• Mario is hard, and that's mathematically official
    46 replies, posted
[IMG]http://www.newscientist.com/img/misc/ns_logo.jpg[/IMG] [release]IF YOU have ever struggled to complete classic Nintendo games, don't feel bad - they are officially difficult.An [URL="http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.1895"]analysis of the computational complexity of video games[/URL], including those in the Mario and Legend of Zelda series, proves that many of them belong to a class of mathematical problems called NP-hard. This means that for a given game level, it can be very difficult to work out whether it is possible for a player to reach the end. The results suggest that some hard problems could be solved by playing a game. The commercial versions of games are designed to be doable, of course, but [URL="http://erikdemaine.org/"]Erik Demaine[/URL] of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues studied versions without that constraint. "We are working within the same rules, but we are free to design the levels however we like," he says. The team transformed each game into a type of logical puzzle called the Boolean satisfiability problem. This asks whether the variables in a collection of logical statements can be chosen to make all the statements true, or whether the statements inevitably contradict each other. For each game, the team constructed sections of a level that force players to choose one of two paths - equivalent to assigning variables in the Boolean satisfiability problem. Arrangements of enemies and power-ups are equivalent to logical statements. If they allow a level to be completed, that is equivalent to all the statements in the Boolean problem being true; if they make the level impossible, that is equivalent to a contradiction. Many of the games in the Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Pokémon series prove to be NP-hard. That means deciding whether a player can complete them is at least as hard as the hardest problems in NP, a complexity class involved in the tantalising problem of P versus NP [URL="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328565.100-mario-is-hard-and-thats-mathematically-official.html?full=true#bx285651B1"](see "Million-dollar proof")[/URL]. Not every game in each series was included in the proof, as they follow different rules. For Mario, the team also prove that the games are NP-complete, an additional property with important consequences. Many difficult problems can be converted into any problem in the NP-complete category. Then if you can solve the NP-complete problem - say, by completing a level of Mario - you have solved the original problem too. That includes the travelling salesman problem - finding the shortest route between a series of points - which is of real interest in the field of logistics, and also the knapsack problem, used in deciding how to allocate resources. So theoretically you could convert an example of either problem into a Mario level, and play the game to solve it. That approach would be fun, says Demaine, although it would probably be simpler to solve the satisfiability problem directly. The results offer mixed news for game designers, says [URL="http://www.di.unipi.it/~vigliett/"]Giovanni Viglietta[/URL] a computer scientist at the University of Pisa, Italy, who was not involved in the research. If it is an NP-hard problem to decide whether a level can be successfully navigated, there is no easy way for a designer to check this. But it does ensure that playing the game is interesting, as players can't easily decide if they are heading the right way or straying into an impassable area of the level. "The game demands some creativity and ingenuity," Viglietta says.[/release] [URL=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328565.100-mario-is-hard-and-thats-mathematically-official.html]Source[/url]
An excuse! Finally!
Tap A and hold right and b at the same time then A is considered to be hard?
Now how mathematically hard is nethack?
It was only hard because the limited amount of lives.
Well if Mario is considered hard, what is I Wanna Be The Guy?
NP-Hard... ...Nintendo Power Hard? :v:
Boy if they think Mario is hard I wonder what they think of Driver 3.
[QUOTE=CMB Unit 01;35141605]Well if Mario is considered hard, what is I Wanna Be The Guy?[/QUOTE] They were testing it, but then the computer caught fire.
no shit theres a reason why old games are sometimes referred to as "nintendo hard"
[QUOTE]NP-hard[/QUOTE] Or just [URL="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard"]Nintendo Hard.[/URL]
BATTLETOADS
Can someone explain the article to me in such a way an 8 year old would understand?
[QUOTE=Jmir 54;35142725]Can someone explain the article to me in such a way an 8 year old would understand?[/QUOTE] Mario games are hard.
I mainly found it hard and overrated because Mario jumped like a retarded kangaroo. That's Mario Bros that is. The rest were great.
