Series Runs

2009-01-14 11:21:43 pm

Has anybody ever considered running a series of games, e.g. Megaman 1-9?
I suppose one of the difficulties with some series would be figuring out what constitutes the series.
If a series has enough games, or the games are long enough, length would also be a problem.
And I haven't even begun to think about how much work goes into running a single game, let alone multiple ones, nor the effort that would be needed to verify.
Epic undertaking or pipe dream?
Any suggestions for series that might be possible?

Thread title:

Enhasa

2009-01-15 02:18:30 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Yeah for fun, here is an old thread by FODA. (I know you're supposed to bump old threads but please don't in this case.)

Might as well get this out of the way and make it clear: pipe dream. If nothing else, it's way too arbitrary for SDA. But even if it wasn't, you're either going to never finish or have to accept a sloppy run. Let's say you can pull off a good MM run 1/100 of the time (which is of course an extremely optimistic assumption). MM1-9 at that already very low level would be 1/10^18. You'd have a higher chance of winning Powerball twice in a row or dying from a meteor landing directly on your head.

Not to deter naive optimism because it's cute, but I'd tell someone that they would be doing a far greater service to both themselves and SDA if they just stuck to one game at a time. It's an academic exercise just thinking about it. It would never happen for the same reason there wouldn't be a published run of someone beating the same game 10 times in a row.

Yeah for fun, [url=http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,6269.0.html]here[/url] is an old thread by FODA. (I know you're supposed to bump old threads but please don't in this case.)

Might as well get this out of the way and make it clear: pipe dream. If nothing else, it's way too arbitrary for SDA. But even if it wasn't, you're either going to never finish or have to accept a sloppy run. Let's say you can pull off a good MM run 1/100 of the time (which is of course an extremely optimistic assumption). MM1-9 at that already very low level would be 1/10^18. You'd have a higher chance of winning Powerball twice in a row or dying from a meteor landing directly on your head.

Not to deter naive optimism because it's cute, but I'd tell someone that they would be doing a far greater service to both themselves and SDA if they just stuck to one game at a time. It's an academic exercise just thinking about it. It would never happen for the same reason there wouldn't be a published run of someone beating the same game 10 times in a row.

InsipidMuckyWater

2009-01-15 03:03:03 am

Visit my profile to see my runs!

Quote from Enhasa:

Not to deter naive optimism because it's cute

Someone please sig this.

Enhasa

2009-01-15 09:01:18 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Yours is open. Tongue

MustacheSamurai

2009-01-15 09:34:12 am

Looks like there was nominal interest in this kind of thing before. Thanks for the link.
I'm going to continue to be cute and naive, despite the improbability of this actually happening, and engage in the academic exercise.
The one megarun suggestion from the old thread that seemed the least improbable was Zelda I, both quests, and I think that's because they're both on the same cart. Most of the Megaman X series (1-6) has reappeared in one game, which would make it a prime candidate. Even if it's not official, I'd love to see a proof of concept video posted on youtube, even if only the first 3.
As for runs of the same game 10x, not going to happen, but take the number down to 2x and SDA almost has two of them: Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Megaman X8.

Carcinogen

2009-01-15 10:09:14 am

...I made a post in that thread? D=

It's a fun idea to run them one after another, but they're better off exactly as they are: concept runs. Perhaps someday I'll run every RE game in succession and be like "Yea dawg, I beat every RE game in a day. Sup?"

mikwuyma

2009-01-15 10:30:14 am

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Quote from Carcinogen:

...I made a post in that thread? D=

It's a fun idea to run them one after another, but they're better off exactly as they are: concept runs. Perhaps someday I'll run every RE game in succession and be like "Yea dawg, I beat every RE game in a day. Sup?"

If you do that, then Speed Gamers won't have a 72 hour RE marathon. Sad

Carcinogen

2009-01-15 11:15:38 am

Then I can be like "yea dawg, I beat every RE game in a day AND donated to Child's Play. Sup?"

dragonre

2009-01-15 01:27:42 pm

Vae Victus!

