>When Kosmic says he's tied with the TAS run at 4-1, that means his inputs are matched up exactly with the program's and he can't physically do any better.
It means he can't physically get a better time, but it does not mean his inputs are matched up exactly with the TAS. SMB1 level transitions are based around the "frame rule", which means you don't advance to the next level until the number of elapsed frames from the start of that level is a multiple of 21. This means it's possible to have slightly imperfect input on all levels except 8-4 (the last level, so no waiting to advance to the next level there) and still get the same time as the TAS (unless the TAS reached the end of the level with no frames to spare). The TAS aims to reach the end of each level as fast as possible even if it would mean no overall time saving because of the wait for the multiple of 21 frames.
I think this mechanic has been very beneficial for speedrunning, because it gives clear sub-goals. When you hear runners talking about "saving a frame rule", that means reaching the end of the level in time for an earlier multiple of 21 frames.
This is, as always, a local maxima— new strats may come along which change everything again. Summoning Salt's WRP videos do a great job of showing how the strategies for a particular game evolve over time as new things are uncovered:
I came here to paste the link to Summoning Salt, and an upvote alone isn't enough to emphasize how much I recommend his channel. Here's the link to his retrospective on Super Mario Bros specifically (now a bit out of date, of course): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdAkY7RfajY
Summoning Salt makes great videos. The SMB1 video has already been linked, but I also love his video on the Choco Mountain track in Mario Kart 64. It has some great livestream captures which show records being broken, and contextualizes them well enough to give them some pathos:
There aren't any techniques he can use that aren't available to a TAS runner. TAS runners aren't just using reinforcement learning to let a computer learn how to play; they're thinking about possible techniques and glitches, and specifically programming their tools to try and exploit them.
What's common, especially in the SMB speed running community, is that the human and tool-assisted runners loosely collaborate. e.g., if one of the humans has an idea, before they spend days or months trying to figure out for themselves if it's even workable, they'll get someone to inexpensively proof-of-concept it with a tool-assisted speed run.
For sure. This is what happened with Super Mario World. Someone discovered a glitch that dropped it down to like 20 minutes. Then another one was found that dropped it to 10. Then 5. Then 4. Now, you can beat SMW in under 42 seconds if you do everything correctly. Or you can spend two hours building and playing Flappy Bird in it instead. Either one works
Given 60fps games, with 5 minutes of play, and 8 NES buttons, it seems reasonable to search through just under 4,608,000 possible plays to find the shortest run!
5 mins * 60 fps * 2^8 button possibilities = 4,608,000 button possibility frames = 4,608,000 possible plays
[*] It's also worth noting that there are 2 categories for TAS timing: Humanly possible vs TAS-only. The former meaning that it's possible in theory for a human to achieve under "normal" conditions, the latter implying the opposite e.g. using left + right inputs at the same time which is not possible on a normal NES pad. The TAS in question was the current theoretical limit for humans.
Speed runner come up with different "categories" for runs.
The most common is "Any %," also the most basic, it means finish the game, usually anything goes, glitch away.
You can also have no glitches category, 100% complete, no warps, no powerups, all <game item>s, etc. Sky's the limit. The community creates the categories.
My favorite are randomized speed runs, where everyone gets the same randomized version and have to speed run it against each other. Normally these are done as real time races and the results of the randomization aren't known to the player until they start. Not all games support it (think games like Zelda and Metroid where you have to collect powerups to push get past obstacles to collect more powerups to get past more obstacles). The randomizer has to make sure the game is still beatable (so no locking a required item behind an obstacle that requires the item). It is also an area that TAS can't help and it has more to do with strategy than physical perfect button presses. Also, since every time you uncover a new randomized item it changes what is the most potential optimized path, it require a deeper knowledge of the game compared to speed running where there is normally a given optimized path that people compete against.
> Not all games support it (think games like Zelda and Metroid where you have to collect powerups to push get past obstacles to collect more powerups to get past more obstacles).
There is, however, OoT Randomizer[1] which is really fun to play and watch. You can get end stage items at the beginning depending on your seed.
