In those crazy times we all need some relax, after all StarCraft isn't only about trying hard and pushing the timings to the limit... Wait... I'm happy to invite you for the StarCraft & BroodWar Compaign Speedrun Quest organized by Rus_Brain.
Rules: Whoever ends 1st in any campaign speedrun by the end of 2025 will get $1,000 per campaign. (You have to beat current TOP1) Capaigns:
SC - Terran
SC - Protoss
SC - Zerg
BW - Terran
BW - Protoss
BW - Zerg
Bonus: $5,000 extra success bonus if challenge won in all six categories.
I'm just helping advertise this project of Mr. Rus_Brain, but I can add from myself, that it will motivate me to complete the campaign for the first time!
QUEST ENDS: ()
Updated rules: Ok, guys, so after hearing feedback from you, we will modify the challenge and add those rules to the competition: -You have to save your run as video; - You have to use the latest available patch of the game; - You have to use a real time timer in your attempts; - Save and load is allowed, so long as it's in the same attempt. - Real time starts from the campaign selection menu, when the 1st mission of the campaign you are running is selected - Real time ends when the victory box appears on screen during the final mission. - Using glitches is allowed
Modified challenge rules: - We will give you some time to get ready - the challenge will start on 01.04.2025 and ends 31.12.2025; - Everyone who will hold each campaign record will win $3.5/day. - Main Prize: Person who holds the world records for the longest time (collectively throughout all six campaigns) will win extra $5,000. - Challenger who will submit his run to the wepbages starts earning daily $ and days for Main Prize from the next day after submitting the record to the page - Days for the Main Prize will be sum up from each campaign.
- Whoever is the world record holder starting April 1, starts earning money. WR holders for now: (Will be updated on March 31) SC - Terran - Shox SC - Protoss - Thadortin SC - Zerg - Shox BW - Terran - Shox BW - Protoss - Thadortin BW - Zerg - 7thAce
Sick initiative The current SC BW speedruns are pretty insane, takes far more than in-game skill to win. However, I definitely saw some areas which could be improved upon in the top runs, especially in terms of macro efficiency and general mechanics. GL to all competitors.
There are absolutely insane optimizations for other game speedruns on yt during 2024...
On January 07 2025 07:30 Jealous wrote: Sick initiative The current SC BW speedruns are pretty insane, takes far more than in-game skill to win. However, I definitely saw some areas which could be improved upon in the top runs, especially in terms of macro efficiency and general mechanics. GL to all competitors.
That's the funny part isn't it... The top speedrunners are exactly that. They are not the top players overall. And vice versa... It would be interesting to see a merge of Brains on the issues.
I'd love to see some strong players try it and maybe have some guest commentators check out the games. The vanilla SC campaign is especially good, so it'd be super worth.
Question: how do we count the time? Personally I would go with the in-game timer that is displayed at the 'victory' sign. Otherwise, the dialogues will mess things up.
On January 07 2025 08:21 Bonyth wrote: Question: how do we count the time? Personally I would go with the in-game timer that is displayed at the 'victory' sign. Otherwise, the dialogues will mess things up.
you have a timer on screen for that. you can see it in some of the submitted videos. most speed runners use LiveSplit (https://livesplit.org/) for this.
i don't think this: is better to use than the sum of in-game timers.
I think loads should be prohibited. You are doing a speed run, if u fail, u start over. Microing dialogue moments with precise save & loads seems like a very xd moment. Dialogues don't add up to the in-game timer.
On January 07 2025 08:21 Bonyth wrote: Question: how do we count the time? Personally I would go with the in-game timer that is displayed at the 'victory' sign. Otherwise, the dialogues will mess things up.
The post references the speedrun.com rules, which uses real time from the first mission select to the final victory message popping up for a given campaign.
Skipping over the mission dialogues causes extremely minor variations in time, which are more than counterbalanced by the amount of time available to be saved by improved strategies and better play across each of the campaigns.
I think $100 per level (e.g. https://www.speedrun.com/sc1/levels ) would have been more interesting. I assume the current prize structure is set in stone now, though.
Good luck to all who try for a world record, and I hope to see some innovative new strategies. (I'm also hoping it doesn't boil down to a battle over epsilon mechanical improvements. Let's see some creativity!)
