The Bridge

tzenes

00:00

for better or worse:

3

Q: How do you get past level 72 of Bubble Bobble Neo

I've had a little trouble at the beginning of level 72 in Bubble Bobble Neo for XBLA. I can't seem to get out of the initial position I am in. I found a video of someone doing it on the original arcade game, but because of the way the Xbox interprets your movement, it seems impossible to orient...

alexanderpas

I love giving good answers.

Kevin Y

:)

tzenes

wow, someone got that fast

alexanderpas

power of community

tzenes

btw, I'm not sure if this should be closed as off topic or not:

16

Q: Why was the gameplay of Super Mario Bros. 2 so different?

In Super Mario Bros. 2, the gameplay mechanics were vastly different from the other 2D side-scrolling Mario games. For example, jumping on enemies didn't kill them; instead, you picked them up. Is there any specific reason that Nintendo decided to take this route with the game, instead of stickin...

super-mario-bros-2

Its about the history of a series

alexanderpas

00:13

seems on topic to me.

doki-doki panic clone :D

tzenes

Yeah

I asked this question back in 1993 to Nintendo Power

and I actually got an answer in the letters to the editor

Kevin Y

Cool. :)

alexanderpas

nice, still got that lying around somewhere? would be cool to have as an answer.

tzenes

sadly no

my mother threw away all my nintendo power when she chucked the snes

I think that was 95 or 96

Kevin Y

D:

alexanderpas

00:15

google search for Nintendo Power 1993 is "intresting"

tzenes

In difference to my mother, I was being a prick, and corporal punishment wasn't really working anymore

Wow, ever since I got Amazon Prime I've bought so much more stuff

they are making their money off me

alexanderpas

do you know which issue it was in 1993?

lol

tzenes

ummm

alexanderpas

retromags.com/forums/files/category/1-nintendo-power/…

you might even be able to find it!

tzenes

oh man

Kevin Y

00:22

This file is in .CBR/.CBZ Format
You will need Comic Book Reader
installed on your computer to read this file.

D:

alexanderpas

aww... CBreader -> geocities

geocities == R.I.P.

tzenes

yeah I've had CBR for a long tgime

its basically a rar format

alexanderpas

download -> PDF version

tzenes

well fuck, maybe it was 94

alexanderpas

you will find it ;)

it would be a pretty epic answer, referring to a letter you sent and got answered in NP 15 years ago.

Kevin Y

00:28

Yeah.

tzenes

yes it would

Kevin Y

If you find it, screen shot it and edit it into your answer. :)

alexanderpas

would probaly upvoted pretty hard.

Mechko

01:31

hi

Who's here?

:( I'm so lonely. Even the chat room won't talk to me.

alexanderpas

01:51

... zzz ...

tzenes

02:50

I'm here

was off doing stuff

now I'm back

Mechko

03:12

yay. is a person

tzenes

hey Mech

how's life?

Mechko

not bad

well

scratch that

itunes stole 500 from me

tzenes

hahaha

Mechko

and they refuse to give it back

tzenes

mother fuckers

what douches

Mechko

03:17

so I'm broke

tzenes

I'm sorry :(

Mechko

meh

Im getting paid 2000 here in australia

tzenes

a month?

Mechko

no in total

tzenes

ah

Mechko

03:20

but then I get 2200 month when I get back

tzenes

that's not bad

Mechko

no it isn't

I'm a studen

t

tzenes

Secondary?

Mechko

phd

tzenes

nice

what in?

Mechko

03:22

computer science

tzenes

Fun

What's your thesis on? or do you know yet?

Mechko

no clue

wb u?

tzenes

well I'm sure you'll figure it out

Mine was Adapting Personal Music for Interactive Design

which is another way of saying: Here is what my advisor told me to write

Mechko

lol

gah back to work

Life is so frucking expensive

lol this is annoying

I'm sitting at 972 rep, just under the 1000 barrier :D

btw, where did you do your phd?

tzenes

03:48

University of Victoria

Masters though, never finished the phd

Mechko

Which Victoria?

tzenes

BC

Canada

Mechko

cool

FallenAngelEyes

Huh, what exactly did you write about in your thesis @tzenes. That sounds interesting.

tzenes

its really not

I basically took music and pumped it through wavelet analysis

then I used an autocorrilation function to extract bpm

then I used a keylogger to grab user key input

and I piped the music through a phasevocoder to adjust its beat rate to that of the user

