[HN Gopher] Diablo hackers uncovered a speedrun scandal
___________________________________________________________________
Diablo hackers uncovered a speedrun scandal
Author : pitwin
Score : 257 points
Date : 2025-02-15 14:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| uolmir wrote:
| There have been several of these deep dives into manipulated
| speed runs and they seldom disappoint. Since we are on HN, I'll
| mention another mathy one that was summarized by Matt Parker:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ko3TdPy0TU
| szvsw wrote:
| As someone with absolutely no knowledge of speedrunning community
| norms, it's very interesting to see how a practice that is
| fundamentally about exploiting generally unintended mechanisms
| within a system design still develops its own notion of ethics,
| legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc. Not that different
| than something like the Astros technology-assisted sign-stealing
| scandal (as opposed to legitimate sign-stealing) against the
| Dodgers in the '17 WS, at least from the perspective of needing
| to identify the lines between fair play and illegitimate
| advantage.
|
| Edit: children have helped point out the precise notion of ethics
| - no exploit is unethical on its face, so long as it is
| disclosed, which allows the speedrun to be correctly classified
| and compared to others in its class.
| darkwater wrote:
| I have your same knowledge but what you mention seems pretty
| normal and even human, no? You exploit some difficult to
| exploit bugs and you don't want easy tricks to be used instead.
|
| Although following this logic I don't fully understand why TAS
| are allowed.
| __s wrote:
| What do you mean by allowed?
|
| TAS runs aren't put on leaderboards against RTA runs
| nurettin wrote:
| Everything is allowed as long as you cat honestly. Some
| present no challenge (like idspispopd and run to exit makes
| no sense) so nobody runs it.
| mst wrote:
| Aha! Doom noclip so you can run through walls.
|
| (the first google result I got for idspispopd did not say
| _which_ cheat code it was, so figured I'd mention)
| darkwater wrote:
| No idea, I'm no expert at all in the scene :) it's just how
| TFA closes its story.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| I think of TAS as a code competition, almost like demoscene,
| whereas tool-free speedrunning is more e-athletics.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| TASes aren't allowed in regular categories (I'm sure they are
| somewhere), they're used to find the fastest way possible
| then human players try to reproduce it.
| __s wrote:
| Note this is what categories are for. The category sets the
| rules. There are glitchless categories (which define glitching,
| see Ocarina of Time which has restricted & unrestricted
| glitchless categories since the game is so broken:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ebZ94KGlVw or how glitched
| categories include no-SRM & no-ACE)
| vanderZwan wrote:
| It's not a particularly complex or surprising "ethics" though:
| the point of competing between speed-runners is an honest
| comparison of human skills, so all exploits require full
| disclosure to ensure a fair comparison and the ability to agree
| on which skills are actually being compared. This is why tool-
| assisted speedruns are separated from human speed runs, for
| example.
| szvsw wrote:
| > It's not a particularly complex or surprising "ethics"
| though
|
| Yes, you are mostly right, but it's still interesting (and
| positive!) that the community landed on an "anything goes so
| long as you are honest" set of norms.
|
| As someone without much (well, any) interaction with
| speedrunning communities, it's still fun to see how other
| internet communities have codified or tacitly established
| their operating procedures, expectations, norms etc.
| dahart wrote:
| What is interesting or unique about honesty as a shared
| norm?
|
| You are, again here, despite trying to deny it elsewhere in
| this thread, claiming the "anything goes" part within the
| bounds of the game and within the rules of the competition
| is somehow reflecting on the community norms and making
| this "interesting".
|
| It's like trying to say "Oh wow it's so interesting that
| marathon runners have their own ethics; they can just run
| as fast as they want as long as they don't take shortcuts".
| krisoft wrote:
| > they can just run as fast as they want as long as they
| don't take shortcuts
|
| In fact that is not how marathon running works. If you
| take certain drugs that is frowned uppon, even if you are
| honest about it. Similarly you can't break the legs of
| the competitors. That is heavily frowned uppon even if
| you are honest about it.
|
| These are not obvious. There could be a full-doping
| version of marathon running but there isn't. There could
| be a combined martial art&marathon running competition
| where you try to hurt your opponent without getting hurt
| while running a marathon distance but there isn't.
| dahart wrote:
| Frowned upon? Not obvious? What are you talking about?
| This is straw man. Doping is against marathon rules and
| assault is both against the rules and also straight up
| illegal. Maybe you should read some marathon rules https:
| //www.baa.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Boston_Marat...
|
| There could be a doping-allowed marathon, indeed, if
| anyone actually wanted that. And that still wouldn't
| demonstrate any unique community norms or change my point
| at all.
| cgriswald wrote:
| As a disinterested third party I'm not sure what your
| point is. Honesty isn't unique? I don't think anyone is
| saying otherwise.
|
| You seem to be proving the other poster's point that
| people interested in marathons landed on a class of rules
| that is specific and that nobody wants the alternatives.
|
| It's the difference between that and the speed-running
| community's "anything goes, we'll just classify it" rules
| that people find are finding interesting.
| pdpi wrote:
| An interesting peculiarity of the speedrunning community is
| that there is also a large component of "the community vs
| the game" mattering more than than "runner vs runner".
| Adachi91 wrote:
| That is very accurate, whenever I was dethroned from a
| position (legitimately) I was happy for that person and
| challenged me to find a better way to complete the run.
|
| Although the games I've done are very niche and have
| small moderation teams.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| So the e-sports version of track and field basically,
| with similar attitudes that arise from the similar nature
| djur wrote:
| A lot of games have community members who are known more
| as researchers than as competitive runners. Even if you
| don't have the reflexes or time to get on the
| leaderboard, you might be able to devise strats for the
| people who do.
| me_me_me wrote:
| Just to add a bit more context.
|
| For a given game there are often multiple categories. With
| rules for each. Some forbid some exploits, some complete
| game as fast as possible some 100% it.
|
| When a new tech gets discovered there might be a debate if
| it belongs to certain categories or not.
| cbarrick wrote:
| No, I think you are misunderstanding. There really isn't an
| "ethics" of what exploits are allowed or disallowed.
|
| Speed running communities generally don't care what exploits
| you use, as long as you are up-front and honest about it. The
| idea is to have apples-to-apples comparisons. You did a 100%
| run with no exploits? Cool, let's compare that to other people
| who also ran that category. Your friend did an any% run with
| save file manipulation? Also cool, let's compare that to others
| in the category.
|
| If you modified your save file mid run, but tell everyone else
| that your run should be compared against other runs that did
| not modify save files, that's clearly dishonest. The problem
| isn't the part about what exploit was used; it's the part where
| he lied to the community about which category it should be
| classified.
|
| Also, the core aspect of speed running is speed: the amount of
| time it takes you to complete the game. If you are modifying
| save files outside the game after you start a run, you need to
| record that time.
| szvsw wrote:
| > Speed running communities generally don't care what
| exploits you use, as long as you are up-front and honest
| about it.
|
| That is, precisely, a set of ethics!
|
| > There really isn't an "ethics" of what exploits are allowed
| or disallowed.
