Speedrunning V3

[SBPC]

Hey! Making this thread here since the last speedrunning thread hasn't been posted in since 2019.

I've always had a love for speedrunning, between events, community projects, and the insane amount of work that rolls into things like routing and mechanical skill for gameplay. It's been a pretty recent hobby of mine over COVID times too, picking up and casually running SNES titles such as Super Metroid and F-Zero.

Speedrunning also has a PS! room now so it'd be a waste not to shill the room here, manned by myself, Akir, and Waves.

Races and runs are really cool to talk about, as well as larger events like the known GDQ series so anything for discussion is welcome here! If any suggestions are down such as ways to speedrun ladders with a leaderboard on this thread, let me know and I'll put something together.

 

[SBPC]

reserved in case of needed usage!

PS Room Discord: https://discord.gg/HpxJPsU

 

[Blazade]

Hey! I'm a speedrunner. I go by Ghost_wheel on twitch and I've been doing it for a while now (going on 8 years).

I'm most known for my work on Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories where I have the world record, but I've also done a lot of work on Radiant Historia and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776. As far as major marathons go, I've run Thracia at Questing for Glory a couple weeks ago (basically the RPGLB substitute this year), and the other games at RPGLB proper in the past. It's been really cool to play at such big events!

I've dabbled in 3rd gen pokemon speedrunning for fun, and beyond that maybe some other RPGs and platformers, but really I enjoy routing more than anything, and I'm always looking for something to sink my teeth into.

If anyone ever wants to race a game, especially if it's a platformer or pokemon, hit me up and I'd be down. Or if you just want to chew the fat over a particular game's route or something I'm always happy to chat.

 

[SBPC]

I'm most known for my work on Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories where I have the world record

Grats for holding WR! I've honestly wanted to take a few runs at CoM but I don't have access to any form of non-emulated play. I'm curious as to what some of the decks for quick boss kills are, and if they're RTA viable

 

[Plague von Karma]

I'm mostly a watcher of speedruns, but me and my irl friend like to sit back and watch speedruns through my PS4 since I have a big TV on the wall. The stuff people do just to squeeze frames out of a run is just incredible.

 

[Blazade]

Grats for holding WR! I've honestly wanted to take a few runs at CoM but I don't have access to any form of non-emulated play. I'm curious as to what some of the decks for quick boss kills are, and if they're RTA viable

Well you have to adapt throughout the run. But the two really fast things you can do in CoM are Blizzard/Fire Raids and Berserk Physical Attacks.

If you can line up at just the right distance, a blizzard raid will hit 4-5 times, making it about as good as a blizzaga. This is really cool because it means you need to collect fewer magic cards to sustain a high damage deck, and you can get all that damage out in one reload so you only need one Rhapsody or Nocturne enemy card to boost damage.

In the endgame where bosses have high health, elemental resistance, and are extremely mobile, you've gotta set up a deck with lots of better keyblades, keeping in mind that each key makes sense only in certain parts of the combo. Then you have to stretch that damage. You're often stocking combos just to have the value to avoid cardbreaks (you never take level up sleights), so you have 3 good reloads before you run out of gas. The plan is to use the Maleficent enemy card at the start, take damage at the right pace, then use berserk at low health to clear 1.5-2 more health bars. It's really scary!

I'd definitely check out a video of a CoM run if you haven't. It's very cool.

 

[cherryb0ng]

I speedrun cookie clicker and get banned by clup penguin

 

[Diophantine]

 

[Amaranth]

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

 

[Here Comes Team Charm!]

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 love Into the Breach, though I'm having a bit of trouble imagining a speedrun of it (iirc the time achievement was one of the last ones i got).

Out of curiosity, what kind of strategies tends to be used in speedruns? (pilots, premade/custom squads, loadout, stuff like that)

 

[Amaranth]

I love Into the Breach, though I'm having a bit of trouble imagining a speedrun of it (iirc the time achievement was one of the last ones i got).

