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!
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
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/E0wfM0o.png)
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)