I have compared the rules between StarCraft & BroodWar, and notice that BroodWar does not have the following rules: * In-game time is the sum of time during the missions. Optional. * Cheats are banned.
I'm not sure whether the discrepancy for first one matters, but the discrepancy for cheats probably matters.
Please could the OP clarify the rules, e.g. for the following questions: 1. Are cheats also banned for BroodWar? If so, maybe someone could update the website (assuming the existing speedruns don't use cheats...). 2. Can we use any version of BroodWar, e.g. Remastered, or 1.16.1, or even one of the very early versions? This isn't mentioned on the rules pages. I doubt there are any advantages of using 1.16.1 rather than Remastered or vice versa, but there are definitely advantages of using very early versions for at least some of the missions (e.g. Terran sliding buildings or forward nexes, as discussed below). Maybe just allow 1.16.1 and above (including Remastered versions)? 3. If so, do we have to use the exact same version for all campaigns (and of course all their missions) that we claim prizes for? Or can we use e.g. Remastered for BroodWar Protoss campaign, and 1.16.1 for BroodWar Terran campaign? 4. Is there a description somewhere of which bugs/glitches/exploits/tricks are considered to be "cheats" for this competition? I am guessing these rules at least include all the illegal ones at Competitive Rules, i.e. these are cheating: Flying ground units, Terran Sliding Buildings, Gas Walk, Allied Mines, Cargo Glitch? And more comprehensively, just the ones in the "Exploits" section at https://www.starcraftai.com/wiki/Tricks,_Glitches_and_Exploits#Exploits (note: most of this page was copied to Bugs ) are considered to be "cheats", i.e. these are also considered to be cheats: Forward Nexus, Tank Under Landed Building, Train Units in the Air, Controlling a Nuke, Flooding the Order Buffer, Liftoff Bug, Otherwise Stacking Ground Units? Note: some of these are only possible in very old versions. 5. The rules pages don't mention whether tool-assisted speedruns (TAS) are allowed. Are TAS allowed, and if so, are there any particular rules for TAS? E.g. can I use e.g. AutoHotkey to automate menu progression and automate save & load just to skip dialogue and write a bot that uses BWAPI (with CompleteMapInformarion disabled of course, so that the bot has to deal with the fog-of-war like humans, and abiding by other BWAPI bot-specific rules that are used in BWAPI bot-vs-bot competitions) to play the campaigns using 1.16.1, rather than just humans doing speedruns? Or is using BWAPI considered to be cheating? Due to the high prizemoney, I expect expect quite a few of BroodWar bot writers like me might be interested. A couple of people already wrote heavily scripted bots (not using LLMs or neural networks at all) that can complete some of the campaigns, but they are slower than the average player (nowhere near speedrun time records). It would be an interesting challenge, and the prizemoney is a great incentive. Maybe you could consider splitting the prizemoney somehow between Human speedruns and TAS, so they aren't competing with each other for prizemoney. 6. Please confirm that $ means USD.
One thing to mention is that if the competition structure is changed from per-racial-campaign to per-mission, if very early versions of of StarCraft/BroodWar are allowed, unless the rules for what is considered to be a "cheat" are clearly defined, some missions may become very easy because things like Terran sliding buildings or forward nexus can speed up mining so much.
On January 07 2025 14:52 Quatari wrote: I have compared the rules between StarCraft & BroodWar, and notice that BroodWar does not have the following rules: * In-game time is the sum of time during the missions. Optional. * Cheats are banned.
I'm not sure whether the discrepancy for first one matters, but the discrepancy for cheats probably matters.
Please could the OP clarify the rules, e.g. for the following questions: 1. Are cheats also banned for BroodWar? If so, maybe someone could update the website (assuming the existing speedruns don't use cheats...).
I'm a leaderboard mod for SC and BW, so I went ahead and made the rules text for BW the same as base SC. This was already the practice so I went ahead and made that change.
To cover another point: All runs must be 100% human input. TAS is an entirely separate category.
