Talk:Speedrun

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CVG To-do:
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
Common techniques
  • 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.
Maintained The following users are actively contributing to this topic and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources:
User:Msikma
Archive
Archives
  1. March 2005 – April 2006

Contents

[edit] Useful links

[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)
There's no mention of "luck manipulation" for tool assisted speed runs. That's used in games that feed controller input into the random number generator. In a tool run, the runner can save/load repeatedly with slightly changed input to nudge that hidden game state into always giving ideal random results. The tool-assisted "Dragon Warrior" run is a perfect example of this, where every attack hits critical, and every enemy swing is a miss. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.0.226.163 (talk • contribs).
Yeah, that's right. It's really unfortunate that this article is so undeveloped. I think that NES Monopoly would be a great example of luck manipulation as well. —msikma (user, talk) 09:54, 14 January 2007 (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%:

"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)

[edit] Glossary

In this it says that lowest possible % runs are the slowest, but then it says that 100% runs are slowest. I'm not into this type of gaming myself, so I wouldn't know what it was one way or the other. Here's what the sections say, troublesome words bolded. (not including title, of course.)

[edit] Low-percentage, low%, minimalist

Speedrun which falls into the low-percentage or low% category; the fastest time is attempted while collecting only the bare minimum amount of items, power-ups or abilities required for completion. These are slower than the any% runs due to extra time spent killing enemies with lesser abilities or actively avoiding items.

[edit] Maximum, 100%

Speedrun in which as much of the game is played as possible, such as killing all enemies in the game or collecting every item available. 100% runs are slower than their any% counterparts due to the taking of actions and going to places in the game which are not necessary for the game's completion.

Help? XXDucky21Xx 22:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Actually, they both say that they're slower than the so-called any% runs. This is true for both. Maximum runs are slower than any% runs, and minimalist runs are also slower than any% runs. Any% runs are the fastest, and whether maximum runs are longer or shorter than minimalist runs is not defined (since this differs greatly per game). function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 11:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Halo 2 speedrun in Guinness Book of Records

According to (This interview, link found from a news article on Bungie's own site), a Halo 2 speedrun has become the first speedrun to appear in the Guinness Book of Records. (I remember one edition of the book a few years advertising for competitors in a few specific games, to be featured in a subsequent edition, but those were games with built-in time attack modes — Mario Kart 64 was among them, I think.)

I'm not really sure where this fact should be placed in the article, but surely it deserves a mention — it must be significant in terms of the acceptance of speedruns as legitimate achievements. --Nick RTalk 01:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, I'll add it to the article later. function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 10:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TSA's comment...

...is complete BS. There aren't even that many hours in 2 years. I removed it, it hurts the enc value. --frothT C 19:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear sir; you come in here, remove a fair chunk of the speedrun article that I've written for so long, and claim that the reason is "it's bs". Whatever the reason may be that you find this claim "bs" (please refrain from using internet abbreviations), it is not valid. The truth is that TSA mentioned this in the commentary of his run; it is obviously not an accurate estimate — not even a guesstimate — of how long he has been playing this game. It was meant to accentuate the extraordinary amount of time he has spent playing the game. I'm reverting your changes, because I feel they were based on incorrect presumptions. function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 23:23, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


Id agree that the comment is utter bs (im using internet slang, get over it), and I would also agree that it hurts the encyclopedic value of the article, even if it is a quotation. Be careful who and what you quote in articles, and remember, you do not own this article. If you cant put up with people changing and editing it themselves without throwing a hissy fit them you shouldnt have written it in the first place. TSMonk 03:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speedruns.net inclusion

