Texas, USAIs using a calculator considered tool-assisted?
I visited your challenge page to check out your playthrough of one of my favorite N64 game (Harvest Moon 64). It turns out to be a bit anti-climatic, but it makes me wonder about what you consider the bare minimum of "beating" every game is. I'm sure you've faced lots of flak about it, but I'd be interested in your opinion. I'm not even sure what would constitute winning Sports or Racing games, but as someone who has played through all of them, I'd like to hear what you've learned along the way.
In Harvest Moon 64, it's just sleeping every day until you get to the credits, but as someone who has more knowledge than most about the scope of N64 games, I'd be interested in your version of what constitutes "beating" each game and how you came to that decision. It's not an easy task determining when you're through with a Sports or Racing game, but I'm genuinely interested in your take on it.
So if you get a bit of time after you've finished the challenge (Congrats! That's a huge achievement! Respect for sticking with it!), I'd request an additional column in the excel sheet with some short notes about what was required to "beat" that particular game. I think it would also help people who want to follow in your footsteps.
What's your definition of "obvious"?
Maybe something using "hidden gems" or "Few and far between"? "Diamonds in the rough" could apply to how something changes over time with enough pressure?
I've been thinking about this a bit longer to try to figure out why the idea of achievements bothers me, and I think it has something to do with being told what to do. Setting an achievement puts a cage around what you can do and, sometimes, how you can do it. I like thinking that anything is possible and that there's always another, better way to do a thing. If I'm trying to win Fortnite with a Pickaxe, I want to do it because I don't really know if it's possible, not because someone told me to do it.
Running with your thread above and gamers trying silly stuff just for the sake of beauty, if someone decides that they want to play Minecraft by building a Statue of Liberty, that person is going to make it the biggest and best Statue of Liberty possible because that's what the motivation is. However, if an achievement was then made for "building a statue of liberty", it will draw a crowd motivated by gaining the achievement rather than the statue itself. These players will experiment with what the minimum requirements for a statue are in-game rather than taking pride in the statue itself, and soon, we'll be seeing 3 block statues of liberty pop up everywhere. These statues are rewarded the same as one that is more massive and detailed, and it can take the air out of the original idea.
Like @Capuno stated above, when you create achievements, it draws the crowd that is only motivated by the achievements. There are a lot of people motivated by getting as much as possible with as little work as possible, and if you go for something "lighter", you're going to draw more cheaters because something "lighter" is much easier to trick and fool. Yes, it's a pain to review an entire three hour run, but you get what you give, and screenshots are extremely easy to fake. If you put in the work to review every submission, you're going to have a much more credible leaderboard.
There is a reason that most achievements are grindy and boring.
There is a very well tested psychology to how games are designed, loosely based on giving a player dopamine hits for completing tasks and making progress. It turns out that making progress- whether in a game or in life- is EXTREMELY ADDICTING. The idea of progressing or improving is a powerful motivator, and this is how achievements initially emerged. Ideally, they could be a way to encourage people to play games differently by creating constraints, but game devs quickly learned that that's not what most people want. If it involves more work than it's worth, most gamers don't even bother going after an achievement. After all, they get just as much of a hit for getting achievements in other games, and there are plenty of games out there.
But we're not most people.
I think you'll find that just about every game here already has achievements in the form of "categories". The difference is that we don't just award people for "doing the thing", but we tack on the additional award for "doing the thing the fastest". If you look at it from that perspective, these achievements / categories are, in fact, chosen by popular vote, and if you peruse the site a bit with this attitude, I think you'll find that your work is already done for you.
It's a speedrunning post, so it makes sense to post it on the speedrunning forum of the speedrunning site. Makes sense to me, anyway, idk
Congrats on the run!
You can play most DOS games online here:
It'll keep your saved games after you close the browser and once you've loaded a game, you don't need internet to play them (as long as the browser remains open).
You can play on the slower speed if you want. That's perfectly fine and acceptable. It's just a thing you could do to improve the time. You showed me some improvements in yours that I could use to improve mine, like skipping the step of swapping with the queen.
I changed the rules a bit, because it's easier to time from the first click to choose the game type to the moment the "game over" screen starts to appear. I didn't think the little ant could defeat the queen, so you might be able to beat my time if you change the speed to "fastest" in the settings.
I know you posted this a year ago, but you can play it for free here:
If you do the approach used in the quick play mode in other modes, I'm pretty sure another red ant colony spontaneously materializes about ten squares away. The only objection I would have to that is that I'd like to use the "end" screen to end timing, especially with a category that will be so closely contested. If you have a computer, the game is available online for free here:
https://classicreload.com/simant-the-electronic-ant-colony.html
Is that a good compromise?
A bad community can easily kill any otherwise good game
Life isn't fair. I don't why. You are rarely in a good mood. You lash out at others. Maybe it has something doing with focusing only on the bad aspects of your life? Maybe it has something to do with focusing only on things that anger you rather than the things that make you happy? Nobody's parents are perfect. Hell, you're almost 22 and you can't even drive a car because of seizures. I can't drive either, nor can many of my friends because we are in monumental debt and can't afford a vehicle, so that's actually pretty normal. I don't beat myself up about it, nor do my friends, and neither should you. It's not your fault.