Mechko

03:58

That sounds fun :D

Btw, what's this deal with rep on chat?

tzenes

well STFT are awesome

and wavelets are always fun

the rest is just bullshit

Mechko

haha

tzenes

@Mechko its our meta.so rep

Mechko

Well a lot of CS papers are bs

tzenes

actually working out the hetrodyning for a phasevocoder is awesome

but its basically just trying to make up for the fact that an STFT isn't a Wavelet

Mechko

04:00

they seem really really simple but no one has done it yet because cs is still a pretty young field

tzenes

I felt less like I was doing research and more like I was playing with legos

Mechko

haha

tzenes

not that I didn't do some other awesome research, just this got picked as my Thesis

Mechko

haha

is it bad practice to seed answers? I've found a bunch of questions for which tentative answers can easily be pulled from google

tzenes

I prefer not to

but that might be a personal preference

certainly there are people like McKay who do do it

Mechko

04:32

@T

...

@tzenes I think it might be a good idea to do it for 'old' questions that haven't received any answers yet, especially questions by people with low rep. Otherwise they might feel that they're being ignored

tzenes

that's not a bad idea

Kevin Y

Answer questions using Google is considered seeding the site? I'm guilty of doing that sometimes. D:

Mechko

Actually, I just put the word seeding in there cos I've heard of seeding questions

I think it's most important to make sure questions get answers, even if they are answers like "We don't know, but we gamers would trust this resource that claims to have the answer". I promise that > 50% of the questions that are asked here are definitely lmgtfy material, but people ask them here anyway because they 1) want rep, 2) want to ask stuff here, 3) have the site constantly open and don't want to spend time googling if it's not necessary.

Ah. I have rep, now.

tzenes

haha

Mechko

I know I ask questions here and go on to start googling for them sometimes, just in case people really really like the question and hence give me like +135 rep like one of my cough list<x> questions did

tzenes

04:42

the rep is unimportant

its the question that matters

Mechko

well actually, for me, rep is unimportant above 1000

Also, you don't get rep unless people find what you say to be contributing, so it doesn't really matter. :-p

tzenes

if we want to attract the people with that "tribal knowledge" the people who know how you get the secret weapon on Gears of War 2, level 8. Then we need those questions

no, I mean the rep is meaningless if you gain it or not

your rep only has value to other people

it has no value to you

Mechko

yeah I guess.

tzenes

I know her one thing is magic

but I can't remember if her ult is

Mechko

but it's also important that the people who ask the questions that attract 'tribal knowledge' don't get disheartened by not being answered. I think it's bad to have questions with 0 answers, especially during beta.

tzenes

04:49

I honestly haven't given it much thought

On the one hand, someone with specialized knowledge might be attracted to these questions not being answered (as they feel useful). On the other, they may feel that they'd be the only ones and not want to join

It could go either way, I have no evidence for one or the other

Kevin Y

@Mechko I agree with what you say about questions with 0 answers; I'm currently going back and trying to answer some of them.

Is there a search term I can use to find only questions with 0 answers? (Unanswered page gives questions with no upvoted answers)

tzenes

answer:0

or maybe answers

Mechko

@Kevin. Yeah. I do that, and then just start looking for the 0 answers manually

Kevin Y

answers:0 works.

tzenes

answers:0

Mechko

04:54

OMG

Kevin Y

answers:0 votes:0 is what I'm using . . . don't feel like looking at - vote questions right now. :)

Mechko

P!=NP proof that looks genuine!

Kevin Y

answers:0 votes:0 closed:0 . . . I'll be searching this for a while.

tzenes

Oh, let's close some of the -vote questions

I guess they're all closed

alright, then I'm off to play Dynasty Warriors, if you have any questions that need help closing, let me know

Kevin Y

Okay, bye.

Kevin Y

05:24

I edited the question above, is there another term that sounds better than "spam"?

Never mind, I just changed it to mass produce.

tzenes

05:36

CURSE YOU LU BU

Duplicate question, vote to close

12

Q: What's the best counter for Void Rays?

Any time I let a Protoss player live to mid-game, I seem to be swarmed by Void Rays, and while I can sort of react, it's generally a 50/50 at that point. Let's say I scout a player with a single Void Ray and plans to build more. What should I do to counter them? As each race preferably, but I ge...

starcraft-2

Kevin Y

Ahh, didn't notice that question. Also voted.

tzenes

it happens

Kevin Y

Well, I'm going to go. G'night.

tzenes

05:59

night

Mechko

06:09

you still there tzenes?

