Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 July 18

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July 18

Indian English literature (untitled)

Any classics of English literature written by ethnic Indians?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.75.107.21 (talk) 11:54, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Some works by, for example, VS Naipul and/or Salman Rushdie might well qualify, but it depends on what definition(s) of "a classic of English literature" one accepts. If you can define criteria, more comprehensive answers might be given. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.177.31 (talk) 14:13, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Our article Indian English literature should give you some good pointers. DuncanHill (talk) 14:26, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Published collections of classics (like Penguin) would be a good definition but some include non-fiction and I am only looking for fiction. Another possible criteria (but more subjective) is works that are heavily analysed and often selected for English literature classes (pre-university).

SMB hack problem

We know that many people hack Super Mario Bros. to make hard games. However, here's a new problem:

Suppose you want to hack Super Mario Bros. so that there's something you can do that will give exactly 600 points. As for why this question is so interesting, please go to:

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/253377/The_long_shadow_of_Super_Mario_Bros.php

Scroll the window down so you see a picture of a screen that says PPU Viewer. The left side has the sprite tiles; some of them are for displaying point additions for when you do something worth a particular number of points. That is, a coin is 200 points and it combines the "20" sprite at the bottom and the "0" sprite on the left a little higher than the middle to display the number 200. How can it display the number 600?? There's no sprite for 60. Are there any hacks of SMB that change the numbers of points you get for certain actions?? If so, how can you get the number 600 to appear?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:42, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

There’s a set of sprites for displaying your total score. These include the digits 0-9 so that they can show an arbitrary number that’s the result of arithmetic, in this case, the sum of the points collected. Each digit in this set appears to have a square aspect ratio; they are quite wide. Then there’s another set of sprites for displaying the points awarded for a single action. These digits are much narrower; they combine several digits on a shared tile; and they don’t form a complete set of digits for displaying arbitrary numbers. I expect these displays are based on simple programmatic rules rather than any numeric calculation. In other words: “When a coin is collected, float these two sprites for 2 seconds and increment the score by 200.” The tiles and the points awarded could be anything and don’t have any necessary relation; the programmer could float a mushroom sprite and add 170 to the score if they wanted to do so. In this case, they have chosen to float sprites that look like a 200 (with narrow digits) and increment the total score by 200 (wide digits), but there would be nothing in the code that “knows” these represent the same number. Your question suggests a different idea that the programmer sets the point value to 200, and the code then has to try to find a way to represent this in the total score (with wide digits) and the floating sprite (with narrow digits). The set of sprites itself is enough to show that this isn’t how it works. —Amble (talk) 14:52, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

If you wanted to award 600 points for some action, you could presumably modify the set of available sprites, or use the wide digits, or just not care about displaying the 600 floating sprite, or represent the same value in a different way such as showing three 200 sprites. —Amble (talk) 14:56, 19 July 2021 (UTC)