Talk:Speedrun

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edit - history - watch - purge To-do list for Speedrun:

Still need to be done Miscellaneous Need to find out whether "unassisted speedrun" was a popular retronym during the Doom era. (has been on the list for a long time; do it!) Need to make it clear that Metroid speedrunning stems from sequence breaking! Other stuff Add information about "Secret Worlds" Add information about Zero Mission Media Redo the Quake video History section See User:Msikma/draft Common techniques Some of it is badly written and the example in route plannign is way too centralized and important. Rewrite it. half-done Rewrite Sequence Breaking and Glitches Done Make the terms in the "classification" paragraph more obvious Clear up minimalist vs any% vs low%! find out more about the Metal Gear Solid 2 run by Takeshi. done; it's not notable enough to warrant inclusion. Need to make categories for competitive gaming (not necessarily with that name). Add all related articles to it. Done; see Category:Competitive computer and video gaming. The end of the Super Mario Bros paragraph: cite the equalling of Trevor's record by two other runners, and cite the source for the rule that says a run must be a whole second faster to count as new record. Make all URL resources {{cite web}} templates Clean up this talk page Super Metroid 100% is more popular than any%; change wording accordingly (DONE) Add low% to someplace else besides just the Metroid paragraph Change wording to note that the Ice Beam is not necessary for 14% completion; the Speed Booster may be used to get past the first Zebetite as well (DONE) Christina is not a he Make the videos appear inline with their relevant context.

Archives
March 2005 – April 2006

Contents 1 Useful links 2 Half Life 2 in 2 and a half hours 3 Screen capture tools 4 Nethack 5 Timeline 6 Game developer's position? 7 Half-life 2 example 8 Where is the Metroid franchise??!?! 9 Example videos 10 Mini style guide 11 Moved "Notable games for speedrunning" 12 Tool-assistance (weasel) 13 History section draft 14 Inaccuracies in "Sequence Breaking" Section 15 Article name 16 Parkour 17 "Minimalist" - any% or low%? 18 Self-reference 19 Length 20 my 2c

[edit] Useful links

• Metroid 2002 :: View topic - Speedrun article on Wikipedia

[edit] Half Life 2 in 2 and a half hours

See HL2DQ

That forum is so confusing. Is there any page that they made that just plain states how long it is, who made it, and perhaps some information on how it was made? I know I can go to SDA for that, but it'd be nice to hear it from them as well. —Michiel Sikma, 08:47, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Screen capture tools

I was wondering what tools are popular in the speedrun community to capture their speedruns. It might be a good idea to include a short discussion of this in the article. The reason I'm asking specifically, is that I'm looking into doing some capturing, but I'm not sure what kinds of tools are appropriate. Jacoplane 00:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

faq.m2k2.com... That's pretty much the only document the community uses as far as capturing is concerned.Maur 04:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Capturing speedruns is usually done via VHS tapes that are then digitized. Tool-assisted speedruns are always directly captured from emulator to AVI, which explains their high quality. I don't think it's interesting enough for this article, but feel free to make something about it. --84.41.190.238 13:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

That was me without logging in, by the way. --Michiel Sikma 07:37, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nethack

Someone left a {{citecheck}} template in the Nethack section. Apparently, the listed "fastest ascention" isn't really the fastest at all; at least, according to this anonymous user. Maybe someone who knows about Nethack could figure out what really is the fastest ascention? I've removed the template for now since a mentioning in the talk page is good enough. --Michiel Sikma 06:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, Rast's run is still the fastest recorded ascension (by turn-count, anyway). I can't find anything that says otherwise either. Megadodo 00:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline

Working on a timeline for the article. --Michiel Sikma 16:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there some way to put some kind of marker in so as to indicate that these are events and not durations of some kind? It's excessively confusing otherwise. Nifboy 08:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It's possible to put single-pixel vertical lines in there, but this looks pretty ugly. I think the most neat way is adding the date to every event. Let's see how that looks... --Michiel Sikma 23:30, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

If you're wondering about the internal links being messed up, it's a known bug. It got broken when something else got fixed. I'm hoping they will fix it as soon as possible. See bug 4046. --Michiel Sikma 06:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it will work if I change the font to a monospace one... --Michiel Sikma 14:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Game developer's position?

