Metroid Speedrunning Marathon 2015

Edit history:

TheMG2: 2015-06-07 07:24:36 pm

2015-06-07 07:06:42 pm

I think things went really well. I really am glad Daryoshi's 22% run went really well, and that Metroid177 got a chance to show off 6%.

A couple things:

Video on how to connect to RTMP server, mumble, etc. I had to help Daryoshi the day of the event by helping him understand the instructions (he isn't a native english speaker). Videos would probably be easier to follow.

Have each runner + commentator do test connections to the RTMP server and mumble some time prior to the event. I know there wasn't much time exactly to do this this year, but it should probably be done in the future.

I heard confusion from both R_web and metroid177 on when their runs were. R_web was not expecting to run at 7AM (He thought it was PM) and metroid177 didn't expect his run to be on Saturday (he found out way earlier that day).

EDIT: Also, THANK YOU MLSTRM for getting this marathon going after kirbymastah quit organizing the marathon

Miles

2015-06-07 08:35:32 pm

Have sign-ups instead of immediately declaring which categories done by which specific runners you want.

Littlenino

Edit history:

Littlenino: 2015-06-07 09:36:10 pm

2015-06-07 09:02:35 pm

MG2 covered most of the points I would have wanted to raise, but I might as well add my 2 cents to the mix (some of which will probably just be expansions of what he's already touched on)

First and foremost, I'll touch on the issue of setup. While setup went fine for some games, there were others that had, to put it rather bluntly, atrocious setup times (I don't mean to be an ass about it, just saying it for how it was). Fortunately, almost all of these were cases of either miscommunication or just a general breakdown of organization due to the very-last-minute change in host, so this is something that can easily be improved on in the future.

Furtermore, to expand upon MG2's point of having each runner+commmentator do test connections to the RTMP and mumble, you could take advantage of this to get a rough sound check of what to expect for the game and commentary audio levels, and allow for being able to get them balanced before the game's marathon run is due to begin. Some games (Primarily the ones with louder game audio) had sound balancing issues at the start of their run, resulting in the first 15-20 minutes of the run having inaudible commentary.

And probably the biggest point, COMMUNICATION. MG2 already mentioned it but I feel the need to reiterate it because it's extremely important. R_Web literally had no idea his run was actually at 7AM until SIX HOURS before his run was due to begin (He thought it was 7PM). He actually wouldn't have even found out had I not mentioned it to him while he was streaming practice that night, so this is something that really needs to be taken care of for next time.

Also, Thank you again, MLSTRM, for essentially saving this event by picking up the organizational reins. You did a great job for the limited time you had to get things re-organized, and I would love to participate again next year if given the opportunity.

MG2 covered most of the points I would have wanted to raise, but I might as well add my 2 cents to the mix (some of which will probably just be expansions of what he's already touched on)

First and foremost, I'll touch on the issue of setup. While setup went fine for some games, there were others that had, to put it rather bluntly, atrocious setup times (I don't mean to be an ass about it, just saying it for how it was). Fortunately, almost all of these were cases of either miscommunication or just a general breakdown of organization due to the very-last-minute change in host, so this is something that can easily be improved on in the future.

Furtermore, to expand upon MG2's point of having each runner+commmentator do test connections to the RTMP and mumble, you could take advantage of this to get a rough sound check of what to expect for the game and commentary audio levels, and allow for being able to get them balanced before the game's marathon run is due to begin. Some games (Primarily the ones with louder game audio) had sound balancing issues at the start of their run, resulting in the first 15-20 minutes of the run having inaudible commentary.

And probably the biggest point, COMMUNICATION. MG2 already mentioned it but I feel the need to reiterate it because it's extremely important. R_Web literally had no idea his run was actually at 7AM until SIX HOURS before his run was due to begin (He thought it was 7PM). He actually wouldn't have even found out had I not mentioned it to him while he was streaming practice that night, so this is something that really needs to be taken care of for next time.

Also, Thank you again, MLSTRM, for essentially saving this event by picking up the organizational reins. You did a great job for the limited time you had to get things re-organized, and I would love to participate again next year if given the opportunity.

TheMG2

2015-06-07 09:35:12 pm

Quote from Miles:

Have sign-ups instead of immediately declaring which categories done by which specific runners you want.

There are some benefits and disadvantages to both approaches. I definitely understand why kirby went with the approach he did (showing off different members of the community rather than just the same ones that you always see). And if you just went with the standard sign ups, we might not have had some of the great runs that we did (the chances of Daryoshi signing up otherwise might have been slim).

A combination of sign ups and asking people to submit might not be a bad idea in the future.

Miles

Edit history:

Miles: 2015-06-07 09:40:34 pm

2015-06-07 09:39:30 pm

So there's no one who would've gone "Hey Daryoshi, a topic was just posted about the Metroid Marathon, you should post and offer to do Prime Low(ish)%"?

