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Speed running Monkey Island
- autoexec 3y agoWasn't it something like Ctrl-W to win? Seems like the easiest game in the world to speed run!
- RajT88 3y agoI played some text-based adventure game which also had graphics. I wish I could remember what it was. It was cool for the early 90's, sort of fantasy-horror haunted house kind of game. I recall finding a bug on a replay of the game, where I accidentally typed a command one room early in the house, and it immediately went to the end game screen. Apparently the bug was that at any time you could basically type something like, "Open the last door" and you would immediately finish the game. That's got to be the fastest speedrun I've seen, just by virtue that the game intro was a lot shorter than Monkey Island.
- rerx 3y agoCould it be Hugo's House of Horrors? Somehow I remember the name quite distinctly, although I couldn't play it much back then (did not know English at that age). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo%27s_House_of_Horrors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo%27s_House_of_Horrors
- RajT88 3y agoCould be! I remember the house looked more blue and was centered on the box cover, but there could be more than one box art.
- rerx 3y agoThere are screenshots on the author's web site: https://www.dgray.com/hwpage.htm https://www.dgray.com/hwpage.htm Now I'm contemplating buying the set for 6$.
- RajT88 3y agoOK, the one I am thinking of was definitely different. But I definitely owned and played that second Hugo game! I am going to have to dig into this tonight and see what I come up with. ETA: It's also possible my memory is totally wrong. Or as well, that it was just some lone dev who barely got his game published. I definitely remember buying it from the bargain bin of crap PC games.
- WizardClickBoy 3y agoManiac Mansion?
- RajT88 3y agoNah, I have played that as an adult. It is not that. I have been searching more, and my visual memory is pretty good (even for something 30+ years ago). Still have not found a dead ringer. Likely to be a CGA game.
- mattl 3y agoThat would be my guess too.
- butz 3y agoPress Alt+W to instantly win the game.
- schnebbau 3y agoI'm still sour about the ending of Return. Come on Ron, release the real ending!
- davidivadavid 3y agoThat ending was such infuriating sophomoric "meta" bullshit it only cemented my perception of Curse as being the best MI game.
- aflag 3y agoHe's made the ending he always wanted. The "secret of the monkey island" was supposed to be that it was all a park attraction all along and that was why there are so many anachronistic things in the game.
- davidivadavid 3y agoI'm sure he did. It's a terrible ending.
- rerx 3y agoVery much how he rolls, see Thimbleweed Park.
- geraldwhen 3y agoYes. It’s clear he lacks a capacity to commit to an ending. Endings put a point on things. Endings will be judged by their impact on the story. “It’s a game lul” isn’t an ending. It’s an escape from the criticism both inward and outward that would result from a real ending.
- yetanotherloser 3y agoHe already did the "it's a theme park" ending in MI2 and it was fine. Not tbh my favourite part, but fine in that context in that time. There was something about the new one which was appallingly "fuck you for still liking Monkey Island".
- EscapeFromNY 3y agoI'm always happy to see a speedrunner decompile the game they're running. I've always thought it was an underappreciated part of understanding a game. But I wish companies would just release their games' original source code after a while. Monkey Island is almost 30 years old, and people have already reverse-engineered it, so they won't be losing too many sales by releasing it. And for Monkey Island specifically it's not a case of losing the source - the original devs gave a copy of the engine and game source to the Video Game History Foundation[^]. But us outsiders will never get to play with it :( [^]: https://gamehistory.org/monkeyisland/ https://gamehistory.org/monkeyisland/
- lpapez 3y agoAs a younger dev I often dreamed of devs releasing the source code to ancient games so that I could learn from it, but now that I know how corporate works I've made my peace that it will happen rarely or never. I bet that devs in a company like LucasArts these days need to wait for weeks on corporate to give permission to use a alternate email client, just imagine coming up with a proposal to abandon copyright claim on something. It just can't happen, you would have a very hard time even finding one single person inside the company who might actually have the authority and pull to greenlight it.
- wizzwizz4 3y agoPublishing something doesn't mean you disclaim copyright over it.
- moritonal 3y agoFun fact, for a charity event Introversion released the source code for a collection of their old games. But they are also the opposite of big corporate.
