The Future of SDA

2015-01-24 07:40:15 pm

I have been lurking on the forums and checking the front page since 2007. I am glad that this thread got posted, I have been wondering and talking to people about it for a couple years now. My perspective is purely from a viewer standpoint. I have never speedran a game in my life, and I do not plan on starting now.

The main strength I see in SDA is that the discussion and runs stay up. Highlights and youtube videos can just be gone one day. On several internet forums I have been too, I have seen people who quit edit every one of their posts in order to delete the text. That annoys me to no end, something about the past is lost forever. What if a runner decided to do the same thing, but with his runs? Then if it were on SDA, I could still see them, but if it were a link to a youtube channel, it is gone.

Similarly, discussion on IRC and Twitch chat is just gone after a while. Nothing to help those who want to start running in the future, and no help in avoiding reinventing the wheel.

On another note, why would someone submit to SDA? So that people who are not interesting in their game, but in general speedrunning can see it. There are many games where my interest in watching streams of it are pretty much zero, but I will watch a run of the game submitted to SDA.

Also, the live commentary of streamed runs is terrible, as they respond to chat and don't explain the trick they are doing for the fifteenth time that day. Which is fine for streaming, but a poor commentary for someone who knows nothing about how that game is ran. I love games on SDA that have audio commentary, but even solid run comments makes the run so much more enjoyable.

I feel no need to visit other speedrunning sites, so I don't. SDA was all I needed to enjoy speedruns in 2007, and even in the streaming era, it lets me know what great runs have been happening for games that I do not watch people stream.

I have been lurking on the forums and checking the front page since 2007. I am glad that this thread got posted, I have been wondering and talking to people about it for a couple years now. My perspective is purely from a viewer standpoint. I have never speedran a game in my life, and I do not plan on starting now.

The main strength I see in SDA is that the discussion and runs stay up. Highlights and youtube videos can just be gone one day. On several internet forums I have been too, I have seen people who quit edit every one of their posts in order to delete the text. That annoys me to no end, something about the past is lost forever. What if a runner decided to do the same thing, but with his runs? Then if it were on SDA, I could still see them, but if it were a link to a youtube channel, it is gone.

Similarly, discussion on IRC and Twitch chat is just gone after a while. Nothing to help those who want to start running in the future, and no help in avoiding reinventing the wheel.

On another note, why would someone submit to SDA? So that people who are not interesting in their game, but in general speedrunning can see it. There are many games where my interest in watching streams of it are pretty much zero, but I will watch a run of the game submitted to SDA.

Also, the live commentary of streamed runs is terrible, as they respond to chat and don't explain the trick they are doing for the fifteenth time that day. Which is fine for streaming, but a poor commentary for someone who knows nothing about how that game is ran. I love games on SDA that have audio commentary, but even solid run comments makes the run so much more enjoyable.

I feel no need to visit other speedrunning sites, so I don't. SDA was all I needed to enjoy speedruns in 2007, and even in the streaming era, it lets me know what great runs have been happening for games that I do not watch people stream.

Reiska

2015-01-24 07:53:57 pm

Quote from stirlock:

Yes to glitchless catagory for games.
Glitchless is, at least for myself, more entertaining to watch, particularly if a runner doesn't do a good job explaining in the run comments what a given glitch is, ETC. Glitched runs, IMO, sort of run that line between TAS and legit, and I don't think I'm alone in this mindset, and adding a separate catagory for glitchless runs would please those wishing to see them, as well as opening the floodgates for a lot more content to the site, which is what everyone wants. Speaking of comments on runs...

I think this is a pretty good point to highlight. Outside of the speedrunning community, I know a lot of people who prefer watching glitchless runs for various reasons (either they just find them more entertaining or they consider glitch abuse to be a form of cheating). I don't want to really get into the whole philosophical debate about what is and isn't cheating where glitches are concerned, but I do think that it'd be nice to have a central place where glitchless runs are highlighted while also still being respectful of glitched runs and the people that perform them. Perhaps having such a place could even revive the running community's interest in performing glitchless runs.

I'm definitely not advocating that the site should be like TG was and banning a lot of arbitrary crap, in fact I don't think the site should ban _anything_ other than what it already does (unofficial emulators, actual cheating, etc.) I'm really just suggesting that such a site could celebrate glitchless running as its main focus, while still providing acknowledgement of what the glitches in various games mean for their runs and the like, if that makes sense.

[quote="stirlock"]Yes to glitchless catagory for games. 
Glitchless is, at least for myself, more entertaining to watch, particularly if a runner doesn't do a good job explaining in the run comments what a given glitch is, ETC. Glitched runs, IMO, sort of run that line between TAS and legit, and I don't think I'm alone in this mindset, and adding a separate catagory for glitchless runs would please those wishing to see them, as well as opening the floodgates for a lot more content to the site, which is what everyone wants. Speaking of comments on runs...
[/quote]

I think this is a pretty good point to highlight.  Outside of the speedrunning community, I know a lot of people who prefer watching glitchless runs for various reasons (either they just find them more entertaining or they consider glitch abuse to be a form of cheating).  I don't want to really get into the whole philosophical debate about what is and isn't cheating where glitches are concerned, but I do think that it'd be nice to have a central place where glitchless runs are highlighted while also still being respectful of glitched runs and the people that perform them.  Perhaps having such a place could even revive the running community's interest in performing glitchless runs.

I'm definitely not advocating that the site should be like TG was and banning a lot of arbitrary crap, in fact I don't think the site should ban _anything_ other than what it already does (unofficial emulators, actual cheating, etc.)  I'm really just suggesting that such a site could celebrate glitchless running as its main focus, while still providing acknowledgement of what the glitches in various games mean for their runs and the like, if that makes sense.

Freezard

2015-01-24 08:17:05 pm

Quote from Roseluck:

I feel no need to visit other speedrunning sites, so I don't. SDA was all I needed to enjoy speedruns in 2007, and even in the streaming era, it lets me know what great runs have been happening for games that I do not watch people stream.

I think there are a lot of other people who feel the same way. I myself was lurking the SDA site for several years when I found out about it in ~2002 and I did no speedrunning at all. The thing is that all the people here saying SDA is irrelevant when it comes to runs are all speedrunners themselves and they do not take into account all of the non-speedrunners who visit the site. I've had many gaming friends talk to me about SDA and they've seen my runs get posted without me even mentioning I'm a speedrunner.

About a glitchless category... I think that would just make things a whole lot more complex for verifiers and the like. Would wavedashing/L-canceling in Melee count as glitches or not? What if the AI in a game suddenly glitches out unintentionally? The focus shouldn't be on determining what's a glitch and what isn't, if anything it would just cause a lot of drama and make it harder for runs to get up on the site.

[quote="Roseluck"]I feel no need to visit other speedrunning sites, so I don't. SDA was all I needed to enjoy speedruns in 2007, and even in the streaming era, it lets me know what great runs have been happening for games that I do not watch people stream.[/quote]
I think there are a lot of other people who feel the same way. I myself was lurking the SDA site for several years when I found out about it in ~2002 and I did no speedrunning at all. The thing is that all the people here saying SDA is irrelevant when it comes to runs are all speedrunners themselves and they do not take into account all of the non-speedrunners who visit the site. I've had many gaming friends talk to me about SDA and they've seen my runs get posted without me even mentioning I'm a speedrunner.

About a glitchless category... I think that would just make things a whole lot more complex for verifiers and the like. Would wavedashing/L-canceling in Melee count as glitches or not? What if the AI in a game suddenly glitches out unintentionally? The focus shouldn't be on determining what's a glitch and what isn't, if anything it would just cause a lot of drama and make it harder for runs to get up on the site.

Reiska

2015-01-24 08:31:56 pm

Yeah, it's a valid concern, which why I said it shouldn't ban anything. I do think it's possible to tell when a glitch abuse is intended versus not, though.

Like many things in speedrun categorization, it is ultimately a bit arbitrary. (SDA already does cover this territory somewhat by having "no major skips" runs up and such.)

bpcookie

2015-01-25 01:17:38 am

Quote from Freezard:

About a glitchless category... I think that would just make things a whole lot more complex for verifiers and the like. Would wavedashing/L-canceling in Melee count as glitches or not? What if the AI in a game suddenly glitches out unintentionally? The focus shouldn't be on determining what's a glitch and what isn't, if anything it would just cause a lot of drama and make it harder for runs to get up on the site.

I've heard this before, and respectfully I think it's an overcautious view. As I said on page 4, I think you make a judgment call and live with it. Like Reiska said, I think you can tell what's a glitch in most cases. Sure there will be occasional opportunities for disagreement, but I don't think it's all that different from the litany of other vaguely-defined categories that already exist. The runners work with knowledgeable community members to settle any potential questions before the run is even attempted. If the issue is truly ambiguous, then there's really no right or wrong answer. It's coke or pepsi. I pick pepsi. But if the consensus is coke, I live with coke. No need for drama.

I mean, what is the identity of this site? I mean it's largely an expression of what the dark blues and greens want it to be, and that's great. But they're cool and they want it to belong to the community, because all you guys are cool too. So, you know, if we/you/they don't feel like glitchless categories fit in with what this site is all about, I have no problem with that. But I think there's value in it, and I don't want to shy away from a whole area of greatness because oh no what if two people argue about bomb slides.

