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[JaseC]

I had that problem too but I realized you have to edit the value after starting the level. Then immediately you'll see a 180000 score.

That's what I was doing. :/ I asked in the IRC, but I was told it doesn't work. I then had another crack at the game proper and got the gold. It only took me 8~9 hours.

Fucking Audiosurf.

 

[The Elite]

We'll know if those projected times are correct (or within the ballpark) when the counter is recalculated once 123 Kick It! is completed, which should be soon.

I don't trust the counter recalculation. It didn't work properly the last time. Everything starting to look good now. In the last hour a lot of the bars have moved quite a bit.

 

[derFeef]

Tried for two hours getting some other potatoes. I give up on those games and I am not going to cheat. I am patient enough to wait for the game anyway.

 

[Blizzard]

We'll know if those projected times are correct (or within the ballpark) when the counter is recalculated once 123 Kick It! is completed, which should be soon.

I'm saying there's a 79% chance of the official recalculated timer going down an additional 2 hours or less, compared to the 50 minutes for end of the world.

Even at the current rate of "easiest game bar finished in 12 hours", I am predicting it only knocks off 1-2 hours for each easy game max, until harder games like killing floor come into play. And consider killing floor has an estimated arrival time of some 74 hours, I don't think it will help, lol.

 

[Fox318]

I don't trust the counter recalculation. It didn't work properly the last time. Everything starting to look good now. In the last hour a lot of the bars have moved quite a bit.

Maybe Valve has shortened the amount of time needed for each game?

 

[Cindres]

Well the thing with the javascript time is that it's assuming the time when all those red bars will be filled.

I think.

 

[Captain N. Tenneal]

Damn, some of these potatoes are such a grind. Starting to feel pointless.

 

[JaseC]

I don't trust the counter recalculation. It didn't work properly the last time. Everything starting to look good now. In the last hour a lot of the bars have moved quite a bit.

Oh, right. I thought it was "fixed" briefly.

I'm saying there's a 79% chance of the official recalculated timer going down an additional 2 hours or less, compared to the 50 minutes for end of the world.

Even at the current rate of "easiest game bar finished in 12 hours", I am predicting it only knocks off 1-2 hours for each easy game max, until harder games like killing floor come into play. And consider killing floor has an estimated arrival time of some 74 hours, I don't think it will help, lol.

I honestly don't think Killing Floor will get done. One of the estimators puts its required hours at 1.2 million.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

Damn, the last DG CHAS potato is tough. I'm trying not to use guides though, I already cheated getting the first 4 potatoes.

Also, has anyone been able to solidly confirm if idling counts toward the total or not?

 

[Baha]

Oh, right. I thought it was "fixed" briefly.



I honestly don't think Killing Floor will get done. One of the estimators puts its required hours at 1.2 million.

Chances are that with every completed computation, the number of concurrent cpus required will drop. I have a feeling that by the time Killing Floor is the last game required, we'll see it's bar grow faster.

 

[JaseC]

Damn, the last DG CHAS potato is tough. I'm trying not to use guides though, I already cheated getting the first 4 potatoes.

If you decide you'd like some help, I recommend this video. Worked flawlessly for me.

Chances are that with every completed computation, the number of concurrent cpus required will drop. I have a feeling that by the time Killing Floor is the last game required, we'll see it's bar grow faster.

Solid theory.

 

[webrunner]

fuckin' bars, how do they work

 

[JaseC]

How hard is it to get the enemies on to the buttons in KF-Aperture when playing by yourself (via a listen server)? It seems like it'll be a pain in the arse.

 

[Fox318]

How hard is it to get the enemies on to the buttons in KF-Aperture when playing by yourself (via a listen server)? It seems like it'll be a pain in the arse.

Id say tough

 

[Baha]

How hard is it to get the enemies on to the buttons in KF-Aperture when playing by yourself (via a listen server)? It seems like it'll be a pain in the arse.

Pretty easy actually, if you're going for the potato, just play on beginner and wait by the door, a clot will usually spawn in that room and step on the button long enough for you to enter. Hit me up on steam (BahaFS) if you need help getting those KF potatoes, I'll be around for another hr or so.

 

[Palette Swap]

How hard is it to get the enemies on to the buttons in KF-Aperture when playing by yourself (via a listen server)? It seems like it'll be a pain in the arse.

You don't need them on the buttons, they might just come from behind the door that's supposed to open. Just hug the door and it will eventually open.

