8/5/2023 0 Comments Cat quest ii speedrunOutside of perhaps the Pokemon metagame community, there are few games that have been torn apart and understood so thoroughly as ones targeted by TASers. The scripts they then put together can display those memory addresses, test which input combinations reduce lag, or generate pseudorandom or comical input. More often than not, a TAS has a TASer behind it that can give you the important memory addresses, such as showing speed and position of the player character. Some discover how enemies are generated, what causes the game to lag, or how luck-based events are determined. Programming skills are also beneficial: many TASers create scripts or macros to assist in creating or even improving the emulators they work on.Īnd the programming aspect is one area in which TASers excel. Having an eye for entertainment and knowledge of the game, of course, helps. So how does one go about making these videos? Time and patience are a must-sometimes, a TASer discovers a trick to improve the beginning of a run when they’re close to having it completed, prompting a rerun of the whole game. Yes, this is done solely with the input of a game controller! And some games, like Pokemon Yellow and Super Mario World, can be broken so thoroughly TASers can insert their own code in. Some, such as the runs of Brain Age and Family Feud, take advantage of data input methods to have a little fun. Some can break games by abusing the rules of in-game physics: for example, TASers get Sonic going so fast in Sonic Advance that the “ camera cannot keep up with him.” Alternately, Super Mario Kart breaks the game by abusing the in-game definition of a lap. Some games use massive sequence breaks: Super Mario 64, a game that normally requires 70 stars to reach the final boss, can be beaten without collecting a single one through precise ramming of game boundaries. Rather, they are used for entertainment, often to answer Morimoto’s question: “What would a perfect speedrun look like?” Depending on the game and the tricks discovered, that answer can vary greatly. Unlike a regular speedrun, the point of a TAS is not to display skill in running the game. Why put two years of effort into an 11-minute video? Morimoto’s answer was, “I want to see what an ideal Mario run would look like.” Many TASers track this work by the number of re-records made in the process, which can sometimes stretch into the millions. Even with the advancement of tools, which are able to do things like peek at the variables and values the game uses in real time, or slow the game down to a frame-by-frame play, the time to create a TAS is often exponentially longer than the TAS itself. (Since then, the records for both the regular speedrun and the tool-assisted speedrun are under five minutes, separated by 0.1 seconds.) Despite the short length of the video itself, the actual creation of it, using resets from saved states and slowing down the game massively, took two years of work. While the in-game recording function of Doom boasts the first examples of using tools to complete a speedrun without mistakes, it wasn’t until 2003 that the internet at large picked up on the idea, starting with an 11-minute run of Super Mario Bros by a Japanese gamer named Morimoto. ![]() That said, labeling them as easy, with no skill involved, is a reduction as oversimplified as “platformers just move the player character to the right.” And it’s true that they shouldn’t be compared to conventional speedruns-tools create an unfair advantage that often leaves regular speedruns far behind. Because the tools make the speedrunning “easier,” many don’t consider them legitimate. Such tools may slow the game down, reveal hidden data, or allow the TAS creator to back up and try again when a mistake is made. And then there’s the tool-assisted speedrun, or TAS. Similar to a regular speedrun, the aim is (usually) to play through the game as quickly as possible, but with tools that assist (surprising, I know). Many fans of video gaming are familiar with the concept of speedruns, be it through the semiannual streams of Games Done Quick, the old competitions among DOOM players, or just sitting down with a friend to see who can beat Super Mario Land the fastest, speedruns have long been considered a display of skill, a demonstration of both extensive knowledge of the game in question and the reflexes and speed to put that knowledge into action.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |