On June 25 2013 10:35 Kyhron wrote: Emulators are handled differently by different communities. Some games have a separate category for emulator runs as the emulator runs faster/slower. Others combine emulator and console as one category as there is no real difference outside of maybe a few frames throughout the game.
I don't know exactly how lag is handled by different emulators, but it seems like a huge task to define which games that are emulated properly. I'd say that relative to the number of games out there, there is just very tiny minority of them with a large enough community for which you can feel the differences are known.
Even if we assume that streaming emulator gameplay is legit enough to rule out cheating, like using save states in the middle of an attempt or playing back a save-stated video (although I don't know how that's possible to objectively tell for sure in many cases), there are still a couple of advantages when playing on emulator. You can have a save state to skip load and title screens instead of resetting. While playing, you can have a memory watch to monitor the rng. Playing on keyboard is also a pretty big advantage compared to many controllers. These things are admittedly small. For races, it probably rarely makes a change to the outcome. Human errors, general rng etc probably give much bigger variations than the differences between emulator and console. However, when you put in a lot of attempts to try to go for the fastest time and the time difference comes down to maybe only a few seconds, those details can become pretty important. Those were just some things from the top of my head, but there are maybe other things too...
So since my brother moved out and took his Wii with him, I can't play Skyward Sword now. Any ideas what I should pick up instead? Currently I'm considering Portal 2 and Mirror's Edge, since I only have my PC. But I'm also considering either buying a WiiU or 3DS in the near future. Any good games to speedrun on either of those? Right now I'm leaning towards the WiiU since it has all those sweet old games for download.
On June 26 2013 23:57 JonsaBoy wrote: So since my brother moved out and took his Wii with him, I can't play Skyward Sword now. Any ideas what I should pick up instead? Currently I'm considering Portal 2 and Mirror's Edge, since I only have my PC. But I'm also considering either buying a WiiU or 3DS in the near future. Any good games to speedrun on either of those? Right now I'm leaning towards the WiiU since it has all those sweet old games for download.
Really depends on what type of games you prefer I suppose. There is a huge community at the moment that plays PC platformers such as IWBTG or super meat boy. Mirror's Edge and Portal are both great choices though and I would definitely give them a shot. I also see quite a bit of half life 2. Doom 3 is an option or heck even Heart Of The Swarm campaign could be fun to route and play.
HOTS contains 2 autoscrollers compared to 4 in WoL and is extremely open-ended as of the moment. HOTS will get a lot more attention when we figure out a fast method to do the final char mission with normal Kerrigan (Hasn't been in the crystalis yet).
On June 25 2013 10:35 Kyhron wrote: Emulators are handled differently by different communities. Some games have a separate category for emulator runs as the emulator runs faster/slower. Others combine emulator and console as one category as there is no real difference outside of maybe a few frames throughout the game.
I don't know exactly how lag is handled by different emulators, but it seems like a huge task to define which games that are emulated properly. I'd say that relative to the number of games out there, there is just very tiny minority of them with a large enough community for which you can feel the differences are known.
Even if we assume that streaming emulator gameplay is legit enough to rule out cheating, like using save states in the middle of an attempt or playing back a save-stated video (although I don't know how that's possible to objectively tell for sure in many cases), there are still a couple of advantages when playing on emulator. You can have a save state to skip load and title screens instead of resetting. While playing, you can have a memory watch to monitor the rng. Playing on keyboard is also a pretty big advantage compared to many controllers. These things are admittedly small. For races, it probably rarely makes a change to the outcome. Human errors, general rng etc probably give much bigger variations than the differences between emulator and console. However, when you put in a lot of attempts to try to go for the fastest time and the time difference comes down to maybe only a few seconds, those details can become pretty important. Those were just some things from the top of my head, but there are maybe other things too...
Again each individual game community has their own rules on how emulator runs are looked at. Most runners know their game well enough to the point they can watch an emulator run and be able to tell if something is wrong with it. The most common things being no lag where there should be or things loading faster. And no you can't just "use savestates to skip title screens" since most games start timing from the time you hit start on the title screen to start the game. Monitoring RNG means absolutely nothing in most games and the ones it does everyone and their mother knows the manipulation methods and how to influence it to what they want without needing to even look at the actual numbers with the one exception of Golden Sun with Plexa being the only runner that uses the RNG method. Youre literally focusing on something thats not a problem and hardly ever matters. And NO god no keyboard is not always better....go play a PS2 game or N64 game with a keyboard and try and say that.
Hey guys. I'm relatively new to the speedrunning scene, ive just watched a few AGDQ/SGDQ's and saw Trihex back from some random TL thread back in the day. Who are the main streamers to watch right now? Are there any "must see" videos in speedrunning? I'm pretty open to watching all/most games, and I'm currently starting my own attempt at learning the current WR route for FFXIII. Thanks in advance!
On June 27 2013 02:10 Kyhron wrote: Most runners know their game well enough to the point they can watch an emulator run and be able to tell if something is wrong with it. The most common things being no lag where there should be or things loading faster.
Maybe, but what then? Suppose there were a leaderboard with mixed emulator and console speedruns. If one of the console players noticed that the top emulator run has "a little less lag". It doesn't have to be a popular game like Super Mario 64, but it can be any one of the literally thousands and thousands of games out there without an active and well-populated community. Who wants to take the time to investigate how big the difference is for that game and then take the role as the impartial arbiter to decide what a reasonable lag deviation would be in that case? I read that a fair amount of (most?) nes-tases can't be played back on console. I don't know if it's just a matter of a frame or two of difference or more, but emulation is apparently not perfect.
On June 27 2013 02:10 Kyhron wrote: Monitoring RNG means absolutely nothing in most games and the ones it does everyone and their mother knows the manipulation methods and how to influence it to what they want without needing to even look at the actual numbers
Take Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, nes, as an example. One of the last bosses can be in any one of three (or four?, I don't remember) locations on the map. The location is determined from the moment you press start. I think you can get a hint by listening to the title screen music or something, but the time window is small and it's not a guarantee that you hit it (at least that's what I recall from watching one of the players doing attempts). If you miss, you'll have to go through pretty much the whole game just to find out that the boss is in a different location, which means an instant reset. On emulator, you could right away get a notification by looking at the correct address. However, I trust you if you say that it's not a big factor in a lot of games. Still, how do you treat the games where you get an advantage? One can say "deal with it, put in some more attempts" to the console players and mean that one should not get stuck on some rare (?) exceptions. To me, it's just as obvious that it's an advantage that should not be ignored. I'm also wondering if there are really that many games that are well mapped out in terms of what can be exploited. I have more the impression that new stuff is being found all the time.
On June 27 2013 02:10 Kyhron wrote: And NO god no keyboard is not always better....go play a PS2 game or N64 game with a keyboard and try and say that.
I agree, but then again I never said keyboard was always better. I was more thinking of for example directional buttons on old-school controllers, which are not as accurate as a keyboard.
On June 27 2013 20:05 vvSiegvv wrote: Hey guys. I'm relatively new to the speedrunning scene, ive just watched a few AGDQ/SGDQ's and saw Trihex back from some random TL thread back in the day. Who are the main streamers to watch right now? Are there any "must see" videos in speedrunning? I'm pretty open to watching all/most games, and I'm currently starting my own attempt at learning the current WR route for FFXIII. Thanks in advance!
This video is in my opinion is the biggest must see video in speedrunning for several reasons.
First of all, doom had a massive competitive scene in speedrunning that began in 1996 with the creation of Competn. You don't really many runners on SRL or SDA because the community is largely based out of DSDA (Doomed Speed Demos Archives)
Secondly, if you've ever played doom on nightmare difficulty you would know that it's easily one of the toughest challenges you can take on in gaming just to complete. I've played the game for 3-4 years extensively and have never gotten past map 9/32 in a single segment run.
Third, it's doom! Intense, fast paced action from start to finish.
And as for some background to this video, the previous WR was done by Drew "stx-vile" Devore in 2005 with a 29:56 which was the first time that doom 2 NM SS ever went below 30 minutes. This new record by Henning Skogsto came 5 years later in 2010.
I could go on about doom all day haha. Keep in mind that the run was initially played in the normal doom executable but played back on the glboom+ sourceport.
On June 27 2013 02:10 Kyhron wrote: Most runners know their game well enough to the point they can watch an emulator run and be able to tell if something is wrong with it. The most common things being no lag where there should be or things loading faster.
Maybe, but what then? Suppose there were a leaderboard with mixed emulator and console speedruns. If one of the console players noticed that the top emulator run has "a little less lag". It doesn't have to be a popular game like Super Mario 64, but it can be any one of the literally thousands and thousands of games out there without an active and well-populated community. Who wants to take the time to investigate how big the difference is for that game and then take the role as the impartial arbiter to decide what a reasonable lag deviation would be in that case? I read that a fair amount of (most?) nes-tases can't be played back on console. I don't know if it's just a matter of a frame or two of difference or more, but emulation is apparently not perfect.
On June 27 2013 02:10 Kyhron wrote: Monitoring RNG means absolutely nothing in most games and the ones it does everyone and their mother knows the manipulation methods and how to influence it to what they want without needing to even look at the actual numbers
Take Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, nes, as an example. One of the last bosses can be in any one of three (or four?, I don't remember) locations on the map. The location is determined from the moment you press start. I think you can get a hint by listening to the title screen music or something, but the time window is small and it's not a guarantee that you hit it (at least that's what I recall from watching one of the players doing attempts). If you miss, you'll have to go through pretty much the whole game just to find out that the boss is in a different location, which means an instant reset. On emulator, you could right away get a notification by looking at the correct address. However, I trust you if you say that it's not a big factor in a lot of games. Still, how do you treat the games where you get an advantage? One can say "deal with it, put in some more attempts" to the console players and mean that one should not get stuck on some rare (?) exceptions. To me, it's just as obvious that it's an advantage that should not be ignored. I'm also wondering if there are really that many games that are well mapped out in terms of what can be exploited. I have more the impression that new stuff is being found all the time.
