Just. Speedruns. Be it by tool-assist, glitching, or straight-up ridiculous human skill. Got to go fast.
OH HI THERE I LIKE SPEEDRUNNING. AND I DO IT MYSELF THOUGH NOT LIKE ANYTHING OTHER THAN CASUALLY. I run Undertale pacifist and the Castlevania 64 games. Sadly I do not record because MEH. My favorite to watch though are monkey ball games because fuck monkey ball runs are some shit. Especially the first Super game. Super Monkey Ball is some fucking bullshit to play even casually. Least favorite are glitched any% runs of Souls games. What I love about Souls just cannot be seen or experienced with a glitched run of those games. Which makes me sad. Glitchless is fun though. I also really love dumb joke categories and games. Like runs of Animorphs for the gbc or the all cows category of OoT.
So SGDQ is coming up. Very, very fucking soon. I personally am really excited. The events have been the highlights of my years for a bit now. Like they're things I actively look forward to as lovely break time rewards for getting through semesters of school. THE TIME. IT IS UPON US. WE MUST BREAK OUT THE BINGO CARDS. WE MUST PRAY WE DON'T HAVE ANOTHER I'D PREFER IF YOU'D STOP TALKING.
AHHHH SUPER MARIO 64 GOT A MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT! The ABC team is freaking amazing... and so is everyone in that TAS group.
Not a speedrun, but Pannenkoek's A-press minimizing activities are quite a beautiful thing to behold. Besides, it started a meme, and that's cool.
Yessssss. Someone else has learned of the joy of all cows. Have you watched a 37 water temple keys run yet? @Lambda
yeah, I watched it, I was very confused for most of it but enjoyed it, that's a good channel in general I wish there was an actual list of speedruns with dumb conditions, bc the speedrunning sites are too professional or something and don't list the ridiculous shit, so I have to wander around looking, that's how I found the no doors run
The greatest thing about the A-press minimizing activities is that some of the glitches used for them were actually what led to the Super Mario 64 TAS improvement, if I recall correctly? Specifically the Parallel Universe exploit.
Yeah, absolutely. PU Theory and Ticket Theory have unlocked so much of this game's potential, it's incredible.
So with AGDQ ending a bunch of people are getting into speedrunning now or are interested in it. The issue is that not everyone knows how to go about it so let's try that now. Giving people an idea. Your first question might "What's a good game to start with?" A lot of people are asking this now and the answer unfortunately isn't specific. Think about the games you yourself like and which you own. Think about those games, especially the ones you replay a lot. Those will likely be your best bets with finding a game to run. Because the important thing about speedrunning is that it's a hobby. A fun one. Alternatively, let's say you watched a GDQ or have otherwise seen runs of a game and went "Oh wow that looks so cool to do". That game? Even if it looks like it's fucking impossible to be that good? It might be a good shot. I myself am going to try to learn Super Mario Sunshine. Not because I think I can do as well as bounceyboy and in fact know I can't be when I start out. Or possibly ever honestly. But again it's a fun hobby. If you think the run looks fun maybe give it a shot. If you still have nothing go look up the past Get Yourself Speedrunning events that speedrunslive have done. They have shorter games/runs that are set up to help new people get into the hobby. Like let's say you want to get into Link to the Past but are daunted at the length of the run. Well they did a Master Sword run and provided a video of the run for a tutorial. Ok so now you got a game or a list of games you're thinking about. What then? How do you learn it? The speedrunning community may well have you covered. We congregate places and share info a lot. So what are these places? speedrun.com is probably going to be the best first stop. The leaderboards have videos of runs which can be very handy to watch. A lot of games have resources, guides, and other tools gathered together on a game's particular page too. The SDA forums are another good bet. You can search for a game that you're thinking of and might find a thread or two about the game. The speedrunning subreddit can be a lovely place. Lots of people use it. Can ask for help there or look for posts that are relevant to your interests. Though due to how reddit works making posts will probably be easier. We have a discord. You can find invites to the server on the subreddit. You can ask for help there or just talk and make friends with the community. Community specific wikis. Not every game or series of games will have one of these but the game you're running may well have a wiki. I know for a fact that both Souls and Final Fantasy have speedrun wikis. Check them out if you can find them. The youtube or twitch channels of specific runners. So those people you see at the tops of leaderboards? They probably have a twitch account and a youtube account. Many don't just post runs but also tutorials on specific tricks and such. Check them out. Non-community specific wikis. So like the normal fandom wikis may have glitches of shit for you to look into. These can also be lovely in figuring out where shit is or the values of health shit have. So now you know where to find this info but what the fuck do you do about these race things? Speedrunslive is what you do. Register your irc handle there and look