On January 07 2025 14:52 Quatari wrote: I have compared the rules between StarCraft & BroodWar, and notice that BroodWar does not have the following rules: * In-game time is the sum of time during the missions. Optional. * Cheats are banned.
I'm not sure whether the discrepancy for first one matters, but the discrepancy for cheats probably matters.
Please could the OP clarify the rules, e.g. for the following questions: 1. Are cheats also banned for BroodWar? If so, maybe someone could update the website (assuming the existing speedruns don't use cheats...).
I'm a leaderboard mod for SC and BW, so I went ahead and made the rules text for BW the same as base SC. This was already the practice so I went ahead and made that change.
To cover another point: All runs must be 100% human input. TAS is an entirely separate category.
Nice Super cool to see you interacting here. I caught a few of your runs on YouTube, great stuff.
Already smashed the current world record (6:37) for mission 1 of starcraft after few tries. i even forgot to use units.. i think 6:34 is possible.
That said Shox is a fucking maniac holyshit.
Also interesting to hear about others never completing the campaign. I thought i was the only one that played solely multiplayer and never touched the campaign LMAO
On January 08 2025 00:29 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Already smashed the current world record (6:37) for mission 1 of starcraft after few tries. i even forgot to use units.. i think 6:34 is possible.
That said Shox is a fucking maniac holyshit.
Also interesting to hear about others never completing the campaign. I thought i was the only one that played solely multiplayer and never touched the campaign LMAO
On January 08 2025 00:29 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Already smashed the current world record (6:37) for mission 1 of starcraft after few tries. i even forgot to use units.. i think 6:34 is possible.
That said Shox is a fucking maniac holyshit.
Also interesting to hear about others never completing the campaign. I thought i was the only one that played solely multiplayer and never touched the campaign LMAO
On January 08 2025 00:29 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: Already smashed the current world record (6:37) for mission 1 of starcraft after few tries. i even forgot to use units.. i think 6:34 is possible.
That said Shox is a fucking maniac holyshit.
Also interesting to hear about others never completing the campaign. I thought i was the only one that played solely multiplayer and never touched the campaign LMAO
LMAOOOO. so i checked the world record. and i saw his record in the vod. so was like yeah i got this. You are right the new record is actually way lower.And a very interesting aproach. Back to the lab.
Wow. I've never played a single second of the campaign, so would having real game knowledge and being a very precise and accurate clicker even help with this?
On January 08 2025 06:51 EndingLife wrote: Wow. I've never played a single second of the campaign, so would having real game knowledge and being a very precise and accurate clicker even help with this?
of course it would help a bit, however those campaign speedrunners are playing one mission over and over, hundreds and thousand of times.
They know exactly what to do and where - and there your mechanics won't help.
Basically, mechanics help up to some point, after that, not so much. I bet those speedrunners are 120-200apm, not 300+ mechanic beasts.
for what it's worth (and i hope he can clarify for me when he sees this thread), shox - the guy who holds most of the records right now, was an okay protoss player back in the day if my memory serves me correctly. i'd say b/b- iccup peak?
On January 08 2025 08:35 GTR wrote: for what it's worth (and i hope he can clarify for me when he sees this thread), shox - the guy who holds most of the records right now, was an okay protoss player back in the day if my memory serves me correctly. i'd say b/b- iccup peak?
GoShox was a solid protoss player for NA standards back then. Played a standard style relying on good mechanics and strategy rather than ape moving and coin flip builds. His style reminded me of Nony and Draw.
On January 08 2025 08:35 GTR wrote: for what it's worth (and i hope he can clarify for me when he sees this thread), shox - the guy who holds most of the records right now, was an okay protoss player back in the day if my memory serves me correctly. i'd say b/b- iccup peak?
Gotta reach out to 7thAce who had Shox on the couch last AGDQ.
Nevermind, 7thAce already in the thread on the first page.
You should record your attempts for individual levels and submit them to speedrun.com whenever you do well just to get yourself established on the individual level leaderboard.
On January 09 2025 07:28 LordOfDabu wrote: You should record your attempts for individual levels and submit them to speedrun.com whenever you do well just to get yourself established on the individual level leaderboard.