HI PERSON!

Epaga

hi other person

Mechko

sigh

I'm so procrastinating today

Epaga

where are you at?

Mechko

Work

In Sydney Australia

Epaga

ah

Mechko

06:21

I just submitted my code to my supervisor and now I have to write up documentation and tutorials

Epaga

i'm in berlin and the day is just getting started

Mechko

hehe

Epaga

so i have an excuse to procrastinate

Epaga

just a little bit

Epaga

;)

Mechko

06:22

that's one way to look at it. I have just the two pieces to write and then I'm done.

with this job

though I start grad school in 3 weeks

what do you do?

Epaga

software dev

Epaga

small company

Mechko

Cool. What kinda software?

Epaga

reporting

Epaga

inetsoftware.de/products/crystalclear

Epaga

06:25

this is kinda cool

Epaga

i bet half the people will be on SO-chat just to see if Jon Skeet is on.

Epaga

:D

Mechko

hehe. It's like people going to church just in case god shows up :D

Epaga

well gotta run. beat the inner lazy man and get to work. :)

Epaga

lol ^^

Mechko

06:26

good luck with that :D

Epaga

see ya

Arda Xi

07:03

@tzenes people actually do use a lower interp setting as a cheat, which allows you to kill someone right after they pass a corner

tzenes

that's true

well, actually not the way your video showed

since the server makes the calculation not the client

setting a low interpolation coeffecient will allow you to see them pass before they pass

this decreases the delay in your reaction

Mechko

so setting interp higher is the way to 'cheat'?

tzenes

possibly

it has to do with relative interpolation

between the two clients

if two clients use identical interpolation values, then they'll both believe their in the same position

however, if you have different values, then one will believe he is somewhere the other does not

Mechko

aha!

tzenes

you run into relativity very quickly

Mechko

07:06

that makes sense

tzenes

because you can't change where the server thinks the player is

Arda Xi

but the server will always think the hitboxes are in the same place

tzenes

right

Mechko

so we could use interp settings to travel in time and create an object of infinite mass and watch the world collapse under gravity

tzenes

can't cheat where you are, just perception

Mechko

07:07

SWEET

tzenes

no, and shut up

Mechko

:(

Arda Xi

it's really only perception, it has nothing to do with where the player actually is

the server keeps track of that, no client can change that

tzenes

Mechko is your MW2 question pc or 360?

Mechko

oh sorry PC

Editing

tzenes

07:08

I didn't know you could host on PC

I thought that was a big criticism

Arda Xi

you can't voluntarily

a host is picked randomly

Mechko

not randomly. They do some calculation so that the best host is chosen, but 'best host' is very subjective imho

Arda Xi

they try to find the one with the lowest latency in regards to the other players, but it's mostly random

since a room is usually within 100 ms of each other anyway

tzenes

This is the reading equivilent of watching paint dry

Arda Xi

but to be honest I'm not sure if anyone other than IW can answer that question

tzenes

07:11

ugh, today has been a bad day for me

Mechko

I can tell.

tzenes

I went up another 300 rep on Raven. God damnit raven, write more answers

there is no reason I should be highest rep on this site

I'm not that good

Arda Xi

tell me about it

tzenes

we need the Jon Skeet of gaming already

I mean seriously

Mechko

Well, you answered some very popular questions... like the SCII ones

tzenes

07:13

yeah, but I haven't asked any good questiosn

that's the key to a good site: good questions, not good answers

the value of an upvote on questions should increase proportional to the number of votes

Mechko

Yeah, well 4 questions, and 59 answers... as opposed to me with 35 questions and 37 answers, not that my questions are good. The top two got closed :-p

tzenes

that's because they're lists and lists are evil

and because we don't reward upvotes on questions well

it should be 5 for the first 5 and then 10 after that

so that +5 would be worth 25, but +6 would be worth 35

Mechko

or we could give +200 rep bonuses or whatever for badge-worthy questions

anyways. I should have left work 20 minutes ago

tc all

tzenes

later

Speaking of Im' going to bed

night

C. Ross

11:44

9

Q: Looking for an MMO which won't empty my wallet and suck out my life.

I'm looking for an MMO that is relatively cheap or has a single one-time fee/micro transactions which also doesn't run the risk of sucking up my life. To make the question less subjective, I am an addictive person, so if there is any potential to become obsessed with the game, you can be guarant...

game-rec mmorpg mmo

Needs to go away (sorry Mechko)

Mechko

12:44

2

Q: What's the biggest ZZT map?