It'd be interesting to know what the developers think about speedruns of their games. Do they like to see people find loopholes in their code, or generally appreciate the effort putting into perfecting playing the game, or are they angry because runners rip through the stuff they carefully put together? Are there copyright concerns? The guy who speedran Quake IV suggested on speeddemosarchive.com, that the game had been adapted as to prohibit common speedrunning tricks [1 http://speeddemosarchive.com/Quake4.html]. Has there ever been a game that had been optimized for speedrunning? (like, for example, shortcuts that require unreasonable amount of skill)

Yes; in Metroid Fusion, there's a trick called the "Shinespark" trick that requires an ungodly amount of skill, but is possible, this however is not a speedrun trick.

In Metroid Zero Mission, however, specific 'hard-to-execute' and 'hard-to-find' routes were left available to enable the "13% runs" (and under) as well as some speed runs.

- 62.206.8.4 17:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea, actually. All I know is that John Romero has one Quake speed demo on Speed Demos Archive (link to his profile). Other than that, I haven't ever heard about what the makers of the games think about speedruns. If we could only get in touch with them! —Michiel Sikma, 10:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, to answer your second question, there has never been made a (commercial) game for speedrunning, but there are plenty which have great speedrunning potential. A notable example is Umihara Kawase, which can be finished in less than two minutes using a proper route. —Michiel Sikma, 10:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Pretty cool game, but what I had in mind is this: In egoshooter speedruns the player will usually be barely shot at, simply because the AI isn't prepared to shoot at something that moves this quickly. On the other hand, in real life warfare, egoshooters played online, or strategy games, moving ahead quickly will result in more damage, not less. So, a speedrun aware egoshooter might provide several ways to confront a group of enemy units - quicker ways that will require you to confront more enemies at a time and/or from a less advantagous position, and slower ways in which traps can be activated or the enemies confronted one at a time. Another possibility would be creative use of objects(a ton is enflamed by an exploding ton, which also catapults it onto a group of enemies, letting it explode there). Of course, it's little fun if you're just doing what the developers intended you to do - but simply putting heavy, usable damage on common environment objects could open the game for such solutions. I thought Thief might be a candidate for something like this - and there have been speedruns 1, however there seem to be no captures of these. -62.206.8.4 20:20, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree that moving through a game very fast will cause the player to get hurt more easily. Popular games such as the Quake series are unplayable at a competitive level unless you know bunny hopping; it's simply impossible to compete with the better players otherwise. Of course, you can't start bunny hopping like mad in case you need to aim really well. Good players should know how to moderate their actions. Of course, it goes without saying that speedrunners don't actually run towards the danger when they're playing online. Speedruns and deathmatches are still two separate things. As for your second statement: sure, speedrunners do know the tricks of the game, but don't be mistaken. So do regular deathmatch players. More so than the speedrunners, really, since they're the ones who are always playing the designated deathmatch levels. —Michiel Sikma, 06:12, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't mean moving around, I mean: pushing forward. But on second thought, that kind of challange might just not belong into all kinds of egoshooters. Halflife 2 did pretty much everything I requested of the "speedrun aware" game anyway, and the speedrunners get hit quite often despite rushing through the game - so ... let's leave it at that. I just hope there's gonna be a lot of speedruns to come. I'm addicted to this stuff :o) -62.206.8.4 17:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Half-life 2 example

User:12.171.224.124 added this section to the Half-life 2 paragraph (slightly rewritten):

In this speedrun, the game's ability to manipulate objects is used to the runners' advantage. For example, in the in-game physics engine, gravity is defined by the object you are currently standing on; not by the Earth. The runners use this feature to "fly" through the game at some points. In one of the early scenes, the character grabs a can of paint, basically holds it up and keeps jumping on en of the can repeatedly while moving it forward, effectively surfing the can through the air. This takes a LOT of skill, good timing and a good portion of luck to pull it off correctly.

I don't understand it at all. You'll need to more clearly illustrate how this works for inclusion in the article. It would be great if you could link to a forum topic in which this bug is discovered or discussed for reference, too. —Michiel Sikma, 21:24, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe it is a little unclear if you read it like this. It is not a bug though. It might be a glitch, but it's not a bug. The problem is, it is a very innovative way of moving around in the game so it really adds to understanding what is valid and not valid in speedrunning.

