
I thought I made a hard game and then speedrunners destroyed it - artsandsci
https://imgur.com/t/speedrunning/OUtDA5J
======
petercooper
The terms "tear it to pieces", "ripped it to shreds", "destroyed" seem so
emotive. It seems like these people loved the game enough to try and beat it
in creative new ways and that seems really awesome. Minecraft thrived on
similar hackery in the early days too.

~~~
glacials
These are pretty common terms in a speedrunning context and I do not believe
they were meant by the author to be emotionally charged. Because speedruns
often take advantage of game-breaking glitches, the extent to which the game
has been literally broken is usually described with destructive terms like
these. Smashing records, destroying games, obliterating levels, etc.

It makes a bit more sense if you imagine the developer's intended way to play
the game being a glass bridge across a chasm, and speedrunners literally
shatter the bridge and glue the pieces into a ramp that they jump a dirtbike
off.

Source: I've been speedrunning for 7 years and my full-time job is in the
speedrunning community

~~~
Pfhreak
This is one of the worst parts of the speedrunning community, imo. The
constant, "This team can't program" or "bad devs" or "LOL their QA department
was asleep" commentary undermines what's potentially a very awesome
relationship runners could have with devs.

I've never understood this need to take pot shots at the devs while running,
but it happens all the time during events like GDQ. Even when the developers
are on the line chatting while the game is being played (which just seems
straight up rude.) It also ignores all the complexity involved in making and
shipping a game, which is definitely non-trivial.

~~~
Retric
I think the community would be more positive if the same issues did not always
crop up.

Several early 3D games increased player moment speed when holding strafe and
forward at the same time. (Doom, EQ, etc.) That’s just incompetence and really
should be described as such.

Now some games may have intentionally copied common bugs for style reasons
etc, but more often titles are just rushed out with many known bugs and or
vastly insufficient QA.

~~~
Pfhreak
Yes, that's a common issue (though typically you had to push against a wall),
and it's an issue that still occurs in games today.

It's also one that doesn't impact core gameplay for most people. Heck, a lot
of players will feel quite clever for discovering and using abilities like
that in a game.

Fixing bugs like that require not fixing other bugs. They may have been aware
of the issue and chose to fix other, more pressing bugs first. I'd strongly
hesitate before labeling someone incompetent because their linear algebra
didn't quite do vector math correctly in every case.

I'm also surprised to hear you describe the devs of Doom as 'incompetent',
given their widespread praise in the engineering community, specifically for
their code.

> Now some games may have intentionally copied common bugs for style reasons
> etc, but more often titles are just rushed out with many known bugs and or
> vastly insufficient QA.

So in some ways, those bugs become a part of the culture. That's an
interesting avenue to explore, but it's an aside from my point that insulting
the devs (who probably aren't the ones making decisions about QA or release
schedules) undermines a relationship speedrunners _could_ have with the
developer community.

Unfortunately, QA costs money. Developers cost lots of money. Finding, root
causing, and fixing bugs therefore costs lots and lots of money. You cannot
just fix bugs forever, at some point you need to evaluate the current amount
of money you've spent making the game and compare that to what you think
you'll be able to make back on it. Does fixing that bug end up costing you
more than you'll make back? Who knows, but it's a very real, complex
prioritization problem that I don't think you are giving enough value or
depth.

~~~
Retric
Doom was a rather groundbreaking game so it’s often given a pass for many
issues. However, a famous failure like the tacoma narrows bridge collapse is
less likely to be repeated in other fields. The 20th game with the same
failure really is best described as incompetence. Especially if it will often
be discovered within 10 seconds of playing the game and it’s not a complex
fix.

~~~
ncallaway
> However, a famous failure like the tacoma narrows bridge collapse is less
> likely to be repeated in other fields.

But, if we're comparing failure modes, can you at least agree that there's a
pretty significant difference between:

* The tacoma narrows bridge, where there entire bridge was totally destroyed narrowly avoiding loss of life, AND * A bug in a video game that impacts the movement speed in a not-negative way for 90% of the players?

Like, if the strafe-bug was destroy millions of dollars in infrastructure and
killing people I'd be on your side. But who cares if the 20th game has the
same bug that doesn't affect most players in any way?

