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1
Competition Central / Re: Longest Standing Untied Records
« on: November 06, 2018, 12:18:46 am »
The data already is there, no task to be made. Gerbil would just have to upload the database somewhere and it's done.
2
Competition Central / Re: Longest Standing Untied Records
« on: November 04, 2018, 01:54:03 am »
Is it possible to get a data dump of all records on TSC? And not just the 1st places but basically all data on the site.
3
Board Games / Re: Word game
« on: March 14, 2018, 06:52:31 am »
*Read 236 times*
C'mon guys...
I'll do a swedish word
diskussionsuppföljningsarbete
C'mon guys...
I'll do a swedish word
diskussionsuppföljningsarbete
4
Gaming and Grazing / Re: Opening .giz without a rom?
« on: November 16, 2017, 06:09:13 pm »
GIZ in the context of Genesis emulators is a GIR file compressed with gzip.
I doubt the file you have has any relation, developers can name their file extensions almost anything they like.
I doubt the file you have has any relation, developers can name their file extensions almost anything they like.
5
Hiya Folks / Re: Hey! :)
« on: September 26, 2017, 06:29:14 am »
Welcome!
Yes you should definitely join the discord. Pretty much no one will respond here and if they do it might take weeks or months.
https://discord.gg/VqkNCEe
Yes you should definitely join the discord. Pretty much no one will respond here and if they do it might take weeks or months.
https://discord.gg/VqkNCEe
6
Hiya Folks / Re: 'Bout Time I Joined This Site!
« on: June 08, 2017, 09:45:50 am »
Hello friend, I'm not sure if you're aware of this already but the forum part of this website is pretty much as dead as it can get.
The community however, is perhaps even more alive now than ever. We all hang out on Discord, so if you don't mind here's the link to join the server: https://discord.gg/VqkNCEe
Cheers.
The community however, is perhaps even more alive now than ever. We all hang out on Discord, so if you don't mind here's the link to join the server: https://discord.gg/VqkNCEe
Cheers.
8
News and Updates / Re: New Heaven, New Earth. Introducing a new site rule
« on: March 19, 2017, 05:02:56 pm »
Since the video is only for proof, why does the quality of it matter to you Vicklaw? As long as it can be determined that the game is being played in real time by a person and that the record is verifiable, who cares if the video isn't going to become the next YT phenomenon with 10 million views?
What if you spend time and effort into recording, practising and grinding out runs and get the record. Cool! A few days later some dude ties or beats you and says he doesn't have a video because he thinks the quality wouldn't be great. However he's fine with submitting a screenshot of the end screen which could be easily cheated using ingame cheats.
Would you be satisfied at that point with the record that beats yours, or would you care less about the quality of the video provided in favour of getting real proof?
Also, if you just want to do things for the challenge of it no one is stopping you from doing RA's etc. without recording. But if you want to submit them to a record keeping site, I think having some sort of proof of your accomplishment at the very least for the top score/time, should be absolutely required in 2017.
What if you spend time and effort into recording, practising and grinding out runs and get the record. Cool! A few days later some dude ties or beats you and says he doesn't have a video because he thinks the quality wouldn't be great. However he's fine with submitting a screenshot of the end screen which could be easily cheated using ingame cheats.
Would you be satisfied at that point with the record that beats yours, or would you care less about the quality of the video provided in favour of getting real proof?
Also, if you just want to do things for the challenge of it no one is stopping you from doing RA's etc. without recording. But if you want to submit them to a record keeping site, I think having some sort of proof of your accomplishment at the very least for the top score/time, should be absolutely required in 2017.
9
Hiya Folks / Re: Hello from Greece!
« on: March 18, 2017, 05:39:55 pm »
Hey mate, competition is still alive on this site, but no one posts on the forum anymore. Pretty much all communication is done through discord or private chats. I'll pm you an invitation for it.
10
Hiya Folks / Re: Hiya, new Sonic runner here
« on: February 15, 2017, 06:04:01 am »
Just a heads up, this forum is pretty dead. Everyone hangs out on Discord now. PM me and I'll send you an invite.
11
News and Updates / Re: New Heaven, New Earth. Introducing a new site rule
« on: January 02, 2017, 09:40:08 am »
Does this mean that if you do a run on an emulator that you are required to use one with rerecording functions? I don't think that's a very good idea at all :/. For one it would clash with the rules on speedrun.com which means that if you do full game runs then you can't submit times if you happen to get an IL PB. Also it forces users to use the rerecording function of TASing emulators which is better than no required proof at all but still does nothing to combat cheating if you know what you're doing. Splices are way harder to do than savestates and hex edits :). Regardless, I very much appreciate the steps you are taking on this.
When it comes to asking for coding help, could you please post more specifics and details about what you want to do?
When it comes to asking for coding help, could you please post more specifics and details about what you want to do?
12
Gaming and Grazing / Re: So...what's up?
« on: October 28, 2016, 04:46:12 pm »
Hey Token :).
I got a job at ESL as a producer and developer so I moved to Germany and just got a contract for an apartment starting from next week! Up until now I've been living in a damn shoebox where the bed is literally on top of the bathroom and the rest is just a hallway to get to the bathroom lol. Also I've been without personal internet for soon to be 3 months now so that's really getting on my nerves...
Other than that I also lived in Wales for 2 months working as a web developer through a programme my city was offering. That was pretty cool but the lady I lived at had some crazy ideas. It started off "small" with her saying stuff about gluten and alternative medicine, but then it never stopped and she would everyday try to convince me to become a 9/11 conpiracy-moon landing hoax-antivaxxer-flat earth holocaust denier because I was "a smart boy who really should try to do more research". ...yea I'm sure all those youtube videos you're watching religiously make more sense than anything you learn in school.
I've also been an active smash player for the past 3 years. So basically since my speedrunning activity started to decline. But it's really fun and I meet so much people! Especially since I now live in Germany as a mid-20's guy with no previous contacts here it's really nice to just find 10 people on facebook and become friends.
