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tmont

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Blog Comments posted by tmont

    vdub_bobby

    Posted

    NES: Supports fine-scrolling in all directions - note that a stock NES only has enough RAM to scroll horizontally or vertically, but not both at the same time.

     

    I tried to think of an example to refute this, but I couldn't think of one. I never realized that before. Interesting.

    Mord

    php

    in Mord's Blog

    A blog by Mord in General

    Posted

    To test stuff, you can do that on your machine, if you have a server (i.e. Apache). It would be fairly ridiculous to ftp stuff to dreamhost just to test a web page. If you're just learning PHP for fun, I'd download something like WAMP or XAMPP (depending on your operating system) to get you going really easily. If you're feeling ambitious, you can compile them all separately and try to get them to talk to each other via the configuration files. It's quite the learning process. :)

    Nathan Strum

    Posted

    The same thing happened to me at work a few weeks ago. They randomly changed the IP address of one of our servers, which effectively rendered us useless for half the day, since the new IP address was not accessible from the memcache servers. It was awesome. Similarly, it would've been nice to know, like, at least 10 minutes before it happened.

    tmont

    Posted

    Shinobi III's already been done. Otherwise I would've been all over it; that game rules. The other two Ninja Gaidens look way cooler than the first. The second one has those cool shadow ninjas, and the third one just has way cooler levels. The first one was just made to piss you off.
    tmont

    Posted

    Are you the only speed-runner who declares his undying hatred for the game in the author comments so frequently? Cracks me up ;)

    Hmmm... doing a quick skim of most of the games there, I appear to be the only one to run games I hate. To be fair, though, I didn't start hating Kid Icarus until after I started the run; Ninja Gaiden was receiving bad vibes well before I decided to tear it apart. And that was before I knew about the birds. My comments were a bit petulant, though; I probably should've waited a week or so to give me some time to cool off.

     

    Also, I got to write the "cheesy intro" for Ninja Gaiden, which I'm quite proud of. I think summed up the game quite nicely:

     

    Released by Tecmo in March 1989, Ninja Gaiden follows the journey of Ryu Hayabusa who sets out to avenge his father's death. Judging from the fantastic cut scenes, it also involves a woman with a mullet who may or may not be trying to kill him. This game set the precedent for all subsequent ninja games, in that you run around in broad daylight, kill any and all things in your path, and do no less than 30 flips every time you leave the ground. This game is known to be extremely frustrating, mainly due to the difficulty of the platforming and the unfairness of the birds.

     

    I never could make sense of the cut scenes. For all it's hype, it's the most convoluted story involving a woman with a mullet I've ever seen.

    Cybergoth

    Posted

    That's one major point that can be criticized regarding the game and admittedly it really takes a lot of practice until you master those sequences. It's only a handful of screens though and once you memorized the required jumps, they're no longer a problem.

     

    Heh. I see what you're saying, but forcing the user to memorize button press sequences is not my idea of a well-made game. I've played a lot of Ninja Gaiden recently (did a speed run), and it's the same kind of thing: there's no way anyone could ever pass some of the levels without memorizing exactly when to jump and swing your sword. And the time you're spending memorizing where and when to do things is time you're not spending enjoying the game.

     

    Reminds me of #19 in A Gamer's Manifesto. :)

    Cybergoth

    Posted

    The music in this game kind of rules.

     

    I'm not really a big fan of games that try to create that psuedo-3D atmosphere by making your character only able to move in diagonals. I imagine that trying to complete platforming puzzles, like jumping from rock to rock across a river, would be rather annoying when your depth perception is so severely limited.

    vdub_bobby

    Posted

    I played this for a while (got a score or 1802!), and everything seemed fine. My only beef is that sometimes it's kind of hard to tell which fish you're allowed to eat, especially since they're slightly different colors depending on their depth. Maybe some kind of indicator could help, or something. Like maybe the sky turns orange when you're allowed to eat the orange-ish fish, or perhaps something less obtrusive.

    ubikuberalles

    Posted

    Here's the main difference in my circles2.php program from circles:

     

    $i = 0;
$order = 0;
while ($i != 360)
{
 $i %= 360;
 $order++;
 $i += $interval;
}
 
$i = 0;
while ($i != 360)
{
 $i %= 360;
 for ($j = 0; $j < $order; $j++)
 {
[draw the line with a random color, etc.]   
 }
 $i += $interval;
}

     

    The only difference was the number of lines drawn from each point. As you can see (maybe), it depends on the order of the interval in the additive group Z[360]. To figure out the order of an element in this group, you just keep adding it to itself, until it equals 0 mod 360. I think there's an actual formula, or something for figuring that out, but I haven't taken group theory for a few years. What this also does is make all elements with equal order look the same. For example, if your interval is n, then 360-n will look exactly the same.

    ubikuberalles

    Posted

    So, my other post got me curious, so I went ahead and created a program to do whatever gibberish I said earlier. Except I'm pretty sure I made a trigonometric mistake somewhere, but I like the results, so I don't really care.

     

    Here's a few examples:

     

    Interval: 30

    circlesCAO2FJVE.png

     

    Interval: 15

    circlesCALQLK1O.png

     

    Interval: 187

    circlesCAQG18D5.png

     

    Interval: 111

    circlesCA1O49Q1.png

     

    You get the idea. If you want to play around with it, just change the interval, color and radius variables in the URL.