I just realized I worded that poorly. I meant that games like Zelda and Metroid do support it, other games don't because there isn't much to randomize (such as platformers, given these tools generally can't create random levels, just swap item locations).
Any% refers to completion percentage, not the number of glitches allowed. But yes, some categories allow for glitches and some don't.
Over the years the Super Mario Bros community in particular has become more accepting of glitches, as otherwise both TAS and human runs would have hit the limit of how fast is possible. By allowing glitches there is now always a possibility that the runs can be further improved.
>Any% refers to completion percentage, not the number of glitches allowed.
Indeed, which is why I said "usually."
I usually see "Any %" and "Any % no glitches," but I just dabble in watching speedruns. If I see "Any %" with no other qualifiers, I'm going to assume glitching is allowed.
I think it can be a bit arbitrary at times when a technique is considered "glitching" or not. The community decides. Which is fine.
I saw a speedrun of Super Ghouls and Ghosts that had a clever limitation - "pick up all weapons that show up." If you're familiar with the game, if you pick up a weapon you lose your previous weapon and some weapons are way worse than others.
If a glitch is severe enough it will result in a new category of competition being created. A glitch that saves a second here or there would likely be accepted in the main category. Frequently speedrun games also have categories for how much has been completed in the run, like Any% meaning you just got the end credits up, or 100% meaning you collected all the items on the way or whatever
A notable example of this is Mario 64, where the lowest stars possible category has been renamed multiple times as ways of defeating bowser with fewer and fewer stars are discovered. I believe we are at 0.
And now that the star count is at zero (which humans have pulled off in runs), there is a distinction between "two-key zero-star" and "one-key zero-star", of which the latter is likely only possible in TAS. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5j6l9ULxmI
It depends on the game and category. Category rules are established by the community and the top priority is runs being fun to watch and play. Usually, any glitches are fair game. However, if any game-breaking glitches are found, the category will usually be split into one that allows and one that disallows the glitch. For example, Portal speedruns were split into "out of bounds" and "inbounds" categories once glitches were discovered that allowed you to beat the game mostly without interacting with the actual game at all.
Same situation for Super Metroid, which seems to be one of the most popular games for speedrunning. The "anything goes" category seems to be "Any% Glitched" [0], which allows for techniques that modify in-game memory values -- the current record is 12m19s. The most popular category, and fun to watch (IMO) is "Any%" [1], which does not allow for such memory tricks and has a current record of 41m18s.
But the latter is still not quite a "glitchless" run, based on the average person's definition of "glitch". For example, I doubt it was intended behavior for Kraid to die after 4 missiles [2] based on the player shooting him during a specific animation. I never played SM much beyond beating it as a kid, but I enjoy its speedruns because besides the variety of techniques and clutch moments required, there's at least one boss who behaves randomly, and requires the player to improvise. Also, in the course of new records being set, there have been a variety of strategies (e.g. different decisions on which path to take) employed, and there still seems to be room to discover more optimal strategies.
For many games the community create additional glitchless categories. Other common ones are warpless (don't use intended level skips) and 100% (collect/do everything).
If normal speedruns are like playing speed chess, tool-assisted speedruns are like finding the theoretically-optimal solutions to chess problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_problem). Both of them require intense devotion to the game, though the first emphasizes physical ability and execution while the second emphasizes exhaustive thinking.
People use them as another tool for finding glitches and exploring the possibility space of the game's systems. They're basically using debugging tools and in some cases even looking at memory allocations etc.
As for full length tool assisted runs, I just find them to be a fascinating new lens to examine these games under. It's cool (depending on who you ask...) to see what the game looks like when another computer program is piloting it perfectly towards the goal of 'finish as fast as possible'
That's a technique called splicing, specifically it refers to "splicing" two videos in the middle, in this case one with real input and one faked. It is surprisingly possible (and often easy) to detect splices based on minute details.
Splicing isn't always cheating, it can be used for other reasons.