Sometimes you just want to take a baseball bat and slams it into walls and all the furniture with it. You probably didn't buy the furniture or have to fix the walls with your own income. You live in your sister's house. You surround yourself with people that ALWAYS blame you for every single thing that happens, but you happen to also be one of those people. Try surrounding yourself with people that cheer you on instead of blaming you. We're out here too, but if you stream your anger, that is the kind of people you will attract. If you want to attract people who don't blame, it's as simple as changing your attitude. Find things to be grateful for rather than things you feel you are missing out on. Life isn't fair, but nobody ever promised it would be either.
How is anyone supposed to be a streamer with everything going on in their lives? Whether there's a bill we can't pay or a job interview coming up or our careers are falling apart. Everyone who has posted here; everyone you meet in your daily life- none of us has ever had to deal with a personal crisis or health issues that prevented us from activities we might otherwise enjoy. Nobody here has ever felt lonely or been sued or lost family members or any of the other things that most humans go through in a lifetime.
So how are we not all depressed all the time? Well, if you're looking for the bad, you're gonna find it. If you're looking for the good, you're gonna find it. If you think your life's a shit-hole, it's because you're looking for the shit. If you truly want to make your life less of a shit hole, be grateful for the things you have and start working toward the things you want.
We're all in this together, so whatever you do, don't ever make the mistake of thinking that you are alone.
What, in particular, about is the game making you angry? Furthermore, are you angry at yourself or at the game?
If you're angry at yourself, you need to change your mindset. I play several games that can be completely cruel and merciless. It helps me to expect not to win. If I do win, great! but I don't ever allow myself to expect it. I used to beat myself up about making stupid careless mistakes that cost me the win, but once I expected to lose, it changed everything. I found that it was more fun because playing the game became more of "how far can I get before I screw up"? or "what stupid mistake am I going to make this time"? It's no good expecting perfection, because let's face it- none of us is ever going to be perfect, so we shouldn't ever realistically expect that.
If you're angry at the game, you need to stop playing it. That's not the game for you.
Hope this helps!
EDIT: I have never actually beaten the game in question. I died in three different attempts today, and it also helps to know when to set it down for the day and take a break.
As far as I'm aware, you can block people from chatting, but as long as you're putting yourself out there for the whole internet, you're gonna have stalkers. It's just part of the deal.
Can you show up to the Tour de France with a cheap mountain bike? Probably. Are you going to win? Not a chance. Does that mean we should we ban efficient road bikes from the competition?
Nobody is stopping anyone from racing- anyone can gather their group of friends and race their bikes- but competition at the top level of any sport that goes professional requires the proper equipment.
I love these kinds of questions, because their decisions create precedence. In other words, they become the examples we refer to later for similar problems later on down the road, so I'm going to take a moment to break this down:
From your description of the game, it sounds like there is very little RNG, which means that there will always be an "optimal path" for every run. This means that the fastest times will all follow the same path, but the BEST run will have the least amount of time between color changes. So if the best runs follow the same optimal path, the limiting factor will be how quickly you can change between colors.
Because color changes are the limiting factor, the problem emerges when the time saves are either made with methods that aren't available to everyone or done in such a way that fewer inputs are made to achieve the same result
That said, I'm going to go against the consensus on this one. I don't think it's unfair that your gaming mouse give you an advantage- if you want the top spot, it makes sense to invest in the proper hardware (see the Pokemon Stadium discussion on time saved by using a specific release here: https://www.speedrun.com/Speedrunning/thread/dw33g/1#1srqx)
However, I think you begin to cross the line when you use software to change mouse inputs to emulate different inputs. The precedent rule for banning Turbo Controllers is due to sending multiple inputs into the game with fewer manual inputs on the controller. Using software to map mouse inputs is very similar to this. I think I am summing up the responses above, but please correct me if I'm misinterpreting.
HOWEVER
Like @ShikenNuggets brought up earlier, the game has built-in responses to a mouse wheel, which means the game developers specifically added this response. Using controls that are built in shouldn't be banned, so if the game accepts inputs from a mouse wheel, it means the developers intended it to be played with a mouse wheel, and that should be fair game.
You can always join some of my lonely little games! These are mostly abandonware games, and each of these has a link to the game hosted online in the "resources" section.
https://www.speedrun.com/The_Amazing_Spider-Man_Amiga Spider-Man - There's one super useful glitch that's easy to learn, but it's just as easy to mess up the timing
https://www.speedrun.com/hapc Home Alone - my route is learnable in a day, but that doesn't mean there's not a better route. Glitch list is in the "guides" section.
https://www.speedrun.com/islandbrain Island of Dr Brain - maybe not learnable within a day, but it's not too hard and more of a fun run if you learn the various puzzles and you have a certain number of skips you can use to bypass puzzles you aren't good at or take too long.
Over at HM64 (https://www.speedrun.com/hm64), we've been having trouble with emulators that have shorter load times than console. There are categories ranging from 2.5 minutes to 8 hrs long, and there's too much RNG for us to establish something across all the runs. I'm not a mod, but something like this would be really helpful in equalizing the playing field for both emulator and console runners- a problem we've been struggling with for while.
Personally, I think accuracy would take precedence over just about anything else. If it takes all night to process, that's fine, but it'd be much better to know that the results are accurate than how quick a number is returned. Honestly, if you're serious about this, I'd recommend hosting a website so things like PC requirements aren't an issue; it'd only be things like upload size and file type.
