The Art and Science of Speedrunning

Laskar

Would you kindly?
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I've been playing FPSs wrong for years. I'm a pugnacious murder-everything-in-your-path player when I should have been bypassing enemies entirely. Would have made those Reach SLASO runs much easier.

I've known about speedrunning for more than a decade, but I've never seen it like this, and I love it. It takes some wicked skills to play like these guys, but it also requires a deep understanding of the game's mechanics to plan out these runs. This kind of speedrunning combines the competitiveness and skill of cross country runners with the analytical skills of an engineer.

Anyone else have any favorite speedruns, or games they like to play quick?
 

Husky_Khan

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Sotnik


I've been playing FPSs wrong for years. I'm a pugnacious murder-everything-in-your-path player when I should have been bypassing enemies entirely. Would have made those Reach SLASO runs much easier.

I've known about speedrunning for more than a decade, but I've never seen it like this, and I love it. It takes some wicked skills to play like these guys, but it also requires a deep understanding of the game's mechanics to plan out these runs. This kind of speedrunning combines the competitiveness and skill of cross country runners with the analytical skills of an engineer.

Anyone else have any favorite speedruns, or games they like to play quick?


Oh wow, I should've kept checking out that channel. I loved that documentary he released a few months earlier of the Speed Runner who beat the 20 year old record getting through the Hangar level of Doom in like seven seconds, after it was stuck at eight seconds for.... well like I said before.

I haven't watched many speedruns in general. I think I went through a phase of watching them several years ago and it was mostly FPS style games... but one speedrun that did stick out was more due to the fact that some famous Twitch streamer named 'Asmongold' whom I never heard of prior to the video, reacted to a Dark Souls speedrun.



I found every minute rather heartily entertaining.
 

TriforcedLink

Well-known member
I'm not sure but I'm sure that some speedrunners also used glitches and stuff to help speed up that process.

I particularly remember an OOT speedrun that used glitches to get to the final boss as child Link and BOTW apparently has exploits too...

There's two videos that parody this.



 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
I find it honestly extremely amusing to see people speedrun Soulsborne games

They got so good at it that they can confidently ditch large amounts of great gear just because they don’t have the time to equip it while running to the end and they can beat bosses without a single hit on themselves
 

Husky_Khan

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Founder
Sotnik
I think for a lot of games, using glitches and bugs and the like is part of the speedrunning process. I was a bit surprised at it when I was watching some Dark Souls speedruns a while ago and people were bringing it up in the chat and everything and the speedrunner basically stated that using map bugs and the like was the standard for speedruns.

Map bugs were used in Doom as well despite how simple and ironclad the coding and map design in that game is... yet on two different levels players found bugs which helped trim up long standing records and are considered legit speedruns as well apparently.
 

Laskar

Would you kindly?
Founder
I find it honestly extremely amusing to see people speedrun Soulsborne games

They got so good at it that they can confidently ditch large amounts of great gear just because they don’t have the time to equip it while running to the end and they can beat bosses without a single hit on themselves
"Take this. It's dangerous to go alone."
"A sword? Nah. That's only going to weigh me down."

I think for a lot of games, using glitches and bugs and the like is part of the speedrunning process. I was a bit surprised at it when I was watching some Dark Souls speedruns a while ago and people were bringing it up in the chat and everything and the speedrunner basically stated that using map bugs and the like was the standard for speedruns.
Yeah. Glitches are common, but speedrunners have these really weird hangups as to what counts as fair play. Karl Jobst has another video where a 55-year-old Goldeneye player claimed that if you look at the ground, you go faster.* And it works. It works because Goldeneye seriously taxes the Nintendo 64's hardware, and if you look down, the console doesn't have to render so many polygons, so each individual frame is rendered faster. You save about one second for each minute of gameplay.

And the Goldeneye speedrunning community lost its shit. Speedrunners will do anything, anything to go faster, but looking at the ground? Some things cross the line!

Or maybe these guys were already burned out on the game, and utterly butthurt that a newbie blew them out of the water.

But yeah. Glitches are common. I remember Reach speedruns where people would use forklifts and Warthogs to no-clip through doors. But some things cross the line.



Congratulations. By inputting arbitrary commands, you've forced a bit of code into the right memory locations which tells the game to jump to the end credits.



Same here. You've reached the end credits without doing any quests or defeating Ganon. Does that really count as playing the game? Don't get me wrong, it's a masterful demonstration requiring an intimate knowledge of glitches and how they affect the game, but something is missing.

*Apparently, this guy was very literal-minded, and interpreted a game manual saying "Hold your nose to the grindstone and haul ass" as "Look at the ground and you go faster."

Map bugs were used in Doom as well despite how simple and ironclad the coding and map design in that game is... yet on two different levels players found bugs which helped trim up long standing records and are considered legit speedruns as well apparently.
Frankly, I think the more simple the game, the more potential there is for glitches. Simple physics, simple level geometry, simple mathematics, but these simple rules create emergent complexity that can be exploited.

