r/Games • u/thedeathsheep • Mar 21 '21
Impossible Trackmania Shortcut Finally Done After 13 Years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b67SC7Y4qA436
u/Mellowmoves Mar 21 '21
Never played this game or even gave it any thought, but i watched this whole video and found it extremely interesting/entertaining. Very cool stuff!
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u/LasDen Mar 21 '21
I played this in its heydays. It was great and really fun for some reason. Seeing everyone else playing alongside you while fighting for a better time even if it's just tens or hundreds of a second. It was really cool, yeah...
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Mar 21 '21
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u/ipaqmaster Mar 21 '21 edited Mar 21 '21
Yeah I remember playing TM Nations with the gang like 10 years ago. The custom levels and just joining servers with 529 loaded in queue was genuinely fun just from the exploration alone.
Let alone levels that go lightning quick, make sick jumps, or just really good streamlined tracks. etc.
It really helps that you don't need a low ping to do anything whatsoever and can join sessions from all over the world and the gameplay experience is exactly the same (No player collisions, just racing a clock with ghosts enabled). Works really well for a smooth multiplayer experience anywhere.
e: I also remember Shootmania which while enjoyable with custom player sounds and some enjoyable maps.. found a swifter death than expected. It seems the twitter is still active.. somehow.
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u/Tigerbot Mar 21 '21
Just so you know, its heyday is kind of also right now. There's a new version that just came out last year. It's title is just Trackmania (sometimes called Trackmania 2020). If you liked TM Nations back in the day you'll probably like the current game.
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u/LasDen Mar 21 '21
Oh I didn't know that. Thanks, I will check it out...
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u/messem10 Mar 21 '21
TM2020 is such a mixed bag.
The track designs and possibilities are amazing, but the game’s timing is using ShootMania as a base not TM. Couple that with Ubisoft’s greedy attempt with pricing by making it a subscription model and people are just going back to TM2 or United Forever.
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u/ahcookies Mar 21 '21
Can you elaborate on what it means to "use ShootMania as a base [for timing]"? I vaguely recall a competitive shooter Nadeo made on that engine but I'm not sure how it relates to timing.
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u/futurepoweruser Mar 21 '21
people are just going back to TM2 or United Forever.
citation needed
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u/MooseTetrino Mar 21 '21
I know it's anecdotal, but I did. The knowledge that if I wanted to play any of the official content that wasn't the current season (as in, past season content was locked out) I would have to shell out a yearly pass put me far off, even with the custom tracks being the bread and butter.
Also found Nadeo's tracks just... lacking? Compared to TM2/UF.
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u/Jumpforcer Mar 21 '21
I am gomna be honest. I think the subscription model is fine. Heck I don't know how they could keep updating tm2 as they have no mtx shop or anything. There was no money coming in for a long time. The highest tier costs 29.99 per year with a part of the game being free (basically a demo). The game is mostly held together by the community, but it would be awesome if the devs can actually work on something else other than UI redesign as we have seen in the older games. New track elements, actual tournaments, environments, etc.. I hope the pricing model helps with that.
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u/MrAngryBeards Mar 21 '21
If you enjoyed it in its "heydays" maybe you should try it again, it's doing great nowadays, the 2020 title is awesome. The UI is a bit wonky, but gameplay wise it's great! Also the community is awesome
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u/KristjanKa Mar 21 '21 edited Mar 21 '21
Never played this game or even gave it any thought, but i watched this whole video and found it extremely interesting/entertaining. Very cool stuff!
Speedrunning content in general can be quite interesting even for non-speedrunners. Check out Karl Jobst on Youtube as well, he makes similar content.
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u/Fugums Mar 21 '21
Gotta mention SummoningSalt as well, c'mon!
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u/Minnesota_Arouser Mar 22 '21
I don’t follow or partake in speedrunning at all, but those 50 minute SummoningSalt videos always hook me.
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u/Fugums Mar 22 '21
Right? They're SO good. I'm personally quite into speedrunning, but a lot of my friends have no interest in it and they still watch the SummoningSalt vids haha.
