Hmm...

Something that I don't quite advertise about me... Especially as a fundamental Bible-believer.

I have always been fascinated with people who have to live their life in a different body than is "normal". Conjoined twins. Amputations. Infibulations and other body modifications. Various kinds of deformations. Transhumanism. It has always fascinated me, and as a child and adult alike I often have fantasized about many of those situations.

Yet, because it is morally contemptible to not show compassion and pity towards people suffering from such predicaments, and/or not to join the choir of people who passionately speak for banning any such mutilations (and indeed, in today's world it is outright fashionable to condemn and to be offended by great many things, all the while speaking about tolerance), I usually avoid any such discussions. I just can't. I refuse to accept guilt for it though; it's just who I am.

Still, I don't wish any of those things for anyone who is/would be actually inconvenienced, fearing and hating that situation.

EDIT: Wait, this wasn't that kind of thread? ;-)

Originally posted by Adelheid

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Futilitris, on the other hand, is not even a game

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What you say!



You might be right though; At this point I broke the game, or something did. I accidentally hit a button on the keyboard which brought forth a popup. Confirming the popup a few times caused the game to repeatedly go into pause mode, which I undid, but then the game logic was broken. The piece would not fall down. Pressing left or right would make it zoom quickly horizontally, but it would not rotate or fall. Hitting esc brought forth the pause again, and it could not be unpaused anymore by clicking the window.

EDIT: After a certain point, it feels as though the objective of the game changes.



Oh, and I love this NES arrangement of the Slavonic march.

EDIT: Who figures out what determines the point where the eagle cry comes?

EDIT: Re: Bastet... Me thinks the game is a little biased. ;-)

Sure, you can kill anyone's game by giving S and Z pieces in an alternating succession.
P.S. What Bastet really needs is the 20G mode.

Originally posted by Reimu

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Also, you people might want to try this. No gravity, but always gives you the immediate worst piece.

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Somehow all of these worst-piece Tetris games revolve around giving disproportionally large numbers of S and Z pieces. I would like to see a worst-piece Tetris that does a fair short-term average distribution.
My first Hatetris game (202A AAAA AAAA 2AAA AAA8 82AA AAA9 AAA0 9300 002A AAAA AAA5 5589 AAAA AAA2 30AA AAAA AA32 6AAA AAA9 DA2A AAAA 9D6A AAAA AAC0 02AA AAAA B0AA AAAA EAAA AAA7 6AAA AAAB D57F C3FD 5AAA AAA4 0032 AAAA A83A AAAA AEAA AAA9 7AAA AAA5 0001 5555 0000 02AA AAA0 AAAA AAAA AA5A AAA8 7555 56AA AA90 032A AAA3 2AAA 72AA A9DA AAA7 D555 6B3F 7F14 3D3D 5AAA 0830 D2AA 32AA D8AA 76AA 755A AA95 0000 0DA) included 16 S pieces, 9 Z pieces, 4 O pieces, 2 J pieces and 1 I piece.
My second one (0D55 555A AAAA AAAA A755 5AAA AAA9 7556 AAAA A9D5 5AAA AAA7 556A AA9D 99AA 8CC7 5542 0000 A9CA AAAA AA82 AAA9 AAAA 0AAA AAA7 E6AA 08D1 5AAA AAAA A365 AAAA AA9D AAAA AA6D AAAA 9DAA AAD6 A005 AAAA AAEA AAAA ABAA AAAE AAAA EAAA 3560 000D F6AA AAAA A003 7CAA AAAA A960 EAAA AAA0 EAAA AA83 1AAA A32A AA30 002A AAAA A035 74C0 0AAA AA80 3D55 556A A9E6 AAAD 5402 AAA3 2AAA 00CA AAA0 C155 5A2A A0D1 F155 D2AA 8EAA 80C5 AA8C 0AAA 755A A802 6297 50DA AEA9 AA) had more than 31 S pieces (I lost count), 3 or 4 Z pieces, and 1 L piece.

Originally posted by Bisqwit

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I would like to see a worst-piece Tetris that does a fair short-term average distribution.

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Actually, I went ahead and created one myself.
Here. Enjoy! http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jsgames/worstpiecegame/

Originally posted by Adelheid

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This is pretty cool, but I feel that "being able to count on every piece showing up" makes it too much like Vanilla Tetris. It's certainly an interesting mind game, but Bastet forcing you to approach the game from a rather different mindset is something I very much like, since in the end it requires quite different strategies in order to do well.

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If that is a problem, you may want to crank the game up to level 2. It doubles the piece queue length, enabling a worst case of 5 consecutive Z pieces and 26 pieces before the desired one appears. (26 pieces corresponds to 11 more than almost-filled rows).
Also, thanks.

Originally posted by Adelheid

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Edit: Ehm. At level 2, my game statistics right now are I=1, O=7, T=4, S=7, J=6, Z=7, L=4. I'm not sure this is quite right.

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Hmm... I see. Thanks for the report. There must be some kind of bug...

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  if(piece_buffer.length % 7 == 0)

  {

    // Make a new piece buffer.

