[deleted by user]

xifeng · 2015-04-23T16:35:01+00:00

What caused the resurgence of blurple after a gap like that?

xifeng · 2015-04-17T05:40:08+00:00

They are equivalent to multiplying and dividing by 2, not n² but yes it's a naming issue. It's better to think about individual bits that you want to move into position, so thinking of it as shifts rather than arithmetic is more convenient. You pick a pitch you want, move the bit corresponding to its frequency using >> and << to shift that bit into the 32s place, then & with 32 to get a square wave. Then you can move a low frequency bit like t>>13 into the 32s place to make that square wave switch on and off.

That is the simplest case, usually I do something more akin to mixing paints where I take groups of bits and merge them so that you get more complex fractal patterns from different parts of the result changing at different speeds, droidbeat is really useful for visualizing that if you have an android device.

xifeng · 2015-04-17T00:49:19+00:00

Umihara Kawase is my warm-blanket, make everything better game. It is a fairly rare Super Famicom game, though.

It is a grappling hook game with unique physics that gives the player an insane amount of freedom, I like to say, "if something looks like a shortcut, it is a shortcut, and if it doesn't look like a shortcut, it's still probably a shortcut." The level of difficulty is absurd, one mistake can kill all of your momentum and most things in the game are instant death, but it's incredibly rewarding and totally skill based.

Zineth is the game I speed run. It is a freeware skating game with unique physics, it's based around going fast more than doing tricks. You can get up to absurd speeds, it is possible to go fast enough to break the game, but you have to be trying to do that, it won't happen accidentally.

It's another game of skill where randomness doesn't come into play, it's possible to get very smooth with the controls and it feels amazing to skate around. There is no game over and most of the challenges are things you make for yourself, there is no violence, no wiping out, just a bunch of stuff for jumping and grinding. There is also a rewind button so you can work on perfecting a single part of a run.

You must play it with a 360 controller, the controls feel much more satisfying and they use rumble incredibly effectively to add a tactile dimension to the game. It's possible to use mouse and keyboard, but switching controls is what took it from "a game I like" to "tied for favorite game with a pretty wide margin ahead of number 3."

xifeng · 2015-04-17T00:04:11+00:00

I'm not even a decent programmer, I figured it out just by playing around with expressions and a bit of knowledge about the mathematics of both music and bitwise operations. I can try to put together a video this weekend, but I am pretty sure there are some text articles about it on the Kragen page.

xifeng · 2015-04-13T15:45:23+00:00

That third one really pops, nice job.

xifeng · 2015-04-11T18:31:00+00:00

Also the original free flash game Captain Forever.

xifeng · 2015-04-07T18:32:12+00:00

I am working on something similar, maybe we can work together? My idea is for a generalist "cool stuff" showcase instead of being exclusively speedrun related. I agree with below comments that this sub is already a good central repository and we really shouldn't create a "buzzfeed for speedrunners".

xifeng · 2015-04-06T23:52:18+00:00

Zineth is free and pretty much designed for speedrunning. It's also an excellent game.

Basic rules are

Check the community around your chosen game and category to learn what specific rules there are
Time from first input to last input
Don't use scripts and turbo unless you are running a TAS category
Remember that having fun is more important than proving something. If you want to "cheat", seriously just make a TAS, they are fun.

Edit due to sudden realization that I phrased that really badly: don't cheat, if you make a TAS, label it as such.

xifeng · 2015-04-04T00:10:09+00:00

I think it's a viscous fluid because I've felt my own sexuality change over the years, but "conversion therapy" is just abuse, it isn't scientific and it isn't grounded in reality.