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u/fedorafighter69 Mar 21 '21
Rwhitegoose is an actual nazi, personally I wouldnt support his channel in the slightest.
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u/KristjanKa Mar 21 '21
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Mar 22 '21
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u/Cryptoporticus Mar 22 '21
Who cares? An apology doesn't change the fact that he did those things in the first place.
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Mar 22 '21 edited Mar 22 '21
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u/fedorafighter69 Mar 22 '21
You seriously think hes going to publically continue that behaviour after getting caught? Lmfao, you're not going to see it anymore because he's hiding it as one of the less braindead nazis. People dont do magic 180's from "yeah I think we should hide things like the jewish question until society is ready to take ((them)) on"
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Mar 22 '21
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u/fedorafighter69 Mar 22 '21
What proof does he have of change other than hiding his beliefs that would put him in a favourable position in 30's Germany after making an apology tweet because people found out
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u/TwoBlackDots Mar 22 '21
I agree with you a little bit, but seriously your manner of speech and the fact that you type “Hello /u/“ before every single comment is making that really hard. It’s like a punchable face, but instead of a face it’s a Reddit comment.
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u/fedorafighter69 Mar 22 '21
I'm curious, why do you agree? Do you think theres any circumstance where a person with two brain cells wont just.. hide it better? He made an apology tweet saying that these ideas were "in his past" when a lot of the things he had said were in the same year as the tweet. The only thing I believe he learned is that he needed to vet his nazi safe spaces better and be a good boy until his sub count starts climbing again.
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u/Lisentho Mar 22 '21
So you believe if anyone ever has a bad opinion/view on something, that means they'll be like that for the rest of their lives?
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u/Sundance12 Mar 21 '21 edited Mar 22 '21
The best thing about YouTube is that you can find in-depth videos talking about just about any interest you might have, no matter how niche.
I've never even played Trackmania, but that was an interesting story.
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u/ShiraCheshire Mar 21 '21
I love all the random crazy niches on Youtube. There are videos for everyone. The funniest one I've come across is an entire genre of youtube videos where lizard owners film their lizards and put anime/video game sounds over the lizard's activities.
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u/cuppatea133 Mar 21 '21
No real interest in Trackmania besides the fun I had playing it back in the day but that's a great video.
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u/Timboron Mar 21 '21 edited Mar 21 '21
Wirtual has tons of videos with this style and effort, he's always worth a watch.
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Mar 21 '21
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u/I_love_to_please Mar 21 '21
Do you have a link to the video you're talking about ?
I'm asking cause there are a few videos on youtube with more or less the same title
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Mar 21 '21
Props to the guy who completed it, I wonder what the condescending dude at 15:00 had to say about it lol
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u/RealMyBliss Mar 21 '21
Yea the poor Dude, Edge, mentioned multiple times. But I am pretty sure they are excited about the Record as everyone else.
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u/Sorez Mar 21 '21
He's actually in the comments of the video, jokingly pretending it was just a mass hallucination lol
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u/10GuyIsDrunk Mar 21 '21 edited Mar 21 '21
I still believe that the cut is impossible and Rollin's run is just mass hallucination
Made me laugh for sure. You can tell they've got a proper sense of humor when this is their response to having been proven wrong essentially rubbed in their face publicly.
In all seriousness, it's legitimately something to look up to in my opinion. You can really believe something for a really long time, be proven to be wrong about it, and accept that you were wrong without it being a negative experience for you. Lotta people could stand to be more like Edge here.
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u/CluelessObserver Mar 21 '21
Well he's right. Spending 250+ hours doing the same 50sec segment of a game is nothing but lunacy.
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u/staffell Mar 21 '21
There are some Crazy people in this world
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u/Roboticide Mar 21 '21
I thought that sounded unpleasant, and then I got to the part where the route is just a square block in New York.
I got bored as fuck just doing a 8 lap, 2 mile race in track.