I agree it'd be better if games had no bugs, but if I had to choose between a
game being 1% more fun, or a game not-having the strafe-bug I take the game
that's 1% more fun every-time.

There's a nearly infinite set of tasks that sit in front of game-devs. The
first thing you learn is that _everything_ is an opportunity cost.

~~~
Retric
Sure structure collapse is a vastly larger downside, but also vastly harder to
detect and fix.

Nobody’s life is at stake in these games, but the gaming industry is both
gigantic and competitive. So, a hypothetical 1% difference is enjoyment really
can translate into 10’s of millions of dollars. Now, I don’t think this
specific bug means a 1% drop, but it also does not take significant resources
to fix.

Also, it’s not just about immersion this has real impact on game balance. Can
players run away from enemy X often makes a huge difference in terms of fun.
Balance assuming people are running sideways and people get stuck playing that
way, balance assuming normal running and tension feels fake because they can
easily escape.

Collectively obvious game bugs have killed off several game companies and
represent billions in lost sales. As an industry that’s clearly extremely
important even if we are just talking about entertainment.

~~~
Pfhreak
> it also does not take significant resources to fix

This is where you are wrong. Even small fixes can destabilize builds. Every
change needs code review, testing, a build, release (and possibly release
notes). You need to schedule time to work on it, which means prioritization
meetings and advocating why this bug should be fixed and not the other large
pile of bugs.

Maybe you need to update some unit tests or automated feature tests. Maybe
stop by the level designer's desk to make sure there weren't any baked in
assumptions about player movement and space. Probably a good idea to chat with
a gameplay designer as well to make sure it wasn't intentional (and also to
validate that the fix doesn't actually make the game _less_ fun.)

Wouldn't hurt to go to a playtest and mention that it's been changed, see if
anyone on the team notices.

Actually, come to think of it, maybe you could put your fix behind a console
command! Then you could quickly flip back and forth and see what you like
better. But that also means adding a little more code and probably a little
more documentation.

Sure, on the face of it you've just changed one arithmetic function. But there
is a ton of hidden work and complexity that surrounds that.

As someone who made games for a living, there's a __huge __amount of unseen
work that goes into even small changes. Players consistently underestimate the
complexity of even minor fixes.

~~~
Retric
This this is not some obscure off by one error. You see it in basic game
building tutorials. Hell, I will admit to making this mistake on an early
game, but only once.

Not making the mistake in the first place should generally prevent the issue
even if it was never fixed in any game ever. I am calling it incompetence
specifically because it’s the kind of mistake you make when you don’t know
what you’re doing.

PS: If detecting and fixing an issue like this is a significant issue for your
team, that’s a much larger issue you need to deal with.

------
__david__
People will speed run anything! I run a little solitaire site that has
leaderboards and the Frecell games are dominated by faster than 10 second
completion times. People complained in the forums about the times and how they
must be by cheaters, and then the fast people started posting videos of
themselves beating the games in seconds. They're truly impressive:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRX-
kxiNfes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRX-kxiNfes)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSgdcH8JJI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSgdcH8JJI4)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgm3BoVxrMI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgm3BoVxrMI)

~~~
phreeza
How does this work, are the people able to really solve the game this fast or
are they memorizing sequences? Is it possible to see the game before the click
starts?

~~~
dwd
Memorising sequences is not the right way to look at it - it's simply a result
of practice (or playing it too much): More like muscle memory where you see
and act without consciously thinking about it. Watch speed solving Rubik's
cubes to see how they do it on an instinctive level.

With Freecell, once you know what you're doing you know at a glance what your
options are: how deep a stack you can move and which cards are key to clearing
out and in which order.

As well as playing way too much Freecell back in the 90s I played Minesweeper
to death. Probably a better example of how you can progress from needing to
consciously work out where you could safely click, to knowing at a glance, to
being able to click the one cell that would open up the area. If you were
actually flagging bombs you were going too slow.

------
noobermin
One of the things I bemoan is that game developers have embraced speedrun-type
players in that it has influenced their game design which is evident in the
most recent games: almost every game that is sold as a "hardcore" game
involves essentially the ability to memorize and perform, skills which are
okay but I don't particularly really enjoy. I painfully miss twitch games like
quake that instead of pushing you to memorize and perform accurately, you
instead had to react and improvise quickly and think on your feet.[0] It's a
different set of skills that seems to have fallen out of favor as of late.

[0] To be clear, I'm talking about multiplayer as it's unpredictable.