I think this is a brilliant idea. And in response to some of the comments on this thread, and FODA's original thread, it seems like a lot of concern is going towards the point that if you look at the run of each individual game they are not perfect, there may be deaths, and they certainly are not the fastest time possible. Consider the speed of of Mario Bros: Lost levels non wii run: the mario version he errs on the side of caution to get no deaths and sacrifices time, the luigi run he dies, the speed runs of diablo2 - multiple deaths. You cannot site deaths as a cause to invalidate a speed run. FFVI is an amazing ss speed run, and it's 4:48, so you cannot site multiple hour speed runs as being invalid.
Series runs is very similar to adding another category, like 100% runs, or low% runs. Like FODA points out, it adds a degree of difficulty to the game, if you screw up far down the line you get to start over. That has to be taken into consideration when judging the run, some deaths are allowed, and some non efficient moves must be allowed to accommodate the length and difficulty of the run.
Just give him a chance, let the boy play.

slowbro

2009-01-15 02:05:45 pm

I'd still like to see a full Mario All-Stars run Grin

but probably not on SDA unless it was incredibly good. Nobody would want to watch MY attempt at four Mario games in a row lol.

I agree, actually, that I was a bit harsh pointing out how far the single games were from the SDA times.

You guys might have known this, but for Twin Galaxies somebody played the first and second quests of Pitfall II, one right after the other, for perfect score (which means no deaths). I hear the second quest is very tough. It wasn't a speedrun though Sad

Enhasa

2009-01-15 03:31:51 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote from MustacheSamurai:

Looks like there was nominal interest in this kind of thing before. Thanks for the link.
I'm going to continue to be cute and naive, despite the improbability of this actually happening, and engage in the academic exercise.

Well don't get me wrong, it's never going to happen officially for SDA but it's a great topic to discuss just for fun. Kinda like the "how fast can you beat a game in real time, given frame advance" topic (here, I found it: http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,5920.0.html). You can get SMB1 2x speed (by stanski, idea and encode by slowbro) in that first post or just here.

Oh yeah and the "optimism" is about one of these getting on SDA, not "being able to speedrun SMB 1-3" or whatever. An optimism some people still have (maybe I should have moved this to general chat instead).

Carcinogen

2009-01-15 04:13:10 pm

Quote from dragonre:

I think this is a brilliant idea. And in response to some of the comments on this thread, and FODA's original thread, it seems like a lot of concern is going towards the point that if you look at the run of each individual game they are not perfect, there may be deaths, and they certainly are not the fastest time possible. Consider the speed of of Mario Bros: Lost levels non wii run: the mario version he errs on the side of caution to get no deaths and sacrifices time, the luigi run he dies, the speed runs of diablo2 - multiple deaths. You cannot site deaths as a cause to invalidate a speed run. FFVI is an amazing ss speed run, and it's 4:48, so you cannot site multiple hour speed runs as being invalid.
Series runs is very similar to adding another category, like 100% runs, or low% runs. Like FODA points out, it adds a degree of difficulty to the game, if you screw up far down the line you get to start over. That has to be taken into consideration when judging the run, some deaths are allowed, and some non efficient moves must be allowed to accommodate the length and difficulty of the run.
Just give him a chance, let the boy play.

We do not invalidate runs based on deaths; we have runs on the site that allow for death abuse. The issue is multiple games played in succession, not length. l2read. =\

[quote="dragonre"]
I think this is a brilliant idea. And in response to some of the comments on this thread, and FODA's original thread, it seems like a lot of concern is going towards the point that if you look at the run of each individual game they are not perfect, there may be deaths, and they certainly are not the fastest time possible. Consider the speed of of Mario Bros: Lost levels non wii run: the mario version he errs on the side of caution to get no deaths and sacrifices time, the luigi run he dies, the speed runs of diablo2 - multiple deaths. You cannot site deaths as a cause to invalidate a speed run. FFVI is an amazing ss speed run, and it's 4:48, so you cannot site multiple hour speed runs as being invalid.
Series runs is very similar to adding another category, like 100% runs, or low% runs. Like FODA points out, it adds a degree of difficulty to the game, if you screw up far down the line you get to start over. That has to be taken into consideration when judging the run, some deaths are allowed, and some non efficient moves must be allowed to accommodate the length and difficulty of the run.
Just give him a chance, let the boy play.
[/quote]

We do not invalidate runs based on deaths; we have runs on the site that allow for death abuse. The issue is multiple games played in succession, not length. l2read. =\

andrewg

Edit history:

andrewg: 2009-01-15 09:02:48 pm

2009-01-15 08:52:59 pm

Hi! I'm andrewg!

