To what degree is the developer console not allowed in HL2?
Only to the degree to which use would also disable achievements?
I'm sure they wouldn't disallow a run by me, and generally I set my graphics settings and key-binds in the developer console. I don't know what the HL2 community's stance on scripts is either, so I'm not going try to talk about that or actual out-of-game-executable actions like deleting the save from Windows.
I think that would draw a pretty clear line though in my mind, and from an outsiders perspective, so again, I have no idea what I'm talking about for some of this, and this is a seeming correlation than a causation. Anything that doesn't disable achievements and is in-game could be considered the line that shouldn't be crossed. That means the community may also accept ACE, as that would likely not disable your ability to get achievements.
I present three videos for your consideration. These are for everyone to consider, not just Warp (though I do desire Warp's input on the second and third)
Link to video
This first video is a video explaining the Swap Glitch in Might and Magic 6. It is both version-dependent and reliant on using metafeatures (both manipulating save files and starting another new game on top of the new game already started). The payload is that your now infinitely-small hitbox can bypass certain barriers that would otherwise require playing the game properly to bypass. Because it manipulates metafeatures to achieve the glitch, this is known to be a disapproved-by-Warp method. Because it is a known value, it is here only to demonstrate a metafeature common to the Windows series of Might and Magic games. To the people who aren't Warp: Would you consider speedruns using this glitch to be valid?
Link to video
This second video is a speedrun of Might and Magic 8. It casts a Renegade Spell within the first twenty seconds of the video. My question right now is, do you consider using Renegade Spells to be abusing a metafeature of the game (something that the programmers released), or abusing a regular feature of the game (something that the designers created)?
Link to video
This third video is a speedrun of Might and Magic 6 that does not use the Swap Glitch. It spends roughly the first thirty seconds creating a party with stats that are known to survive the early part of the game while still optimizing for speed (granted, new strats has been discovered since the video was made in 2008; this was just the first result). Would you consider that a metafeature or a regular feature?
(As a point of curiosity, Might and Magic 6 is the game I was referring to with my scenario where favorable RNG can save tens of minutes, and where the segmenting would be determined by when RNG manipulation is necessary - the segmented any% runs manipulate to get certain spellbooks and items at the first opportunity as well as to generate bypassable enemy spawn clumps; without this manipulation much time is lost)
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How much of this can be boiled down to "filesystem manipulation is aesthetically unappealing and/or violates the spirit of TASing?"
Because, hey, I can sympathize with that. It actually seems more salient in the case of non-console games, since an exploitable issue could well be the fault of the OS, not the game.
Whether or not they're "valid" (a term I've never liked since it always loads the dice in favor of the more permissive side), I think it's legitimate to have a problem with runs that focus on exploiting the filesystem, OS, or hardware, rather than the game engine itself (including menus, BTW). It's sort of like the difference between hacking a system remotely vs. with physical access to the machine.
That doesn't you can expect the world to do anything to accommodate your objection, of course. But it's not some kind of crazy, old-man-yells-at-clouds POV either. I personally wouldn't bother watching a run that involves power cycling the console, for example, let alone relying on a specific voltage state to preload the RAM chips just so. It's just not an approach that appeals to me, and while I don't object to the fact that it exists, I do want it clearly labeled so I can skip it.
Filesystem manipulation is more borderline; I'll watch runs that depend on corrupting savegames to cut 1-2 corners, but eh, it doesn't give me the same "Wow!" response as the death warps in Rygar.
This second video is a speedrun of Might and Magic 8. It casts a Renegade Spell within the first twenty seconds of the video. My question right now is, do you consider using Renegade Spells to be abusing a metafeature of the game (something that the programmers released), or abusing a regular feature of the game (something that the designers created)?
I don't know the game, but the description looked like the bug is triggered purely with gameplay controls, so I don't see a problem.
This third video is a speedrun of Might and Magic 6 that does not use the Swap Glitch. It spends roughly the first thirty seconds creating a party with stats that are known to survive the early part of the game while still optimizing for speed (granted, new strats has been discovered since the video was made in 2008; this was just the first result). Would you consider that a metafeature or a regular feature?
Setting up a party seems to be an essential part of gameplay, so I don't see what the problem could be.