|
| It sounds like there is: disclosed exploits are allowed,
| while non-disclosed exploits are disallowed. This is very
| clearly a set of ethics. It is different than that of
| industry, where generally speaking trade-secrets and non-
| disclosure of methodology is often considered critical to
| business success, short of establishing protected IP; in
| academia, disclosure is putatively the norm but there is
| plenty of partial disclosure of methodology rather than
| complete... etc.
|
| > The problem isn't the part about what exploit was used;
| it's the part where he lied to the community about which
| category it should be classified.
|
| That puts it very precisely, and also highlights his
| unethical behavior in the context of speedrunning's norms
| around ethical representation of achievements.
| dahart wrote:
| Whether someone was honest or lied in competition isn't a
| unique set of ethics anywhere. Yes they use ethics, and
| those ethics are shared with society's notion of ethics.
| You're failing to make a case that speed running has their
| own norms.
| cbarrick wrote:
| I see. Maybe we're getting too hung up on a prescribed
| meaning of the word "ethics" rather than the larger meaning
| of what we're actually saying to each other.
|
| Your original comment talks about the distinction between
| "legitimate" and "illegitimate" exploits, and the
| juxtaposition of ethics and exploits. My point is that this
| framing is a misunderstanding of speed running norms -
| there isn't actually a distinction between "legitimate" and
| "illegitimate" exploits. And this undermines the poignancy
| of the juxtaposition. I even refute your assertion that
| speed running is fundamentally about exploiting - some of
| the most fun categories or glitchless.
|
| I assumed you meant the original comment in the scope of
| behaviors that could be triggered by the game's code. So it
| seemed to me that there was a misunderstanding:
| "illegitimate exploits" simply isn't a thing in this scope,
| given honesty around the recording.
|
| But now I see you make the distinction "disclosed exploits
| are allowed, while non-disclosed exploits are disallowed".
| Yes, lying is a exploit, in a larger sense. It wasn't clear
| to me that this was the intended original meaning. So sure,
| in this scope it is valid to talk about illegitimate
| exploits.
|
| Frankly, I'm still not sure this actually was your original
| intended meaning, and it feels like I got strawmanned into
| an argument about the semantics of the words "ethics" and
| "legitimacy", when my original intent was to add clarity
| around the culture of speed running. Any further debate
| about the philosophy of language is getting too far off
| topic.
|
| Oh, and your edit about "children" is rude.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Maybe we're getting too hung up on a prescribed meaning
| of the word "ethics" rather than the larger meaning of
| what we're actually saying to each other.
|
| Huh, this reminds me of speedrunners and speedrunning
| being called "cheaters" and "cheating" by new-to-
| speedrunning viewers on speedrun streams. (Really,
| they're just interested in the glitchless categories.) It
| seems to be a fairly common first reaction and this
| thread helps put that in perspective.
|
| > Oh, and your edit about "children" is rude.
|
| That's presumably not how they meant it.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43060190
| cbarrick wrote:
| > That's presumably not how they meant it.
|
| Hah, I have made a misunderstanding again! I guess the
| philosophy of language _is_ on topic for this thread :P
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate
| exploits, etc.
|
| There are run "categories" for any given game. Super Metroid's
| arguably most prestigious category used to be called "Any%",
| referring to the required item collection percentage as
| distinct from 100% or Low%, and now it's called "Any%, No Major
| Glitches" because someone discovered that you can go out of
| bounds with the X-Ray Scope and a door. It specifies "major"
| glitches because the run otherwise makes heavy use of (among
| others) a "minor" glitch called Mock Ball, which lets you move
| in morph ball form at regular form running speed. Ultimately,
| the community has to agree on what is major and what is minor
| but it's usually moot until a new exploit is discovered.
|
| It is interesting and it makes a whole lot of sense once you
| look at it from this angle. The categories actually have pretty
| rigorously defined rules precisely because there is so much
| competition involved.
| jordigh wrote:
| It also depends on what is "fun". Major glitches in Super
| Metroid make you skip too much of the game and that just
| isn't fun to watch.
|
| Speedrunning is a spectator sport, so spectators ultimately
| determine which categories are the prestigious ones.
| djur wrote:
| An example I'm aware of is the Lufia II No Major
| Glitches/No RNG Manipulation run. That game is very easy to
| make essentially deterministic with RNG manipulation, but
| like most highly technical RPG runs it's long and
| exhausting. The No RNG run not only bans RNG manipulation
| but also certain very rare drops that RNG manipulation is
| usually used to obtain. Why? Because otherwise, the optimal
| strategy would be to grind runs 10 minutes at a time until
| you got the rare drop from an early boss, and that's not
| fun. So the ruleset is designed to be accessible for
| runners who aren't interested in pathological optimization.
| immibis wrote:
| You can always play whatever you want - you just can't rank
| it on leaderboards if it doesn't follow the rules of that
| leaderboard.
|
| TASes break every rule and are pretty cool.
| recursive wrote:
| I mean there can still be rules. Like using a hacked ROM or
| spliced video. Of course you wouldn't splice to get good
| performances, but different RNG states or something.
| immibis wrote:
| You can still do that, just don't submit it to a normal
| or TAS leaderboard. Put it on Youtube and say here's this
| cool thing I did. Even Doodong's Cavern is a meme.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > TASes break every rule and are pretty cool.
|
| There's still rules in TASing, just a different set of
| rules! Specifically, you have to submit a file containing a
| sequence of controller inputs that completes the game when
| played back in an accurate emulator (or a replay device
| connected to the controller port of an original console
| running the original game).
|
| I co-authored the current fastest TAS of Super Metroid:
| https://youtu.be/m-Gt57ur7OA?t=2m30s We completed the game
| in under 2 minutes of gameplay by exploiting a race
| condition in the game's sprite animation system to start an
| exploit chain leading to full arbitrary code execution
| (full writeup: https://tasvideos.org/8214S ).
|
| We used all kinds of tooling to create the run: a recording
| emulator with savestates, slowdown, and frame-by-frame
| input editing, scripting tools, debuggers, disassemblers,
| and memory viewers. We used memory editing tools during
| development to test different scenarios without having to
| set them up in-game first, but the actual run you submitted
| is completely "pure"; just an input file that beats the
| original, unmodified game.
|
| And just like real-time speedruns, TASes are split into
| categories too. Here's the world record TAS with major
| glitches disallowed, by Sniq: https://youtu.be/Rr9gdQ-VkO4
| Whereas our ACE TAS is more like a CTF challenge than
| anything else, Sniq's run is a masterpiece of gameplay that
| shows how far the game can be pushed beyond the current
| human limits. But again, it's still a true run of the game;
| the only difference is that you submit an input file
| instead of a realtime performance of the run.
| snibsnib wrote:
| A bit outdated now, but Saturn TAS made a very good TAS.
| It optimized door transitions to get the best in-game
| time. Unfortunately this was right as the rules changed
| between tracking in-game time and real-time, so the run
| never made it into the leaderboard. It made him stop
| making TASes for Super Metroid altogether.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3THRhCgCO4
| AJenbo wrote:
| Here is the TAS we produced for Diablo (the original goal
| before we got side tracked by the issue found in what as
| supposed to be the baseline):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwoqd4arI0
| tetha wrote:
| > There's still rules in TASing, just a different set of
| rules! Specifically, you have to submit a file containing
| a sequence of controller inputs that completes the game
| when played back in an accurate emulator (or a replay
| device connected to the controller port of an original
| console running the original game).