Quote from slowbro:

I'd still like to see a full Mario All-Stars run Grin

but probably not on SDA unless it was incredibly good. Nobody would want to watch MY attempt at four Mario games in a row lol.

I was actually talking about this a few days ago.

Would SDA allow that?

trihex

2009-01-16 01:23:23 pm

Yoshi's eggs are at my mercy!

Wasn't that "catch all 486 Pokemon" concept run that required playing through over 5 different games (IIRC FireRed, Saphhire, XD Gale, Diamond, and something else) likely over 20 hours total in this category?

ExplodingCabbage

2009-01-16 02:44:54 pm

Single-segmenting multiple games is a cool idea but as pointed out would never work in practice.

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series. You can import your character from BGI (complete with all his items, if you use an exploit at the start of the game) into BGII, and then when you finish BGII you start Throne of Bhaal with the same party and items. You have the advantage of being able to get ahold of items you need in advance and use items that runners doing a single game wouldn't have access to. You can also start the game at higher level than when doing a new game run. On the other hand, the different games are best run by different character classes, and indeed the best class to use in ToB doesn't even EXIST in BGI, so you'd be handicapped by your class. It's not clear whether the sum of these effects would lead to a faster or a slower run than the sum of the three individual game run times, but it would certainly have significant differences. Would SDA allow a run-through of the three games with a single character, if some nutter actually did it?

Single-segmenting multiple games is a cool idea but as pointed out would never work in practice.

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series. You can import your character from BGI (complete with all his items, if you use an exploit at the start of the game) into BGII, and then when you finish BGII you start Throne of Bhaal with the same party and items. You have the advantage of being able to get ahold of items you need in advance and use items that runners doing a single game wouldn't have access to. You can also start the game at higher level than when doing a new game run. On the other hand, the different games are best run by different character classes, and indeed the best class to use in ToB doesn't even EXIST in BGI, so you'd be handicapped by your class. It's not clear whether the sum of these effects would lead to a faster or a slower run than the sum of the three individual game run times, but it would certainly have significant differences. Would SDA allow a run-through of the three games with a single character, if some nutter actually did it?

petrie911

2009-01-16 03:07:51 pm

Everybody loves Hypnotoad!

Quote from t r i - h e x:

Wasn't that "catch all 486 Pokemon" concept run that required playing through over 5 different games (IIRC FireRed, Saphhire, XD Gale, Diamond, and something else) likely over 20 hours total in this category?

There was an idea for a run that would catch all 383 pokemon obtainable in the ADV gen. You absolutely needed LG, XD, Colosseum, and the Colosseum Bonus Disc, and in addition needed 1 extra FR/LG and 2 of R/S/E. Unfortunately, you'd have to complete all of them except the spare FR/LG.

Doesn't seem particularly feasible, although it's no doubt possible. I'd still rather see the single-game 151 run of R/B, though.

Enhasa

2009-01-16 04:24:15 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:

Single-segmenting multiple games is a cool idea but as pointed out would never work in practice.

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series. You can import your character from BGI (complete with all his items, if you use an exploit at the start of the game) into BGII, and then when you finish BGII you start Throne of Bhaal with the same party and items. You have the advantage of being able to get ahold of items you need in advance and use items that runners doing a single game wouldn't have access to. You can also start the game at higher level than when doing a new game run. On the other hand, the different games are best run by different character classes, and indeed the best class to use in ToB doesn't even EXIST in BGI, so you'd be handicapped by your class. It's not clear whether the sum of these effects would lead to a faster or a slower run than the sum of the three individual game run times, but it would certainly have significant differences. Would SDA allow a run-through of the three games with a single character, if some nutter actually did it?

Just like the single-segment multiple games idea, this is cool but won't go up officially on SDA.

The problem with both ideas is that other people playing without these arbitrary self-imposed restrictions will beat your run. Of course, if you can somehow get an acceptable run this way, it would be allowed, but beatable in the future. Just like how some NES games, we have or had runs where the runner used TG rules (intentionally not using stuff allowed by SDA because they wanted to submit to both), but the run was still accepted. Sleepz's MM2 that was later beaten by Seth Glass (once "glitchless", once with glitches) is a good example.

