simply sliding). Assume the collision with the far side of the hole is perfectly elastic. Under these conditions, the balls drops into the hole if the angle between the ball's radius and the side of the hole is less than 135o. This happens when the ball drops at least a height h before hitting the back wall, where h = d*(1-1/sqrt(2))/2. It must drop this distance before the ball hits the brim on the far side of the hole - to a first-order approximation the ball travels a distance D but for full accuracy it travels a distance x = D - d/2 + h. (Difficult to explain this formula without being able to draw a diagram, so I leave this as an exercise for the reader.) To accelerate a distance h, requires a time t = sqrt(2h/g). And therefore a speed v = x/t = (D - d/2 + h)*sqrt(g/2h). Now substituting in our expression for h, the critical speed v = (D-d/2+d*(1-1/sqrt(2))/2)*sqrt(g/2d*(1-1/sqrt(2))/2). Putting in typical values (D = 0.05m, d = 0.03m, g = 9.8ms-2) gives a speed of 0.57ms-1. Seems a bit on the slow side to me, but that's where a bunch of assumptions come in (the bounce will not be perfectly elastic, which will allow for a higher approach speed, for example).
Posted: 7/6/2018 9:14 PM
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thatguy
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To be honest Brazil were the better side today, they had more possession, more chances to score (27 shots!) but Thibault Courtois was astonishing. The best team doesn't always win. I just have this gut feeling that my beloved England side will suffer similarly against Sweden tomorrow. We are a much better team on paper, we will probably outplay them, but that doesn't necessarily mean we will win...
Posted: 7/2/2018 8:44 PM
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thatguy
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Many pundits have commented that this World Cup represents a last hurrah/changing of the guard for Lionel Messi & Cristiano Ronaldo. Question is - who do we think are going to be the best players in the world by the time the next World Cup comes round? Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane are the most obvious for me. Mbappe in particular has the potential to be considered one of the greatest players of all time (if he fulfils his early promise).
Posted: 6/17/2018 10:21 PM
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thatguy
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Good tournament for the neutral spectator so far. Think it really shows that the gap between the top teams and the rest is narrowing, which can only be a good thing. Anyway, England start tomorrow and I have listened to Three lions about ten times over the past week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJqimlFcJsM
Posted: 6/13/2018 7:06 AM
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thatguy
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Eh, probably semifinal like last time. Yes. Good god, no. Let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Posted: 5/28/2018 1:08 PM
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thatguy
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Top work lapogne36. A gold star for you. Anyone who worked as a programmer for this game - please see me after class.
Posted: 4/3/2018 8:49 PM
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thatguy
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So... is anyone up for console-verifying this one? :)
Posted: 4/3/2018 8:44 PM
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thatguy
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I think "Lucky Wins Again" is possibly the best-named glitch ever. On whether this is entertaining - well, the submission notes are very honest here, it is really boring (at least after about 12 minutes, when you get to LWA). I voted no but that doesn't mean it's not a well-made TAS. Not sure whether this is publishable either - it would be a shame if we couldn't showcase such brokenness, but such is life. And it was definitely one of the stronger April Fools' Day showings this year.
Posted: 3/18/2018 10:38 AM
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thatguy
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Haven't got time to watch right now, but tempted to vote yes anyway. I don't think there's anything that could possibly make me vote no. Now can someone TAS Wind Waker please?
Posted: 3/18/2018 10:30 AM
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thatguy
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So, I was about to comment "looks like one of the audio channels is missing in Oak's lab, better get that cleared up in the final encode." Then I read the submission notes...
Posted: 2/10/2018 9:40 AM
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thatguy
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Warp wrote:
(Note that I'm a complete layman on this subject, so I may well be talking out of my ass.)
No, what you say is correct. But it doesn't help answer the question.