Out of curiosity, what kind of strategies tends to be used in speedruns? (pilots, premade/custom squads, loadout, stuff like that)

The most popular category is just completing a 2-islands run on Easy, though there are longer categories as well. There's some pieces of speed tech (controlling mechs with hotkeys instead of clicking, quitting out in specific moments to skip animations) but the biggest timesave is just being able to quickfire moves every single turn and do all the thinking in a split second.

There's categories for all the premade squads, as well as one for any and all custom squads. The setup in nearly every squad is to load Kazaaak on whichever utility mech because 2 damage w/ push is a lot better than 0 damage, though Frozen Titans and Custom Squad both use Mafan for the shielded Ice Mech interaction. Speaking of which, Custom Squad is just x2 Laser Mechs because the attack animation is nearly instant and 3 damage is a lot of damage, and 1 Ice Mech to effectively instakill bosses and any enemies that are in tricky spots for the Lasers. Changing weapons is almost never good but some of the squads with the weaker prime mechs (Behemoths, Judoka) definitely want to pick up better weapons if they show up. That's about it generally - I have specific plans for cores and upgrades with every squad but that's getting deep, feel free to ask more questions or check out the vids on speedrun.com if you want to dive deeper

 

[AM]

I’m a fan of Anthony’s speedruns of Last of Us on Grounded (Hardest difficulty in game), and he’s been doing them for Last of Us 2 now. Lot of my free time is binging on these speedruns so it’s funny I stumbled upon this thread. Watched some Sonic Adventure 2 180 emblem speedruns the other day which run for like 9 hours on average. Finding new techs and tricks to play the game is my favorite part of watching. Been meaning to watch the full run of Crash 4 that the developers watched an abbreviated version of from a speed runner cause it looked awesome.

 

[shade]

belvin and i have been learning to speedrun bloodborne, it is a long road but we are making progress

@ am: the crash 4 speedrun is pretty insane. i much much prefer the All Clear Gems runs to any % because any % feels like completely missing the point of crash. love seeing crash games get smashed however makes you feel like such a lemon that these people just rattle of WRs in 100%ing levels that took you ages

 

[UncleSam]

This is gonna be a hot take but I think that speed runs which circumvent intended encounters / mechanics in the game shouldn’t be considered legitimate. Speedruns should require that you actually beat the game the developers built, not just abuse ways in which the game is broken.

 

[SBPC]

This is gonna be a hot take but I think that speed runs which circumvent intended encounters / mechanics in the game shouldn’t be considered legitimate. Speedruns should require that you actually beat the game the developers built, not just abuse ways in which the game is broken.

play glitchless then lol.

In all seriousness, this take is not only hot ass but incredibly common to the misfortune of every speedrunning community ever. These games, even the most ridiculously broken of them gain a supreme amount of traction from the footage, and the skill ceiling created from the ridiculous manners at which you can play these games helps. It's why games like Mario 64 and Super Metroid have categories like 0 Star, 1 Star, and Reverse Boss Order that still hold thousands of spectators and a lot of high level competition to this day. If you seriously think speedruns that utilize quirks or breaks in a game's engine are illegitimate, I suggest you watch some of the insane research and practice that goes into creating these runs, and reevaluate your thoughts on the entire topic.

 

[UncleSam]

play glitchless then lol.

In all seriousness, this take is not only hot ass but incredibly common to the misfortune of every speedrunning community ever. These games, even the most ridiculously broken of them gain a supreme amount of traction from the footage, and the skill ceiling created from the ridiculous manners at which you can play these games helps. It's why games like Mario 64 and Super Metroid have categories like 0 Star, 1 Star, and Reverse Boss Order that still hold thousands of spectators and a lot of high level competition to this day. If you seriously think speedruns that utilize quirks or breaks in a game's engine are illegitimate, I suggest you watch some of the insane research and practice that goes into creating these runs, and reevaluate your thoughts on the entire topic.