I'd respond to more people who have posted but I only know you guys in passing so sorry but token will get all my <3<3
I got a job at ESL as a producer and developer so I moved to Germany and just got a contract for an apartment starting from next week! Up until now I've been living in a damn shoebox where the bed is literally on top of the bathroom and the rest is just a hallway to get to the bathroom lol. Also I've been without personal internet for soon to be 3 months now so that's really getting on my nerves...
Other than that I also lived in Wales for 2 months working as a web developer through a programme my city was offering. That was pretty cool but the lady I lived at had some crazy ideas. It started off "small" with her saying stuff about gluten and alternative medicine, but then it never stopped and she would everyday try to convince me to become a 9/11 conpiracy-moon landing hoax-antivaxxer-flat earth holocaust denier because I was "a smart boy who really should try to do more research". ...yea I'm sure all those youtube videos you're watching religiously make more sense than anything you learn in school.
I've also been an active smash player for the past 3 years. So basically since my speedrunning activity started to decline. But it's really fun and I meet so much people! Especially since I now live in Germany as a mid-20's guy with no previous contacts here it's really nice to just find 10 people on facebook and become friends.
I'd respond to more people who have posted but I only know you guys in passing so sorry but token will get all my <3<3
13
Hiya Folks / Re: Hey!
« on: October 28, 2016, 04:31:51 pm »
Oh hey man long time no see. I didn't realise you got a livable income from minecraft nowadays, that pretty neat :).
Compete with me when Mania comes out ;)
Compete with me when Mania comes out ;)
14
Gaming and Grazing / Re: Quick Slick Deadly
« on: January 11, 2016, 08:10:48 pm »
If the issues with Multimedia Fusion are so many, then perhaps you shouldn't use that engine.
I don't have an issue with Escape being a "back" key. Left and Right click also works fairly well for menu navigation. The issue I'm having is when it's not clear what state the game is currently in (menu or ingame) and what controls are in effect. Especially when there's no on-screen buttons to press or rebinding. It's simply bad design no matter how you spin it in my opinion.
QSD is a space shooter. Why does it need so long instructions?
Like, I get it, you want to teach the player all mechanics with specific missions at the start revolving around them. That's cool and all but what's not cool is having 30-40 second missions of literally doing nothing then trying to see if you understood what to do then having to wait another 30-40 seconds to try again if you didn't. And even if you did understand it on the first go the mission doesn't feel satisfying in any way. Why couldn't the tutorial level be a single long stage with prompts like Star Fox 64? Observe how you don't have to start over and wait for a minute if you do something wrong. Everything is paced nicely even if it's a lot of information and the numbers make a lot of intuitive sense together with the UI.
I'm not saying that's how it definitely should be done always but it's infinitely better than QSD's current system.
But even so, after reading all of the text for all 5 missions three times over and trying for half an hour (which really only is like 15 tries, less since I reread a lot of text) I still couldn't understand how the trickster mechanic worked. If you can't convey a basic mechanic with walls of text and 30 minutes of time to even a 5-year old then you've failed. I can be the dumbest on earth for not realising the most simple thing, but that still doesn't justify how I couldn't wrap my head around it after that much hard work. It just invalidates the whole point of trying.
EDIT: Yes I used a mouse. Also sorry if I come off as aggressive or straight up mean but I really tried giving the game a shot by playing it for 3-4 hours but all it did was put me in a pretty bad mood so sorry for that :/.
I don't have an issue with Escape being a "back" key. Left and Right click also works fairly well for menu navigation. The issue I'm having is when it's not clear what state the game is currently in (menu or ingame) and what controls are in effect. Especially when there's no on-screen buttons to press or rebinding. It's simply bad design no matter how you spin it in my opinion.
QSD is a space shooter. Why does it need so long instructions?
Like, I get it, you want to teach the player all mechanics with specific missions at the start revolving around them. That's cool and all but what's not cool is having 30-40 second missions of literally doing nothing then trying to see if you understood what to do then having to wait another 30-40 seconds to try again if you didn't. And even if you did understand it on the first go the mission doesn't feel satisfying in any way. Why couldn't the tutorial level be a single long stage with prompts like Star Fox 64? Observe how you don't have to start over and wait for a minute if you do something wrong. Everything is paced nicely even if it's a lot of information and the numbers make a lot of intuitive sense together with the UI.
I'm not saying that's how it definitely should be done always but it's infinitely better than QSD's current system.
But even so, after reading all of the text for all 5 missions three times over and trying for half an hour (which really only is like 15 tries, less since I reread a lot of text) I still couldn't understand how the trickster mechanic worked. If you can't convey a basic mechanic with walls of text and 30 minutes of time to even a 5-year old then you've failed. I can be the dumbest on earth for not realising the most simple thing, but that still doesn't justify how I couldn't wrap my head around it after that much hard work. It just invalidates the whole point of trying.
EDIT: Yes I used a mouse. Also sorry if I come off as aggressive or straight up mean but I really tried giving the game a shot by playing it for 3-4 hours but all it did was put me in a pretty bad mood so sorry for that :/.
15
Gaming and Grazing / Re: Quick Slick Deadly
« on: December 21, 2015, 07:06:12 pm »
My first complaint with the game is the developer logo. It's completely illegible!
Secondly, the frame rate of this game is completely bonkers. I actually couldn't find a way to find out the true FPS of the game since neither the Steam overlay or Fraps would work with it but based on my own experience it hovers around 20 to 30 FPS which is unacceptable for a PC game. Take a look at the credits and you can clearly see the text jumping while scrolling.
My third complaint is the options menu. There isn't any! I can appreciate the fact that keyboard controls are available and with the right settings they might be somewhat useful but really this game was designed to be used with a mouse and thus the movement speed is more or less a useless option which makes the options menu even more lackluster. The game only supports 1 resolution which is 1280*720 and there isn't any toggle for full screen on the options menu. There is a button command for it which is flashed when you first start the game but it disappears quickly and honestly should be listed in the options since there's tons of room for it.
