Is the deliberate creation of lag cheating?

2016-01-09 04:46:26 pm

In starcraft, if you lag up your computer, it is possible to overflow the order buffer, causing a whole load of unintended effects, such as production not being stopped when you cancel it, allowing for infinite money, or units failing to die when they get to 0 life, making them permanently invincible. This is possible without the use of hacks or cheats, and only requires that you run programs in the background (such as a whole load of google chrome windows).

Technically, I suppose that this does mean that you are using third-party programs in a way that impacts your game, but on a computer deliberately made to be laggy, it may be possible to do this even without running programs to slow it down.

I think it probably should not be allowed, but it is notable that this is possible without hacking the game.

Thread title:

Softman25

2016-01-09 05:41:57 pm

Generally speaking, any 'lag creation' should be done within the confines of the game. So using third party programs is generally frowned upon. (See as an example, DK64 orange clips.)

Further, a speedrun is generally considered to be done on a game that is running as intended, normally. So if you can 'normally' create the lag (or other unintended effect), all good, if not, probably not OK. (As another example, see crooked cart N64 stuff - not OK because you have to manipulate the hardware, and the game is not therefore 'running as intended'.)

Zergreenone

2016-01-10 03:36:25 am

I'm not really saying anything, but there are two notes I would like to add.

Firstly, starcraft is an old game, and running it on a modern computer means that it is running better than intended, and it is practically impossible to lag the game on a modern computer without having another program slowing your game down. On the computers that it was designed for, however, it probably would be possible to lag the game without using another program.

Secondly, less to do with the overarching topic and more to do with the specific glitch, I might have been wrong in the way the glitch works. I know that some hacks work by overflowing the order buffer, and that is what I set out to achieve, but looking through the patch notes it says something in patch 1.01 about fixing a resource glitch based on lag, and I believe this is what I used. Still, this doesn't really change that much.

LotBlind

2016-01-10 03:15:26 pm

Another thing to consider is if using the glitching makes is inconvenient for runners to set themselves up so as to be able to do the same. E.g. there's a game I study where early versions require Win XP to be installed. While not the biggest issue in the world, it's still enough so I wouldn't force it on people to have to do that, which is why those versions exist as their own category.

How predictable is getting the desired effects? Do you remember them happening (or know of it) "back then"? If the effects are sort of random and can even cause graphics glitching etc., it's difficult to accept that sort of behaviour and it might cause the community to be put off to running the game. Certainly try and find old runners and ask them if they've given it thought.

Zergreenone

2016-01-10 04:13:47 pm

Yeah, it probably would be inconvenient for other runners. I probably won't use it.

I don't really remember it happening much, I was only 0 years old when starcraft first got released. I don't really know how predictable getting it to occur on old hardware is.

ais523

2016-01-10 04:25:35 pm

This came up as a debate in the Enigma IL community (I got a very good time for a level via lagging the computer using background programs as it loaded). The developers decided that doing so wasn't a bug worth fixing. (Luckily, I eventually made the debate moot by pulling off the same IL strategy without the lag, but the lag made it easier.) If game developers are considering this sort of behaviour to be cheating, then presumably it should be disallowed.

(This differs from creating lag by getting a lot of sprites onscreen or similar in-game actions, of course; that's in-game rather than out-of-game behaviour.)