I'm not here to argue, I'm here to understand. When I ask if something makes sense, that is legitimately what I am asking- "Does what I am saying make sense or is there a concept I am missing / mis-interpreting?" I feel like that's what someone who isn't sure they know what they're talking about ¤should¤ ask.

I respect your view that "that is stupid". What I am asking is "Why do you think it is stupid?" I don't have a definition of "speedrunning"; that is why I am asking.

If people have agreed what speedrunning is, why is this still an issue? If the definition is so clear, then why are people submitting things that so clearly do not fit the definition? I would argue that the definition of "speedrunning" is not clear at all. Every community seems to have their own definition of it, which is fine, but there needs to be at least a core definition that we can all agree upon or we will end up bickering with each other into eternity.

Why would anyone speedrun before reading the rules? Plenty of reasons. Maybe you don't know that this community even exists. Maybe someone is doing it for themselves, and not for other people (but when they find this community, they want to share their results). Maybe there ¤aren't¤ any set rules for the game you want to run. Maybe you don't know where to look for the rules.

You can't compare this to driving, because driving has a very concrete ruleset that is made very clear from the beginning. I mean, you have to take a test to make sure you know the rules before you are even allowed to apply for a license, right? The problem with the game in question is that even if he wanted to ask, there ¤was¤ no moderator or anyone to ask. There is no list of site rules or what is allowed and what isn't, or if it is, it is difficult to find.

Honestly, I was speedrunning before the community even existed, way back when I was a bored teenager with nothing but time. I did it because I loved these games and I was bored with beating them over and over, and I wanted to really challenge myself by seeing how much I could optimize them (and also because I friggin love math and I didn't have anyone to share that with). Fast forward fifteen years, and lo and behold, I'm not the only one who likes doing it, and that's kinda awesome.

The part where he (she? I don't mean to assume..) doesn't respect TASing is in his very first sentence: "TASing isn't Speedrunning". To me, this says that to him (her?), TASing is an inferior form of speedrunning. It seems to me like one of the greater barriers with this community is the divide between people who value physical ability and those who value ingenuity. These two groups will continue to butt heads about what is considered "good" and what isn't until a universal definition of "speedrunning" is agreed upon.

You say that the terms "tool-assisted", "any%", etc. have very distinct definitions, but that is not the case for all games. There is a forum post I found on SDA that addresses the problem with trying to globalize "100% run" and "low% run" as categories. See the thread here:

https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/low100_definitions.html

These definitions have most definitely ¤not¤ been around forever; someone had to come up with them at some point, right? From what I can tell, SDA is the earliest anyone has tried to set a solid foundation of global rules stating what is and what is not allowed. TASVideos has something similar, but it is not quite as in depth as SDA's Rules page.

Why would anyone publicly post something knowing it was cheating? That doesn't make sense. Do you really think he posted that with the intention of being publicly humiliated? I'm not saying there aren't people who simply want attention, but considering his responses, it doesn't seem like this is the case here.

I disagree. I believe TASing ¤is¤ a form of speedrunning; it's just not one that you are involved with and therefore don't respect. Your response is actually a pretty good example of why I think we need to have a much more solid foundation, especially in our definition of what is considered "speedrunning" and what isn't. How can we be a speedrunning community if we can't even agree what "speedrunning" is? Does that make sense?

I agree with what SuccinctAndPunchy said above- anything that cannot be done on an original console and standard controller should be considered "tool-assisted". (And I also agree with you that it's kind of lame to use a save state until you get the right number, because it takes basically no skill. You just roll the dice over and over until you get the number you want, then say "Yay I'm the best!") I think the best response to that is to just roll our eyes, like, "sure, kid, whatever you say" and go about our business.

The problem with your assertion that "it is not hard to ask the people of the community what the rules are" is that, first of all, most people only come here ¤after¤ speedrunning on their own by their own rules. Second, when their rules happen to be different from the community's accepted rules (which aren't stated anywhere), the reaction seems to be pessimistic. These are the two problems I am addressing.

Heh, and everybody starts as a nobody. I am not pretending to know all the details, nor am I under the impression that learning the unique aspects of each community will be a simple task. I am going to do this because I want to and because it's what I would have wanted someone to do before I joined here, regardless of result, so that's what I'm gonna do.

That's right. I'm not quite sure how to set this thing up with my actual system, so it was easier to just get a usb adapted controller. Openemu is the best for Mac, and it looks like it is using a Mupen64Plus core. I guess that's something I need to ask as well: what are acceptable cores?