You can't rebind any of the controls but mostly they're pretty logical so it's not a big deal. However the game does a pretty bad job at menu navigation. What button you need to press at the end of a level in order to continue? Test every one and you might find it's right click or escape but nowhere in the game does it tell you this.
Speaking of "bound controls", let's say you want to record some gameplay footage or put on some music while messing around in a level or at the end of it. Well too bad because you can't! The mouse is locked to the center of the screen whilst in these modes so you need to pause or quit to the menu to regain control even if you tab out. To be honest it's not a big deal but it's certainly very confusing and frustrating when it happens to you and you have no clue what the problem is since it happens on seemingly random menu screens. Another thing that happens when you tab out of the game is that the gameplay music (but not menu music) stops looping and the voiced mission briefings gets muted but doesn't stop playing.
Now to my fourth complaint about the game. The mission breifings. First of all they're way too long and convoluted. Many do have some useful info but considering the gameplay the game offers you can't be bothered to read it all most of the time. Secondly the briefing is voiced by a computer-sounding female which actually sounds pretty neat. However the things she says isn't what the text is saying. What she's saying is a condensed version of the highlighted text, but if you try to listen to her and read at the same time it's just confusing. Thirdly, there is a lot of information that would be very useful to have in the instructions of the game but I'll get back to that later.
Moving on, let's take a look at the gameplay for a bit. When you first start the game only the Fighter is available and you need to complete 5 missions before you unlock the Survivor ship. These missions are mostly just tutorial levels that let you get a handle of your ship and the mechanics which is fine. The very first mission just let's you navigate through some obstacles for 20 seconds. However there is no way to go faster, you can't gain any score and the only thing dying or getting hit does is lowering your score which starts at 0 and can't go below it so you can literally do nothing and successfully beat the mission.
That in and of itself wouldn't be too bad if the only goal was to learn how to handle the craft. However when you unlock the second craft IT'S first mission is exactly the same and as far as I can tell their speed and handling are identical. This means that there is literally zero point in having that first mission again for the second craft.
When it comes to actually handling the craft, the mechanics are in my opinion very bad. Like I said before the WASD keys are very hard to use to the point of unusable considering the overall difficulty of the game so really you're going to use the mouse for all the movement. However the ship has a maximum speed limit and if your mouse speed exceeds that, a faint shadow of your ship will indicate where your mouse is and the ship will go toward that point at maximum speed. This gives the game an inherent input lag that only makes navigating hard and unintuitive. Other games that has a similar mechanic usually use mouse acceleration to smooth out the movements to make it more natural whilst also having a slower overall speed.
Now it might not seem all that bad at first glance but consider the situation here: you have 2 enemies shooting straight from the left, another enemy moving fast in a cross pattern with fast shots aimed towards you in addition to a big boulder blocking your path and a small boulder that's almost invisible against the background. There's also a boost ring which is a sort of power up that you'd like to collect.
So basically you want to look at 5 or 6 different places that aren't your ship and steer with a method of control that basically requires you to look at the faint shadow of your ship in order to move accurately in a game that moves this fast. You feel crippled rather than challenged and whenever you do something right it feels more like luck that you happened to move your mouse to the position you wanted rather than skill.
The second mission introduces the boost mechanic. Basically you can collect "boost rings" in order to fill your boost gauge and then scroll the game faster to get a better level time. You can also combo them together in order to get more boost per ring. The first ring gives "1" something, the second gives 2, then 3 and so on. Once you reach 10 it starts over at 1 even if the combo didn't end and if it did end you also get 1.
The fifth mission for the survivor ship requires you to finish the level in "Ghost mode". In order to do that you need to gain boost level 3 and then boost to the finish. So you try it a couple times and can't seem to reach level 3. How do I keep the combo going? How long between rings can I wait? Is there a visual cue I'm missing? Do the numbers represent the combo counter or something else?
So you go to the in-depth guide PDF linked on the steam page and read about Boost and you learn that each ring gives 2% individually, the 2nd in a combo gives 4%, the next 8%. "After this, every boost ring that is reached within two seconds from the last fills the boost bar by 8%".
So in total there are 21 rings in the level. With some basic maths we find that the maximum combo we can get is 10 + 10 + 1 which gives
2*(2+4+8*8)+2= 142%
Wait hold on that doesn't look right! How much % is a level anyway? If you ignore the actual numbers and just assume a 21 ring combo you still only get
2+4+8*19=158%
That still looks wrong unless a boost level is 50% for some reason. So I don't get this mission because the game numbers your combo from 1 to 10 back to 1 and I have no clue if that resets the combo or not because it would be pretty reasonable to assume that if the number go from 10 to 1 that means the combo was reset, but the "in-depth guide" only mentions it being 2 seconds between picking up a ring as a combo breaker so I have no clue what's going on. Furthermore what is the whole deal with the percentages anyway because the numbers don't add up in any way I can make sense of.
Now you stop giving a crap about making sense of all this and try to just get all the rings in a single combo to beat the stage, which is hard because there is no indicator for when 2 seconds have gone by and you can't look at the timer because the controls are shit and getting killed ruins it so after some 20 attempts you finally get level 3 and beat the stage.
Or so you thought but you didn't. What the hell why not? I reached level three so I should be in ghost mode right? Nope, in the mission text you read 30 minutes ago and forgot about it says you're only in ghost mode if you're boosting while in level 3.
Anyway moving on, the 6th mission for Fighter requires you to reach "Rank: C". Ranks are determined by the score you have at the end of the level. Time doesn't give you extra score so "Highest score" and "Fastest time" are completely independent of each other so you can take your time with these which is thankful considering every single hit gives you a score penalty.
