EPTStarCraft & BroodWar Campaign Speedrun Quest - Page 4
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LordOfDabu
United States394 Posts
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LML
Germany1766 Posts
On June 21 2025 14:50 Quatari wrote: If the competition happens again, there might be more interest if there is prize money per mission, not per campaign, as one significant mistake/setback in a campaign run could waste your whole run so far. That's the whole point of a speedrun, though. Often times it's about completing a full game. A friend of mine does DOOM 2016 speedrunning and the run takes a while. Usually speedrunners have a split tool, which they use to keep track on how long they needed for each section and then compare it to their best run. So you can see how fast or slow they are. Some sections are green, some are red. It's part of the whole thing. Speedrunning one section is much easier to perfect than running the full game or a big part of it. | ||
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Jealous
10156 Posts
On June 22 2025 06:57 LML wrote: That's the whole point of a speedrun, though. Often times it's about completing a full game. A friend of mine does DOOM 2016 speedrunning and the run takes a while. Usually speedrunners have a split tool, which they use to keep track on how long they needed for each section and then compare it to their best run. So you can see how fast or slow they are. Some sections are green, some are red. It's part of the whole thing. Speedrunning one section is much easier to perfect than running the full game or a big part of it. Depends on the game/community TBH. Something like Zelda OoT is best known for its full story play-through. Something like Golden Eye 64 is better known for its single level clear speed. The Super Smash Bros Melee speedrunning community banded together to get a community aggregate of under 3 minutes between 26 characters doing target practice, by as little as one frame at a time, as a group effort (recent feature in Summoning Salt reminded me of this, check out the video - super cool). Furthermore, there are some games which take literal days to 100% due to in-game restrictions, sheer size, etc. such as the 230 hour Gran Turismo 4 run which saw four players team up to complete it (according to this site). In short, I don't think beating the whole game in one sitting is a universal "point" which can be applied to all speedruns. I think the only truly universal "point" is to set a goal - often in conjunction with or based on the established consensus of other runners of the game - and beat it as fast as possible. And to have fun, of course. EDIT: Personally, I agree with Quatari in that this would likely have garnered more attention/participants if the goal was based on individual missions a la SSBM; perhaps X amount of dollars per second shaved off the record, for example. However, I imagine that makes it ten times more work for checking/confirming records, sending out payment, etc. So, perhaps it was by design. | ||
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GoShox
United States1837 Posts
I think in the next few years we'll find out what the gold standard is for StarCraft. Maybe it will just stick at the campaign level or maybe those will start to get refined to the point where people start grinding out the full game. This challenge has actually drawn a lot of competition and 4 of the 6 campaigns have new world records and it's very likely that Brood War Terran gets a new one very soon too. On June 21 2025 02:33 Peeano wrote: Tbh, I don't see the appeal of speedrunning BW, when you can just play online instead. This is a silly post and I expect a little more from a staff member of TL tbh | ||
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Quatari
Australia48 Posts
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ZZZero.O
Poland1516 Posts
 Thadortin: Episode 1 (01.04-23.06 = 84 days) Bloody: Episode 2 (05.05-23.06 = 50 days), Episode 3 (01.04-23.06 = 84 days) total = 134 days Shox: Episode 2 (01.04-04.05 = 34 days), Episode 5 (01.04-22.06 = 83 days) total = 117 days MSergios: Episode 4 (01.04-23.06 = 84 days), Episode 5 (23.06 = 1 day) total = 85 days 7thAce: Episode 6 (01.04-23.06 = 84 days) Current World Record holders are SC - Terran - ThadortinSC - Protoss - BloodySC - Zerg - BloodyBW - Terran - MSergiosBW - Protoss - MSergiosBW - Zerg - 7thAce![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/2dI3p3Y.png) graph from Alukret QUEST ENDS: () | ||
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Zzzapper
1796 Posts
