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Super Mario 'Speed Runners' Are Setting New World Records (fivethirtyeight.com)
Virginia software engineer Brad Myers has played Super Mario 22,000 times, and just set a new speed record earlier this month -- 4 minutes and 56.878 seconds. An anonymous Slashdot reader summarizes a new article at FiveThirtyEight:
"In this 31-year-old video game, there is a full-on, high-speed assault on Bowser's castle under way right now..." writes Oliver Roeder, describing a collaborative community of both theorists and experimentalists "who test the theories in game after callus-creating game... 'Everything in my run, so many people contributed so much knowledge at various points in the game's history,' Myers told me. 'Now someone can come along and use that as their starting point.'"
Online broadcasts form a kind of peer-review system, with an ever-expanding canon of tricks -- for example, intentionally bumping into objects for a slight increase in speed. But the success rate for the maneuver is estimated at 3%, meaning speed runners spend most of their time stating over. "On average, about 1 out of 1,000 times does a record-setting campaign continue beyond its halfway point..."
Online broadcasts form a kind of peer-review system, with an ever-expanding canon of tricks -- for example, intentionally bumping into objects for a slight increase in speed. But the success rate for the maneuver is estimated at 3%, meaning speed runners spend most of their time stating over. "On average, about 1 out of 1,000 times does a record-setting campaign continue beyond its halfway point..."
Neat.
Why do people care about sports at all? Why do the Olympic Games exist?
One possible angle that I might accept is that unlike well-known ball sports, notable video games are proprietary. A video game's publisher has state-backed power to dictate whether, how, and by whom its game shall be played in public.
Not to judge anyone for their choice of pastime... but what the hell is the point of this choice of pastime?
World record time to beat Super Mario. Who gives a shit?! Why would you spend time on this?!
I agree with you, but let me be the devil's advocate anyway
TFA also plots recent advances in "time to assemble Rubik's cube" and "time to run 100m dash".
So why do people care and spend time on that? Because there are more spectators?
If the millenial to whom you refer is labeled an engineer in academia I'd declare this gamer a winner.
or if not... Check out this guy playing tetris. At the end the pieces are invisible when they drop in. Crazy stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Silence is a state of mime.
How do you know this guy's a millenial? TFA doesn't say he is.
Or did you just want an excuse to sob about something? That seems to play well on Slashdot.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a millenial. But I'm not a whiny Professional Victim that likes to complain about random things, either.)
And here is Exhibit B, human nature and Exhibit C, the reason people are refusing to work
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
And this is why you can point to so many of your own achievements that are globally recognised? Yes?
And all the things you are the best in the world at yes?
If your biggest trouble with the generation is their ability to focus and accomplish difficult (if maybe arguably pointless) things - then things aren't so bad.
Exhibit B, human nature
From the linked page:
I guess it's human nature to charge for human nature.
I'd say this is less useful than some of the electronics and machine learning stuff that's going on around this. We've built learning machines that can progressively refine a speed run on a Mario level, and the value is in just how crazy the results can be. Once you start iterating solutions at that frequency it becomes possible to exploit game code in ways nobody thought of (the flagpole glitch??). It's strange how the results of those experiments are heading back into the players and driving speed runs.
"We taught a computer to play so it could teach us how to play better"
Reminds me of an old genetic programming experiment that was so highly tuned it could exploit the electrical properties of the FPGA it was running on to generate a solution. The engineers couldn't understand the solution. That's actually quite an amazing result. ...but no, speed running with a controller is just an exercise in personal training. Skillful, but not exactly reusable.
"who test the theories in game after callus-creating game"
please help me understand what this string of words means
hoo! hoo!!
yep!
n/c
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
(You)
We like to believe that we have come a long way from the pharaoes of old, but have we really?
They're still up there between Iceland and Norway.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
To help you understand, we will first need to understand your English proficiency. Of the following phrases, which is the first to sound ungrammatical to you? That'll help me craft an explanation.
A. Researchers "who test the theories"
B. Researchers "who test the theories in games"
C. Researchers "who test the theories in game after game"
D. Researchers "who test the theories in game after callus-creating game"
Yeah I know. god forbid anyone have any fun in life. It should all be about work work work work work.
I present to you, Exhibit A for "why Millennials never accomplish anything."
I know right! I mean they only broke 65 Olympic records and 19 world records this year alone!
Though I have to hand it to you, you may have just broken a record of your own for stupidest comment on the internet.
CONGRATULATIONS!!
On twitch or youtube, I want to see if I can complete the game with one life, no powerups, no warps. Could take me a couple months or years.
God spoke to me
I didn't know this was a thing. Me and my friends did this all the time in high school. You'd hold the run button down and take all the shortcuts.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
You can do that? has got to be the most overused question from viewers
Don't challenge MLB if you know what's good for you.
I don't know what you're getting at because "challenge MLB" can have any of several meanings. If you start your own league unaffiliated with MLB, do you "challenge MLB"?
Major League Baseball has copyright over broadcasts of matches between MLB clubs or between clubs in MLB-affiliated minor leagues. It does not have copyright over broadcasts of baseball matches in other leagues. Video game publishers, on the other hand, control which leagues are even allowed to exist.
It's for the same reason people like you and I waste time posting to slashdot.
The same reason people climb mountains, or play football, or paint, or make music, or collect stamps, or watch tv shows and go to movies, or have and play with pets.
Pretty much anything you've ever done that doesn't involve keeping your body healthy and alive, or attempting to procreate, is equally "worthless" time spent that doesn't further the goal of living.
It's no different for being entertained by playing video games, or being entertained watching glee someone else play video games, or being entertained by learning the program flow of a video game in such detail as to be able to exploit functionality that isn't known by the original creator(s) of the game, sometimes to the extent that the functionality wasn't intended or opposed to the intent of the game creator(s).
So you are just as qualified to answer your question as any of the rest of us are.
I highly recommend you spend some introspective thought on the subject, if for no other reason than for "pointless" entertainment purposes.
And if you do, please do come back and share your thoughts. Despite some anon posts, there are plenty of us that would enjoy knowing your conclusions.
Because the only worthwhile thing to accomplish is to build intergalactic nuclear bombardment facilities to nuke anything that fails to build intergalactic nuclear bombardment faciliities. Or was that neurotoxin plants. What were we talking about again? Your name wouldn't happen to be G.L.A.D.O.S. or Ripley, would it?