Now I've never balanced a game personally so take my opinion here with a grain of salt but when you kill the most common enemies in the game you only get 10-50 points. Some are worth more to the point where they're breaking the levels they're in but what happens for most levels requiring a rank you're struggling to combo 10-point enemies while avoiding near invisible tiny space rocks that take off 250 points if you touch them. Compare that to 100 points off for a death. Also the game doesn't give you a reasonable amount of invincibility frames after being hurt so what usually happens is that a single crash into anything that doesn't disappear will remove all of your points unless you're lucky enough to die before that in which case you do get some frames of invincibility. And mistakes are quite easy in this game, just take a look at the section right at the end of Fighter 6. There's one section that's sort of hard at the start but you learn to avoid it but the rest of the level is just waiting for that one bit and a single mistake means a reset.
Speaking of resets; there's no reset button. Every time you want to do a new attempt, you need to exit the stage, select the correct mission, wait half a second until the "play" button can be pressed, then wait for the second or two it takes to load the level (which is insane btw for a game of this sort!). For a game that revolves around hard gameplay and maximising scores it's very strange there's not a "retry" button.
Anyway that level took me like half an hour to complete but the 7th Fighter mission one I got on my third try. How you ask? By making sure I didn't die after the first row of enemies kill themselves then you just hit the OP enemies that give 100 points each and kill the last two in a combo. Again the strategy becomes to just wait around for the very end part of the level for the challenging part and that's not very fun at all even if you were loving the game and tried to get high scores.
The start of this level is shamelessly reused from the end of the level before. In fact in the 18 missions I've completed so far the only areas I've seen are the asteroids, that ship-arm-light thing and a small part of the inside of the ship. I suspect all 3 ships have the same long continuous level that are split apart between missions with the start point just being slightly further into the level with each mission but it certainly gets repetitive after like 6 or so missions in a row of the same area.
After only a few moments with the last character I had had enough. Let's take another look at the instructions. "You can also drag this box around enemy attacks to return their damage back at each corresponding enemy that initiated the attack". So basically I wait for 30 seconds then try to use the star box to kill the 3 enemies at the end. But it doesn't work. I tried several times. Maybe I'm doing it wrong and should consult the "in-depth guide" but I don't care. I followed the instructions and tried dragging the box which disappears in like half a second around the enemy attacks and it didn't work. I tried dragging it in front of the attacks and it didn't work. I tried dragging it onto the enemies themselves and it didn't work. I'm not waiting around for 30 seconds doing almost nothing in order to have another attempt at understanding the basic attack you couldn't explain how to do in four rows of text.
So that's basically all I have to say about the game. I'm sure I could continue all day if I had the patience to play it all the way through but I think I've tried harder than most would and all it does is making me frustrated over the poor execution of almost every aspect of the game. I don't really mind the graphics personally, they're ok for what the game is, but there's no thought put behind the things that really matter.
The meters are quite literally big boxes made with no love. Every piece of the Heads Up Display is out of the way so it's hard to look at them while playing the more intense sections. The ship shoots from weird offcenter places making it hard to aim. Foreground objects often don't stand out from the background. It's very hard to keep a combo going because there's no indicator for when it's ending. The same areas are reused over and over. The list just goes on!
The menu music is pretty good and the game music is... ok, but those aren't original works they're just taken from some website with free music.
I wouldn't buy this game.
Secondly, the frame rate of this game is completely bonkers. I actually couldn't find a way to find out the true FPS of the game since neither the Steam overlay or Fraps would work with it but based on my own experience it hovers around 20 to 30 FPS which is unacceptable for a PC game. Take a look at the credits and you can clearly see the text jumping while scrolling.
My third complaint is the options menu. There isn't any! I can appreciate the fact that keyboard controls are available and with the right settings they might be somewhat useful but really this game was designed to be used with a mouse and thus the movement speed is more or less a useless option which makes the options menu even more lackluster. The game only supports 1 resolution which is 1280*720 and there isn't any toggle for full screen on the options menu. There is a button command for it which is flashed when you first start the game but it disappears quickly and honestly should be listed in the options since there's tons of room for it.
You can't rebind any of the controls but mostly they're pretty logical so it's not a big deal. However the game does a pretty bad job at menu navigation. What button you need to press at the end of a level in order to continue? Test every one and you might find it's right click or escape but nowhere in the game does it tell you this.
Speaking of "bound controls", let's say you want to record some gameplay footage or put on some music while messing around in a level or at the end of it. Well too bad because you can't! The mouse is locked to the center of the screen whilst in these modes so you need to pause or quit to the menu to regain control even if you tab out. To be honest it's not a big deal but it's certainly very confusing and frustrating when it happens to you and you have no clue what the problem is since it happens on seemingly random menu screens. Another thing that happens when you tab out of the game is that the gameplay music (but not menu music) stops looping and the voiced mission briefings gets muted but doesn't stop playing.
Now to my fourth complaint about the game. The mission breifings. First of all they're way too long and convoluted. Many do have some useful info but considering the gameplay the game offers you can't be bothered to read it all most of the time. Secondly the briefing is voiced by a computer-sounding female which actually sounds pretty neat. However the things she says isn't what the text is saying. What she's saying is a condensed version of the highlighted text, but if you try to listen to her and read at the same time it's just confusing. Thirdly, there is a lot of information that would be very useful to have in the instructions of the game but I'll get back to that later.
Moving on, let's take a look at the gameplay for a bit. When you first start the game only the Fighter is available and you need to complete 5 missions before you unlock the Survivor ship. These missions are mostly just tutorial levels that let you get a handle of your ship and the mechanics which is fine. The very first mission just let's you navigate through some obstacles for 20 seconds. However there is no way to go faster, you can't gain any score and the only thing dying or getting hit does is lowering your score which starts at 0 and can't go below it so you can literally do nothing and successfully beat the mission.
That in and of itself wouldn't be too bad if the only goal was to learn how to handle the craft. However when you unlock the second craft IT'S first mission is exactly the same and as far as I can tell their speed and handling are identical. This means that there is literally zero point in having that first mission again for the second craft.
