Portal Player Glitches His Way to World Record
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
I've been on the internet for 17 years. I've never seen any reasonable human being consider anything like what I posted as being even remotely close to being a bannable personal attack, or even a personal attack at all. If pointing out the hypocrisy of an internet forum poster (person A) who says that someone else (person B) has too much spare time is a personal attack, then how was the original post not a personal attack against person B? Just because they're not here it makes it okay?Lawyer105 said:
Also, telling someone that you think they're wrong is not, and has never been the same as telling them you think they're stupid, especially when you provide a highly detailed argument as to exactly why you think they're wrong. Which you didn't respond to, by the way.
I wholeheartedly agree. Portal is a game where you're suppose to think outside of the box, but not in a way where you're outside the actual map. If Valve recompiled the engine and handed him a new version of Portal with all the glitches removed (like shooting portals THROUGH walls) then his time would be drastically different.EHKOS said:
I'm pretty sure Guinness wouldn't except this after the very first glitch exploit.
Yeeeaaaahhhhh. Next time you find an item dupe exploit that hasn't been patched in an MMO and you start selling them for real &/or game money, do us a favor and get a stopwatch ready so you can tell us how fast it was from the first item duped to the ban hammer.Analogy said:
He could've gone through a no-glitch playthrough and gotten a fast as hell run. Instead he tried something more difficult. The amount of planning it takes to get these glitches to work is massive. It requires a ridiculous amount of precision.Samechiel said:
You can't compare this to a regular speedrun either, they're totally different rulesets.
Yes, it would be. But that is not the game that is being speedrun here! The game that is being speedrun here is a game with all sorts of glitches that allow a sufficiently creative and skillful player to sequence break the game. These glitches are part of the game, you can't arbitrarily disallow them just because you don't personally like them.FrossetMareritt said:
When Guinness sets criteria for a record, they define a strict set of rules under which the record is to be attempted. In the case of speed running a video game, the rules are the actions which the game allows you to make. Just because you don't like some of those actions doesn't mean that they are not still perfectly legitimate means to speed run a game. I suggest you actually watch some of the speed runs at Speed Demos Archive [http://www.speeddemosarchive.com], which is the de-facto repository for all speed running records. The rules set by SDA are the rules under which speed runs are attempted. And SDA allows glitch abuse. I'm not exactly sure what else I can say here that will get the point across.
If the MMO's TOS has rules against item duplication and RMT, then these actions are absolutely breaking the rules and are banworthy. What you're missing is that the MMO has an actual TOS on top of its game logic which serves as an additional set of rules for players to follow. Speedrunning doesn't have such a thing except for the rules set by the speed running community web sites that that certify and post speed runs, and SDA explicitly allows glitches. It doesn't matter what you think "should" be allowable, the game allows it, the speed running community allows and even encourages it, this is a legal and perfectly legitimate speed run.Analogy said:
The point I think we'll all (those of us that don't agree with this being a legit speed run) are saying is that the glitches were not intended by the devs/designers. We all understand that computers aren't perfect, the engine isn't perfect and the programmers sure as hell aren't prefect, but they didn't intentionally program those glitches in there. Those are the things that the programmers work on making patches for when they find out about them.Analogy said:
I'm not sure if you realize this but Guinness != SDA. So since I said nothing about the SDA your point is invalid.Analogy said:
This really, really, REALLY annoyed me because, like most other people, I struggled and grappled with this game and I loved it because it was a challenge . . . . but then I saw this video and it just . . . . my effort seemed like I was trying to die! And fail! And get shot by turrets! I may be just complaining here but this video made me feel like I wasn't even a gamer . . . .
You need to read up on your gaming history, especially when it comes to the phenomenon of Ascended Glitches [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AscendedGlitch].FrossetMareritt said:
When Quake first came out, it was obvious that the developers intended the player to be limited to a certain walking speed. What they didn't realize was that strafing at certain angles in the air and jumping when touching the ground to avoid friction would allow the player to move much faster than this. Thus, strafe-jumping was born.
The fix for this would be trivial - disallow acceleration in the air if such acceleration would raise the player's velocity over the cap velocity. What the developers and players found, however, was that strafe-jumping required skill to execute, and that every player had access to it and it was therefore fair. Strafe-jumping became an "official" feature of Quake from that point forward, despite originally being a glitch.
There are *countless* examples of similar glitches turning into actual features. Even when they could trivially be patched out, it is typically found that the glitch makes the game more interesting for people attempting to compete within it due to the skill requirement for executing it, and for the new realms of game space that they open up, so the glitch is left unpatched and effectively becomes part of the game.
What we're seeing with Portal are bugs that Valve could have patched - they have patched the game since its release and could easily have slipped bug fixes in with the patch. The fact is that they didn't. And a case can definitely be made that these glitches make the metagame of speedrunning far more interesting and skillful. If they were patched or disallowed from speed runs, eventually speedrunners would reach a point where it would be physically impossible to run the game any faster... Which is boring. Allowing the glitches increases the amount of gamespace that there is to explore, and increases the chances that a speed running record can be beaten in the future... Which is exciting. Also, I highly suggest that you watch the author's series of commentary videos [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziuj8KW_XQ0] describing his techniques to run the game. Some of these techniques require millimeter accuracy, millisecond timing, and the ability to make blind shots through walls. Many times, the author can't even reproduce the technique on the first or even fiftieth try. He mentions one level taking over six thousand tries to perfect. There is no way you can't argue that these glitches don't require skill to use.
It's quite valid. In the same way that Guinness is the record authority for many real-world records, and thus Guinness' rules are authoritative for attempts at breaking those records, SDA is the record authority for video game speed runs, and thus their rules are authoritative for attempts at breaking those records.Analogy said:
Also, for the record, Guinness does allow the use of glitches for video game speed runs, as evidenced by this entry [http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/Search/Details/Fastest-segmented-completion-of-Final-Fantasy-Tactics/117856.htm].