|
| Enter TASBot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rha61Y3_Voc
|
| It's a really cool project. In case "just" running a TAS
| on a real console through some wired up controller...
| Nintendo DS is also supported:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHQCJX0RzS8
|
| It's such a funny and rewarding escalation of the really
| impressive world of TAS.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Another good example is the Zelda Ocarina of Time any%, which
| progressed as new techniques allowed skipping more and more
| of the game, but which was still pretty broadly popular even
| when it was a warp to the final boss in under 20 minutes, is
| now way less popular now that they discovered a arbitrary
| code execution method that credits-warps in under 5 minutes.
|
| This process had already been going on before, but you have
| this progressive sequence of the speedrun getting harder to
| play _and_ harder to watch. You see some spliting out to
| restricted categories but even those aren 't all that
| popular, but also something else that's recently become
| really common particularly in the communities for these games
| that have been optimized to death: randomizers. Shuffle
| around the positions of the necessary items, or the map
| itself, and you have something that's fresh for viewers and
| people who've played the game forever, an extra aspect of
| chance, usefulness of skills and familiarity with parts of
| the game that wouldn't otherwise be relevant... but it does
| split the community even more.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| And they are oh-so-contentious. If anyone wants to go down a
| fascinating rabbit hole, the recent conversation/debate
| around whether Bomb Torizo skip (a very difficult,
| borderline-human-impossible trick) should be allowed in Super
| Metroid runs was actually fascinating and ended up getting
| into deep research about inconsistencies between hardware
| polling rates vis-a-vis what runners could
| reasonable/humanely expect from one another... that's a thin
| gloss from a non-expert, but it's a great concrete example to
| work from.
|
| (The debate was sparked by a runner proving that the trick
| was humanly possible, raising the spectre of someone actually
| pulling it off in a world record run, which would force all
| subsequent world record would-bes to replicate a trick that
| would kill 99.99% of runs, execution of which depending on
| the vagaries of how different controllers poll inputs in
| addition to nearly inhuman levels of sustained, frame-perfect
| inputs).
| rcxdude wrote:
| And there's generally a combination of principles involved,
| and different speedrunners and communities will prioritise
| different ones:
|
| Fairness: generally speaking the competition wants to be
| fair. Part of this is just having a consistent set of
| enforced rules, but it also comes down to decisions about
| timing and allowing or disallowing certain tricks: if how
| fast part of a game is depends on how fast your hardware is,
| for example (whether by a trick working or simply lag), then
| most communities will try to eliminate this effect by banning
| hardware-dependent tricks or adjusting timing rules to remove
| loading times.
|
| Competition: At the end of the day speedrunning is a
| competition around a game, so there's a general resistance to
| modifying the game itself, or e.g. use of external tools to
| assist the player beyond what was intended by the developer.
| But that will sometimes be compromised if there's some aspect
| of the game which badly affects other goals.
|
| Fun: At the end of the day, speedruns are something that
| should be fun and rewarding to play and watch. So if the
| optimal run of a game becomes unfun to play or watch, then
| generally something will be done about it, whether by banning
| the trick which is unfun or by allowing something which
| alleviates the pain point (sometimes this even verges into
| health concerns: some pokemon games, for example, have very
| long runs with a huge amount of button-mashing to get through
| dialogue quickly, and RSI is a very real concern which means
| that turbo controllers which automate that are sometimes
| allowed). This can go as far as patching the game to remove
| particularly unfun or RNG-heavy parts, though it's rare.
|
| And of course you can have different categories which will
| focus on different aspects of this, especially as different
| runners and watchers will have different ideas on what is
| fun: apart from what counts as 'beating the game' (any%,
| 100%, 'true ending', whatever), there's different levels of
| what other compromises are allowed. And it can get pretty
| contentious: from hardcore 'play the game as intended'
| purists to arbitrary-code-execution TASers, everyone has a
| different idea about what they enjoy in the competition, and
| different games can have strengths in each area of focus.
| dahart wrote:
| You're framing this in a very funny way.
|
| This is not at all the same thing as the Astros scandal. Astros
| didn't break the agreed upon rules (edit: I'm wrong - human
| sign stealing was allowed, but electronic sign stealing was
| not). Groobo did break the agreed upon rules.
|
| There is no "own notion" of ethics here, and it's presumptuous
| and incorrect to suggest that exploiting games during a game
| exploit competition somehow reflects on ethics and makes the
| cheating "interesting". Cheating and ethics in a competition is
| defined by what the agreed upon rules are. Perhaps ironically,
| your comment is developing it's own notion of ethics.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > Astros didn't break the agreed upon rules.
|
| They did. Using electronic devices to communicate during a
| game (I guess besides the dugout phone) is banned. They were
| watching the video feed in the clubhouse. https://en.m.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing...
| dahart wrote:
| Ah, you're right, thanks. I read that sign stealing was
| allowed, and missed the parts about devices being banned.
| szvsw wrote:
| Runners on 2B are allowed to try to steal signs if they
| can crack whatever set the pitcher and catcher have
| switched to (well they use pitch com now); the astros
| used live video feeds to pick up the signs even with no
| one on base as well as computer assisted methods to crack
| the codes, and then related the pitches to the batter via
| the dugout.
| szvsw wrote:
| > This is not at all the same thing as the Astros scandal.
| Astros didn't break the agreed upon rules.
|
| Sheesh, didn't expect to re-litigate WS'17 on HN today... I
| concede that there was at least some gray area in the
| codified official rules and the 2001 directive around
| electronic transmission, but it very clearly was a violation
| of the norms, IMO, and the Giants-Dodgers binocular incident
| in the 50s and its reception is good precedent.
|
| > There is no "own notion" of ethics here, and it's
| presumptuous and incorrect to suggest that exploiting games
| during a game exploit competition somehow reflects on ethics
| and makes the cheating "interesting".
|
| That's not what I was suggesting was interesting to me. What
| interests me is the social phenomenon that is what the actual
| members of the community deem to be acceptable or in this
| case unacceptable, how the the community works to identify
| violations of norms, and then handle with the fallout.
| dahart wrote:
| > That's not what I was suggesting was interesting to me.
| What interests me is the social phenomenon that is what the
| actual members of the community deem to be acceptable or in
| this case unacceptable, how the the community works to
| identify violations of norms, and then handle with the
| fallout.
|
| You cited the exploiting as the one and only reason that
| cheating is interesting here, and explicitly implied that
| it's somehow different from other kinds of competition.
| After this new comment, I don't see how to interpret your
| top comment any differently.
|
| This community competition didn't do anything differently
| than any other competition. Someone entered the competition
| claiming to be adhering to the rules
| (https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Rules), they flagrantly
| broke the competition rules, tried to hide their cheating,
| and people got upset when it was uncovered. No different
| than any competition cheating, I don't see what you're
| implying about what people deem to be acceptable, or norms.
| The norms here are no different than anywhere else.