The physics of this concept are much like a cartoon caracter, reaching down to hold up the branch he is sitting on after the branch was broken of from the tree. By jumping of the branch in a certain direction, grabbing it again to prevent it from falling and climbing on, jumping of again a runner can fly around the level. See http://speeddemosarchive.com/HalfLife2.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.171.224.124 (talk • contribs).

So basically, you grab an item, hold it in mid-air as you normally would when you hold something, and then jumps off of it (jumps from that item while it's in mid-air) then grabs it again, this time holding it higher as he's in mid-air while holding it, and then jumping off of it again, going higher and higher with every jump? —Michiel Sikma, 16:08, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where is the Metroid franchise??!?!

Umm, wow - i think the Metroid Franchise is being woefully under-represented here. The article focuses on doom and quake. People have been speed-running that game and discovering new glitches in it since its release in '94...not to mention the original metroid which is *STILL* being used in both non-assisted and tool assisted runs (http://bisqwit.iki.fi/nesvideos/654S.html) since 1986!! Furthermore, all of the metroid games (well, except for 'Prime' and now 'Prime 2') give the player better endings depending on how fast they complete the game - encouraging speed runs. Metroid Zero Mission was actually the first game to give bonus rewards for minimalist, 100%, and generic speed runs. (http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/nes/file/metroid_ending.txt) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 161.253.10.11 (talk • contribs).

I don't think that the Metroid franchise is being under-represented. The Metroid section has the longest history explanation of all of the games and covers much more than the Doom or Quake histories. It's also used as example many times. Where do you think that we should write more about it? It's true that Metroid speedrunning is more or less the original speedrunning scene, so I'm always looking for more information to add to this article. I think that it's pretty well-covered, though. If you have suggestions, feel free to give them (or edit them in yourself). —Michiel Sikma, 15:53, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Example videos

---

I'll make some video excerpts later. We should probably have about three videos, one that shows the development of route planning, one that shows sequence breaking, and one that shows a glitch. —Michiel Sikma, 14:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

• Made a video that shows a glitch and sequence breaking of Super Mario 64.

See also: Wikipedia:Media#Video. —Michiel Sikma, 19:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mini style guide

The style in this article is not always consistent. This is a personal reminder for me how to format it. —Michiel Sikma, 08:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

• The length of a speedrun is always in numbers. Use 0:13:37 for speedruns of which the exact amount of seconds are always known or are under three hours in length. Use 4:35 for speedruns of which the exact amount of seconds are not always known and are over three hours in length. Use 0:28 for segmented speedruns of which the segments are always under an hour long.
• When mentioning a speedrun, link to it directly after its name or sentence with an unnamed external link, except if there is information at that page that is directly being referenced, since then a cited reference should be used. Use both if necessary.
• Many authors have nicknames. Refer to them as, for example, Michiel "Dada" Sikma. "Aka." is not used because it's incorrect; it would be A.k.a. but this is very ugly.
• References that deal with speedruns are referred to with the full name of the game in camel case and the length of the speedrun without formatting, e.g. "MegaMan1610".
• Authors are to be referred to by their real (last) name rather than their nickname.

[edit] Moved "Notable games for speedrunning"

I moved the section to its own article because it was adding unnecessary length to the main article (which is only about speedrunning), as well having a hefty amount of fan opinion. The main article as it stands has a disproportionate amount of history and background information compared to its wealth of player documenting. That gets very near spam. The sub-article can be used for keeping up to date info on new speedruns, but this main article needs to function as an explanation of speedrunning to the layman. I understand this is a controversial move, and one open to quick revert, but reading the page, I saw where an edit was possible (and could preserve the work already provided) so I just shunted the section off to a new page. Cybertooth85 16:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I reverted your edit. The reason? Well, first of all: explain why you feel that there is "fancruft" or "spam" in that section. I don't see any. The first three games mentioned (Quake, Doom, Metroid) are extraordinarily well-documented and the rest of the games are documented less well, some being stubs, but none having fan opinion. I agree that the Half-life series and Halo series paragraphs aren't exactly that nicely written, and are also not very critical, but that's nothing to warrant moving it out of the article completely. Also, I don't think that it added unnecessary length to the main article. Did you even bother to read the notable games section? A lot more history is explained in the individual games' sections (mostly the first three) than in the entire rest of the article. It's also pretty significant in establishing how important Metroid has been for the speedrunning community and how it managed to catch the limelight more than a few times. I therefore disagree with such an edit. What is your rationale? Please explain yourself further. —Michiel Sikma, 16:32, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to attack anyone's writing, but the layout for the "history" of each game is less tied to the article than the indivudal achievements of each player and those surrounding making speedrunning well-known. Also, various sections repeat information about speedrunning already presented in the main article (how widespread speedruns became, explaining the tactics used by speedruns). It's mostly the excessive linking to outside media that I would call fan-centered. Websites making announcements about new versions of speedruns, specific new findings on the levels, why each speedrun gets faster. That's more about "how to speedrun _" than explaining what speedrunning is. It's a few sentences in each section, really, but weeding out those minor points is necessary. If the layout of each game is their chronological addition to speedrunning popularity, that's fine, but most of them are charting the individual history of each game (which should go on the game's main article), rather than being included as information in the history section. There just seems to be an incredible amount of minutia, but it's not really incorporated as an encyclopedic article. Cybertooth85 16:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