[quote="Freezard"]
About a glitchless category... I think that would just make things a whole lot more complex for verifiers and the like. Would wavedashing/L-canceling in Melee count as glitches or not? What if the AI in a game suddenly glitches out unintentionally? The focus shouldn't be on determining what's a glitch and what isn't, if anything it would just cause a lot of drama and make it harder for runs to get up on the site.[/quote]

I've heard this before, and respectfully I think it's an overcautious view. As I said on page 4, I think you make a judgment call and live with it. Like Reiska said, I think you can tell what's a glitch in most cases. Sure there will be occasional opportunities for disagreement, but I don't think it's all that different from the litany of other vaguely-defined categories that already exist. The runners work with knowledgeable community members to settle any potential questions before the run is even attempted. If the issue is truly ambiguous, then there's really no right or wrong answer. It's coke or pepsi. I pick pepsi. But if the consensus is coke, I live with coke. No need for drama.

I mean, what is the identity of this site? I mean it's largely an expression of what the dark blues and greens want it to be, and that's great. But they're cool and they want it to belong to the community, because all you guys are cool too. So, you know, if we/you/they don't feel like glitchless categories fit in with what this site is all about, I have no problem with that. But I think there's value in it, and I don't want to shy away from a whole area of greatness because oh no what if two people argue about bomb slides.

Andrew_Mills

Edit history:

Andrew_Mills: 2015-01-25 02:12:26 am

2015-01-25 02:09:58 am

AlphaStrategyGui des.com

Quote from Radix:

Quote from Andrew_Mills:

Actually Radix, yes yes it is SDA's fault. I've personally decided against submitting, solid, speed runs in the past to SDA because it simply takes too long overall to get the run published (getting it on to the main game page and onto the front page takes forever in an era where more and more people want to see runs now - and they can do so elsewhere).

The effort for you to submit a run is the same whether that run appears on the SDA front page in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or 1 year. How long is an acceptable time to you that suddenly you would submit, and why?

And there in itself lies SDA's biggest issue (as far as getting new runs submitted are concerned). Here's a, very likely, scenario for someone who's never submitted to SDA before:

SDA Run Submission Experience:
Hoop 1: Wants to submit their awesome new speedrun for game X.
Hoop 2: Visits SDA and has to trawl through walls of text to establish that you MUST encode in 3-4 different qualities.
Hoop 3: Said qualities are rather specific so user now needs to read up and sees stuff about D2, D4, F1 etc (shit, even *I* don't know what they really mean - and I've been encoding videos professionally for a few years now).
Hoop 4: Needs to add a 'Stat ID' to the start of each video.
Hoop 5: Needs to find a program that'll do all that for them (or learn something like the genuinely useful yua from here).
Hoop 6: Submits a run thinking video is awesome.
Hoop 7: Waits for X period of time for run to be 'verified'.
Hoop 8: Faces potentially being told it's 'not correct' (for whatever reason, wrong FPS, wrong 'native' res, whatever) and needs to re-encode it again.
Hoop 9: Has to post a sample for feedback or just submit again.
Hoop 10: Finally submits a run, of all qualities, with everything that SDA wants.
Hoop 11: Has to wait X weeks for run to even make it on to the site.

Speedrun Submission Elsewhere:
Hoop 1: Upload to YouTube in anything up to 1080p60
Hoop 2: Give out URL and track stats and comments *immediately* in real-time.

Sadly for SDA, the vast majority of people simply don't give a crap if a run looks 10-15% better because it was mastered first in Lossless Lagariath (rather than a 15mbps x264 .mp4(, heck most people these days wouldn't even know what lossless is! And the number of arbitrary hoops still in place is what puts even the likes of me off (who could, if I wanted to, use avisynth to deinterlace in telecine or mvbob, or submit a proper run first time with my gained knowledge).

IMO, SDA simply cannot compete and whilst having an archive is indeed useful; to be frank, a lot of people getting into speedrunning simply don't care if an out-of-date run is still available online. That desire becomes more niche as time goes on an attention spans shorten. So SDA shouldn't compete.

SDA's strengths have always been in it's knowledge of it's users. I learned *ALOT* of encoding and capture knowledge from here and went through countless capture cards, capture software, codecs and avisynth scripts over the last 12 years since starting Samus.co.uk. And that was all thanks to the people here.

So why not reposition SDA as an authority of stuff like that. Leverage thethrillness' blog, Blizz's site, industry contacts and expand on the stuff relevant to speedrunning that you simply *can't* find anywhere else. Get interviews with QA staff, level designers and find out their opinions on speedrunning, how they try and stop the glitches runners hunt for etc.

One idea I had last night was a 'SDA Handbook' where all the really in-depth tech knowledge (both capturing and game-wise see: Metroid Hack research topic, or Quake map triggers discussions for examples), is distilled and presented as a proper printed book on every element of speedrunning. Heck, you could print it (physically and as an eBook) and sell it with an aim to put all money to the next SDQ charity event).

The reality is, is that as far as for submitting runs goes, I personally don't feel the 'WOW!' factor I once did when my COD4 run, eventually, went live on SDA all those years ago. I can much more quickly stick it up on YouTube, or hell, even host it using HTML5 myself on my own server, and start getting immediate feedback from runners. That's more useful than jumping through tons of arbitrary hoops/red tape.

Turn SDA into the gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/) of the speedrunning world. Don't waste valuable time and resources anymore chasing something loads of other places are already offering at a quality 95% are happy with at a speed at which they care about and that look nice on any device they happen to be using.

[quote="Radix"][quote="Andrew_Mills"]Actually Radix, yes yes it is SDA's fault. I've personally decided against submitting, solid, speed runs  in the past to SDA because it simply takes too long [i]overall[/i] to get the run published (getting it on to the main game page and onto the front page takes forever in an era where more and more people want to see runs now - and they can do so elsewhere).[/quote]

The effort for you to submit a run is the same whether that run appears on the SDA front page in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or 1 year. How long is an acceptable time to you that suddenly you would submit, and why?[/quote]
And there in itself lies SDA's biggest issue (as far as getting new runs submitted are concerned). Here's a, very likely, scenario for someone who's never submitted to SDA before:

SDA Run Submission Experience:
Hoop 1: Wants to submit their awesome new speedrun for game X.
Hoop 2: Visits SDA and has to trawl through walls of text to establish that you MUST encode in 3-4 different qualities.
Hoop 3: Said qualities are rather specific so user now needs to read up and sees stuff about D2, D4, F1 etc (shit, even *I* don't know what they really mean - and I've been encoding videos professionally for a few years now).
Hoop 4: Needs to add a 'Stat ID' to the start of each video.
Hoop 5: Needs to find a program that'll do all that for them (or learn something like the genuinely useful yua from here).
Hoop 6: Submits a run thinking video is awesome.
Hoop 7: Waits for X period of time for run to be 'verified'.
Hoop 8: Faces potentially being told it's 'not correct' (for whatever reason, wrong FPS, wrong 'native' res, whatever) and needs to re-encode it again.
Hoop 9: Has to post a sample for feedback or just submit again.
Hoop 10: Finally submits a run, of all qualities, with everything that SDA wants.
Hoop 11: Has to wait X weeks for run to even make it on to the site.

Speedrun Submission Elsewhere:
Hoop 1: Upload to YouTube in anything up to 1080p60
Hoop 2: Give out URL and track stats and comments *immediately* in real-time.

Sadly for SDA, the vast majority of people simply don't give a crap if a run looks 10-15% better because it was mastered first in Lossless Lagariath (rather than a 15mbps x264 .mp4(, heck most people these days wouldn't even know what lossless is! And the number of arbitrary hoops still in place is what puts even the likes of me off (who could, if I wanted to, use avisynth to deinterlace in telecine or mvbob, or submit a proper run first time with my gained knowledge).

IMO, SDA simply cannot compete and whilst having an archive is indeed useful; to be frank, a lot of people getting into speedrunning simply don't care if an out-of-date run is still available online. That desire becomes more niche as time goes on an attention spans shorten. So SDA shouldn't compete.

SDA's strengths have always been in it's knowledge of it's users. I learned *ALOT* of encoding and capture knowledge from here and went through countless capture cards, capture software, codecs and avisynth scripts over the last 12 years since starting Samus.co.uk. And that was all thanks to the people here.

So why not reposition SDA as an authority of stuff like that. Leverage thethrillness' blog, Blizz's site, industry contacts and expand on the stuff relevant to speedrunning that you simply *can't* find anywhere else. Get interviews with QA staff, level designers and find out their opinions on speedrunning, how they try and stop the glitches runners hunt for etc.

One idea I had last night was a 'SDA Handbook' where all the really in-depth tech knowledge (both capturing and game-wise see: Metroid Hack research topic, or Quake map triggers discussions for examples), is distilled and presented as a proper printed book on every element of speedrunning. Heck, you could print it (physically and as an eBook) and sell it with an aim to put all money to the next SDQ charity event).