into getting involved in races if you'd like. Some key bits of advice I have too: It's just a hobby. That's it. You're doing this for fun, though competing for world records might be fun for you. Take the world record time and multiply that by 1.5 as a general rule for how shit you'll likely do when starting out. Don't get discouraged by poor times or trouble with tricks. If you're really having issues seek out help. Maybe you're running the wrong version of the game and can't do the trick. Maybe you'd get help out of a setup for the trick. Seek out the community. They may well have your back. And given how much the hobby thrives off people communicating they probably do honestly. Just get a run done. When starting out you might be tempted to just do tricks over and over till you get them perfect. Don't fucking do this. Get a run done. Get lots of runs done. Also practice specific tricks, but really I feel I need to stress how important it is that you actually start. Makes it easier to make it a habit. Make your goals for time reductions small and reasonable things. Let's say you get 35 minutes in Momodora 4. Shoot for 30 minutes next. Then maybe 28. Small goals. Reasonable goals. Gradually make your way to WR. SAVE STATES ARE YOUR BEST FRIENDS. Use these. Don't be afraid of practicing on emulator. Do look up accuracy of specific emulators though to keep the conditions you're working under as similar to console as possible if you're also doing console runs. You don't have to stream and record shit if you don't want to. It can just be your personal hobby if you want it to be. Though recordings can make finding your mistakes easier and lets you share them with others who might notice things you don't. The community isn't that scary. I thought it was too and I get why people might. I spent a while not talking with anyone in it. But the community does want more people. They want more people who do this weird thing that they do.
Also if you're wanting some advice on kinds of runs you might like...Here is Aon's short guide on sorts of run types and what kinds of games tend to have runs that focus on these things: Execution - If you want very execution heavy games then 2D platformers and old fps games like Doom are good bets. 3D platformers tend to be very execution heavy as well. Execution basically being "Can you play the game well?", glitches aside. If you like glitches then even these execution heavy games like Super Mario Sunshine or Megaman have glitches. Though some runs are very glitch light, like Megaman X. Glitches - You want to fuck up the game? Try out some 3D Zeldas maybe. 2D ones too. 3D adventure games or wrpgs like The Elder Scrolls tend to be good bets too. Super Metroid is a legendary glitch filled game. Memorization, rng manipulation, and menuing - You want a jrpg. It can be a tactical strategy one like Fire Emblem or a traditional turnbased one like Dragon Quest but what you want is a jrpg. Love memorization? Love finding ways to bully the game's engine into giving you exactly what you want? This is where you go. Dealing with the rng - Ok so you like the rng but you don't like bullying it. You like having to react to it. Melee all events or puzzle games are your deal. Things like Tetris: The Grandmaster 3 Sakura Mode or the Panel de Pon games can be speedran and give you plenty to get your teeth around with skillfully reacting to the rng. Memorization - You may like survival horror games. They're focused on menuing and routing and memorization, but the rng isn't something you need to be constantly manipulating. A jrpg type thing but I hate rng manipulation - Undertale is what you want. Specifically True Pacifist. Alternatively the Paper Mario series tends to be more execution heavy than it is about forcing the game to do what you want it to. 2D platformer runs vary from under 10 minutes to over an hour. Depends on the game and the category. Rule of thumb though is that NES platformers tend to be on the shorter end (10-20 minutes) and beyond that you start getting into times 30-45 minutes or over an hour. 3D platformers tend to have runs of an hour or more. Especially if they're collectathons. Old fps games tend to have very short runs. Like under half an hour even. Modern ones I'm not sure but the Halo runs I've seen are over an hour? 3D adventure games like Zeldas are typically an hour or three depending on the game in particular. Survival horrors tend to be around that length too depending on the game. Some categories may be exceptions such as the current any% route of Ocarina of Time which is less than 20 minutes. Games like this will often have varying categories for those sorts of games. Puzzle games it varies but they do tend to be on the shorter side of half an hour or less. JRPGs regardless of category tend to be multiple hours long. Same with 100% collectathon 3D platformers or Zeldas. Times vary from 2 hours to like 10 depending on the game and category in question.
Doing a paladin% run of ff4 for the Get Yourself Speedrunning even this year. Basically means I get Cecil to become a paladin and then I'm done. A "good" time is generally considered to be sub-one hour. The wr is 58m and some odd seconds. Worst time was the first time at 1h17m??s I believe it was. Current pb is 1h6m53s. Last run was 1h7m5s. I may record my times here in this thread just so I have a place to store them all neatly.
oh my god so i found a really horrible game that i now want to optimize and submit for an awfulgdq it's called urth the game and it's fucking horrendous
