Thanks a lot for reporting this!
It turned out to be a bug with handling \0 characters in strings that I introduced in like September 2020 while doing some optimization/cleanup work on the language that runs the escape server code, Aphasia. Several red herrings in there since I also made some proximal changes to the escape server code relating to solution uploading *after* that.
Unfortunately the result of the bug is that solutions uploaded during this period (Dec 12 to today) were just saved as the empty string. I don't think there's any way I can recover them, so please reupload these if you want to claim records! (At least the server handles this case okay, so that's something, although I think it's important that we maintain at least one solution for every level...) Here are the records I deleted:
https://sourceforge.net/p/tom7misc/svn/HEAD/tree/trunk/escapex/missing-solutions2021.txt
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13796. Tom 7 (pool-74-109-237-238.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net) –
03 Apr 2021 09:49:47
[ Oh! WVPA ]
jonas, that's right! I clocked 14.75 miles = 23.73 km. I wish it had been a bit longer (I think there's a nicer route a little to the north) but I only had a couple hours left with the zipcar and didn't want to get in trouble.
Saeid: Awesome! Nice to meet you :) |
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13795. Saeid (5.232.76.164) –
02 Apr 2021 09:25:09
[ Oh! WVPA ]
Tom your running diary is really aspiring! BTW I am from Iran |
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13794. jonas (catv-176-63-11-151.catv.broadband.hu) –
01 Apr 2021 21:10:25
[ Oh! WVPA ]
Talk is now available at "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLRdruqQfRk", paper in "http://sigbovik.org/2021/proceedings.pdf" page 122. |
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13793. jonas (catv-176-63-11-151.catv.broadband.hu) –
01 Apr 2021 07:46:40
[ Oh! WVPA ]
If I understand that map screenshot correctly, the city on the top left is Steubenville, OH, and the run must have been about 22 kilometers long. |
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Dan B! Happy Pi day! I was just looking at those old photos (: |
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Yeah I know! I hope to port this one to javascript as soon as I get some other stuff done :) |
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Thanks Matt! I will look at this right after I finish this project due tomorrow.
Hopefully we didn't lose data.. |
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Well, on Chrome at least. |
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Happy Pi Day Tom7! From your late night sidewalk chalker partner |
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Oops, it looks like I just broke the page layout. Sorry. Feel free to edit the long string out of my comment. |
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Something seems to be broken on the server: all solutions uploaded since December 12, 2020 are being returned as empty, resulting in a "Bad solution on server!" message when I select "Download solutions" in the game. Example (see the blank line under "noname"):
$ md5sum ~/.escape/triage/lev4133.esx
735794a3715b7d32a3e7a6451afbb23c /home/user/.escape/triage/lev4133.esx
$ curl 'h'ttp://escape.spacebar.org/f/a/escape/allsols/735794a3715b7d32a3e7a6451afbb23c
2
13394 1607780628 Optimal
noname
13158 1568974412 Original
mark
AAABF4MDgCQSAqBoAoKYMQSAi...
Tom, can you please take a look at this? Thanks. |
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jonas, Shapez.io looks good! I added it to my wishlist and will give it a go once I finish some current games. Thanks for the recommendation.
Lucas: No new games for a while. I should really do a Ludum Dare event since I almost always come out with something worth the time, although in the last year or so I've felt more attracted to longer-lived "care and feeding" kinds of projects than the "unhealthy weekend" kind. So my video game work has been of the form where I write pages of notes on game mechanics in some notebook before bed. That's less fun for people other than me (as the paper is unplayable) but I like to think that when my brain truly sponges over in my old age I'll just be able to live off the prerecorded creativity in those books and ideas.txt, etc..
William: Most of the emulator code I've worked with has been pretty annoying. It might be a combination of the fact that the hardware being emulated is itself pretty annoying (so there are all these weird special cases and hacks) and the way those projects tend to develop. I only have significant experience with NES, but I did spend dozens of hours ripping out needless stuff from FCEUX and cleaning it up for my purposes, basically turning it into a library. (i.e.: Try to hide the stuff you don't need behind a layer of abstraction.) This both reduced the minor and major annoyances of working with it, and also gave me a lot more familiarity with what was going on under the hood! I don't know if it's the kind of tip you're looking for, but I will say that a lot of this stuff just ends up being a grind, and that figuring out how to successfully suffer through those grinds (whatever works for you!) is indispensable. Maybe there are some people out there for whom it's effortless, but it certainly isn't for me.
If you're asking about my programming work, I honestly don't think books were/are that influential. I do like to read non-fiction but for computer stuff, I think that books always seemed a bit out of date, and I think the best source of inspiration was either (a) trying to figure it out from scraps of code and text files pre-internet in the 90s, (b) classes and (especially) stimulating colleagues during college and grad school and then the same later at work. But, outside of programming (or more abstractly influential), some that randomly come to mind are "Thinking, Fast and Slow", "Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy", "Inadequate Equilibria", and the full anthology of SIGBOVIK proceedings. |
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Unfortunately Esace is not working on my MacBook M1 Big Sur :-( |
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I just tried to read the memory address of a game boy advance emulator so I could store the data structure of a pokemon into some python shitpost, and I'm finding it to be really tedious. Any tips on how to make working with emulators not painful?
Also, do you have any recommendations for books that influenced your work? |
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Have you written any games lately? I was flicking through your YouTube hits and noticed you had performed a bit in Ludum Dare events. |
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Might I recommend you the timewaster called shapez.io? This is a single-player video game played with keyboard and mouse that is an open-ended sandbox simulation game where you build factories that make abstract shapes. I recommend it not for its sandbox aspect, but for the two nontrivial puzzles that it comes with. These are your types of puzzle: ones where part of the difficulty is that the game doesn't quite tell you what all the rules are, and you have to figure out the remaining ones using experimentation. The first part of the game is the tutorials that teaches you most of the other rules. The game runs in browser. You can play the free demo version at https://shapez.io/ . The demo does not unlock all the tools for the sandbox part, but it unlocks enough that the rest of tools don't change the nature of the two puzzles. (After the speed upgrade screen changes so it no longer asks for the first 15 upgrade shapes, it will require three final upgrade shapes. Making the second and third shapes are the two puzzles. In the non-demo version, these also unlock level 20 and 26.) |
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13779. Tom 7 (pool-74-109-237-238.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net) –
31 Jan 2021 23:14:47
[ November Rain ]
Thanks Tom 2! :) Don't forget about SIGBOVIK if you can't find any nerds to read your next project! |
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13778. Tom 7 (pool-74-109-237-238.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net) –
31 Jan 2021 23:12:55
[ Happy halloween! ]
I fixed the typo in the rules!
Thank you anonymous! I regret that I have not made a computer font in many years, but I'm happy that people are still finding and enjoying them :) |
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Aha. I believe all the levels are listable by visiting the special world "all0", which then links to "all1", etc. |
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jonas: I'm sympathetic about the gravel, but I'm sure glad the scar is on the knee (basically cool) and not somewhere prominent. When I wrote this post I was worried about this cut on my face, although by now even if doesn't get any better than it is, it's fortunately not that bad.
Anonymous: And to you!
andrea: hi |
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I'm glad you enjoy Spelunky 2. It's indeed a well-designed and enjoyable game.
Falling on gravel is something of a personal nemesis to me, ever since around eight years old. Admittedly I fell from a bicycle, and not on my face. I got a big wound and permanently clearly visible scar on my left knee from it. |
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