*Speed* runners

Speedrunners are Some of the most patient people ever. They put 1000’s of hours into a game just to save seconds of time.

@@paradoxx4546 i dont think patient is the right word for that. theyre persistant

@@tarah2048 and determined

@@tarah2048 Probably both+determined?

I know you’re joking, but speedrunners are probably the lost patient people ever. They spend thousands of hours on a thing that is completely meaningless.

@@jon.... it’s not meaningless if you like it

@@jon.... but then what has meaning in life. If you have fun doing something, it's not meaningless.

@@cosmicabuse_ There is no inherent meaning to anything, so give it whatever meaning you want.

It’s not really considered a time penalty, just the timer starting at where it would be if you actually sat through the cutscene.

Yeah, especially since some runners STILL justify running New File every time. It annoys the shit out of mr

@@lucasn0tch nobody is forcing you to watch it

What's crazier is that comes up to just ~4230 runs

I believe people should get a job instead of play games like this

@@samditto they do have a job.

@@samditto Every speedrunner I watch has jobs outside of speedrunning lmao what are you talking about

@@samditto Ratioed

@edoardo caccia theres prob some but i think most people just think that using hacks tarnishes the “vanilla” aspect of speedrunning

jcool was bein a huge whiny bitch tho

@edoardo caccia Because the status quote has to be maintained. Why should modification of any kind be allowed in any game? That is that.

@@professionalfangster1510 Because modifications, as long as they are regulated, make speedrunning games more enjoyable. As simple as that.

​@Professional Fangster "Why should modification of any kind be allowed in any game?" That is a very "black and white" thought process. There is a first time for everything, but that doesn't mean there has a second necessarily. People worried that this sets some sort of precedent are clearly over-looking the extremely lengthy conversation that was had over this. If some random runner started talking about using hacks that had no purpose, people would be up in arms in seconds. This was an over-all good change for everyone, and if it does set a precedent it will only be a positive one in the vein of considering making a change for the better. What you are implying is weirdly boomer-ish.

At least it isn't the Golden Sun Dark dawn intro. 7 minutes and 6 minetes and half are text explaining the history of the other 2 games.

Its not even just mistakes, Sunshine also has plenty of RNG sections that can lose minutes of time.

you think that's bad? try doing a speedrun of the og ps2 version of Kingdom Hearts, that's like 30 minutes of unskippable cutscenes within the first hour, and a total of 4 hours the entire run

Bruh

Yes, I guess that's the best argument they can give. In my opinion, I would say that it's preferible to use the hacked file and other external tools for practicing, but only allow the real game to be speedruned.

@@spannersan9172 the issue then is that then you have to make sure that your ‘good runs’ are always during real runs and not during your easier practice. which… you can’t do, or predict in any way. and while i’m not much into the SMS speedrunning community specifically, i would assume that most runners are grinding real runs for an attempt at the record, where every run is experience gained and an actual try.

@@leori-7477 Sure, I totally understand your point, but it just makes it easier in the matter of sense that you are reducing the amount of patience between every speedrun try. Of course, thos is not about skill, but how you're mentally prepared for keep trying and trying again. If the community accepts this, so be it, it's kinda rational. But, in my opinion, that is like "fakeing the runs". But, of course, nobody cares about my opinion and I'm okay with that jaja

No idea. Seems pretty obvious, there must be a reason

people complained that it was just a cat extension at that point so much so that jcool made his own lb for it i have spoken with him abt it in the past and seems to be the reason i only started using hf because of the vote

If they could do that, the people who didn't want to couldn't get a world record

@@ardron1 Sure they could. It would just be in a separate category.

You want to VERY careful splitting an Any%. That's usually the most popular category, and, especially with something like this, you could HEAVILY splinter and possibly even kill a speedgame if you aren't being VERY careful.

Agree. If modifying the game makes it into a better speedgame, I see no reason not to do it. It is human nature to take a thing and make it better. The only argument against it was the slippery slope argument which is generally not a good argument

I'd rather say that they do that for competitivity, not just for fun. Then, I'd understand those speedruners who didn't agree with the hacked file.

@@herrabanani if you haven’t heard of bioshock infinite speedruns, there’s a part of the speedrun where you have a 1% chance to actually continue a run at least halfway into it thanks to a certain item, and the community was so sick of it they allowed a modded rom to make that item always spawn instead of a 1% chance

@@TheDunsparceGames when rng is the only way and there's no exploit to force the rng you need that's completely fair.

