Speedrunning Thread (Take 2) - GOTTA GO FAST

[LoverofPi]

This is the crying soy star wars fan in retrogaming form.

It's not clear from the video for some reason but the basic idea is that beta stuff and other extra stuff can be inserted via code into an unmodified Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time rom in real time to make a new gameplay experience.

And all soyboys everywhere are crying about it and cumming in their diapers. Over what is essentially a glorified fanfiction romhack. Yeah okay, the rom is technically "unmodified" but that's just semantics.

This romhack played at AGDQ:

Zelda is one of my favorite N64 games and the beta stuff is interesting, but come on, it's just a glorified romhack and the twitch messages in the ending is cringe. You're all crying over 23 year old games for kids and WW3 hasn't even started yet.

It's supposedly not even unmodified, so it's a bunch of bullshit as it is.

It's absolutely all fanfiction, but from a programming perspective, it is an amazing feat. The only mod made to either the cart or the system was an output mod for the N64 so they could get a clean digital signal. The cart was -and technically still is- an unmodified original Zelda cart. What the programmers and runners did was write a program to change the game as it existed in the N64's memory on the fly through the controller ports using arbitrary code execution.

So yes. It's a Romhack. But it's a Romhack done "live" and in a way where the original ROM on the cartridge was not even remotely affected.

 

[FarCentrist]

So yes. It's a Romhack. But it's a Romhack done "live" and in a way where the original ROM on the cartridge was not even remotely affected.

No one is questioning the technical skill needed to perform the feat but who actually cares apart from other emu game devs/programmers?

It's like when a guitar player does all sort of musical tricks and technical stuff that only other guitar players are impressed by or when a gymbro achieves gains that only get the attention of other gymbros (and not the opposite sex). The first video I posted was being disingenuous and doing its best to not sell it as a glorified romhack (note the comments section where some people feel cheated "nice but it's just a fanfiction romhack dude" or "this shit isn't in the original game so how can it be unmodified cos it's not")

I think it's just a pure self congratulatory masturbation exercise that could have just as easily have been a standard romhack alongside all the other romhacks at romhacking.net (so that other people, not just autistic emudevs, can experience). It just smells like a cynical attempt to reinvigorate the stagnating speedrunning scene by exploiting people's nostalgia for a beloved game and manufacturing an "event"

Is this the Pokemon RBG "Beta" all over again?

What happened there?

 

[The Fatriarchy]

It's absolutely all fanfiction, but from a programming perspective, it is an amazing feat. The only mod made to either the cart or the system was an output mod for the N64 so they could get a clean digital signal. The cart was -and technically still is- an unmodified original Zelda cart. What the programmers and runners did was write a program to change the game as it existed in the N64's memory on the fly through the controller ports using arbitrary code execution.

So yes. It's a Romhack. But it's a Romhack done "live" and in a way where the original ROM on the cartridge was not even remotely affected.

Well that's clearly not true, because the N64 can't connect to twitch chat no matter how much code you write on it. And that's just the most blatant part. But I guess that's still off the original topic.

 

[Clorox Cowboy]

What happened there?

This article (archive) explains the controversy, but TLDR:

• During a Nintendo server leak a bunch of back sprites of beta Pokemon designs get leaked.
• Helix Chamber a Pokémon archival community verify legitimacy.
• Excited they begin work on a Pokemon ROM hack, including making fan-made front sprites for the Pokemon and creating Pokedex entries.
• Helix Chamber starts advertising a Twitch Stream where they'll being playing the Spaceworld 97 demo of Gold and Silver.
• People show up super hyped.
• Suddenly they get a surprise. Helix Chamber says they're playing a leaked prototype of Pokemon Green.
• No mention is made that it's a romhack
• Treated as legit
• People start pouring in donations for them to show Pokedex entries and stuff with no idea most of it is a fan "recreation"
• It's not revealed until afterwards that it is a fan-made romhack.
• People were of course pissed

While at the time it caused an uproar a lot of the assets they made are still treated as legit designs and due to the way this info was presented you still get people unknowingly passing around the rom as legit.

Not quite the same on the same technical scope as the Ocarina Romhack, but it's also fanfiction mixed with real assets treated as legitimate beta content.

 

[LoverofPi]

No one is questioning the technical skill needed to perform the feat but who actually cares apart from other emu game devs/programmers?

It's like when a guitar player does all sort of musical tricks and technical stuff that only other guitar players are impressed by or when a gymbro achieves gains that only get the attention of other gymbros (and not the opposite sex). The first video I posted was being disingenuous and doing its best to not sell it as a glorified romhack (note the comments section where some people feel cheated "nice but it's just a fanfiction romhack dude" or "this shit isn't in the original game so how can it be unmodified cos it's not")

Which I completely understand. I went into the thing expecting Arbitrary Code Execution fuckery and found the content chintzy but the coding impressive.

I think it's just a pure self congratulatory masturbation exercise that could have just as easily have been a standard romhack alongside all the other romhacks at romhacking.net (so that other people, not just autistic emudevs, can experience). It just smells like a cynical attempt to reinvigorate the stagnating speedrunning scene by exploiting people's nostalgia for a beloved game and manufacturing an "event"

I mean it's by the TASing community, so doing it live through just the controller inputs is sort of the name of the game, but I agree, releasing it as a standalone hack so people can explore in it would have been a decent follow up.