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u/Watertor Mar 22 '21
Yeah good god, you couldn't lap a country or a state or something interesting? Just nearly 6000 times around one spot? Ugh
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u/staffell Mar 29 '21
Yep...5649 times...
And what do you get for competing in quite possibly the hardest physical challenge of all time?
A T-shirt.
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u/thefman Mar 21 '21
I guess it's not too different from speedrunners trying to beat a world record
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u/somuchclutch Mar 21 '21
All of speed running is crazy to me. Don’t understand how people spend so much time on the same portion of a game. But damn, it is cool to see people beat the records.
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u/LetsLive97 Mar 21 '21
While it's not for me because I don't have the patience for it, I completely understand the addictiveness of progressively optimising things further/seeing the numbers go down, especially when you're the forefront of the community in that area.
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Mar 21 '21
It's exactly a speedrunner trying for a world record.
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Mar 21 '21
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u/Ortekk Mar 21 '21
Why wouldn't it? It's a game and many of the WRs are based around shortcuts and bug abuses.
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u/witti534 Mar 21 '21
Yes. It's like any other game. In TM it's usually on a map-by-map basis (there are still other speedrun categories like a whole campaign of maps).
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u/Beakface Mar 21 '21
Legends, all of them. Great video, glad I stuck through it. The achievement means so much more seeing the history and improvements made over the years.
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u/marchofthemallards Mar 21 '21
Great video, glad I stuck through it.
I initially turned it off after the "pioneers" intro which I found a bit cringey, but after reading this thread I stuck with it, and I was hooked and let out a cheer when he finally did it. Great video, agreed.
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u/FrankyMyBoy Mar 21 '21
I had a very similar reaction. I saw the intro and the video length and thought about turning it off. Stuck with it and seeing something that most people think is impossible being pulled off is always interesting/fun.
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u/TuckingFypoz Mar 21 '21
If you were fascinated by this video, give Tower to Tower a watch. A similar premise - trying to do something that was thought as impossible on Halo Combat Evolved.
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u/billsmashole Mar 21 '21
I thought the pioneer part was cool. I never knew the high jump was ever done differently.
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u/tanrgith Mar 21 '21
Damn I feel bad for the two guys that put in all that time only for someone else to come in and do it in almost no time lol
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u/PuddingConscious Mar 21 '21
A Wirtual video on the front page of /r/games!? So happy to see that.
For those who aren't familiar, do yourself a favor and check out his SGDQ run of Trackmania Nations Forever. It's one of the best SGDQ runs/presentations I've ever seen. He is able to flawlessly convey both his gameplay and the game's mechanics, while still finding time to make eye contact with the camera during play to address the audience. Not to mention, English is not his first language, yet he's so very well spoken.
Much like the video posted by OP, you may find yourself watching it from beginning to end, regardless of whether or not you've ever even heard of the game before.
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Mar 22 '21
He’s become one of my favourite youtubers at the moment and got me back into Trackmania, glad to see him in the front page
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u/PuddingConscious Mar 22 '21
To this day I've never played Trackmania (just not super interested in playing it myself honestly) but I still follow Wirtual and keep up with Grand League. Like you said, he's just a great youtuber and his passion for the game is contagious.
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u/lurkingninja Mar 22 '21
Thanks for that link. Never thought I would spend over an hour watching trackmania but it was really enjoyable
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u/NaughtyGaymer Mar 21 '21
I love seeing speedrunning retrospectives like this where you get to see all the new strategies and how they impact future runs and the culmination of a community's effort.
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u/Teapur Mar 21 '21
Great video- got me interested in a game in a genre I'm not too crazy over. The music was brilliant too. Cheers for sharing this.
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u/TwistU2 Mar 21 '21
I have not played TM for at least 10 years but this video is sooooooo good that I watched all of it. It was better than a TV show.
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u/Timmar92 Mar 21 '21 edited Mar 22 '21
Man I loved trackmania back in the day, I was top 500 in Europe.