Since we've reverted each other about 7 times now, in the external links section, I think it's about time that we try some other way to figure out what to do. I think that the site should not be included, and you think that it should. Personally, I find that the external links section should only contain a minimal amount of sites that are relevant to both the subject matter and the article itself. The sites that are listed now are integral to speedrunning and have high traffic rankings, not to mention plenty of media coverage on gaming news sites. So why exactly is your site so important that it should be included among them? function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 20:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I received an e-mail from WebNations, which I'll move here for discussion: function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 09:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
hey there.
at first i want to say that i do not want to make any trouble or similar. so i hope we are going to discuss this with no problems.
i need to say something about the other linked sites before. tasvideos.org is the biggest tool-assisted speedrun site of course. bisqwit got a huge database of informations about this topic on his site. speeddemosarchive.com is the biggest site for general speedruns. my site is a great addition to bisqwits. he got many informations but for users who have no idea about speedruns and just want to watch one for seeing an example it is not the easiest way to make up a bittorrent client to download the movies. nor it is easy for the most to make the emulator files work. thats exactly where my site joins. on speedruns.net you can easily access the movies by downloading or watching them in the browser itself. this makes it for beginners very easy to get a first look at the runs themselves. in my opinion there is actually no reason to add a japaneses site because no one can get any information out of that. so the only addition this japaneses site got is the possibility of downloading the movies directly what i offer as well and even more. no need to say that the site is not much known yet but we are just there for a couple of months. we got 2gb of movies for ddl in high speed. i do not know any comparable site yet. downloading from speeddemos is a pain and yes from tasvideos it is fast but bittorrent .. like i mentioned before.
the next point is that linking on wikipedia is a great advertise and there is as far as i know no other serious competitor in these kind of sites (speedruns) so it is a must to link a minimum of one competitor. it would be a farce to have only one linked at all. we need to give the users the possibility to choose. this makes the whole offer bigger and growing.
so in my opinion we are one big community which shares over several sites but why working against each other? i do not see the point. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by WebNations (talk • contribs).
To respond to this: while I agree that speedruns.net is a special site in that it has plenty of information for new users, as well as easily accessible runs, we must consider the purpose of the external linking section. Generally, links that appear there are only for purposes of further research. Therefore, fan sites must be limited to a minimum. This is Wikipedia policy, and you can read more about it at WP:EXTERNAL. I do sympathize with your site and feel that it might be inappropriate to link to the Japanese site and not to yours (that site exists for the purpose of showing the international nature of speedrunning, and the fact it's also very popular in Japan, but I haven't written anything in the article that confirms this yet). But to say that it's too difficult for people to get movies from a place such as SDA or TASVideos is a far stretch. I think that SDA does fine in providing a huge amount of runs which people can easily access (the Internet Archive servers really aren't too bad), and TASVideos does a good job providing lots of technical information about speedrunning in general, and tool-assisted speedrunning in particular. function msikma(user:UserPage, talk:TalkPage):Void 09:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
3 lines of external links. 3 links go to tasvideos and 1 to a japanese site that no one understands. so your argument that there should not be too much links and only the important ones is not true at all. the external link section is just an advertisement for bisqwits site and nothing else. you got 2 links and one will no one understand. is there any tool-assisted speedrunsite except of tasvideos bigger than www.speedruns.net at the moment. so it is a farce not to link the only competitor. what would you think when you go shopping and you can not choose? you have to give the user a choice. and choosing which of the 3 links to click is a joke. perhaps i am wrong but i really know no other tool assisted speedrun sites. summarisedd the only reason not linking my site is that you want everyone to go to tasvideos. no other reason there. or why is it sooo bad to link to my site?
webnations
I'm gonna have to agree with msikma here. speedruns.net is a nice site, but is currently small and a lot of the runs are on TASvideos anyway. So including it is rather redundant. Also, I did not see 3 links to TASvideos, just one. --Ouzo 08:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
WebNations, I don't seem to really understand why you're saying this. Your reasons for linking to a page don't correspond to the reasons for which one generally links to a page in a Wikipedia article. That doesn't surprise me, however, since at this point your contributions show that all you've ever done here is add your link, not making any other type of contribution, and as a result you don't even know how to sign your comments on a talk page. So I'll explain again: the reason why we're linking to TASVideos is because the external links section is for further reading about the subject, so that readers may get to know it better, and the amount of external links should be kept to a minimum. TASVideos is the largest site, and has a large amount of information readily available for people who want to know the details of tool-assisted speedrunning. We're not refusing to link to your site because of competitional purposes, but simply because a good link is already present, and to the reader, there don't need to be two. This is also explained in WP:EXTERNAL. function msikma(const U, T : Float) : Float { to my page. } ; 09:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split the article?

It currently weighs in at 83 KB (including footers). In general cleanup, there are several [18] -> -formatted external links... perhaps turn them into references using cite web formats?