Well that's clearly not true, because the N64 can't connect to twitch chat no matter how much code you write on it. And that's just the most blatant part. But I guess that's still off the original topic.

The N64 isn't connecting to twitch. The microcomputer that handles TASing and was used to write the romhack into RAM was connected to it, and then it used ports 2-4 to pass a bunch of messages into memory. Using TASbot to put GDQ chat into otherwise not-internet connected consoles has been a party trick for them for several years now.

And again, I am not saying that they didn't modify the game- the 100% did. They just did it live and without touching the ROM on the cart.

 

[FarCentrist]

This article (archive) explains the controversy, but TLDR:

• During a Nintendo server leak a bunch of back sprites of beta Pokemon designs get leaked.
• Helix Chamber a Pokémon archival community verify legitimacy.
• Excited they begin work on a Pokemon ROM hack, including making fan-made front sprites for the Pokemon and creating Pokedex entries.
• Helix Chamber starts advertising a Twitch Stream where they'll being playing the Spaceworld 97 demo of Gold and Silver.
• People show up super hyped.
• Suddenly they get a surprise. Helix Chamber says they're playing a leaked prototype of Pokemon Green.
• No mention is made that it's a romhack
• Treated as legit
• People start pouring in donations for them to show Pokedex entries and stuff with no idea most of it is a fan "recreation"
• It's not revealed until afterwards that it is a fan-made romhack.
• People were of course pissed

While at the time it caused an uproar a lot of the assets they made are still treated as legit designs and due to the way this info was presented you still get people unknowingly passing around the rom as legit.

Not quite the same on the same technical scope as the Ocarina Romhack, but it's also fanfiction mixed with real assets treated as legitimate beta content.

What a shitshow, and very similar to the Zelda situation, which at least had no money involved. But it takes a special sort of emudev autism to present beta content in an ambitious unorthodox way, making people question what's real and what's not, making people feel cheated and making them feel their time is wasted.

Just present the beta/unreleased shit in an honest and non-autist way, clearly identify what's official and what's fan fiction (preferably separately) and there should be no complaints.


The twitch chat ending is still cringe bigly though.

 

[Boss Bass]

I’m always annoyed by gross revenue numbers being repeated by the media as if that’s the total charity takeaway.

Annoyance gave way to curiosity. Since GDQ is an LLC, we can’t see much about their financials, however, PCF is required to disclose event financials. I’m not an auditor, nor was it a deep look, but it for 2019 and 2020 about 88% of event revenue was going to PCF.

Fuck it, I think that’s pretty good. 350k for that event + admin is bloated, but well within reason.

Edit: ah, ok. If there is funny business it’s in the P&L for fundraising (1M including 320k in the old chestnut “professional services”). Still, they’re contributing 45% of all money taken in by PCF.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I’m always annoyed by gross revenue numbers being repeated by the media as if that’s the total charity takeaway.

Annoyance gave way to curiosity. Since GDQ is an LLC, we can’t see much about their financials, however, PCF is required to disclose event financials. I’m not an auditor, nor was it a deep look, but it for 2019 and 2020 about 88% of event revenue was going to PCF.

Fuck it, I think that’s pretty good. 350k for that event + admin is bloated, but well within reason.

Edit: ah, ok. If there is funny business it’s in the P&L for fundraising (1M including 320k in the old chestnut “professional services”). Still, they’re contributing 45% of all money taken in by PCF.

I'm no financial analyst - but GDQ is likely only required to pass forward PCF/DW what are taken in as "donations" (ex - given from the viewers as express donations).

It's likely they keep 100% of ad revenue, direct ad sales, registrations, twitch subscriptions, allegedly gets paid to put the event on by the charity in question, and might even get paid to "showcase" certain games by developers. They absolutely take in a whole bunch of "people don't think about it" money, but the actual number is completely unknown. It's a pretty good gig, the entire event basically runs itself and everyone works for free. It's like an internet forum (THEY DO IT FOR FREE) except it generates several million dollars a year.

 

[Lithuophile]

I used to know a few speedrunners back in university, most of them have long since quit by now, and none of them turned into these beastly trannies. I wonder why that is?

 

[FarCentrist]

I used to know a few speedrunners back in university, most of them have long since quit by now, and none of them turned into these beastly trannies. I wonder why that is?

Do people who speedrun too much become trannies?

Or are trannies naturally autistic enough to gravitate towards autistic hobbies like speedrunning?

Which came first, chicken or egg? We demand a government funded study to investigate the troon to speedrunning/speedrunning to troon pipeline.

 

[Kuchipatchi]

This is the crying soy star wars fan in retrogaming form.

It's not clear from the video for some reason but the basic idea is that beta stuff and other extra stuff can be inserted via code into an unmodified Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time rom in real time to make a new gameplay experience.

And all soyboys everywhere are crying about it and cumming in their diapers. Over what is essentially a glorified fanfiction romhack. Yeah okay, the rom is technically "unmodified" but that's just semantics.

