m-
no apologies necessary for not knowing - the body of work of laser
tank levels is indeed a behemoth!
hmm... your pole asks a very tough question... i think the length of
the playback will be limited more by the logistics of the level
solver's willingness to solve than by the level creator's willingness
to create. it will be especially important for the creators to submit
their solutions, which works out because we now have a ghs file for
special.lvl. i assume you solved and created playbacks for all your
really long levels? at the 65500 move limit, it's about 18 hours at 1
move per second - sheesh. i don't know who, if anyone, is going to
update the lpb buffer, but i'd like to see it happen, too.
that's pretty funny - we don't have computers fast enough to solve
the VERY long levels in our lifetimes, but we also don't have hard
drives big enough to store the playbacks. of course, by the time any
PC finished calculating the playback, better PCs would have been
invented to calculate it faster ha ha. it's like travelling to alpha
centauri and then constantly getting passed by a faster rocket ship.
virtually any goal can be set for a contest (even "most visually
artistic level") and i think your idea for a contest is worthy. i
think i might be able to compete by adapting my method and make the
bulk of the solution nontrivial, but we'll have to wait to see the
result of the zipped file size. have you zipped the lpb files for the
levels in your world record list yet to determine how much they
compress? i'd like to see your results. it's tough to make a long
level without a lot of repetition, so it will be interesting.
certainly the key is randomness of moves to produce large zipped
files.
for "theoretical max" in special.lvl, i used a hex editor and pasted
enough characters to reach 65500 moves "up" in the lpb file. i wonder
how "Arek" did it. he really went to town solving levels in
special.lvl. i wouldn't expect donald to be checking all the really
long solutions - it takes LT a while to run through something like
that! maybe others who are interested in such things should be the
ones required to verify solutions for these types of levels and then
post their confirmations. "theoretical max" takes about 40 minutes on
my PC to verify the solution with "f8 - resume recording" (which is
much faster than a normal playback "f7"). LT just locks up until it
finishes reading the file, unless you shut it down with "pview"
or "ctrl-alt-del". this is sorta cool for this level - you get to see
the clock-like machinery progressing through to the end. "trinary
counter IV" would take only about a million years to verify by
using "f8".
-steve
no apologies necessary for not knowing - the body of work of laser
tank levels is indeed a behemoth!
hmm... your pole asks a very tough question... i think the length of
the playback will be limited more by the logistics of the level
solver's willingness to solve than by the level creator's willingness
to create. it will be especially important for the creators to submit
their solutions, which works out because we now have a ghs file for
special.lvl. i assume you solved and created playbacks for all your
really long levels? at the 65500 move limit, it's about 18 hours at 1
move per second - sheesh. i don't know who, if anyone, is going to
update the lpb buffer, but i'd like to see it happen, too.
that's pretty funny - we don't have computers fast enough to solve
the VERY long levels in our lifetimes, but we also don't have hard
drives big enough to store the playbacks. of course, by the time any
PC finished calculating the playback, better PCs would have been
invented to calculate it faster ha ha. it's like travelling to alpha
centauri and then constantly getting passed by a faster rocket ship.
virtually any goal can be set for a contest (even "most visually
artistic level") and i think your idea for a contest is worthy. i
think i might be able to compete by adapting my method and make the
bulk of the solution nontrivial, but we'll have to wait to see the
result of the zipped file size. have you zipped the lpb files for the
levels in your world record list yet to determine how much they
compress? i'd like to see your results. it's tough to make a long
level without a lot of repetition, so it will be interesting.
certainly the key is randomness of moves to produce large zipped
files.
for "theoretical max" in special.lvl, i used a hex editor and pasted
enough characters to reach 65500 moves "up" in the lpb file. i wonder
how "Arek" did it. he really went to town solving levels in
special.lvl. i wouldn't expect donald to be checking all the really
long solutions - it takes LT a while to run through something like
that! maybe others who are interested in such things should be the
ones required to verify solutions for these types of levels and then
post their confirmations. "theoretical max" takes about 40 minutes on
my PC to verify the solution with "f8 - resume recording" (which is
much faster than a normal playback "f7"). LT just locks up until it
finishes reading the file, unless you shut it down with "pview"
or "ctrl-alt-del". this is sorta cool for this level - you get to see
the clock-like machinery progressing through to the end. "trinary
counter IV" would take only about a million years to verify by
using "f8".
-steve