 

[JaseC]

Pretty easy actually, if you're going for the potato, just play on beginner and wait by the door, a clot will usually spawn in that room and step on the button long enough for you to enter.

You don't need them on the buttons, they might just come from behind the door that's supposed to open. Just hug the door and it will eventually open.

Yeah, I tried luring them on to the outside button a couple times and only just noticed the door was seemingly opening by itself.

Cheers.

 

[Palette Swap]

The Wonderful End of the World wasn't bad. At least as a sub $5 game.

I liked it as a Katamari ripoff but controller support is pretty terrible.

 

[JaseC]

Got it after a few tries (had a tendency to blow myself up ).

Just Amnesia and The Ball to go now.

Id say tough

Certainly wasn't the walk in the park I figured it'd be (after realising I didn't need to lure them to the button, I mean).

 

[Jubbly]

Only need another 200 people to play 123 Kick It simultaneously. If you're playing something else swap over to 123 and it can be done easily in the next half hour.

 

[Covfan]

We must be quite close to having 1...2...3...Kick it finished surely?

 

[JaseC]

Only need another 200 people to play 123 Kick It simultaneously. If you're playing something else swap over to 123 and it can be done easily in the next half hour.

The red bars are based on hours played, not concurrent users. If everybody quit the game right now the bar would probably fill up.

 

[Rur0ni]

Seems to be speeding up now.

 

[butter_stick]

We must be quite close to having 1...2...3...Kick it finished surely?

89%

 

[epmode]

The red bars are based on hours played, not concurrent users.

So is there any proof of this or is it just speculation? Because it makes no sense, especially with the CPU usage tracked on the official countdown page.

 

[J-Rod]

I ran taki toki while I slept, and closed/reopened the game when I got up, and my steam profile reported I only played it for 4 hours even though about 10 had passed.

 

[JaseC]

So is there any proof of this or is it just speculation? Because it makes no sense, especially with the CPU usage tracked on the official countdown page.

That's the current understanding. Concurrent users would make even less sense seeing as that would mean Killing Floor would need around 40,000~50,000, plus Kick It! was at ~1.4k users when I woke up yesterday and the bar was somewhere in-between where SMB and Audiosurf are now.

 

[Palette Swap]

That's the current understanding. Concurrent users would make even less sense seeing as that would mean Killing Floor would need around 40,000~50,000, plus Kick It! was at ~1.4k users when I woke up yesterday and the bar was somewhere in-between where SMB and Audiosurf are now.

Plus, concurrent could lead to these numbers actually decreasing, while they obviously add up. The manhour theory seems pretty sensible.

 

[Graphics Horse]

So is there any proof of this or is it just speculation? Because it makes no sense, especially with the CPU usage tracked on the official countdown page.

The red bars are definitely not the same thing as concurrent users, they numbers go up and down but the bars stay up. Each bar is scaled to a different number of hours depending on how many people own that game, or something like that.

 

[Datwheezy]

33% done in 25 hours. If we keep this pace, even with no bonus for filling a red bar, we should have this unlocked 48 hours from now.

I ran taki toki while I slept, and closed/reopened the game when I got up, and my steam profile reported I only played it for 4 hours even though about 10 had passed.

Thats strange. I kept 4 games open while I slept and when I closed them and then refreshed my profile a few times, all times were accurate.

 

[epmode]

That's the current understanding. Concurrent users would make even less sense seeing as that would mean Killing Floor would need around 40,000~50,000, plus Kick It! was at ~1.4k users when I woke up yesterday and the bar was somewhere in-between where SMB and Audiosurf are now.

Maybe I'm not explaining myself properly.

I don't mean that we just need to get X number of users playing at the same time. I just mean that the red bars increase at a rate that is based on the current CPU usage. The more players in-game, the faster it goes up.

It doesn't have anything to do with your personal hours played (which are usually delayed) because that only adds needless complexity. Valve queries their login servers every 30 seconds or so, sees how many people are in game X and increments the red bars accordingly.

 

[Fox318]

33% done in 25 hours. If we keep this pace, even with no bonus for filling a red bar, we should have this unlocked 48 hours from now.



Thats strange. I kept 4 games open while I slept and when I closed them and then refreshed my profile a few times, all times were accurate.

I went to sleep last night with meat boy running and I woke up and steam restarted after I went to sleep.

 

[EatChildren]

Here's how it works according to the Wiki.

CPU count = current player count. This fluxuates as people quit and start the games.
Red bar = total time spent playing these games. The bar can only go forward, not backwards.

