Speed Runner Beats Ocarina of Time in Less Than 19 Minutes

The_Echo

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008Zulu said:
I'm not disputing or belittling his skill, rather that he is being praised for, what would be under any other circumstances, cheating.
Well, it's not cheating here, so don't act like it is.

This is how an Ocarina of Time any% speedrun looks. This is what people do for the run. All Ocarina of Time any% runs will follow this basic route.

A speedrun is by no means playing the game normally. If this were purported as a casual run of the game, then yes, he'd be cheating. But this is a speedrun, the purpose of which being to get from the beginning of the game to the end of the game in as fast a time as possible. That's what Cosmo did, and he did it well.

CriticKitten said:
The rules do not give Cosmo or anyone else any sort of competitive advantage.
Yes, clearly being able to skip 90% of the game is not a competitive advantage. How about we compete in a game of Pokemon. You start at Pallet Town and I'll start on Victory Road with a team of Lvl 100 mons. Fair, right? Totally equal.
You have no clue what you're talking about.

Every any% run looks like this. Every OoT speedrunner doing the any% category does this route. Cosmo has no edge over the other speedrunners other than his own skill. Every runner is on equal footing in the any% category because they all follow the same basic route.

Your analogy makes no sense. You might as well be comparing a first playthrough to a world record speedrun. They don't match up, they are nowhere near the same thing.

Phrozenflame500 said:
Oh, it's the old "glitches don't count" argument by people who don't understand how speedrunning works. Dammit, and here I thought we were finally getting the recognition we deserve.
If only.
 

Zombie_Fish

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t850terminator said:
OoT? Meh, Wind Waker FTW...
But, hmm... impressive speedrun...
Cosmo also did a 100% run of Wind Waker a while back. You can find the whole thing on his Twitch channel but it's ~35 hours long; a summary of what he's collected is here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIJF8Tc2aqs].
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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DrOswald said:
RJ 17 said:
Revnak said:
In baseball you're clearly not supposed to intentionally walk a guy, but what are they gonna do about it when you do? In football, you really shouldn't just put half of your defenders 50 yards back, but if there's one play left and the score is 19-14, why wouldn't you? It is a clear example of doing whatever it is you have to to win as best as you can as long as the rules allow it. This whole spirit of the game thing is irrelevant to this level or style of play.
The difference is that in both cases, what the team has decided to do falls completely within the rules of the game. There's no rule that says you can't intentionally walk a batter that's dangerous, just as there's no rule that says you can't drop your entire defense back into 50 yard coverage. So long as the pitcher is throwing the ball towards home plate in baseball and the defense has 11 players on the field in football, they can use whatever strategy they want.

What is going on in this video goes outside of the "rules" of the game. Namely: you can walk through solid walls. The only reason you can is because there's no ref to call foul. :p

Quite simply: it's exploitation of bad coding (a glitch, an error that should not exist) and not simply exploitation of a mechanic (a well thought strategy such as intentionally walking a batter or dropping into deep coverage to prevent the Hail Mary pass).
I think the actual problem here is that we disagree with what the rules actually are. Your camp is arguing that the rules are what the developer intended. My camp is arguing that the rules are what the developer actually wrote.

I would argue that there is absolutely no rule that says you can't clip though that door - if it is not in the rule book, it is not a rule.
But this gets back to the other half of our conversation. You just got done explaining the difference between a glitch and a design flaw - to which I can say fair enough - however now you're saying that its fine to exploit such a glitch. In the OOT case, clipping through that wall isn't a design flaw (which the Yoshi's Island and Metroid examples are), it's an actual glitch. Just as the bridge builders intended to use high quality steel, the developers clearly intended for that wall to be solid. As I said to Revnak: the only reason you can get away with clipping through walls or exploiting any other glitch in a game is because there's no built-in ref to blow a whistle and say "You can't do that!" The design of the game wasn't flawed, for all intents and purposes that room is supposed to be sealed. However just like a bridge with bad steal, there were imperfections within the coding that allowed for Link to escape that sealed room. It's not like they forgot to make it so that the door can't be opened, allowing for someone to simply walk back through it. It's not as though there's some secret tunnel that you can crawl through to leave the boss' chamber. There's nothing wrong with the design of that room, while there is something wrong with the design of 1-E: it doesn't have a ceiling when clearly it should.