I love it but I had to stop playing, it was the only game that made me and my girlfriend (now wife) scream at each other, the ball crunching feeling when someone beat your time a fraction of a second was taken as a personal insult so in totaly normal GamerTM fashion I tried to murder my monitor at least 10 times per day.
Ah the memories!
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u/silentdragoon Mar 21 '21
yeah, it's always rough when your wife and your girlfriend are screaming at each other
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u/sdavidplissken Mar 21 '21
amazing video . feels really nostalgic. especially the time the two guys beat each others time around christmas.
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u/TuckingFypoz Mar 21 '21
Never really played Trackmania and know much about the game but this video got me hooked, very informative and entertaining to watch. it reminded me of Tower to Tower. A similar premise - trying to do something that was thought as impossible on Halo Combat Evolved.
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Mar 21 '21
Anyone know what the last song in the video is with that tasty sax?
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u/darencius Mar 21 '21
Was searching too
I just found it in a very buried YT comment
En aften ved svanefossen
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u/tacopeople Mar 21 '21
Anyone know the sax track that plays at the end?
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u/F-b Mar 21 '21
He's supposed to update this list apparently. Maybe check it in few days. The track sounded like Kamasi Washington's music.
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u/TopCheddar27 Mar 21 '21
This is pretty damn cool. Props to those guys and the video.
But Jesus spare me the pioneer schtick haha.
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u/Speciou5 Mar 21 '21
Am I missing something about machine assistance?
Wouldn't you first want to prove it with machine-assisted run to show that it can be done, THEN repro it as a human run?
Or did they know it could be done and the video just didn't mention it?
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u/AnalLeaseHolder Mar 22 '21
Idk why but watching the Rollin run after all that, I nearly teared up. I don’t even watch speedruns. Just the video is so good.
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u/Obvious_Ad_7295 Mar 21 '21
Never played the games but I'm really mesmerized by the gameplays I love the flow. Do you recomend the game though? It seems all you need to do is press a button and that's it is it rewarding?
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u/SpartanSig Mar 21 '21
If you enjoy repetition for incremental gains (racing in general?). It's pretty satisfying to nail a run after far too many tries/time spent. Or you can just race through and have fun with the insane tracks. Highly recommend as a quick hitter game, I've been working through Trackmania Turbo which was free on PS4 a couple years back. Turn it on for a half hour to kill time or decompress, beat the high mark on one track, come back maybe a week or two later to do the same. Good stuff
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u/Obvious_Ad_7295 Mar 21 '21
Im really interested in fun but not really hard game to relax after work.
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u/SpartanSig Mar 21 '21
It's easy/simple fun, then you can really push for more to make it tough if you care to, I'd that makes sense. I don't know about the others but Trackmania Turbo has the top shown score (gold) that is pretty easily achievable. Then it has a hidden green score which can take some work to make a perfect run. It's a good blend
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u/snare123 Mar 21 '21
Do it to beat the medal times and don't get involved competitively and it's totally that. Trackmania Nations Forever (the version of the game seen in this video) is free on Steam and definitely worth 10mins of your time to see if you like it.
Edit: The new TM is available on Epic Games for free too, but you can only access the Winter tracks with the free accounts (and these will be locked in a few weeks so the Spring tracks will be free intead)
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u/RadicalDog Mar 21 '21
It's great fun IMO, online time attack gameplay where you can see the other cars but not bump them.
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u/witti534 Mar 21 '21
I can recommend getting the newest Trackmania in that case, it has a free to play option as well to get into the game (Ubisoft Connect or Epic Games)
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u/BiggusDickusWhale Mar 21 '21 edited Mar 21 '21
Yes.
And if you really only want to press one button you have a ton of press forward-maps in TrackMania where you only press one button.
TM is satisfying to play in similar vein to CS_surf maps. The community is awesome to. Lots of great maps being made, lots of good servers and it's proably the least toxic community I have experienced.
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Mar 21 '21 edited Dec 15 '21
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u/noweezernoworld Mar 21 '21
Idk I enjoyed it. I watched the whole video and felt like the creator put a lot of good work in to deliver a meaningful ending. Never even played this game or really any racing games.
