Tom 7 Radar:
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9065. Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-251.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
07 Oct 2009 22:29:35
[ New! Escape 200704130 ]
Thanks for pushing the envelope!
I knew that 1, 2, and 5 were possible, though the weird behavior in 2 is new to me. It actually makes sense given the Escape rules of physics but highlights an undesirable disparity between the way bots behave and the "guy". It's a good reason to not allow bots to move after bombs, though. In general I am trying to minimize the amount of hidden information (this even includes things you can see with keys like 'n' and 'y'; those are just less hidden!) that the player has to deal with. The bot numbering is already a bit much for my tastes but is seemingly unavoidable, and does admittedly lead to some interesting puzzles.
3 is a funny surprise but definitely a mess. It's obvious why this is possible but I didn't know about it, and is a bona fide bug. If there's a crashing bug that's even more serious. If you like, sending me (e-mail) a level that crashes will help me make sure I'm fixing the right bug.
I thought I hadn't thought of 4, but when I was just looking at the code I see an "XXX Flags" in sanitize that indicates I did but just didn't feel like doing it at the time. Like you say it's similar to the bizarro world and could be supported with some other info key. But I really think of flags as an implementation detail, not part of the level data. As a result the condition of having two different panels should really just be impossible; it's up to the code to maintain the invariants surrounding these correctly. It isn't, which makes this a real bug, but not a feature I'd want to support. (It's crazy complicated, that part of the code, anyway. I often regret doing it that way.)
I don't agree with you that 5 is unequivocal, but I am most sympathetic to this case. The main reason to reject it is that it's just too mean to the player to have these panels hidden under blocks with no way to know. I can think of some straightforward extremely annoying levels one could make that involve guessing the locations of panels, for example, and if it's possible to make extremely annoying levels, someone will do it. If there were a good way to visually indicate this to naive players (I think there are lots of possibilities, just none implemented) I wouldn't be against it. But as it stands there's no deficiency (broken bots allow you to get the same effect, or level setup phases) to solve if we don't, and some IQ Carriers to suffer if we do, so it seems a straightforward choice to keep the status quo (and fix the sanitizer).
BTW, I believe there are a few more amusing behaviors (some specific ones I can think of, though I don't have the time to easily test them right now). Let me say for fair warning that levels that can't be made in the editor are almost for sure gonna end up in Quarantine though. But don't think that means I don't get a kick out of 'em. :) |
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9064. Anonymous (97-83-126-36.dhcp.trcy.mi.charter.com) –
07 Oct 2009 21:27:36
[ Bathroom? Mushroom! ]
WOW! I just found a slew of them growing from the tile grout behind my toilet. They were light yellow rubbery looking things. I know they were not there the other day because I just cleaned the floor around the toilet. My toilet has been dripping back there for about a month. I plucked those suckers out and the tile is coming up tomorrow. I'm thinking the leak needs to be fixed, the wood replaced, and new tile put down. eeeewwww!!! |
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So people have been posting out here for 3 years and still no one can say whether or not they are really harmful? lovely |
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The Malformed Levels series got me thinking about which of those behaviors, if any, should be consciously accepted in future versions. Obviously, since the editor forces 1, 2, and 4 into an unsolvable state, refuses to create 3 (but runs it just fine), and makes 5 into a watered-down version of itself, every one of them can be said to cook the game itself. But just as obviously, the fact that they have solutions demonstrates that there is design space for these mechanics, and officially embracing them would give level makers (or at least the ones familiar with the inner workings of the file format) more tools with which to pull off level ideas.
As I've said in level comments, the solution in (1) behaves exactly as you'd expect--the only thing wrong with it is that it challenges one of the tenets of bot behavior listed in the readme. Indeed, given the demonstrated versatility gained from not taking that assumption for granted, it challenges the idea that it should even be a hard-and-fast tenet. In terms of (1), my thought is that the editor can go ahead and put bombs at the end of the numbering by default, but if the designer uses F to modify that behavior, the editor should allow it without secretly undoing the change at every opportunity.
As (1) asks for a reason why the game wants to force bombs to the end of the line, so too does (2) answer it. The key move required to solve (2) is the only scenario I can find where allowing a more liberal ordering of bots and bombs leads to clearly unwanted behavior. I would fix this by introducing a "mortally wounded" flag; once this is set, the rest of the move is allowed to play out, but then when it comes time to check for death, the guy sees the mortal wound and dies regardless of what ensued in the rest of the move. Thus (1) would be a well-defined, solvable level; (2) would also be well-defined in its current form but would have no solution.
