Using emulation to further our competitive experience

[Sangoku]

Question: is the earth core liquid or solid? SOLID the pressure is so high that it makes it solid (according to what I read at least).

Thanks Limaçon, cluba and dan for the answers. I do use a router, so if I could set up the QoS, I could play smash smoothly even when others are on the internet?

And BHLMRO: yes I didn't know what these things were at all, that's why I said I could be made fun of =).

I personally find the bumper as annoying as the nado. We should establish some stats though: how many times (per say, 5 games) the bumper saves you and how many times the nado kills you. We could give the hazard award to the winner.

 

[Battlecow]

Are you including the side triangles or just the bumper?

'cause nado kills you a lot more than the bumper saves you otherwise.

 

[Sangoku]

Are you including the side triangles or just the bumper?

'cause nado kills you a lot more than the bumper saves you otherwise.

Yes you're right, we should also include the side triangles. But to be fair we should also count the tent saves and that becomes too complicated lol. Forget what I said.

 

[Limaçon]

Thanks Limaçon, cluba and dan for the answers. I do use a router, so if I could set up the QoS, I could play smash smoothly even when others are on the internet?

You should be able to. If you post the make/model I could probably dig up instructions for how to do it.

The only potential problem is if your computer is set up to use a dynamic IP (if you haven't set any internet setting yourself, it probably is) you will either have to switch a static IP or MAC address binding (sorry for using probably more confusing terms), which I probably will not be able to help with (I am terrible with anything that is Linux/*nix). Most likely someone else can explain that process to you.

 

[Zantetsu]

Edit: I will reply to a few of these things now that I'm a bit more awake

No one wants to win by using stage hazards. No one wants to try to incorporate a tactical knowledge of stage hazards into their game. It should be Player vs. Player.

What gives you the right to speak for every player? I would like to win by my knowledge of stage hazards. I would also like to incorporate a tactical knowledge of stage hazards into my game. If you think it should be player vs player, then we should take out the **** tent, because in a way, that can be a "hazard" as well.

You're fine with a tower that can rack up huge amounts of damage by simple throws/tilts but not a tornado that you can purposely avoid by knowing the knowledge of where it is?

The bumper on PC? Small thing. We're used to it. Leave it in there. But new, predictable 'nados? **** that.

As I was saying earlier, if you read my complete post, you would see that I suggested a tornado with either:
a) Nerfed strength
b) Set knockback (Probably would be quite low)

If we were to add any of those effects, this would make the tornado less damaging then the bumper, but I'm sure you would STILL be against it but would be fine with the bumper.

 

[Sangoku]

Limaçon: my IP always changes, does that mean it's dynamic? Also I'm not at home right now, but I'll PM you once I get back (about two weeks). Thank you very much =).

 

[dandan]

Ah sorry, I meant bits rather than packets (I should read my own posts more carefully).

Wouldn't fiber be slower than copper? IIRC light through fiber travels somewhere close to .5*c whereas copper is almost negligibly close to c. On top of that I imagine all of the signal processing for both has a higher latency variance than the difference between the two. And isn't most of the distance already on a fiber backhaul (for most locations at least)?


*off to learn more about networking*

[EDIT]: I do wonder if denser networking will lead to more efficient routing which would drop latencies. I'm not sure how close to "as the crow flies" data moves now, anyone know of some information on that?

copper does a poor job of retaining the quality of the signle, and cannot really be used for more than a few miles worth of connection.

yeah, the backbone is made mostly of fibers, like the cross atlantic one which is the main fiber between europe and the us, between the uk and ny.

moreover, and i am doing this off the top of my head, the total data you can transfer is way higher on fibers, as you can band together many data streams on the same line, as opposed to copper where you have to add a line for each stream (and adding too much degrades the quality of the transfer due to magnetic fields affecting near lines, iirc).

 

[Limaçon]

copper does a poor job of retaining the quality of the signle, and cannot really be used for more than a few miles worth of connection.

yeah, the backbone is made mostly of fibers, like the cross atlantic one which is the main fiber between europe and the us, between the uk and ny.

moreover, and i am doing this off the top of my head, the total data you can transfer is way higher on fibers, as you can band together many data streams on the same line, as opposed to copper where you have to add a line for each stream (and adding too much degrades the quality of the transfer due to magnetic fields affecting near lines, iirc).

Is data more parallelized (probably not a word) on fiber vs copper? If so then improved network infrastructure seems like it could reduce latency (use a higher sampling rate PISO/SIPO at the edges). Then again latency improvement would be a function of the packet size, so improvements probably wouldn't be very good.

 

[Battlecow]

As I was saying earlier, if you read my complete post, you would see that I suggested a tornado with either:
a) Nerfed strength
b) Set knockback (Probably would be quite low)

If we were to add any of those effects, this would make the tornado less damaging then the bumper, but I'm sure you would STILL be against it but would be fine with the bumper.

I did read your complete post. Even if you nerfed it, it would set up combos for the other guy and whatnot. The bumper does 1% damage, saves only occasionally (once every several games in my experience) and rarely contributes to combos (generally by coolifying ones that would have led to death anyways).