Secondly, as per the size, perhaps the glossary could be moved? Dåvid ƒuchs (talk • contribs) 21:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Ive just read this article and agree totally. Its way way over the 32KB recommendation and could do with a lot of cleanup. The strategies and techniques section should be rewritten IMO since it reads an awful lot like original research at the moment, and the continuity of the article might need to be sorted slightly (some subject changes etc). i might have a go at doing some of this stuff tomorrow, but in regards to the size Id agree some chopping needs to be done and would agree that the glossery should go. TSMonk 03:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The 32 KB recommendation was originally conceived because of browser limitations. If you look at the size of the average featured article, which is about 50 - 60 KB, I believe that it's safe to say it's really no problem if an article is rather large in size. I have two problems with small articles: first of all, it seems to have become common practice for featured article candidates to hide all crude and unbalanced information in low-quality sub-articles so that the main article can be promoted easier. Secondly, I believe that articles should be informational above all other things, including enjoyment of reading. I'm tired of people recommending that the article be "made smaller" because "that's just how it should be". There are good reasons for and against trimming articles, but please give these reasons when making any recommendation.
If you're going to try and improve this topic, then please do, because it does require a good cleanup. I was actually already working on one via Talk:Speedrun/rewrite. I wasn't going to completely rewrite the article, but I think that the "common techniques" section should at least be completely rewritten from scratch to avoid falling back to the same original research-ridden solution that I've picked right now. It does explain the concepts fairly well, but it simply needs to use different examples and get a more natural flow.
As for the glossary: I believe that it's crucial to give the user more information on the vocabulary associated with this subject. I think that this information should be either very concisely incorporated into the main text or otherwise moved somewhere, because I think that it's very useful to have such a reference. It's pretty difficult to understand any random part of this article without knowing anything about the various terms that are used. —msikma (user, talk) 07:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I am aware that the 32KB recommendation is a guide, not a strict policy. Many FA are, as you say, almost double that. However, currently you need to remember that this article is not featured, and is weighing in currently at 83KB, which is far far too much. If we can get this down to around 50 KB I think that would be great. My reasoning is that currently the article is very wordy and rambles a lot, if we can trim down some sections and make it more concise it would be far easier and more enjoyable to read. Id suggest that 1)the overview section be trimmed up, remove some of the examples cited 2) again, rewrite the common techniques section. Currently it reads as if someone is giving a lecture on speedrunning and sounds like OR. It could get away with being 1/5 of the size it currently is, and since sequence breaking has its own article it should be removed from here, or the other article deleted. 3) the "notable games for speedrunning" section again has its own article, which is fine alone, so I think it should be removed from here and replaced with a simple stub and a link to the main article. 4) Finally, the footnotes section should be changed to just citations. Many of the footnotes are unnecessary, and if they do contain vital info then it should be placed in brackets in the article. People dont want to be jumping back and forth while reading to see this information if it is important.
In my opinion fixing these four bits should make the article far more concise and more enjoyable to read, and could comfortably get it to GA status (which I wouldnt say it is at the moment). TSMonk 17:14, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
It should be noted that the size of an article has nothing to do with whether it is FA or not. The fact that FAs are large simply means that large articles can be good. Being small is not a prerequisite for an article being of good quality. Since this subject is broad and not easily explained, I don't think that this article will ever be very small.
However, I can agree with you saying that there is a lot of rambling going on here. I agree that it could be rewritten to be more concise and enjoyable to read, and what you suggest is reasonable, although the "common techniques" section surely can't be that small as it explains some of the fundamentals of speedrunning (and it isn't very easy to explain). I also don't think that "sequence breaking" should be removed from this article since there is already an article on it. It's very common to have incorporate summaries of other articles if they are relevant (which is why we have the "further reading" template). Same goes for the "notable games for speedrunning" article. It's actually very crucial information, and the only reason it was moved to a separate article was because it was getting too large. I'm thinking of actually moving some information from the "notable games for speedrunning" article back into the speedrun article and then having it deleted.
Another thing that I disagree with is your wanting to remove the footnotes. Why are they unnecessary? They explain some things that do need to be told, while they do not fit into the flow of the text. Every single academic publication, as well as many educational books and essays contain footnotes. This encyclopedia has a footnotes system specifically for this task. The fact that people have to "jump back and forward" to read them (I recon most people will ignore them, since they look just like source citations) is simply because this is a website and it's impossible to place them at the bottom of the page. Unless you can point out that they contain information that isn't somehow relevant to their context, I disagree with removing them. —msikma (user, talk) 20:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Forgive my late reply, Ive been out of the country. I can understand your reluctance to change this article but I think you've done some good work on it so far and it only requires a bit more work to turn it into a really interesting article. I am setting about rewriting the common techniques section so its more concise and easier to read. At the moment I feel it is far too in depth for an encyclopedic entry, and as I said above, it rambles rather a lot. Unfortunately, since "sequence breaking" and "notable games for speedrunning" have individual articles then they ever need to be deleted and the contents placed here or the information here removed and a link placed to the main article. Summeries are often used incorperating material from other articles, but what are currently on these articles are way larger than summeries. I would suggest removing the information here and keeping the seperate articles since currently this article is too big anyway. TSMonk 18:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm slowly moving content from this article into Talk:Speedrun/rewrite. Partially, it's to address things that you've mentioned on this talk page. My main goal is to do a huge copyedit on the article and trim the sections down to more concise and coherent wholes. I'm not really concerned with the other articles that exist (on sequence breaking and notable games for speedrunning) at this moment. I'm first going to try and get this article to A-status, and then I'll look into the other articles to see if maybe they should be removed or merged somehow. Of course, if you want to do it before me, then please do. Although personally I'd rather put everything in one article, which certainly is possible in a decent size. (Although I'm also not too fond of changing an article solely for changing its size. I believe that articles should have all information that an encyclopedia should require, no more and no less, and if that means that articles are larger than people find enjoyable to read, then so be it. An encyclopedia isn't a novel.) —msikma (user, talk) 21:18, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
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