Відео

There's something about video essays that devolve into people losing their damn minds, realizing maybe there are more important things in life than a game made for 8 year olds, and then coming back at the end all "by the way I WAS RIGHT BITCH!" that just feels right.

excellent music throughout the video, and I loved how you described the discovery process. really good!

great video. i’m glad you spent all that time writing and running code instead of earning coins and purchasing TM13 Ice Beam.

MATLAB MENTIONED

new yorkers can do anything

did you account for the weighting though? as in: since you are eliminating permutations, you *should* then count them as many times as there are permutations for them. otherwise the percentage solvable might be off

incredible video, I certainly did not expect to stumble upon absolute cinema when clicking on this

It doesn't matter what proportion of theoretical voltorb flip puzzles are solvable -- the actual game doesn't sample from that distribution uniformly.

how dare I skip this video; this truly is a masterpiece. I'll have to see if I can go visit the historic Gugen Heights someday

what the hell, Tongy. great work

Are we getting another part?

damn bait! when I saw "core dump", I thought you was gonna say the lab computer took fire because of some sub-optimal code. 😂

STARS AND BARS MENTIONED

I think you severely miscounted. Even without knowing the game specifics, I highly doubt all boards are equally likely. First, the game probably generates a limited number bombs and then fills the rest. Second, you counted the number of row/column configurations. Every solvable round has one configuration, however every non-solvable has 2+. By that, non-solvable row/col combinations are at least 2x as likely as solvable ones. On the other hand, only from the rows/columns it's not always possible to tell whether a board is solvable. It could be that there is a safe square and the game becomes solvable if it is a 2 but unsolvable if it is a 1.

Lol just reverse engineer the seed, then the puzzles are skill again, you have all those computers.

I think your example may be wrong, there should be 2 voltorb in column 4, the number of voltorb in the rows and columns don’t match. But what do I know, I only grinded for dratini not ice beam

Heartgold > Soulsilver

I grinded for a dratini once I discovered the game, seems about right lol

I expected many thing when I clicked this video. Daddy Yankee was not one of them.

36

W

Another great video. If you need some extra compute, I might be able to spin up an extra node or two on my local kubernetes cluster. No guarantees, but I should have some extra unused processing power… - a fellow New Yorker

When I was a small child playing Soul Silver on release I became so addicted to Voltorb Flip that I never actually beat the game, I just stayed in the Game Corner all day losing to 50/50 guesses. I knew the game was BS but I loved it.

I appreciate the work but a lot of it seems… unnecessary? You can look up the total number of 2s, 3s, and voltorbs based on the number you’re playing. Then, based on that, you can calculate the odds a square of death exists.

You should be able to reduce the column search space using two invariants. Sum(Voltorbs in Rows) = Sum(Voltorbs in Cols), and Sum(Cards in Rows) = Sum(Cards in Cols). No need to check every single combination of columns for every set of rows, only those where the invariants hold.

I always looked at this minigame as a hybrid of minesweeper and picross, hah Which the stock minesweeper that came with Windows (and probably the one on Google) also funnily have a tendency to succumb to RNG vibe checks so that's fun All the while the one picross game I grew up with, Picross DS, has a puzzle editor that comes with a solvability checker that stops you from saving a puzzle if there's an ambiguous set of clues, it's pretty damn robust too iirc

Solid upload. Can't wait for the next one

I don't understand the puzzle at 6:36. Isn't the fourth column from the left only supposed to have one Voltorb?

A similar question that I have had about Voltorb flip: what is the probability of winning while playing optimally. That is, for each time you have to guess, simulate all game possible game boards and choose the tiles least likely to make you lose. Sequel?! Great video though, I dig your style

I feel like something that generally helps is to ignore fields you dont need to care about. For example when a row has 1 voltorb and the sum of the other tiles is 4. That row only has ones and voltorbs. Ones dont help you so if you dont know where the voltorb is you can simoly ignore tte whole row. Doesnt help with 50 50 guesses though

Alternative title: New York man proves that a casino game involves chance (Great video as always)

Pokémon has always at its core been a game about gambling, odds, and doing what you can to beat the odds. The random chances to encounter a wild Pokémon with what you want. The chances as to whether or not a poké ball will capture what you’re throwing it at. The high risk high reward of moves like Stone Edge, Focus Blast, Fire Blast, etc… The various NPC’s that give you one item of a set of random items every day you talk to them. The gambling corner is just the elements of luck we’ve seen time and time again but compltely upfront. Voltorb flip was meant to replace the gambling corner but they got very creative about it and intentionally designed it to be ultimately gambling but a child friendly and player infuriating way. As a sicko who still plays voltorb flip for fun every now and then, I absolutely prefer it over the slot machines and even what they tried to do in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum. The crucial mechanic where you remain at a higher level when you fail if you flip enough cards to match the level, being fast enough to reach those part where the level is a gamble, and being the friend who would play voltorb flip for others in order to help them get those early dratinis as a kid made me appreciate it. It’s far from perfect though. My first encounters with the game were absolutely frustrating and the lack of help the game gives you due to it being a patched in inclusion is horrible game design.

This is a weird way to confess to abusing access to the high-performance compute at university.

Tomgy

Two posts in one week? Early Christmas?

An 18 minute tongy video is exactly what i ordered for my lunch break

thank you for delivering justice to the people. i love the way you stitch in bits about your life in these videos, they are much more compelling for it. looking forward to the next one.

Fun fact: The EU was the one who pitched a fit about gambling in pokemon. The yanks get off scott-free on this one (for a change). Very nice video on a minigame I completely forgot about.

Stand proud king, your girlfriend stucked with you BECAUSE you beat fire red blind and deaf on offical hardware, not despite it. I'd tell it to everyone I meet tbh. Also matlab is truly rated M.

Thank you for this video. It was very enjoyable :3

I've recently become monomaniacally obsessed with an obscure (albeit less whimsical) project myself to the point that it's started to invade my dreams, so this was very cathartic to watch. Now you've got me wondering whether anyone's tried to patch Voltorb Flip to make all boards solvable... also damn those are some big honkin' caterpillars

No joke, not only a great pokemon video, but a great video in general english is not my first language so i dont know the exact words, i just wanted to say that the final product turned out to be really great!

This about lines up with what I would have expected. I played through SoulSilver earlier this year and initally thought Voltorb flip was really fun, but eventually found myself running into these minesweeper-like guessing games all the time, which really took the fun out of it. It seems to happen more often at the higher difficulty levels, too. Question: does the game actually generate of of the theoretically possible puzzles that you checked for solvability? I remember finding patterns in how the game generated its puzzles: something along the lines of two tiles with 2s in level 1, two 2s and a 3 or two 3s in level 2, and so on. I'd be curious to see what proportion of puzzles at each level are (un)solvable.

savestates are a wonderful thing

He’s back with some quality content!

Disliked so fast...

It is almost like the game cube controller but better

Revolutionary

pablo bacala

Dog reveal??!?!???