The reality is, is that as far as for submitting runs goes, I personally don't feel the 'WOW!' factor I once did when my COD4 run, eventually, went live on SDA all those years ago. I can much more quickly stick it up on YouTube, or hell, even host it using HTML5 myself on my own server, and start getting immediate feedback from runners. That's more useful than jumping through tons of arbitrary hoops/red tape.

Turn SDA into the gamasutra ([url]http://www.gamasutra.com/[/url]) of the speedrunning world. Don't waste valuable time and resources anymore chasing something loads of other places are already offering at a quality 95% are happy with at a speed at which they care about and that look nice on any device they happen to be using.

Warepire

Edit history:

Warepire: 2015-01-25 03:08:51 am

2015-01-25 03:07:34 am

Heavy Metal Powered

I skimmed through most of what was written, but I didn't have the time to go through it all in detail, so forgive me if I bring up points that have already been shared.

First off:
I do believe that SDA does have a purpose today, and I will try to point out what I think could be worth thinking about. I know a lot of these suggestions will not in any way be trivial fixes, keep that in mind if I come off as thinking this is a simple thing later on. And everything below is purely my own opinion.

I am also one of those who don't really follow a lot of games communities, but often check out a run if it looks good when it gets posted on SDA.

There are surely more places to improve, but I don't feel qualified to have suggestions for those.

Front page:

As a member of TASvideos I find their front page much more usable. I am not saying we shall clone it, that would not work for SDA, but the front page could surely be more useful. The front page should at least become more automated.
Do note that I am NOT requesting the front page to look like a news paper website or something like that, those make my eyes bleed from all the random unrelated crap in the sidelines and mid-page ads.

Promote the Knowledge Base better, a section dedicated to new updates in it would expose it more, and if contributed to enough, it would also show that it is alive and may contain a lot of useful stuff. The menu item at the top is kinda anonymous.

Post runs when they are ready to be posted, don't hog them waiting for a "suitable" update, I personally never cared for the updates as they are today. This to me is just a really unnecessary delay. Perhaps also delegate part of the intro text for the game to the runner / other qualified party. That way it will not suffer from the "Syphoon Filter 3 mistake" that was mentioned earlier.

Separate news-feed, don't mix site news with new run update , I think many people miss them the first time around, maybe permanently. I know I have.

Submitted runs feed / status of submitted runs feed, this would generate a quicker heads up that stuff is happening. It's currently very hidden away in the forum / submission page. And all of the information is not available to anyone but the staff / submitter / verifiers at this point, which I think simply makes it feel like nothing's really happening when I know things are happening.

Ok, that sounded a bit like cloning the TASvideos front page. But above mentioned parts of SDA should really be highlighted on the front page.

The forum:

I have suggested this before and gotten shot down, but I will bring it up again. I really think the planning section shall be divided per game console, not per console "age".

While the argument that a game exist for several consoles is valid, that's what the knowledge base is for. I know I don't contribute to the knowledge base even though I do have a game to add there. However, the thing is that most cases the mechanics in the different versions of the games makes it more sane to keep the threads separate. Dividing the current threads would be a nightmare. Perhaps those could be archived and linked to by the starting post of each new thread instead. Because we shall not kill the staff with an insane workload.

Because the older consoles / newer consoles division is getting pretty problematic. No one reads the console list for each one, and I see more and more PS2 games show up in older consoles. And some will surely think the PS2 IS an old console. I know I do. But here on SDA I expect to find PS2 games in the newer consoles section.
To keep the main page of the forum less dense, the sections could be: Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Atari etc, and then those would contain sub-sections for each console. Consoles like the Lync / WonderSwan / ColecoVision etc could theoretically be thrown into the same forum to begin with, but require a tag to which console the thread is for.

Make submissions / verifications it's own forum section. Split rejected runs and accepted runs thread-wise. Or at least tag the threads. Maybe automate that in the SDAverification bot?
I find myself seeing a thread thinking "Awesome, I'll get to see a run of game X!!" sometimes, and then read through and see it got rejected. It's nice to know that detail ahead of time.

Make the "real time" script optional, and default it to off. Then members can choose to activate it if they want to, and get a notice that it will make forum tabs take a while to close.
I find this so annoying that I started browsing the forum as being logged out, and then logging in when I have something to write, just to log out again when I have posted, to get around the "issue". That is honestly less annoying.

Submission & Verification process:

I liked some of the stuff moooh touched here about making the videos available earlier.

Once upon a time private verification was probably useful. But today I do not see the point. Open the flood gates that is public verification and use it for everything. Runs of popular games could theoretically get accepted in a day or two. While less known games might be stuck for a while. Today everyone basically knows ahead of time who made the run anyway, otherwise it's often written in the stat-id or comments, so obscuring the runner isn't the reason to keep it (note: Not sure if this was ever a reason). Hiding the verifier identity isn't really working today either, as, again, runners today know pretty much who will verify ahead of time, it's very likely they were in the stream chatting with the runner as it was recorded.
As I see it reduces staff workload, possibly at the cost of server workload, and it also reduces some turn-around time for the runs.

Staff: Re-organize the verification process, some steps can absolutely be delegated and not piled onto one person / a few people, while it shall not be 100% available to the public, anyone with the required skills can encode most raw video submissions, write the game page, do the pre-release check etc. This database system I hear about can probably be useful to generate the final html from. So it would be a matter of having the necessary data fields.

I skimmed through most of what was written, but I didn't have the time to go through it all in detail, so forgive me if I bring up points that have already been shared.

First off:
I do believe that SDA does have a purpose today, and I will try to point out what I think could be worth thinking about. I know a lot of these suggestions will not in any way be trivial fixes, keep that in mind if I come off as thinking this is a simple thing later on. And everything below is purely my own opinion.

I am also one of those who don't really follow a lot of games communities, but often check out a run if it looks good when it gets posted on SDA.

There are surely more places to improve, but I don't feel qualified to have suggestions for those.

[b]Front page:[/b]

As a member of TASvideos I find their front page much more usable. I am not saying we shall clone it, that would not work for SDA, but the front page could surely be more useful. The front page should at least become more automated.
Do note that I am NOT requesting the front page to look like a news paper website or something like that, those make my eyes bleed from all the random unrelated crap in the sidelines and mid-page ads.

Promote the Knowledge Base better, a section dedicated to new updates in it would expose it more, and if contributed to enough, it would also show that it is alive and may contain a lot of useful stuff. The menu item at the top is kinda anonymous.

Post runs when they are ready to be posted, don't hog them waiting for a "suitable" update, I personally never cared for the updates as they are today. This to me is just a really unnecessary delay. Perhaps also delegate part of the intro text for the game to the runner / other qualified party. That way it will not suffer from the "Syphoon Filter 3 mistake" that was mentioned earlier.

Separate news-feed, don't mix site news with new run update , I think many people miss them the first time around, maybe permanently. I know I have.

Submitted runs feed / status of submitted runs feed, this would generate a quicker heads up that stuff is happening. It's currently very hidden away in the forum / submission page. And all of the information is not available to anyone but the staff / submitter / verifiers at this point, which I think simply makes it feel like nothing's really happening when I know things are happening.

Ok, that sounded a bit like cloning the TASvideos front page. But above mentioned parts of SDA should really be highlighted on the front page.

[b]The forum:[/b]

I have suggested this before and gotten shot down, but I will bring it up again. I really think the planning section shall be divided per game console, not per console "age".

While the argument that a game exist for several consoles is valid, that's what the knowledge base is for. I know I don't contribute to the knowledge base even though I do have a game to add there. However, the thing is that most cases the mechanics in the different versions of the games makes it more sane to keep the threads separate. Dividing the current threads would be a nightmare. Perhaps those could be archived and linked to by the starting post of each new thread instead. Because we shall not kill the staff with an insane workload.

Because the older consoles / newer consoles division is getting pretty problematic. No one reads the console list for each one, and I see more and more PS2 games show up in older consoles. And some will surely think the PS2 IS an old console. I know I do. But here on SDA I expect to find PS2 games in the newer consoles section.
To keep the main page of the forum less dense, the sections could be: Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Atari etc, and then those would contain sub-sections for each console. Consoles like the Lync / WonderSwan / ColecoVision etc could theoretically be thrown into the same forum to begin with, but require a tag to which console the thread is for.

Make submissions / verifications it's own forum section. Split rejected runs and accepted runs thread-wise. Or at least tag the threads. Maybe automate that in the SDAverification bot?
I find myself seeing a thread thinking "Awesome, I'll get to see a run of game X!!" sometimes, and then read through and see it got rejected. It's nice to know that detail ahead of time.

Make the "real time" script optional, and default it to off. Then members can choose to activate it if they want to, and get a notice that it will make forum tabs take a while to close.
I find this so annoying that I started browsing the forum as being logged out, and then logging in when I have something to write, just to log out again when I have posted, to get around the "issue". That is honestly less annoying.

[b]Submission & Verification process:[/b]

I liked some of the stuff moooh touched here about making the videos available earlier.

