Speedrunning V3

[Coeur7]

Not sure why you're bringing up my trans pride flag in a discussion about speedrunning, and in that way, but ok I guess? Not sure if I like the wording, though...

I brought it up because the argument between you and UncleSam, as I understood it, was whether the implementation or the ideation of a game should be the higher measure for its mastery, and that you were arguing for implementation, and that UncleSam was arguing for ideation.

Since trans people, as I understand, feel like their "implementation" (to simplify: genetics) is not true to their "ideation" (which evolves partly from genetics, partly from the environment, and partly from "emergent properties of the mind" -- to handwave it admittedly -- and is no less "real") at least in some respects, I thought it would help convince you to raise the point that emphasizing the "ideation" (e.g. of a program) over its "implementation" is valid, since -- from how I understand this -- you already accept this in other matters. If this was offensive to you, I'd be astonished. If anything, I'd think the position that should offend you would be "implementation ought to determine/overrule ideation". But let's discuss this elsewhere, I think, if you want.

If I was thoroughly misunderstanding everything you said, this is all meaningless anyway.

e: We also agree that glitchful isn't inherently more impressive (iirc the TAS of 7th Saga is glitchless). The reason I brought this up was that I don't fully agree with UncleSam as I understood his point, either.

 

[Plague von Karma]

I brought it up because the argument between you and UncleSam, as I understood it, was whether the implementation or the ideation of a game should be the higher measure for its mastery, and that you were arguing for implementation, and that UncleSam was arguing for ideation.

If I was thoroughly misunderstanding everything you said, this is all meaningless anyway.

e: We also agree that glitchful isn't inherently more impressive (iirc the TAS of 7th Saga is glitchless). The reason I brought this up was that I don't fully agree with UncleSam as I understood his point, either.

I was not arguing for that at all, so yes, it is meaningless.

To add onto the last part, glitched runs can absolutely be unimpressive. The most optimal form of an RBY run is to do a credits warp right as the game begins, which was controversial - on the basis of it being unimpressive - to the point that it got its own category. Hell, LoZ OoT had a credits warp that became equally controversial fairly recently, then there's SMB3's...the list goes on. Credits warps alone prove that glitched runs will have those inherent flaws that require a "policy" to address. Hell, if I recall correctly, some techniques have even been banned before?

 

[UncleSam]

I never said it didn’t require lots of skill to glitch the hell out of a game - in some cases, lots more than it requires to beat the game itself. In plenty of cases it is very impressive.

What I’m saying is that you’re not playing the game at that point. And when I want to watch a speedrun of a game I love I want to see that person actually beat the game.

If you’re getting upset at this take ask yourself why that is. My guess is it’s because you’ve heard it before, probably often. But if the goal is to enhance exposure and make speed runs more popular, shouldn’t that encourage running games in a manner consistent with actually playing the game?

Anyway I won’t bother posting about this anymore since I’ve made my philosophical point. I’m sure we can all agree that speed running is an interesting concept that will hopefully become more mainstream in one form or another. Gl to you aspiring speedrunners!

 

[Amaranth]

If you’re getting upset at this take ask yourself why that is. My guess is it’s because you’ve heard it before, probably often. But if the goal is to enhance exposure and make speed runs more popular, shouldn’t that encourage running games in a manner consistent with actually playing the game?

I’m sure we can all agree that speed running is an interesting concept that will hopefully become more mainstream in one form or another. Gl to you aspiring speedrunners!

See, here's the thing. We can't agree on this. I don't really care if my runs get 10 views or 10 million views. I don't run to be mainstream, I run because I like to explore the boundaries of the videogames I play. Getting more mainstream would be nice, but I'm never ever going to sacrifice my speedrunning experience to satisfy potential viewers. I don't stream my attempts frequently at all because the distraction makes me play worse. And I will never, ever run a glitchless category purely to satisfy viewers who want to see me play the game a certain way. Growth of the hobby is something that I do appreciate, but will never be ahead of the hobby itself. The goal is not to enhance exposure at all. Maybe you see the big events and the big streamers and you think that we do this for show; we don't. The silent majority well and truly does not give a fuck about the general public, it's the player versus the game and that's all there is to it.