I suppose this would go back to the "lack of communication" issue...

heero_fred

2015-06-07 10:09:00 pm

event was amazing, and went surprisingly well considering how late MLSTRM took the lead, shoutouts to him and everyone who helped

What went well:

-Almost every run, most of them had amazing commentary, were fast and entertaining.
-Chat was amazing for most of the runs with the usual exceptions but even then it was "tame" and could have been worse
-Showcasing Prime 22% and 6% was a great idea
-AM2R stole the show again, but the low%s and the clutch Fusion race were great highlights too

What could have been better:

-Enforcing runners to safety save, this is a marathon run, not a pb attempt, if you are going to enter a high risk area is better to waste a few seconds saving (this doesn't apply to the SM race, but could), There were a lot of points in a lot of runs were the runners almost died and had no save nearby.

-Making sure at least a week prior that every runner and commentator know how to connect to an rtmp server and how to setup mumble/team speak/whatever.

-I agree with Miles that having sign ups for next marathon should be a thing, it can make it so unexpected runs or runners sign up.

-Have dedicated commentators for Super Metroid races and let the runners focus on playing, that run is already hard the way it is.

event was amazing, and went surprisingly well considering how late MLSTRM took the lead, shoutouts to him and everyone who helped

What went well:

-Almost every run, most of them had amazing commentary, were fast and entertaining.
-Chat was amazing for most of the runs with the usual exceptions but even then it was "tame" and could have been worse
-Showcasing Prime 22% and 6% was a great idea
-AM2R stole the show again, but the low%s and the clutch Fusion race were great highlights too

What could have been better:

-Enforcing runners to safety save, this is a marathon run, not a pb attempt, if you are going to enter a high risk area is better to waste a few seconds saving (this doesn't apply to the SM race, but could), There were a lot of points in a lot of runs were the runners almost died and had no save nearby.

-Making sure at least a week prior that every runner and commentator know how to connect to an rtmp server and how to setup mumble/team speak/whatever.

-I agree with Miles that having sign ups for next marathon should be a thing, it can make it so unexpected runs or runners sign up.

-Have dedicated commentators for Super Metroid races and let the runners focus on playing, that run is already hard the way it is.

TheMG2

Edit history:

TheMG2: 2015-06-07 10:34:20 pm

2015-06-07 10:17:41 pm

Quote from heero_fred:

-Enforcing runners to safety save, this is a marathon run, not a pb attempt, if you are going to enter a high risk area is better to waste a few seconds saving (this doesn't apply to the SM race, but could), There were a lot of points in a lot of runs were the runners almost died and had no save nearby.

If you're not going to do this, make sure they have backup saves otherwise. Even though they're technically not going to be from the same run, marathons aren't about pbing like you said.

EDIT: Miles actually did that last year instead of the making a safety save as the run goes along route.

R Web

2015-06-08 02:18:08 am

Not knowing the run was at 7 AM was mostly my fault. I knew the schedule had changed but I misread the time (I'm not used to the 24-hour time format). Perhaps in the future you could list the time in 12-hour format as well, to prevent stupid mistakes like that from happening. I certainly won't make that mistake again, but you definitely don't want anyone else to.

Also, I didn't list 7 AM as one of my available times. I don't know if it was mentioned that some people's schedules couldn't be accommodated, but that was part of the reason I assumed it was 7 PM.

That said, I thought the marathon went pretty well and I was glad to be a part of it. Thanks again to MLSTRM for organizing everything; you did a great job with the limited time you had.

kirbymastah

Edit history:

kirbymastah: 2015-06-08 09:24:30 am

2015-06-08 09:24:19 am

<(^_^)>

First off, thanks a lot to everyone (especially mlstrm) for picking up the organization after I decided to drop this. It's impressive that the marathon even happened in the originally planned time; there was a lot of miscommunication and confusion going on in the skype group due to the changes in organization but I think we all learned a lot from it. Most of the issues stem from either the runners' end, or from the last-minute preparations thanks to the change in organization. I personally still think this should've been delayed a month or so but as it wasn't in my hands anymore, that's whatever.

As for me manually asking runners about doing runs (instead of letting runners sign up), there are both pros and cons to this. The main problem with the organization was communication; this was made evident for examples like itspersonnal dropping out last minute and angelisx asking me again about other m. An annoying thing about this is, not everyone uses the same form of communication. Skype seems to be the most reliable, but a good number of runners do NOT use skype regularly. I sorta alleviated this problem by assigning communication tasks to three people (such that I give messages to those people, and they relay those messages to certain groups of runners/commentators) but I dropped the organization after that, and I think communication was sorta dropped from some runners, which was my mistake.

