Jake

Idle Thumbs 245: Psyching Out That Bear

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Idle Thumbs 245:

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Psyching Out That Bear

You soar over a Mediterranean villa and find it so thrilling you think, "Hey, I'll build myself a new computer so this looks nicer." In the time it takes you to have this experience and this thought, a plastic robot toy built in 1985 completes Super Mario World. You remember throwing out the unused cables from your old power supply and curse. The plastic robot toy effortlessly re-programs the old Nintendo game, unlocking secrets not seen in Mario World's 25 year lifetime. The third CPU re-seat fails. As you wipe the thermal paste from your hands and start again, the robot turns off and is carried from the stage to rapturous applause.

Games Discussed: Just Cause 3, Super Mario World (Tool-Assisted Speedeun), Step Mania, Bushido Blade, Spelunky

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Just Cause 3 had graphics issues at launch, but I think they have mostly been resolved now? I never had issues because I got a 970 the same day it came out. I think it also got knocked for the unlockables being stuck behind shitty side missions. It is still one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2015. Also JC3 is surprisingly good on gender. Both factions have female soldiers mixed in and wearing reasonable clothes. Most of the competent story characters are women.

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Brand new poster here but have been listening for a few months.

 

Listening to this episode right now and just finished where you are talking about the crazy mario world hack at AGDQ and wanted to comment before I forget :).

 

AFAIK that editor wasn't in the game, they (or rather the TAS bot) actually programmed that into the game live using controller inputs....which is probably even crazier. I haven't read it yet but ars technica has a great write up on the whole thing: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/how-a-game-playing-robot-coded-super-mario-maker-onto-an-snes-live-on-stage/

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Great episode as always. 

 

As someone in the middle of an upgrade, I'm curious what parts Chris put into his new PC build? Here's hoping it finally works out, and he can play some games.

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Great episode as always. 

 

As someone in the middle of an upgrade, I'm curious what parts Chris put into his new PC build? Here's hoping it finally works out, and he can play some games.

Without going into super-specific manufacturer details, the basics are:

CPU: Intel i5 6600K

GPU: GeForce GTX 970

RAM: 16GB DDR4

I have played a bunch more Just Cause 3 on it since getting it up and running and it's awesome!

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I have played a bunch more Just Cause 3 on it since getting it up and running and it's awesome!

Pro Tip: Get the tractor added to your airdrop list ASAP:

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Brand new poster here but have been listening for a few months.

 

Listening to this episode right now and just finished where you are talking about the crazy mario world hack at AGDQ and wanted to comment before I forget :).

 

AFAIK that editor wasn't in the game, they (or rather the TAS bot) actually programmed that into the game live using controller inputs....which is probably even crazier. I haven't read it yet but ars technica has a great write up on the whole thing: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/how-a-game-playing-robot-coded-super-mario-maker-onto-an-snes-live-on-stage/

 

Yeah, Nick's AGDQ rant was full of a lot of half mistakes and overstatements. Most of what TASbot did in both Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World is what is generally known as a "total control" hack, where you can use controller inputs and carefully done Mario maneuvers to load code into RAM, that, when executed, allow the computer (which is generally a laptop connected to the game console, generally through a connector that has a little ROB mascot around it, you can see it in the Ars Technica article) to run any code through quick button inputs on the second controller. I'm pretty sure that at no point are actual physical inputs on a physical controller ever used. The SMB3 backdoor that Nick described, with the message from Shigeru Miyamoto, was a joke programmed in by the TASbot guys, and the "dinosaur" was a reference to an AGDQ favorite, the NES game Color-A-Dinosaur. It's pretty neat to see, and the Ars Technica article does a fantastic job explaining it in detail, but the hard part wasn't executing the code, it was finding the space to run the code on the cartridge, which could only have been done for the Super Mario World Maker hack by using the Super Mario All-Stars cartridge, which offered more on-cart space to allow for so many save games.

 

I also want to be pedantic about something else AGDQ related from the episode, since it actually reframes an entire discussion. Nick was talking about the pretty amazing

, and at one point early in the run,
(and potentially unbelievable): these levels are not memorized, but rather, high-level players are just looking for patterns actually coming up the screen, and using their intrinsic muscle memory and pattern recognition they manage to work their way through a song. Watch the run with this in mind, especially for the moment later when a second player steps in and plays a version of the game where the arrows spin into place from opposite directions on the screen. It's nuts. 

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It's interesting how into Just Cause 3 Chris is, though I think him not having played Just Cause 2 explains a lot of it.