It's like you're trying to tell 400m sprint specialists to switch to 100m or 200m because it's more popular. Someone who's spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on one specific thing is never gonna care about what's popular, they've made up their mind long ago on what they do and don't like before deciding to spend so much time on it. They'll keep running 400m. They're not gonna switch for popularity. They were never in it for the popularity. You like 100m more? Cool, go watch Usain Bolt clips. It's there, it exists, go find it and enjoy. 400m runners certainly aren't mad at you, and they're wondering why you're so upset at the fact that 400m exists to begin with, and insisting that "it's not real running" or whatever.

 

[Blazade]

I never said it didn’t require lots of skill to glitch the hell out of a game - in some cases, lots more than it requires to beat the game itself. In plenty of cases it is very impressive.

What I’m saying is that you’re not playing the game at that point. And when I want to watch a speedrun of a game I love I want to see that person actually beat the game.

If you’re getting upset at this take ask yourself why that is. My guess is it’s because you’ve heard it before, probably often. But if the goal is to enhance exposure and make speed runs more popular, shouldn’t that encourage running games in a manner consistent with actually playing the game?

Anyway I won’t bother posting about this anymore since I’ve made my philosophical point. I’m sure we can all agree that speed running is an interesting concept that will hopefully become more mainstream in one form or another. Gl to you aspiring speedrunners!

The irony is that the glitched runs are by far the most popular with viewers. Longer runs that prioritize optimization over sequence breaking rarely make it into major marathons, and flashy difficult to execute glitches are a very popular way for a skilled runner to attract a following.

I was around before the GDQ boom and the rise of speedrunning on twitch. Back in the day it used to be like an academic community, small groups of posters on a forum sharing strategies and incrementally improving times. Segmented speedruns were far more common, and they were big projects that took a lot of time and collaborative effort, and yes, usually in the big completionist glitchless categories. Not to say the glitched runs were uncommon, just less prominent than they are today.

The rise of speedrunning as a phenomenon or esport or streaming hook or what have you, accompanied by communities large enough to hold regular races on places like SRL completely changed the incentives. Suddenly there are tons of people looking for glitches, and when that happens you're gonna find them a lot more quickly. Suddenly many more people are driven by the desire to compete since the competition is fierce, and they don't care about routing, instead choosing to practice the hottest (usually fastest with glitches) category. Suddenly lots of people are getting into the hobby because they like seeing the game get broken, and getting to break the game themselves is fun for them.

Like I said, the people who care about your kind of speedrunning are already out there! And we're doing our best to work on some cool shit! But lots of people get into this hobby for different reasons, and let me tell ya, my experience over the years is that the viewers have spoken up about what they want and the streamers are giving it to them. Never a miscommunication.

 

[Wigglytuff]

Radiant Historia

Massively underrated game and I was very excited to see it mentioned in the first reply to this thread. After spending ~25 hours beating RH this summer, the first thing I did was search up a speedrun and I saw yours without even knowing you were also a smogon member. Sometimes the world really is small (and flat).

I have a couple questions:
1: do you think there’s potential for glitches to be found that would affect the speedrun of RH? It’s not a very popular game so there aren’t thousands of people going out and looking for glitches like in Pokémon or Legend of Zelda, but if there were, would people be able to find anything?
2: if yes to above, do you have an idea about possible glitch triggers?
3: have you played Perfect Chronology? If so, is it any different from a speedrun perspective?

e: and if it’s not too off topic, some general radiant historia questions:
1: favorite song?
2: favorite character?
3: how many times did you let the world go to sand in your first playthrough? I counted 33
4: What do you think of eruca’s art change in Perfect chronology? opinions have been mixed, from what I can tell
5: did you unleash dynamax gafka onto mankind?

 

[Blazade]

Massively underrated game and I was very excited to see it mentioned in the first reply to this thread. After spending ~25 hours beating RH this summer, the first thing I did was search up a speedrun and I saw yours without even knowing you were also a smogon member. Sometimes the world really is small (and flat).