Will consider it . But so far i didnt break anything :D
Ok, guys, so after hearing feedback from you, we will modify the challenge and add those rules to the competition: -You have to save your run as video; (this one we would want your feedback about, cuz not sure) - You have to use the latest available patch of the game; - You have to use a real time timer in your attempts; - Save and load is allowed, so long as it's in the same attempt. - Real time ends when the victory box appears on screen during the final mission.
Modified challenge rules: - We will give you some time to get ready - the challenge will start on 01.04.2025 and ends 31.12.2025; - Everyone who will hold each campaign record will win $3.5/day. - Main Prize: Person who holds the world records for the longest time (collectively throughout all six campaigns) will win extra $5,000. - Challenger who will submit his run starts earning daily $ and days for Main Prize from the next day after submitting the record to the page - Days for the Main Prize will be sum up from each campaign.
- Whoever is the world record holder starting April 1, starts earning money. WR holders for now: (Will be updated on March 31) SC - Terran - Shox SC - Protoss - Thadortin SC - Zerg - Shox BW - Terran - Shox BW - Protoss - Thadortin BW - Zerg - 7thAce
The prize will be paid by usual means (fe. bank transfer).
We hope those changes will make this challenge more attractive and fair towards everyone.
We just need your feedback if you think video is enough, or streaming is needed to keep it integral ?
On January 09 2025 06:53 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: For anyone that has completed the starcraft zerg campaign. What is the hardest mission ?
When I ran the base SC Zerg campaign, I found mission 8 to be the hardest (Eye for an Eye) due to heavy inconsistencies nearly an hour into the run. That being said, the hardest mission is probably one that has the most precise AI manipulation and punishment if things go wrong. Full Circle seems tough to get just the right AI pulls, and any precise build orders with attacks are going to be tough (I'm thinking things like The Dark Templar).
Hope the community can do something to detect cheated speedruns (e.g., edited recordings). There's lots of cheating in the speedrun world even without any monetary incentive. Competitors could consider streaming their attempts to minimize suspicion.
On January 09 2025 22:17 Puosu wrote: Hope the community can do something to detect cheated speedruns (e.g., edited recordings). There's lots of cheating in the speedrun world even without any monetary incentive. Competitors could consider streaming their attempts to minimize suspicion.
That's very easy. U just ensure there is no cola nor pizza in the video.
On January 09 2025 22:17 Puosu wrote: Hope the community can do something to detect cheated speedruns (e.g., edited recordings). There's lots of cheating in the speedrun world even without any monetary incentive. Competitors could consider streaming their attempts to minimize suspicion.
Providing a replay along with video is an option, but tbf there are many ways to detect spliced runs such as audio analysis, frame-by-frame manual tracking, etc. I imagine that any run coming out of nowhere to take the top spot would be scrutinized by the category moderators who have experience with the run, at minimum.
On January 09 2025 22:17 Puosu wrote: Hope the community can do something to detect cheated speedruns (e.g., edited recordings). There's lots of cheating in the speedrun world even without any monetary incentive. Competitors could consider streaming their attempts to minimize suspicion.
That's very easy. U just ensure there is no cola nor pizza in the video.
Unsurprised to see that you are a speedrunning fan
Ok, guys, so after hearing feedback from you, we will modify the challenge and add those rules to the competition: -You have to save your run as video; - You have to use the latest available patch of the game; - You have to use a real time timer in your attempts; - Save and load is allowed, so long as it's in the same attempt. - Real time starts from the campaign selection menu, when the 1st mission of the campaign you are running is selected - Real time ends when the victory box appears on screen during the final mission. - Using glitches is allowed
Modified challenge rules: - We will give you some time to get ready - the challenge will start on 01.04.2025 and ends 31.12.2025; - Everyone who will hold each campaign record will win $3.5/day. - Main Prize: Person who holds the world records for the longest time (collectively throughout all six campaigns) will win extra $5,000. - Challenger who will submit his run to the wepbages starts earning daily $ and days for Main Prize from the next day after submitting the record to the page - Days for the Main Prize will be sum up from each campaign.