I can't prove that he isn't, strictly speaking, but Kosmic is a highly respected runner and has the skills to make this record.
What if he uses prerecorded footage of his hands, created by using some kind of TAS programmed to perform a 4:55 run in human style and then outputs those button presses to a screen. So instead of playing the game, he just presses what he sees on the screen. It would take a lot of work but would arguably be a lot easier than actually accomplishing the real run. Then, the footage is just TAS footage and the camera on his hands is also prerecorded. Then he just has to read out the comments on stream as this charade is going on and make sly responses to it
I guess my point is that, although I trust the veracity of this record, one should not underestimate the potential for cheating.
> So instead of playing the game, he just presses what he sees on the screen. It would take a lot of work but would arguably be a lot easier than actually accomplishing the real run.
First, matching prerecorded input with the frame-precision required would be nearly as difficult as doing the run, if not more so. At this point, he's already trying to produce very specific inputs that require frame-precision; he's not reacting to what's on the screen and adapting on the fly.
Second, some TAS techniques are incredibly difficult for a human to replicate, and there'd be an expectation that he can replicate those tricks at least sometimes.
Third, some of the techniques for detecting this kind of cheating include carefully watching the inputs to see if they're ever just the slightest bit late or early.
I think part of is the nature of it. Why would you get sufficiently into this scene, care enough about this one game to post video after video of you speedrunning it, to then cheat? The challenge for someone doing it manually is to do it manually; the challenge for someone doing it TAS is to do it TAS. Without the challenge there is literally no reason to do it. So while lack of evidence can't really prove anything, there really isn't that much motivation to cheat. If it was a complete nobody claiming they had manually set a record, yeah, that's suspicious, but someone well involved in the scene either is playing the long con for something that they themselves don't care about (and which they can't really revel in since any sort of in person interaction would show they're frauds), which is unlikely, or they're legit.
>Without the challenge there is literally no reason to do it.
What about money? Fame? Aren't these reasons?
And there are countless examples from history of 'the best' in whatever area getting caught at cheating just to stay 'the best'. I'm not really sure what you're getting at with this.
Actually plenty of people who have been deep in the community have cheated. It happens. But given that this run was performed live during a stream where he is reacting to chat it is pretty unlikely that he was doing playbacks of the entire stream.
Thy're a series of videos on how world records have been lowered over time on various games. It's fascinating watching particularity the one on Super Mario 64
I just watched this entirely for the first time. It's incredible that someone would deconstruct a video game so completely just to avoid pressing the A button. Makes me wonder how many other things in the world are possible with the right information and determination.
Ditto! pannenkoek2012 is operating at a level that every hacker should aspire to. Piecing together that solution for that star in 0.5 A presses is a thing of beauty.
There's a guy on YouTube & Twitch, who posts N64 Goldeneye speedrunning breakdowns at the start of each month. Very specific niche but oddly interesting! RWhiteGoose is his username.
I love RWhiteGoose and the GoldenEye speedrun community generally. There's a core group of 50 or so people who've spent literally man-decades optimizing that game. If you haven't seen his "speedlore" series on YouTube I recommend it, he goes through the history of optimizations of a particular level. There are many parallels with the experience of optimizing software systems and the cycle of breakthrough and consolidation we go through there.
I am not a speedrunner and I don't really follow any speedrunning community, but this takes me back to 1998 doing the Facility in time for the Invincibility cheat. If I still remember it 20 years later, I must have done it a few times.
Yes Goldeneye made amateur speedrunners of most people who played, as you had to get times to get cheats. You'd be amazed to see the fastest runs on Facility now. One particularly amazing thing is that the time for the invincibility cheat is now possible not only on 00 Agent mode (where in fact it's considered easy), but on so-called "Dark LTK" mode, where one injury kills Bond and all enemies have max stats.
Apollo Legend [0] and EZScape [1] are two good channels to consider after binging SummoningSalt. SethBling's [2] Mario hacks should appeal to the HN crowd, too.