Once upon a time private verification was probably useful. But today I do not see the point. Open the flood gates that is public verification and use it for everything. Runs of popular games could theoretically get accepted in a day or two. While less known games might be stuck for a while. Today everyone basically knows ahead of time who made the run anyway, otherwise it's often written in the stat-id or comments, so obscuring the runner isn't the reason to keep it (note: Not sure if this was ever a reason). Hiding the verifier identity isn't really working today either, as, again, runners today know pretty much who will verify ahead of time, it's very likely they were in the stream chatting with the runner as it was recorded.
As I see it reduces staff workload, possibly at the cost of server workload, and it also reduces some turn-around time for the runs.

Staff: Re-organize the verification process, some steps can absolutely be delegated and not piled onto one person / a few people, while it shall not be 100% available to the public, anyone with the required skills can encode most raw video submissions, write the game page, do the pre-release check etc. This database system I hear about can probably be useful to generate the final html from. So it would be a matter of having the necessary data fields.

DarkAries

Edit history:

DarkAries: 2015-01-25 03:11:55 am

2015-01-25 03:10:57 am

Okay so lots of things are being mentioned based on a runner's perspective. I totally like the tier idea of the videos on the site, which would solve a lot of issues. Hell if the site gets more speedrunning news you can even have blog posts like "X run now available in gold quality for download" or something like that to fill in the slow news day gaps.

With regards to the KB, from a hardware tinkerers( is this even a word?) perspective, this wiki is the shit. So useful as a base of starting anything. I wish it had more info and I would gladly help fill it out even more. I like trying to figure out the best way to make a stream and my games look. Hell for a site that wants to have the best quality videos, this should be the number one place to go, to figure out how to do this. There should be tons of community reviews on capture cards, scalers, tvs, third party controllers whatever. I kind of attempted this in a very shitty attempt of a god awful podcast. Ways to help people figure out how to set up something proper that actually does look it's absolute best. All the time people get into the hobby and the first question they ask is "What do I need to get started" . Well how about being able to just say go to the SDA KB and get started there. Watch some video tutorials and reviews, what to do and not do. I mean it's already a really good resource, but it can be even better.

Also on a previous page somebody mentioned aobut SDA not really adapting to the whole streaming scene. I have an idea that's been in the back of my mind for awhile now. A rainwave-esque livestream akin to Cinemateq when it used to air on G4. With a site that has so many videos we could have a livestream that just airs runs, the next one could be viewer voted it and run 24/7. I mean sometimes people just need something to watch, so why not just some cool vod runs, hell with some community help you could rerender the videos with info blurbs running throughout or something, or maybe have the community record a commentary track etc. With Twitch's host mode you can set it to a streamer or a marathon. Obviously this would require effort, but I think it would be cool and I'm probably not alone in this.

That's about all I can think up. I'll edit if I can think up anything else.

Okay so lots of things are being mentioned based on a runner's perspective. I totally like the tier idea of the videos on the site, which would solve a lot of issues. Hell if the site gets more speedrunning news you can even have blog posts like "X run now available in gold quality for download" or something like that to fill in the slow news day gaps.

With regards to the KB, from a hardware tinkerers( is this even a word?) perspective, this wiki is the shit. So useful as a base of starting anything. I wish it had more info and I would gladly help fill it out even more. I like trying to figure out the best way to make a stream and my games look. Hell for a site that wants to have the best quality videos, this should be the number one place to go, to figure out how to do this. There should be tons of community reviews on capture cards, scalers, tvs, third party controllers whatever. I kind of attempted this in a very shitty attempt of a god awful podcast. Ways to help people figure out how to set up something proper that actually does look it's absolute best. All the time people get into the hobby and the first question they ask is "What do I need to get started" . Well how about being able to just say go to the SDA KB and get started there. Watch some video tutorials and reviews, what to do and not do. I mean it's already a really good resource, but it can be even better.

Also on a previous page somebody mentioned aobut SDA not really adapting to the whole streaming scene. I have an idea that's been in the back of my mind for awhile now. A rainwave-esque livestream akin to Cinemateq when it used to air on G4. With a site that has so many videos we could have a livestream that just airs runs, the next one could be viewer voted it and run 24/7. I mean sometimes people just need something to watch, so why not just some cool vod runs, hell with some community help you could rerender the videos with info blurbs running throughout or something, or maybe have the community record a commentary track etc.  With Twitch's host mode you can set it to a streamer or a marathon.  Obviously this would require effort, but I think it would be cool and I'm probably not alone in this.

That's about all I can think up.  I'll edit if I can think up anything else.

moooh

2015-01-25 03:17:04 am

Exoray

@cyghfer: Verification actually does catch cheated runs in advance, it has happened on numerous occasions and I myself have been a verifier for a couple of those.
No matter how extensive research is made for runs, a verification system is never going to be 100% waterproof. Things will slip through and we can only hope that they are at least caught eventually.
I've heard from a non-speedrunner visiting the site that, with the internet being so full of fake things, fake news, fake videos, fake rumors, how good it is to have this oasis where you know that every video available is something that other people have scrutinized in some way and approved it as likely legit. Even if verification wouldn't remain identical to how it's been in the past, I still think there's value in having verification in some form.

Re: glitchless:
Over the past 10 years I've seen countless of discussions where people are arguing over what constitutes a glitch or not. I can definitely say by experience that it is very difficult for people to agree upon what counts as a glitch in a game and what's "intended". Everyone has their own firm belief and it varies wildly from the next person (and the next game as well for that matter).
It is however, very easy for people to agree upon what counts as a large-skip glitch and what only counts as a minor glitch (or just a large-skip in general) which is why we prefer that kind of separation. We can only have category definitions that a lot of people can back and say "yeah this makes sense", otherwise it would make up a poor and oft disputed category.

@cyghfer: Verification actually does catch cheated runs in advance, it has happened on numerous occasions and I myself have been a verifier for a couple of those.
No matter how extensive research is made for runs, a verification system is never going to be 100% waterproof. Things will slip through and we can only hope that they are at least caught eventually.
I've heard from a non-speedrunner visiting the site that, with the internet being so full of fake things, fake news, fake videos, fake rumors, how good it is to have this oasis where you know that every video available is something that other people have scrutinized in some way and approved it as likely legit. Even if verification wouldn't remain identical to how it's been in the past, I still think there's value in having verification in some form.

Re: glitchless:
Over the past 10 years I've seen countless of discussions where people are arguing over what constitutes a glitch or not. I can definitely say by experience that it is very difficult for people to agree upon what counts as a glitch in a game and what's "intended". Everyone has their own firm belief and it varies wildly from the next person (and the next game as well for that matter).
It is however, very easy for people to agree upon what counts as a large-skip glitch and what only counts as a minor glitch (or just a large-skip in general) which is why we prefer that kind of separation. We can only have category definitions that a lot of people can back and say "yeah this makes sense", otherwise it would make up a poor and oft disputed category.

Judgy

2015-01-25 06:01:12 am

Borderlands 2 Glitch Hunter/ router.

Quote from Warepire:

Perhaps also delegate part of the intro text for the game to the runner / other qualified party. That way it will not suffer from the "Syphoon Filter 3 mistake" that was mentioned earlier.

^ This, maybe have it as a text field on the submission form. (maybe also a tick box for "Game page already exists")

Quote from Warepire:

Open the flood gates that is public verification and use it for everything. Runs of popular games could theoretically get accepted in a day or two. While less known games might be stuck for a while. Today everyone basically knows ahead of time who made the run anyway, otherwise it's often written in the stat-id or comments, so obscuring the runner isn't the reason to keep it (note: Not sure if this was ever a reason). Hiding the verifier identity isn't really working today either, as, again, runners today know pretty much who will verify ahead of time, it's very likely they were in the stream chatting with the runner as it was recorded.
As I see it reduces staff workload, possibly at the cost of server workload, and it also reduces some turn-around time for the runs.

^ also this.

[quote="Warepire"] Perhaps also delegate part of the intro text for the game to the runner / other qualified party. That way it will not suffer from the "Syphoon Filter 3 mistake" that was mentioned earlier.[/quote]

^ This, maybe have it as a text field on the submission form. (maybe also a tick box for "Game page already exists")

[quote="Warepire"]Open the flood gates that is public verification and use it for everything. Runs of popular games could theoretically get accepted in a day or two. While less known games might be stuck for a while. Today everyone basically knows ahead of time who made the run anyway, otherwise it's often written in the stat-id or comments, so obscuring the runner isn't the reason to keep it (note: Not sure if this was ever a reason). Hiding the verifier identity isn't really working today either, as, again, runners today know pretty much who will verify ahead of time, it's very likely they were in the stream chatting with the runner as it was recorded.
As I see it reduces staff workload, possibly at the cost of server workload, and it also reduces some turn-around time for the runs.[/quote]

^ also this.

MetzGER

2015-01-25 06:37:35 am

If it aint broke don't fix it.

Quote from Roseluck:

I have been lurking on the forums and checking the front page since 2007. I am glad that this thread got posted, I have been wondering and talking to people about it for a couple years now. My perspective is purely from a viewer standpoint. I have never speedran a game in my life, and I do not plan on starting now.

The main strength I see in SDA is that the discussion and runs stay up. Highlights and youtube videos can just be gone one day. On several internet forums I have been too, I have seen people who quit edit every one of their posts in order to delete the text. That annoys me to no end, something about the past is lost forever. What if a runner decided to do the same thing, but with his runs? Then if it were on SDA, I could still see them, but if it were a link to a youtube channel, it is gone.