| szvsw wrote:
| > You cited the exploiting as the one and only reason
| that cheating is interesting here
|
| As far as I can tell, I did not... this is what I said:
|
| > it's very interesting to see how a practice that is
| fundamentally about exploiting generally unintended
| mechanisms within a system design still develops its own
| notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits,
| etc
|
| Removing extra clauses:
|
| > it's very interesting to see how a practice [...]
| develops its own notion of ethics, legitimate and
| illegitimate exploits, etc
| dahart wrote:
| > Removing extra clauses
|
| Oh, "fundamentally about exploiting" is just a "extra
| clause"? Hahaha.
|
| Your sentence intentionally juxtaposed game exploits with
| ethics. If you disagree with that, you're contradicting
| yourself and not me.
|
| What's left over is still the part I'm objecting to.
| Nobody developed their own notion of ethics, the
| community has the same competition ethics that
| practically any competition anywhere uses.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yes. All of human culture is like this.
|
| When you do something nobody did before or are faced with a
| moral dilemma you've no prior experience with it's often
| unclear whether what's "Good" and what's "Bad" in some general
| sense and so the reaction may be based on "vibes".
|
| Dick Fosbury's weird jumping style? No rule against that, but
| equally the committee could have seen it and said "No, that's
| not OK" and forbidden it by the next event. They did not, Dick
| seems like an athlete, this is a new technique, fine by us -
| and today everybody serious uses this style (the "Fosbury
| Flop") or one based on it for jumping.
|
| Modern Contract Law mostly comes back to "Carlill v Carbolic
| Smokeball Co" in the 19th century. This is about a quack
| medicine (Carbolic Smokeballs don't prevent Influenza) but the
| legal question was: If you specifically advertise that if
| people do a thing (use your Carbolic Smokeballs) and an event
| happens (a customer catches Influenza, "flu") you will pay them
| a lot of money (PS100 in the 1890s) - well can the advertiser
| say they didn't mean it when asked for the money? Mrs Carlill
| seems like a nice lady, everybody hates people selling quack
| medicine, so obvious Carlill wins - but setting out explicitly
| _why_ she wins forms the basis of an important part of modern
| civil law. That advert is an _Offer_ , the choice to buy and
| use the Carbolic Smokeballs was _Acceptance_ , she caught flu,
| therefore now Carbolic Smokeball Co. owe Mrs Carlill PS100.
|
| If you've ever heard about why people would buy a seemingly
| worthless thing for $1, or about the peppercorn rents, or
| wondered why you're told you "agreed" to a bunch of legal stuff
| you don't care about and haven't actually read - that all comes
| back to Carlill v Carbolic Smokeball Co. Maybe if she'd been an
| awful smug Karen trying to get paid for moaning and they were
| selling a pretty good (but not 100% effective) cure for flu,
| judges would have instead figured out why she _does not get
| paid_ and our case law would have turned out very differently.
|
| [Edited to fix typo]
| Y_Y wrote:
| It's a good story but I think you oversell it. Carbolic Smoke
| Ball was heard in 1892, peppercorn rents (literal and
| figurative) predate that case by hundreds of years.
| ricree wrote:
| To elaborate on your points some more: the basic building
| blocks of contract law were already well established by the
| time Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball came about. The main
| question at hand was whether these could apply when the
| offer was made to the public at large rather than to any
| specific person or group.
| tialaramex wrote:
| That's fair. Contract law was not invented from scratch to
| give Mrs Carlill the win, but much of the modern
| formalisation around the ingredients for a legal contract
| does date back to that case.
|
| Also this models what we were discussing. What exactly the
| rules were for contracts drifted over time as people's
| intuitions and experiences changed, things that everybody
| just accepted as normal in 1825 seem insane in 2025 - when
| I was born there wasn't yet an Unfair Contract Terms Act
| for example - if you didn't read carefully maybe you're
| trapped in a deal that any fool could see was abusive, but
| the courts can't fix it.
| Y_Y wrote:
| You make a worthwhile point, and I think that we're
| talking about the same thing from different perspectives.
|
| For example I'm glad the Unfair Contract Terms Act (and
| its successors exist), but I would have considered it a
| formalisation of existing, inconsistently applied,
| principles. As I see it, the magic of common law is that
| actual decisions can depend on which way the wind is
| blowing at the time, while keeping vague long-term
| ideals.
|
| The concept clearly had some support in the Doctrine of
| Fundamental Breach. Perhaps you were already born in time
| for e.g. Canada Steamship Lines Ltd v The King (1952)
| which limited the ability to include exclusions for
| liability in a contract, in a way that that wasn't
| codified until the Unfair Contracts Terms Act.
|
| Anyway I think we don't substantially disagree, and I
| think it's valuable to have a range of reasonable
| conceptualizations of the same history.
| dahart wrote:
| > Edit: children have helped point out the precise notion of
| ethics - no exploit is unethical on its face, so long as it is
| disclosed
|
| (Edit: I know I goofed here) Calling people children for
| correcting your assumptions breaks HN guidelines, please
| review: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Whether video game exploits are ethical was never a question.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Children comments to theirs, not childish commenters. For
| what it's worth, I thought the same thing on first read
| before I realized another interpretation.
| dahart wrote:
| Sorry! You're right. My bad assumption, I'm embarrassed.
| Apologies to parent @szvsw.
| buttercraft wrote:
| FWIW, I completely misinterpreted their comment too. I
| thought they were talking about actual young people and
| the intersection of innocence and ethics or something.
| Never would have connected it to "child comments."
| shakow wrote:
| > Calling people children for correcting your assumptions
|
| I'm pretty sure that's an abbreviation for "children
| comments".
| dahart wrote:
| Yep, my bad.
| nottorp wrote:
| Speedruns aren't only about exploiting glitches.
|
| For example, I only watch glitchless speedruns. That's what I'm
| interested in.
|
| People who are interested in speedruns including glitches want
| all of them to be disclosed though.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> a practice that is fundamentally about exploiting generally
| unintended mechanisms within a system design
|
| That is true of _all_ racing. From NASCAR and F1 to the Olympic
| 100m, everyone operates on the bleeding edge of "the rules"
| ... at least that's where winners play.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I think this notion of ethics is: "Don't lie."
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Honestly, I really can't stand speedrunning because it is so
| focused on glitches most of the time. No glitch categories
| exist, but are by far in the minority. I don't find it
| interesting to watch people exploit programming bugs, I want to
| watch people play the game as intended at a high level of
| skill.
| djur wrote:
| This really isn't true. One of the most famous speedrunning
| games is Super Metroid, and its two glitchless categories are
| the most actively competitive ones. Ocarina of Time
| glitchless had a new world record a few months back. Glitched
| speedruns tend to get more coverage in gaming media (because
| "runner completely breaks game" is clickier than "runner
| plays game 0:01 faster than previous runner"), and they tend
| to show up a lot at marathons (because they're faster), but
| generally speaking if you don't like seeing glitches there is
| plenty of content out there for you.
| scott_w wrote:
| What's being described in this article is separate from regular
| exploits, though. Hacking invalid seeds and items into your
| game are clearly not even speed running. It's like riding a
| bike round the London Marathon and declaring victory.
| sixtiethutopia wrote:
| This kind of "ethics" is common in many different areas.
|
| For example in rock climbing there's no cheating, only lying.