I've actually been looking into the old SDA rules and regulations here:

https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Rules

I think a page like this is something that this site needs. One of the things I've noticed is either distinctly lacking from this community (or maybe I just don't see it?) is something that brings everyone together; something that makes this community a single unit rather than many dispersed individual units. I am using my knowledge of how Wikipedia works here- a community as diverse as there are topics in the universe, but they still maintain a sense of community that I feel is lacking here. I would like to change this.

I am going to start asking around and gauging the larger communities to see what they have come up with and try to consolidate at least the major rules and definitions into a single document. At the very least, it would include solid definitions of terms like "tool-assisted" and "any%", which seem to have varied definitions based on community. Variety is fine, but definitions created by sub-groups need to be based on core definitions agreed upon by the community as a whole, and modified from there. I feel that this is the best way to start bringing together these groups that seem to be drifting apart.

If you'll allow me to play the devil's advocate here, I understand the arguments behind those who wish to create ways that a game can be optimally performed if played to perfection. My real-life job is finding ways to simplify run-time complexity and / or space complexity in certain blocks of code, so I will admit to likely bias, but I think they make several good arguments here:

http://tasvideos.org/WelcomeToTASVideos.html

As this site grows, there will only be more diversity in types of people and approaches to speedrunning, and I don't think it's fair to only cater to a certain group.

It is OBS 18.0.1 for mac. All the tutorials I have checked say that game sound is the default recorded- and it looks like it is on mine too- it simply doesn't show up in the final product. Does that make sense? The best I have been able to do so far is use the built-in mic to record audio played aloud, but the quality is terrible.

You mention "globally banned" and "almost global policy". Where are these policies listed? (I'm not saying they don't exist, but I'm not as fluent with the community rules as I'd like to be).

I'd ask the same about the "Japanese rulesets". Are you referring to an overall ruling or the aggregate rulings made by many individual communities?

I didn't say it wasn't, only that I didn't know what the difference was.

Why can't we call a run that uses save states "tool assisted"? I feel like if games like Half-Life are willing to accept runs that are patched together from separate runs to form the perfect run or runs that are performed at a slower speed, then replayed at a faster rate to appear normal, then the use of save states should also be accepted under certain conditions, even if it must be classified as "tool assisted".

To take it a step further, who is to say what "legit hardware" consists of? Should we separate runs performed on consoles from those performed on emulators? At what point does using an emulator become "tool assisted"? (I say this because there are other options you can do with an emulator, such as modify framerates or change the audio / graphic plugins to improve performance or decrease load time, that you cannot do with a console.)

On a side note, your profile picture makes it very hard for me not to imagine your responses spoken by Wednesday Addams (who is most definitely not glib)

Interesting. Okay, so this is an actual question because I really am curious to hear your perspective: Why is it okay to have tabs for runs that use glitches, but not one runs that use save states? I feel like not using save states is a personal preference, not a community-wide rule, and if it ¤is¤ a community-wide rule, there really needs to be a forum post about community-wide rules like these for newcomers to read before diving in and getting ousted simply because they didn't know how things work here.

Hello everyone! (all three or so of you, lol) Hey, so I've been mapping out an all-photos run, but I can't get OBS to record the game sound. I've gotten used to it, but I don't really want to spend ~10 hours grinding through this thing only to have it rejected for something so trivial. (Also, the music to this game is maddening after X hours of listening to it on repeat. Is that part of the challenge? Heh.)

So anyway, the question I have is if, by the time I get around to doing this, I still haven't figured out all of the inner workings of OBS, would it be enough to stream it live or am I going to have to find some other streaming program to work with?

Honestly, I feel like this is just a misunderstanding. You're not the only one who has been bitten by the community for doing this; it's actually quite a common thing for people who aren't used to the community. A very similar thing happened to me when I wrote a js helper script that used probability distribution functions to predict random item drops in a game I ran a while back

See the thread here: https://www.speedrun.com/Super_Solvers_Gizmos_and_Gadgets/thread/kluj5

More importantly, do you understand ¤why¤ using save states to affect RNG can bother people who either choose not to or don't know how to use them? I haven't played this game myself, but if randomness is one of the predominant factors to why people might run this game, it can take the fun out of it if someone comes through and nullifies the random number aspect.

To put it in simpler terms, imagine a foreigner who is visiting your country and sees someone playing soccer for the first time. He thinks it might be fun and asks to join in. He hasn't really played the game before, but he thinks it might be fun, and the team members welcome him. He watches the game for a bit, then comes up with a good strategy he thinks the others haven't thought of. When the ball comes to him, he reaches down and picks it up, then starts running down the field thinking he really outsmarted everyone. However, instead of applauding his ingenuity, his teammates scold him. This leaves the team members thinking the outsider is a troll, while the outsider now thinks that the team members are just a bunch of whining complainers, when the truth is that there is a ¤reason¤ that nobody has picked up the ball with their hands. What the foreigner doesn't realize is that this handicap is part of what makes the game fun for these players, and removing that aspect takes the fun out of the game.