I’ve watched hundreds of hours of speedruns, possibly more. I admit I’ve started losing interest in them in recent years but I never said it didn’t take skill to manipulate the game’s engine. It’s just not a kind of skill that I associate with actually playing the game in question.

It’s like if someone did a chess speedrun but found a way to flip the board in such a manner that only the opponents’ king fell over. Yes that person would ‘win’ and it would be an insane display of skill, but it would have absolutely nothing to do with playing chess. That’s basically how I view almost all glitch-filled speedruns. I do enjoy glitchless but those runs are few and far between and are generally considered niche categories, and even in ‘glitchless’ there’s all sorts of sequence breaks etc. that are commonly accepted. My favorite categories tend to be glitchless 100% runs because at least in those the speed runners generally have to demonstrate a total mastery over the game, but those are very rare indeed and generally boring to watch due to how long they often are.

Anyway it really comes down to philosophy. I appreciate the skill and planning that goes into performing speed runs, but if someone speed runs a game I’ve played I generally want to actually see that person demonstrate mastery over the game in question. If they’re skipping huge chunks of the game such as major bosses or story elements or big intended mechanics, then they’re not demonstrating mastery over the game, they’re exploiting technical weaknesses in the hardware or software that allow them to ‘beat’ the game due to what is essentially a technicality.

 

[Amaranth]

I think that speed runs which circumvent intended encounters / mechanics in the game shouldn’t be considered legitimate.

What’s most surprising to me is how butthurt speed runners get at this argument.

You come in here and open with a "what you guys do isn't legitimate" and you expect people to be anything but defensive? Really?

It's funny because when you actually elaborate you don't actually speak like you think glitched runs are illegitimate, you speak like you think they should be separated from glitchless. Which they are.

The bottom line is that a speedrun aims to maximize speed, not to showcase mastery. We don't care about what's impressive, we care about what's fast, because at the end of the day in a lot of games that's the only objective metric to compare players. It's not a contest of who gets through the game with the most amount of swag - good luck trying to quantify swag and putting it on a leaderboard - it's a contest of who gets through the game the fastest. These two things overlap often, so people mistakenly conflate the idea of "great speedrun" with "entertaining to watch" and then get disappointed when they find runs that aren't so impressive to look at. When you say "I generally want to actually see that person demonstrate mastery over the game in question" you fundamentally misunderstand why most people speedrun.

There's a pretty good reason why the "glitches aint fair" crew is made up entirely of speedrun spectators and not a single actual speedrunner. You don't sit down for hundreds of hours to showcase mastery, nobody speedruns for vanity. We speedrun to see the final time go down and push the boundaries of what is possible, by any means available. I guess this is partially fed into by things like GDQs or those IGN "developers react to speedrun" videos, if speedruns are presented as a spectacle then outsiders will see it as such. But I guarantee you not one man starts to speedrun because he wants to make a show out of it - it just so happens that some speedruns are particularly marketable and you can entertain casuals with them as a one-off thing.

 

[Blazade]

I’ve watched hundreds of hours of speedruns, possibly more. I admit I’ve started losing interest in them in recent years but I never said it didn’t take skill to manipulate the game’s engine. It’s just not a kind of skill that I associate with actually playing the game in question.

It’s like if someone did a chess speedrun but found a way to flip the board in such a manner that only the opponents’ king fell over. Yes that person would ‘win’ and it would be an insane display of skill, but it would have absolutely nothing to do with playing chess. That’s basically how I view almost all glitch-filled speedruns. I do enjoy glitchless but those runs are few and far between and are generally considered niche categories, and even in ‘glitchless’ there’s all sorts of sequence breaks etc. that are commonly accepted. My favorite categories tend to be glitchless 100% runs because at least in those the speed runners generally have to demonstrate a total mastery over the game, but those are very rare indeed and generally boring to watch due to how long they often are.