    // Don't bother randomizing it; we will apply the bad-piece algorithm for it in any case!

    while(piece_buffer.length < expected_piece_buffer_length)

      piece_buffer.push( piece_buffer.length % 7 )

  }

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Who can figure out why this code fails to produce an equal distribution of pieces (with expected_piece_buffer_length being 7 at levels 0-1 and 14 at levels 2-5)?
EDIT: Ohh, I think I know why. Removing the % 7 from the "if".
EDIT: Fixing that problem caused another: The game knows how useful the "I" pieces are in my playing style. Because it really does not want to give them, it delays them as long as possible. With the 14 piece buffer, that is for 12 turns, assuming the previous one was also given as late as possible. Then, because it really needs to catch up, it ends up giving two "I" pieces in a row in order to balance the odds. Hmm...

As for the feature selection buttons, I thought about that, but I think it confuses people to have too many control buttons. Most people just use the default settings. Even the "level up" button is stretching it... Hm.

Re: Futilitris, at no point did I notice any bias towards or against some piece when I played it.

Let's play more!



(2MB OGG)

Originally posted by Adelheid

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Originally posted by Bisqwit

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Now, within these boundaries, the game still tries its best to make sure you never get what you want when you want it. Let me know how well it fares!

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The more I play it, the more I feel like it's perhaps even easier than normal tetris. Increasing the queue doesn't make it harder, it makes it easier; sure, you play with a bunch of bad pieces immediately in play, but then it levels out, and just before the queue is refreshed you get a glut of the most useful pieces. It's very manipulable.

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I see. Thank you for the analysis.

If your playing style hinges on a particular piece occurring every so often, an algorithm that _must_ balance the odds once in a while will satisfy your playing style perfectly.
As long anyway as you aren't doing something stupid like making a wasteland of 1-wide wells to be clumsily blocked by a square piece that has no place to go.
Is there any possible other way to go about this? I.e. fair, but still screws you over...

How my program decides the next piece, barring the balance equation, is that it uses a state-of-art AI algorithm by Pierre Dellacherie to evaluate all possible placements for all pieces (only dropping though; no slides, wedges or t-spins), and chooses the piece for which the best possible placement had the worst score compared to the other pieces. The AI evaluates things such as two-dimensional Fourier transform of the board, choosing an option that has least high frequencies*, the cumulative depth of 1-wide pits, number of piece cells eroded by a possible line clearing, the height of placement for the center of the piece on the playfield, and number of empty cells hiding beneath filled cells.


*) Not really, but for a mathematically inclined person what the algorithm really does in that step, this is the easiest explanation. It really just sums for each column and each row how many times the field transitions from "vacant" to "occupied" or the other way around.

P.S. Who hasn't yet seen this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrs8ZCO8xM

Originally posted by SamuelEarl666

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I've got a pair of red and cyan 3d glasses but can't get my hands on any movies that actually use it so i was wondering if i could somehow convert a stereoscopic into an anaglyphic instead of the other way around.

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You could also upload the stereoscopic video into YouTube, wait for it to be processed, and then choose anaglyphic 3D in the playback options on the video player.

Some people here may remember from early this year when I posted a detailed analysis about the dialog text and translations in the NES Castlevania II, a.k.a. Simon's Quest: http://iki.fi/bisqwit/cv2fin/diff

That project has now bore fruit.

I present you two completed projects:
― Complete Finnish translation of the game: http://iki.fi/bisqwit/cv2fin/
― AND a re-translated English version based on the same knowledge. This translation was made really quickly, in just under three hours, which obviously does not include the months of background work that went into the both versions. (The URL is the same.)

Here is a demo video showcasing the first official release.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xv2Z0PQgR4 (would embed it here if I knew how)

The niftiest thing: Automap feature.

Originally posted by Adelheid

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What the heck is an avatar

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It is a material form through which a god may appear, according to Hinduism or something.

Originally posted by The Red Snifit

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We sure do have a peculiar religion here at Jul, then.

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What's that? Pedokazam?

Originally posted by vinnyboiler

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(713KB OGG)

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Wow, you got me hooked on that song. It's just so crazy, yet well one.

Originally posted by FieryIce

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Gwa-

Is that even-

I don't-

I repeat, gwa-

Originally posted by divingkataetheweirdo

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If you're referring to the second image, that's Bidoof's face photoshopped on Alakazaam.

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Thanks, but...
Meh. For me, 253 Pokémon were stretching it. I consider anything over that unhistory.

To help make the player squirm a bit more,
I upgraded the Pierre algorithm into El-Ashi alorithm. Let me know if you see any difference! http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jsgames/worstpiecegame/

Originally posted by Xkeeper

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Does this take slides into account? If not, you can abuse these sorts of generators by spending the first few pieces creating a large overhang with enough space at the side to slip pieces through.

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It doesn't. It only considers straight drops. I doubt your suggestion is worth the effort though...

"Your theme song"?

I was reminded of "You want a theme tune for yourself." from http://bisqwit.iki.fi/story/rpg/symptoms/ .
Turns out the topic is something different, though.