(As a point of curiosity, Might and Magic 6 is the game I was referring to with my scenario where favorable RNG can save tens of minutes, and where the segmenting would be determined by when RNG manipulation is necessary
What is the purpose of segmented speedruns? To minimize suboptimalities by reducing runner mistakes as much as possible, and this is done by doing smaller segments of the game at a time, and choosing the best results, then appending them together as if it were a whole run. It approaches the same idea as with TASes: What would it look like if a skilled player played the game without mistakes, almost perfectly? Segmented runs could ostensibly have been done single-segment, if the player made absolutely no mistakes, and got really lucky in everything.
And getting lucky is part of it. Thus, I think, restarting a segment in order to get better RNG feels like a rather legit technique, especially if the RNG is affected by the gameplay (rather than, for instance, how many times the savefile has been loaded). It's not doing anything more than seeking that perfect playthrough, with everything going perfectly (or almost perfectly). Something that could theoretically happen in a single-segment run, if everything just goes perfectly.
The problem is largely a disagreement about what, precisely, constitutes gameplay. I'm putting out specific examples so that we can get clearer understandings as to who stands where.
Because your approval or lack thereof depends on whether the exploit comes from gameplay or from metafeatures, it needs to be clearly defined where one ends and the other begins. Getting your input on those examples helps significantly, especially the 2nd one since that was probably the closest to being a metafeature without actually crossing the line. Otherwise we'll just be arguing semantics all day without making forward progress on actually addressing what your concerns are and how to mitigate them.
Unfortunately, the examples from Might and Magic were relatively clear-cut, as the one that was reliant on metafeatures was very clearly doing something that wasn't gameplay.
To everyone else: This does not work if you don't contribute as well.
I am finding it difficult to resolve, "Resetting and powering off the game is bad because it's not gameplay," and "Might and Magic 6 is alright even though its RNG manipulations might require the game being turned off for a while" as a coherent worldview.
If resetting or powering off is bad, then turning the game off to do something else while you wait for that ideal RNG cycle is bad.
If getting favourable RNG is good, then a run which power cycles to reset RNG to a favourable state is permissible, and thus the practice is not a bad thing.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
If getting favourable RNG is good, then a run which power cycles to reset RNG to a favourable state is permissible, and thus the practice is not a bad thing.
The question was about whether segmented runs are ok, where the segment with the best RNG is chosen. Not about runs that use resetting.
In principle the saving/loading is not part of the run. It's done simply to start the segment over.
If I understood incorrectly how the RNG is optimized in M&M, then I'll change my answer.
If getting favourable RNG is good, then a run which power cycles to reset RNG to a favourable state is permissible, and thus the practice is not a bad thing.
I direct you to Ghosts 'n Goblins, iteration (I believe) 9, which was found by the runners themselves to be invalid specifically because of starting from reset instead of power-on, which led to even better item drops.
Warp: I haven't found a dissasembly of the Might and Magic 6 RNG, but I can tell you from personal experience that randomly determined stuff such as mob spawn sizes and shop stock isn't determined until you access the map/store in question. Simply saving before entering and reloading if you get an unfavorable loadout is sufficient, and for my purposes getting something favorable enough usually only takes two or three reloads (I don't speedrun the game myself, so manipulating shop stock is too much work for too little return. I do manipulate luck to get good mob spawns, however, as fighting in the late game is usually more dangerous than simply dodging.) I don't know how (if at all) the RNG can be manipulated in a single segment run.
To the people who aren't Warp: Would you consider speedruns using this glitch to be valid?
I consider glitches that manipulate save files to be valid in two circumstances. One is if the glitch starts from a completely clean cartridge (i.e. no save files are initially present), and any time spent setting up the extra save files counts as part of the run's time; in this case, I don't consider there to be any restrictions on what you can do with the save files. The other is if the run is classified as a new game + and the game is completed on a new or newgame+ file, rather than an existing save file and there is no use of a "copy save" or equivalent feature, including one created via a glitch, to copy onto the save file that's being created as part of the run. (In other words, in a newgame+, you have to be careful that you are in fact completing the game yourself rather than using an existing completion. I don't consider it a legitimate speedrun to load up an existing save file from just before the final boss, immediately win, and trick the game into saving the resulting game over the wrong file.)
ais523: I am asking for a specific response regarding a specific case. You're giving a generic answer (and one that seems to be better suited to console gaming rather than PC gaming, which is what is in question here due to the various ways you can manipulate save files outside of the game). Would you consider speedruns of Might and Magic 6 that use the Swap Glitch to be valid?