Which brings us back to my emphasis on what you're "supposed" to be able to do in games vs what you actually can do in games. You're supposed to not be able to go through that wall, but you can anyways. I'll submit that technically since there is no ceiling on 1-E that there's nothing that says you can't go up that high. I still say you're exploiting weak coding (that could have made the trigger zone extend all the way to the top of the screen), but clearly they should have put a ceiling on that level. As such it does fall under the realm of "design flaw", just like the Metroid platform. However I think we can both agree that the OOT case isn't a design flaw, but an actual glitch. And sticking consistent with the points I've been discussing so far, it's glitch abuse that I find to be unimpressive.
 

DrOswald

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CriticKitten said:
DrOswald said:
No, he is not bending any rule. He is not ignoring any established rules. Because if the rule book (the code) says you can do these things. You are making up arbitrary rules on what you think is acceptable and what is not.
This is the most nonsensical argument I've ever seen. You're literally claiming that any bug, glitch, or exploit in a video game is completely legitimate to use because "it's in the game", regardless of what the dev's intentions were. This is ludicrous to say the least. There's a reason that exploits, bugs, and glitches get fixed in more modern games via patching in the first place: because they are not supposed to be there, and using them to gain an advantage is absolutely cheating under any standard definition.

I don't think you understand. YOU are the one making up the rules of what the "correct" way to play the game is. Cosmo follows the rules exactly as they are written.
Except that I'm not. The proper way to play the game is a well established fact. It's this "speedrun community" that made up its own rules for how to play, not me.

Well, lets be clear. Once again, Cosmo did win the game through the standard rule set. You are the one insisting that he must adhere to additional rules for it to be legitimate.
No I'm not! I'm insisting that his run is not a "beat the game" run because he didn't follow the original rules established by the game itself! Why is this so hard for some people to comprehend, that the "community's rules" are not the actual rules of the bloody game?

The rules do not give Cosmo or anyone else any sort of competitive advantage.
Yes, clearly being able to skip 90% of the game is not a competitive advantage. How about we compete in a game of Pokemon. You start at Pallet Town and I'll start on Victory Road with a team of Lvl 100 mons. Fair, right? Totally equal.

But he did complete the game by the rules established by the game and its devs.
Did he complete all of the story content? No, he didn't. So he didn't complete the game's rules as established by the devs, no. Let's stop being ridiculous here for just a minute or two.

And if you are going to say that he cheated you need to give me an actual reason why using glitches and exploits is cheating. You have failed to do so. I am not demanding you respect him, I am demanding that you not call him a cheater without reason. Because you have given no reason exploits and glitches are cheats besides the fact that some people say so.
*massages temples*

So despite the fact that use of exploits are clearly labeled by a vast majority of the overall gaming community as "cheating", especially in a competitive environment, that doesn't matter, because the much smaller "speedrun community" has decided that they're a-okay.

Yeah, right, whatever. This argument's going nowhere fast. Just drop it.
But this is the point. The overall gaming community has decided that exploits and glitches are not cheating in this case.
 

The Bandit

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The ignorance in this thread is absolutely astounding. It's truly embarrassing to see. Here's something you should keep in mind: while everyone is entitled to an opinion, not all opinions are equal. Educate yourself before you start spouting out garbage.
 

AgedGrunt

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>Big thread on a high-profile speed run.
>Expected thread hijack by obsessive Zelda fans.
>Stayed for Cosmo.
>Find out everyone is an authority on speed-running.
>TheseAreMyRules.png
>Glitching old games that existed before patching is now cheating and shouldn't be counted.

This thread is the most perfect definition of the Internet, ever.

And yes, if you can do it, it counts. The community will distinguish special/full runs.
 

