RubixsQube

Facebook just bought Oculus for 2 billion! What a weird thing. I don't really know what to think, but my gut reaction is that this is "not great." It's pretty strange to think that John Carmack is now an employee of Facebook.

God damn, it is always funny when the internet's emoticon algorithm deems it necessary to preface the second item in an letter-based list with a cool dude with sunglasses.

Let people drink whatever they want! Being stuck up about beer is so completely bizarre. Being stuck up about most things is bizarre. If you see someone drinking a Miller Lite, and that is not a beer you prefer, well, what are you going to do? What do you gain from judging another human being for something so silly? They're not drinking anything "ironically." Nobody drinks PBR "ironically." PBR gets ordered because it is cheap! I don't get why people assume the world does things "ironically." What the hell does that even mean? "Oh, look at that guy's ironic facial hair" This is a nonsense statement. You know that guy probably wears his mustache that way because he thinks it looks cool on his face, right?

Chris Remo makes the greatest of all faces.

Yeah, you can click here and go directly to idle thumbs goodness.

Hrm. I suppose. This is what I look like when I'm talking to people about the Milky Way galaxy.

What a nice bunch of people here on this forum! Here is what I look like. I think that I fit right in!

As a birthday gift for myself, I bought a Space Invaders Deluxe cabinet when I was just starting graduate school. It was entirely working, and the guy who sold it to me (for only $300!) threw in the Space Invaders boards that I could swap out if I wanted to play the other version. It's a pretty simple arcade cabinet as far as they go, but it was really fun to have around, and a simple arcade cabinet is a killer when you throw parties. Unfortunately, when I moved across country a few years ago, I had to leave it with my parents (it wouldn't have survived the trip), so it's sitting in a garage in California at the moment. It's a pretty cabinet, and looked great in my apartment besides being a fun high-score competition for my friends and I. I cut my teeth in quite a few arcades growing up, and was lucky enough to live near a few great nickel arcades when I was in high school. It's neat that Sean discussed Sunset Riders on the podcast, since that's one of my all time favorites. I wonder if MAME+Kaillera servers are still a thing? Nothing beats pizza smell + loud arcade noises + a roll of quarters and the determination to beat an arcade game with some friends, however. I'm currently pretty close to the World's Largest Arcade, which I've gone to a few times, although it's a good hours drive away. ALL IN ALL, ARCADES/ARCADE GAMES ARE NEAT

Guys, I linked to both of those videos on the first page of this thread. I also linked to videos that didn't have a bunch of unnecessary, not-even-readable twitch chat on the margins!

I definitely read that dialogue in Chris' Spelunky Daily Challenge Voice.

There's a higher-res version of the art for retina devices, if you guys would like it. (My buddy and I, by the way, were pretty impressed by the way that the site builds the page such that if you happen to have an insanely wide screen it still looks real nice, what with the repeating mountains in the background. Whoever designed that, kudos! )

I wish I had conveyed my tone a little better; I didn't mean to imply you were negative. As someone who has watched the majority of your speedrun attempts, I think that it is an incredible thing to do well (it's more fun to watch yours, by the way, over people who are very good with the teleporter, as that seems more like black magic). My comment was just trying to make a counterpoint (for you, who admitted you're not super interested in watching speedruns) that while most speedrunners would love to do things in a rote, straightforward, "solved" way, random number generation is everywhere, and it's interesting to watch their "flow" get interrupted, and see them have to respond in real time. However, to me the flow is equally as imprssive, since in the best speed runs people are accomplishing very technical things at an insane pace. And, as a person who thinks it's interesting how people love to take things apart, even the crazy hack-ey speedruns (see this weird Boy and his Blob run) that Nick got excited about have a high level of fascinating content.