Tornados, whether they're strong or weak, will always be annoying as **** with that big-*** grab hitbox .

 

[Zantetsu]

I did read your complete post. Even if you nerfed it, it would set up combos for the other guy and whatnot. The bumper does 1% damage, saves only occasionally (once every several games in my experience) and rarely contributes to combos (generally by coolifying ones that would have led to death anyways).

Tornados, whether they're strong or weak, will always be annoying as **** with that big-*** grab hitbox .

So if it's not the bumper or weaker, it deserves to be banned? That's stupid. If you want a game to be player vs player, go play Street Fighter or something. That's a game that comes down to player vs player. Smash, on the other hand, has all these obstacles and it's just part of how the game is. Big stages, small stages, stupid temple walls, moving platforms. It's all going to be there, so instead of making the game like Street Fighter, why not keep it like Smash with a competitive aspect to it?

Anyway, I can see you're not going to change your opinion, and neither am I, so I'm just going to walk away from this debate unless someone else would like to partake.

 

[Battlecow]

... Stage hazards aren't what makes smash different from street fighter. Lol. But if you wanna walk away, we can.

 

[Olikus]

BHLMRO wasnt you first on my and battlecows side about not liking nadoes? Sad to see people going over to the dark side.

 

[Zantetsu]

BHLMRO wasnt you first on my and battlecows side about not liking nadoes? Sad to see people going over to the dark side.

I don't like the randomness of them. I'm completely up to "fixing" them though.

Seriously, I have the worst luck with the tornados. Ever since I've started to play online, I've kept track of "my death from tornado : opponents death from tornado" ratio and I've never had a match where I haven't died more then my opponent by the tornado.

 

[The Star King]

Seriously, I have the worst luck with the tornados. Ever since I've started to play online, I've kept track of "my death from tornado : opponents death from tornado" ratio and I've never had a match where I haven't died more then my opponent by the tornado.

 

[Sempiternity]

I'll be damned if I'm going to read through all this, but a couple things:

if you can apply codes to a rom that would be SO godly for not only the reasons you said but also for when the n64 flashcart comes out...the possibilities!

It's already out, silly! With a whopping 512 Mb of space, you can fit one, maybe two ROMs on it! Wow! Incredible! The best part? It can be yours for the mere price of... $200! That's right, don't everybody line up at once!


And regarding changing things, I'm not a fan of the reject stages, unless somebody hacks in and polishes them off, but I do like the prospect of removing hazards from stages that make them unplayable in competitions. Yoshi's Island without the clouds and Planet Zebes without the lava are perfect examples. We wouldn't be crippling any gameplay mechanics or ruining any stages, but adding more options, because the current stage choices are a bit scarce, to say the least.

There's no way you can say those two stages are perfect as they are (well maybe the lava for kicks, but certainly not the clouds), and the game should have initially come with an option to turn these things off.

 

[The Star King]

Yoshi's Island without clouds already exists, from the single player Yoshi horde. Easily accesible with a cheat.

 

[Sempiternity]

Well there you go, add that one. Although, I'm really not a fan of that stage anyway, with or without the clouds. Too slanty. :/

 

[Battlecow]

Boundaries are ****ed, too.

 

[Zantetsu]

How so?

 

[Battlecow]

The one on the right is waaaaaaay out there

it's almost as bad as that one random demo level

 

[Zantetsu]

The one on the right is waaaaaaay out there

it's almost as bad as that one random demo level

Really? I don't think I ever noticed..

Shouldn't be a hard fix though if someone could do it.

 

[clubbadubba]

Boundaries are ****ed, too.

Okay now we're just being picky. Stage boundaries are part of the stage. Some stages are farther than others. And yea the blast lines aren't symmetric, but I think that's cool and another thing to think about while playing.

 

[Zantetsu]

Having boundaries that are 3x as far on one side then the other isn't going to work well at all.

 

[clubbadubba]

Having boundaries that are 3x as far on one side then the other isn't going to work well at all.

Why? Its the same for both players, and its not random. Players use the distance to the blast line to position themselves accordingly. I'm sure some characters would benefit more from the blast lines than others, but you can say that about many things on every stage. Fox benefits from hyrule's flat plane and **** tent. Pika benefits from dreamlands small stage, and falcon benefits from dreamlands platforms. Yet we still play those stages.

We ban stages when they significantly make up for player skill gaps. Mushroom Kingdom, i.e, recover and edgeguarding is gone, plus grab throw = win. Saffron, kirby utilt camp on heli pad against anyone w/o projectiles = win. sector z, space ship is unpredictable and does ridiculous damage and knockback, meaning better player could easily get screwed. What about cloudless YI boundaries gives the worse player a significantly better chance to win?

 

[MechaWave]

Full support for Final Destination, Battlefield and Metal Crystal.

 

[Sempiternity]

Ehhhh not the one with the ledges of death.

 

[Zantetsu]

Why? Its the same for both players, and its not random. Players use the distance to the blast line to position themselves accordingly. I'm sure some characters would benefit more from the blast lines than others, but you can say that about many things on every stage. Fox benefits from hyrule's flat plane and **** tent. Pika benefits from dreamlands small stage, and falcon benefits from dreamlands platforms. Yet we still play those stages.