A similar thing was done with Dark Souls 2 speedrunning. A mod that removes "baby jumps" has been used by prominent runners, despite the controversy. Because baby jumps are entirely outside their control and act simply as random screwover that could add full minutes to a speedrun. Btw jump distance in vanilla DS2 is calculated using the framerate, which is variable. So if a jump happens to coincide with a drop in framerate, the jump will be shorter and will likely not clear the gap

"hacking out the cutscenes doesn't give anyone any kind of timing advantage against those who don't do it" Ummm... what? You literally just said, "Skipping cutscenes doesn't save time."

@@0rbnotacus It doesn't save time on the leaderboards because the time of the cutscenes is added back in. Though it does save time outside the leaderboards, that is, real time.

@@SilverLining1 Ooohhhh okay hahaha, thanks.

The main arguments against are accessibility (someone without the means to use a hacked file can't participate), slippery slope (why not hack this and that and so on too), and potential for cheating (how do we know you didn't also hack something else to gain a subtle advantage). How much weight these arguments hold is a matter of opinion.

@@renakunisaki accessibility with the hacked file isnt an argument, the time is still there, someone with a unhacked file with a total playtime time of 21 minutes beats out someone with a hacked file of 17 minutes because the hacked file adds the 6 minutes to the leaderboard as a penalty, totaling 23 minutes, if someone can't play a hacked file they can still play the game Slippery slopes are basically the weakest argument there is, sure there IS a chance for this, but its VERY slim, especially since it's for convenience, and not taking away any skill from the actual game, and the time, like I stated before, isn't affected by this, end of story, and if people try to weasle in hacks that affect time because of this, that shows more of an issue with them/the community, and NOT the quality of life change Point three is just flat out bullshit, a hacked file=/=a hacked game, changing a flag for convenience in a save isn't like running a hacked emulator, the software still runs the same, the hardware still runs the same, erase the file off of your memory card and play a fresh game and the cutscenes will work as the developers intended As for other flags to get ticked, moderators will notice a blatant "oh.....he already has a blue coin, why?" deal, they comb through every run like mad when something seems afoot, doing something like increasing Mario's run speed or how much gets cleaned by flood or how much is in floods tank can be measured using frames Worse comes to worse, show the hardware and software, plus, cheaters ARE gonna cheat, but not with a save hack, theres a ton of world records that have been caught sooner or later because of that, if they do end up hacking the software somehow and moderators can't determine the runs fake, that's not gonna happen with a save hack, it'll have to be a software hack Imagine (in this instance) flags being goals you have to run through, effectively the hack just tells the game "hey, they passed this goal, don't make them do it again" and as such, theres no way to subtly cheat, if the game says "hey, they got this shine" the shine menue is going to expose them, visual tells like the pineapple on the hotel level not being there is going to show, or having acess to fludd parts when they shouldn't will also be obvious, and when you enter levels, basically every flag for that specific level gets changed back to false, meaning even hacking flags in levels kinda useless even if it doesnt get caught, so the flag hacks only permamently affect (off the top of my head) pretty much all of defino plaza content, shine count/completion, cutscenes, blue coins, secret level red coin buttons appearing, fludd nozzles being unlocked in a specific level, and yoshi being unlocked, all these things that are very noticeable

not a lost number I don't know which cutscene you are talking about, but if it is one of the opening cutscenes on outset island, speed runners skip them by using manual super swim

@@ludbud3727 The one when you start the game, the "lore" video. In GCN it takes like 7 minutes just to begin the game

@@notalostnumber8660 But, at least it's just one cutscene, so you don't have to be actively paying attention to the game for it.

@@evonthon And there is no gameplay between cutscenes (I may be very wrong) so the timing starts after the intro cutscens ends. Correct me if I'm wrong

@@evonthon It's one you have to restart and watch the cutscene again

People like you are the best. Thanks homie

I'm sure MOST games have something like a uneskippable cutscene. Again, hacking is hacking and sadly that's no longer an official Mario Sunshine game, but an adultered version, which is basically against the basic rules of speedrunning about not allowing hacks. I would say more about but I'm sure I'll put some clear bias against that game, but a thing I can say, Why is the game splitted into 2 leaderboards?

SMS rule changes do not set a precedent for any other game. Speedrunning rules have always been on a per game basis. The idea has always been that the communities around each game set their own rules since they know the most about the game and it's quirks. Lots of games are split up into more than 1 leaderboard. SM64 has multiple leaderboards, because that's what the community decided was best for the game. Every game has it's own unique leaderboards and rules. SMS is no different. This changes nothing for other games.