I have a couple questions:
1: do you think there’s potential for glitches to be found that would affect the speedrun of RH? It’s not a very popular game so there aren’t thousands of people going out and looking for glitches like in Pokémon or Legend of Zelda, but if there were, would people be able to find anything?
2: if yes to above, do you have an idea about possible glitch triggers?
3: have you played Perfect Chronology? If so, is it any different from a speedrun perspective?

e: and if it’s not too off topic, some general radiant historia questions:
1: favorite song?
2: favorite character?
3: how many times did you let the world go to sand in your first playthrough? I counted 33
4: What do you think of eruca’s art change in Perfect chronology? opinions have been mixed, from what I can tell
5: did you unleash dynamax gafka onto mankind?

1-2. I'm not interested in finding glitches because they'll probably make the any% run worse for me, and I'm not good at finding them anyway. But about, oh, 5-6 years ago? Caleb of Mega Man X fame looked into this game and tried to find glitches. He found ways to go out of bounds but he never could do anything with it. The biggest thing you could conceivably do with something like that is clip into Hugo's boss area early but we haven't managed anything close, and actually doing it would probably be like a dog chasing a car, we're not even sure if it'd work.

Outside of that, I'm not even sure what glitches might be useful. Item duplication or money is not really helpful. Some kind of fast leveling could open up different or more consistent strategies for characters that aren't Aht.

3. I have played Perfect Chronology! It sucks from a speedrun perspective! The kiss of death is they don't let you skip the cutscenes on the first playthrough, you have to hold X to speed through all the text and it adds like 4 hours. Outside of that there are a lot of minor changes, the economy is harsher on the player for instance, and any% goes to Singularity so the run is longer. I'd be interested in trying to find a hacked save file that's basically fresh but with the NG+ flag so we can skip cutscenes but until then I've got a 10 hour run under my belt and no plans to touch it again.

Fun questions:

1. Probably the final boss theme, but the regular boss theme (Edge of Green?) comes really close a lot of the time.

2. Viola is really cool, I like her design and character a lot. On the player side I've come around on Rosche over the years. We keep trying to work him into the run but he cannot compete with Gafka lol.

3. I think I messed up exactly once in my first playthrough 10 years ago, on the first decision node in Alma Mine. I didn't do a lot of the sidequests back then, and when I got around to it I looked them up, but still. Pretty good track record, not sure myself how I figured out in advance to save Will and Pierre.

4. I think she looks good in the new art but I think the short hair was really distinctive and it's a bit of a shame it got taken away. So yeah, I guess you could say it's a mixed reaction from me too. I'm more pissed at the fanservice they included than any of the art changes.

5. I did as a donation incentive at RPG Limit Break, in addition to a couple of the other bad endings (Marco killing everyone is obviously my favorite), but never by accident.

Really glad to see someone who likes this game! I agree it's underrated, it's my favorite turn based RPG for sure!

 

[Ehmcee]

I remember what was basically the only team I've ever attempted speedrunning, I tried going through Mario Odyssey, fairly blind to most tactics. It was still fairly early in the game's release, i think i remember getting top 100 with a 2 hour run lol, that record got smashed.

I want to try speedrunning an old game I used to play when i was younger, it only has two runs published on speedrun.com so i might try to see if i can grind for a WR.

 

[SBPC]

I want to try speedrunning an old game I used to play when i was younger, it only has two runs published on speedrun.com so i might try to see if i can grind for a WR.

What game in particular? Could be an interesting project to grind it out in this thread if others catch on the idea

 

[Ehmcee]

What game in particular? Could be an interesting project to grind it out in this thread if others catch on the idea

It's called Monster Tale, very obscure game that got released super late in the DS's life cycle and got region locked to the US so i have it on an emulated cartridge.
It's a very unheard of game, wikipedia page has literally no information of the game on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Tale

It's a metroidvania with elements of a pet management game, kind of made me feel like pokemon because you could evolve your pet and make it use many different skills.

 

[Mr.E]

To which I'd say the RPG speedrunning community is pretty ideal to keep tabs on. A large number of RPGs don't have major skip glitches (but a good number do, especially as they get older), but crucially RPG speedrunners like me typically really enjoy clean routing and quick decision making instead of grinding out a difficult mechanical glitch. All of the games I run are glitchless, and while it's uncommon I've found a number of communities who popularize the more difficult or complete run categories even when fast categories with major skips exist.