Similarly, discussion on IRC and Twitch chat is just gone after a while. Nothing to help those who want to start running in the future, and no help in avoiding reinventing the wheel.

On another note, why would someone submit to SDA? So that people who are not interesting in their game, but in general speedrunning can see it. There are many games where my interest in watching streams of it are pretty much zero, but I will watch a run of the game submitted to SDA.

Also, the live commentary of streamed runs is terrible, as they respond to chat and don't explain the trick they are doing for the fifteenth time that day. Which is fine for streaming, but a poor commentary for someone who knows nothing about how that game is ran. I love games on SDA that have audio commentary, but even solid run comments makes the run so much more enjoyable.

I feel no need to visit other speedrunning sites, so I don't. SDA was all I needed to enjoy speedruns in 2007, and even in the streaming era, it lets me know what great runs have been happening for games that I do not watch people stream.

Exactly what I am thinking.

As a lurker myself for nearly 10 years now, for me SDA is a hard copy archive. The only way I ever feasted on speedruns, and the only way I ever will. I guess its just about "needing the real deal".

I have a backup of every "3d/ego game related shooter run" released on this site since 2006 right inside my rigg. So if something, for whatever reason goes nuclear around here, 200GB of runs won't be lost.

I wonder if there are others out there preserving the legacy this board built up to the way I do.

As long as SDA does what it does right now, I will backup parts of its legacy and thereby be a part of it.

[quote="Roseluck"]I have been lurking on the forums and checking the front page since 2007. I am glad that this thread got posted, I have been wondering and talking to people about it for a couple years now. My perspective is purely from a viewer standpoint. I have never speedran a game in my life, and I do not plan on starting now.

The main strength I see in SDA is that the discussion and runs stay up. Highlights and youtube videos can just be gone one day. On several internet forums I have been too, I have seen people who quit edit every one of their posts in order to delete the text. That annoys me to no end, something about the past is lost forever. What if a runner decided to do the same thing, but with his runs? Then if it were on SDA, I could still see them, but if it were a link to a youtube channel, it is gone.

Similarly, discussion on IRC and Twitch chat is just gone after a while. Nothing to help those who want to start running in the future, and no help in avoiding reinventing the wheel.

On another note, why would someone submit to SDA? So that people who are not interesting in their game, but in general speedrunning can see it. There are many games where my interest in watching streams of it are pretty much zero, but I will watch a run of the game submitted to SDA.

Also, the live commentary of streamed runs is terrible, as they respond to chat and don't explain the trick they are doing for the fifteenth time that day. Which is fine for streaming, but a poor commentary for someone who knows nothing about how that game is ran. I love games on SDA that have audio commentary, but even solid run comments makes the run so much more enjoyable.

I feel no need to visit other speedrunning sites, so I don't. SDA was all I needed to enjoy speedruns in 2007, and even in the streaming era, it lets me know what great runs have been happening for games that I do not watch people stream.[/quote]

Exactly what I am thinking.

As a lurker myself for nearly 10 years now, for me SDA is a hard copy archive. The only way I ever feasted on speedruns, and the only way I ever will. I guess its just about "needing the real deal".

I have a backup of every "3d/ego game related shooter run" released on this site since 2006 right inside my rigg. So if something, for whatever reason goes nuclear around here, 200GB of runs won't be lost.

I wonder if there are others out there preserving the legacy this board built up to the way I do.

As long as SDA does what it does right now, I will backup parts of its legacy and thereby be a part of it.

Radix

Edit history:

Radix: 2015-01-25 07:29:45 am

2015-01-25 07:29:31 am

I'm addicted to games

Quote from Andrew_Mills:

SDA Run Submission Experience:
Hoop 1:
[...]
Hoop 10: Finally submits a run, of all qualities, with everything that SDA wants.
Hoop 11: Has to wait X weeks for run to even make it on to the site.

So your main complaint is not "sda staff is slow to process a run" but "video encoding is hard". You do realize that you can submit a raw video to nate and he'll encode for you? That effectively makes it the same as your one hoop elsewhere example.

Quote from Warepire:

The forum:

I have suggested this before and gotten shot down, but I will bring it up again. I really think the planning section shall be divided per game console, not per console "age".

It is definitely time for rethinking the three main forums for run discussion. They've been organized the way they are for ~10 years at my idea to avoid "too many forums" symptom that I'd seen on too many other sites. I still wouldn't want one forum per console because that's like what... 20? Probably a forum reorg discussion should go into a separate thread.

[quote="Andrew_Mills"]SDA Run Submission Experience:
Hoop 1: 
[...]
Hoop 10: Finally submits a run, of all qualities, with everything that SDA wants.
Hoop 11: Has to wait X weeks for run to even make it on to the site.[/quote]

So your main complaint is not "sda staff is slow to process a run" but "video encoding is hard". You do realize that you can submit a raw video to nate and he'll encode for you? That effectively makes it the same as your one hoop elsewhere example.

[quote="Warepire"][b]The forum:[/b]

I have suggested this before and gotten shot down, but I will bring it up again. I really think the planning section shall be divided per game console, not per console "age".[/quote]

It is definitely time for rethinking the three main forums for run discussion. They've been organized the way they are for ~10 years at my idea to avoid "too many forums" symptom that I'd seen on too many other sites. I still wouldn't want one forum per console because that's like what... 20? Probably a forum reorg discussion should go into a separate thread.

Melodia

2015-01-25 09:04:46 am

One minor point that I have *no* idea how much is a factor for others -- the RSS feed. As it is currently, the point points directly to the front page so any new updates still show as 'read' on the feed. In other words, it's VERY easy to miss when there's a new update, one either has to just check regularly or remember what the title of the previous update was.

Again, maybe people like me who would rely on the feed for updates is in the minority but it's a point...

As for the forum, a "by console" division just doesn't work any more. It's bad enough to have PC separate. A large majority of games these days get released on multiple consoles. I completely agree that having too many forums is bad (and I'm VERY grateful SDA doesn't have all the shit some forums have with "music/movies/food/off topic/whateverthefuckelse" that some forums throw in for no apparently reason outside of everyone else doing it).
I almost wonder if going the route that VGMDB has and just have one large forum with a single thread per game, which where nessesary is also tied directly to the 'data' page (i.e. the runs & comments page). Or even go a step further and have each game be a mini-forum with a thread for each major category. Just throwing some mental ideas out there.
One other issue with the forums that I've noticed over the years is that, especially popular games, will often get multiple threads in the casual speedrunning or gaming discussiuon that should really be in the normal section. It's great to ahknowledge that some of us don't care too much about WR and just want to Run for Fun™, but when there's got to be a better way to centralize discussion -- though on the flip side I *would* prefer to see separate threads for any% vs 100% vs glitchless vs. whatever just to cut down on confusion when going back through threads themsevles.

Now onto glitches....I have to say I'm a huge fan of having as many categories THAT MAKE SENSE as possible. I definetly agree that it's not always easy to really define 'glitch' but I think most people have a general sense of what could be called...cheating vs. not. From other posts, I think the general sense I'm getting from the forum, not just for glitched vs glitchless but also for categories in general is that it should be a game by game basis. FFVI has a general recognized gltichless category, but of course it's literally impossible to not take advantage of certain glitches in that game (most notably the evade thing). On the flip side, what they call a "100%"....isn't (in fact IMO it's way too arbetrary, and is lacking in some things that wouldn't extend the run TOO much to be called a proper 100%), but again, it's what is generally accepted for the game as a category.
On that note, and I don't believe it's been brought up in this thread, I think the whole single segment vs. RTA issue is very outdated and there should be exactly two 'types' of runs on that front -- segmented vs. not segmented. Whether someone resets orS&Q in the middle of the run or not should be irrelevant, unless there's, again, generally accepted separate categories for that (such as in LTTP).

One minor point that I have *no* idea how much is a factor for others -- the RSS feed. As it is currently, the point points directly to the front page so any new updates still show as 'read' on the feed. In other words, it's VERY easy to miss when there's a new update, one either has to just check regularly or remember what the title of the previous update was.

Again, maybe people like me who would rely on the feed for updates is in the minority but it's a point...

As for the forum, a "by console" division just doesn't work any more. It's bad enough to have PC separate. A large majority of games these days get released on multiple consoles. I completely agree that having too many forums is bad (and I'm VERY grateful SDA doesn't have all the shit some forums have with "music/movies/food/off topic/whateverthefuckelse" that some forums throw in for no apparently reason outside of everyone else  doing it).
I almost wonder if going the route that VGMDB has and just have one large forum with a single thread per game, which where nessesary is also tied directly to the 'data' page (i.e. the runs & comments page). Or even go a step further and have each game be a mini-forum with a thread for each major category. Just throwing some mental ideas out there.
One other issue with the forums that I've noticed over the years is that, especially popular games, will often get multiple threads in the casual speedrunning or gaming discussiuon that should really be in the normal section. It's great to ahknowledge that some of us don't care too much about WR and just want to Run for Fun™, but when there's got to be a better way to centralize discussion -- though on the flip side I *would* prefer to see separate threads for any% vs 100% vs glitchless vs. whatever just to cut down on confusion when going back through threads themsevles.