(3) is just a huge mess. I haven't even gotten around to exploring the full ramifications of positions like this, but suffice it to say there's no clear, unambiguous, and sensical behavior for the bots. (If the existing level doesn't make that obvious enough, try adding a sixth bot.) I wouldn't be opposed to branding this type of level as corrupt, and refusing to list it, particularly since it doesn't open up very much design space. Even less, considering the 15-bot limit (sure you can modify the level file to try and place more than 15 bots, but the level is correctly rejected in this case, and if there's a mismatch between the number of expected bots and the number actually placed, Escape segfaults while attempting to load the list of level collections.)
(4) is likely to be the most contentious of the bunch. As my level choice indicates, I think it's a nice trick that allows many embeddings to take up less space than they would otherwise be able to, and it's no stranger than a lot of the things that Chips players routinely deal with (particularly in CCLP2). The biggest problem is that it's another piece of perfectly hidden information--a countermeasure to bots-on-wires is presumably already in the pipeline, and now that you know about this trick I doubt there could be another release without either excising it from the game or letting players get at the concealed information with _yet another_ secret shortcut key, possibly F. To me, the ideal implementation of F would draw alpha-blended tiles in the appropriate positions, and in particular the interaction with Y would need to be checked against. Probably a feasible improvement (which would also help out cases like (5)), but what do I know; this level and the trick behind might well end up canned for being "too tricksy".
And finally, positions such as (5) should be unequivocally accepted. Such positions arise completely naturally over the course of play; why shouldn't they be representable in the starting position? As an added bonus (although not much of one nowadays since this application has been largely superseded by strings of remotes), the use of Turing-Machine-esque rows of colored steel can go off much more smoothly this way (set off an entire row of panels from just a one-tile push, rather than setting off just one panel at a time--maybe four on the last step--and taking at least as many steps as there are steel blocks). |
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9061. OPOOPFOOK (cpe-24-160-183-204.columbus.res.rr.com) –
06 Oct 2009 18:59:23
[ BAD SAT SCORES ]
FOOK. Mi Name Is Bawb. Me r 2k00l4sk00l. Bai. |
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9060. Adhesion (cpe-74-74-185-170.rochester.res.rr.com) –
05 Oct 2009 22:43:18
[ Death Row Candyland ]
Yeah, this is pretty damn well composed, though I might disagree on the immediate tunefulness of stuff like the intro. The polyrhythm section in the middle, the material right after it, and the reuse of polyrhythm later, are definitely great though. I'm a sucker for "dramatic return", and I tend to (ab)use it a decent amount. Repeating a melody in a different harmonic context (like major instead of minor) can be really intense too - the first movement of Oubliées by Debussy is a great example of this.
To make a terribly lofty comparison: you know how someone (supposedly Brian Eno) said not very many people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but everyone who did started a band? This is the kind of song that makes me want to write music. |
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9058. Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-149.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
03 Oct 2009 11:43:20
[ Death Row Candyland ]
Good day good sir! Please do send me your remixes, I love remixes to the max. Unfortunately I believe the AAD submission form goes into a black hole right now. Feel free to e-mail me if you want to make sure I know about your album; I've been meaning to fix the AAD page for so long, but sometimes I am a bad, bad man... |
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9057. Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-149.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) –
02 Oct 2009 09:31:52
[ New! Escape 200704130 ]
I can try to recover it manually for you, though the situation suggests that it's truncated so there's not much I'd be able to do. Take a look at it; it's text format. After the first section is the list of solutions, then ratings, then preferences. It's hard to say what a corrupted file would look like. If it's just got extra garbage you could delete that.