I don't know how (if at all) the RNG can be manipulated in a single segment run.
The important part is that the favorable RNG could have theoretically happened in a single-segment run, if the player had happened to do the exact right things (eg. timings or whatever affects the RNG.)
ais523: I am asking for a specific response regarding a specific case. You're giving a generic answer (and one that seems to be better suited to console gaming rather than PC gaming, which is what is in question here due to the various ways you can manipulate save files outside of the game). Would you consider speedruns of Might and Magic 6 that use the Swap Glitch to be valid?
I'd need to look at the glitch to be sure (and am at work and can't check YouTube). Even then, a video might not be clear enough. Do you have a link to a technical explanation of the glitch and how it works?
The very first thing that happens in the run is a version specific glitch that exploits the existence of a fifth character slot. You can swap
characters by holding ctrl and clicking, however, if all of your guys are on cooldown and you try to swap then you end up swapping in a strange new character. The interesting thing about him is that his stats, conditions, inventory etc all correspond to certain memory adresses that the game uses. This lets us manipulate memory; unfortunately it isn't really useful most of the time, except for shrinking the party hitbox.
When you swap a normal character into the fifth slot, it writes to memory, placing your party in the exact middle of New Sorpigal, stuck in place and with a point hitbox. In order to be able to move I have to die. I can either do this by waiting for the conveniently nearby goblins to kill me, or by swapping each of my characters into the fifth slot, which is much faster. Once I respawn I just put the nameless knight back into the fifth slot and then start a new game, because the hitbox effect persists into new games.
Having such a small hitbox is incredibly useful: it lets me clip under any door that opens vertically, underneath buildings in the overworld and through some completely solid walls/floors/ceilings. It also makes it very difficult for monsters to hit me with ranged attacks. This is the main reason that this run is almost 10 minutes faster than the segmented run on SDA.
Once my party has been generated, I spawn in New Sorpigal with a small hitbox and also a completely blue colour palette. Technically I could play through just fine with it, but that's dumb so I get rid of it by saving and restarting the entire game.
But wait - there's more. When you swap a character out of the fifth slot, they are given a number of skillpoints equal to the current game seconds value (between 0 and 60). By timing the swap back, I can give the druid a lot of skillpoints at the very beginning of the game. Unfortunately it kills him, but that's not too bad as there's a temple nearby.
There is one caveat: the 5th character slot glitch will crash your game if you have completed any quest, so it can only be used at the very start of the run.
Assuming that the run starts from a state before the glitch has been set up (and the time spent doing the swap is thus on the timer), I'd be fine with that. What's being exploited is some glitched state in the game that persists past the "new game" command, and you're still spending the time to set it up.
Back on this topic, one thing I noticed recently in HL2 speedrunning is that when the runner is quicksaving&loading, the clock isn't running. In typical current HL2 speedruns there are quite many places where the runner spends a significant amount of time quicksaving&loading. For example there's one particular place where the runner spends over 3 minutes doing nothing other than that. And all the while the clock is paused.
This, once again, goes to a territory that I really, really don't like. The player could just as well spend 3 hours quicksaving&loading, and it wouldn't be counted towards the length of the run. I just can't get over how much that feels like quasi-cheating. (Not "cheating" as in trying to do something surreptitiously to fool the viewers, or doing something clearly in breach of some rules, but something that, in my opinion, goes contrary to the whole idea of speedrunning.)
That's not the only example of this. Recently I tried to watch some speedruns of Dark Souls III, and the runner constantly (like once or twice per minute) would do this thing where he would quit the game to the main menu and then continue. This was done for various purposes such as skipping cutscenes, but in many cases it was simply done to travel some distance (because the player is not always spawned in the exact same place where he quit, but closeby).
That last part, especially, felt like a cheap cheat. The distances we are talking about are something that would take like 5 seconds to traverse by playing normally, while the quit+continue cycle takes something like 10 seconds. And, you guessed it, the clock was paused during that cycle. So he spends 10 seconds in quit+continue to save something like 5 seconds of traveling time, by abusing the fact that the clock isn't running during that time.
