1. It's not running the vanilla game. You cannot hold R on Eden, and thereby see like what, 5x as many seeds as anyone playing the vanilla game, drastically reducing your time investment to get a viable seed, creating an unfair advantage.
2. The first input of the run, holding R to start it, is done by a tool. The run is thereby clearly a TAS. End of discussion.
3. Resetting is part of the time investment for a run, whether it counts towards the time or not. In Spelunky, an any% run takes 2 minutes, but finding the good shop needed for it takes maybe 2 hours, so during the run, you feel incredibly pressured because the total time investment for this run was 2 hours. Finding the perfect seed is part of the time investment, you gain a huge advantage in terms of your resources by letting a tool do this, even if the tool had to normally reset Eden by going back to the menu. Let me make a comparison. In Dark Souls 1, you need to get a random drop weapon to start a speedrun. How about I just mod my droprate to 100%? On the actual run, there is no difference to any other run that actually has the weapon, so this is totally fine to do right? No, it's not, because it gives me a huge advantage cutting out the time spent on failed attempts, which are part of running the game.

I really don't understand how anyone can be fine with this run. It's insulting to the runners who actually did invest their own sweat and time into getting their runs, and thereby disrespectful and insulting to the whole community.

In my opinion, I don't like the way how he found this seed. Hold R on eden is impossible and be able to do this is very sad. If he wants to get the wr, I think he has to find the seed with the "real" game. :/

Yeah this WR is just plain unfair. He did the same on Afterbirth but for some reason it got deleted there and not in rebirth.

Why is this run still up? There are lots of strong arguments and many people against it... I think we should create a poll and come to a final decision.

Resetting is part of the time investment? Please, it's boring and nobody wants to do it and now you don't have to but since the record has now been broken the previous holder is salty about it, I should be more surprised about this than I am. If you care enough to keep this record it seems you are now able to download the reset mod and try it for yourself. The time itself is perfectly legit and it seems completely nonsensical to argue about instead of embracing the time-save.

I tip my hat to dea1h who broke my records the day after because it was fair. I am not salty about my records getting broken however I will stand up for what I think is right.

If Zamiell used outside programs and sources to do his run, then it should be considered a Tool Assisted Run at the very least, and be it's own category. It has no place being 1st for the current 1 character times.

@FSUYevon: This community already uses tools or outside programs during their runs, yet you want to ban a new one based solely on the fact that it's an outside program. Either you have a serious discussion about potential new ones or you ban all of them, including the item tracker and missing HUD.

Dea1h asked for the program to use himself and to break the record while the rest are rallying against it. The former is the best approach IMO!

Allowing programs to play the game for us is not the best approach. Might as well just allow cheat engine at that point. Stuff like item Tracker or Missing HUD do not improve, control or allow anything in a run that can't already be done by the player themselves, while this new program automatically can find seeds, and reset Eden for you. If this doesn't make a run TAS, then what the hell does?

But it does let you do things you can already do by yourself, resetting manually to find the best seed will produce the same result in the end. From the time the timer starts until the timer stops isn't affected by this tool at all.

I wasn't gonna post in this topic since I am not a speedrunner, but I feel like if everyone keeps their mouth shut, people will think most are for this and that is definitely not what I've seen. I've been following the isaac community since the release of Wrath of the Lamb and the direction is it taking is worrying me.

This is clearly a tool assisted run. Like many said before, this is basically the same as just using cheat engine. If you want a world record so bad that you're gonna use an external program for it you might want to reconsider. And just because it is now open for everyone doesn't make it more fair. It completely ignored the spirit of an rng based game like isaac and unlike the coop baby "feature" is not included in the game. There is a reason why you can't just hold R on eden. And even IF you could, chances are you are still gonna invest a ton of time into finding the perfect combo.

Furthermore, the new rule draft "Time starts on the first frame that the floor name banner starts to become visible at the beginning of the run, and ends on the first frame of the entering-the-chest animation at the end. You're not allowed to use any kind of automated input during this time." is not adressing the problem. It leaves a loophole open for exactly this kind of program. I think a decision has to be made. And in my opinion the program should definitely NOT be allowed, else you might aswell just legitimize cheat engine.

As LadyKurai said, I've seen countless viewers also agree that this program should not be allowed, this isn't just a minority of speedrunners who think this. Also, Firkraag, just because a TAS tool does something that is "technically" possible in a run doesn't mean you're not still using a TAS tool to do it. And this program most definitely falls under the category of a TAS tool.

I'm not saying that this kind of run shouldn't be allowed period, If people wanna use tools to practice "perfect" runs, and they find that fun, then go for it, but it should NOT fall under the same category as a normal 1 character run.

Comparing the Item Tracker and MissingHUD is very very different though. The item tracker trails a log file that the game outputs, while MissingHUD injects code into the game to display memory addresses on screen. The item tracker is NOT capable of showing you what an experimental treatment or D8 roll does to your stats or what your current DD% is, where as MissingHUD will tell you the exact change in any of those stats. The only thing the Item Tracker does is add up known stats about items and display them (+1 dmg from pentagram, # of items for each transformation, etc) and is configurable to remove it from the tracker itself. It does however allow the runner to show the seed on screen without having to think about it. This is a nice to have as it makes validation easier if there is ever an accusation. If we want to continue to have the ability to do that, we'd have to force runners to show the seed at some point during a run. If we don't care about that kind of verification, then it doesn't matter.

In the end, MissingHUD is effectively what Cheat Engine will show you, where as the item tracker is a convenience thing that is not the same values as what you'd find in Cheat Engine. I think they are very different things, so you have to evaluate them differently as "outside programs" and thus need to make a ruling for them differently.