When it comes to actually handling the craft, the mechanics are in my opinion very bad. Like I said before the WASD keys are very hard to use to the point of unusable considering the overall difficulty of the game so really you're going to use the mouse for all the movement. However the ship has a maximum speed limit and if your mouse speed exceeds that, a faint shadow of your ship will indicate where your mouse is and the ship will go toward that point at maximum speed. This gives the game an inherent input lag that only makes navigating hard and unintuitive. Other games that has a similar mechanic usually use mouse acceleration to smooth out the movements to make it more natural whilst also having a slower overall speed.
Now it might not seem all that bad at first glance but consider the situation here: you have 2 enemies shooting straight from the left, another enemy moving fast in a cross pattern with fast shots aimed towards you in addition to a big boulder blocking your path and a small boulder that's almost invisible against the background. There's also a boost ring which is a sort of power up that you'd like to collect.
So basically you want to look at 5 or 6 different places that aren't your ship and steer with a method of control that basically requires you to look at the faint shadow of your ship in order to move accurately in a game that moves this fast. You feel crippled rather than challenged and whenever you do something right it feels more like luck that you happened to move your mouse to the position you wanted rather than skill.
The second mission introduces the boost mechanic. Basically you can collect "boost rings" in order to fill your boost gauge and then scroll the game faster to get a better level time. You can also combo them together in order to get more boost per ring. The first ring gives "1" something, the second gives 2, then 3 and so on. Once you reach 10 it starts over at 1 even if the combo didn't end and if it did end you also get 1.
The fifth mission for the survivor ship requires you to finish the level in "Ghost mode". In order to do that you need to gain boost level 3 and then boost to the finish. So you try it a couple times and can't seem to reach level 3. How do I keep the combo going? How long between rings can I wait? Is there a visual cue I'm missing? Do the numbers represent the combo counter or something else?
So you go to the in-depth guide PDF linked on the steam page and read about Boost and you learn that each ring gives 2% individually, the 2nd in a combo gives 4%, the next 8%. "After this, every boost ring that is reached within two seconds from the last fills the boost bar by 8%".
So in total there are 21 rings in the level. With some basic maths we find that the maximum combo we can get is 10 + 10 + 1 which gives
2*(2+4+8*8)+2= 142%
Wait hold on that doesn't look right! How much % is a level anyway? If you ignore the actual numbers and just assume a 21 ring combo you still only get
2+4+8*19=158%
That still looks wrong unless a boost level is 50% for some reason. So I don't get this mission because the game numbers your combo from 1 to 10 back to 1 and I have no clue if that resets the combo or not because it would be pretty reasonable to assume that if the number go from 10 to 1 that means the combo was reset, but the "in-depth guide" only mentions it being 2 seconds between picking up a ring as a combo breaker so I have no clue what's going on. Furthermore what is the whole deal with the percentages anyway because the numbers don't add up in any way I can make sense of.
Now you stop giving a crap about making sense of all this and try to just get all the rings in a single combo to beat the stage, which is hard because there is no indicator for when 2 seconds have gone by and you can't look at the timer because the controls are shit and getting killed ruins it so after some 20 attempts you finally get level 3 and beat the stage.
Or so you thought but you didn't. What the hell why not? I reached level three so I should be in ghost mode right? Nope, in the mission text you read 30 minutes ago and forgot about it says you're only in ghost mode if you're boosting while in level 3.
Anyway moving on, the 6th mission for Fighter requires you to reach "Rank: C". Ranks are determined by the score you have at the end of the level. Time doesn't give you extra score so "Highest score" and "Fastest time" are completely independent of each other so you can take your time with these which is thankful considering every single hit gives you a score penalty.
Now I've never balanced a game personally so take my opinion here with a grain of salt but when you kill the most common enemies in the game you only get 10-50 points. Some are worth more to the point where they're breaking the levels they're in but what happens for most levels requiring a rank you're struggling to combo 10-point enemies while avoiding near invisible tiny space rocks that take off 250 points if you touch them. Compare that to 100 points off for a death. Also the game doesn't give you a reasonable amount of invincibility frames after being hurt so what usually happens is that a single crash into anything that doesn't disappear will remove all of your points unless you're lucky enough to die before that in which case you do get some frames of invincibility. And mistakes are quite easy in this game, just take a look at the section right at the end of Fighter 6. There's one section that's sort of hard at the start but you learn to avoid it but the rest of the level is just waiting for that one bit and a single mistake means a reset.
Speaking of resets; there's no reset button. Every time you want to do a new attempt, you need to exit the stage, select the correct mission, wait half a second until the "play" button can be pressed, then wait for the second or two it takes to load the level (which is insane btw for a game of this sort!). For a game that revolves around hard gameplay and maximising scores it's very strange there's not a "retry" button.
Anyway that level took me like half an hour to complete but the 7th Fighter mission one I got on my third try. How you ask? By making sure I didn't die after the first row of enemies kill themselves then you just hit the OP enemies that give 100 points each and kill the last two in a combo. Again the strategy becomes to just wait around for the very end part of the level for the challenging part and that's not very fun at all even if you were loving the game and tried to get high scores.
The start of this level is shamelessly reused from the end of the level before. In fact in the 18 missions I've completed so far the only areas I've seen are the asteroids, that ship-arm-light thing and a small part of the inside of the ship. I suspect all 3 ships have the same long continuous level that are split apart between missions with the start point just being slightly further into the level with each mission but it certainly gets repetitive after like 6 or so missions in a row of the same area.
After only a few moments with the last character I had had enough. Let's take another look at the instructions. "You can also drag this box around enemy attacks to return their damage back at each corresponding enemy that initiated the attack". So basically I wait for 30 seconds then try to use the star box to kill the 3 enemies at the end. But it doesn't work. I tried several times. Maybe I'm doing it wrong and should consult the "in-depth guide" but I don't care. I followed the instructions and tried dragging the box which disappears in like half a second around the enemy attacks and it didn't work. I tried dragging it in front of the attacks and it didn't work. I tried dragging it onto the enemies themselves and it didn't work. I'm not waiting around for 30 seconds doing almost nothing in order to have another attempt at understanding the basic attack you couldn't explain how to do in four rows of text.