There is something amazing about artforms when the performers and spectators have an appreciation for the subtlest details. Mario speedruns are an oddball artform surely, but right now it has enough of a community to appreciate those details. For example, from the article I gather to "clip the wall to warp into the first level of world four" is a well-known and discussed precision move in the genre.
It reminds me a lot of classical ballet. There the moves and forms have been developed over centuries. As a non-expert I can go to a show and see they dance beautifully. An expert may be disappointed by the same performance -- were the hands poised just so; were the movements optimally precise?
It takes a lot of feedback between knowledgeable fans and expert performers to push an artform to its highest levels of excellence.
Naw, clipping the wall is taking advantage of a well known intentionally created bug where you walk through a wall to get to an area to skip levels. Every kid playing the game back in the 80s knew about it.
i think you're referring simply to the warp zones, which are accessible with normal jumps. With wall clipping you don't go on top the wall, you go through it. See 1:10 and 2:04 on his video:
No, I think he's referring to the technique of wall clipping you can use toward the end of 1-2 before you take the pipe back out to the flag.
Back in the 80s/90s kids would show how you could clip through the wall to the warp zone for two purposes:
1. as an alternative to jumping from the platform to the top of the screen.
2. More importantly, to get to level -1. You can do this because clipping through the wall Mario can arrive at the first warp zone pipe before the game registers that pipe as one of the labeled warp zone pipes. If you instead walk to the warp zone from the top of the screen Mario has to go all the way to the left before dropping down. And that would trigger the normal warp zones everyone is familiar with.
What the speed runners are doing is understanding the mechanics of wall clipping on a much deeper level. Rather than doing it to make Mario "moonwalk" or reach a special warp zone, they do it to push Mario forward on the screen. This allows them to do stuff like "wrong warp" and shave some frames off of their time to beat the game faster.
I think you're talking about the warping to the negative worlds. In the 80's we found out about a wall clipping method to get to the first warp tubes, but you ended up going to negative world numbers which never have an ending.
super impressive stuff. I'm generally unfamiliar with speedrunning, but I am familiar with the billy mitchell controversies, so I'm surprised that people accept the legitimacy of streamed runs. wouldn't it be trivial-enough to fake?
To an extent I think that streaming has solved this problem, compared to the days of people just submitting videos that they recorded by themselves. Streamers might fake a single run to get a record, but it would be a huge amount of work to fake all the progression they had to go through to get there.
This just isn't true. Recently there was a Super Meat Boy cheater who was discovered due to analysis of a persistent animation across the game that wasn't lining up due to video cuts.
Pretty flimsy system (and far from "solved"), and it lets cheaters steal glory for the months or years it takes to catch them which threatens the legitimacy of the sport past a critical mass.
Moderators/judges are on the wrong side of a trapdoor function because of the amount of analysis it may take to verify a single video, and they aren't professionals in the field of video analysis.
I don't see how "all progression" is relevant here since you don't need to be a streamer to speedrun much less to submit a well-doctored video with a time that beats other people.
don't know, but my point is that it took a rather serendipitous global animation to expose them. There are people who think speed runs should require footage of the controller for the sake of a consistent analysis medium, and I'm sympathetic to them for the sake of the legitimacy of the sport at the expense of accessibility.
And to respond to your question, you can livestream a pre-recorded video so it doesn't matter. Some guy livestreamed a record breaking run of Yoshi's island or something but got cocky and streamed his controller, and someone trivially discovered he was miming it, pressing or skipping inputs after they were seen in the video. The Super Meat Boy wasn't doing that.
I would have previously thought so too, but recently there was a cheating incident in the GTA speedrunning where already a top runner started cheating: https://old.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/98utvr/grand_thef.... So for a year there was apparent progression to be seen in the streams, but it was all/most due to modifying the game files to gain advantage.
> To wit, I don't think many people suspected Billy Mitchell of cheating until there was undeniable proof of that fact.
Not so much. Billy has been suspected of cheating for ages. His live play is completely at odds with his WR runs. As of the early/mid 2000s he just wasn't very good at Donkey Kong when compared with his contemporaries.