One major issue with older RPGs, aside the length that comes with the genre in general, is RNG manipulation. A lot of old RPG speedruns are literally nothing more than executing a multi-hour list of commands as flawlessly as possible. I suppose there's some sense of impressiveness in the mental stamina necessary to succeed at that, but it sure is boring.

 

[Blazade]

One major issue with older RPGs, aside the length that comes with the genre in general, is RNG manipulation. A lot of old RPG speedruns are literally nothing more than executing a multi-hour list of commands as flawlessly as possible. I suppose there's some sense of impressiveness in the mental stamina necessary to succeed at that, but it sure is boring.

It's true! Some runs of RPGs are fully manipped. I tend to avoid those, but I think it's an exaggeration to say a lot of them are anything close to fully manipped. Most RPGs are long, like you said, and the most boring parts usually are the walking around and the precision menuing, which out of battle usually does go the same way every time. The thrill is usually in improvising fights and making decisions quickly as things progress. And I was just trying to give Sam an example of a community which tends to rely less on major skip glitches in the most popular categories.

Even fully manipped runs are sometimes tense though, because manipulating RNG usually requires very precise timing and awareness of factors that can accumulate over a whole run. An example is werster's recent HGSS Gold Prints run, where the battle frontier is made significantly easier by manipping the trainers that appear, requiring frequent frame perfect inputs and hours of tile perfect movement to hold the manip. Even then, the fights themselves are still random, and there's a lot to think about especially since time variation within fights can make Elm call at the wrong time, for instance.

Just about the only RPGs I can remember that have a manipulation that trivializes the game and is "easy" (not time sensitive, but menuing is always an execution factor) to do, are some of the older fire emblems, specifically the GBA titles and 4. But yeah, games like that don't tend to attract as much of a playerbase unless the execution is really fun.

 

[Cousiin]

I hold basically all the WRs in Into the Breach and some guy with a time that's 2 minutes slower than mine (on a 10 minute run), who hasn't run the game in a full year, submitted it to GDQ and apparently he got in. This is the speedrunning equivalent of getting cucked. I just hope the showcase will get some more people interested in the game

In other news I've been really enjoying Simply's Nether Invitational and the Minecraft boom in general, nice to see speedrunning getting mainstream exposure and it's pretty insane to see someone like Cizzors grinding and becoming unironically good at it

I don't think it's even close to be the first case of this kind of stuff happening, I remember that in AGDQ (or SGDQ I don't remember) 2019 some guy ran Split/Second, they were only 2 guys in the leaderboard and that guy was 2nd lmao (quite far from 1st)

These marathons don't care that much into actual player performance, they usually seek for a good show and a good variety of games before everything else, so yeah the only way to not have regrets is to submit yourself, u got nothing to lose :D a submission with audio commentary (live or not) probably helps as well. The few small online marathons I've made it to I was barely in the top 10 of the category I ran, and I was the only one submitting my game (or even the only one submitting this game genre), I wish I can make it to a live one someday but sadly ~2h runs are quite long for their standards

 

[CaffeineBoost]

I've recently started running Pokemon Battle Revolution again. Unfortunately I have no means to record any of my runs so I can't submit them to the leaderboards but it's still fun to do.

By the way make sure you know how to correctly identify a Combusken because my last run died as a result of my failure to do so.

 

[Cousiin]

if the leaderboard rules allow it, just film your TV with your phone tbf

 

[CaffeineBoost]

if the leaderboard rules allow it, just film your TV with your phone tbf

I'd have to film the wii u gamepad, the tv's normally in use

 

[Siggu]

A while ago I made a bunch of speedruns of a few Puyo Puyo games.

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine

Puyo Puyo Tsu

Unfortunately, there's no Rally category, so this is pretty much a show-off. Still pretty good, though.

Puyo Puyo SUN

Puyo Puyo Fever

The sad thing is that this run beats the top time on speedrun.com, but since I forgot to show the difficulty...

I got kind of stuck because I'm trying to think on which platform to use for a Puyo Puyo Fever 2 speedrun, but the PSP version is broken and the DS version is slower...