And as to the appeal of speedrunning, it's just not that popular in the first place, probably 1-200 people have speedrun anything SC1/BW or SC2 compared to hundreds of thousands of ladder players; I don't really see a reason to denigrate it. I realize it's just one person and that several people have said so already but I thought I'd chime in with my experience: Working out speedrun strats is a lot like polishing build orders except that minor improvements where you get a certain unit out a second or two earlier generally don't really matter in melee games so it feels more rewarding. Add to that all the tinkering you can do with manipulating triggers or general AI behavior and you've got a lot of nice puzzles to solve. This was always my favorite aspect of speedrunning; I personally prefer full game runs as a finished product, a nice way to showcase all these pieces together but I never really had the motivation to grind out a ton of runs like that. A good example for this mentality is this run (sorry for posting SC2 in the BW forum...): Gameplay wise it's extremely simple, you're basically building one unit and using two abilities. Once it's been done it's really not that interesting. But the whole process of realizing that you can queue up cutscenes while the nuke is launching to stop the timer and then working out how to use BC movement and language settings (ridiculous, I know) to line it up just right felt great. Overall, it's just a very different experience to laddering. Some people like it, others might not, but I'd recommend trying it out for variety if nothing else. And I'd love to see some real good players play the longer and more mechanical missions, those are where you'd really see a difference between top players and random speedrunners. | ||
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LUCKY_NOOB
Bulgaria1440 Posts
On July 01 2025 03:18 Zzzapper wrote: + Show Spoiler + Oh, I hadn't seen this thread, now I see why Bloody has been grinding sc1. Maybe I'll try learning one of the campaigns when I have the time. Idk though, at the moment I don't even have a PC to play on... And as to the appeal of speedrunning, it's just not that popular in the first place, probably 1-200 people have speedrun anything SC1/BW or SC2 compared to hundreds of thousands of ladder players; I don't really see a reason to denigrate it. I realize it's just one person and that several people have said so already but I thought I'd chime in with my experience: Working out speedrun strats is a lot like polishing build orders except that minor improvements where you get a certain unit out a second or two earlier generally don't really matter in melee games so it feels more rewarding. Add to that all the tinkering you can do with manipulating triggers or general AI behavior and you've got a lot of nice puzzles to solve. This was always my favorite aspect of speedrunning; I personally prefer full game runs as a finished product, a nice way to showcase all these pieces together but I never really had the motivation to grind out a ton of runs like that. A good example for this mentality is this run (sorry for posting SC2 in the BW forum...): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HhNPq5RcBQ Gameplay wise it's extremely simple, you're basically building one unit and using two abilities. Once it's been done it's really not that interesting. But the whole process of realizing that you can queue up cutscenes while the nuke is launching to stop the timer and then working out how to use BC movement and language settings (ridiculous, I know) to line it up just right felt great. Overall, it's just a very different experience to laddering. Some people like it, others might not, but I'd recommend trying it out for variety if nothing else. And I'd love to see some real good players play the longer and more mechanical missions, those are where you'd really see a difference between top players and random speedrunners. I saw Bonyth try speedrunning a bit for this challenge. The "random speedrunners" are quite amazing at what they do even if they are not S rank on ladder. Pretty grindy too. I would be surprised if a top player (non speedrunner) can improve on those timings that are getting tighter and tighter by the day! | ||
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Jealous
10156 Posts
On July 30 2025 01:41 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: I saw Bonyth try speedrunning a bit for this challenge. The "random speedrunners" are quite amazing at what they do even if they are not S rank on ladder. Pretty grindy too. I would be surprised if a top player (non speedrunner) can improve on those timings that are getting tighter and tighter by the day! I disagree about being surprised at least. Having tried my hand at some levels in the past and being a relatively impartial observer of many runs throughout the years, my impression is that it is much harder to improve your mechanics than it is to copy some of the tricks and strats used by speedrunners. There were many instances where I could see the runner having idle larvae in a spot where a top foreigner Zerg would probably not, for example. This alone could save seconds on each Zerg mission, or at the very least the more mechanically demanding ones. I will concede that speedrunners are far more likely to come up with new strats and gaining an advantage that way. I also think they probably have more motivation and dedication, because they had it even before the financial incentive. Furthermore, I imagine they have a bit more patience and certainly more practice, particularly in a full campaign format and with the various menu tricks. So, they have things going for them too. I just wouldn't be surprised if a sufficiently motivated top player could replicate those tricks after some practice and do it faster due to superior mechanics. | ||
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Quatari
Australia48 Posts
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Quatari
Australia48 Posts
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