Or maybe more complicated AAA games have more rigorous playtesting and programming to make sure they can't be broken.

All I know that I know from experience that if you get out of the level geometry of Halo: Reach or Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the only place you're going is down.
 
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Abhorsen

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Another good YouTuber is Summoning Salt, who posts videos covering the history of world record breaks. I really like his post on Blindfolded Mike Tyson's Punchout:
 

Laskar

Would you kindly?
Founder
Already pondering how to break open Doom: Eternal for speedrunning and how it will likely be an epic challenge in the future unlike Doom 2016 which was very glitch heavy for speedrunners to exploit.


First of all, that twenty-six-second speedrun was amazing.

As for whether Doom Eternal will be good for speedrunning... I dunno. I haven't played any Doom games since Doom II (maybe) and I probably won't play the modern ones, but having to kill every enemy in an arena before a teleporter opens gives me flashbacks to Spartan Ops. "It's you versus 214 Covenant terrorists and Promethean combat droids, Spartan, and the mission doesn't end until they are all dead."

It was tedious in Spartan Ops, but I imagine it will be more fun in Doom Eternal. Still, given how squishy the enemies are and how mobile they are on the battlefield, I think a lot of speedrunning might come down to RNG. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've just discovered Haloruns.com, and I'm amazed at how fast some of these levels get done. How does a sub-three minute Silent Cartographer run strike you?


Legendary run, one second faster than the current Easy Mode run.
 

Husky_Khan

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Sotnik
ZING!

And the game is broken, via ramp jumping. To try it out, bind the mouse scroll wheel to jump using console commands. Next, turn framerate as high as possible, sacrificing video quality. The video says 250 is standard for speed runners. Then stand on a ramp and scroll quickly, which should shoot you into the air.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
And the game is broken, via ramp jumping. To try it out, bind the mouse scroll wheel to jump using console commands. Next, turn framerate as high as possible, sacrificing video quality. The video says 250 is standard for speed runners. Then stand on a ramp and scroll quickly, which should shoot you into the air. Combine with the weapon wheel to slow time and jumping off the edge of the ramp just before the jump (explained in video) for a huge boost.

At that point though, why not just use console commands to finish the entire game in seconds? Personally, I have no respect for speed runners who use glitches and/or cheats to beat a game; because they're not even playing it anymore, just trying to break it.
 

Abhorsen

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At that point though, why not just use console commands to finish the entire game in seconds? Personally, I have no respect for speed runners who use glitches and/or cheats to beat a game; because they're not even playing it anymore, just trying to break it.
It's just a keybinding? Usually you can use the menu, but this specific combination was blocked. Anyhow, why hate it? They are having fun, just using the item differently than intended. It's like using lawnmowers to race. Sure it's not intended, but it's fun, and some people are really good at it, so why not respect the effort and skill it takes?
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
It's just a keybinding? Usually you can use the menu, but this specific combination was blocked. Anyhow, why hate it? They are having fun, just using the item differently than intended. It's like using lawnmowers to race. Sure it's not intended, but it's fun, and some people are really good at it, so why not respect the effort and skill it takes?
I didn't say I hated the practice, just that I have no respect for it. I am well aware of the skill it can often take to take advantage of glitches in a speedrun; I've watched a lot of Karl Jobst's videos about the community. I'm sure they're having fun doing it, and they're free to; but I prefer it when speedrunners play by the rules the developers intends them to play by.
 

Abhorsen

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I didn't say I hated the practice, just that I have no respect for it. I am well aware of the skill it can often take to take advantage of glitches in a speedrun; I've watched a lot of Karl Jobst's videos about the community. I'm sure they're having fun doing it, and they're free to; but I prefer it when speedrunners play by the rules the developers intends them to play by.
But this isn't even an exploit. I mean, they don't have to use the in console system to do this, there is probably a way to change which key presses do what outside of the game as well (which is why this is probably allowed). I just thought it was cool because anyone can do it.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
But this isn't even an exploit. I mean, they don't have to use the in console system to do this, there is probably a way to change which key presses do what outside of the game as well (which is why this is probably allowed). I just thought it was cool because anyone can do it.
People are using it to skip entire maps; how is that not an exploit?
 

Abhorsen

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People are using it to skip entire maps; how is that not an exploit?
The problem is drawing a line. All the parts of this behavior is intended. The issue is that combined, it becomes broken. It's not like they are editing parts of the game code (this can be done using only the controller in a zelda game, and teleports you to the end of the game) or glitching through walls.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
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Sotnik
The Doom: Eternal Developer reactions are pretty rich.



Looks like it's a series where Developers react to speedruns, no doubt it's rich with priceless reaction content like this video was.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
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Sotnik
Looks like we already have speedruns of Cyberpunk 2077 out there.

Who is this hero of the future? His name is Tomatoanus and previous conquests include banging every possible partner in Fallout: New Vegas in under half an hour and has had sex in Fallout 3 as a baby. Now his latest accomplishment?


And it wasn't actually eleven minutes, more like ten minutes, twenty seven seconds. But whose counting?
 

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