- lencastre 3y agoCarmack’s release of quake comes to mind. I may misremember,…
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- rerx 3y agoSpeed running MI2 takes a bit over 30 minutes if you were wondering: https://youtu.be/5_I7hlaWVCE https://youtu.be/5_I7hlaWVCE
- wkat4242 3y agoWow. that game is so difficult. I spent hours and hours on it in my youth and never got anywhere lol. I didn't know you could do it in 30 minutes though. Of course speedrunners will know all the puzzles in advance. Which kinda defeats the purpose of such a game.
- account42 3y agoSpeed running in general is usually about playing games in a way they were not meant to be played.
- bhj 3y agoHighly recommend this channel for well-researched and entertaining mini-documentaries on adventure game speedrunning: https://www.youtube.com/@OneShortEye https://www.youtube.com/@OneShortEye
- somat 3y agoI find software archeology like this very interesting. My understanding is that this lispy looking language, we will call it scummL, compiles to a stack based virtual machine which is what the game executable would run. scummvm is a third party opensource reverse engineering project to replicate the virtual machine so that games written to it can be played in current execution environments. Are there any compilers for scummL known to exist in the wild? I found scummC but it is more C-ish in specification. https://www.scummvm.org/old/docs/specs/scrp-v6.php https://www.scummvm.org/old/docs/specs/scrp-v6.php https://github.com/AlbanBedel/scummc/wiki/ScummC-Grammar https://github.com/AlbanBedel/scummc/wiki/ScummC-Grammar
- madmoose 3y agoThere are no original compilers of SCUMM script available online as far as I know, although certainly Ron Gilbert and Aaron Giles and probably some other LucasArts programmers have the originals. I don't think there were even any samples of the original scripts online when ScummC was developed so it can be forgiven for not matching the original format :)
- seba_dos1 3y agoWhat you call "scummL" isn't even publicly described in any other way than by the kind of snippets like in this article. You can find some more in GDC slides, but that's pretty much it.
- exlurker 3y agoHere's what looks like a manual for SCUMM, with examples and all: https://tandell.com/misc/SCUMM-Tutorial-0.1.pdf https://tandell.com/misc/SCUMM-Tutorial-0.1.pdf
- ftxbro 3y agooh a game on the front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147399
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoSuch an odd complaint. Not only is this not really a forum about games, but also the recent Zelda release was at the very top for like a whole day.
- chrisdfrey 3y agoA great video on the history of Monkey Island speedruns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0mso2jW6Jc&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0mso2jW6Jc&t
- msephton 3y agoThat was very good!
- jheriko 3y agohis small print is bad, and he should feel bad. (its not, but its an annoying rookie fail)
- egypturnash 3y agoare you seriously calling Ron Gilbert a rookie
- wly_cdgr 3y agoBut why
- qbasic_forever 3y agoSpeed running games is an awesome hobby. I've been watching the community for over a decade and it's really amazing the creativity and skill speed runners demonstrate. When you get down to it high level speed running is really no different from sophisticated software testing--the best speed runners figure out bugs and how to exploit them for maximum speed. It's really a cool software development-adjacent sport IMHO.
- wly_cdgr 3y agoSorry, I should have been more clear. I think speed running is cool & I think creative testing is a great way of framing it. Actually, as a QA guy, I think some original speed runs would be the best portfolio pieces you could have on your resume. I'm just hating on Monkey Island :)
- dudul 3y agoWhile I have no interest in speed running any game, it is kind of entertaining to see what people come up with.
- wkat4242 3y agoIf you're modding the game to speedrun it, are you still speedrunning the game?
- tiagod 3y agoI don't think the point is to speedrun a modded game, but instead to understand how the random events work to exploit them in your advantage
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoThe rules vary between games, but generally it's up to the community to decide what's allowed. I'm not sure if I remember the details correctly, but I think a few months back there was a moist critical speedrun challenge where the game had to be patched using a third party tool in order to prevent crashes. As long as the rules are clear and everyone is on a level playing field then it's fair.
- nottorp 3y agoThere are any% any glitch speedruns, any% glitchless speedruns, 100% speedruns glitchless or not etc etc. Just watch the ones you like. Personally I prefer glitchless but then I only ever watched speedruns for Soulbornes which are pretty ... cinematic.
- p0w3n3d 3y agoSpeed running Monkey Island is like swallowing whole ice cream.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoHow appropriate, you fight like a cow!
- p0w3n3d 3y agoEvery enemy I've met I've anihilated
- WeylandYutani 3y agoReminds me of Grim Fandango. Any 90s adventure game is revealed to be very short with a guide. Now when that game came out I had to go to the library for internet and pay 25 cents for each printed page or make a handwritten copy of gamefaqs...