|
| There's nothing wrong with hangdogging a route (relying on the
| rope/gear to rest while ascending a route) but if you then tell
| people that you redpointed the route (climbed the route start
| to finish without relying on the rope/gear) then you're a liar.
| remram wrote:
| You're equating deviating from the intended way to play a
| computer game you own with lying to entire communities of
| people. I do not understand it. One of those things has nothing
| to do with "ethics".
| Liquix wrote:
| also covered by Abyssoft in video format:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_1su-dOUNw
| sesm wrote:
| So, the speedrun author claimed it was RNG-edited, but it was
| level edited instead? The author could easily refute that by
| providing the RNG seed. I think every run that claims to be RNG-
| edited should post RNG seed for verification. If the author
| claimed that the run was unedited and it was 'just luck', I'm
| surprised that anyone believed him in the first place.
| hn-acct wrote:
| The copyright notice mismatch is suspicious and the missing
| items is a dead giveaway away and should have made it
| ineligible alone.
| AJenbo wrote:
| I would agree with you but SDA is very picky with what they
| will accept as evidence against a video, since the changing
| inventory doesn't affect anything it could have been a
| mistake in replicating the segments when optimizing the run,
| but would not actually have affected things. In the end it
| was a combination of the inability to reproduce the level
| with item drops and the impossible end fight that got them to
| decide to pull the record.
| mst wrote:
| > I think every run that claims to be RNG-edited should post
| RNG seed for verification
|
| If I understood the later parts of the article right, that's
| now basically a standard or nobody believes you.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| And it encourages the community to create a "fixed-seed"
| category for the game, which would generally have a fastest
| known seed with a fastest known route.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > So, the speedrun author claimed it was RNG-edited, but it was
| level edited instead?
|
| It's worse than that - it's a bunch of separate video clips
| spliced together to give the appearance that it's a playthrough
| of the entire game, but which couldn't actually play out that
| way in a single game. Not just because the RNG doesn't match
| up, but also because the character is gaining items and levels
| between the splices which they never actually earned through
| gameplay.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Which is fully valid video genre. But not a valid record.
| Spliced runs as videos show casing best what a specific scene
| can do is great tool to promote scene. But those should never
| be presented as records.
|
| Well apart from not being completable run...
| duskwuff wrote:
| At that point, that isn't even a "run" anymore, spliced or
| otherwise - it's just a gameplay compilation video. Which
| is fine, like you said, but only as long as you don't call
| it something it's not.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| On the topic of speedrunning, DwangoAC is a name that stands out.
| He's represented (possibly led but I'm not familiar) the TAS
| Block team for Games Done Quick events in the past (not sure
| about events since 2018 since I did not watch them) and they've
| put together some impressive work.
|
| My favorite was publicly declaring that all PS2 replay files for
| Super Monkey Ball 2 can't be trusted after a public demonstration
| as to why. Closely followed by Brain Age shenanigans. Interesting
| but not surprising to see the name on this story as well.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=-0eM0413N8w (SMB2, declaration near
| the end after the run)
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=uXFiKuK5M30 (Brain Age)
| gmueckl wrote:
| He was the public figure for TASBot and TASVideos for a while
| (see https://tas.bot/wiki/Main_Page). TASBot is really a
| beautiful idea to help visualize what tool assisted speedruns
| are doing via the controller button lights in TASBot's hands. I
| think DwangoAC and TASBot represented the TAS community at
| multiple events, not just GDQ.
|
| Tool assisted speedruns are remarkable to me because creating
| the authoring tools is hacking in the classic sense.
|
| And then there's the sheer insanity of exploiting broken game
| logic to gain arbitrary code execution solely via controller
| inputs. The most elaborate demonstration of this that I know of
| was given at AGDQ 2017, eventually injecting a video player
| into Zelda on SNES and streaming the video through the
| controller port: https://youtu.be/7CgXvIuZR40?si=KR5hAv-
| iJHjWv8vL&t=1076 Ars Technica went into a little more detail
| about that feat: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/how-a-
| robot-got-super...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Here is the full analysis that the article links to eventually:
|
| https://diablo.tas.bot/
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| "Fastest completion of an RPG videogame?" You can beat Pokemon
| Blue in ~1 minute, and I'm sure there are countless other similar
| examples.
|
| Guinness being in this area at all is bizarre to me, but it
| probably sells books.
| autarch wrote:
| Guinness is a joke. They don't really have standards for lots
| of their records. For example, Guinness called Ben Lee's the
| "fastest violinist" for his "performance" of Flight of the
| Bumblebee. I put "performance" in quotes because he absolutely
| butchered the piece. But he butchered it very quickly!
|
| It's obvious when you think about it that these sorts of
| categories are meaningless. What is the fastest violinist?
| Surely this has to include both speed and _accuracy_. How do
| you measure accuracy over speed?
| devnullbrain wrote:
| GWR's website's about us:
|
| >We are the global authority on all things record-breaking
|
| GWR website when you search "first person to":
|
| >1 to 20 of 1691 results found
|
| Now how do they propose I break those?
| thih9 wrote:
| Become the first person to X+1, or the first person to X in
| record time, or the oldest person to X, or the first person
| to X while Y, etc.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Had to lookup a video of his performance. The fastest
| speakers somehow enunciate all phonemes when played back
| slowly, but Lee just at 25% is running notes into another. It
| doesn't help that he keeps winking at the camera instead of
| fully concentrating like high-performers do.
|
| It's as if Steve Woodmore started slurring words and claimed
| an even faster Guiness record. The difference is most of us
| have great hearing for words, but not so great for music.
| autarch wrote:
| I have Ben Lee beat. I've done the fastest violin
| performance of John Cage's 4:33, and I didn't even need a
| violin. I'll be calling up Guinness next Monday to have it
| confirmed.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Ruggiero Ricci's 1947 recording (first
| ever) of Paganini's 5th caprice is faster
|
| https://youtu.be/9ugLoMvfUiQ?feature=shared&t=815
| danem wrote:
| Five years ago, Guinness left the following note on their
| video of Ben Lee's performance:
|
| " It's worth noting that this is no longer a category that
| our records team monitor - the record has been rested. Our
| records managers are no longer able to monitor fastest
| musician records as it has become impossible to judge the
| quality of the renditions, even when slowed down. In terms of
| monitoring the number of musical notes, it is not clear if
| all notes have been played fully. "
| autarch wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is in large part due to TwoSetViolin, a
| classical music YouTuber duo who did a hilarious roast of
| this performance, as well as the whole concept of "fastest
| performance". See
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvsvaCU6i1M for the
| original video.
| philistine wrote:
| Publicly disowned cheater Billy Mitchell is disgraced with
| all record-keeping authorities. Except Guinness. They have
| reinstated his records years after all his cheating
| allegations had been thoroughly proven. Guinness is 100% pay
| for play and should not even be trusted with beer-making,
| even less record-keeping.
| chmod775 wrote:
| It mainly sells beer, but some books too.
| Deathmax wrote:
| Their primary business model nowadays is as an advertising
| agency, not book selling:
| https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/business-marketing-solu...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I'm sure everyone even vaguely interested in this topic has
| already seen it, but hbomberguy's 30 minute video about a sound
| effect, and accompanying feature length meltdown about an
| infamous video game music composer, has a lengthy section in
| the middle about Guinness' involvement in video games records.