@@N12015 Not really... not this long or this close to the beginning of the run. At least not in the other major speedrunning games (zelda, super metroid, Mario 64, Goldeneye, etc)

@@trequor the only ones I know of that compare are Majora's Mask and Star Fox Adventures, but in both of those cases, the opening scene does contain a lot of gameplay, so skipping them wouldn't be the same as in SMS. (They just aren't much fun the 800th time through, and may as well be a cutscene...) While not as long, there are Ocarina of Time and Super Metroid; both have a long unskippable opening scene with zero gameplay. Interestingly, SM players opt to skip it by starting from a file that's saved just after, but OoT players don't, though they could. If you want even more controversy, check out Banjo-Kazooie runs that use a "New Game+" glitch involving playing a few minutes on an existing save file before actually starting the run. Edit: I forgot about Wind Waker 🤦

@@renakunisaki Wind Waker's intro isn't nearly as long (same goes for Ocarina of Time). Majora's Mask is fairly comparable to Sunshine though

Exactly. And if there is a dispute then the category can simply be split.

Community nothing, each individual runner can set their own rules - what the community thinks only matters for a given website hosting leaderboards, and different communities are going to think different things. So the only thing that actually matters is "do I want to speedrun it this way" for the runners.

Im not sure what your point is. If multiple people decide they "want to speedrun it this way" then that creates a community for that type of run...?

@@Ouzzel My point is that it doesn't matter what "the community" says, no matter what site or group or so on it is. You can always do your own thing. So, community votes and such on such things are extremely trivial, echo-chamber-y and circle-jerky - they're trying to define what speedrunning is according to what they personally want, and then they flip out when they don't get what they want. None of them actually respect the democratic process either. So, it's better to just speedrun however you like and have fun with it instead of worrying about community nonsense.

And how was the save file altered to flag the intro cutscene as “seen”? Via hacks.

@@christianc1120 but the point is that all the hack affects is cutscene viewing. It doesn’t affect gameplay or rng chances or anything, you just skip something that only has story value and no addition to run skill. all you do during those parts is wait, without the ability to get to gameplay. they might as well not be there, as far as the run is concerned, except for the time spent waiting while they play. “hacked game” in the way toader the toad says it does refer to altering the game to give the runner a favor, which can be dishonest and most certainly destroys the integrity of gameplay. it is still a hack to flag the three cutscenes watched, but it doesn’t alter gameplay experience and only adds an option for players to choose a much nicer playing experience.

@@christianc1120 Yeah. Adding on to Leori's comment, what I meant by that comment is that there are NO hacks applied to the game. Something like using a AR code to skip cutscenes I can understand, but the save file is simply modified in this case, meaning the game is dealing with this save file as intended.

The cut scenes are part of the game they didn't release the game with them being cut out that was not what they intended

@@AdamKaiser. But what I'm saying is that the game is going "Has the entire opening been seen yet? Yes, it has. Skip to Delfino Plaza." The game isn't the one modded, it's the save file

Unskippable ads are just as bad lol

The "Y'all" says it all

@@SpringySpring04 such criticism against other cultures’ region of linguistic differences says a lot about you actually. Hard to believe Americans still have issues with southern Scots-Irish linguistics.

Yes, that's the final decision they agreed on

Pls shut up about dream pls

@@orangeman3505 no

@@Serph.. yes

Rest in peace facebook's dislike button lol

yea its not like runners have thousands of runs which all add up to waste multiple hours of their life or anything

They all already waste days of their life into this, not like taking the cutscenes out will change much to that

​@@PixieBladeArt Great explanation of the Sunken Costs fallacy, but that being said, it actually changes a LOT. Super Mario Sunshine came out in 2002, that's almost 20 years ago! I was casually scrolling through the official run list, and the oldest run I saw with a runner still playing is 6 years ago. So this person has been playing Super Mario Sunshine at the rate it takes to get speedruns for the last 6 years... The intro to the run is 7 minutes long, out of the roughly hour and a half run; which btw is about 10% of the entire run... Let's say they do 3 attempts a day, and they do attempts 4 times a week. 3 attempts times 7 minutes is 21 minutes per day, 4 times a week is 84 minutes a week, or a little over an hour JUST WATCHING CUTSCENES. Let's go a little farther, because I am talking about 6 years worth of runs here. Let's assume they take breaks for holidays, and throw in some extra lost time to be safe for possible hiatuses: So 84 minutes a week * 48 weeks in a year is 4,032 minutes, and let's remove 10 days worth of time for safeness in every year, so 21 minutes per day times 10 is 210 minutes, bringing us to 3,822 minutes every year spent watching cutscenes, or 63.7 HOURS. Finally, let's add that up into years, 3,822 minutes times 6 would be 22,932 minutes, or 382 HOURS! So yea, skipping a 7 minute cutscene is kind of the difference between some speedrunners even placing on the leaderboards in the time they have available to play a video game... People's lives are finite, maybe you need to learn to appreciate yours better.