    Here's the source code if anyone's interested: circlesource.php.

     

    Edit: My error was actually a group theory error, not a trig error. Fixed version is here: circles 2. It's quite a bit slower, but the differences are pretty evident, e.g. interval 115 circles 2 and interval 115 circles.

    ubikuberalles

    Posted

    Sounds cool; computer generated art has always been interesting to me, even though I'm a terrible artist, and have no interest in ever becoming an artist. But I like looking at it.

     

    An interesting variation on your circle-line program would be to vary the points. The way you're implementing it now, all the intervals are equal (I assume, although you didn't show an example with a number of points not divisible by 360). There's a (semi-) famous logic puzzle that goes something like this:

     

    There's a circular table with 13 chairs (I don't remember the exact number), each numbered 1-13, going clockwise (like a clock). You want to sit in the chair numbered 1. The way you decided where you will sit is by skipping every other chair. So the first time around, if you choose to start at chair 1, you can't sit in any of the even-numbered chairs. i.e.

     

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

     

    Now you're on chair 13, but you still have to skip every other chair, so you cross out chair 1, bypass chair 2 (it's already gone), and now you're on chair 3. After the second iteration, it would look like this:

     

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

     

    Keep repeating this process of skipping every other chair until only one chair is left (in the example I just made up, the last chair would be 11). Which chair do you start at so that chair #1 is the last chair left?

     

    Obviously, the solution is irrelevant, but I was thinking what if you selected the points on the circle like that? Instead of evenly spacing them out, you choose an interval (in degrees?) that you start with, and place points like that until the entire circle is filled.

     

    For example, if you choose your interval to be 7, then you'd place a point at 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, etc. until all points on the perimeter of the circle were filled (assuming each point on the perimeter of the circle was numbered 1-360). I don't know if it would make any difference, but I think each generated circle would look different depending on the interval you chose (after you added color, of course).

     

    Anyway, your pictures made me think of that puzzle. I'm not sure if I related it in a coherent fashion, though...

    ubikuberalles

    Posted

    Very cool!

     

    It reminds of a program I saw on TV about fractals and the Mandelbrot set. They drew a Mandelbrot set and rotated the colors like you did, and it created the effect that it was "moving," kind of like going through a never-ending a tunnel. I was totally mesmerized.

     

    Check this out; it's very similar to what you've created:

     

    http://www.eddaardvark.co.uk/python_patterns/mbaindex.htm

    tmont

    Posted

    Would there be any practical way of generating .WAV output? Would probably require a high-speed internet connection to be terribly useful (31.5 kbytes per second of music) but it would give a much more accurate impression of what the thing will sound like.

     

    Well, I'd need two things:

    • .wav files of all the pitches for all the distortions (for immediate playback, like when you click on a key).
    • an algorithm to dynamically create .wav files (for when you want to listen to the whole song).

    Unfortunately, I have neither of those. I used MIDI because I already knew the format, and the files are small enough to make the lag unnoticeable. I would've preferred to use some kind of "true" audio format (I was actually prepared to use .au), but MIDI files are better documented and more easily manipulable.

    tmont

    Posted

    Your guys' compassion breaks my heart.

     

    Note that these samples I'm spitting out aren't testaments to my so-fine musical skillz per se, they're more like examples of what my little tool can do. And the rodtv thing was an experiment in trying to create the illusion of a third channel. And I had the music handy.

     

    You bastards.

    tmont

    Posted

    Well, it "mostly" works in Safari. :)

    Bummer though for Mac users, since IE was abandoned years ago (not that we miss it, mind you).

     

    Not knowing anything about coding, is the data this generates able to be plugged into 2600 code directly? Or would a conversion utility be required for that?

     

    Everything besides the sound should work in all browsers (well, I don't have a way to test Safari or Konqueror). Actually, Opera, one of the most annoying browsers available, doesn't allow disabling the context menu (right click menu), so the little window that pops up when you click on a key won't work.

     

    As for the code, I don't know anything either, but I think the music driver is unique to each game, so in essense, the code would be different depending on who's doing the coding. Maybe. I don't really know. It shouldn't be all that difficult to just translate the data that the script spits out into 2600-speak, though.

    vdub_bobby

    Posted

    If an object will be maintaining a constant fractional speed, there's no need to store fractional position. Instead, you can use a lookup table to determine what the object should do on each frame.

     

    I don't know anything about fractional speed, 2600 programming, etc., but does this mean that the elevators (have the potential to) change speed on every frame? Or does each individual elevator maintain a constant speed at all times (until you pass the level, or whatever)? I think it would be cool if the elevators didn't act like elevators, rather they acted like sentient, evil elevators, that adjusted their speed based on the vertical alignment of the maid. For example, when the maid is directly above or below the SEE (sentient evil elevator), it would increase speed until the maid was no longer vertically aligned. Kind of like the sharks in Go Fish!

     

    Also, no offense, but "Got it Maid?" doesn't really make any sense, other than the fact that you're using a maid for the sprite, and it's a pun. I think something along the lines of "Maid vs. Elevators" would be more appropriate, despite the fact that that's an incredibly lame, terrible example. "Got it Maid?" doesn't really tell me anything about the game; it's just a clever pun. Just my professional opinion.

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