So that's basically all I have to say about the game. I'm sure I could continue all day if I had the patience to play it all the way through but I think I've tried harder than most would and all it does is making me frustrated over the poor execution of almost every aspect of the game. I don't really mind the graphics personally, they're ok for what the game is, but there's no thought put behind the things that really matter.
The meters are quite literally big boxes made with no love. Every piece of the Heads Up Display is out of the way so it's hard to look at them while playing the more intense sections. The ship shoots from weird offcenter places making it hard to aim. Foreground objects often don't stand out from the background. It's very hard to keep a combo going because there's no indicator for when it's ending. The same areas are reused over and over. The list just goes on!
The menu music is pretty good and the game music is... ok, but those aren't original works they're just taken from some website with free music.
I wouldn't buy this game.
16
Hiya Folks / Re: Hello!
« on: November 20, 2015, 06:47:27 pm »
Congratulations on having excellent taste. Don't be afraid to ask if you need help. Also remember to check out the resources gathered at the SDA knowledgebase if you need extra guidance. Welcome!
17
Wikkity! / Re: Halloween Topics! 3: Most Bizarre Costume
« on: October 29, 2015, 08:15:15 am »
Menstruation theme
This was a school class photo shoot in Sweden. People usually do them the last year of elementary school.
This was a school class photo shoot in Sweden. People usually do them the last year of elementary school.
18
Wikkity! / Re: Halloween Topics! 1: Spookiet Game Experience
« on: October 28, 2015, 02:55:04 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybhHonNePpQ
For legit scares I have to say the Majoras Mask aliens. My mom had to help me get through that part haha.
For legit scares I have to say the Majoras Mask aliens. My mom had to help me get through that part haha.
19
Information Kiosk / Re: IMPORTANT: Verify your stats before submitting!
« on: October 09, 2015, 09:37:12 pm »
I don't like how people can abuse the checkpoints in the Genesis games so I only do it in 1 or 2 stages where it's necessary. I still beat lots of people with those times and it's equally pleasing every time ;).
You can put whatever restrictions you want on yourself but if you want to change the rules you should make an argument in the appropriate subforum.
(just to clarify, saying it's "not legit" or "cheating" is not an argument)
You can put whatever restrictions you want on yourself but if you want to change the rules you should make an argument in the appropriate subforum.
(just to clarify, saying it's "not legit" or "cheating" is not an argument)
20
Competition Central / Re: Gathering thoughts and general ideas for the improvement of TSC
« on: August 12, 2015, 08:41:02 am »
You mean like this? http://www.soniccenter.org/forum/index.php?topic=5424.msg56643#msg56643
21
Competition Central / Re: Gathering thoughts and general ideas for the improvement of TSC
« on: June 02, 2015, 09:13:13 am »
Why have olympics the greeks did it 2000 years ago that's sooo 5th century BC.
22
Rules Revisions / Re: Validity of proof and clarification
« on: May 30, 2015, 07:33:32 am »
By console video I mean footage captured from a console. Everyone and their mom have a decent camera on their phone nowadays so there's no excuse not being able to record in the case of having to prove a stat.
23
Rules Revisions / Re: Validity of proof and clarification
« on: May 29, 2015, 11:55:26 am »
I'm not saying TSC shouldn't have an honour system or that every stat should have proof, but if easily faked proof is accepted then BS calls become ineffective and pointless, leaving the site with no method of weeding out fake stats. What is valid proof varies with the game, but I'm going to use Sonic 2 as an example since I know a lot about it.
We can make up a few types of evidence and order them after how hard they are to fake:
- Claim
- Screenshot/photo
- Video
- Live attempt
The problem in this case is that TSC accept all videos as valid evidence for any stat and if someone has a problem with it they need to find proof of it being faked. However all videos are not equally hard to fake which creates a discrepancy in the order I laid out. We can try to make a new one with more types:
- Claim
- Screenshot/Photo
- Emulator video with capability of recording inputs
- Emulator video without capability of recording inputs
- Emulator video with extra info (e.g. including booting the game or controller cam)
- Console video
- Live attempt
Now we need to decide how to handle these different types of evidence. Claims you do when you submit stats so that's nothing new. Photo's shouldn't be valid proof because how easy it is to fake thanks to the debug mode allowing you to move with a paused timer. Console videos and live attempts could probably be considered valid by default since faking them is very hard and detecting splices or similar is much easier. But if someone submits an emulator video I think additional information should be required if a BS call comes into effect (like sharing the GMV if it the inputs were recorded, sharing the source video files etc.) and I think it should be viewed with a lot of skepticism similar to screenshots instead of being unfalsifiable proof like it is today. You could also restrict what methods one is allowed to use or have clear instructions that makes cheating harder while also making detecting straying from these easier. I've heard that people are working on saving meta-data in the input files in Bizhawk that will make cheating on it very hard so I'm hopeful reasonable alternatives for providing proof can exist for everyone.
We can make up a few types of evidence and order them after how hard they are to fake:
- Claim
- Screenshot/photo
- Video
- Live attempt
The problem in this case is that TSC accept all videos as valid evidence for any stat and if someone has a problem with it they need to find proof of it being faked. However all videos are not equally hard to fake which creates a discrepancy in the order I laid out. We can try to make a new one with more types:
- Claim
- Screenshot/Photo
- Emulator video with capability of recording inputs
- Emulator video without capability of recording inputs
- Emulator video with extra info (e.g. including booting the game or controller cam)
- Console video
- Live attempt
Now we need to decide how to handle these different types of evidence. Claims you do when you submit stats so that's nothing new. Photo's shouldn't be valid proof because how easy it is to fake thanks to the debug mode allowing you to move with a paused timer. Console videos and live attempts could probably be considered valid by default since faking them is very hard and detecting splices or similar is much easier. But if someone submits an emulator video I think additional information should be required if a BS call comes into effect (like sharing the GMV if it the inputs were recorded, sharing the source video files etc.) and I think it should be viewed with a lot of skepticism similar to screenshots instead of being unfalsifiable proof like it is today. You could also restrict what methods one is allowed to use or have clear instructions that makes cheating harder while also making detecting straying from these easier. I've heard that people are working on saving meta-data in the input files in Bizhawk that will make cheating on it very hard so I'm hopeful reasonable alternatives for providing proof can exist for everyone.