- Whoever is the world record holder starting April 1, starts earning money. WR holders for now: (Will be updated on March 31) SC - Terran - Shox SC - Protoss - Thadortin SC - Zerg - Shox BW - Terran - Shox BW - Protoss - Thadortin BW - Zerg - 7thAce
The prize will be paid by usual means (fe. bank transfer). Timer that speedrunes uses: https://livesplit.github.io/ (you have to update it manually)
We hope those changes will make this challenge more attractive and fair towards everyone.
Am I right in thinking that the following rules that are currently listed in the rules on speedrun.com for StarCraft 1 and Brood War are also required for this competition? * Cheat codes, hacks (maphacks, memory watchers, etc...), and macros are banned. * Audible game sound is required. Update (28 Jan 2025): because the OP says to register and add my attempts at speedrun.com, I'll assume that all the rules listed on speedrun.com need to be followed.
Another question:
- Main Prize: Person who holds the world records for the longest time (collectively throughout all six campaigns) will win extra $5,000. - Days for the Main Prize will be sum up from each campaign.
Just to clarify, am I right in thinking that this is calculated as the total number of individual days that I hold SC - Terran (i.e. including multiple periods rather than just the number of days in the longest period) plus the total number of individual days that I hold SC - Protoss plus ... etc for the other campaigns? Update (28 Jan 2025): I gather that I am correct, based on my interpretation of previous posts.
Maybe it's overkill, but to avoid cheating using AIs, you might also consider requiring video to show someone operating a physical keyboard(/mouse) and possibly audio via microphone (to hear keypresses/clicks and voice if they speak), rather than just virtual video/audio. It's not unexpected that that during the competition period, a tech company or someone writes & trains an AI to be good at playing the StarCraft campaigns via a virtual keyboard/mouse (e.g. using existing speedrun videos), and I doubt that you would want them just submitting in-game video/audio to be eligible. Update (28 Jan 2025): as I haven't received a reply about this yet, until instructed otherwise, I'll assume only in-game video and in-game audio is required (i.e. virtual keyboard/mouse keypress graphics or microphone/webcam required).
On January 25 2025 21:35 Quatari wrote: Maybe it's overkill, but to avoid cheating using AIs, you might also consider requiring video to show someone operating a physical keyboard(/mouse) and possibly audio via microphone (to hear keypresses/clicks and voice if they speak), rather than just virtual video/audio. It's not unexpected that that during the competition period, a tech company or someone writes & trains an AI to be good at playing the StarCraft campaigns via a virtual keyboard/mouse (e.g. using existing speedrun videos), and I doubt that you would want them just submitting in-game video/audio to be eligible.
Does such an AI exist? I mean it could, but I’d imagine it would probably cost more to train such a beast to outdo the best human runners than you’d make from winning a contest like this.
I guess it might be a rule to prevent Tool-Assisted Speedruns being done, if that were a concern.
Well, tech companies like DeepMind are working on building a single AI to be good at playing a very wide variety of video games. SC/BW campaign speedruns might be something they could try it on, as it has a simple reward (i.e. faster is better) and it's single-player, so actions are relatively predictable (although there's some RNG due to the initial seed, which is initialized based on what the mission start time is in seconds). I'm not saying they would necessarily be any good, but who knows, especially if they are trained on existing speedrun videos, VODs, old streams, and stuff on the internet about StarCraft, like Liquipedia, TL.
Can missions can be done in a different order than chronological order? E.g. so I can do the StarCraft 1 Terran mission 3 (Desperate Alliance) last, because that's the mission to survive for 30 minutes, so I'd rather avoid that until the rest of the attempt has been done in a record-breaking time. This would be such a time-saving measure for participants, as we could tackle the hardest or most unpredictable missions first, and minimize time wasted when restarting from scratch. I expect it would lead to even better world records at the end of the competition, because participants would probably focus more on the missions that they want to improve. Update (28 Jan 2025): the rules written on speedrun.com currently only mention a particular mission name as the first mission, but "final mission" doesn't mention missions by name. Does "final mission" mean the final mission of the run, or the final mission if doing them in chronological order? It might seem strange to do the missions in a different order than chronological order, but what does it matter, so long as all the required missions are completed? Allowing a different order would help participants to avoid wasting time. I also notice that only the "All campaigns" run's rules says "in chronological order" - the race-specific campaigns don't. Is this intentional, or an oversight? I suggest updating the rules on the website to either say "in chronological order" or e.g. "(missions may be completed in a different order than chronological order, but only where other rules do not prevent this)".