@@PixieBladeArt ngl you just kinda lost your iq here

@@PixieBladeArt big dumb

yes

That just seems like theerect solution, doesn't it, @@TheJinx64?

nice pfp

What, like the opening of RE5 before you gear up and the literal only dynamic gameplay is for flavor?

@@stitchfinger7678 Right but I don't think the RE5 speedrunners will complain, it literally takes what, 30 secs? It's not a big deal.

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“Dur hur xem what about ur SMS time”

"Why can't they just compromise and be happy?" There's a lot of situations where you have to ask yourself. The answer is always "I don't know".

Honestly, I agree. The only reason I'm against the hacked file, is because they are making what should be a category mandatory. As for why they can't compromise... because it is about being right/wrong. It is petty justification. After all, if they aren't right in using a hacked version, then their suffering and arguments and people who insulted them were right. To protect their pride, standing, and bias on both sides... one side must be wrong otherwise both sides have to admit they were making a mistake.

eh in gtaV they can kinda be a blessing too i think since they can be used to like go to the toilet n shit which is good in a 6 hour any% run or an over 10 hour (iirc) 100% run i could be wrong though

The game came out in an era where video games never had the feature.

Not necessarily. It was added in as a way of asking the community: where do we draw the line for modifying the game?

It was essentially the "Skip all cutscenes" options, as the exceptions were ones that there were already known ways to skip

Or just create an option in the pause menu, which auto-skips cutscenes. People accidentally hold down the button, or their pet might do something and depending on how sensitive the controller is resting can put enough pressure to skip. Sometimes controllers even have sticky buttons after use where it will hold inputs for short periods.

I'm a fan of having oldschool secrets and easter eggs unlocked by pressing special button combos in the pause menu. For a game where you don't want players missing important cutscenes (especially if they contain important gameplay information that players might not expect in a cutscene, such as hinting at the location of a hidden item), locking the option to skip or disable cutscenes behind a cheat code can be a great option.

I think the main argument against skipping actual playable gameplay, even if simple, is that it reduces reset chances versus people who play everything the game offers to them. No matter how small the chance, you could certainly mess up and lose time in the easy first bits. That’s what the new file players encounter. But if you skip those insignificant bits, you’re already taking a shortcut to skip a period of risk, by having that many seconds/minutes less gameplay to worry about. *This* is the part that can possibly be considered a slippery slope, if other areas of the game are also deemed unimportant to gameplay experience and skipped, decreasing the risk of having to reset. But the solution is really just to draw hard lines and not make hasty decisions on things like this. A good rule is just to never remove gameplay if it is during/intrinsically linked to a period that could lose you time (ie a super mario world run where a completely autoscroller level is marked complete, but the instant or two that would be spent navigating overworld to select and leave that level would be neglected and thus become an advantage). So the intro cutscenes in Sunshine, which are neither gameplay nor could lose/gain you time if you do worse/better, are of no consequence if they were to be skipped. …Yeah, this isn’t fresh news anymore, but I thought it was cool and wanted to talk.

If you make a game with FMV or nonrendered cgi cutscenes there is no reason not to allow skipping.

yeah, that would’ve been really smart! they could’ve just included something like a toggleable setting for “watch cutscenes” and make this no longer require hacking

You can literally go eat dinner, have a bath, brush your teeth, and when you come back pokemon SM's cutscene wont even be over yet

@@k8e717 tbh just bring your ds or computer emulator with you and its just an interactive movie

I should add that you COULD glitch the radio outside of the vault in Portal, or glitch yourself thru the ceiling. Both those methods are faster, and very, very hard to pull off. But it's like this speedrun. You COULD save like a second in the beginning, but it's better to have consistency and let more runs played.

Thats pretty much what hacked file is

@@CyberchaoX Yes that's a fair enough criticism of my phrasing. I meant it in the sense that there are times where someone's time gets killed because of a cutscene- sure, AFTER the fact, everyone has the same blocks, but *during* the run itself they can surely feel oppressive, like an inescapable doom clawing away your victory from you or something but yeah I just find it strange that you can totally lose a record run because of something wholly outside your control??

what on earth is this black magic?

What kind of RNG? Because RNG in games can kill runs but it is part of the game unfortunately (think Dampe in OoT).