It's possible to fake streamed runs, e.g. by miming over pre-recorded spliced/TASed runs, but Kosmic has played at live events where this would be impossible, and there's no doubt that he has the skill to do this legitimately.
Billy's live performances were miles away from his spliced runs. The live performances of top level SMB runners are in line with streamed performances. Some communities are moving toward controller cams to show each button press.
Would it be fair to say similar scandals have happened in actual sports (PEDs, judge corruption)? Cheating is often caught and corrected in the speedrunning community.
As a regular fan of MMA and occasional watcher of boxing, I can't think of a single example of the sports' governing bodies overturning a corrupt result, even in the Olympics. Occasionally judges will be fired later; that's it.
PEDs are enforced almost sporadically; I wish they didn't bother.
Edit: By corrupt result I meant corrupt or inaccurate judging.
Because after all, it's still a game and this is still just about having fun. Until someone starts losing real money from video game fraud, there's no incentive to turn a friendly competition into a thing where you feel like you can't trust anybody.
The current world record in tool-assisted speedrunning is at http://tasvideos.org/1715M.html beating the game in 4:54.03 (RTA timing, measured from start menu) or 04:57.31 (TAS timing, measured from console power-on)
In the top left of the video feed there's supposed to be an active input display (showing what buttons are being pressed on the controller). At this point in the video he fixes the input display, causing the capture of the timer to stagger a little bit.
As you'll notice by the end of the video the timer doesn't actually display 4:55.913, even though that's his record time - this is because the entire run has been re-timed (more accurately) after the record was set.
SMB has a weird property that all levels are finished in exact multiples of 21 frames (except the last level). This makes it very easy to know precisely where you are in relation to the WR at any given moment. Kosmic knows that he is precisely 21 frames ahead of the WR going into the final level. He has also done 8-4 so many times that he has a very good idea of how many frames it took (maybe off by 1-5 frames at the end). Also, the bowser hammer pattern at the end depends on the frame so if you have the patterns memorized you can tell exactly how many frames it took.
All this together, Kosmic can be very sure that the run is below 4:56 without timing it down to the frame.
I had wondered about this too and asked about it in r/speedruns [0] I originally assumed that speedrunners used some kind of special software/hardware that provide the watch counters displayed during their streams, but apparently, the displayed timer is controlled manually, via something like a foot pedal, and is not meant to be the official time (which is verified later through analysis)
But for a game like SMB, in which there is a hardcoded "window" (the 21-frame rule), it seems like it's fairly easy for a speedrunner to know if they've performed optimally when they finish each level.
> Additionally for Super Mario Bros. there is a thing called the frame rule that basically means that you can only beat a level (except the last level) on certain frames. If you beat the level before the frame rule then the game waits until the next frame rule before starting the next level. It's something like every 20 frames, I'm not exactly sure. So for most of the levels you only really need to know which frame rule you hit, which is fairly easy even with manual timing. The end of the last level needs to be measured precisely though.
Actually, the special software you describe does exist and is often used in speedrunning. It is called an autosplitter.
It works by reading out known memory addresses of the game. At bare minimum this would be "start of level 1" and "game completion" but you'll often find more elaborate "splits" as the more popular the game is.
It shows the last three missions, the timestamp when it was completed and a comparison agains this speedrunners personal best.
It also shows the current mission and the one after that, along with a timestamp of when it was finished in the speedrunners personal best run.
Beneath that it also shows a whole bunch of stats, what the best possible time is the speedrunner could achieve at current pace based on all the best times in the earlier runs, how it compares to the world record, etc.
This works really well for PC games and emulators but is a lot harder on real hardware.
Looks like the game is losing focus but it's pausing inbetween the clicks - at first I thought it didn't pause but you can look at the score being counted up in the game, it pauses with the pauses in the timer, so I think there is no mistake.
This trivializes my childhood accomplishment. I don't like it!