I have incredibly fond memories of ZZT from Epic Megagames. One of the neatest things for me was discovering some of the mind-blowingly cool third party maps that fans created. What's the biggest map available?

mod roguelikes zzt

oh wait... the last guy was here an hour ago... :-p

C. Ross

What about it Mechko?

he's still here actually

Mechko

Ah

This question. I believe it's badly phrased, but the underlying question is perfectly legit

would you concur?

C. Ross

I read the core question as "What's the biggest map you've seen?" which is awfully subjective

but I admit to being of the "When in doubt, close it" philosophy

Mechko

I read the core question as being "What is the biggest map"

which is very objective

I'm of the "When in doubt, wait to see what happens" philosophy :-p

C. Ross

Is that answerable though? Maybe what is the largest map size possible?

Mechko

12:49

Not what is the largest map size possible. What is the largest map made. Even if the best answer is wrong, there will be one superlatively most correct answer at any given time

Downvoter

one better question to ask is "what is the value of the question?"

alexanderpas

there could be infinite maps using the largest map size.

Downvoter

The original question was different, and now I feel it was edited just for teh sake of making it objective, but I don't see any value to it

Mechko

No, there will be a finite number, in which case the question has multiple right answers, just like any "how can I fix bug X" questions

C. Ross

If it's always going to be changing I don't see the value

Arda Xi

12:50

@JuanManuel "Change from "best" to "biggest" to make it objective." definitely edited just to make it objective

Mechko

I doubt it's always going to be changing

alexanderpas

If I create another map using the largest map size tomorrow, there is another map to add... so it is infinite

Arda Xi

that depends, mechko

if I play the smallest map

then I play a slightly bigger map

that changes my answer

the question is What’s the biggest ZZT map you’ve ever played?

Mechko

Oh no! I mean the question is subjective as is: it needs to be "What is the biggest map", scratching the You've ever seen part

Arda Xi

Even so, someone could come along and make a bigger map, the same discussion as with the best-selling game

alexanderpas

12:53

even "what is the biggest map" has infinite answers

C. Ross

good comparison Arda Xi

Mechko

What about SCII? It's a pretty new game. I promise strategies are going to change, but I still don't think the annoyingly large number of SCII questions should be closed because the information hasn't been finalized...

11

Q: Protoss: Upgrade shields or armor?

When playing as Protoss, would you recommend upgrading shields or armor first? I know the attack upgrades are more valuable, but the mechanics of the defense ones are a bit vague. Does the armor upgrade have any effect at all if the units shield is still up?

starcraft-2 strategy

Totally subjective by the general guidelines I've seen questions closed on. As new strategies develop, the answer is going to change and as people learn more about the mechanics, but I think it's still a valid question

alexanderpas

vald question, as it is basically maths.

"Does the armor upgrade have any effect at all if the units shield is still up?" is perfect.

Mechko

When playing as Protoss, would you recommend upgrading shields or armor first? is totally subjective

Downvoter

Answers can include pros and cons on both options

Downvoter

13:00

think about the answers rather than the question

alexanderpas

that is the introduction, and together with the rest of the quesion, acceptable, however standalone, you're right.

Arda Xi

it's never a good idea to just tell a person what to do strategy-wise, just give the pros cons and a general advice

alexanderpas

also everyone: Get To Work: gaming.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms

Arda Xi

on?

alexanderpas

voting for/against the pending synonyms

Mechko

13:16

Do we have tracking statistics for traffic and stuff?

Like can we see how many unique hits we get and how many people come back and what the frequency of user activity is and so on?

alexanderpas

@Jeff probaly has, but afaik, no public stats beside those already displayed on the page -- 1,407 questions - 3,265 answers - 95% answered - 2,504 users - 4,504 views/day -- currently.

Mechko

13:36

Sigh. Another one of my questions heads towards +10 and is gonna be closed as soon as the next 500+ comes online :(

Mechko

13:55

did we just get the 'view total up and down vote counts' thing like in the last 10 minutes?

alexanderpas

it has a reputation requirement

you broke the 1k rep barrier today.

Mechko

but the rep requirement is 750 which I broke the other day...

alexanderpas

but you never clicked the count i assume.

Mechko

+1 you're absolutely right. I just noticed :-p

ok off to play mw2 until 1 am. <chat injection attack>Hello World</chat injection attack>

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