Speedruns

[Ein Sof]

Lately, I've been remarkably enthralled by speedruns. The concept is simple: complete a game as quickly as possible, exploiting glitches as you go - if glitches can be found in the code. As wonderful as these runs can be to behold [nb]I once attempted to complete Sonic in 15 minutes, copying the movements of the speedrunners, but - as you can imagine - it's very difficult and wastes too many hours of my life.[/nb] (particularly the Super Mario 64 runs, which can attain balletic qualities), I'm taken aback by how much money viewers throw at the most profilic speedrunners (e.g. Cosmo Wright, Siglemic). I'm currently watching this Zelda: Wind Waker speedrun intermittently:

http://www.twitch.tv/cosmowright

I noticed at the top of the screen, one person has donated $100 to cosmo and another has given him $28[nb]EDIT: Somebody has just given him $130 and another has given him $125[/nb]. Cosmo receives quite a lot of donations over the course of a run and I think he makes a comfortable living from donations and twitch.tv ad revenue. One time, somebody donated $1000 to his 'cause' (at the bottom of his channel page it says "Click here to give me pizza!"). It beggars belief how much people are willing to give, and I never would have thought that somebody could subsist on doing something as seemingly obscure as speedrunning. I wonder how much the speedrunners make per day (most of them broadcast their runs at least once a day). And I also wonder how much time they allocate for practicing these runs. I think Cosmo or Siglemic once said that he practices about "eight hours a day" but I might be misremembering. If they make a living out of this, then good luck to them, but I wouldn't take the same risk.

However, it's not all about obsessive-compulsive nerdery. Every year, the speedrunning community hold a charity event for Prevent Cancer charity and, during the most recent event, they managed to raise over $400,000 over the course of a week (I think...). Admirable stuff, in my opinion, and it's great to take advantage of the gaming community's interest in this way.

If anyone here hasn't watched speedruns before, here are channels that I'd recommend:

www.youtube.com/user/CosmoSpeedruns (specialises in Zelda[nb]He once exploits a glitch where you can complete Zelda:OoT in 5 minutes.[/nb], Super Monkey Ball and Paper Mario)
www.youtube.com/user/SpeedDemosArchiveSDA (videos from the charity events and an archive of various world records)
www.youtube.com/user/Siglemic (he has an autistic preference for Super Mario 64)

Mike89 is an enjoyable speedrunner because, whilst playing the game, he delves into very technical commentary of the game's code and how the glitches work.

Does anyone here watch this sort of thing?

[buntyman]

Cheers for the links, compelling viewing! Just watched that 23 minute Ocarina of Time one. The nerdy rounds of applause are lovely as is the mind-numbingly detailed explanation of how the guy warped from the Deku Tree to the final boss battle.
My favourite bit was the brief Q&A with the grown up version of this guy:

asking about his use of the master sword on the final battle.

[mcbpete]

I'm a big fan of the major glitch TAS ones. Though not a speerun I loved this one which manages to reprogramme Pokemon Yellow from the inside writing its own assembler and creating a pretty picture of balloons and some music (ffwd to about 11 minutes to see the result of the exploit) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5T81yHkHtI

[lazarou]

A personal favourite TAS of mine is this hypnotic, increasingly elaborate run through the Brain Age maths exercises. Lovely stuff.

[mcbpete]

A personal favourite TAS of mine is this hypnotic, increasingly elaborate run through the Brain Age maths exercises. Lovely stuff.

WHAT. THE. HOLY. FUCK ! That is amazing, I love the wild breaking of the handwriting recognition .

[syntaxerror]

I have to say, I prefer longplays to speedruns but they are quite impressive, usually.

[MojoJojo]

WHAT. THE. HOLY. FUCK ! That is amazing, I love the wild breaking of the handwriting recognition .

From reading the comment, I think they just hacked the rom so it thinks numbers look different, rather than some super clever exploitation of the handwriting recognition. (i.e. drawing those images on a regular version wouldn't work)

Still quite cool - and it's impressive the recognition still works so quickly with such complex images.

[Consignia]

I was going to ask if TAS (Tool Assisted Speedruns?) meant that they had to be technically possible with the originals, or that they were allowed to alter the game code in some way. I guess that answers my question. I was hoping though that they had something that they had done some experimentation to find pictures that were recognised as the numbers calculated.

[MojoJojo]

Tool-assisted normally means they use stuff to do bits pixel/frame perfect, without changing the game code[nb]I was entertained by some quake speedruns about a ecade ago[/nb]. But that's not TAS anyway, since it's not a speedrun. And a TAS run of Brainage would be a bit pointless anyway.

Reading the comment again I'm not sure how they did it.

[lazarou]

Yeah, it's not really a speedrun, but it's certainly tool assisted. I suppose they just weren't sure what other way to label it.

I'm fairly sure they didn't externally edit the text recognition routines, that kind of thing is generally outside the bounds of tool-assisted runs and would render the whole exercise pointless. Well, even more pointless. You know what I mean.

[mcbpete]

Another TAS glitch 'run', absolutely bootiful -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UnB1fomvAw