Now onto glitches....I have to say I'm a huge fan of having as many categories THAT MAKE SENSE as possible. I definetly agree that it's not always easy to really define 'glitch' but I think most people have a general sense of what could be called...cheating vs. not. From other posts, I think the general sense I'm getting from the forum, not just for glitched vs glitchless but also for categories in general is that it should be a game by game basis. FFVI has a general recognized gltichless category, but of course it's literally impossible to not take advantage of certain glitches in that game (most notably the evade thing). On the flip side, what they call a "100%"....isn't (in fact IMO it's way too arbetrary, and is lacking in some things that wouldn't extend the run TOO much to be called a proper 100%), but again, it's what is generally accepted for the game as a category. 
On that note, and I don't believe it's been brought up in this thread, I think the whole single segment vs. RTA issue is very outdated and there should be exactly two 'types' of runs on that front -- segmented vs. not segmented. Whether someone resets orS&Q in the middle of the run or not should be irrelevant, unless there's, again, generally accepted separate categories for that (such as in LTTP).

Reiska

2015-01-25 09:26:40 am

Yeah, to be clear and touch on something Melodia mentioned, when I say "glitchless" even that can get pretty arbitrary. Is it "glitchless" if you're abusing mblock in FF6? (Most of the community would say yes, because you can't really avoid doing this in the SNES version.)

Re: forum divisions - Why not separate the forums not by console or console generation at all, but by rough game genre? The only risk you run there is over-categorization, so I'd keep it simple.

cyghfer

2015-01-25 09:52:57 am

Quote from moooh:

@cyghfer: Verification actually does catch cheated runs in advance, it has happened on numerous occasions and I myself have been a verifier for a couple of those.
No matter how extensive research is made for runs, a verification system is never going to be 100% waterproof. Things will slip through and we can only hope that they are at least caught eventually.
I've heard from a non-speedrunner visiting the site that, with the internet being so full of fake things, fake news, fake videos, fake rumors, how good it is to have this oasis where you know that every video available is something that other people have scrutinized in some way and approved it as likely legit. Even if verification wouldn't remain identical to how it's been in the past, I still think there's value in having verification in some form.

Do you mind posting an example or two? I've read a decent number of verifications over the years and I've never seen one where a cheated run was caught, nor have I heard of one. Are they simply not posted at all in this case?

[quote="moooh"]@cyghfer: Verification actually does catch cheated runs in advance, it has happened on numerous occasions and I myself have been a verifier for a couple of those.
No matter how extensive research is made for runs, a verification system is never going to be 100% waterproof. Things will slip through and we can only hope that they are at least caught eventually.
I've heard from a non-speedrunner visiting the site that, with the internet being so full of fake things, fake news, fake videos, fake rumors, how good it is to have this oasis where you know that every video available is something that other people have scrutinized in some way and approved it as likely legit. Even if verification wouldn't remain identical to how it's been in the past, I still think there's value in having verification in some form.[/quote]
Do you mind posting an example or two? I've read a decent number of verifications over the years and I've never seen one where a cheated run was caught, nor have I heard of one. Are they simply not posted at all in this case?

__sdfg

2015-01-25 11:10:03 am

D:

This comes to mind as possibly the only time Yours Truly called severe cheating on a run where there actually was severe cheating on the part of the runner.

Nate had already caught it just by looking at how the video was captured, though.

moooh

2015-01-25 11:21:55 am

Exoray

Pretty old example though. I believe cyghfer was looking for something more recent.
Don't know if they are always posted as I'm not around following all the submissions in early stages, maybe another admin could answer that for you.
I can probably try to find you a few examples if you can wait a couple of days as I'm on phone only for a couple of days.
The main point was however that verification serves other purposes as well.

bpcookie

2015-01-25 12:07:02 pm

Quote from moooh:

Re: glitchless:
Over the past 10 years I've seen countless of discussions where people are arguing over what constitutes a glitch or not.

I'm not sure how many it takes to exceed countability, but that sounds like a lot. I'm a little curious what context these arguments were even in. I mean we don't have glitchless runs, so why was it even being discussed?

Anyway, I think a lot of people's trepidation concerning glitchless is tied to this scary idea of flood gates opening. It's like you're imagining one big sloppy What's A Glitch thread that has 728 pages and devolves into petty bickering. But it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There may be some, or even several games for which a glitchless category doesn't make sense. Maybe start with 5 games, or 1 game, and say we're going to consider adding a glitchless OoT category if there's interest in that, and here's a thread discussing what the rules for this category, for this one game, are going to be, and these specific, whatever, 3 or 5 guys are going to have the final say on borderline cases, end of story, and these will be the rules for glitchless OoT, and if the runner wants to use something we haven't covered, it's on them to bring it up and get it added to this list, but basically, if you even have to ask, it's probably not allowed in a glitchless run. Then we see if there's interest on part of the runners, and when the run is done if there's interest in the community. Was this worth the effort, or was it just spinning wheels in the mud? If that works out, maybe we say ok, we'll consider adding a glitchless category for Metroid Prime if there's interest there. It's not something you ever have to let get out of control.

[quote="moooh"]Re: glitchless:
Over the past 10 years I've seen countless of discussions where people are arguing over what constitutes a glitch or not.[/quote]

I'm not sure how many it takes to exceed countability, but that sounds like a lot. I'm a little curious what context these arguments were even in. I mean we don't have glitchless runs, so why was it even being discussed?

Anyway, I think a lot of people's trepidation concerning glitchless is tied to this scary idea of flood gates opening. It's like you're imagining one big sloppy What's A Glitch thread that has 728 pages and devolves into petty bickering. But it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There may be some, or even several games for which a glitchless category doesn't make sense. Maybe start with 5 games, or 1 game, and say we're going to consider adding a glitchless OoT category if there's interest in that, and here's a thread discussing what the rules for this category, for this one game, are going to be, and these specific, whatever, 3 or 5 guys are going to have the final say on borderline cases, end of story, and these will be the rules for glitchless OoT, and if the runner wants to use something we haven't covered, it's on them to bring it up and get it added to this list, but basically, if you even have to ask, it's probably not allowed in a glitchless run. Then we see if there's interest on part of the runners, and when the run is done if there's interest in the community. Was this worth the effort, or was it just spinning wheels in the mud? If that works out, maybe we say ok, we'll consider adding a glitchless category for Metroid Prime if there's interest there. It's not something you ever have to let get out of control.

TheMG2

2015-01-25 12:11:47 pm

Quote from bpcookie:

Quote from moooh:

Re: glitchless:
Over the past 10 years I've seen countless of discussions where people are arguing over what constitutes a glitch or not.

I'm not sure how many it takes to exceed countability, but that sounds like a lot. I'm a little curious what context these arguments were even in. I mean we don't have glitchless runs, so why was it even being discussed?

Anyway, I think a lot of people's trepidation concerning glitchless is tied to this scary idea of flood gates opening. It's like you're imagining one big sloppy What's A Glitch thread that has 728 pages and devolves into petty bickering. But it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There may be some, or even several games for which a glitchless category doesn't make sense. Maybe start with 5 games, or 1 game, and say we're going to consider adding a glitchless OoT category if there's interest in that, and here's a thread discussing what the rules for this category, for this one game, are going to be, and these specific, whatever, 3 or 5 guys are going to have the final say on borderline cases, end of story, and these will be the rules for glitchless OoT, and if the runner wants to use something we haven't covered, it's on them to bring it up and get it added to this list, but basically, if you even have to ask, it's probably not allowed in a glitchless run. Then we see if there's interest on part of the runners, and when the run is done if there's interest in the community. Was this worth the effort, or was it just spinning wheels in the mud? If that works out, maybe we say ok, we'll consider adding a glitchless category for Metroid Prime if there's interest there. It's not something you ever have to let get out of control.

Here is the thing, there needs to be a want for a glitchless category in the specific communities. The metroid prime community has 0 desire for any sort of glitchless category. Therefore it would make 0 sense to have one for that game.

[quote="bpcookie"][quote="moooh"]Re: glitchless:
Over the past 10 years I've seen countless of discussions where people are arguing over what constitutes a glitch or not.[/quote]

I'm not sure how many it takes to exceed countability, but that sounds like a lot. I'm a little curious what context these arguments were even in. I mean we don't have glitchless runs, so why was it even being discussed?

Anyway, I think a lot of people's trepidation concerning glitchless is tied to this scary idea of flood gates opening. It's like you're imagining one big sloppy What's A Glitch thread that has 728 pages and devolves into petty bickering. But it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There may be some, or even several games for which a glitchless category doesn't make sense. Maybe start with 5 games, or 1 game, and say we're going to consider adding a glitchless OoT category if there's interest in that, and here's a thread discussing what the rules for this category, for this one game, are going to be, and these specific, whatever, 3 or 5 guys are going to have the final say on borderline cases, end of story, and these will be the rules for glitchless OoT, and if the runner wants to use something we haven't covered, it's on them to bring it up and get it added to this list, but basically, if you even have to ask, it's probably not allowed in a glitchless run. Then we see if there's interest on part of the runners, and when the run is done if there's interest in the community. Was this worth the effort, or was it just spinning wheels in the mud? If that works out, maybe we say ok, we'll consider adding a glitchless category for Metroid Prime if there's interest there. It's not something you ever have to let get out of control.[/quote]
Here is the thing, there needs to be a want for a glitchless category in the specific communities. The metroid prime community has 0 desire for any sort of glitchless category. Therefore it would make 0 sense to have one for that game.