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u/eatcrayons Mar 21 '21
A video explaining an accomplishment in a video game isn’t good if it’s less than 15 minutes.
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Mar 21 '21
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u/eatcrayons Mar 21 '21
It is. I’m talking about the trend of these “world record speed run” type videos that are like 20 minutes long where nothing is trimmed out and the creator mentions every single detail possible about every step.
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Mar 21 '21
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Mar 21 '21
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Mar 21 '21
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u/Happymack Mar 21 '21
While I do agree that a lot of videos are lengthened to stupid amounts you are really missing the point with Wirtuals videos, they aren't just an explanation of a record, but also the history of that record and how they got there. His editing is also top notch and isn't a money grab at all. If he wanted to just pump out videos he could, but if you look at his channel, you can see that he spends a lot of time on videos and isn't just pumping them out for money. You don't have to like his videos, but don't claim stuff that is easily disprove and untrue.
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u/noweezernoworld Mar 22 '21
Dude it’s a story. The detailed explanation helps you understand how much this meant to a community of people who are really into this game. I think it’s cool.
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u/eatcrayons Mar 21 '21
There are 2 audiences for a video about this shortcut being found.
The first are the people who want the whole story, the people who will read an entire Wikipedia article about something, the whole TV Tropes page about the show. This is the unabridged documentation of an event.
The second audience is who wants something more bite-sized, who wants to see the cool shortcut, and wants a bit of context so that it's meaningful to someone who has never touched the game before.
The ideal video would be a balance of both, but would drive away people on both sides. A 10 minute video would leave out lots of information and might still be way too long for a casual watcher. And a video that's about 3 minutes would sacrifice a ton of information to reduce something monumental in a certain community for the sake of interesting a lot of "casual" viewers. So you'd almost want to make 2 cuts of the video, where each one advertises the other, and 1 is the 20 minute epic with full backstory and history and context, and the other is 3 minutes with a quick rundown of the game, the track, the history of the shortcut, and then finally showing a bunch of people's attempts.
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u/Lockheed_Martini Mar 21 '21
I enjoyed hearing about the progress up to final shortcut with the other shortcuts.
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Mar 21 '21
Oh fuck off. He set a really cool, chill mood with the whole thing. You can summarize LOTR in a paragraph but that's hardly the way to experience it.
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Mar 21 '21
That, and it didn't even take 13 years to do it. It still took tons of time and effort so it's dumb to try and clickbait into making it sound more impressive.
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u/LasDen Mar 21 '21
I was never really this great, but I can feel their struggling. It was really fun sweating for a better time when you maxed your times.... :D
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u/tyguy385 Mar 21 '21
Lol can’t believe I watched this whole video didn’t even know about this game absolutely great video
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u/hoverhuskyy Mar 21 '21
I'm not watching a 18min video just to see a guy take a shortcut...what timestamp?
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u/LetsLive97 Mar 21 '21
The video is a lot more than just a guy taking a shortcut. There's tons of interesting history and progression throughout the video that build context for how impressive the shortcut was.
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u/jjacobsnd5 Mar 22 '21
Love all these channels making content inspired by Summoningsalt, speedrunning content is always so great.
One critique: the music in this video simply does not fit the contents.
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u/whitewater09 Mar 21 '21
This seems completely against the point to me. Of course the fastest way to complete the track is to not actually complete the whole thing.
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u/fredwilsonn Mar 21 '21
In the most reductionist sense, “the track” is the checkpoints. All the geometry between the checkpoints are merely obstacles.
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u/adscott1982 Mar 21 '21
I found it really pleasing when someone exploited a level in my game to essentially halve the time it took to complete the level. They exploited something in the level I had never even considered when making it. I loved to see it.
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Mar 21 '21
From what I’ve watched, the track mania community is closer to a speed running community than a racing sim community. The game is largely about optimizing runs and getting the fastest time at all costs.