Wait how has it taken this long for someone to talk about AGDQ on the podcast! You should definitely watch the , but again, I also recommend watching parts of the , or even the . Just find a game you're familiar with from this list, and devote some time to watching a person destroy the game, and delight in the huge spectrum of (unfortunately, predominantly male) nerd culture that exists. ALSO, Chris' comments about games being "solved" is pretty naive, because while each individual speedrunner is really working towards some platonic ideal (the "tool-assisted run", or TAS, which I think is as close to the "solved" version that Chris describes, wherein someone goes frame by frame through an emulated version of the game to find the fastest possible method of beating the game), they still have to fight a lot of weird randomness (witness, in every speed run, the crowd bemoaning "RNG", the game's random number generator). Yes, spelunky has a random seed, which means that the speedrunner is up against a completely new scenario, but to decry most speedrunning as "solved" is a pretty hasty and broad judgment.

I can't wait until Halloween comes and they don't have a direwatch event and all the fans get so, so upset

eeee There's a relatively easy hike near where I live up to a fire tower that overlooks the entire Upper Valley in New Hampshire. I grew up, went to college, and subsequently went to grad school in the (wonderful) urban sprawl of Southern California, so it's something otherworldly to be able to look out over such a rich, verdant place. All this is to say, this is a pretty incredible idea for a game. What a neat time to be playing video games! My frothing demand for this game begins! Edit: Also, the view is pretty fantastic in the autumn.

I don't really get how you're "saving" the damsels, as much as you just kind of leaving them in a little hallway deep underground. I figure that they deserve a true escape from the mines, and, who's to say what Kali does for them in the afterlife? Also, shopkeepers knew what they were in for when they set up a shop deep in an ice cavern most populated by penniless aliens and yetis. And if you think that his speedrunning leads to less mass murder of shopkeepers, you haven't been watching. Chris has gotten quite good at leaping at the shopkeepers, whip out, only to land on their heads and subsequently throw their entire bodies out of their own shop.

That's great! I appreciate that information. It's really interesting how many things in the game you slowly learn, frustratingly. In this run above, I learn about the wacky behavior of those little vampire kids. I'm glad that the punishment for failure, while severe, never feels mean. I've watched some Dark Souls, and it seems like the punishment is Over the Top. Spelunky is hard, but it's always just something where I can hope in another game.

This is the run from the 11th, since I do them like, an hour before the end of the day. I'm pretty happy with the results, even though it took like 40 minutes to get to where I did. There's a moment where I say "I really want a cape" and then Kali grants me one like, ten seconds later. It's weird, since in Chris' run, Kali gave him paste earlier. I wonder how that's determined.

Yes! Nice catch!

I have been recording my streams recently, and I figured I should post things here! Yesterday's seed was pretty much BS: Also, while I don't recommend watching the entirety of it, the ending of was pretty shocking for me.

Yeah, this is like, the first order solution, and everything else is overcomplicated for this kind of problem, but generally, talking with some of my friends in environmental sciences, where this issue can get a little more complex, the answer tends to be 1-2.

The answer is 1, but not for the reasons expressed (ie, it's not a clever twist, that'd be bullshit). The leaves falling straight down to the ground is exactly equivalent to the idea of drawing a straight line from above the tree down to the ground, right? And how many leaves, generally, would a straight line drawn through a tree pass through? About 1. "What? That's impossible!" you say. Well, this is what happens with light, the energy source and reason for the existence of leaves. Leaves are light collectors, meaning that leaves grow where they can collect light. As a result, a light beam passing through a tree should only hit one leaf, or else any leaves behind it have no reason for existing, and die. You could also make some simple assumptions about the size and average number of leaves on a tree, and the average size of a leaf, and eventually you'd come up with 1 - 2 as well, but that's an annoying math problem. Here's a silly Berkeley astrophysics homework solution set that I just found dealing with the same problem (Problem 3).

Oh, the quotation marks don't mean much. The leaf puzzle is a standard order of magnitude astrophysics problem I give to students, but it has a way more straightforward answer which you can arrive at by thinking about the question for a bit. I think, el muerte, that it's your turn for a puzzle.

No pun whatsoever. It's a straightforward puzzle, requiring some clever thinking, or, if you're feeling bold, some gross math.

Oh, that's correct, then. Yes! Congrats.