|
| https://youtu.be/0twDETh6QaI
| memhole wrote:
| Highly recommend watching this channel if you're curious about
| speedruns:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@SummoningSalt
| latexr wrote:
| I don't care about speed runs at all, but that channel always
| grabs me.
| fracus wrote:
| It is kind of hilarious the fraud was uncovered by some esoteric
| technical investigation when there was definitive evidence in
| plain sight the whole time.
|
| "For instance, the "1996-2001" copyright date seen on the title
| screen in Groobo's video is inconsistent with the v1.00 shown on
| the initial menu screen, suggesting Groobo's run was spliced
| together from runs on multiple different versions of the game.
| Items acquired early in the run also disappear from the inventory
| later on with no apparent explanation."
|
| It reminded me of a joke in Northern Exposure where Ed uncovers a
| thief by listing circumstantial evidence and then adding one
| piece of evidence that he almost forgot.. he witnessed the thief
| stealing a radio.
| permo-w wrote:
| the whole thing is so chaotic. I don't get the impression that
| Guinness World Records or anyone in the Youtube comments is
| aware it's a segmented run, but it is clearly stated in the
| original submission:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20091121211238/https://speeddemo...
|
| it's cheating for other reasons too, but it's confusing as fuck
| trying to figure who originally thought the record was
| segmented or not.
| AJenbo wrote:
| Being a segmented run is not a problem, the issue is that the
| segments are not from the same save meaning that the RNG
| could never produce the given levels in a single run, which
| is a requirement for segmented runs.
|
| But yeah a lot of the "it's obviously cheating" comments
| seems to be from people not realizing that the player is
| allowed to re run the level and no required to go in blind,
| some of them may only have played it multiplayer where there
| isn't a save state for the game.
| jolmg wrote:
| Hmm... I'm not familiar with the speedrunning community.
| However, if I check the rules it cites, while it does say
| this today[1]:
|
| > There obviously needs to be continuity between segments
| in terms of inventory, experience points or whatever is
| applicable for the individual game.
|
| > manually editing/adding/removing game files is generally
| not allowed
|
| If I check the Wayback Machine, it doesn't go all the way
| back to 2009 when the run was done. Earliest is 2012, and
| there it doesn't say anything about continuity or
| editing/adding/removing game files.[2]
|
| [1] https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Rules
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120701000000*/https://kb.
| speed...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Those sound like rules you'd file under "too obvious to
| even mention". It's not a speedrun if you're editing
| files at will.
|
| Very specific changes are sometimes allowed by specific
| game communities.
|
| Like, what would the alternative be? People would just
| hook the intro to the credits and win after one second.
| toast0 wrote:
| If you don't mention the rules that are too obvious to
| mention, someone will think they can put together a
| segmented speed run with their best times from each
| dungeon level smooshed together into one run. After all,
| that's a lot of good segments.
|
| And a little bit of 'rng forcing' using outside tools to
| get drops they want that they can't get and then tweak
| your fireball damage to make things work for the final
| boss.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| Thats just not what a segmented run is. Just like any
| game that allows save-states, you could abuse save states
| to retry any part of 'the run' changing the entire save
| file to a different run and 'splicing' them together is
| splicing, which is not allowed. Tweaking fireball damage
| is literally hacking the game to get the desired result.
| Unless you find a way to perform ACE with your inputs.
| Which is not the case here.
| AJenbo wrote:
| Which is probably why they have clarified the rules since
| then. And why they have always had judges evaluate the
| submissions to check that the comply with the spirit of
| the rules.
| Salgat wrote:
| Everyone knew it was probably faked, but for the longest time
| there was no smoking gun that refuted the run's legitimacy
| without any plausible deniability. You have to remember that
| the speed runner gave plausible answers to many of the concerns
| brought up, which took a lot of concrete work to disprove (for
| example, proving that the map seeds they used required
| different runs, which required special tooling to bruteforce
| check against).
| fracus wrote:
| Were the two inconsistencies I quoted not smoking guns?
| AJenbo wrote:
| The problem is that the menu is not part of the timed
| portion of the video and is just there for the viewer. In
| his response the runner said he simply used an old random
| intro he had when he combined the segments. The
| disappearing item might not have been enough either since
| it would not have had any consequence and could have been a
| simple continuity issue when redoing segments. If it was
| the only thinks we had pointed out it likely would not have
| been removed based on the response from SDA.
| yifanl wrote:
| The premise of being a segmented run uploaded by an amateur
| a decade ago provides a _lot_ of leeway.
| phire wrote:
| Nobody knew it was fake before the investigation started.
|
| The investigation didn't even start because they were
| suspicious. The team wanted to create a TAS and decided to
| recreate Groobo as a starting point, then optimise from
| there. First step of making a TAS was to bruteforce the map
| generation seed.
|
| And they quickly encountered issues, and it quickly devolved
| into an investigation of just how "cheated" it was. Partly
| because for their TAS usecase, they didn't really care if the
| run was played on multiple versions, as long as it was still
| a single save file with a single map seed. But I assume it
| was mostly curiosity at that point.
|
| Groobo's defence was didn't come until near the end of the
| investigation, and was more or less: "Yes, I did that. But it
| was all disclosed to the SDA judges, and they allowed it
| under the rules of that time".
| driverdan wrote:
| What's funny is that I immediately noticed the inventory
| inconsistency but since I'm not a Diablo speedrunner I assumed
| it was some kind of intended glitch that's known and allowed.
| Then I continued reading and saw they just noticed it.
| tiltowait wrote:
| This happens pretty often. Karl Jobst has a lot of videos about
| cheaters, and it's always interesting to see how many were
| ridiculously obvious in hindsight. Frequently, people won't
| expect a good player to cheat, because "they don't need to."
| But cheating, at thay level, tends to be about saving time
| waiting for the perfect RNG.
| lawn wrote:
| It reminds me of the blatant aim hacks that for example
| Flusha used in Counter Strike, yet people online still defend
| him.
| vikingerik wrote:
| There's observation bias there - the cheaters that we see are
| the obvious ones, we never know who gets away with it when
| they got everything to appear perfectly consistent without
| any telltales.
|
| Like even for RNG, it'd be possible to fake that on a real
| console, with extra hardware writing to the bus. We'd never
| detect that, all we'd have would be the statistical arguments
| of like "one in 10^10 tries" or whatever.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Reminds me of the argument that rich people, given political
| power, won't act to harm the government/society for their own
| enrichment "because they're already rich!".
