It wouldn't be a SMB speedrun video if it didn't have the bus analogy.
Jokes aside, Summoning Salt is a great Youtube channel, and it makes me feel emotionally invested in speedruns of games I've never heard of before. Great storytelling. Not to mention that speedruns (and the glitches people find to get world record times) are pretty interesting from a computer science standpoint.
Came here to add comments about Summoning Salt as well. I don't follow speedruns at all; but, I really love his work and I absolutely echo the sentiment that he will get you emotionally invested in his content.
As an interesting aside, not only does he make great documentary style videos about Speed running, he also happens to be the current (as of June 2021) world record holder for Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!
His video on Mike Tyson punch-out progression was fantastic. It was such a shock when he super casually starts talking about his own contributions to the record like it was anyone else's.
I do wonder if the “check for win condition after every X number of frames” is for performance reasons.
Since I believe it’s every 21 frames that means you could perform 20 other functions dispersed across the 20 other frames, but if the system doesn’t need to do anything in that time then I don’t know why you wouldn’t just check every frame.
I found it to be very similar to science at large - the idea that there’s a community nibbling away at the edges of the unoknown, working in collaboration (and some competition) to maximize something.
This is a great video, but it glosses over some of the technical aspects because it assumes the viewer already understands them. This video provides a basic gestalt of the tech used for these runs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FQJEzJ_cQw
It‘s probably way too late to change the rules now, but even though it‘s totally legal according to the rules on the leaderboards, using a keyboard seems like quite a difference from using a controller, and from the end of the video, sounds like it does make certain moves easier.
It's complicated. Keyboards are almost certainly 'better' in the abstract if they're good enough (low activation threshold, not a lot of bus latency on whatever you're using to connect it, etc) because it's easier to press complex sequences of buttons when you're not holding the thing you're pressing them on ('fat thumb') or you can choose the layout of the relevant keys (vs. 'claw' or 'piano' gripping a controller).
But there are advantages to controllers too -- it tends to be easier to press two buttons on the same frame for eg.
And the thing is, it's not like there's only one controller you can perfectly standardize on. Even if you require only an 'original controller from the console manufacturer', well does that mean you have to be using the original rubber contact pads? Those are mostly all dead by now. Are all replacement rubbers equal? What about putting tape in the middle of the dpad to make diagonals more consistent?
And then it's also an accessibility issue. A lot of people can't use the original controllers. A lot of people who are otherwise very good at video games. Many of them can't use them because they played so many video games on them and they've gotten RSIs.
All that said there are usually limits. Almost no games allow macros (exception: Celeste allows a macro for a dash technique) or any other "press one button for multiple inputs" kinda stuff. Very few games allow turbo (exceptions: some RPGs do because mashing through cutscenes is very bad for your hands).
A lot of games do require controllers that are at least no more capable than one that came with the console though. But then there are things like one-handed controllers that are no more capable but could potentially change what's easy/hard.
So.. yeah it's complicated. It's just down to the game and its 'community' to decide what makes sense. That's largely how the whole speedrunning world works these days.
But no it's not too late to change the rules. Speedrun leaderboard rules change all the time to accommodate new information, techniques, and glitches. If people who run SMB feel it's unfair, it might change.
>A lot of games do require controllers that are at least no more capable than one that came with the console though.
An example of this would be if the original controller won't let you press both left and right at the same time, and being able to do so gives an unfair advantage due to the way the game was programmed (I think Castlevania SOTN is one of these.)
Fun story: when I worked in videogame QA ~20 years ago, there was a specific Nintendo rule about games not doing anything weird when both left and right were pressed on the controller at the same time (this would have been Nintendo DS, I think). This wasnt possible on a normal console, so how was it tested? We had a special unit that someone had cut the Dpad in half down the middle with a Dremel tool.
This is generally handled by an input cleaner, either in the controller itself if you hook it up to an original system, or via an emulator if you're using one. In the case of SMB1 L+R is disallowed (and it does give some in game time advantages) and all allowed emulators will give 'neutral' inputs if you press both L and R simultaneously so it will act as if you've pressed neither.
On the NES or SNES and any console with a dpad like those (which was patented by nintendo so until that expired there were other designed), it's actually just physically impossible. The directions are on a physical rocker that can't be pressed in two parallel directions at once.
Though if the controller pcb is really worn down by the rocker's center nub, it can start to become possible, and then there really is nothing stopping you. It's not uncommon for really well-loved controllers to end up like this.
It's definitely a letter-of-the-law thing where you could claim "but it's an original controller!" but no speedrun leaderboard is gonna let you get away with it.
Also I don't think emulators do a neutral input if you press both, that would be quite weird (and unlike how it happens with a real controller when you move from one to the other). Instead I think they prioritize the first input.
Yeah on original NES/SNES controllers the rocker physically prevented this. I was mostly referring to some third party controllers like say the 'hitbox' which go through an input cleaner before sending it to the system.