Please confirm that $ means USD, thanks. Update (28 Jan 2025): as I haven't received a reply about this yet, until instructed otherwise, I'll assume $ means USD.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but I'm also assuming that the Brood War Zerg mission Dark Origin (secret mission) can be skipped, as in 7thAce's current world record. Update (28 Jan 2025): I originally wrote "The Reckoning" but I meant "Dark Origin", so I've edited it above. I notice there's a rule written on speedrun.com now that says "The secret mission, Dark Origin, is not required.", so I'll assume that's the case for this competition.
Am I right in thinking that each "day" will be according to speedrun.com's time zone (which time zone is it exactly?), or does the website show the date in my local time zone? If it's the former, I notice there's a "History" page that would presumably allow the organizers to know who "won" each day for a campaign, throughout the entire year, without needing to look up the leader at the same exact time every day. Update (28 Jan 2025): not all listed players seem to appear on these pages, so maybe the pages only show a limited number of recent notifications, or perhaps throttle notifications somehow, which might lead to problems figuring out the winner for each day for each campaign, after the fact. That's up to the organizers to deal with, but participants might consider backing up the relevant speedrun.com web page (is the Wayback machine working again?...) as soon as they upload a new world record, as evidence in case there's a dispute.
The organizers could also say in the rules something to the effect that the organizers reserve the right to disqualify participants for evidence of cheating or other behavior that are not in the spirit of the competition, at the organizers' discretion.
To be clear, pausing the timer for bathroom breaks or AFK etc is not allowed, right? Update (28 Jan 2025): I haven't had a reply about this. https://www.speedrun.com/support/learn/site-rules says "The time of the run is the time in the video from starting condition to ending condition. It is not the time shown on the timer program, which is started and ended with human error." and Site Bans for "Splicing and/or faking/falsifying runs for any reason" and General Gameplay Rules considered cheating include "Segmented runs (runs performed in multiple sittings, often with each segment retried many times until it is made as optimal as possible) are most often disallowed.", so unless instructed otherwise, I'll assume nothing like this is allowed, and if there's a dispute with participants that do this, this post could be used to show precedence.
On January 26 2025 12:29 Quatari wrote: Well, tech companies like DeepMind are working on building a single AI to be good at playing a very wide variety of video games. SC/BW campaign speedruns might be something they could try it on, as it has a simple reward (i.e. faster is better) and it's single-player, so actions are relatively predictable (although there's some RNG due to the initial seed, which is initialized based on what the mission start time is in seconds). I'm not saying they would necessarily be any good, but who knows, especially if they are trained on existing speedrun videos, VODs, old streams, and stuff on the internet about StarCraft, like Liquipedia, TL.
If a company like that did give it a shot, they’d let you know because ‘look at what we did’ is much better for their image and funding, rather than hoovering up a few hundred dollars in small contests such as this.
Okay, there are a lot of questions you asked. I can answer some of them as a speedrun.com moderator and not as an organizer of this event. 1. Speedrun.com rules apply. 2. Common sense speedrunning things apply. You don't have to worry about an AI taking over. There are standards in speedrunning that generally don't have to be said. 3. Play the missions in order. A player should be able to start a new profile and complete the run the same way. 4. I can't be certain, but SRC doesn't track the time that a run was done at, so thie history function should work. I'm expecting to keep a backup/have people post in the discord though. 5. SRC mods can disqualify runs if we think something illegitimate is going on. We're really hoping not to have to do that though. 6. The run is real time, so if you take a break, you're spending your valuable run time doing it. Or time on Desperate Alliance. Only one of those is valuable.
Thanks for the speedrun.com moderator take. Unless the organizer(s) say otherwise, I'll assume that all your answers apply for this competition.