It's because of this that it's hard to have ONLY a general sign-up; not everyone-potentially-involved is going to know that there are sign-ups for a metroid marathon, and if the organizer goes out of their way to ask those said runners, you're basically asking them to sign up. It still wouldn't hurt to actually have a sign-up for next time, but considering this obviously isn't on the scale of GDQ/ESA, we obviously can't purely go with sign-ups.

There were also some issues with testing rtmp servers; though this is partly on runners' ends for not testing, I don't think the set-up instructions were sent out early enough and they didn't quite emphasize that the runner should test the rtmp server EARLY. Again, this is partly due to the fact that a lot of organization was last-minute thanks to me dropping, but it's still something worth pointing out.

There was also a lot of empty time between runs; I think that runs should generally be scheduled in the middle of runners' availability, such that they have some leeway to do their respective runs up to an hour early+late. What was a sort of a problem, was that 22% and 6% have really high estimates due to their risky nature; it may have been helpful to discuss if someone available could maybe squeeze in a short category of some other metroid game if we end up cutting estimate by over an hour or something like that (maybe 200 missiles in fusion, which is ~50min RTA? stuff like that)

In general, all things considered, I'm surprised the marathon ran at all, and it went pretty well despite some hiccups here and there. Basically most of the issues can be attributed to me dropping organization, and a lot of resulting last-minute miscommunication from that; if that doesn't happen next time, then most of these issues will be resolved.

First off, thanks a lot to everyone (especially mlstrm) for picking up the organization after I decided to drop this. It's impressive that the marathon even happened in the originally planned time; there was a lot of miscommunication and confusion going on in the skype group due to the changes in organization but I think we all learned a lot from it. Most of the issues stem from either the runners' end, or from the last-minute preparations thanks to the change in organization. I personally still think this should've been delayed a month or so but as it wasn't in my hands anymore, that's whatever.

As for me manually asking runners about doing runs (instead of letting runners sign up), there are both pros and cons to this. The main problem with the organization was communication; this was made evident for examples like itspersonnal dropping out last minute and angelisx asking me again about other m. An annoying thing about this is, not everyone uses the same form of communication. Skype seems to be the most reliable, but a good number of runners do NOT use skype regularly. I sorta alleviated this problem by assigning communication tasks to three people (such that I give messages to those people, and they relay those messages to certain groups of runners/commentators) but I dropped the organization after that, and I think communication was sorta dropped from some runners, which was my mistake.

It's because of this that it's hard to have ONLY a general sign-up; not everyone-potentially-involved is going to know that there are sign-ups for a metroid marathon, and if the organizer goes out of their way to ask those said runners, you're basically asking them to sign up. It still wouldn't hurt to actually have a sign-up for next time, but considering this obviously isn't on the scale of GDQ/ESA, we obviously can't purely go with sign-ups.

There were also some issues with testing rtmp servers; though this is partly on runners' ends for not testing, I don't think the set-up instructions were sent out early enough and they didn't quite emphasize that the runner should test the rtmp server EARLY. Again, this is partly due to the fact that a lot of organization was last-minute thanks to me dropping, but it's still something worth pointing out.

There was also a lot of empty time between runs; I think that runs should generally be scheduled in the middle of runners' availability, such that they have some leeway to do their respective runs up to an hour early+late. What was a sort of a problem, was that 22% and 6% have really high estimates due to their risky nature; it may have been helpful to discuss if someone available could maybe squeeze in a short category of some other metroid game if we end up cutting estimate by over an hour or something like that (maybe 200 missiles in fusion, which is ~50min RTA? stuff like that)

In general, all things considered, I'm surprised the marathon ran at all, and it went pretty well despite some hiccups here and there. Basically most of the issues can be attributed to me dropping organization, and a lot of resulting last-minute miscommunication from that; if that doesn't happen next time, then most of these issues will be resolved.

JaggerG

2015-06-08 05:54:22 pm

Jumping Turtle

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I believe there had been a taiga thread announcing the planning details of the marathon, and it had a text field you can use for offering runs, commentary, help, and relaying pretty much any other offers/details. Is it much different from having a page that submits specific details to specific people?

TheMG2

Edit history:

TheMG2: 2015-06-08 05:56:30 pm

2015-06-08 05:55:04 pm

EDIT: Reread post nvm

JaggerG

Edit history:

JaggerG: 2015-06-08 05:57:20 pm

2015-06-08 05:55:37 pm

Jumping Turtle

Edit: Oh

TheMG2

2015-06-08 05:57:39 pm

Well like, kirby had pretty much decided on runners for certain runs before planning even started kinda.

kirbymastah

2015-06-08 08:50:51 pm

<(^_^)>

Quote from TheMG2:

Well like, kirby had pretty much decided on runners for certain runs before planning even started kinda.

Yeah sorta. Last year it worked out fine since there were way fewer runners back then, so it was pretty much finding those 1-2 people for the correpsonding games/categories. Now, more games have many more runners