We ban stages when they significantly make up for player skill gaps. Mushroom Kingdom, i.e, recover and edgeguarding is gone, plus grab throw = win. Saffron, kirby utilt camp on heli pad against anyone w/o projectiles = win. sector z, space ship is unpredictable and does ridiculous damage and knockback, meaning better player could easily get screwed. What about cloudless YI boundaries gives the worse player a significantly better chance to win?

You do make a very good point with this, but wouldn't it be better to fix the boundaries rather then settle with them?

 

[Battlecow]

Ehhhh not the one with the ledges of death.

Congo has LOD's as well as the barrel.

It's neutral.

FD and battlefield should be givens if you have the codes.

 

[ciaza]

You do make a very good point with this, but wouldn't it be better to fix the boundaries rather then settle with them?

Why fix something that's not broken? It's not settling if people don't see it as a bad thing. I know I wouldn't.

 

[clubbadubba]

You do make a very good point with this, but wouldn't it be better to fix the boundaries rather then settle with them?

It definitely could be done and would make a perfectly good stage. I don't see anything wrong with the current stage (minus clouds) though, and the boundaries adds a little spice to the very limited stage selection we have imo. I wouldn't be opposed to having one changed, and one unchanged stage. 2 more stages for competitive play!

Btw is this ever getting done or just wishful thinking? And I know some stages (like pokemon stadium) have been made, but it seems they are rather cumbersome to set up. Is there any chance that we will ever be able to pick these extra stages on the stage select screen?

 

[Zantetsu]

It definitely could be done and would make a perfectly good stage. I don't see anything wrong with the current stage (minus clouds) though, and the boundaries adds a little spice to the very limited stage selection we have imo. I wouldn't be opposed to having one changed, and one unchanged stage. 2 more stages for competitive play!

Btw is this ever getting done or just wishful thinking? And I know some stages (like pokemon stadium) have been made, but it seems they are rather cumbersome to set up. Is there any chance that we will ever be able to pick these extra stages on the stage select screen?

Well, something I noticed was that the stage selection re-mapper codes didn't work for me, or others, in Project64k 1.6. The codes DID work in Project64k 1.7 though. I had a codeset set up so that the css looked like this:

Peach's Castle = Peach's Castle
Kongo Jungle = Kongo Jungle
Hyrule Castle = Hyrule Castle
Planet Zebes = How-To-Play stage
Mushroom Kingdom = Metal Cavern
Yoshi's Island = Yoshi's Island without clouds
Dream Land = Dream Land
Sector Z = Metal Cavern (Metal Mario's Stage)
Saffron City = Saffron City
Random = Random

I couldn't do much else with stages like Saffron because I ran out of stages to replace them with, but if we were to get some people to start hacking the stages, then maybe we can make this whole select screen tournament legal. It seems like majority of the community can't agree on what to change and what not to change, so it looks like, to me, that the game is just going to stay vanilla.

 

[clubbadubba]

See I don't really know what to do with all the cheat codes, and unless its spelled out for me I probably won't do it because files and folders scare me. Is there a guide that gives step by step instructions how to do that re-mapper thing?

 

[Glöwworm]

If only the GS window to add GS codes wasn't such a pain in the butt to use (especially when you have a bunch of codes). If you've looked at the cheat codes file, it's literally just this:


Cheat0="Give Kirby A Wierd Blow-Up",8025C118 000A

Seems way easier to just open it up through Notepad and manually put it in. It gets a bit more tricky when there's subcategories and those codes where it opens another window to add the last two digits (e.g., music selection).

 

[Sempiternity]

Haha, I found sound out how to hack my registry to include an "Open With Notepad" option when rightclicking things, since basically everything can be opened and edited in Notepad.

Sometimes, seemingly advanced configuration files are stupidly simple to edit.

For example, one would think it would be very difficult getting a controller working with a game like Half-Life 2 (pre-orange box), when it's clearly not supported, but all it takes is a new file in notepad, and several settings like "joy_threshold 0.5", and all of a sudden, it freaking works when you rename it with a .cfg extension.

Methinks there's a lot more going on behind the scenes though, in the communication between the program and the configuration file.

 

[Glöwworm]

Can you point me to a tutorial of some sort on making that registry change? It sounds pretty freaking useful lol.

 

[Sempiternity]

This oughta do it. There's the manual hack and a downloadable one (which I haven't tried).

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...th-notepad-to-the-context-menu-for-all-files/

 

[Zantetsu]

If only the GS window to add GS codes wasn't such a pain in the butt to use (especially when you have a bunch of codes). If you've looked at the cheat codes file, it's literally just this:


Cheat0="Give Kirby A Wierd Blow-Up",8025C118 000A

Seems way easier to just open it up through Notepad and manually put it in. It gets a bit more tricky when there's subcategories and those codes where it opens another window to add the last two digits (e.g., music selection).

I think everyone who edits cheat files do so with a text editor rather then inside Project64k itself. I couldn't imagine using it's editor for some of these crazy codes >_>