It blows my mind how speed runners learn to exploit the inner workings of a game, from timing hacks of the RNG to positioning actors on the screen to unlock design weaknesses. While it takes a lot of skill and many hours of practice to pull off these exploits, advancing through a game at record speeds through exploits takes away from the experience that was intended for play. Speedrunning is not playing the game better but rather playing exploits better.
It's a different game that uses the same cartidge. I don't think you should think of it as taking away from the experience, it rather adds another aspect of the game that you can enjoy.
Seems like a false dichotomy to me. This run has a fair amount of exploits, but also a lot of plain "being good at Mario". Compare to the any% run of Pokémon Red/Blue for instance (which uses an exploit to warp to the final screen of the game without any "traditional" gameplay).
Think of the game as a deck of cards. You liked playing poker with the deck. These people are playing solitaire. It's a different game entirely using the same pieces. Your goal (to have fun) and their goal (to do something faster than any other person on the planet) both provided you with a sense of accomplishment, but you were never really trying to do the same things
I think it's a bit of both. Clearly, the glitches weren't in the mind of the creators, so don't represent the 'proper' game. Still, this guy would clearly be insanely good at the game even if all the glitches were taken out — he's still playing the game better. It's also pretty difficult to define exactly where to draw the line on this one, so it's easier to just say "anything goes".
It means he can't physically get a better time, but it does not mean his inputs are matched up exactly with the TAS. SMB1 level transitions are based around the "frame rule", which means you don't advance to the next level until the number of elapsed frames from the start of that level is a multiple of 21. This means it's possible to have slightly imperfect input on all levels except 8-4 (the last level, so no waiting to advance to the next level there) and still get the same time as the TAS (unless the TAS reached the end of the level with no frames to spare). The TAS aims to reach the end of each level as fast as possible even if it would mean no overall time saving because of the wait for the multiple of 21 frames.
I think this mechanic has been very beneficial for speedrunning, because it gives clear sub-goals. When you hear runners talking about "saving a frame rule", that means reaching the end of the level in time for an earlier multiple of 21 frames.
... using the same techniques the TAS does.
It's possible (although unlikely) that a new glitch/exploit could be discovered that allows for faster times.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUbO6rBht0daVIOGML3c8w/vid...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99Wj-NStok
What's common, especially in the SMB speed running community, is that the human and tool-assisted runners loosely collaborate. e.g., if one of the humans has an idea, before they spend days or months trying to figure out for themselves if it's even workable, they'll get someone to inexpensively proof-of-concept it with a tool-assisted speed run.
5 mins * 60 fps * 2^8 button possibilities = 4,608,000 button possibility frames = 4,608,000 possible plays
A bit of a bigger space to search ;)
http://tasvideos.org/Game/nes-super-mario-bros.html
[*] It's also worth noting that there are 2 categories for TAS timing: Humanly possible vs TAS-only. The former meaning that it's possible in theory for a human to achieve under "normal" conditions, the latter implying the opposite e.g. using left + right inputs at the same time which is not possible on a normal NES pad. The TAS in question was the current theoretical limit for humans.
The most common is "Any %," also the most basic, it means finish the game, usually anything goes, glitch away.
You can also have no glitches category, 100% complete, no warps, no powerups, all <game item>s, etc. Sky's the limit. The community creates the categories.
There is, however, OoT Randomizer[1] which is really fun to play and watch. You can get end stage items at the beginning depending on your seed.
[1] https://github.com/AmazingAmpharos/OoT-Randomizer
Over the years the Super Mario Bros community in particular has become more accepting of glitches, as otherwise both TAS and human runs would have hit the limit of how fast is possible. By allowing glitches there is now always a possibility that the runs can be further improved.
Indeed, which is why I said "usually."
I usually see "Any %" and "Any % no glitches," but I just dabble in watching speedruns. If I see "Any %" with no other qualifiers, I'm going to assume glitching is allowed.
I think it can be a bit arbitrary at times when a technique is considered "glitching" or not. The community decides. Which is fine.
I saw a speedrun of Super Ghouls and Ghosts that had a clever limitation - "pick up all weapons that show up." If you're familiar with the game, if you pick up a weapon you lose your previous weapon and some weapons are way worse than others.