24
Rules Revisions / Validity of proof and clarification
« on: May 27, 2015, 08:54:50 am »
Before I start, no this is not the new "emulators should be banned" thread.
Today I finished a run of Sonic 2 using savestates and uploaded to Youtube. If I was a douchebag who wanted to cheat I could reference that video when submitting stats and no one could BS call me because nothing in the video indicates cheating.
Except it's completely ridiculous.
No one in their right mind who had played Sonic 2 for more than 10 minutes would think this run was made at least without using some form of cheat. The entire speedrun community would be unanimous in thinking that the run isn't legit.
TSC operates on an honour system and if someone comes under suspicion of cheating they are required to provide proof. This proof is then analyzed by moderators and whomever they might ask for help. I have in the past helped out a number of times in trying to help ban people who are under suspicion. This includes audio, video and gameplay analysis. After I have determined the most likely emulator the game is being played on (if not console) by using telltale signs, I re-watch the video a few times, sometimes slowed down, to try to detect frame skips to look for a splice, unlikely frame perfect inputs (like counting the number of frames some suspicious spindashes take) and a number of other things that might differ depending on the emulator. This is all made harder by YT compressed, 30fps, low quality recordings I might add. If everything checks out and there's several stats submitted, you can look at other videos the person has submitted and do the same thing. All this work can take hours if not a whole day put together.
If that checks out, the only thing left to do is to analyse what the person is actually doing during the run and weigh it all together to see if it's reasonable. For IL's this is very hard almost to the point of pointless but sometimes someone uploads a supposed single segment full game run and submits the times in that run to TSC or other sites.
This is an example of when this was successful in detecting someone cheating who later got caught from another video and admitted it. He denied that the full game run he used for submission was cheated but his credibility was already lost. The community of different games have also used this form of analysing gameplay to determine whether a run is in fact "too good to be true", most notably on SDA.
I've been told that an SDA reject for cheating can be valid proof for a BS call, but this does not apply to emulators. It could also probably be extended to other sites like speedrun.com, but what happens if the player only submits to TSC?
A few months ago I sent this to an admin who requested my help who then forwarded to a second admin. I admit that it's quite passive aggressive to the point of not being an objective analysis anymore and while I don't want to put full blame on frustration I think it's important to note that I've tried to help a growing number of times fruitlessly and this BS call in particular took an unusual amount of time. After a month of silence I requested response but still I have received none whatsoever. The video in question has since been taken down after being made private shortly after it caught knowledgeable peoples attention but I have a download of it saved on my computer. The few other prominent runners I have asked all agree it looks mighty suspicious with just a quick glance. The stats are still up.
So my question is: How rigid does proof need to be in order to be considered valid for a BS call? Would my video really make the cut? At what point can we trust the knowledge of top runners without obvious proof? What can we do to prevent this loop hole to continue to happen? Hell, this guy is not banned but admitted to cheating just months prior using exactly the same setup I did in my video. This is a big issue to me with this site and I think a clear line has to be drawn somewhere.
Today I finished a run of Sonic 2 using savestates and uploaded to Youtube. If I was a douchebag who wanted to cheat I could reference that video when submitting stats and no one could BS call me because nothing in the video indicates cheating.
Except it's completely ridiculous.
No one in their right mind who had played Sonic 2 for more than 10 minutes would think this run was made at least without using some form of cheat. The entire speedrun community would be unanimous in thinking that the run isn't legit.
TSC operates on an honour system and if someone comes under suspicion of cheating they are required to provide proof. This proof is then analyzed by moderators and whomever they might ask for help. I have in the past helped out a number of times in trying to help ban people who are under suspicion. This includes audio, video and gameplay analysis. After I have determined the most likely emulator the game is being played on (if not console) by using telltale signs, I re-watch the video a few times, sometimes slowed down, to try to detect frame skips to look for a splice, unlikely frame perfect inputs (like counting the number of frames some suspicious spindashes take) and a number of other things that might differ depending on the emulator. This is all made harder by YT compressed, 30fps, low quality recordings I might add. If everything checks out and there's several stats submitted, you can look at other videos the person has submitted and do the same thing. All this work can take hours if not a whole day put together.
If that checks out, the only thing left to do is to analyse what the person is actually doing during the run and weigh it all together to see if it's reasonable. For IL's this is very hard almost to the point of pointless but sometimes someone uploads a supposed single segment full game run and submits the times in that run to TSC or other sites.
This is an example of when this was successful in detecting someone cheating who later got caught from another video and admitted it. He denied that the full game run he used for submission was cheated but his credibility was already lost. The community of different games have also used this form of analysing gameplay to determine whether a run is in fact "too good to be true", most notably on SDA.
I've been told that an SDA reject for cheating can be valid proof for a BS call, but this does not apply to emulators. It could also probably be extended to other sites like speedrun.com, but what happens if the player only submits to TSC?
A few months ago I sent this to an admin who requested my help who then forwarded to a second admin. I admit that it's quite passive aggressive to the point of not being an objective analysis anymore and while I don't want to put full blame on frustration I think it's important to note that I've tried to help a growing number of times fruitlessly and this BS call in particular took an unusual amount of time. After a month of silence I requested response but still I have received none whatsoever. The video in question has since been taken down after being made private shortly after it caught knowledgeable peoples attention but I have a download of it saved on my computer. The few other prominent runners I have asked all agree it looks mighty suspicious with just a quick glance. The stats are still up.
So my question is: How rigid does proof need to be in order to be considered valid for a BS call? Would my video really make the cut? At what point can we trust the knowledge of top runners without obvious proof? What can we do to prevent this loop hole to continue to happen? Hell, this guy is not banned but admitted to cheating just months prior using exactly the same setup I did in my video. This is a big issue to me with this site and I think a clear line has to be drawn somewhere.