~~~
dkarl
I think it's always been like that in any game with predesigned layouts and
enemy placement. I was still a kid (in the 1980s) when I figured out I was
playing a fundamentally different game from the kids who _really_ loved video
games. I was thinking, "I need to get faster at making decisions and timing my
actions so I can respond to what's on the next screen," and they were
thinking, "Okay, the next screen has two goblins closing from the upper right
corner and one goblin closing from the middle and a fireball from top to
bottom after four seconds, and the exit door starts closed and opens or closes
every three seconds, so I'll kill the closest goblin while I wait for the
fireball and then hit the exit the third time it opens...."

I remember feeling guilty when I remembered what was on the next screen,
because it felt like cheating. It kind of broke my heart when I realized that
was the best way to get good and it was pointlessly stubborn for me to resist
a technique that games were designed to cater to.

~~~
Jach
It's not just games, it's life. But to take a non-video game, e.g. in hockey
the better goalies aren't better because they have awesome reflexes or quick
thinking, but primarily because they're better at predicting where the puck is
going to be and positioning themselves accordingly. Same thing with gamers
knowing "what's ahead", or "what's ahead with probability". Very few things
are so random that "more accurately predicting the future" isn't the
dominating strategy, with execution of the moment, while important, not being
the primary factor.

~~~
jacobolus
> _Very few things are so random that "more accurately predicting the future"
> isn't the dominating strategy,_

This is what is nice about research. Real problem solving matters.

But also what is frustrating about research: real problem solving is hard!

------
Ajedi32
My favorite game to watch speed runs of is still Getting Over It. The game is
notoriously frustrating, with many players spending multiple painstaking hours
climbing up small sections of the level, only to make a critical mistake, fall
back down, and have to start all over again.

Then you have people like this, who've gotten so good at the game that they're
able to beat the entire thing in 1 minute 17 seconds:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnzTObVRwF0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnzTObVRwF0)

~~~
falcolas
My current favorite (to watch) is Celeste. The humans are amazing, but the TAS
is just out of this world. It just looks so damned _cool_ as it blows through
the levels.

------
csours
This is reminiscent of N, Way of the Ninja [0]

I used to work nights doing production support (lots of downtime). To beat
88-4 [1], I exported the level, re-edited it to have 4 starting points (each a
quarter of the way through [0/4, 1/4, 2/4, 3/4]). Then I practiced each of
those in turn until I could beat them. After I could be each with about an 80%
success rate, I tried the whole level again.

There are probably only 5 hard "gates" in 88-4. That is, 5 places where you
are likely to fail (say a 15% success rate before extensive practice). The
success rate after 5 gates is unexpectedly, phenomenally low: 0.008% (0.15^5).
If you practice and get your individual success rate up to 80%, then the
overall challenge is a doable 32.7% overall. I think my success rate was more
like 40% on three gates, though, because even after practicing I think I tried
about 30 times.

I still think about gates like this. I think Yatzee explained this in a Zero
Punctuation episode, but I don't remember which one.

0\. [http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/](http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/) 1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6hxHi234AM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6hxHi234AM)

~~~
dnate
have you played the sequel n++? I think it's a worthy successor with an
amazing soundtrack. (if you are into electronic music that is)

~~~
csours
I have, some (I mainly bought it as a reward for the time I spent on the
original; same for Spelunky and Cave Story+) Nowhere near as much as the
original. I think the time I spent on the original was a function of boredom.

------
dv_dt
Now think of any critical software as the game, with security hackers as the
speedrunners.

~~~
eof
And then think of the fact that people are going to pay money to have software
interfacing directly with their brains/neurons.