SethBling turning Super Mario World into Super Flappy Birds on a console comes to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0
But the latter is still not quite a "glitchless" run, based on the average person's definition of "glitch". For example, I doubt it was intended behavior for Kraid to die after 4 missiles [2] based on the player shooting him during a specific animation. I never played SM much beyond beating it as a kid, but I enjoy its speedruns because besides the variety of techniques and clutch moments required, there's at least one boss who behaves randomly, and requires the player to improvise. Also, in the course of new records being set, there have been a variety of strategies (e.g. different decisions on which path to take) employed, and there still seems to be room to discover more optimal strategies.
[0] https://wiki.supermetroid.run/Any%25_Glitched
[1] https://wiki.supermetroid.run/Any%25
[2] https://youtu.be/ezFcybTLOOE?t=27m29s
Phantoon, bane of speedrunners.
TAS = Tool-assisted game movies http://tasvideos.org/Game/nes-super-mario-bros.html
Some people also use TAS's to find, reproduce and understand glitches for use in normal speedrun.
As for full length tool assisted runs, I just find them to be a fascinating new lens to examine these games under. It's cool (depending on who you ask...) to see what the game looks like when another computer program is piloting it perfectly towards the goal of 'finish as fast as possible'
TAS players play the game frame-by-frame and seek theoretical perfection.
Splicing isn't always cheating, it can be used for other reasons.
I can't prove that he isn't, strictly speaking, but Kosmic is a highly respected runner and has the skills to make this record.
I guess my point is that, although I trust the veracity of this record, one should not underestimate the potential for cheating.
First, matching prerecorded input with the frame-precision required would be nearly as difficult as doing the run, if not more so. At this point, he's already trying to produce very specific inputs that require frame-precision; he's not reacting to what's on the screen and adapting on the fly.
Second, some TAS techniques are incredibly difficult for a human to replicate, and there'd be an expectation that he can replicate those tricks at least sometimes.
Third, some of the techniques for detecting this kind of cheating include carefully watching the inputs to see if they're ever just the slightest bit late or early.
What about money? Fame? Aren't these reasons?
And there are countless examples from history of 'the best' in whatever area getting caught at cheating just to stay 'the best'. I'm not really sure what you're getting at with this.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUbO6rBht0daVIOGML3c8w
Thy're a series of videos on how world records have been lowered over time on various games. It's fascinating watching particularity the one on Super Mario 64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ePi38LnrA&t=16s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A
This guy literally has a PhD in SM64. It's insanely complicated, and surprisingly lucid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnU7DJXiMAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9fUV7uA2_s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1kbABTyeo8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRCjVLqjST4
It's amazing how engrossing they are.
When it went from "exploit this glitch" to a graph of "registering p-q alignment", I knew I would have to slow down and watch the entire thing.
Boy am I glad I did.
If you actually play through any of these games you really start to appreciate just how insane some of these times are.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5t8u4kpE0WvLxkPWIp8n-g/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIyZiiHXIH7KkqfaDvBmG-Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/sethbling/
It reminds me a lot of classical ballet. There the moves and forms have been developed over centuries. As a non-expert I can go to a show and see they dance beautifully. An expert may be disappointed by the same performance -- were the hands poised just so; were the movements optimally precise?
It takes a lot of feedback between knowledgeable fans and expert performers to push an artform to its highest levels of excellence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gum4GI2Jr0s
Back in the 80s/90s kids would show how you could clip through the wall to the warp zone for two purposes:
1. as an alternative to jumping from the platform to the top of the screen.
2. More importantly, to get to level -1. You can do this because clipping through the wall Mario can arrive at the first warp zone pipe before the game registers that pipe as one of the labeled warp zone pipes. If you instead walk to the warp zone from the top of the screen Mario has to go all the way to the left before dropping down. And that would trigger the normal warp zones everyone is familiar with.