DrOswald

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RJ 17 said:
DrOswald said:
RJ 17 said:
Revnak said:
In baseball you're clearly not supposed to intentionally walk a guy, but what are they gonna do about it when you do? In football, you really shouldn't just put half of your defenders 50 yards back, but if there's one play left and the score is 19-14, why wouldn't you? It is a clear example of doing whatever it is you have to to win as best as you can as long as the rules allow it. This whole spirit of the game thing is irrelevant to this level or style of play.
The difference is that in both cases, what the team has decided to do falls completely within the rules of the game. There's no rule that says you can't intentionally walk a batter that's dangerous, just as there's no rule that says you can't drop your entire defense back into 50 yard coverage. So long as the pitcher is throwing the ball towards home plate in baseball and the defense has 11 players on the field in football, they can use whatever strategy they want.

What is going on in this video goes outside of the "rules" of the game. Namely: you can walk through solid walls. The only reason you can is because there's no ref to call foul. :p

Quite simply: it's exploitation of bad coding (a glitch, an error that should not exist) and not simply exploitation of a mechanic (a well thought strategy such as intentionally walking a batter or dropping into deep coverage to prevent the Hail Mary pass).
I think the actual problem here is that we disagree with what the rules actually are. Your camp is arguing that the rules are what the developer intended. My camp is arguing that the rules are what the developer actually wrote.

I would argue that there is absolutely no rule that says you can't clip though that door - if it is not in the rule book, it is not a rule.
But this gets back to the other half of our conversation. You just got done explaining the difference between a glitch and a design flaw - to which I can say fair enough - however now you're saying that its fine to exploit such a glitch. In the OOT case, clipping through that wall isn't a design flaw (which the Yoshi's Island and Metroid examples are), it's an actual glitch. Just as the bridge builders intended to use high quality steel, the developers clearly intended for that wall to be solid. As I said to Revnak: the only reason you can get away with clipping through walls or exploiting any other glitch in a game is because there's no built-in ref to blow a whistle and say "You can't do that!" The design of the game wasn't flawed, for all intents and purposes that room is supposed to be sealed. However just like a bridge with bad steal, there were imperfections within the coding that allowed for Link to escape that sealed room. It's not like they forgot to make it so that the door can't be opened, allowing for someone to simply walk back through it. It's not as though there's some secret tunnel that you can crawl through to leave the boss' chamber. There's nothing wrong with the design of that room, while there is something wrong with the design of 1-E: it doesn't have a ceiling when clearly it should.

Which brings us back to my emphasis on what you're "supposed" to be able to do in games vs what you actually can do in games. You're supposed to not be able to go through that wall, but you can anyways. I'll submit that technically since there is no ceiling on 1-E that there's nothing that says you can't go up that high. I still say you're exploiting weak coding (that could have made the trigger zone extend all the way to the top of the screen), but clearly they should have put a ceiling on that level. As such it does fall under the realm of "design flaw", just like the Metroid platform. However I think we can both agree that the OOT case isn't a design flaw, but an actual glitch. And sticking consistent with the points I've been discussing so far, it's glitch abuse that I find to be unimpressive.
But where your baseball analogy breaks down is that there is an umpire. The umpire is the console, and it's judgments are always perfect interpretations of the rules as they are written. What you are arguing is closer to the idea that a given rule (lets say walking a runner) should not be allowed because it was an oversight in the creation of the rules and against the spirit of the game and the intention of the designers of baseball.

I said before that the problem is that we disagree on what the rules actually are. This is technically incorrect - we know exactly what the rules are. They are explicitly and exactly defined in the code. What we disagree on is actually what the rules should be.

And I totally get where you are coming from with your idea that the rules should be how the game was meant to be played. The problem with that idea is that you are only really looking at the cases that fall easily and obviously into one side, but there is a massive area of uncertainty. You are arguing for a competition without clearly defined rules, only general guidelines. This is because you are basing what you think the rules should be on developer intent (which you cannot possibly know) glitches vs design flaws (which are often impossible to distinguish) and the spirit of the game (which no two people will exactly agree upon). Even worse, these three guidelines are often conflicting. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of edge cases that are do not clearly fall into either side. In OOT alone. Who gets to define that line? What happens if there is a rules dispute?

From a purely practical standpoint your standard of "play the game how it should be played" is impossible to consistently define and extremely toxic to a competitive environment. I am not saying you have to find it impressive, but the reasons we allow glitches, the reason we interpret the rules as we do, are important and make for a much better and interesting competitive environment.
 

sinterklaas

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Speedrunning is finishing the game as fast as possible using any means possible within the scope of the game. Glitches and bugs fall into this category. Memory hacking for example would not because that'd require outside interference.