What you're saying is ridiculous. This section contains much important information and key aspects of speedrunning. It's absolutely necessary to document the communities of these games in this article in order to fully understand what speedrunning is, who practices it and why, how important it is to the Internet community, and how it has matured over time. The excessive linking to external sites isn't really that uncommon, since other large articles do it as well. To this article, it's a means of linking directly to a speedrun so that people may see for themselves that this is indeed the fastest completion time for such a game. It's rather important for this particular article, for one because the data might become outdated, which means that it's an easy reference material, and because things such as exact figures (the durations of speedruns) are pretty much always in need of proper citation to ensure that it is correct. It's unnecessary to link to the article in a Cite web template, however, because usually the link is just used for reference material of the time rather than the actual information provided in the article. I don't see how you can possibly think that this is fancruft. Note that the article simply uses the external links as references, along with the 32 notes and citations at the bottom of the article, and they are what makes this thing accurate rather than fan-oriented. I also don't understand why you would want to put this information in the main article of that game. It's obvious that the information is only in its place in this context rather than any other. Having said that, if you feel that there are errors in this section, such as the repeating of information, then you're free to edit it and improve on it. I've also spotted some things which I think don't have to be in there. But that's no reason to move the entire section to a separate article. —Michiel Sikma, 18:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to debate further on the merits of individual sections; I wanted to preserve the work previously done, while diminishing the size of this article. This is "speedrun", not the "history of the catholic church." It just reads as excessive. If the editors behind the upkeep of this article can find ways to improve it, great, but it's woefully dense right now, and very hard to traverse. Cybertooth85 19:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but what are your arguments? I don't see your reasoning. You say that the article is large: agreed, but speedrunning is a broad and diverse subject with a rich and well-documented history. This is an encyclopedia. I don't care one single bit that this article is large. This is about documentation. I'm going to put that other article you made up for speedy since I don't think it's going to be used anymore anytime soon. —Michiel Sikma, 21:08, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The argument here is that the article is, in essense, too detailed to be useful. For example, the Half-Life section is dedicated almost entirely to "how to skip various scripted scenes". Halo's "How to abuse the Energy Sword" is worse, detailing the specific button required to do it. Other phrases, like "The first platformer game to feature Mario as protagonist was Super Mario Bros., which was..." do little to add to the article. Nifboy 22:13, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

This is actually a good argument that I can understand. (Except for that bit about the Mario phrase, which is just writing style.) It might be true that some sections in the notable gaming paragraph are moot. Let's face it: aside from Quake, Doom and Metroid, there aren't really that notable games. Still, some, such as Zelda, have also been competed over a lot. I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to split up the notable games section once it's finished (there are a lot of stubs in there right now), so we can see for ourselves what use it is, and if we do so, then the most important paragraphs (Doom, Quake, Metroid) should stay in the Speedrun article, the "Notable games for speedrunning" article having only summaries of what the information in speedrun contains. It's something I'll consider doing when the section matures. But for now, I don't think we should. —Michiel Sikma, 08:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I've made a draft page for a separate article. My intention: keep the three main games, Quake, Doom and Metroid, in this main article space, and use the separate article to contain all information about all other games while still having a smaller version of Quake, Doom and Metroid. You can see the draft at User:Msikma/draft. —Michiel Sikma, 06:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I've made the change. The new article's name is "Notable games for speedrunning". —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 16:22, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tool-assistance (weasel)