[quote="ExplodingCabbage"]
Single-segmenting multiple games is a cool idea but as pointed out would never work in practice.

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series. You can import your character from BGI (complete with all his items, if you use an exploit at the start of the game) into BGII, and then when you finish BGII you start Throne of Bhaal with the same party and items. You have the advantage of being able to get ahold of items you need in advance and use items that runners doing a single game wouldn't have access to. You can also start the game at higher level than when doing a new game run. On the other hand, the different games are best run by different character classes, and indeed the best class to use in ToB doesn't even EXIST in BGI, so you'd be handicapped by your class. It's not clear whether the sum of these effects would lead to a faster or a slower run than the sum of the three individual game run times, but it would certainly have significant differences. Would SDA allow a run-through of the three games with a single character, if some nutter actually did it?
[/quote]
Just like the single-segment multiple games idea, this is cool but won't go up officially on SDA.

The problem with both ideas is that other people playing without these arbitrary self-imposed restrictions will beat your run. Of course, if you can somehow get an acceptable run this way, it would be allowed, but beatable in the future. Just like how some NES games, we have or had runs where the runner used TG rules (intentionally not using stuff allowed by SDA because they wanted to submit to both), but the run was still accepted. Sleepz's MM2 that was later beaten by Seth Glass (once "glitchless", once with glitches) is a good example.

ExplodingCabbage

2009-01-17 11:34:21 am

Quote from Enhasa:

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:

Single-segmenting multiple games is a cool idea but as pointed out would never work in practice.

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series. You can import your character from BGI (complete with all his items, if you use an exploit at the start of the game) into BGII, and then when you finish BGII you start Throne of Bhaal with the same party and items. You have the advantage of being able to get ahold of items you need in advance and use items that runners doing a single game wouldn't have access to. You can also start the game at higher level than when doing a new game run. On the other hand, the different games are best run by different character classes, and indeed the best class to use in ToB doesn't even EXIST in BGI, so you'd be handicapped by your class. It's not clear whether the sum of these effects would lead to a faster or a slower run than the sum of the three individual game run times, but it would certainly have significant differences. Would SDA allow a run-through of the three games with a single character, if some nutter actually did it?

Just like the single-segment multiple games idea, this is cool but won't go up officially on SDA.

The problem with both ideas is that other people playing without these arbitrary self-imposed restrictions will beat your run. Of course, if you can somehow get an acceptable run this way, it would be allowed, but beatable in the future. Just like how some NES games, we have or had runs where the runner used TG rules (intentionally not using stuff allowed by SDA because they wanted to submit to both), but the run was still accepted. Sleepz's MM2 that was later beaten by Seth Glass (once "glitchless", once with glitches) is a good example.

The thing is that it's NOT an arbitrary restriction. Indeed, you're actually supposed and expected to play SoA and ToB one after the other with the same party; all installing ToB does is add a few extra chapters onto the end of the game, and give you the option, should you wish, of starting after the end of the original game with a new character and a bunch of items the developers chose that're supposed to represent what you'd typically have at the end of SoA. There are also many variables from SoA that get set to default values, like which characters are dead and whether you're shagging any of your teammates. So actually, doing a New Game run of ToB is really unnatural, and nobody playing the game normally would ever do it. Heck, you even start the game in 'Chapter 8' with 7 pages of empty journal space for where your SoA quests are meant to be.

As for importing a character from BGI, I can see why that wouldn't be allowed because it's somewhat more arbitrary; all that's remembered is your character and items, and there's no plot continuity in that people you've killed in BGI are alive again in BGII. But BGII and ToB together are just one big game you can choose to start halfway through if you wish. Doing a run of the full 10 chapters, rather than just chapters 1-7 or chapters 8-10 individually, seems to me to be a worthy category.

[quote="Enhasa"]
[quote="ExplodingCabbage"]
Single-segmenting multiple games is a cool idea but as pointed out would never work in practice.