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The famous Van Meegeren forgery "Christ and the Adulteress",
| which was sold to Goering, used a more modern blue instead of
| the original Vermeer's ultramarine - and for a good reason,
| because Van Meegeren could not, during wartime, obtain
| ultramarine from London, which is where the only contemporary
| vendor was located.
|
| It could be detected by contemporary means, but no one thought
| about it in time, and there was no wisdom-of-the-crowds yet.
| rollcat wrote:
| Eh these kinds of runs pop up all the time in the speedrunning
| scene. Busting fake runners is an easy way to make views on YT.
|
| First signal is when it's from a person who doesn't have a
| history of consistent achievements on the public leaderboards.
| It's not a rule - sometimes there are extremely talented up-
| and-coming _legit_ runners who go from pretty bad times to WRs
| in a matter of months (e.g. Derek MacIntyre in Factorio 100%),
| but their past runs often show steady improvements. Many fake
| runners pop out of nowhere, or have few /inconsistent top
| times/PBs.
|
| Second, every serious speedrunning community has people who
| check the video recording frame-by-frame; other rules usually
| include a whitelist of mods, posting the save, (for games that
| have RNG) the seed, and (for games that have replays) the
| replay. Breaking the rules just outright disqualifies a run.
| The frame-by-frame videos usually are enough to uncover
| cheating. E.g. in Minecraft any%, stronghold navigation relies
| a lot on luck and intuition; but there are visual cues for
| which room might lead to the end portal, and if a runner
| doesn't take the split second to look in that direction it's a
| tell-tale sign they've already scouted the seed.
|
| But yeah, some formerly-respected runners actually put a lot of
| effort into cheating, and it takes another expert runner (or
| even the whole community) to bust them. More in-depth for
| Minecraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoEQ8wtawPI
| AJenbo wrote:
| Groobo has records in several other games, he also held
| previous records for Diablo, the previous runs looks like
| they have less issues so it seems to be something that
| escalated from just replacing one or two levels in the video
| in to making changes to the game and splicing everything
| together from unrelated runs.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Hmmm.
|
| From the article:
|
| > "My run is a segmented/spliced run," Groobo said. "It always
| has been and it was never passed off as anything else, nor was it
| part of any competition or leaderboards. The Speed Demos Archive
| [SDA] page states that outright." Indeed, an archived version of
| Groobo's record-setting Speed Demos Archive submission [link to
| archive from 2009-11-21] does say directly that it's made up of
| "27 segments appended to one file."
|
| > But simply splitting a run into segments doesn't explain away
| all of the problems the TAS team found. Getting Naj's Puzzler on
| dungeon level 9, for instance, still requires outside
| modification of a save file, which is specifically prohibited by
| longstanding [link to current rules page] Speed Demos Archive
| rules that "manually editing/adding/removing game files is
| generally not allowed." Groobo's apparent splicing of multiple
| game versions and differently seeded save files also seems to go
| against SDA rules, which say that "there obviously needs to be
| continuity between segments in terms of inventory, experience
| points or whatever is applicable for the individual game."
|
| This doesn't really look like good reporting. First, we're
| comparing an archived page from 2009 to the rules as they're
| reported today. But the rules page from 2009-11-28, ten months
| after the submission, says this (
| https://web.archive.org/web/20091128190935/http://speeddemos...
| ):
|
| > System modification: You are not allowed to modify your system
| or use extra hardware such as GameSharks and Game Genies. These
| devices let you alter game parameters and can give you an unfair
| advantage. The only allowed extra hardware are modchips and boot
| disks used for playing imports, and official add-ons. For
| example, the PS2 HDD is allowed, while the HD Loader is not.
|
| > Game modification: Removing or altering a game
| disc/cartridge/files while the game is running is forbidden.
| Examples of this are the crooked cartridge trick in The Legend of
| Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the CD streaming trick in The Legend
| of Zelda: Twilight Princess. If you're not sure what this rule
| means, think about it this way: don't mess with your system while
| playing the game, and don't modify the game itself at any time.
|
| > Games that allow you to save your progress and continue later
| can be done using segments. You can retry segments as much as you
| want, in order to optimize them. Keep in mind that the purpose of
| segmentation is not to make life easier for you or to reduce the
| amount of time it takes you to produce a run. A segmented run
| implies a higher level of risk-taking and a lower tolerance for
| mistakes. Use as many segments as is optimal to achieve the
| fastest final time.
|
| The continuity-between-segments requirement is not present in the
| 2009 rules. And not only does the prohibition on editing game
| files not exist, there's a clause stating it's allowed while the
| game isn't running. Why might the game not be running? Well, if
| you're doing a segmented run, you're expected to save and quit
| the game, restarting it later.
|
| This raises some questions:
|
| 1. Are we allowed to set our system clock to a time in the
| future? The rules appear to specify that we aren't ("you are not
| allowed to modify your system"). But that part of the rules is
| heavily focused on altering the hardware, making it unclear
| whether the system clock is supposed to count in that category.
|
| 2. Are we allowed to change the random dungeon generation seed
| stored in our savefile between segments? Now the rules specify
| that we can! ("Removing or altering a game disc/cartridge/files
| _while the game is running_ is forbidden.)
|
| 3. The summary of the modification rules says the opposite of
| what the rules themselves say. ("1. You are not allowed to modify
| your system; 2. Altering game files while the game is running is
| forbidden; 3. In summary, don't alter the system while the game
| is running, and don't alter the game at any time.") What's up
| with that?
|
| 4. Can two segments of a segmented run come from different
| savefiles?
|
| Second, the original submission doesn't just state that it's a
| segmented run. It also says this:
|
| > Once more I'm here to cut down the time almost in half and it's
| due to even more luck manipulation, even more glitches, and even
| more sexiness. The most important thing is that I manipulated
| Naj's Puzzler to drop from the earliest monster possible.
|
| The implication is that there is some form of RNG manipulation in
| Diablo 1 that would have been allowed, but the actual form of
| manipulation that groobo used wasn't it. If that's true, the
| article should have covered what would have been allowed and why
| this was different. As written, this looks more like the
| journalist didn't bother reading what groobo said about his
| video.
|
| Third, the article almost glosses over what appears to be a much
| more significant problem:
|
| > Groobo's final fight against Diablo, for instance, required
| just 19 fireballs to take him out. While that's technically
| possible with perfect luck for the level 12 Sorceror seen in the
| footage, the TAS team found that the specific damage dealt and
| boss behavior only matched when they attempted the same attacks
| using a level 26 Sorceror.
|
| While there isn't an explicit continuity requirement in 2009, the
| difference between fighting a boss at level 26 vs level 12 is
| large enough that I'm comfortable assuming it violated an
| implicit requirement. I'm also curious about whether your level
| is displayed on screen - which would imply that the video isn't
| just segmented but assembled from edited frames - or not. This
| finding appears to have been glossed over because it's not in the
| original report on the video. But the journalist should have
| exercised better judgment.
| layer8 wrote:
| > The continuity-between-segments requirement is not present in
| the 2009 rules.
|
| Arguably, it is implied by "the purpose of segmentation is not
| to make life easier for you". In the present case, the
| segmentation not only makes it easier, it makes the run
| possible at all in the first place.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Arguably, it is implied by "the purpose of segmentation is
| not to make life easier for you".
|
| I don't agree with that; in context, "the purpose of
| segmentation is not to make life easier for you" is a warning
| that it takes more time to create a competitive segmented run
| than it does to create a competitive single-segment run.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > 1. Are we allowed to set our system clock to a time in the
| future?
|
| These rules were written to apply to console games, which
| typically didn't have a system clock, or didn't use it to
| affect gameplay. (It's also not clear that it was even known at
| the time that the system time was used as the RNG seed.)
|
| > 4. Can two segments of a segmented run come from different
| savefiles?
