What is Speedrunning?
Speedrunning is simply the attempt to play and complete a video game as fast as possible. This is done through plenty of planning and practice, and usually involves exploiting bugs or otherwise imperfect game mechanics. Speedrunning is demanding work, and requires a lot of effort, but many people in the community find it rewarding and a way to breathe new life into older games.
There is another category of speedrunning called Tool-assisted speedrunning (or TAS). In this category, tools such as controller input emulators are used to create speedruns that would not be achievable purely through player skill or dexterity. Essentially, a TAS will generally feature gameplay that would otherwise be impossible to perform. There is plenty of collaboration between the TAS community and the general speedrun community; plenty of glitches that can also be utilised by human speedrunners have been discovered through TAS.
What is Speedrunning?
Speedruns fall into different categories, and this varies from game to game. Some of the most common categories include:
- Any % - the most popular category. In this category the runner must complete the game as quickly as possible, regardless of other facets of the game (sidequests, item collection, etc).
- 100% - in order to qualify for this category, the runner must do everything possible to complete in the game. This is defined by individual game speedrunning comunities, so make sure you know the rules before running!
- Low % - a more obscure category, in order for a speedrun to fall into this category, the runner must complete a game while collecting the minimum number of items and upgrades necessary.
- Glitchless – although this is more of a category modifier than a specific category, it's still important to mention. In a glitchless run, the runner must complete the game as quickly as possible without exploiting any bugs. A lot of games have mechanics that straddle the line between a glitch and a poorly implemented game mechanic, so make sure you check out the rules for your game before attempting a run.
Here is a list of useful tools you'll need to get started speedrunning:
- OBS - open source live streaming software.
- Livesplit - a robust timer and split recording tool.
- Llanfair - a Mac and Unix compatible timer
- mIRC – an IRC client for connecting to #speedrunslive and registering your runs.
Resources
Here are some community sites to help you get started speedrunning:
- Speedrunslive.com - A site for registering and promoting races between runners.
- Speedrun.com - A leaderboard hosting site. If you want to know what times you need to beat, you can probably find it here.
- SpeedDemosArchive - Although not as active anymore, the site needs to be recognised for it's contribution to popularising speedrunning. The forums are still relatively active and a great archive of the evolution of speedrunning.
- TAS Videos - This site is for hosting TAS videos. They also have a great newcomers corner for help getting into TAS.
Upcoming Events
- SpeedGaming has events running all the time. See their upcoming events here.
- ARPGME 2017 is taking place Nov. 11th - Nov. 13th, 2017
- AGDQ2018 is taking place Jan. 7th - Jan. 14th, 2018
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