On June 27 2013 02:10 Kyhron wrote: And NO god no keyboard is not always better....go play a PS2 game or N64 game with a keyboard and try and say that.
I agree, but then again I never said keyboard was always better. I was more thinking of for example directional buttons on old-school controllers, which are not as accurate as a keyboard.
Let me state this againEACH INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITY KNOWS THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EMULATOR AND CART RUNS. Some games are emulated poorly and cant really be used for a practical run like DK64 its ok for testing, but it lags even worse than the cart does. Other games have it as a separate category SM64 has the Virtual Console as a separate record from the N64 one. Then finally some games have no difference all 3 Golden Sun games the difference is almost non existent and are treated as the same category.
Youre literally nitpicking problems that don't exist. Most runners are fine with losing a run to RNG its literally the nature of the beast so to speak. If someones getting perfect RNG on an emulator people are going to know they are cheating simple as that. Most people that run the same game are friends its how this community works. If you run the same game youre going to spend a lot of time talking and working with other people that do the same. I've honestly spent more time talking with Plexa about DD routing and strats then I have with my family. Your competition becomes some of your closest friends and most people aren't going to cheat to get ahead.
With games being mapped out well it depends on the game. Some games like OoT, SM64 and DK64 the routes are pretty well optimised and not much is going to be discovered unless someone like Sockfolder is actually spending their time going out of their way looking for ways to break the game. Plexa has been discovering a lot of breaks/skips/glitches for both Golden Sun 1 and 2 lately, but at the same time I've spent upwards of 200 hours trying to break Golden Sun 3 and have had 0 luck. Different games are in different levels of how exploitable they are and its constantly changing as the different communities work to expand their knowledge of their game and improve the routing.
First decent run (first run I tried to make decent) of Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
In-game time was 3:27:xx which is 29 minutes faster than the SDA run and the real time is 50 minutes faster.
I still have a few more minutes to chop off but generally it's looking pretty good. I could submit it now to SDA and it would be a near instant pass (minus the crash that wasted 2 minutes), but I want it to be better than that.
Two very cool runs that weirdly both ended up with 40:03 times this weekend. Both runners hold the best times for their games and both are aiming for sub 40 min runs.
The first game run by zubmit is mirror's edge. A fast paced first person platformer that involves momentum tricks to make jumps that are otherwise impossible. I am not well informed on mirror's edge but damn is it entertaining.
The second run is by Kalemandu who runs "I Wanna Be The Boshy" , a very popular IWBTG fangame. Kale is now over 5 minutes ahead of cosmic who holds a 45:34 currently. Highlights include a perfect Solgryn and an incredible world 10 that gets an extremely difficult skip to bypass a large section at the moving wall of spikes section. It contains ridiculous execution start to finish aside from a slip up on Skeleton King
As a final note, I wasted around three hours this weekend working on strategies for "old soldiers" in the HOTS campaign. Turns out the videos I had analyzed were on the hard difficulty...... Next time I will learn how to read.
Mirror's edge is pretty technical, there are certain ways to turn that preserve all of your forward speed, obvious not intended that allow for some of the crazy speed gains and long jumps. It's very easy to miss jumps even while going the proper speed, some of them are very precise. Even if you make jumps, not getting them quite the right way in some of the longer platforming sections can result in losing speed etc. It's a cool looking game that has a lot of technical controls behind it.
On July 03 2013 06:24 Raelcun wrote: Mirror's edge is pretty technical, there are certain ways to turn that preserve all of your forward speed, obvious not intended that allow for some of the crazy speed gains and long jumps. It's very easy to miss jumps even while going the proper speed, some of them are very precise. Even if you make jumps, not getting them quite the right way in some of the longer platforming sections can result in losing speed etc. It's a cool looking game that has a lot of technical controls behind it.
Would the movement system in Mirror's Edge be at all similar to strafe jumping/bunnyhopping? (not necessarily in terms of how you execute it, but in that you can gain a lot of speed if done correctly)
On July 03 2013 01:06 KingDime wrote: The second run is by Kalemandu who runs "I Wanna Be The Boshy" , a very popular IWBTG fangame. Kale is now over 5 minutes ahead of cosmic who holds a 45:34 currently. Highlights include a perfect Solgryn and an incredible world 10 that gets an extremely difficult skip to bypass a large section at the moving wall of spikes section. It contains ridiculous execution start to finish aside from a slip up on Skeleton King
Kale always is a pleasure to watch.. Few too many people have played Boshy so far (and sadly the only way to really gauge how difficult the execution of the run is, is playing it), thus if you have not yet played Boshy, go download it at www.solgryn.org !
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TvWyq39.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FCkvScJ.png)