The way emulators handle L+R depends a bit.. For SMB1 specifically you're allowed to use an up to date version of Nestopia, Bizhawk, FCEUX or OpenEMU, all of which by default give neutral inputs if you press L+R (I don't recall if OpenEMU works this way but I believe it does.) There are other emulators like older versions of Bizhawk which gave priority to your latest input, or older versions of Mesen which gave priority to left and down. I'm sure other methods of handling L+R exist as well.
Which method is most correct is debateable, and sometimes contentious! :)
From what I've seen, speedrunning communities tend to be pragmatic about that: If something like this becomes a concern, the leaderboards are typically just split and a new category added. (Although I guess for a console game there is a fundamental question if keyboard is an extra category or gets allowed for the "main" one)
For some games there are tons of categories for different variations or restrictions. (It can even happen that when a new fundamental glitch is found, a category "Game X without this one specific glitch" is added if people enjoy running the game without it anyways)
The video mentions that moves that can only be done by pressing right and left at the same time aren't allowed, as that can't be done on a controller. I wonder if keyboard input is tolerated but only if it blocks impossible combinations, or if it's just on the honor system not to do those moves?
It'd be impossible to do that on the honour system. It would take an absurd amount of coordination to avoid ever doing it in a game like SMB, and the effects would be pretty immediately obvious.
If you're using an emulator, you have to enable allowing it. If you're using a hardware adapter you'd have to have your adapter blocking it.
So I'm going to use the GameCube controller with the keyboard in the middle or I'll make a custom controller board or use a high end fighting games pad.
Though an original NES controller speedrun coming close should definitely be a legit accomplishment.
I enjoyed the video, but I have to disagree. For me, the storytelling was the worst part. I feel like they said “the problem seemed insurmountable, and the community needed a little help. [x months/weeks/years] later [clever person] decided to give it a go” about 4 times.
I suppose, from a certain perspective, repetition can make good storytelling, and the actual real life events of course restrict the storyline to an extent, but they could have at least phrased it differently
Highly recommend going through Summoning Salt’s back catalogue as he is a great storyteller. He has a way of getting me interested even in games I’ve never played, like Ninja Gaiden [1].
I think the epitome of this for me was his vid on Mario Kart 64 and the A1A trying to stop a prolific speedrunner from claiming 32/32 simultaneous track records [2].
My teenage son is currently 223rd in the world in Super Mario Bros with a sub-5 personal best. He's explained just bits and pieces of the SMB speedrun subculture to me (frame rules, etc.) and it's just fascinating.
At under 5 minutes, it seems like it's the ideal length for practicing as well - if you screw up a full run, you at most have lost 5 minutes of time, you just start over again.
No-warp runs which go about 20 minutes are way more painful when you make a dumb mistake in 8-4.
> how did they figure out the theoretical best time in the first place
A rarely used tool is brute-force searching for ideal inputs by making a computer play the game, trying all possible inputs. In theory, this process could find the ideal set of inputs for any game, but since the space of all possible inputs grows exponentially with the length of the sequence, this is only viable for optimizing very small portions of the speed run. Instead, a heuristic algorithm can be used. Although such an approach does not guarantee a perfect solution, it can prove very effective for solving simple puzzle games.
They don't know the theoretical best time but they know what is possible using tool-assisted speedruns (TAS) using the current set of known tricks. So it's possible there are still tricks to discover that will improve the speed floor, but it's been a long time since anything new was found.
> - how did they figure out the theoretical best time in the first place?
Depends on the game...
With mario, if you know the max acceleration and speed of mario, and the length of the level, you can calculate the theoretical minimum needed to come to the other end, especially if no glitches are allowed. If you have to backtrack a bit, you can calculate the optimal path to pass through. Glitches (eg. passing through walls) make this harder.
With games like Zelda, breath of the wild, it's pretty much impossible to calculate exactly, except for taking the current records, finding flaws, errors and/or adding new optimizations, and subtracting the "lost time" from the record.... until a new, better strategy comes out.
> how did they figure out the theoretical best time in the first place?
Generally by trial and error and with a TAS, which is a "Tool Assisted Speedrun". Some people determined what all of the most optimal segments were, then programmed a computer to push the buttons at exactly the right time (down to frame perfect). So theoretically the current best time could be a local maximum, but with how long the game has been out for that seems unlikely.
This also led to a kind of funny thing where some runs were considered "TAS Only", only to be later achieved by a human in a real run.
I've been seeing this on some Castlevania SOTN tricks. I'm not sure whether this was done before or after TAS became in vogue, but while Some specific tricks are 'frame perfect', in that game you can use the map function to check your frame and slow it down. Yeah, it's still slower than a TAS, but if the time savings is substantial it's worth it.
Jokes aside, Summoning Salt is a great Youtube channel, and it makes me feel emotionally invested in speedruns of games I've never heard of before. Great storytelling. Not to mention that speedruns (and the glitches people find to get world record times) are pretty interesting from a computer science standpoint.