Since this happened pretty much constantly throughout the run, and was highly distracting and annoying, I couldn't even watch the run.
This, once again, goes to a territory that I really, really don't like. The player could just as well spend 3 hours quicksaving&loading, and it wouldn't be counted towards the length of the run.
But if that counts to the length of the run, then man who gets like bijilion GHz cpu overclock + like game installed on ram disk can win by extremely fast save / load. The only way it's like ban save / load completely or like make a rule where you can't use save states for the clips, but it feels like it's just making new category.
But then it would be so hard to land after huge ABH fly without quick save / load. So runners have to use more safe strats and game become boring again.
But then it would be so hard to land after huge ABH fly without quick save / load. So runners have to use more safe strats and game become boring again.
In other words, they would need to rely on game mechanics rather than meta-features unrelated to gameplay. Which, once again, would sound perfect in my books.
But i personally really like those ABH flies and i think many hl2 speedruns watchers like them too. I also don't think that banning quick / save loads is good. I think if some peoples agree with you so they have to make new run category "No quick save / load" for those games then popularize those categories. And in result of doing that those categories can become a main categories for those games. I think this is how speedrunning community should work.
One solution is to make each save/load carry some arbitrary time penalty (anywhere from 10 milliseconds to 1000 milliseconds) such that you'd still do it everywhere where it saves a meaningful amount of time, but if it saves an insignificant amount of time you'd not bother.
But then it would be so hard to land after huge ABH fly without quick save / load. So runners have to use more safe strats and game become boring again.
In other words, they would need to rely on game mechanics rather than meta-features unrelated to gameplay. Which, once again, would sound perfect in my books.
I mean, it's perfect in your books because you have a bias against anything that isn't on a controller, which ultimately I feel doesn't make sense on a PC game that uses a mouse and an entire keyboard. The way I see it, if its in the game you should be allowed to exploit it as you please.
Patashu wrote:
One solution is to make each save/load carry some arbitrary time penalty (anywhere from 10 milliseconds to 1000 milliseconds) such that you'd still do it everywhere where it saves a meaningful amount of time, but if it saves an insignificant amount of time you'd not bother.
People have been using different models of consoles, or even different consoles altogether, for ages in order to speed up loading times in video games. Why should time arbitrarily be lost just because they happen to have the best model of a computer for speedrunning? It would be like penalizing someone for running Crash Bandicoot on a PS2 just because the PS2 loads the game better then the original PS. It doesn't make any sense.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
In-game time speedruns can lead the runners doing some pretty weird things just for the sake of fooling the in-game clock.
I think you could save a lot of in-game time in Silent Hill 4 by Continuing and quitting repeatedly to slowly move in the apartment without game clock running. Takes maybe 10 minutes to save 10 seconds. But at what point do tricks like this reach the limit of being too absurd to consider?
Real time is the superior way to time things in speedruns, I feel... Just a pity that so many games have things like varying loading times depending on the game's port and the player's hardware, making in-game time the most reliable option sometimes.
People have been using different models of consoles, or even different consoles altogether, for ages in order to speed up loading times in video games. Why should time arbitrarily be lost just because they happen to have the best model of a computer for speedrunning? It would be like penalizing someone for running Crash Bandicoot on a PS2 just because the PS2 loads the game better then the original PS. It doesn't make any sense.
To clarify, my proposed timing scheme is the following:
-In game time (loading times not counted), except...
-...each time you load from a save, 100ms (or whatever) is added to your final time
This is objective and fair and prevents quicksave spam abuse.
I mean, it's perfect in your books because you have a bias against anything that isn't on a controller, which ultimately I feel doesn't make sense on a PC game that uses a mouse and an entire keyboard.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the type of controller.
The way I see it, if its in the game you should be allowed to exploit it as you please.
By that logic, the entire developer console in HL2 should be allowed. Which means you can just jump to the final chapter, turn on noclip, and just fly to the end through geometry.
I'm certain that you would agree that shouldn't be allowed. Therefore we come back to the fact that what you are and aren't allowed to use is pretty much arbitrary.
The HL2 speedrunning community has decided that the developer console is banned but, for example, deleting a savefile from the game's menu is allowed. The only difference between the two is where this is being done from.
IMO the restrictions should be much stricter, and restrict the available actions to actual gameplay, rather than any metafeatures that the game program might offer.