Anyway it really comes down to philosophy. I appreciate the skill and planning that goes into performing speed runs, but if someone speed runs a game I’ve played I generally want to actually see that person demonstrate mastery over the game in question. If they’re skipping huge chunks of the game such as major bosses or story elements or big intended mechanics, then they’re not demonstrating mastery over the game, they’re exploiting technical weaknesses in the hardware or software that allow them to ‘beat’ the game due to what is essentially a technicality.

While I think it's ridiculous to say glitched speedruns are "illegitimate" I am entirely in agreement with you in finding the glitchless stuff far more interesting.

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.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Anyway it really comes down to philosophy. I appreciate the skill and planning that goes into performing speed runs, but if someone speed runs a game I’ve played I generally want to actually see that person demonstrate mastery over the game in question. If they’re skipping huge chunks of the game such as major bosses or story elements or big intended mechanics, then they’re not demonstrating mastery over the game, they’re exploiting technical weaknesses in the hardware or software that allow them to ‘beat’ the game due to what is essentially a technicality.

Wouldn't finding an interesting programming quirk and optimizing it be the ultimate mastery of a game, though? You play the game enough to the point that you know everything about it, even things the developers didn't. If anything, that's an ode to the developers themselves, a sign of sheer devotion and passion.

I don't see how finding these (sometimes) obnoxiously difficult tricks isn't the best possible example of technical skill. It shows the passion and optimization that a community has gone through to showcase, in full, what they are capable of, within solely the game's limits. It's amazing.

While you may feel that it's wrong, as it deviates from the story and usual boundaries, that's fine! There's nothing wrong with that, and you're far from the only one who feels that way. This is why Glitchless categories exist, and some of these are quite popular. These also tend to be more accessible to the average player, removing the need for difficult tricks and encouraging basic fundamentals. However, I don't think you should try to push a narrative that using glitches is inherently bad, as if to undermine other categories. You're not the dev team of x game, and I don't think you should speak for them. You'd be surprised at how some developers even find these glitches awesome themselves! They're people too!

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

To change the topic a bit

I am not the most passionate person you will meet when it comes to speedrunning, but I enjoy watching them (albeit I sometimes skip some parts from them if I feel bored). I like the most the ones about Pokemon and Mario franchise, though I don't mind watching other games as long as I have heard of them and have a good idea of what happens in there. I am not a speedrunner myself. I once was thinking of trying, but I gave up quickly. Speedrunning is just not for me.

I also like watching videos that bust the faked ones (how sad do you have to be to fake a speedrun?). While I am at it, what are some "speedrun faked" moments you know of? The most notable ones I know of are:

 

[Coeur7]

Wouldn't finding an interesting programming quirk and optimizing it be the ultimate mastery of a game, though?

Not objectively. You have a "narrative" of your own here, even if it's reasonable. Are Glitchcity users the best players at RBY/GSC/ADV OU?

Whether glitchless speedruns are interesting usually depends on how mechanically good the given game is in "regular" single-player. I don't care if someone can glitchlessly go from Pallet Town to Lance 30 minutes faster than I can, because the game is boring to death either way. I'm far more intrigued, and see it as some good (or at least devoted) understanding of programming, which is a necessary evil to bring video games into the physical world, if the runner can manipulate save data to warp themselves into the Hall of Fame immediately. It's akin to what illusionists do, thus artful.

But this still has nothing to do with "the game we play at Smogon" and if forced to pick between that or speedruns as a sign of "game mastery", I know what I'd choose. And both the former and the latter "metagame" emerged from the game Pokémon as it was probably not imagined by the developers initially.

Glitchless is not necessarily more "casual". It can emphasize an understanding / exploitation of the actual game instead of the regrettably flawed incarnation of its save/load mechanics. Candidly -- and with respect -- since you have the trans pride flag in your signature, you can probably acknowledge sensible precedent for seeing things not by their implementation, but their ideation.