25
News and Updates / Re: Administrator Title Change
« on: May 24, 2015, 07:01:38 pm »
Forgive me for being late to the party but I'd like to give my gratitude to Thorn, Parax and whomever I've learned to know during my time on TSC for all their efforts both prior and after I joined to help make the community what it is when it's at its best and for putting up with so much bullshit, including from me.
My best experience from TSC is by far the revival of race nights and the year that followed. Unfortunately it changed for the worse and I was honestly quite sad when it finally died. Thank you guys, I had a blast.
As far as what's to come of TSC in the future, I'm in agreement with Parax in that I don't see any real future for it unless some major changes are implemented. When it comes to stats the site is in this limbo where you can't call out a proof without solid evidence but at the same time solid evidence for either side doesn't exist. But instead of putting the burden of proof on the one claiming the stat, the burden of proof lies on the one making the BS call. The result is frustration both from users and admins and unless this is changed I can only see TSC devolving to obscurity.
I've previously argued that TSC should go with the times and include full-game runs of some sort on the site. However I've changed my opinion since today that role has already been filled by newer and more progressive sites. I'm happy with TSC filling the niche of score, ring and IL runs since that's the embodiment of the spirit SEGA had in the 90's with their heavy arcade feel. But the reason TSC and its members have become more toxic and/or vocal about it in recent years I would attribute to frustration to the status quo that I think most feel is hurting the site.
I hope change for the better can come sooner than later. And if nothing else, it's been a fun ride while it lasted :).
My best experience from TSC is by far the revival of race nights and the year that followed. Unfortunately it changed for the worse and I was honestly quite sad when it finally died. Thank you guys, I had a blast.
As far as what's to come of TSC in the future, I'm in agreement with Parax in that I don't see any real future for it unless some major changes are implemented. When it comes to stats the site is in this limbo where you can't call out a proof without solid evidence but at the same time solid evidence for either side doesn't exist. But instead of putting the burden of proof on the one claiming the stat, the burden of proof lies on the one making the BS call. The result is frustration both from users and admins and unless this is changed I can only see TSC devolving to obscurity.
I've previously argued that TSC should go with the times and include full-game runs of some sort on the site. However I've changed my opinion since today that role has already been filled by newer and more progressive sites. I'm happy with TSC filling the niche of score, ring and IL runs since that's the embodiment of the spirit SEGA had in the 90's with their heavy arcade feel. But the reason TSC and its members have become more toxic and/or vocal about it in recent years I would attribute to frustration to the status quo that I think most feel is hurting the site.
I hope change for the better can come sooner than later. And if nothing else, it's been a fun ride while it lasted :).
26
Beef / Re: ITT Anti-emulator propaganda
« on: May 13, 2015, 07:53:33 am »I need to clarify this isn't a salt issue, my computer is capable of running an emulated ps4 sonic game at what tsc calls "full speed" ( and this is where therein the problem lies) if it existed, I can emulate anything if I so choose.
No you couldn't. A moderate to high end desktop computer today would struggle to accurately emulate a console from the early 90's. When it was released, the Genesis emulator Exodus required a prototype processor not on the market in order to run at full speed. Why were there Genesis emulators even in the age when DOS were popular then you might ask? The answer is programming tricks and cheats that result in inaccurate emulation that can be sufficient for casual play but not for competition.
EDIT: Quote from the first link: "To run Pong at about 5-10fps, DICE requires a 3GHz processor. Yes, you read that right: no computer processor at this time that can run Pong at the circuit level at full speed".
27
Information Kiosk / Re: Realistic Suggestion On Moving Forward
« on: May 12, 2015, 02:27:09 pm »
https://www.zeldaspeedruns.com/leaderboards/oot/any
Notice that thing to the right that says "status"? The tick that says "verified"? I think that should be sufficient for all intents and purposes with an option of filtering it. All that's needed is to determine what is considered valid proof. A screenshot or video of an emulator I think shouldn't (at least depending on the emulator used, see the rules I wrote on speedrun.com). A screenshot of a TV or handheld could be depending on the game. A recorded video of a console should.
When it comes to point boosts I have no opinion since I never cared about them, I only care about the charts themselves and their legitimacy.
Notice that thing to the right that says "status"? The tick that says "verified"? I think that should be sufficient for all intents and purposes with an option of filtering it. All that's needed is to determine what is considered valid proof. A screenshot or video of an emulator I think shouldn't (at least depending on the emulator used, see the rules I wrote on speedrun.com). A screenshot of a TV or handheld could be depending on the game. A recorded video of a console should.
When it comes to point boosts I have no opinion since I never cared about them, I only care about the charts themselves and their legitimacy.
28
Information Kiosk / Re: Realistic Suggestion On Moving Forward
« on: May 10, 2015, 08:47:29 am »
I don't think video proof is the end all solution for the site. But I think there's a big discrepancy in how valid a proof is considered depending on if it's an image or video.
It's easy to cheat with photo proofs even on console for a lot of games. For genesis games just enable debug and move while the timer is paused. If you have a video however, it's much trickier to fake. However if you have a video from an emulator with rerecording capabilities then it's easy as pie.
I'm not particularly against a "verified stat" system but I think some proofs should be valued more than others and currently I think emulator videos are extremely overrated in their value.
It's easy to cheat with photo proofs even on console for a lot of games. For genesis games just enable debug and move while the timer is paused. If you have a video however, it's much trickier to fake. However if you have a video from an emulator with rerecording capabilities then it's easy as pie.
I'm not particularly against a "verified stat" system but I think some proofs should be valued more than others and currently I think emulator videos are extremely overrated in their value.
29
Beef / Re: ITT Anti-emulator propaganda
« on: May 09, 2015, 09:09:36 am »
Yea sure you only want to follow the laws you like while ignoring those you don't care about like stealing intellectual property because you don't feel like paying. That sounds like a reasonable position..... >_>
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