The more people playing the games, the faster the red bar will increase, as obviously the more hours are being put towards that game. The less people are playing a game, the less hours are going towards that bar, and thus the slower it will increase.

The kicker is that the speed at which the bar increase is shaped to the amount of people who own that game. Not playing, but own. The more people that own a game, the more hours are required to fill the bar to completion. The less people who own the game, the quicker it will be to fill the red bar.

Not many people own Kick It!, so it will be easy to fill. Plus, people are focusing on playing it, so it's not only one of the easiest games to fill but also has the largest current player focus. Hence why it will be done soon.

On the downside games like Killing Floor likely have a lot of owners, and thus will require more people playing to increase the bar.

 

[darkpaladinmfc]

Here's how it works according to the Wiki.

CPU count = current player count. This fluxuates as people quit and start the games.
Red bar = total time spent playing these games. The bar can only go forward, not backwards.

The more people playing the games, the faster the red bar will increase, as obviously the more hours are being put towards that game. The less people are playing a game, the less hours are going towards that bar, and thus the slower it will increase.

The kicker is that the speed at which the bar increase is shaped to the amount of people who own that game. Not playing, but own. The more people that own a game, the more hours are required to fill the bar to completion. The less people who own the game, the quicker it will be to fill the red bar.

Not many people own Kick It!, so it will be easy to fill. Plus, people are focusing on playing it, so it's not only one of the easiest games to fill but also has the largest current player focus. Hence why it will be done soon.

On the downside games like Killing Floor likely have a lot of owners, and thus will require more people playing to increase the bar.

So basically the less games we buy the quicker bars go up, so we shouldn't buy any of these indie games until Portal 2 is out.

 

[Blizzard]

Here's how it works according to the Wiki.

CPU count = current player count. This fluxuates as people quit and start the games.
Red bar = total time spent playing these games. The bar can only go forward, not backwards.

The more people playing the games, the faster the red bar will increase, as obviously the more hours are being put towards that game. The less people are playing a game, the less hours are going towards that bar, and thus the slower it will increase.

The kicker is that the speed at which the bar increase is shaped to the amount of people who own that game. Not playing, but own. The more people that own a game, the more hours are required to fill the bar to completion. The less people who own the game, the quicker it will be to fill the red bar.

Not many people own Kick It!, so it will be easy to fill. Plus, people are focusing on playing it, so it's not only one of the easiest games to fill but also has the largest current player focus. Hence why it will be done soon.

On the downside games like Killing Floor likely have a lot of owners, and thus will require more people playing to increase the bar.

This seems like the simplest and most logical explanation, though I don't know what, if any, impact the potatoes have.

The big problem is that the actual release adjustment seems to be based on the man-hour length of each bar, which is why end of the world (and probably kick it in the next hour or two) only lowered the projection by 50 minutes.

 

[Baha]

Here's how it works according to the Wiki.

CPU count = current player count. This fluxuates as people quit and start the games.
Red bar = total time spent playing these games. The bar can only go forward, not backwards.

The more people playing the games, the faster the red bar will increase, as obviously the more hours are being put towards that game. The less people are playing a game, the less hours are going towards that bar, and thus the slower it will increase.

The kicker is that the speed at which the bar increase is shaped to the amount of people who own that game. Not playing, but own. The more people that own a game, the more hours are required to fill the bar to completion. The less people who own the game, the quicker it will be to fill the red bar.

Not many people own Kick It!, so it will be easy to fill. Plus, people are focusing on playing it, so it's not only one of the easiest games to fill but also has the largest current player focus. Hence why it will be done soon.

On the downside games like Killing Floor likely have a lot of owners, and thus will require more people playing to increase the bar.

If people keep switching from game to game, then it's not crazy to assume that by the last stretch Killing Floor will have double to triple it's current cpu. A Monday release seems to be on lock at this point.

 

[thefil]

I would help with kick it, but my download speed has crunched down to 8KB for some reason.

At least my 4 potatoes are contributing.

 

[Mudkips]

I just bought the potato sack.
I'm getting the PS3 (+Steam) version of Portal 2, so I don't care about early release shit.

But I'm willing to help you goobers out.
What do I do to maximize potatoeness or whatever?
(I didn't have any of the games in the potato sack before.)

 

[speculawyer]

(Bogus) conspiracy theory: Valve is just getting people to idle in Potato games so they can scramble to fix the TF2 crashing bugs.

Grumble.