Btw, one of my favourite TAS is the one for 7th Saga, and in that case, the players (Kirkq and Nitrodon) did supply a lot of information about the game that was not necessarily important to the speedrun as it turned out, but which was not known before, e.g. the companions' betrayal rates. So your argument certainly has weight.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Not objectively. You have a "narrative" of your own here. Are Glitchcity users the best players at RBY/GSC/ADV OU?

Whether glitchless speedruns are interesting usually depends on how mechanically good the given game is in "regular" single-player. I don't care if someone can glitchlessly go from Pallet Town to Lance 30 minutes faster than I can, because the game is boring to death either way. I'm far more intrigued, and see it as some good (or at least devoted) understanding of programming, which is a necessary evil to bring video games into the physical world, if the runner can manipulate save data to warp themselves into the Hall of Fame immediately. It's akin to what illusionists do, thus artful.

But this still has nothing to do with "the game we play at Smogon" and if forced to pick between that or speedruns as a sign of "game mastery", I know what I'd choose.

Glitchless is not necessarily more "casual". It can emphasize an understanding / exploitation of the actual game instead of the regrettably flawed incarnation of its save/load mechanics. Candidly -- and with respect -- since you have the trans pride flag in your signature, you can probably acknowledge sensible precedent for seeing things not by their implementation, but their ideation.

You're thoroughly misunderstanding my point, but I understand why you would see it this way, as my wording wasn't great. Perhaps a better phrase would be "among the best showings of knowledge and understanding of a game", which I believe to be true.

I did not say nor imply that glitchless is more casual; for RPGs and strategy games, as this is absolutely not the case, thus why I said "tend to be", not "always". Glitchless runs tend to be longer and more vulnerable to error, for example, which reduces consistency and thus makes them more difficult in that regard. There's a lot to talk about in that respect, but to compare and contrast glitch vs glitchless would be disrespectful at best. What I'm trying to get across is the accessibility factor, which is, on average, better on the glitchless front. That is my point.

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...

 

[thewaffleman]

I’ve watched hundreds of hours of speedruns, possibly more. I admit I’ve started losing interest in them in recent years but I never said it didn’t take skill to manipulate the game’s engine. It’s just not a kind of skill that I associate with actually playing the game in question.

It’s like if someone did a chess speedrun but found a way to flip the board in such a manner that only the opponents’ king fell over. Yes that person would ‘win’ and it would be an insane display of skill, but it would have absolutely nothing to do with playing chess. That’s basically how I view almost all glitch-filled speedruns. I do enjoy glitchless but those runs are few and far between and are generally considered niche categories, and even in ‘glitchless’ there’s all sorts of sequence breaks etc. that are commonly accepted. My favorite categories tend to be glitchless 100% runs because at least in those the speed runners generally have to demonstrate a total mastery over the game, but those are very rare indeed and generally boring to watch due to how long they often are.

Anyway it really comes down to philosophy. I appreciate the skill and planning that goes into performing speed runs, but if someone speed runs a game I’ve played I generally want to actually see that person demonstrate mastery over the game in question. If they’re skipping huge chunks of the game such as major bosses or story elements or big intended mechanics, then they’re not demonstrating mastery over the game, they’re exploiting technical weaknesses in the hardware or software that allow them to ‘beat’ the game due to what is essentially a technicality.

Personally i think it depends how "honest" ur glitches are. Like mario 64 is a great example. I hate the 0 star category cause they dont play the game its just BLJ here BLJ there and win. But the 120 star category gets every single star in the game. Its not like they are ignoring the intended purpose of the game, they are just using glitches to do it quicker!

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

If it's going to make you happy, the Switch version of SM64 uses the version where the BLJs are patched

 

[thewaffleman]

also i think its on topic so im leaving this video from the "devs react to speedruns" series ign is currently doing. In this particular video the devs feel "stupid" but ultimately call the runner smart for finding exploits in flags in their game.