[quote]The commercial versions of games are designed to be doable, of course, but Erik Demaine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues studied versions without that constraint. "We are working within the same rules, but we are free to design the levels however we like," he says.[/quote] They didn't play the commercial version, they played their own hack ala Kaizo Mario.
I remember my Brother's face when he beat The Guy in IWBtG on hardest difficulty. He proceeded to die in the credits, though. :v:
[QUOTE=Cuon Alpinus;35143545]I remember my Brother's face when he beat The Guy in IWBtG on hardest difficulty. He proceeded to die in the credits, though. :v:[/QUOTE] Was it like this? [img]http://www.youthink.com/images_quiz/2009/07/01/full_925243627.jpg[/img]
[img]http://mmxz.zophar.net/megamanxz/megamanx6/mmx6_boxpal.jpg[/img] The bane of my childhood.
[QUOTE=Jmir 54;35142725]Can someone explain the article to me in such a way an 8 year old would understand?[/QUOTE] Basically, to prove Mario is hard, they used true/false values, and if they lined up (true true true, or false false false) then the level was possible.
Super Mario bros, if I died, it was mainly my own fault, like badly timing a jump on a piranha plant pipe, or dodging hammers from lakitu. In theory, none of the games are hard once you have the levels memorized. I can breeze Yoshi's Story without taking a single hit, and the Baby Bowser Castle Shy Guys are [B]ASSHOLES.[/B]
I played through all of Super Mario World on my phone not too long ago, and was astonished at how hard it really is. Modern gamers are pussies.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;35144998]I played through all of Super Mario World on my phone not too long ago, and was astonished at how hard it really is. Modern gamers are pussies.[/QUOTE] I think that a game back then is more challenging to a novice than one is today. On that same note, I think the games back then would be [B]less challenging[/B] to a professional who's mastered the game than one today would be because of enemy AI, when done correctly, has that level of unpredictability that makes you change your strategy. Some of the hardest modes of games made recently have you survive just by luck of the draw.
Lacking a save feature doesn't make a game hard, just extremely time consuming and frustrating. Fortunately in Mario there were those "secret" warp pipes at the end of 1-2 so you could at least get close to where you left off.
i've never beaten the original Super Mario Brothers, and i've never gotten past like 1-4 without using the warp zones, in equal parts due to me just sucking and having a short attention span i'm not entirely sure if they needed to get all mathematical on this. i think this may have been an excuse for mathmaticians to play mario instead of doing math.
[QUOTE=PvtCupcakes;35145245]Lacking a save feature doesn't make a game hard, just extremely time consuming and frustrating. Fortunately in Mario there were those "secret" warp pipes at the end of 1-2 so you could at least get close to where you left off.[/QUOTE] Or in SM3 with those flutes that got you to the end of the game. Aw, but I hated how they trolled people with warp pipes in The Lost Levels. "I searched the level for cool secrets and you have the balls to send me [I][B]back?![/B][/I]"
I only passed mario using an emulator so I could save state (like a quick save function). it whas the only whay.
Well Super Mario Bros 2 Lost levels is harder than the rest. So if SMB is hard, then SMB2 Lost levels is like expert.
lol scrub sceintits cant bete mario xdd I recently got into playing Doom again, from E1M1 all the way to map32 including Plutonia and TNT. Fuck you, ID software and your damn walk-over-floor-get-thousands-monsters-warped-in-your-face traps. Sometimes I feel as if they designed the levels to fuck around with the player, just [I]knowing[/I] somewhere, someone is totally flipping his shit because a monster just teleported behind him. But because of this, Doom is an amazing game. No wonder I love playing it.
I am pretty sure there are alot of rougelikes that are [I]much[/I] harder. [QUOTE=Hidole555;35141819]Or just [URL="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard"]Nintendo Hard.[/URL][/QUOTE] Shit. Why did you link to Tvtropes man? Now I can't get out.
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