 

[darkpaladinmfc]

I just bought the potato sack.
I'm getting the PS3 (+Steam) version of Portal 2, so I don't care about early release shit.

But I'm willing to help you goobers out.
What do I do to maximize potatoeness or whatever?
(I didn't have any of the games in the potato sack before.)

Open AAAAAAAAAAAAAA, then alt+tab and do whatever you want.

 

[Blizzard]

I just bought the potato sack.
I'm getting the PS3 (+Steam) version of Portal 2, so I don't care about early release shit.

But I'm willing to help you goobers out.
What do I do to maximize potatoeness or whatever?
(I didn't have any of the games in the potato sack before.)

In theory, just leave a game idle (paused and alt-tabbed), that's all we can do. http://hasportal2launchedyet.com/index.html has an arrow that can in theory coordinate people's efforts.

 

[duderon]

Here's how it works according to the Wiki.

CPU count = current player count. This fluxuates as people quit and start the games.
Red bar = total time spent playing these games. The bar can only go forward, not backwards.

The more people playing the games, the faster the red bar will increase, as obviously the more hours are being put towards that game. The less people are playing a game, the less hours are going towards that bar, and thus the slower it will increase.

The kicker is that the speed at which the bar increase is shaped to the amount of people who own that game. Not playing, but own. The more people that own a game, the more hours are required to fill the bar to completion. The less people who own the game, the quicker it will be to fill the red bar.

Not many people own Kick It!, so it will be easy to fill. Plus, people are focusing on playing it, so it's not only one of the easiest games to fill but also has the largest current player focus. Hence why it will be done soon.

On the downside games like Killing Floor likely have a lot of owners, and thus will require more people playing to increase the bar.

One more thing to consider is the potato multiplier at the bottom. I thought that it would be a good idea to play the more popular games first, but this is wrong taking the multiplier into account. If we leave the most popular games for last the multiplier will be larger and should help us finish the popular games more quickly.

 

[darkpaladinmfc]

In theory, just leave a game idle (paused and alt-tabbed), that's all we can do. http://hasportal2launchedyet.com/index.html has an arrow that can in theory coordinate people's efforts.

Don't bother with Kick It, it's nearly done, so you might as well just skip to AAAAAAAA which is next on the list.

 

[Baha]

(Bogus) conspiracy theory: Valve is just getting people to idle in Potato games so they can scramble to fix the TF2 crashing bugs.

Grumble.

I'd believe that if they pulled the same stunt fixing the stuttering audio and ctds that TF2 had before but seeing as they took months fixing those I doubt it.

 

[Datwheezy]

Also, according to the wiki, you can get some or maybe even all of the audiosurf potatoes using the audiosurf demo.

 

[snoopeasystreet]

Could everyone with the potato pack launch the same game at the same time and fill up one game at a time?

 

[Jubbly]

This is how I understand, based on a quick conversation with a friend at Valve who admittedly makes the games rather than builds tech for ARGs:

- The game-specific bars are based on the number of people playing/idling at that moment. This can be verified by looking at the stats page on the Steam store. Once you reach the simultaneous user requirement, the bar is completed and a bonus amount of time is knocked off the countdown.

- Everyone playing, regardless of Potato Pack game, contributes to the overall bar at the top of the page and reduces the time until unlock.

It is therefore better to go after the game-specific bars to get the bonuses.

- I do not know how, or if potatoes factor into it. My friend at Valve either didn't know or was unwilling to discuss it, plus he was working away on Portal 2 still.

- Having talked with him about the store stats page in the past, it is unable to ascertain if you are idling in a game, and it only reports the first game that you load. It is therefore entirely possible that loading multiple games at once helps the overall bar, but only impacts one game bar.

 

[darkpaladinmfc]

Could everyone with the potato pack launch the same game at the same time and fill up one game at a time?

That's what we're doing, here's the priority list:

AaAaAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
RUSH
BIT.TRIP BEAT
Toki Tori
Cogs
The Ball
Audiosurf
Amnesia
Super Meat Boy
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Killing Floor

I'm ignoring Kick It because it'll be done in like 20-30 mins.

 

[JaseC]

Damn it, I keep forgetting The Ball doesn't like to be alt-tabbed.

Got up to Test Chamber 5 and now I'll have to do it all again when I wake up. :/

 

[Azure Dream]

The hardest part about the Killing Floor ones were actually getting on a server. Connection process is so bad, and people never want you to join on.

Now just one potato left. I have to do it, for science. I'm coming for you Amnesia.