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series. You can import your character from BGI (complete with all his items, if you use an exploit at the start of the game) into BGII, and then when you finish BGII you start Throne of Bhaal with the same party and items. You have the advantage of being able to get ahold of items you need in advance and use items that runners doing a single game wouldn't have access to. You can also start the game at higher level than when doing a new game run. On the other hand, the different games are best run by different character classes, and indeed the best class to use in ToB doesn't even EXIST in BGI, so you'd be handicapped by your class. It's not clear whether the sum of these effects would lead to a faster or a slower run than the sum of the three individual game run times, but it would certainly have significant differences. Would SDA allow a run-through of the three games with a single character, if some nutter actually did it?
[/quote]
Just like the single-segment multiple games idea, this is cool but won't go up officially on SDA.

The problem with both ideas is that other people playing without these arbitrary self-imposed restrictions will beat your run. Of course, if you can somehow get an acceptable run this way, it would be allowed, but beatable in the future. Just like how some NES games, we have or had runs where the runner used TG rules (intentionally not using stuff allowed by SDA because they wanted to submit to both), but the run was still accepted. Sleepz's MM2 that was later beaten by Seth Glass (once "glitchless", once with glitches) is a good example.
[/quote]

The thing is that it's NOT an arbitrary restriction. Indeed, you're actually supposed and expected to play SoA and ToB one after the other with the same party; all installing ToB does is add a few extra chapters onto the end of the game, and give you the option, should you wish, of starting after the end of the original game with a new character and a bunch of items the developers chose that're supposed to represent what you'd typically have at the end of SoA. There are also many variables from SoA that get set to default values, like which characters are dead and whether you're shagging any of your teammates. So actually, doing a New Game run of ToB is really unnatural, and nobody playing the game normally would ever do it. Heck, you even start the game in 'Chapter 8' with 7 pages of empty journal space for where your SoA quests are meant to be.

As for importing a character from BGI, I can see why that wouldn't be allowed because it's somewhat more arbitrary; all that's remembered is your character and items, and there's no plot continuity in that people you've killed in BGI are alive again in BGII. But BGII and ToB together are just one big game you can choose to start halfway through if you wish. Doing a run of the full 10 chapters, rather than just chapters 1-7 or chapters 8-10 individually, seems to me to be a worthy category.

dragonre

2009-02-18 09:38:31 am

Vae Victus!

Enhansa's arguments against it were based on the run being arbitrary and sloppy, I defined sloppy as unintentional deaths and wasting time. Having the run be well defined would indeed be important, but not impossible. Carcinogen, your argument before my post only mentions that your opinion is it is better as a concept run. No one before my post said anything about "if it's more than one game it cannot be on SDA." So I'm not very appreciative of the lrn2read. It did give me the idea to read the posted rules, you can find them here: http://speeddemosarchive.com/rules.html. In the rules it refers to "runs". No where does it say in the rules that a run is defined by one single game played from start to finish. Here is an example of how a run is referred to: "In order for us to host or publicize your run, you need to record actual footage of the entire run from start to finish."

mike89

2009-02-24 12:17:38 am

SEGA Junkie

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series.

Golden Sun. You get a password upon beating the first game and it transfers all your characters' levels, items, and Djinn across to the second game. (Of course, if you were to speedrun the first game, your levels would be substantially lower than the GS2 default :D)

JaggerG

2009-02-24 05:08:16 am

Jumping Turtle

In m2k2 there's a thread for Total Metroid Time that I can't bother to find. Also, I suppose there could be an individual game table for the series. That's...kind of not the same thing though.

ExplodingCabbage

2009-02-27 10:22:17 am

Quote from mike89:

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:

What's perhaps more realistic is a segmented run of a series where the games can actually affect each other in some way. The only example I know of is the Baldur's Gate series.

Golden Sun. You get a password upon beating the first game and it transfers all your characters' levels, items, and Djinn across to the second game. (Of course, if you were to speedrun the first game, your levels would be substantially lower than the GS2 default :D)

Exactly, I think runs in situations like that should be allowed.

mike89

2009-02-28 04:50:25 am

SEGA Junkie

Actually, as an addendum to that point, you -cannot- complete the game 100% unless you transfer a GS1 file, because you need all 28 Djinn from the first game to fight Dullahan and get the last two summons, where the default only gives you 18.