I think it's time to start working on the tool-assistance section of this article. It was moved to a separate article a while back, but I then also mentioned how I was planning on moving some of the content back once both articles would mature. This article is relatively mature by now, but even though the tool-assistance article is not, I'd still like to help this one grow by putting what I consider vital content in it. I've therefore added some old content back to the tool-assistance section and placed a "weasel" template on it (since it really is badly written and in need of proper rewriting and sourcing). Just to serve as a reminder to myself and others that it's about time this is worked on. —Michiel Sikma, 05:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The tool-assistance section is in desperate need of work and clarification of purpose, as well as neutralization. As a fan of both assisted and non-assisted runs, I think that section deserves to be more accurately written, but alas, I am not the man to do it. 216.86.104.31 09:50, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History section draft

It's about time to work on this section. Here's what it should contain:

• General introduction
• Release of Metroid, first game to reward fast completion
• Release of Doom, first speedrunning community
• Release of Quake
• 1998: SDA formed
• 2003: Metroid2002 formed
• November 2003: Metroid2002 and SDA merge
• November 2003: Morimoto releases SMB3 TAS
• March 2nd, 2004: SDA begins offering all kinds of speedruns
• ?: Bisqwit starts TASVideos

[edit] Inaccuracies in "Sequence Breaking" Section

This section implies that sequence breaking was more or less invented in Metroid Prime. While it may be true that the TERM "Sequence Break" was coined as this article says, I think the actual action of sequence breaking has been around a lot longer, certainly since the original Metroid. I could swear I've heard the phrase "sequence breaking" associated with video games in a similar manner, perhaps in a speed walkthrough that suggests getting the wave beam before ice beam. I'm simply not sure that this section is accurate, nor do I know if it is altogether neutral. Perhaps this information would be appropriate in a "Histroy of Sequence Breaking" section. 66.82.9.87 09:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Sequence breaking has been around since the original Metroid, but it was "invented" by mainstream gamers in the context of Metroid Prime. Maybe the text needs to be changed to ensure that people know that Metroid was really the first of its kind. But then again, there are many other games which also allow some instances of sequence breaking, even before Metroid. —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 15:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I was wrong. The walkthough I mentioned (Marshmallow's Speed run walkthough for Super Metroid) doesn't ever actually say "sequence break," it just describes them. I agree that the text could use some clarification, but I'm not exactly sure about the best way to say it. Perhaps, more importantly, this argument would best serve Sequence breaking, since this article is looking good and that article a little bare-bones. 66.82.9.55 01:33, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Aha, I see. It would be nice if you could edit it into that article. Keep in mind, though, that you can't really claim that it was invented before Metroid Prime if Marshmallow's walkthrough was made after the sequence breaking topics on GameFAQs. I'll watch the article and maybe help improve it a little bit when I get the time. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 06:06, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Look at the main sequence breaking article for how this section should look. I have rewritten it to be: 1) very clear and concise, 2) to eliminate all that name dropping, which is just useless cruft. Also, get real ... the claims you make are completely unverifiable. Go ahead ... prove to me no one used "sequence breaking" prior to 2003. You can't. I'm not saying you have to completely drop the nice story; it's all we have. Just shorten it up (a la my modifications to the main sequence breaking article) and drop all the useless bullshit.

[edit] Article name

Doing a quick google search, "Speed run" yields about 433000 results, while "Speedrun" has about 163000. A google search for former term seems to give me better results. And speeddemosarchive.com also writes it "speed run". So, should this article be moved? --Conti|✉ 21:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I've thought about this for a long time, but figured that I should use speedrun rather than speed run. The reason: all of the major speedrun sites seem to prefer it. Speeddemosarchive occasionally uses both, but finally still uses "speedrun" (1,730) more than "speed run" (784). We see similar results for TASVideos (http://tasvideos.org/, keep in mind that some pages still yield better results via http://bisqwit.iki.fi/nesvideos/, which is the old URL of the site). The only major community that seems to prefer "speed run" is metroid2002, which is still smaller in comparison to the two previously mentioned sites. Old sites, however, usually preferred the term "speedrun". Now, after all of this analysis, the actual largest reason why I prefer "speedrun" for documentation is, for one, because it would appear that "speed run" is usually used by writers of articles outside of the speedrun communities because it's an easier to understand word (one can more easily parse the meaning if the word isn't a portmanteau) and thus appears outside of the speedrun context more often. This will need to be mentioned in the definition, of course, but I still don't think that it's more accurate to use "speed run" as title of this article. —Michiel Sikma (Kijken maar niet aanraken) 05:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Parkour

I added links to "See Also" for Parkour and Speedrunning, referring them to one another. Both disciplines share a similar philosophy — to get from point A to point B as fast as possible — and a similar visual impact.