These things aside, since you are the moderator for that game, why don't you create two separate tabs: one for using save states and one for not using them? I feel like that would be a fair compromise. I don't think anyone intended to demean you or say that you didn't put in the work to earn the run you made, but I also think that using a save state to affect RNG can make it unfair for those who like having to think on their feet.

That's a pretty cool bit with the Dumbo summon and using a temporary stick to wall jump, but in the GTA games, what exactly ¤is¤ a replay? Do you mean you can replay a mission? Store a certain series of actions, then replay it? Something else? I'm one of the few people who never really got into the GTA series (school and what not), but they've been on my to do list for a while.

So it has come to my attention that (at least in the version that I use) the backgrounds aren't static. For instance, if you start a new game and go directly left, you'll get a different background every time you start a new game, even though it is supposedly the same screen. I haven't been recording this, but I thought I'd bring it up, because there might be some kind of correlation between the background used and whether or not there are gems / puffer fish on that particular screen.

I was just watching Bioice's speedrun of the original Starcraft, and I noticed an interesting tactic used around 36:30.

https://www.speedrun.com/run/zn88lkvz

A little background here: the goal of this level is to bring a certain object to a certain destination, which sounds relatively simple, but because this destination is in the center of the enemy encampment, and because only the weakest unit can carry the object, the implication is that you have to destroy the enemy encampment to achieve this goal.

However, the game also gives you use of a certain unit that happens to have the ability to put a protective shield around any other single unit. By putting a protective shield around the weak unit and marching it straight into the camp, he beats this level in about thirty seconds. It's not a very straightforward tactic, but because the only requirement for this level is to transport the object, it is a brilliant approach.

So I was wondering what other interesting / unique approaches you all have seen in speedruns? I'm not talking about glitches or game physics abuse, but where someone uses the tools provided to them in an unorthodox manner to achieve some goal much faster than it might have been done the conventional way. I'm really interested in that kind of stuff, and I would very much appreciate any recommendations for runs that employ imagination rather than brute force to solve a problem.

Thanks! You guys and gals are awesome!

Heh, I'm not sure "seriously" is the proper term, but it would be kinda cool to be a moderator.

I'm not sure if you can, but if you changed the trophy icons to the same ones given in the game for beating each level, that would be kinda funny. Just a thought.

Haha, no tools here, just careful observation and educated guessing. This game isn't quite complicated enough to warrant something like that. The maps are super simple, and I'm pretty sure the location of the puffer fish really is randomized (not a good way I can think of to predict it anyway... yet...), and though I also feel like the three sets of clues are randomized, I think they are picked from a pool of three clues bound together rather than picked randomly individually, and I think that's the key to speedrunning any% one level.

Even if the variables are randomized, there are different classes of "random", and it takes a lot of work to make something truly random (i.e. every possibility has an equal chance of appearing), and I doubt that this game's developers really went into that much effort for what is essentially just a children's educational game. All the software devs I know have this attitude of "if it works, leave it alone- functionality first, optimization later if needed". You can probably tell from my work here and with Gizmos, but my particular field tries to find better or unique ways of approaching problems that may seem unsolvable using conventional approaches. I love math and I speak "computer", so figuring out the inner workings of a simple program like this and using it to find patterns or exploits is just one of my hobbies.

I think that's one of the things I like most about the speedrunning community- there are just as many ways to solve a problem as there are types of people making speedrunning videos, and there is no one "accepted" way to speedrun a game; all approaches are respected equally (at least within the community)

Hey, and I'd be interested as well to see how the variables hold out from one version to the next. How much did the developers change when porting the game from DOS to Windows? Do you also get the same clues over and over when replaying the first level over and over? Is there a discernible pattern to the puffer fish location or the clues or anything else that might stand out? (where the stars first appear on the screen, what the first objects that spawn below you are, etc.) I don't know how much you know about software development or how these variables are defined, stored, or manipulated, but I think it would be interesting to have someone else to discuss these with.

Based on what I've seen in other games, whenever a new player comes through with a new glitch / idea that drastically changes the times, either it is adopted by all the other people in that group or a new category is made. For this game, though, I think the categories would be more like the "We just play for funsies" category and the "Wow this guy needs to get a life" category, lol.

I just found this, it's a pretty good thesis on the subject of randomness and random number generation:

http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1311&context=honors