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Smudging the game disc to make speedrunning 'SpongeBob' faster
- bitwize 4mo agoI was telling a friend about a game I'm working on which has "hacking mechanics". Him: So, have you ever thought about basing the hacking mechanics on Hyrum's Law? Me: ...No, but I'm sure that if it ever develops a speedrunning community, they will do just that!
- rtkwe 4mo agoI'm not clear on what that would even look like as a mechanic related to hacking?
- wildzzz 4mo agoIntentionally sloppy code, like leaving exploits in the game. Like if perform some action in a very specific way, you trigger an overflow that unlocks an item that's otherwise very difficult or impossible to obtain. So rather than these exploits breaking you out of the intended flow of the game, it's a real game mechanic. Like having that unobtainable item unlocks a story path that changes the ending. I guess it's more like an Easter egg but it relies on typical game glitching techniques rather than extensive exploration. In Halo 2, there was a level where if you damaged a banshee in a specific way and made it follow you down a tunnel, you could hijack it at the exact moment when a new level loaded at the end of the tunnel (otherwise you couldn't use it). Then you could fly up to the top of the level and find a modified weapon that was incredibly powerful (scarab gun). There was another secret weapon (energy sword) you could obtain by performing typical boundary breaking moves and walking on invisible walls. Normally, you'd be doing this to skip combat but the game was also rewarding you for it.
- rtkwe 4mo agoI was thinking more about how Hyrum's Law specifically would be an intentional mechanic in the hacking gameplay I guess rather than it being a way of labelling the glitchy behavior speed run categories run on I guess.
- aaroninsf 4mo agoSame
- sumtechguy 4mo agoThere is one game called 'hack n slash' on steam. You manipulate the 'global vars' to win the game. There is even one point where the game has you open up its data files and change things. Interesting mechanic.
- loganc2342 4mo agoI’ve been following this game’s speedrun for years; I never expected to see it on the front page of HN! This post could use a (2021), because this trick was discovered years ago. For anyone interested in speedrunning, this game has some of the most insane tech I’ve seen in any game and is definitely worth checking out.
- PaulStatezny 4mo ago> this game has some of the most insane tech I’ve seen in any game and is definitely worth checking out Given the context of this forum, I'd be interested to hear more about what's so interesting about the technology!
- lesam 4mo ago'tech' in speed running is a reference to "technique" rather than "technology". https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Tech https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Tech
- aaroninsf 4mo agoThank you TIL
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- JacobKfromIRC 4mo agoWoah, I just realized (because of this comment) that I've been grouping "technique" and "technology" as a single thing in my understanding and calling it "technology"/"tech". For example, I would describe a method to do something in a video game as "tech" but in my mind I would expand it to "technology" if I thought about it. I didn't realize that the word "technique" would be a better fit in those contexts. Looking at Wikipedia [1], it looks like the words are pretty closely related so I haven't been using the word completely wrong. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology
- autoexec 4mo ago> While SHiFT insists that the method of smudging your disc will give you enough time in a lag to beat the SpongeBob game, he adds a clear caveat that it's not worth the risk of permanently damaging your game or original Xbox console How would reading a scratched/dirty disc permanently damage a console? That seems like a very bad issue for a device expected to read frequently swapped discs.
- wildzzz 4mo agoThis article is hard to read, it seems to repeat itself constantly and expands on nothing. The main point is that smudging the disc can help with performing certain glitches while the console is trying to run error correction but you could potentially scratch your disc to an unusable state if you are too liberal with the smudging. I'm pretty sure I've seen this same topic on HN before so this article isn't exactly reporting on anything new.
- kelnos 4mo agoThe article seems to suggest that you can damage the console itself, though, not just the disc.
- postexitus 4mo agoWell - ketchup on your disc may drip on the the laser diode - don't you think it's hard to defend against? maybe they need lens wipers against ketchup on the disc issue.
- thatguy0900 4mo agoThe disc's spin pretty fast, I could see someone smudging the disc too heavily with a substance that might fling off
- sumtechguy 4mo agoOn some systems/drives if it detects an error that is big enough it will reset the carriage. You can here it reading and rescrubbing over and over. That can cause the carriage motor to overwork and burn out. Not sure of this system does that or not. But that would be my guess.