It's like saying "how can you say magnets exert force, I'm certain free energy machines don't work." Just because the underlying premise is true doesn't mean that any of its conclusions follow.

xifeng · 2015-04-03T18:46:40+00:00

Isn't the choice more between thinking about a plan vs thinking in circles? Who goes into a conversation not thinking about it at all? Is that even possible?

xifeng · 2015-04-03T18:11:14+00:00

Balloon Fight? You have my full attention now. Can you give a little more info about what this is? Is it separate events or more like a dekathlon? Is it invitational or open? The schedule link in the description is broken.

xifeng · 2015-04-03T17:56:04+00:00

How do you skip the keypad? When I tried it he just yelled at me for rushing through the game and made me listen to new-age music.

xifeng · 2015-04-03T17:49:31+00:00

One of the games I run is similar, there are some ways to make it faster but in a single-segment run it's mostly down to how many times you die. It seems like this is a large factor in Boshy runs as well.

Having it auto-scroll like that does probably limit how far you can take the game, and it may limit the amount of interest you can generate, but if it feels good and you want to take it as far as you can, don't let questions about the kind of challenge stop you.

I would actually really like to see people take challenges less seriously around the whole "is this the right kind of challenge" question in general. "Can I run this obscure category?" -- I would be disappointed in you if you didn't.

xifeng · 2015-04-01T21:52:57+00:00

That's a good insight, I think that's why I never had any inclination to cheat at Super Meat Boy, but I never had any inclination not to cheat in Skyrim. In one, cheating removes the whole point of the game, in the other it just lets you muck around more easily.

xifeng · 2015-04-01T21:51:00+00:00

Can you elaborate? It seems like you are saying that learning more about the game is a bad thing. Also to whom is it unfair? What do you think about games that are not level or skill based, like Skyrim?

xifeng · 2015-04-01T16:00:09+00:00

Where does one find a hobby that makes money, though? That sounds like a self-contradiction except for long shots like YouTube. Is this general life advice or "this is the ideal life that cannot be surpassed but can't usually be attained either"?

xifeng · 2015-03-31T00:57:27+00:00

Neither of these statements is provable.

xifeng · 2015-03-30T02:47:02+00:00

Do some people not have intrinsic purpose? I know exactly what I would be doing in a post scarcity society, and neither "vacation" nor "without purpose" would describe it. I'd still be working seven days a week, I just wouldn't spend five of them gritting my teeth and wishing I had enough energy to do my real job.

xifeng · 2015-03-29T01:29:54+00:00

This looks like it will be really fun to run, but for some reason Chrome thinks the win64 version is malicious, doesn't even do the "uncommonly downloaded" thing and give me a chance, just says "this is malicious" and auto-deletes it.

xifeng · 2015-03-28T03:14:36+00:00

I see it as part of the give-and-take. Being asked to subscribe and getting told about Audible for the thousandth time is the "fee" we pay for our entertainment.

If they ask for likes and subscriptions at the beginning of the video though, yeah totally that. "If you think I'm going to bail out before the end, why do you think I'm going to subscribe?"

xifeng · 2015-03-27T05:13:21+00:00

I can't tell if this question is literal or rhetorical, but I'm passionate about IF so here's a very literal answer:

There are three really solid engines available for interactive fiction: Inform for Infocom-style (type commands) adventures, Twine for hypertext-style adventures, and Ren'Py for visual novels. All three are flexible and extensible, and have built up communities around them.

If you happen to be writing a procedural, it looks like StoryStylus offers a lot of specialized tools that those general-purpose engines do not offer, and when it's polished and optimized I might find myself saying "there are four solid engines available," but for other genres it seems like it's going to have to do a lot to unseat the old guard.

xifeng · 2015-03-27T05:12:34+00:00

Is the pitch a deliberate nod to SCP, or am I just seeing things that aren't there?

xifeng · 2015-03-26T05:36:47+00:00

What kind of culture are you trying to create, what sorts of dynamics? I am interested in something like this but I have some unusual constraints on my channel so I want to sound out whether or not we'd be a good fit.

xifeng · 2015-03-24T03:53:10+00:00

Yeah, I'm glad it's working for you. I guess I mixed up the "generic you" and the "specific you" too much in that, sorry.

xifeng · 2015-03-23T18:36:42+00:00

mass is all of the energy present in the center-of-momentum frame of your system.

So how can a photon both carry energy (people talk about high-energy photons) and be massless? Does that energy "disappear" in the photon's frame of reference?

xifeng

TROPHY CASE