And besides, performing most of these glitches is damn hard to do, way harder than anything you would be required to do in a glitchless run. Which, by the way, is a different bracket than Any% and seperate WRs exist for both.
 

Sean951

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I take issue with the claim that he "beat" the game. No. He did not beat it, he reached the end of the game, but by skipping most of it, I can't cell it beating. Especially since it abuses where kid Link spawns after saving to effectively warp. Yeah, this is it's own category, but the terminology needs to catch up.
 

sinterklaas

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Sean951 said:
I take issue with the claim that he "beat" the game. No. He did not beat it, he reached the end of the game, but by skipping most of it, I can't cell it beating. Especially since it abuses where kid Link spawns after saving to effectively warp. Yeah, this is it's own category, but the terminology needs to catch up.
If beating the end boss/completing the final challenge and getting the credits rolling is not beating the game, then what is? Having to play an arbitrary percentage of additional content? If I take all the warp pipes in Mario and skip 80% of the levels have I not beaten the game? It doesn't matter how he did it, as long as it's possible within the game.
 

Sean951

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sinterklaas said:
Sean951 said:
I take issue with the claim that he "beat" the game. No. He did not beat it, he reached the end of the game, but by skipping most of it, I can't cell it beating. Especially since it abuses where kid Link spawns after saving to effectively warp. Yeah, this is it's own category, but the terminology needs to catch up.
If beating the end boss/completing the final challenge and getting the credits rolling is not beating the game, then what is? Having to play an arbitrary percentage of additional content? If I take all the warp pipes in Mario and skip 80% of the levels have I not beaten the game? It doesn't matter how he did it, as long as it's possible within the game.
To me, beating the game means he beat the story missions, i.e. beat the required dungeons. I'm not taking away from what he did, I certainly can't do it, but I feel the wording takes away from the people who beat it "legitimately."

"Oh, you beat it in 3 hours? Well it says this guy did it in 19 minutes..."

It's a problem of terminology in my mind.
 

The_Echo

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CriticKitten said:
What is at question here, what has always been at question here, is whether or not completion of 10% of the game using heavy doses of exploits qualifies as "beating the game" or not.
Well this is entirely arbitrary and up to your opinion.

Like, how much of the game must you play before you've "beaten" it? 100%? 50%? Where's the line? Every game counts its percent differently, can there be a strict "amount" of a game you must play? In a speedrun, the run normally ends at credits, and that's a definition of beating the game. Not yours, obviously. But it is one.
I don't care if it follows "house rules", that doesn't make it a equal run to someone who plays 100% of a game and beats 100% of the game legitimately.
Nobody said that it is.

And yet, cue the dozens of speedrun fans who have kept telling me "oh but the rules say", acting as if that matters.
Why doesn't it matter? Because the game is being played in a way you don't like?
And it's annoying, because it's like you didn't read what I said at all.
Well, in my case the part I quoted specifically was the part I was responding to.
[small]You don't expect me to keep up with all the arguments happening in this thread, do you?[/small]

Or, to use your own damn arguments against you, there's a reason that separate 'categories' exist. Your "Any%" speedrun junk != a 100% clearing of the game.
Yeah, no shit. Nobody ever said they were equal. Where does this even come from?
[small]Well maybe someone did but if they did they were dead wrong.[/small]
 

Olas

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008Zulu said:
I don't recognize his achievement. Exploiting glitches to beat a game should invalidate the entire effort.
As much as I similarly hate it, I'd imagine there's a significant gray area when it comes to what is or isn't a glitch, which can make that a somewhat arbitrary line to draw. For example, is the fact that Link runs slightly faster going backwards a glitch? Because it obviously wasn't the intention of the creators for people to travel backwards through the whole game.

To make something truly competitive you have to have hard rules, and you can't call people out for playing a game 'the wrong way' if they stay within those rules. That being said there are speedruns with certain requirements like defeating all dungeons or getting 100% items which would probably more closely align with how you think the game should be played.
 