What the speed runners are doing is understanding the mechanics of wall clipping on a much deeper level. Rather than doing it to make Mario "moonwalk" or reach a special warp zone, they do it to push Mario forward on the screen. This allows them to do stuff like "wrong warp" and shave some frames off of their time to beat the game faster.
Incredible how many hidden tricks/bugs/calculations went into that world record.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FQJEzJ_cQw
They basically go through Kosmic's (4:56.462 WR) run earlier in the year.
Showing a few replays explaining each of the tricks/techniques used.
There are quite a lot of places where you literally need to be perfect to the pixel to get a good run.
https://np.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/9ip34a/455_by_kosm...
tangental: my personal favorite mario-related feat is sethbling injecting flappy bird into super mario world manually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0
Pretty flimsy system (and far from "solved"), and it lets cheaters steal glory for the months or years it takes to catch them which threatens the legitimacy of the sport past a critical mass.
Moderators/judges are on the wrong side of a trapdoor function because of the amount of analysis it may take to verify a single video, and they aren't professionals in the field of video analysis.
I don't see how "all progression" is relevant here since you don't need to be a streamer to speedrun much less to submit a well-doctored video with a time that beats other people.
And to respond to your question, you can livestream a pre-recorded video so it doesn't matter. Some guy livestreamed a record breaking run of Yoshi's island or something but got cocky and streamed his controller, and someone trivially discovered he was miming it, pressing or skipping inputs after they were seen in the video. The Super Meat Boy wasn't doing that.
To wit, I don't think many people suspected Billy Mitchell of cheating until there was undeniable proof of that fact.
Not so much. Billy has been suspected of cheating for ages. His live play is completely at odds with his WR runs. As of the early/mid 2000s he just wasn't very good at Donkey Kong when compared with his contemporaries.
PEDs are enforced almost sporadically; I wish they didn't bother.
Edit: By corrupt result I meant corrupt or inaccurate judging.
When I said "corrupt result" I meant corrupt judging. Sorry I was unclear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FQJEzJ_cQw&t=3s
I thought it was pretty clever.
I can't even begin to describe how much skill and movement precision is in this video :)
As you'll notice by the end of the video the timer doesn't actually display 4:55.913, even though that's his record time - this is because the entire run has been re-timed (more accurately) after the record was set.
All this together, Kosmic can be very sure that the run is below 4:56 without timing it down to the frame.
But for a game like SMB, in which there is a hardcoded "window" (the 21-frame rule), it seems like it's fairly easy for a speedrunner to know if they've performed optimally when they finish each level.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/9iturn/super_mario_b...
Helpful comment:
> Additionally for Super Mario Bros. there is a thing called the frame rule that basically means that you can only beat a level (except the last level) on certain frames. If you beat the level before the frame rule then the game waits until the next frame rule before starting the next level. It's something like every 20 frames, I'm not exactly sure. So for most of the levels you only really need to know which frame rule you hit, which is fairly easy even with manual timing. The end of the last level needs to be measured precisely though.
It works by reading out known memory addresses of the game. At bare minimum this would be "start of level 1" and "game completion" but you'll often find more elaborate "splits" as the more popular the game is.
See this for an example: https://imgur.com/a/KDp7YFx
It shows the last three missions, the timestamp when it was completed and a comparison agains this speedrunners personal best.
It also shows the current mission and the one after that, along with a timestamp of when it was finished in the speedrunners personal best run.
Beneath that it also shows a whole bunch of stats, what the best possible time is the speedrunner could achieve at current pace based on all the best times in the earlier runs, how it compares to the world record, etc.
This works really well for PC games and emulators but is a lot harder on real hardware.
(This comment is in jest, but that has been my experience with the speedrunning community thus far.)
It blows my mind how speed runners learn to exploit the inner workings of a game, from timing hacks of the RNG to positioning actors on the screen to unlock design weaknesses. While it takes a lot of skill and many hours of practice to pull off these exploits, advancing through a game at record speeds through exploits takes away from the experience that was intended for play. Speedrunning is not playing the game better but rather playing exploits better.