5 ms·

Amazed it hasn't come up yet considering the overlap with engineering communities. Video game speedrunning - playing a video game over and over, trying to beat

Amazed it hasn't come up yet considering the overlap with engineering communities. Video game speedrunning - playing a video game over and over, trying to beat it in the fastest time possible. It scratches an engineering itch to know miniscule little details and optimizations about a game that you love, and be collaborating/competing with others, working to push down times. It has a chill social aspect to it, where you stream on twitch and your friends watch your attempts, talk about the techniques, and hang out with you while you practice. A lot of incredibly bright, talented and kind geeks. Some of the real scientists behind the scenes are brilliant engineers who poke at ram values and theorycraft routes based on manipulated RNG seeds. I got into the scene from participating in a speedgaming tournament (http://speedgaming.org/events/ http://speedgaming.org/events/), which forced me to learn a game and made me several great friends. Since then I've gotten deep into a zelda randomizer (http://alttpr.com/ http://alttpr.com/) that has a vibrant and passionate community. A really smart engineer realized that you could randomize the items in the game by breaking it down into a dependency graph, so that the game is different every time. You race on the same seed as someone else, and you win by efficiently routing your item checks, better faster at the game, and/or making good gambles. It's one part speedrunning, one part poker.

jmcgough 8y ago
There are also those to do tool-assisted speedruns, where they play a game and complete it frame-by-frame, doing precise inputs that a human might not be capable of in order to show the theoretically best time that a game can be completed in.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Far beyond what "might not be capable". Some TAS runs do things like abuse the order that the console would read inputs to do multiple inputs in a single "frame".
mcast 8y ago
I didn't realize I cared about speed-running until I saw this YouTube video from Summoning Salt about N64's Mario Kart level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99Wj-NStok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99Wj-NStok
- jmcgough 8y ago
  His progression videos are awesome! There's not great documentation of this stuff, so it's cool to see if you get into a speedrun that has a lot of history behind it.
- 0x4f3759df 8y ago
  His level 4-2 vid is pretty crazy, 20 minute video about 9 seconds of gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg
tomkinson 8y ago
Guilty of also falling for this insanely rad community. I don't have the time nor constitution to participate, but watching an occasional breakdown of glitch detection, shortcuts, hacks and other such time savers, is a lesson in outside the box thinking. Speedrunners capitalize on pixels and milliseconds and there's something I love about that level of attention (in occasional doses).
- Klathmon 8y ago
  And this is why I enjoy "TAS" or "tool assisted speedruns". People will basically write a program to do the speedruns for them with literal microsecond precision. My favorite are watching super Mario 64 TAS runs. Stuff like a special way that they can jump perfectly on some slopes to build up hilariously high speed values then using that to launch across the map all in a fraction of a second. There is also a Pokemon run where the guy built a way to input arbritrary code during a first generation Pokemon (red or blue) run, and used it to program in the opening to the next generation of the games among other things things.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    > Stuff like a special way that they can jump perfectly on some slopes to build up hilariously high speed values then using that to launch across the map all in a fraction of a second. "...But before that, we have to talk about alternate universes."
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Context, for those not aware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A. This specific quote is at around 10:35.
      - ruytlm 8y ago
        On a related note of Youtube videos about Mario games that I never thought I'd watch the full duration of but that turned out to be strangely fascinating, here is the World Record History of Super Mario Sunshine any%: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oudZMniib08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oudZMniib08
aquova 8y ago
Randomizers are a really cool and growing community. That Zelda randomizer is probably the most famous one, but programs exist for a significant number of old classics. Not only are they fun to play, but development of them combines both romhacking with modern sensibilities which is really neat.
- nyolfen 8y ago
  could you give a few examples of some interesting ones?
  - myrmi 8y ago
    This isn't really my scene, but the Link to the Past // Super Metroid randomiser[1], where you keep switching between the two games, potentially discovering items from one in the other, is something that is impressive that it's even technically possible. [1] https://kotaku.com/inside-the-wild-new-mash-up-of-link-to-the-past-and-sup-1826049172 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-wild-new-mash-up-of-link-to-th...
  - aquova 8y ago
    Some of the more well known ones are Final Fantasy, A Link to the Past, and Pokemon. Here is a comprehensive list of games that currently have randomizers written for them. Full disclosure, I've written two of the Kirby randomizers ;)

jmcgough 8y ago

There are also those to do tool-assisted speedruns, where they play a game and complete it frame-by-frame, doing precise inputs that a human might not be capable of in order to show the theoretically best time that a game can be completed in.

Klathmon 8y ago
Far beyond what "might not be capable". Some TAS runs do things like abuse the order that the console would read inputs to do multiple inputs in a single "frame".

mcast 8y ago

I didn't realize I cared about speed-running until I saw this YouTube video from Summoning Salt about N64's Mario Kart level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99Wj-NStok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99Wj-NStok

jmcgough 8y ago
His progression videos are awesome! There's not great documentation of this stuff, so it's cool to see if you get into a speedrun that has a lot of history behind it.
0x4f3759df 8y ago
His level 4-2 vid is pretty crazy, 20 minute video about 9 seconds of gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg

tomkinson 8y ago

Guilty of also falling for this insanely rad community. I don't have the time nor constitution to participate, but watching an occasional breakdown of glitch detection, shortcuts, hacks and other such time savers, is a lesson in outside the box thinking. Speedrunners capitalize on pixels and milliseconds and there's something I love about that level of attention (in occasional doses).

Klathmon 8y ago
And this is why I enjoy "TAS" or "tool assisted speedruns". People will basically write a program to do the speedruns for them with literal microsecond precision. My favorite are watching super Mario 64 TAS runs. Stuff like a special way that they can jump perfectly on some slopes to build up hilariously high speed values then using that to launch across the map all in a fraction of a second. There is also a Pokemon run where the guy built a way to input arbritrary code during a first generation Pokemon (red or blue) run, and used it to program in the opening to the next generation of the games among other things things.
- bitwize 8y ago
  > Stuff like a special way that they can jump perfectly on some slopes to build up hilariously high speed values then using that to launch across the map all in a fraction of a second. "...But before that, we have to talk about alternate universes."
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Context, for those not aware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A. This specific quote is at around 10:35.
    - ruytlm 8y ago
      On a related note of Youtube videos about Mario games that I never thought I'd watch the full duration of but that turned out to be strangely fascinating, here is the World Record History of Super Mario Sunshine any%: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oudZMniib08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oudZMniib08

aquova 8y ago

Randomizers are a really cool and growing community. That Zelda randomizer is probably the most famous one, but programs exist for a significant number of old classics. Not only are they fun to play, but development of them combines both romhacking with modern sensibilities which is really neat.

nyolfen 8y ago
could you give a few examples of some interesting ones?
- myrmi 8y ago
  This isn't really my scene, but the Link to the Past // Super Metroid randomiser[1], where you keep switching between the two games, potentially discovering items from one in the other, is something that is impressive that it's even technically possible. [1] https://kotaku.com/inside-the-wild-new-mash-up-of-link-to-the-past-and-sup-1826049172 https://kotaku.com/inside-the-wild-new-mash-up-of-link-to-th...
- aquova 8y ago
  Some of the more well known ones are Final Fantasy, A Link to the Past, and Pokemon. Here is a comprehensive list of games that currently have randomizers written for them. Full disclosure, I've written two of the Kirby randomizers ;)