Either way, this is what I enjoy doing and I enjoy sharing what I find/do with the community. This is why I've been saying for the entirety of this discussion, what the community deems "okay" is what I think should be what is allowed and shouldn't be up to any single person. I don't think it's fair for the minority to dictate what the majority feel is "okay" or "allowable".

@sillypears: I still think Itemtracker gives an advantage, and it's an external tool. You may for example not remember that guppy piece you picked up in B1 was for this character or the previous one but a quick glance at the IT confirms it even after the in-game extra HUD no longer shows it. There can still be a seed showing without the additional features. That said I obviously don't want to get rid of it, it's a great tool.

I would like to ask everyone to reconsider for AB+ though, wouldn't you rather have this way to reset Eden when the new categories hit than having to do the same old exit to menu as you do now? You're getting very technical on what's a TAS or not where as I really just see the old way as tedious and would gladly be rid of it once and for all. The majority disagrees with my reasoning so I give it up for the older games, I'll be honest and say I'm a bit surprised 1 character wasn't a misc category to begin with.

Those who are strongly against it today just think about what you'd rather do when the expansion hits, it would be fair if everyone used it from the start and I think ultimately everyone would be happier for it.

Once the expansion hits, it will have it's own categories, just as Afterbirth does. The expansion and it's features should have no bearing on what we currently allow or disallow.

I've thought about this a little more over the past few days. Some food for thought:

1. It seems a little weird to outlaw inputs that occur before speedrun timing starts (or finishes). Currently, the start of timing is defined as the first frame that the floor name banner starts to become visible at the beginning of the run. If we agree that we should outlaw tool inputs that start a run, then I think it makes more sense to adjust the start of timing to the frame that the R button is pressed on the previous seed or the frame that enter is pressed on the main menu, depending on the situation of the specific speedrun. Otherwise you are outlawing something that isn't technically a part of the run.

2. However, point #1 seems largely irrelevant, since it seems silly to outlaw tool inputs that start the run at all. This is because ultimately, it would be a rule that is non-enforceable. In other words, there is no way for a moderator to know from any given submitted video if the input that started the run was made by a tool or not. Thus, if the community agreed to enact a "no tool inputs to start the run" rule, it wouldn't accomplish anything - dishonest players could still submit runs that were started with a tool and no-one would be able to tell the difference. Honest players would abide by the rule, but at the end of the day, having the rule in place at all gives dishonest players an unfair advantage.

At first glance, this may seem weird or confusing, so I'll give a pertinent analogy to illustrate the conundrum. In 2015, I participated in an Isaac tournament called the Balls of Steel Weekly. Some of you may remember it. ;) In this particular tournament, entrants would race to defeat Blue Baby using the Diversity Mod, a mod that gives you three random starting items at the beginning of your run. The two competing racers were each given the same Diversity seed to ensure that they got the same three starting items. However, Diabetech, the tournament organizer, had a rule where a player was not allowed to start a "test run" before the race actually began. This way, the three random items given to the player would be a surprise and they would not be allowed to start thinking of synergies and the like beforehand.

The problem with this rule is that, given a Diversity seed, it is trivial to use a program to figure out what the 3 resulting items are. Back in 2015, Inschato wrote a program called "DiversityViewer". It is located here:

https://github.com/Inschato/DiversityViewer

This program is open-source, freely downloadable, and was generally well-known at the time of the tournament. Thus, if a competing player wanted to know what their 3 items were before their run, they could just open the DiversityViewer off-stream on a second monitor or whatnot, enter in their seed, and no-one would be the wiser. And since the Balls of Steel Weekly had a cash prize, a disingenuous player had a financial incentive to download the program and use it so that they could start planning and strategizing before the run, giving them a competitive advantage.

The solution to this problem is simple. By simply removing the rule that prevents players from checking the three items beforehand, it puts everyone in the tournament on an even playing field regardless of whether they are honest or not.

By the way, a shoutout should go to Diabetech for the tremendous amount of work he has put into organizing tournaments for the Isaac community. The point of this analogy is not to shit on him as a TO, but rather to illustrate how unenforceable rules like this can potentially have a negative impact overall.

Also, if we consider Zam run as TAS, then every run that uses basic macro to reset on eden before run is considered TAS. Which I find kinda silly. Also to the missinghud

1. It acts like cheat engine,
2. It gives you information that you shouldn't have at all. While item tracker gives you informations that are accessible to player via text file. I see huge distinction here. I honestly see nothing wrong with removing tedious nature of eden resetting while it's not impactful on the time of the run(so if it's runned first).

@FSUYevon: If you ban the Eden reset tool now people will be less likely to accept it for the expansion, not only because of how it's perceived but also that those who fought to ban it will need to defend their view once the question comes up again later.

Most seem unwilling to accept this convenience tool and I doubt it's for the best reasons, you'll regret it eventually the next time you'd rather hit R to reset this character in rebirth, afterbirth or AB+ combined. And for what? All because it was used in a category that nobody cares about enough to run to begin with?

Alright from what I understand now the only thing sillypears program does is making it possible to hold R on eden. And what Zam did was use ANOTHER program to stop the resets when isaacs heart+bloodrights appreared right?

I'm not sure about the public opinion on holding R for eden resetting, but that script to stop when you have your desired item combo is too close to cheat engine imo and the WR should be taken down.

-edit- Isn't it possible to make an ffa modded section on speedrun.com and a vanilla section with missinghud and eden resetting (and whatever else mod program there is) banned? Pibonacci offered mutliple times to take his missinghud runs down so zams run gets taken down too. I don't believe that the whole community will ever agree on an outcome so making a modded section could be a good compromise don't you think? (I don't exactly know how speedruns.com works so if this is not a possibility ignore this suggestion)