|
| Generally not. Otherwise, a "run" would degenerate into
| starting the game, saving at the first opportunity, then
| loading a save which has almost completed the game and
| finishing it from there. That's clearly not a meaningful or
| interesting competition. The expectation is that segments are
| used as "checkpoints" in what could have, in principle, been a
| single-segment run.
|
| For some games where there's very little state saved - e.g. if
| progress through the game consists entirely of how many levels
| you've completed - there's some room for bending this rule. For
| a game with complex state like Diablo, though? Absolutely not.
| AJenbo wrote:
| 1: Yes, setting the time isn't a modification of hardware.
|
| 2: No, because then you could just give yourself hacked items
| (items are based on their item seed) to one-shot Diablo. Where
| would the limit be if save editing were allowed? Why go down
| all the stairs when you could just change your current level to
| the last one by editing the save?
|
| 3: The rules are guidelines for what you can expect your run to
| be rejected for, not an exhaustive list. The discrepancy is
| probably just a case of the rule specifically targeting issues
| that have come up, while the summary simply states that, in
| general, any modification is not allowed. I don't see the
| conflict, just apply both. After all, if you were allowed to
| mod the game, you could just make the win condition talking to
| Pepin when you first enter town, and now you can beat the game
| in a few seconds.
|
| > The implication is that there is some form of RNG
| manipulation in Diablo 1 that would have been allowed, but the
| actual form of manipulation that groobo used wasn't it. If
| that's true, the article should have covered what would have
| been allowed and why this was different. As written, this looks
| more like the journalist didn't bother reading what groobo said
| about his video.
|
| The simple rule is that you can use any manipulation as long as
| it relies only on the game itself. This includes starting the
| game at a specific system time.
|
| Some of Groobo's claims are simply impossible to achieve
| through RNG manipulation in Diablo. For example, item drops are
| predetermined at game start and are not influenced by the
| runtime RNG. The only way to alter them would be by using a
| tool to modify the game's memory. In one of his older videos,
| such a tool can be seen running in the taskbar. He also admits
| to using one to skip through levels while searching for a good
| level set to run. While that isn't a problem in itself, the
| tool must be off during the actual run. Evidently, it wasn't
| off for the final fight, and that's also the only plausible
| explanation for the item drops seen during the run. If he knew
| of a legitimate way to manipulate drops, he could simply
| explain it to clear things up.
|
| This TAS demonstrates a lot of what can be done within Diablo's
| mechanics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwoqd4arI0 - Boot
| the game at a specific point after Windows startup to get a
| perfect shop. - Enter a new game at a specific system time to
| generate ideal levels. - Split gold to manipulate RNG. - Wait
| for the monster AI to advance RNG.
|
| For full details on all tricks used, you can read this article:
| https://tasvideos.org/9396S
|
| > While there isn't an explicit continuity requirement in 2009,
| the difference between fighting a boss at level 26 vs level 12
| is large enough that I'm comfortable assuming it violated an
| implicit requirement. I'm also curious about whether your level
| is displayed on screen - which would imply that the video isn't
| just segmented but assembled from edited frames - or not. This
| finding appears to have been glossed over because it's not in
| the original report on the video. But the journalist should
| have exercised better judgment.
|
| The level is only shown when opening the character panel, which
| does happen a few times. However, you can also estimate the
| level based on the amount of mana consumed by spells. He is
| evidently level 12, but his damage output matches that of a
| level 26 hero. Most likely, this was achieved by modifying the
| base damage formula used to calculate fireball damage.
|
| If you check the source article, you can watch a recreation
| using an unmodified game with a level 12 hero, where the fight
| desynchronizes, and the hero dies. In contrast, when fireball
| damage is artificially enhanced, the gameplay remains
| synchronized throughout the fight.
|
| https://diablo.tas.bot/#Artificially_Enhanced_Fireball_Damag...
|
| From what I understood, Groobo had come to the understanding
| that 19 fireballs would have been enough with perfect RNG based
| his calculations using number from various strategy guides.
|
| A lot of what happens in this run can be explained as him
| simply wanting to create the perfect run but making bad
| assumptions regarding what could actually be done legitimately
| and ending up with an impossible run instead.
| djur wrote:
| In context, "while the game is running" is meant to prohibit a
| category of glitches you can trigger in console games by
| bumping/removing the game media (like the exploits mentioned).
| I don't think in context it was intended to exclude save file
| modification between segments. I would characterize it as an
| unintended oversight in the rules, and save file editing is
| definitely against the spirit of those rules as written.
| anthk wrote:
| That's why I prefer gameplays on Nethack/Slashem, they are pretty
| hard to either fake or cheat in.
|
| You can replay these online, or with TTYREC. Also, the fanbase
| has values, the gameplay has conducts to reflect what kind of
| behaviour did you follow ingame.
|
| You can play as a vegetarian, or as a pacifist, letting your pet
| bash and bite everyone.
|
| OFC locally they can hack the game, but these are mostly done
| from developers to test the game, not for "serious" gameplays.
| beeflet wrote:
| >That's why I prefer gameplays on Nethack/Slashem, they are
| pretty hard to either fake or cheat in.
|
| I wonder if you could train an AI on it and just have 1000 of
| em running to get the best records
| anthk wrote:
| They already did that; it was one of the earliest (modern) AI
| tests from Facebook. You can get the paper at Google.
|
| And it was not easy at all.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I don't care about speed running at all. The drama in this
| community though, absolutely top notch, it's like a technical
| soap opera and I love it.
| SG- wrote:
| just like Musk.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I don't really care about speed running, but I have played a ton
| of Diablo. That run is so obviously fake that I am astounded it
| was ever taken seriously. Getting that many stairs right next to
| each other in a row, then getting perfect super lucky drops and
| just perfect everything. It would be, even if possible, a 1 in a
| trillion run.
| fmxsh wrote:
| I find speedrunning fascinating. Like a microcosm of society to
| study human behavior. How the wins and losses of one generation
| of players shape the next, pushing the art beyond what was
| thought possible. A generation of strategies and perception of
| the limits in speedrunnig, in my view, can be just a few years.
|
| Cheaters. Their motives. The attempts to expose them. The
| creative and not-so-creative ways they cheat. The equally
| creative ways they are caught. The border between trust and
| distrust. The psychological need for fame and belonging. Honor.
| Hierarchy. Tradition. Breakthroughs.
|
| Technology. Strategies. Outside-the-box thinking. Advanced
| analysis. Statistics. Reverse engineering.
|
| The psychology of the player. Persistence. Stress. Pressure.
| Adaptation.
|
| Carl Jobst's youtube channel of course is recommended. But also
| 'Summoning Salt', and 'Bismut'.
| taurath wrote:
| This entire article is not new, and the information was posted to
| youtube back in November 2024: https://youtu.be/N_1su-dOUNw
| aboardRat4 wrote:
| >"it did harm. Groobo's alleged cheating in 2009 completely
| stopped interest in speedrunning this category [of Diablo]. No
| one tried, no one could." >Because of Groobo's previously unknown
| modifications to make an impossible-to-beat run, "this big
| running community just stopped trying to run this game in that
| category,"
|
| Come on, it saved people a lot of time.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Nobody should have hobbies.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-16 23:02 UTC)