Posted: 2/10/2018 2:24 AM
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thatguy
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Can someone explain the following to me? The entropy of a black hole, famously, is proportional to its surface area (or, more specifically, the surface area of its event horizon). To motivate the argument for why this is the case, matter is imagined to "fall" into the black hole, though of course, from the perspective of an external observer, time slows down and length contracts until, as time heads off to infinity, the matter is compressed to within the thickness of a Planck-length, just beyond the horizon. This is the same for any matter that has ever fallen into the black hole, and so the whole black hole is compressed into a thin shell of matter at the event horizon. There's nothing inside. Black holes are essentially two-dimensional surfaces rather than 3D solid objects. Hence the entropy scales as the surface area, rather than the volume as for every other object in the universe. Here's my problem with the above argument: as more matter falls into the black hole, the mass increases. Therefore the radius of the event horizon increases. Therefore matter that was previously compressed against the event horizon is very definitely now inside that event horizon, even if it hasn't moved. Although matter stops at the event horizon, that doesn't prevent the event horizon expanding to swallow the matter anyway. So isn't the conclusion that a black hole is defined by its event horizon fundamentally flawed? (Incidentally there is a more sophisticated version of this argument which is based on information theory, and has cute finesses like adding matter in the form of photons with a wavelength equal to the Schwarzschild radius, so you can't specify where they entered the black hole. But it still relies on this idea of the black hole existing as a pile-up at the event horizon, which still looks to me like a flawed conclusion.)
Posted: 2/10/2018 1:15 AM
Post subject: Re: AVGN
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thatguy
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Zucca wrote:
Maybe I'm just an angry old fart, who doesn't like misinformation to be spread.
I mean, you're absolutely right - but this is a world where people believe in chemtrails. I can't get particularly get worked up about people having subtle misunderstandings about a relatively technical topic of mostly recreational interest.
Posted: 2/4/2018 8:08 AM
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thatguy
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I'll leave that as an exercise for you. It's not hard to modify the argument above.
Posted: 2/4/2018 6:27 AM
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thatguy
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The way I always thought about it was in relation to the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. Assume x = y2/z2 for some integers x, y, z. y2 = xz2 Now, expand x, y & z in terms of their prime factors. (To make the following argument watertight, the a, b, c are in strict ascending order, and the set of primes a, b, c chosen are the primes dividing the product xyz, so some of the exponents below may be zero.) x = ap1bq1cr1..., y = ap2bq2cr2..., z = ap3bq3cr3... a2p2b2q2c2r2... = ap1bq1cr1...a2p3b2q3c2r3... Using the FTA, the expressions on left and right can only be the same if they have exactly the same prime factorisation. So it follows that: 2p2 = p1+2p3, 2q2 = q1+2q3, etc... p1 = 2(p3-p2), q1 = 2(q3-q2), etc... Therefore p1, q1, r1... are all even numbers (possibly including zero). Which is precisely the condition for x to be a perfect square. Therefore we can conclude that if x = y2/z2 for some integers x, y, z, then x must be a perfect square. QED.
Posted: 2/1/2018 7:13 PM
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thatguy
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Definitely not a fact. Not even a myth, really. "Myth" implies that a lot of people believe it. It's just bullshit.
Posted: 1/18/2018 9:48 PM
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thatguy
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Okay, let's pick a simpler function like x2 ∫(0 -> A) x2 dx = 72 {x3/3}(0 -> A) = 72 A3/3 = 72 A3 = 72 x 3 = 216 A = 2161/3 = 6 But you knew all that, of course. I'm assuming you chose the function deliberately not to have an elementary antiderivative. It has a closed-form value when the integral is evaluated over the entire number line, but in general the indefinite integral cannot be expressed as a combination of the standard polynomial, exponential, logarithmic and trigonometric functions we are used to. So, going through the same process, you aren't going to get anything nicer-looking than B = erf-1(erf(A) + 0.5) (where erf is the indefinite integral of e-x2).
Posted: 1/15/2018 8:53 PM
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thatguy
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y=log x is upside-down and y=sin x is back-to-front.
Posted: 1/14/2018 8:36 PM
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thatguy
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It also reminds me of the entropy of mixing formula, which has a similar shape, and a formula with stuff like ln(x) and ln(1-x) in it. In fact when I saw this I thought "ah, that's the entropy of mixing" (but it turns out I'm rusty and the actual formula is actually a bit different).
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