 

If you've put a lot of time into JC2, especially if you used any of the fantastic mods that JC3 heavily cribs from, JC3 is staggeringly same-y and quite disappointing.

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My girlfriend has been having a lot of computer troubles this week, leading to several late nights of us solving them. I related Chris's computer story to her, and I think his struggles with computer goop made her feel much better about the troubles she was having. Thanks for telling that story Chris, I enjoyed this episode a bunch!

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It's interesting how into Just Cause 3 Chris is, though I think him not having played Just Cause 2 explains a lot of it.

If you've put a lot of time into JC2, especially if you used any of the fantastic mods that JC3 heavily cribs from, JC3 is staggeringly same-y and quite disappointing.

Yeah I figured that might be the case. That's a shame to hear. I do think it's cool that JC3 took a cue from the mod community, though.

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My girlfriend has been having a lot of computer troubles this week, leading to several late nights of us solving them. I related Chris's computer story to her, and I think his struggles with computer goop made her feel much better about the troubles she was having. Thanks for telling that story Chris, I enjoyed this episode a bunch!

Haha, glad to help!

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Without going into super-specific manufacturer details, the basics are:

CPU: Intel i5 6600K

GPU: GeForce GTX 970

RAM: 16GB DDR4

I have played a bunch more Just Cause 3 on it since getting it up and running and it's awesome!

Good deal! I'm glad it all worked out, and am looking forward to hearing more Just Cause 3 stories on the cast. 

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Chris, your PC build story was amazing. Well, amazing in the sense that so much of what you described is exactly what I went through this last weekend (although in my case I'm just dumb). I just got the last of my new PC parts delivered last week and had a couple similar freak out moments while I was putting it together on Saturday, one of which I feel incredibly stupid about in retrospect.

 

It's been several years since I've put a PC together but I've done it enough times that I was feeling pretty confident about my ability to get it all done in a couple hours. So I started going through the motions, got the cpu installed, put on the thermal paste and spread it out evenly with a credit card, and got the cooler mounted without issue. I figured the hard part was over at that point and the rest should be a breeze. But then as I pulled out my two RAM sticks and tried to set them in their slots, I found that the heatsink on my badass gamer RAM made the stick protrude out too far which resulted in my giant cpu heatsink partially blocking one of the RAM slots (if it weren't for that RAM heatsink I would have had enough room to get the RAM under the cpu heatsink pipes that were tapering out over the RAM slots). It was super close though and I could almost get it seated if I went in at a slight angle but it was still just slightly blocked. So I went ahead and removed the cpu heatsink to temporarily get it out of the way, got my RAM installed, and ever so gently mounted the heatsink back onto the cpu. It wasn't the cleanest job though and that RAM stick is being forced to sit at a slight angle because the CPU heatsink is still slightly in the way.

 

From there everything went really smooth and I got just about everything connected to the motherboard and realized I had two problems. My first issue was just that I was down a SATA cable which wasn't a big deal and I figured I would just run down to Fry's Electronics and grab one. My other issue was that I couldn't seem to find the right connectors to get all of my little daisy chained power cables connected back to the power supply. I just kept looking at all of the power supply cables that came in the box and the three cables coming out from the power supply and could not seem to find any way to get them all connected. So I figured I would just need some kind of a molex adapter and made my trip down to Fry's to get that and my missing SATA cable.

 

I found the SATA cable I needed no problem but I must have sat there staring at all of the power supply cables for a solid 45 minutes. I just could not find the kind of adapter that I thought I needed and in a bit of a panic, just got desperate and grabbed a few things that I hoped would magically work somehow. I got back home and sure enough, those cables didn't help. So I started frantically Googling power cable adapters and did some research on my power supply to see if there were additional cables I was supposed to purchase separately but I just couldn't come up with anything. So on a whim, I pulled up a random Youtube video with like 1,000 views of a guy un-boxing the exact power supply I had purchased to see if there was something I was missing. I was about to stop the video after a few minutes but as soon as he pulled it out of the box, I instantly saw what my problem was. Apparently, all of the connectors I needed were right there on the back of the power supply and all I had to do was plug them directly into the unit. I guess I had mounted my power supply into the case so fast and without thinking that I never even looked at the back and just assumed it was like previous power supplies I had purchased where the cables coming out of the unit itself directly connected to all of the other daisy chained cables that were hooked up to the various drives. I probably wasted a solid three hours going down this stupid stupid rabbit hole and I still feel like a big fucking idiot for never taking 5 seconds to just look at the back of the power supply (to be fair, the documentation that came with it didn't show any diagrams or anything that pointed this out, I guess it just should have been that obvious).