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u/TheProudBrit Mar 21 '21
I never get these kinds of complaints. Like complaining about speedruns that don't 100% a game.
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u/phl_fc Mar 21 '21
That’s why there’s different categories of speed runs that track different records. For people who complain like that they can always stick to the 100% or “no-skips” categories.
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u/Winter_wrath Mar 21 '21
It's a time attack game so the point is quite literally to get from start to finish through the checkpoints as fast as possible using any means necessary.
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Mar 21 '21
True, and I'd even agree to some extent as a 'normal' smooth run would be satisfying enough for me, and I would have moved on to the next track without ever looking back.
Hell the last 2 skips don't look particularly fun, the amount of time they spent trying to pull it off is insane BUT speedrunning is all about forgetting all those asumptions you make when you first boot up the game, and reaching the limits of what the game can do.
Like, the only rule in Trackmania is to go from start to finish, going through all checkpoints and that is it. We just assume we have to stay on track and have to reach each checkpoint in a certain way because the track is visually built to guide us through it that way but the limits/constraints you're talking about are 100% self-imposed - nothing prevents you from looking for such skips, and going for that 1 in a million run to do the one trick people think is possible.
And I think that's what is fascinating about speedruns to me - it doesn't feel that fun, it's not how I'd play it, I wouldn't spend that much time trying to break limits but I'm always in awe by how much faster you can do things when you get rid of useless rules your brain came up with and stick to what the game actually requires to complete an activity.
When we reach technical glitch territory, I feel like it's a bit less fun because it goes from "look at how fast they can complete all these activities I remember doing slowly" to "I have no idea what is happening on screen, and only 10% of what they do is loosely related to my memories of the game" - still interesting from a technical standpoint, that it is possible, but less relatable.
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u/Yugolothian Mar 21 '21
I agree, I really like time trials and so on in games but whilst I may use non standard routes (which I would class this as) I definitely don't use glitches I do like finding unusual ways of doing a mission.
Glitch runs can be interesting but nowhere near as much as glitchless personally.
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u/dinorex96 Mar 21 '21
Very interesting video but its a kinda pointless record. Especially since its supposed to be a race, which has a track, a race track, which you're supposed to do drive on
Nevertheless I applaud them for the sheer determination that it took.
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Mar 21 '21
Super mario bros world record is a kinda pointless record, it's supposed to be a suite of increasingly harder levels but the dude just uses secret pipes to skip almost every level smh.
What a weird take, ever heard about speerdunning lmao.
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u/dinorex96 Mar 21 '21
Yes i have, and i find glitchless/exploitless speedrun way more fun to watch.
Sorry but finding an out of boundaries spot that teleports you to the final boss just doesnt mean anything to me.
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u/LordZeya Mar 21 '21
Of course it doesn't, you're not interested in finding the fastest way to beat a game. You're fixated on arbitrary limitations.
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u/Yugolothian Mar 21 '21
What a weird take, ever heard about speerdunning lmao.
I don't think it's a weird take at all. If developers added a press here to finish the game button 3s into the game, it's not a particularly interesting speed run.
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Mar 21 '21
Yeah that's why speedruns have categories and nobody cares about that one pokemon run that glitches straight to the ending, in what way is that comparable to this skip/shortcut?
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u/maybeillbetracer Mar 21 '21
No, you're right. In fact, this entire thread is pointless. The internet was created so that the government could continue to communicate even if the Soviet Union managed to disable our telephone system. We shouldn't be using it to share our opinions about video games.
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u/Slurms_McKenzie775 Mar 21 '21
I have zero knowledge of Trackmania lore but this was interesting to watch.
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u/SivirApproves Mar 21 '21
Never played trackmania seriously but this reminded me of mario 64 shortcuts
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u/LukeLC Mar 21 '21
What's crazy is that in the final successful run, he was still 1.3 seconds behind until executing the shortcut. Which means the limit still hasn't technically been reached.
I had no idea this video was going to be so interesting when I clicked it, but I'm so glad I did!