Judgy

Edit history:

Judgy: 2015-01-25 12:26:59 pm

2015-01-25 12:26:18 pm

Borderlands 2 Glitch Hunter/ router.

Quote from TheMG2:

Here is the thing, there needs to be a want for a glitchless category in the specific communities. The metroid prime community has 0 desire for any sort of glitchless category. Therefore it would make 0 sense to have one for that game.

This is also true for Borderlands 2 / Pre-sequal.

Borderlands 2 for example with glitches is around 2:20:00 for NG W/DLC, without glitches it's (as far as I can remember) 3.5 - 4 hours (if not more) for NG W/DLC.

Hence why exactly NO-ONE runs without glitches.

Onin

2015-01-25 12:35:37 pm

I don't think there's any harm in accepting glitchless runs IF the community agrees on its relevance.

The problem with blanketly accepting glitchless runs is that it could encourage people to submit games where glitchless isn't even a thing among the community. Accepting common glitchless runs for games where such a category is legitimate, is fine. But it could act as a slippery slope.

Andrew_Mills

Edit history:

Andrew_Mills: 2015-01-25 12:43:18 pm

2015-01-25 12:40:28 pm

AlphaStrategyGui des.com

Quote from Radix:

Quote from Andrew_Mills:

SDA Run Submission Experience:
Hoop 1:
[...]
Hoop 10: Finally submits a run, of all qualities, with everything that SDA wants.
Hoop 11: Has to wait X weeks for run to even make it on to the site.

So your main complaint is not "sda staff is slow to process a run" but "video encoding is hard". You do realize that you can submit a raw video to nate and he'll encode for you? That effectively makes it the same as your one hoop elsewhere example.

As someone who has frequented the site for many years now, I was under the impression nate had pretty much 'retired' from SDA and was no longer processing peoples runs for them. So if a seasoned visitor doesn't realise such an option is there; how is anyone new to the site supposed to know that? And I doubt nate has the time to become a mini-YouTube dedicated to pure video encoding, even if his services were much more apparent.

And btw, I never said video encoding was hard. Video encoding is piss easy these days (say hello to Elgato, YouTube, Handbrake etc). Video encoding to SDA's specific requirements is cumbersome (more-so if you're new to video capture). And it's a set of requirements that simply isn't needed anymore when, as I said before, most people really won't care about the extra few % increase in video quality.

And it's still not the same number of hoops if nate encodes for you (which would take a, potentially frustrating, unknown length of time) as you STILL have to wait God knows how long to even see the run live on the site (and you'll never know how many people watched your run, or what they thought of it etc).

[quote="Radix"][quote="Andrew_Mills"]SDA Run Submission Experience:
Hoop 1: 
[...]
Hoop 10: Finally submits a run, of all qualities, with everything that SDA wants.
Hoop 11: Has to wait X weeks for run to even make it on to the site.[/quote]

So your main complaint is not "sda staff is slow to process a run" but "video encoding is hard". You do realize that you can submit a raw video to nate and he'll encode for you? That effectively makes it the same as your one hoop elsewhere example.[/quote]
As someone who has frequented the site for many years now, I was under the impression nate had pretty much 'retired' from SDA and was no longer processing peoples runs for them. So if a seasoned visitor doesn't realise such an option is there; how is anyone new to the site supposed to know that? And I doubt nate has the time to become a mini-YouTube dedicated to pure video encoding, even if his services [i]were[/i] much more apparent.

And btw, I never said video encoding was hard. Video encoding is piss easy these days (say hello to Elgato, YouTube, Handbrake etc). Video encoding [i]to SDA's specific requirements[/i] is cumbersome (more-so if you're new to video capture). And it's a set of requirements that simply isn't needed anymore when, as I said before, most people really won't care about the extra few % increase in video quality.

And it's still not the same number of hoops if nate encodes for you (which would take a, potentially frustrating, unknown length of time) as you STILL have to wait God knows how long to even see the run live on the site (and you'll never know how many people watched your run, or what they thought of it etc).

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2015-01-25 01:51:13 pm

Omnigamer: 2015-01-25 01:04:56 pm

Omnigamer: 2015-01-25 01:04:15 pm

2015-01-25 01:03:00 pm

All the things

Regarding category discussions, I'm going to leave this here and expect nobody to read it: https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/What_is_a_speedrun%3F#Categories_Galore

Overall though, the category debate isn't one that can be solved in this thread. The only common thread between various categories comes down to: do people actually want to run it? Speaking in terms of the raw quantity of games that have been run, the vast majority only have one category, and will only ever have one category. Only the largest of games start to get into category shenanigans, and for the most part casual viewers only clamor for "glitchless" on these popular games. If runners can find enough merit to it as a category and can define the rules well enough, then I don't see the harm. Those are some big "Ifs" though.

-------------------------------

Thank you everybody who has contributed thus far! We've had some good suggestions and plenty to think of as we move forward. The biggest pushes I've seen have been for community news aggregation, having the various resources intertwined, and a more front-and-center Knowledge Base. Concerns with the process and usefulness of the run submission are still somewhat up in the air and not honed. One thing that I only alluded to in my initial post is that regardless of what direction we end up going, the staffing for SDA will need to expand. I don't think this can be disputed. Average forum activity has doubled or tripled in the last few years, yet the site's staff has changed by only a few individuals. That's fine to keep up the status quo, but for any meaningful changes to come to the site the roster of programmers, artists, web designers, and writers will need to expand to meet the demands of growth.

Now, I am not affiliated with SDA and as such I can't speak for the staff. But as happened earlier in the thread, there are needs for talented individuals that can volunteer some of their time to helping the site. I don't want this thread to turn into a list of resumes, but if you have such talents and want to help the site, it probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to PM an admin about it.

Regarding category discussions, I'm going to leave this here and expect nobody to read it: https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/What_is_a_speedrun%3F#Categories_Galore

Overall though, the category debate isn't one that can be solved in this thread. The only common thread between various categories comes down to: do people actually want to run it? Speaking in terms of the raw quantity of games that have been run, the vast majority only have one category, and will only ever have one category. Only the largest of games start to get into category shenanigans, and for the most part casual viewers only clamor for "glitchless" on these popular games. If runners can find enough merit to it as a category and can define the rules well enough, then I don't see the harm. Those are some big "Ifs" though.

-------------------------------

Thank you everybody who has contributed thus far! We've had some good suggestions and plenty to think of as we move forward. The biggest pushes I've seen have been for community news aggregation, having the various resources intertwined, and a more front-and-center Knowledge Base. Concerns with the process and usefulness of the run submission are still somewhat up in the air and not honed. One thing that I only alluded to in my initial post is that regardless of what direction we end up going, the staffing for SDA will need to expand. I don't think this can be disputed. Average forum activity has doubled or tripled in the last few years, yet the site's staff has changed by only a few individuals. That's fine to keep up the status quo, but for any meaningful changes to come to the site the roster of programmers, artists, web designers, and writers will need to expand to meet the demands of growth.

Now, I am not affiliated with SDA and as such I can't speak for the staff. But as happened earlier in the thread, there are needs for talented individuals that can volunteer some of their time to helping the site. I don't want this thread to turn into a list of resumes, but if you have such talents and want to help the site, it probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to PM an admin about it.

Yoshi348

2015-01-25 01:28:52 pm

dinosaur from the past

Well, this is a login i haven't used in a while.

I may not have used it, but I still regularly visit the site and view the posted runs. For me, the biggest thing SDA offers me right now is the ability to "follow" speedrunning as a general concept. Twitch and Youtube have become where a large majority of the speedrunners do their thing, but as a viewer there is no "speedrun" channel to follow or even a "Zelda speedrun" channel to follow, to name the biggest group of non-SDA users. The only choice is to follow the channel of each individual runner, but then you need to know who the runners are, and you have to deal with their other games and "funny uploads" and things change as time goes on. Actually, I'm being way too harsh with those quote marks there; most of the stuff people upload is interesting, but what I'm trying to say is they're all personal channels for the runner to put all of their personal things on, and that's great for people to follow a person and totally fine, but it's not so fine if you're just trying to see some of the best runs coming out.

Plus, if you wanted to do more than a few games the amount of people you're following starts to grow very quickly and becomes way too many to keep up with. It's double compounded with the choice of either Youtube, where you probably already are following a number of channels for non-speedrunning stuff already, or streaming sites, where Twitch's policy shifts have put some things in question and also fragmented the sites where runners run.

SDA is still the only real place that offers this. Speedrun.com could take this place if SDA submissions take a downward spiral, but given that they just post times and video links (a lot that got broken by the twitch thing, I guess) the site is REALLY bland and not engaging. I'm not saying that I've been needing LLCoolDave style symphonies on the front page, but more that it's not just a bald list, plus just as importantly the game pages with comments.

