Games - Speedrun

	Games - Speedrun

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

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

History

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

It could be argued that all of the Metroid games were among the first to have major speedrun challenges. They have built-in rewards for speed in the form of earning better endings for beating the game faster.

Techniques

Route planning

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

Additionally, depending on the structure of levels, there has to be constructed a route for them as well. Contrary to strictly linear levels which can only be finished using one predetermined route, there are games in which levels leave a lot of room for creativity in its playthrough.

Good examples of this can be found in Quake, where even years after the initial versions of its speedrun routes there are still additional shortcuts being discovered. One notable example of a level which has undergone a lot of route changes in this game is (The Elder God Shrine). Originally, the route for this map was very long and involved going through the graveyard in addition to many other things. After the release of the first Quake done Quick video, in which this route was recorded as a 1:21 run by Yonathan Donner, it was found out that a large part of this route could be skipped by using a slope jump in the starting room, leading to Donner improving his run to 0:57. This was the basic foundation of the map's route, which is still being used today: do the slope jump, get the silver key, run back to the start room, jump to the other side, get the gold key, and exit. A variety of new shortcuts were found since then, constantly updating the optimal route. Following Donner's record, "DooMfienD" used an in-flight grenade jump from the back of a Fiend rather than one from balcony to balcony in order to get to the other side of the start room. He also added a grenade jump at the silver key and got 0:55 for Quake done Quicker. Markus Taipale later replaced this with a bunny hop. Evan Wagner ran 0:54 by adding a grenade jump from the Knights near the gold key and an additional boost in a long hallway. These additional grenade jumps became possible due to more efficient health usage attained by picking up the second large health upgrade when returning at the starting point rather than when starting. Ilkka Kurkela added bunny hops to get 0:50. The grenade jump at the silver key went through a few revisions (being replaced by a double grenade jump or a quad boost) but was eventually reverted to DooMfienD's original method because the health was needed for a much more important trick devised by Markus Taipale: a Fiend boost after the start, and a quad damage grenade jump at the gold key that carries the player at full speed nearly all the way to the exit. Combining all of these tricks, Markus was able to record 0:40 for Quake done Quick with a Vengeance, a run which he later improved to 0:37. Even so, the route was still not optimal, as proved by Peter Horvath, who added a grenade jump from a Spawn in the lava near the silver key, which gave him the high-regarded time of 0:33. This route is currently believed to be optimal.

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