This romhack played at AGDQ:

Zelda is one of my favorite N64 games and the beta stuff is interesting, but come on, it's just a glorified romhack and the twitch messages in the ending is cringe. You're all crying over 23 year old games for kids and WW3 hasn't even started yet.

Bonus vid: soy star wars fan:

I saw the first half of Retro Mechanics Explained's video and when I saw the Twitch chat in the sky and Link and Zelda look at it as if it was meant to be inspirational. That was so cringey, I felt embarrassed for have watching it.

It's the equivalent of doing an amazing technical marvel and capping it off with a fart joke.

 

[Liquid Marlon]

Triforce% is just the most autistic thing I've ever seen.

But even still it's a little charming, I'm not really a Zelda fan with only really caring about the game after watching Running Shine's great video on it

But even still, I do find it pretty interesting even if it's just a fanfic and doesn't hold any real closure or change anything as something like the Gigaleak did.

It's still neat nonetheless even if I can agree that it is scummy to present this as real when it's not but from the outside looking in, it's just a strange little thing that happened once and that's what I see it as.

The really worst part of this all though has to be its homosexual ending, something that even comments on SwankyBox's video echo.

Edit:
After writing this, I started to rethink a lot of this, they had to lie to get people interested in it which doesn't matter in the end because none of this is real, it won't be brought up in the future other than just a few mentions.

They put so much effort into it and completely break immersion with the sappy ending which doesn't even hold true because they don't want to release the ROM hack because they want it to stay as some art project or something.

Those are my revised opinions on this all, the Running Man boss fight is the best part, as a side note.

 

[FarCentrist]

After writing this, I started to rethink a lot of this, they had to lie to get people interested in it which doesn't matter in the end because none of this is real

Autism defined

 

[Lapis Lazuli]

Do people who speedrun too much become trannies?

Or are trannies naturally autistic enough to gravitate towards autistic hobbies like speedrunning?

Which came first, chicken or egg? We demand a government funded study to investigate the troon to speedrunning/speedrunning to troon pipeline.

The majority of speedrunners are still men. This is why the pronouns being displayed next to their username make no damn sense, 99% of the time it's He/Him and I can clearly see the person is male. I have yet to see a She/Her or a They/Them in a GDQ stream.

 

[FarCentrist]

I have yet to see a She/Her or a They/Them in a GDQ stream.

Some of the speedrunners are fat enough to qualify for a they/them. And I wouldn't have sex with them.

 

[Simply Outplayed-HD]

 

[BowsersRectum]

Eh, at least he didnt double down like this guy did during a smash stream.

https://youtu.be/KNpSeKKQtUI

 

[BowsersRectum]

Sorry for double post, but this seems important separate to my previous post.

JustLemres, a Trans MtF speedrunner (I think) who is known for speedrunning Sonic games, decided to out themselves for sending explicit pictures to a minor. Others in the replies are coming out and saying they sent nudes to more than one minor. In the twitlonger they are mostly trying to blame other things in their life on why they are a creep.

JustLemres is 24 and the minors they were involved with were 16-17 (17 is the subject of the twitlonger, though replies are saying others were 16).

Archive of the tweet
Archive of the twitlonger
A separate allegation (though timing on this one seems to be a gray area)

There was another allegation referred to but I can't seem to find the original tweet.

At the moment they are being "cancelled" and their content is being scrubbed from the internet. Their twitch is gone, but their YouTube channel is still up.

 

[Czechem Republic]

I'm no financial analyst - but GDQ is likely only required to pass forward PCF/DW what are taken in as "donations" (ex - given from the viewers as express donations).

As I understand it, they are paid by the charity to put the event on, but all of the donations, to the penny, go directly to the charity (as in, straight into their PayPal wallet they already use for direct fundraising with no intermediary).

The only intermediate step is a technical one; just a web hook callback so GDQ can update their donation tracker. There is very little opportunity for shenanigans. They are surprisingly aboveboard in how the event handles finances, with the one possible exception of not prominently disclosing how much they get paid to put on the event. If you want to put it in marathon timing terms, roughly half of day one pays games done quick, the other 6 1/2 days goes directly to the charity's pocketbook.

 

[Tanner Glass]

As I understand it, they are paid by the charity to put the event on, but all of the donations, to the penny, go directly to the charity (as in, straight into their PayPal wallet they already use for direct fundraising with no intermediary).

The only intermediate step is a technical one; just a web hook callback so GDQ can update their donation tracker. There is very little opportunity for shenanigans. They are surprisingly aboveboard in how the event handles finances, with the one possible exception of not prominently disclosing how much they get paid to put on the event. If you want to put it in marathon timing terms, roughly half of day one pays games done quick, the other 6 1/2 days goes directly to the charity's pocketbook.

It feels like there's a large opportunity for shenanigans; just not with donations.

They make money from the charity to put on the event (an undisclosed amount), but it's also unclear who makes the money from Twitch bits/Twitch subscriber tiers, advertising during the event, badge sales, any hotel kickbacks, and so on.

It's very likely that GDQ the corporation makes out very large from these events and then still cries poverty to attract volunteers to work the event for free.