There are acknowledged differences: Parkour is real-life, speedrunning is in video games; Parkour uses only the abilities of the human body, speedrunning uses weapons and other items provided to the player. However, the similarities are significant enough (in my opinion) to warrant a single link on each page. BlueNight 04:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I've heard of Parkour before, and it makes sense that it's related to speedrunning. I guess that one could say speedrunning is the electronic form of parkour. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 06:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Minimalist" - any% or low%?

"Minimalist" used to indicate low%:

• Mega Man X (SNES) - 0:37:25 - Mike Uyama

"Minimalist" used to indicate any%:

• All of Twin Galaxies (ew)

Will by updated later. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 20:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Figured out. It is used to indicate low%. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 20:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Self-reference

I'm going to remove the last paragraph in the intro per WP:ASR. A description of what the article is about is not needed. The necessary portion of it (the time stuff) is already in a footnote. --- RockMFR 16:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:ASR only covers references to Wikipedia, not to the article itself. That paragraph isn't against any guideline. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 13:00, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Length

I am not actively involved in the gaming community, as many Wikipedians clearly are. In this particular case, that may be too much of a good thing. Isn't this article terribly long and doesn't it include much more detail than it should? Should the article be shortened and the subsections made into their own articles? 72.196.104.129 08:30, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to accurately describe this phenomenon, and because of this, I often have to explain things extensively and with many words. This is because, well, an internet gaming phenomenon is pretty unknown. So instead of assuming that the reader has even the most basic of knowledge, I assume that the reader has none. This has caused the article to be long. But still, I think that it isn't too long at this point. Afterall, this isn't something meant for a quick read; it's meant to be encyclopedic and describe the phenomenon in detail, to have use. But maybe I should trim it a bit here and there. —msikma <user_talk:msikma> 12:56, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] my 2c

Re: Glitches in the article! Just a few things that need tidying up as they're sloppy mistakes... 1/ the image showing how collision detection can be exploited - the large red square is plainly moving at 5 pixels/frame, not the 4 p/f described in the text and suggested by the small green one. Someone who was good at design but couldn't count/had a very late night? .... 2/ similarly, there is a time listed as 0:67 and some seconds, rather than 1:07... 3/ the times are STILL confusing. Would it maybe not make more sense to have them showing the time more explicitly - e.g. always being hours-minutes-seconds regardless of the time being shown, or being listed with more definite units? (1h23m45s, 1:23'45", 1:23 hours, 23:45 minutes, etc)... for example, not being familiar with metroid prime, I really have no idea if the listed times are a respectable 1 hour 43, or an eye-wateringly quick 1 minute 43.

PS, any chance of adding Role Playing Games to the article? I'm sure there's as much effort goes into speedruns on these, though they could be a little more drawn out. I wouldn't like to bet on what the quickest possible time for e.g. any final fantasy game you could name would be (FF6 and FF8 definitely come to mind as titles that could take 60+ hours of your life away in "standard" mode... a speedrun could count as three or four hours or more) -tahrey, 00.41 GMT 3rd dec 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.46.180.56 (talk • contribs) 00:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

• As for #1: uhh, yeah, that's indeed a very stupid mistake. I was going to remake it with real sprites, so now I know what to look out for. :) As for the times, I've been thinking about reformatting them, too. The reason for this timing scheme is the precision of the times as outlined by the various speedrun communities. Unassisted runs drop their seconds at some point (because they cannot be accurately recorded anymore) and it's always exactly known how long tool-assisted speedruns are. Maybe explicitly naming them (using "hours", "minutes" and "seconds" where applicable) would indeed be a better idea. As for role-playing games, there have been a few runs of them but I've not really felt the need to explicitly mention them. Maybe they should be. FF6 was finished in a couple of hours in a speedrun, and there's been made a FF8 speedrun a while back, but due to the author losing one of the chapters midway, it was never published. Then there's the tool-assisted speedruns of role-playing games. function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 08:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)