 

But from there, everything was a success and it booted up right away! My wife had also surprised me just last week with a new desk that she had a friend custom make from some old barn doors. Pictures and specs below:

 

post-31977-0-95226700-1452877115_thumb.jpg

 

post-31977-0-60416300-1452877084_thumb.jpg

 

Specs:

CPU - i7 4790k

RAM - 16 GB 2400Mhz DDR3

GPU - GTX 980 ti

SSD - 500 GB

HDD - 2 X 1 TB

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I think Jake would love this ( because it's Mario 3 mechanics pushed far beyond what you need in a normal Mario 3 run) :

 

Also if you though the Mario 64 commentary was bonkers I present to you Cosmos Ocarina Of Time Speedrun in 18:10 with full commentary, watch it , it's a treat! Especially if you know the game! 3D zeldas are really broken and fun to watch in my option xD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq6pGJbd6Iw

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One point I would add to the discussion about games feeling stale is that any game challenge that feels like a solved problem will feel stale. So I think games that don't offer enough flexibility with their systems are more susceptible to feeling stale than games with more dynamic approaches to problem solving. So traditional adventure games have this problem because there is literally only one solution to the game. Assassin's Creed ends up also running into this problem because even though the game offers you a lot of freedom of movement around the environment, your toolkit for the challenges continues to be limited in scope. Meanwhile I think a game like System Shock 2 holds up fairly well even though the combat system for the game is pretty atrocious, it at least gives the player a generous amount of flexibility in how to deal with the obstacles in the environment.

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With one or two exceptions, I don't think any of the TAS runs during GDQ events have been video. I know there have been a few emulated performances, but for the most part it's on actual consoles (that's one of the major problems that has to be dealt with during the event - tweaking clock timing to match the console so that the incredibly minute and time-sensitive inputs will work). If memory serves, they use some sort of Arduino interface that takes input from a laptop and translates it to button presses.

 

My favorite TAS run from this event was the Brain Age demonstration, which wasn't so much a run as it was a showcase of crazy stuff you can do to image recognition when you have perfect control of the input space:

 

 

One thing I missed during the intro to this run was that it was actually performed on real DS hardware, rather than an emulator. It had been modified to allow video capture and touch screen input from an external device, but it was an actual DS.

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Today's episode made me too terrified to ever contemplate building a PC.

Most of it is totally fine! Some coolers come with pre-applied thermal paste and next time I do this I'm just going to get one of those, haha.

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Most of it is totally fine! Some coolers come with pre-applied thermal paste and next time I do this I'm just going to get one of those, haha.

 

I'm guessing since you got a K processor, you got an aftermarket heatsink and fan as well? I believe most of the stock CPUs come with paste ready to go right on the heatsink now.

 

 

I would like to say how much I enjoyed reading the podcast description this week. It perfectly captured the entire conversation, and was great to read in its own right.

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More AGDQ stuff.

 

The official YouTube channel is here.  I'm in the process of curating a

(I promise I'll stop mentioning this).  

 

Korax is correct about most of the TAS stuff at previous events being in real time as opposed to video playback.  They have to be very careful about how they set things up in order for the TAS program to execute in sync with the console, including down not running wires over each other.  

 

The Super Mario World showcase that Nick talked about where they get the game to execute code they have placed into memory to skip to the end is in this video (

)

 

 

There was also a Yoshi's Island race where they do something similar to skip to the end in the second stage

 

 

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I'm guessing since you got a K processor, you got an aftermarket heatsink and fan as well? I believe most of the stock CPUs come with paste ready to go right on the heatsink now.

 

Yeah I got one from Cooler Master. I don't even really know why, because I probably won't end up overclocking it.

I would like to say how much I enjoyed reading the podcast description this week. It perfectly captured the entire conversation, and was great to read in its own right.

I agree! Good job Jake.

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While it's not an obvious bug, there is some sort of memory leak / performance degredation type stuff in Just Cause 3. The game plays fine for me for about 10-15 minutes and then it starts dropping from 60fps to the 40s and below and never recovers until I restart the game. I've seen a ridiculous amount of folks mention similar issues online when I went looking for solutions, some have even said the console versions have identical performance drops. Not sure if it was ever fixed.

 

Fun game, though. Especially after someone finally put out an vertical fov fix, when you're driving or on foot & shooting the narrow, zoomed in view is pretty rough. I kept getting sick after a few minutes.

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