This point would probably always end up being irrelevant, but it might be a source of disputes. It's probably unlikely, but in case of run time ties by different players submitted on the same date, does only the first uploaded submission to break a record (i.e. just in terms of <minutes>:<seconds> shown) on the same day win the prizemoney for that day and onward until the record is broken, or do the players split prizemoney evenly per player until the record is broken, or are split-second timings taken into account and only the best time at the end of the day matters? Note: at least for individual levels, speedrun.com shows all tied players (e.g. https://www.speedrun.com/sc1/levels currently shows ties for the individual missions "Terran 04: The Jacobs Installation", "Terran 09: New Gettysburg", "Zerg 02: Egression") and I don't know whether there is enough info in the History page to tell which was uploaded first.
Unless the organizer(s) say otherwise, I'll assume that each "day" will be according to speedrun.com's time zone (whatever time zone that is).
I'll assume that $ means USD. There are many dollar currencies, but it would be pretty misleading if the organizers don't respond and eventually pay in some other dollar currency.
Any updates on this? The first post hasn't been updated with the current world record holders. Who is keeping track of who has the world record on each day?
I am not an organizer, but FYI, speedrun.com has a "History" button that shows a timeline of most of the activity, but not necessarily all of the history AFAIK. According to the History pages: * SC1 T: Thadortin beat the world record on 31st March 2025. * SC1 Z: Bloody beat Shox's original WR on 5th May 2025. * SC1 P: Bloody has had the original WR and has improved it several times during the competition. * BW P: MSerGios's original WR hasn't been beaten. * BW T: shox's original WR hasn't been beaten. * BW Z: 7thAce's original WR hasn't been beaten.
Given the silence from the organizers, and the "Will be updated on March 31" portion still not updated in the original post, I assume it was cancelled (possibly due to lack of significant interest?). Would love to be told I'm wrong, though.
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.
Speedrunners are a different breed. I'd say the bar for entry is a bit lower, or at the very least, more concrete as well. Plus, no one shits on you when you fuck up 😂
Overall, it's kinda like comparing apples to oranges.
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.
Update: zzzero posted in the speedrunning discord that this contest IS still running. Good luck to all who are interested (and for those who are not, enjoy your multiplayer experience).
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.
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.
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.
Obviously the game itself is 27 years old now but for all intents and purposes, Brood War speedrunning is still in its infancy. It wasn't until the last couple years that the scene got really competitive with a lot of different runners popping up thanks to remastered making it much more accessible. Every community is different - like Jealous said Goldeneye prefers IL's, but 120 stars is by far the most valued run in Mario 64 while any% in Super Metroid is cherished a lot more than 100%. It wasn't until the last couple years that we actually split up the patches so that people playing on the current patch aren't competing with people playing on 1.04 which has helped make the runs more varied and interesting.
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
To each, their own. Some only see the appeal of multiplayer. Some only like to speedrun a game as a whole, some only like to speedrun a particular race's campaign, some like to focus on improving times for individual levels/missions. speedrun.com has records for individual missions, not just individual racial campaigns, and it also has records for all racial campaigns combined in a single run for SC1, and for BW, and also for all SC1+BW campaigns together in a single run. I should have written "not just not per campaign" rather than "not per campaign". My point is simply that if there are speedrunning competitions in future for SC1/BW, depending on what they want to incentivize, the organizers might consider adding separate prizes for individual levels, particular racial campaigns for each game (SC1, BW), combined racial campaigns for SC1 (and similarly for BW), and perhaps a prize for all campaigns of SC1 and all campaigns of BW together in a single run. It's so that if you slip up during say towards the end of a long run but have beat some more specific records along the way (e.g. individual mission(s), or a particular campaign), it wasn't a total waste of time. I expect that having separate prizes like this would encourage more interest in both improving individual missions, and encourage interest in improving particular or combined racial campaigns/games, as all finer-grained improvements could still get prizes even if the larger run they are in eventually fails. Publishing improvements to the best speed for individual mission(s) may quickly lead to improving the best speed for an overall run for campaign(s)/game(s) that they are a part of.
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...):
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.
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...):
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!
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...):
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!
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.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/E0wfM0o.png)
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
The current SC BW speedruns are pretty insane, takes far more than in-game skill to win. However, I definitely saw some areas which could be improved upon in the top runs, especially in terms of macro efficiency and general mechanics. GL to all competitors. 
Competitive Rules,![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/nYpnTDN.png)
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