------
binarysolo
Great ad - engaging, entertaining content that doubles up as exposure for the
product. The best kind of ad that is actually useful. (This post is
appreciating it, not knocking it for that.)

------
cabaalis
> This is a funny little story about what happens when your game gets
> discovered by speedrunners.

The game was built with a timer which counts up. It's intended to be
speedrun...

~~~
Cyberdog
Yeah, I believe zero percent that this developer was unfamiliar with the
concept of speedrunning while developing a game like this.

------
dmortin
I'm not familiar with the scene. Are the speedrunners mostly kids with lots of
free time? This hobby must be time consuming.

Or are there also hardcore older gamers among them, who started playing in the
80s, 90s and they have jobs, families and still spend their free time
spedrunning games?

~~~
copperx
I thought speedrunners were fuzzing games somehow. Are you saying they play
the game manually?

~~~
eridius
Speedrunners are playing the game manually, and sharing the tricks they find
for how to exploit game mechanics to speed things up.

There exist something called TAS (tool-assisted speedrun) where you use an
emulator with save states and either slow motion or the ability to advance
frame-by-frame in order to construct the "ideal" run, but runs constructed
these ways generally aren't actually playable by hand because they rely too
much on frame-exact timing.

------
dlevine
Even if some people can beat it in 1 minute, it is still extremely hard for a
lot of people, and provides a lot of enjoyment. And those speedrunners who
beat it in a minute probably spent dozens of hours finding those exploits.

A couple of years ago, I played Hollow Knight on PC. I probably spent 60 hours
getting to the final ending and finding the majority of the secrets. I enjoyed
it immensely for a month or two. Sure there are speed runners who can beat it
in under an hour, but that doesn't diminish the many hours of enjoyment I got
from it.

If you haven't, I would recommend watching Summoning Salt's World Record
Progression videos, each of which takes a game and talks about the series of
exploits that allowed the world record speedruns to exist.

------
AaronFriel
I'm guessing based on the overlay that this was a tool assisted speedrun
(TAS)? If so, I wouldn't fret if I were the author. These players are able to
exploit collision glitches and timings that are almost impossible for a human
player!

And if not, all the more impressive.

~~~
tyrust
The overlay does not imply a TAS. Other players are just interested in the
inputs required to perform certain actions.

------
franknine
For people who like this post, I highly recommend "Devs Play" S1E06 -
Psychonauts "The SMK Speedrun" by Double Fine Production:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsDc1YVxHA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsDc1YVxHA0)

They had a speedrunner running their game in front of the development team
which is hilarious.

------
raverbashing
Based on some speed runners videos I saw they have way more patience and
ability in Super Mario than me

But remember it doesn't matter if they finish it quickly if your audience is
the average player

A game that's too difficult is not fun for a lot of people. So unless your
target audience is specialized in that, I wouldn't worry too much

------
fiatjaf
When I was young I played video games like they were an open world full of
mysteries I was uncovering by myself, as the first and only explorer.

Then I realized all the little things I was discovering were actually known by
everybody else. Specially, they were made by someone else.

As I grew old I kept thinking about how to make a game that would have secrets
no one knew, not even the game maker. But that's impossible, not even Dwarf
Fortress or similar very complex games where you can do basically almost
anything are like that.

Every game is just a treasure hunt made by some adult for kids to play -- and
that is very depressing.

~~~
seabird
Speedruns and other exploitative/unintended aspects of a game basically solve
that issue. There is no way that the developers of Super Mario World would
have ever guessed that someone would beat the game in minutes by reprogramming
it at runtime via glitches. The same goes for "0.5 A presses" and other absurd
ways to play games.

------
ibatindev
I had to buy it to try it myself. Awesome work I have to say.

------
scarejunba
Haha, this is amazing! It must have been so much fun to have people enjoy it
like that.

------
Havoc
The fact that speed runners even bothered is a huge vote of confidence

------
kazinator
I thought I made a safe, correct, program; then QA destroyed it! Waaah!

------
rsync
Looks like someone should have budgeted for "Speedrunning as a Service" before
launching ...

------
syberiyxx
I'm pleased you're reacting to this with curiosity instead of rage.

------
darepublic
This post seems like a humble brag tbh