That said; the real issue is in supply; speedrunners not submitting to SDA and why this is. Youtube and Twitch give instant gratification for speedrunners. There's really two points I'm thinking of here, and my thoughts are probably going to get more messy here, but there's two potential factors and I don't know how they're really weighted here. One is oft mentioned long delay between submission and posting. I think that even though it may take actual, real time to get what needs to be done in the current process done, it's reached a breaking point where the customer demands to be right, and the customer is getting a quick turnaround with youtube. SDA is not Google; it's never going to achieve the upload time of Youtube, but I don't think people would mind a couple days or even a week, but clearly they aren't willing to wait much longer than that. The "content creators" currently have the balance of power and no matter what anybody feels, SDA has to reach that week turnaround target even if it means sacrificing things like the full range of quality or the situation won't change. It's just the cold hard reality of the situation. I do think that it's not like speedrunners are unreasonable. Since the current video quality on youtube sites is "good enough" for pretty much anybody who's not a videophile, things like lossless quality are probably going to need to be the first to go. However, other things that are fairly simple and still provide good value for the average user should stay to keep there being a reason to watch here; things in this category are things like full framerate, actually having the game audio, and not filling up half the screen with your stream chat and shit. Taking time to achieve top notch technical video quality, as defined in pixels and artifacts is taking time to appeal to the small percentage of people who care about that. Yet there are other things that viewers want and that runners and posters don't have to take too much time to achieve.

For SDA hoping the former reason is the bigger reason is key, because the other possible reason doesn't really have much hope: it's possible that runners get enough recognition from just the speedrun faithful and the channel followers than they don't need a general appeal much anymore. (I'm using recognition broadly here; I'm not try to imply that speedrunners are vain but trying to sum up everything that is about sharing their work with others and having it there for people to see.) This would be far far harder to overcome, but it would also be a determent to speedrunning as a whole because it would mean speedrunning would always be this thing only the faithful really followed.

I guess some other various points:

* The design of the site is kind of a red herring. I feel it's functional enough, and although the design could be improved and I do think there is a right way to do "modernization", the problem isn't on the demand side, it's the supply side, and people wanting to submit runs don't really use the website much at all other than to get an email address.

* Rules is a tricky thing. Zelda was kind of the first group to branch out and IIRC it was partially about rules... but at the same time I think that the current rules set is probably the best you can get for a general purpose website. If a specific community diverges for its own reasons, that's something SDA really has to figure out how to handle. 3D Zelda specifically is the elephant in the room here; it's one of THE biggest series in gaming and it really has to be bridged to be taken seriously, but I'm not sure what the real issues are at the current stage. The only thing I know for sure varies is timing what with ZSR using power on instead of start of control; and I'm not even sure if the difference is because of an actual reason, or the simple reason of "we're making our own rules now, and let's just use timing that's more convenient for streaming timers".

Well, this is a login i haven't used in a while.

I may not have used it, but I still regularly visit the site and view the posted runs. For me, the biggest thing SDA offers me right now is the ability to "follow" speedrunning as a general concept. Twitch and Youtube have become where a large majority of the speedrunners do their thing, but as a viewer there is no "speedrun" channel to follow or even a "Zelda speedrun" channel to follow, to name the biggest group of non-SDA users. The only choice is to follow the channel of each individual runner, but then you need to know who the runners are, and you have to deal with their other games and "funny uploads" and things change as time goes on. Actually, I'm being way too harsh with those quote marks there; most of the stuff people upload is interesting, but what I'm trying to say is they're all personal channels for the runner to put all of their personal things on, and that's great for people to follow a person and totally fine, but it's not so fine if you're just trying to see some of the best runs coming out.

Plus, if you wanted to do more than a few games the amount of people you're following starts to grow very quickly and becomes way too many to keep up with. It's double compounded with the choice of either Youtube, where you probably already are following a number of channels for non-speedrunning stuff already, or streaming sites, where Twitch's policy shifts have put some things in question and also fragmented the sites where runners run.

SDA is still the only real place that offers this. Speedrun.com could take this place if SDA submissions take a downward spiral, but given that they just post times and video links (a lot that got broken by the twitch thing, I guess) the site is REALLY bland and not engaging. I'm not saying that I've been needing LLCoolDave style symphonies on the front page, but more that it's not just a bald list, plus just as importantly the game pages with comments.

[b]That said;[/b] the real issue is in supply; speedrunners not submitting to SDA and [i]why[/i] this is. Youtube and Twitch give instant gratification for speedrunners. There's really two points I'm thinking of here, and my thoughts are probably going to get more messy here, but there's two potential factors and I don't know how they're really weighted here. One is oft mentioned long delay between submission and posting. I think that even though it may take actual, real time to get what needs to be done in the current process done, it's reached a breaking point where [b]the customer demands to be right[/b], and the customer is getting a quick turnaround with youtube. SDA is not Google; it's never going to achieve the upload time of Youtube, but I don't think people would mind a couple days or even a week, but clearly they aren't willing to wait much longer than that. [b]The "content creators" currently have the balance of power[/b] and no matter what anybody feels, SDA has to reach that week turnaround target [b]even if it means sacrificing things like the full range of quality[/b] or the situation won't change. It's just the cold hard reality of the situation. I do think that it's not like speedrunners are unreasonable. Since the current video quality on youtube sites is "good enough" for pretty much anybody who's not a videophile, things like lossless quality are probably going to need to be the first to go. However, other things that are fairly simple and still provide good value for the average user should stay to keep there being a reason to watch here; things in this category are things like full framerate, actually having the game audio, and not filling up half the screen with your stream chat and shit. [b]Taking time to achieve top notch technical video quality[/b], as defined in pixels and artifacts [b]is taking time to appeal to the small percentage of people who care about that. Yet there are other things that viewers want and that runners and posters don't have to take too much time to achieve.[/b]

For SDA hoping the former reason is the bigger reason is key, because the other possible reason doesn't really have much hope: it's possible that runners get enough recognition from just the speedrun faithful and the channel followers than they don't need a general appeal much anymore. (I'm using recognition broadly here; I'm not try to imply that speedrunners are vain but trying to sum up everything that is about sharing their work with others and having it there for people to see.) This would be far far harder to overcome, but it would also be a determent to speedrunning as a whole because it would mean speedrunning would always be this thing only the faithful really followed.

I guess some other various points:

* The design of the site is kind of a red herring. I feel it's functional enough, and although the design could be improved and I do think there is a right way to do "modernization", the problem isn't on the demand side, it's the supply side, and people wanting to submit runs don't really use the website much at all other than to get an email address.

* Rules is a tricky thing. Zelda was kind of the first group to branch out and IIRC it was partially about rules... but at the same time I think that the current rules set is probably the best you can get for a general purpose website. If a specific community diverges for its own reasons, that's something SDA really has to figure out how to handle. 3D Zelda specifically is the elephant in the room here; it's one of THE biggest series in gaming and it really has to be bridged to be taken seriously, but I'm not sure what the real issues are at the current stage. The only thing I know for sure varies is timing what with ZSR using power on instead of start of control; and I'm not even sure if the difference is because of an actual reason, or the simple reason of "we're making our own rules now, and let's just use timing that's more convenient for streaming timers".

Twinge

2015-01-25 01:32:34 pm

I first got involved with the speedrunning community 2 years ago and have never really found SDA terribly relevant outside of forums for GDQs. If I'm looking to see a run, I care more about better times and strats than I do about pristine audio & video. As others have mentioned, I feel this (primary) aspect of the site is at largely obsolete: WRs are broken often and people in general care a lot more about the record than a worse run at moderately better quality.

Areas that I would suggest to focus on would be history and run information in one centralized location, and the infrastructure to support that. These are categories which have a lot of value but are generally only found on an individual game basis elsewhere. These could also be mixed in with the high-quality runs easily enough: specific game pages could prominently feature an HQ run, discussion about the game, and history of the game. Ideally games could be given their own subforum of some sort rather than a single thread, and people could subscribe to a game to be notified on new comments in the forum, etc.

I'm basically talking about an entire site overhaul here so I don't expect it to be implemented anytime soon, if at all, but it would definitely be one way to ensure SDA remains useful and relevant while emphasizing the 'archive' and 'community' aspects of the site.

I first got involved with the speedrunning community 2 years ago and have never really found SDA terribly relevant outside of forums for GDQs.  If I'm looking to see a run, I care more about better times and strats than I do about pristine audio & video.  As others have mentioned, I feel this (primary) aspect of the site is at largely obsolete: WRs are broken often and people in general care a lot more about the record than a worse run at moderately better quality.

Areas that I would suggest to focus on would be history and run information in one centralized location, and the infrastructure to support that.  These are categories which have a lot of value but are generally only found on an individual game basis elsewhere.  These could also be mixed in with the high-quality runs easily enough: specific game pages could prominently feature an HQ run, discussion about the game, and history of the game.  Ideally games could be given their own subforum of some sort rather than a single thread, and people could subscribe to a game to be notified on new comments in the forum, etc.

I'm basically talking about an entire site overhaul here so I don't expect it to be implemented anytime soon, if at all, but it would definitely be one way to ensure SDA remains useful and relevant while emphasizing the 'archive' and 'community' aspects of the site.