- Dwedit 4mo agoIf you put tape on cartridge pin #14 of NES Platoon (or other bad connection), the game will boot to a glitched version of the ending, thus making it a zero-second speedrun. Pin #14 is the CPU R/W pin, and if it's not properly connected, the game will be unable to write to the MMC1 mapper to perform bank switching. Platoon happens to be programmed in a way that address 0x8000 of every bank is an entry point that will run a particular level from the game. So you boot up the game, and it tries to switch to the Title Screen bank, then jumps to 0x8000. But the bank switch fails, and instead it runs code from the first bank. It just so happens that the first bank contains the program for the ending. If the cartridge connection improves and mapper writes start to succeed, the graphics will return to normal as it continues to run the ending.
- brayhite 4mo agoI love little facts like these. Thanks for sharing (and sounding convincing enough for me to trust it lol).
- nosioptar 4mo agoIf you haven't read about the Pilot Wings coprocessor differences, it's really interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19883714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19883714
- tantalor 4mo agoReally stretches the definition of speed run. If I record the game to VHS, and fast forward to the end, does that count?
- charcircuit 4mo agoYou aren't playing the game then. There is a difference in being creative in what actions you can take as a speed runner versus just playing back a video recording.
- TimorousBestie 4mo agoSpeedrunners are perfectly capable of defining categories better than that.
- ihazgithub 4mo ago[dead]
- psygn89 4mo agoMy copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops that I bought from a rental store was corrupted in that sniper scopes didn't have the black scope silhouette when zoomed in, so essentially the whole screen just zooms in.
- HerbManic 4mo agoI find it so funny that somethings coded can crumble if a single bit is out of place, and others are like "No file there, no problem!"
- jasonjayr 4mo agoThat's kinda what happens with DNA -- a random mutation will make the resulting organism 'incompatible with life' -- or it will create a change that gives a huge advantage for survival.
- smegger001 4mo agoor give a different eye color it not all life or death
- NamTaf 4mo agoMy first "gaming" PC was a secondhand thing with a RIVA TNT2 M64. It had cooked memory from presumably prior abuse, in such a way that if I ran Counter-Strike with 3d accel on, some of the wall textures were transparent. But it also relatively frequently crashed so I rarely tried using it for the better graphics, and at that young age never appreciated the cheating aspect of it.
- Orangeair 4mo ago[2021]
- uKVZe85V 4mo agoThe diagram showing where to smudge the disc looks so incredible, a kind of flower shape, no rotational origin. Seeing the video it makes more sense. All this is highly artisanal, the diagram is just a hint. This give me an idea. Here's my smudge pattern that works better: (shows a diagram with blotches in the shape of Rick Astley singing).
- CqtGLRGcukpy 4mo agoThis is just a write-up of a video by SHiFT which can be watched at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THtbjPQFVZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THtbjPQFVZI.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- charcircuit 4mo ago>a core tenet of speedrunning is preserving old games, not destroying them. That is not a core tenant of speed running. Software preservation is completely separate from speed running.
- account42 4mo agoIt's not entirely unrelated in that speed runs help preserve a community around the game.
- charcircuit 4mo agoA very different community both in kind and demographics. It introduces a new community to the game rather than preserving what once existed.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4mo agoThis comment made me think of pencil sharpening speedruns in the context of "preservation". Had a good chuckle. Quite a different mindset: the point is to sharpen a pencil (or 10) as fast as possible. https://www.speedrun.com/pencil?h=In_Real_Life-Drillless-10_Pencils&rules=game https://www.speedrun.com/pencil?h=In_Real_Life-Drillless-10_... (Not to mention hardware preservation is separate from software preservation and hardware preservation is rarely referring to pencils.)
- jogu 4mo agoSpeed running is so bizarre to me, the rules seem so arbitrary. I struggle to see how any form of hardware level modification that results in a meaningful deviation in the behavior of the game would be allowed. At that point what's the difference between smudging your disk and using a GameShark, etc? Similar thoughts on things like shiny hunting in the Pokemon community.
- account42 4mo agoAre you also confused about kids playing outside making up arbitrary rules for their games? The point to have fun by challenging yourself in a competition with others. That means allowing things that make the competition more fun/challenging and disallowing those things that trivialize it. Sometimes that's a subjective thing.
- x187463 4mo agoWhat's 'allowed' in a speed run is decided by the community who do the speed running. Further, run leaderboards are broken into categories based around defined parameters. So, perhaps there would be a category unique to hardware manipulation such as this. For major speed running games, the rules are often very well defined and enforced.