escape also keeps backups of the player file because it's so precious. If your main player file is called jl.esp, then the backups will be called something like jl.esp.~2890 where larger numbers are newer. Just replace jl.esp with one of those and at most you'll lose some of your most recent activity. You could even merge stuff from jl.esp if you can find it (programs like diff should be good at this format; I designed it so that I could keep my player file in CVS and synchronize it between computers). |
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9056. John Lewis (adsl-75-23-39-59.dsl.lgvwtx.sbcglobal.net) –
02 Oct 2009 08:05:57
[ New! Escape 200704130 ]
I've just run into a huge problem: last night, while playing Escape, my laptop battery ran out and shut the entire machine down right when I was sending a rating for a level, and now, I can't load my player file (next to the name, it says "**ERROR** (-1)"). Is there any way this can be fixed? Could I possibly send the file to someone who could read it? Any help would be appreciated! |
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9055. SeriousMF (s0106001cdf72f707.ed.shawcable.net) –
01 Oct 2009 08:08:13
[ Death Row Candyland ]
Jai ho! A very satisfying conclusive note! Original and thought provoking chord structures. Honestly, contemporary Chiptune at its finest.
Tom, I'm Ryan! I've already remixed both 'Theme from rt2i' and 'Zurich' among others. I've released an AAD; posted and submitted. One day I'll use your mailing address to mail you Real Packaged Content! I did all this without knowing that you had a fairly substantial following. From here on your's shall be one of the selected elite blogs that I read consistently. Keep up the success! I'll post my remixes and my second AAD when I quit my job and start investing my time instead of just spending it. Thanks for the quality. Happy birthday!
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Happy birthday. The fact that you had 30 years to become as awesome as you are makes me feel better, a little, about my own comparative lack of awesomeness. (It's all relative, of course.) I love the Observatory idea. If you ever become leader of a personality cult, I'd be delighted if you grant me the honor of being the first to know.
Whee, running with cakes!! TOM YOU CAN DO NO WRONG |
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someone left the cake out in the rain! |
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The cake still tasted pretty good, even after the race. |
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9049. I'm too ashamed to sign my real name ... (c-98-219-162-219.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) –
28 Sep 2009 10:26:38
[ 30th birthday: Cake Quest ]
Until I saw the pictures I thought the cake was a lie. |
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i love when they talk about you with their serious news voices! |
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9046. Buffalo, NY (cpe-76-180-62-151.buffalo.res.rr.com) –
26 Sep 2009 20:59:05
[ Bathroom? Mushroom! ]
WOW>>> you have got to be kidding me... i also have mushrooms growing by the side of my bathtub. I saw the kind i had at a science museum, it is called a Mica Cap.. its gross and i cant seem to get rid of it.. i would love advice.. we are renting to own a house and buying it soon.... help ( it is slightly reassuring that i am not the only one in the world with this problem....) i guess my house is going green |
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9045. Tom 7 (63.161.156.66.customer.sprintlink.com) –
24 Sep 2009 10:24:21
[ Death Row Candyland ]
Thanks Max! |
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9044. Max (adsl-76-194-83-68.dsl.wlfrct.sbcglobal.net) –
23 Sep 2009 11:24:21
[ Death Row Candyland ]
Pretty badass. The last 30 seconds are face-melting for sure. |
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Oh my gosh... i thought my situation is unique..but am relieved that there are people out there who can give advice about mushroom infestations.
Unlike most of you though, my mushrooms are growing invertedly on my ceiling. Due to the strong rains (and probably poor maintenance of the previous tenant), my ceiling has been leaking for 2 months or so. The leak isn't that bad, as it's not flooding my floor. But me and my husband were laughing hysterically at the mushrooms growing on our ceiling. It was a 3-tiered mushroom, wide brown umbrella-top and really white stalk.
I want to know what species of mushroom it can be and if it can cause health problems for me and my husband.... and how do you get rid of these things ? |
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I discovered that this was not our first collaborate
http://jcreed.livejournal.com/582588.html |
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9041. sandy (pool-71-127-111-6.aubnin.fios.verizon.net) –
18 Sep 2009 15:01:26
[ Bathroom? Mushroom! ]
A month ago we noticed our wall in the bathroom was wet we fixed the leak which was caused by the new siding and hung up new drywall and painted. Last night we noticed about 3 dozen mushrooms pop out from the wall. I hate to see what it looks like behind. This morning I went in there to spray with bleach and it had doubled and some kind of black stuff was spreading across the floor. Grossed me out. I sprayed them and they instantly died and the black stuff disappreared. My husband is going to tear that wall out again and see if he can kill all the fungus. He is worried with the dryer in there we may never be able to get rid of them because of the moisture. Does anyone have any ideas. |
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