Speedrun

Categories: Computer and video game gameplay

A speedrun is a play-through of a computer or video game, the whole game or a selected part such as a single level of it, with the intent of completing it as quickly as possible, optionally with certain prerequisites, such as collecting every item available. The term is only used in the context of games that were not originally or primarily designed with time-squashing in mind; one generally does not "speedrun" in a racing game (in those cases the game's standard setting for achieving and recording fast times is called a time attack or time trial mode). Both speedrunning and time attacking are often practiced competitively in Internet-based communities.

There are two big subgenres of speedruns: unassisted or regular speedruns, and tool-assisted speedruns. Unassisted speedruns are done in real time using only whatever features there were in the actual game and the original hardware, while tool-assisted speedruns also use the features found outside the game, such as the "save-state" feature found in emulators.

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History

Image:Quake-qdqwav2 2.png
Screenshot of Robert Maglic's E4M2 (The Tower of Despair) segment of the upcoming Quake done Quick speedrun for the game Quake. The entire level, played on "nightmare" difficulty level (the highest in the game), is finished in 29 seconds.

Doom developed what might have been the first online speedrunning fanbase, emerging in 1994 around newsgroups, FTPs and websites that collected demos (see Doom speedrunning). Speedrunning entered mainstream with the famous Quake done Quick demo for Quake created by the eponymous group. QdQ also produced Quake done Quicker, which was later obsoleted by Quake done Quick with a Vengeance, and Scourge done Slick, movies which in addition to top-notch speedrunning skills featured humorous plot and camerawork, making QdQ one of the pioneers of machinima community.

It could be argued that all of the Metroid games were among the first to have major speedrun challenges. They have built-in rewards for speed, in providing different Samus outfits for winning in various time frames.

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Techniques

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Finding the route

An essential part of speedrunning is to find the shortest feasible route through the game. In highly non-linearly structured games, which are almost exclusively preferred for speedrunning purposes, there is often no obvious choice. The shortest possible route might contain so many obstacles that it is virtually impossible to use, and it is therefore often necessary to find a compromise between ease and distance. Depending on how the player's skill improves, faster but increasingly difficult routes may be chosen.

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Sequence breaking

The best routes rarely rely upon the paths and progressions that were designated by the developers. Skilled players will usually discover ways to finish parts of the game in a different order than was intended, and they consequentially often find ways to skip parts of a game entirely. Using these shortcuts is sometimes called sequence breaking. Shortcuts are often possible because their existence has been overlooked by the developers, but they are sometimes actually implemented intentionally.

A trick for sequence breaking in first-person shooters is the so called "rocket jump", which consists of jumping intentionally over a mine or explosive, or shooting with a rocket launcher on the ground. The explosion allows the character to jump higher than normal, reaching nearby but otherwise unreachable places. Obviously, the character incurs significant damage from the explosion.

In another example (from the Quake done Quick speedruns), the character jumped to an unreachable platform by stepping over a laser shot, just shot by a nearby enemy. This technique requires precise timing and study. Since the level was centered on finding an alternative way to reach the platform, the sequence breaking permitted a player to skip almost the complete level.

One famous example of sequence breaking is a series of glitches which allow Super Mario 64 to be completed after collecting only 16 stars (as opposed to 70); the game can be completed in less than twenty minutes by doing so [1]. The Metroid series is also famous for sequence breaking; many items can be acquired early on or skipped altogether.

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Glitches

Sometimes a glitch will allow for an interesting speedrunning opportunity. The classic example is being able to walk through a wall due to an inferior collision detection. A commonly used, minor glitch in Quake games is that turning makes the player move faster than running straight forwards, and jumping takes away the friction caused by hitting the ground; thus, by continuously jumping and turning, players can achieve around 60% faster speed than running on the ground (measurement taken from Quake 1). This is referred to as "bunny hopping". An interesting glitch found in Half Life 2 is that players can fly by grabbing a planar object, looking downwards and jumping continuously. Many polished and acclaimed speedruns are filled with glitch abuse, but the usage of several inconspicuous glitches may be left unnoticed by casual gamers.

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Tool assistance

Image:Rockmanv6.png
Mega Man narrowly avoiding three enemy robots while trying not to fall into the lava. From the Rockman tool-assisted speedrun by Joel Yliluoma (aka. Bisqwit), who finishes the game in 16:58.

Tool-assisted speedruns make use of tools such as slow motion and re-recording. Emulators that currently feature the tools necessary to creating these tool-assisted speedruns include Famtasia, FCE Ultra [2], Nintendulator, VirtuaNES, Snes9x [3], Gens [4], ZSNES [5] and Visual Boy Advance [6]. Doom has a long tradition of both traditional and tool-assisted speedrunning. Since the release of the Doom source, some ports have included tools for doing assisted runs, most notably PrBoom

The tool-assisted speedruns try to avoid comparisons to the unassisted runs, as this would be unfair to the players. In unassisted runs, it would be unacceptable to use emulator's save-state features to take a shorter but more dangerous path, saving the game when passing an obstacle. Likewise, many unassisted speedrunners frown upon glitch abuse, mainly due to the fact these glitches are usually impossible to reproduce without tool-assistance, while it is highly desirable in the tool-assisted community.

Tool-assisted speedruns are not done to show off one's playing skills, but more to show off all kinds of techniques that are theoretically possible in the game but impossible to do in practice. Because of this, tool-assisted runs discern themselves by pushing the gameplay to the physical limits of the game's engine. This is extensively demonstrated in the Mega Man and Rygar runs.

While speed is desired in these runs, the focus is on entertainment. For example, there is a famous tool-assisted speedrun of Super Mario Bros. 3 by "Morimoto" that finishes the game in approximately 11 minutes - the fun is in the breathtaking speed and overall craziness of the game, not the skills. The video has since been "obsoleted" by a faster tool-assisted speedrun, but this video is still the best-known example of its kind.

The controversy revolves around the similarity between the finished products. Websites exist dedicated to each side in the hopes that the movies will be considered separate. However, some individuals have allegedly tried to submit tool-assisted speedruns as unassisted speedruns. Without careful analysis, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between the two, and this undermines the effort put into unassisted speedruns.

Official recordkeeping only considers unassisted speedruns. Some believe this is the only real way to do a speedrun, even going so far as to describe tool-assisted speedruns as "fake" or "cheating".

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Popular games for speedrunning

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See also

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External links

Many websites have been created so that players of video games can compete against each other for fast times and high scores. Some of these are listed below.

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Articles
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Speedrun archives
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Machinima archives
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Scoreboards
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Specific games
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Other information

pt:Quebra de Seqüência