The_Echo

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CriticKitten said:
The title of the thread, for starters?
In my previous post I already said that the definition of "beating a game" is up to you.

You're arguing semantics. Where is the line drawn? How much game do you have to play before you're allowed to say you've "beaten" it? The specific line you took was in response to a sentence comparing a speedrun to a 100% playthrough. Do you need to get 100% before you've "legitimately" beaten the game? Is that what you think?

I'd like to know.

most of the people objecting were commenting on the bullshit-ness of the article's title. >_>
Which is entirely your opinion and not some kind of objective fact. Clearly those of us in this thread who follow speedruns and are a part of the community see it differently.

It's not like it's an essay, it's a few posts of a few paragraphs' length at best. You can manage that much. No excuse.
You're right, it's not an essay. I shouldn't really have to put in any effort at all.
 

Alex Mac

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It takes hours and hours of practice and optimization for this sort of thing. People want to act as if what Cosmo is doing is "cheating" but I promise you that most of the people saying that would struggle amazingly to pull off a great deal of the things he's doing. Sit down, crack out Ocarina of Time, and see if you can figure out how he's doing that water extended super slide from Zora's to Kakariko. Then see if you can do it without dropping it 9 times out of ten. And that's just one trick!

People who want to moan about any% runs don't really understand just how hard it is to do these things. OoT is nearly air tight in routing at this point (unless something major happens); these records are down to matters of mere seconds and hinge upon technical execution to a high degree. What's being done here is not easy and certainly deserves recognition.

As a side note, OoT just got a new 100% record as well. Look it up. Then lament that even 100% runs use glitches and understand that is how speedrunning goes.
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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DrOswald said:
I disagree, I think it's pretty easy to tell what the developer's intent was, and using that you can easily determine "the rules of the game". Judging by the fact that the moment you step into the boss room the door slams shut behind you, startles link, and is even sealed with iron bars, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the developers did not intend for you to leave that chamber without killing the boss in the proper fashion. Those are the rules. The rules aren't defined by code.

To further clarify that, the code in a game is akin to free will in reality. Sure, according to the code you can pass through that wall, but are you supposed to? In real life, you can go on a murderous rampage, but are you supposed to? The rules of society are set in the form of laws. Laws are simply words, and have absolutely no power to stop you if you make a decision to go contrary to them. Coding is just...well...coding. It can't stop you from exploiting it if you find such a flaw and decide to exploit it. Does that mean we can't see what the intention behind the coding was meant to be? No. We can see that the developers clearly didn't want you to leave that room. Just as we can see that society clearly doesn't want you to go around murdering people.

So no, I still disagree with you on the notion that it's impossible to come up with rules for a game or adhere to them because it's impossible to know what the developer's intent was. Most games have a tendency to obey the laws of physics, and unless there's a valid reason given in the game for having a character being able to pass through solid matter (i.e. they're a ghost or something) then you're not supposed to be able to pass through solid matter. I really can't see this in any way other than black and white.

Quite simply, there shouldn't be an argument over the phrase "how the game was meant to be played"...as we should all already know what that means. It means not exploiting things such as clipping glitches, trigger avoidances, or side-jump short-cuts. All of those things are neat tricks, I'll give you that, but they still all obviously go beyond the bounds of what the developers intended. What did the developers intend for 1-E? They intended the level to be pretty challenging due to a slow self-scrolling screen. What did the developers intend for Metroid? They intended that you shouldn't be able to reach that ledge and skip a massive chunk of the game. What did the developers intend for OOT? They intended that you'd beat the boss then go outside to watch the tree die. If you're trying to argue against that, it'd be like trying to argue "Well maybe the engineers MEANT to use faulty steel to build the bridge so that it could easily be destroyed." I highly doubt any developer intends to use faulty code so that you can clip through walls and skip past the game.

So yeah, I understand that people like speed runs. I understand that there's different categories of speed runs. I understand that people like these various different categories of speed runs. And I understand that not everyone is going to play by the rules of the games. All that said, however, I still won't find it to be impressive or anything other than cheating, and as such not worthy of holding a record. Does that mean I'm going to start a petition to have such records removed? Of course not. I just won't ever really give a damn about them. :p