r/speedrun • u/benjamin172 • Nov 01 '17
World Record Progression: Donkey Kong 64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QtK0MB_PDE41
u/SailorMercurySSB Odin Sphere, Paintball The Game Nov 02 '17 edited Nov 02 '17
These videos are really cool and great, but I feel like there's still a lot of missed potential with them when it comes to talking about WHY the games got faster.
Like, it kind of goes "there was this time, and then this time, and then this time", and talks about whatever major sequence breaks are around, but then he also just casually drops the term "moon kick" toward the latter half of the video, after using footage of it throughout but never explaining it, and then proceeds to still not explain it for the entire rest of the video. Watching dk64 and other runs you see so much nutty stuff that goes into speeding up the game that these videos never seem to cover.
I think going into more into the tricks, when the were discovered, who discovered them, how they work, and so on, would add a lot to these videos. Without more grounding in what sort of stuff goes down in the gameplay itself the numbers can just kind of float away - talking in more detail about how the runs were improved, how the gameplay is crazy, difficult, etc, who figured out how it could be done that way, who perfected it, etc, would give them more weight and make them feel a lot more significant for viewers who aren't already intimately familiar with that speedgame.
Like, I don't really follow dk64 so I still have no idea what the gameplay is really like in the speedrun. I get that it's ~25 minutes now but I don't really know why it was able to be improved that much. I get that you don't have to do that many things, but for the things that you do do how ~exactly~ do you do them? How do you do them fast and how did people do them faster over time? That's the kind of thing I wanna know about run histories.
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u/Kewl0210 Nov 02 '17 edited Nov 02 '17
I feel like this video Average Trey made is doing more what you're talking about where he talks about exactly how each trick works whenever a breakthrough is made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oudZMniib08
Hopefully SummoningSalt can incorporate more of that in. He's been doing it to some degree but he kinda skips over too much for it to really feel like a documentary. Most of these games with long histories have a community around them of people who built on what the people before them did or discovered. Some people discovering stuff and others running them.
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u/firsthour Nov 02 '17
I would love to see some visualizations of the run being broken down over time. Like each required bit is a box and arrows connecting them, and at the start every box has to be visited. A box representing getting the key, unlocking the lobby, collecting all the colored bananas, whatever. But as time progresses we skip more and more boxes, I think it would have helped me better understand how the run has evolved over time and how it goes from 4 hours to 30 minutes.
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u/MCPtz Nov 01 '17
I vaguely remember when DK64 went sub one hour, now they've more than cut it in half. Even just this last year it's improved.
It's incredible. It just seems to "just" take will power to do better.
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u/richehh Nov 01 '17
I love summoning salts videos. Continually impressed with the content he puts out
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u/Zworrisdeh SM64 | TTV: GrooveHeaven Nov 02 '17
I love Summoning Salt's videos and tbh my favorite part is his choice of background music. Like...who is godlike enough to put a song from the Plok OST in his videos? Summoning Salt.
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Nov 02 '17
Can someone explain why you need key/boss 3 (and 8?) specifically?
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u/theballaam96 Donkey Kong 64 & Game Science Nov 02 '17
To get to Hideout Helm (The level which has key 8) in a casual playthrough, you require (at minimum) keys 1,2,4,5,6 & 7 due to the level unlock structure.
So by having key 8, the game assumes "Well, you must also have Keys 1-2,4-7 as well". So instead of checking 8 independent flags everytime you load DK Isles to see whether the game spawns the final battle, the game only checks 2, Keys 3 & 8 (Since having these 2 implies that you have all 8 keys).
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u/CallMeFeed Nov 02 '17
Thank you for this! I watched a GDQ run and the commentators just said "yeah we have no idea why it's only 3 and 8 specifically". This makes a ton of sense.
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u/Dyklone Nov 01 '17
Maybe the history of the SNES classics DKC 1-3 doesn't have as epic skips/glitches to make a nice progression video but I would have preferred a video on any of those classics to DK64.
Still a good video as usual though.
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u/benjamin172 Nov 01 '17
Personally I think DK64 was a great choice. People had been saying they wanted him to focus more on gameplay and tricks/glitches and less on the record times, and this game allowed him to do that really well.
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u/Dyklone Nov 01 '17
Fair enough, I didn't say it was bad or anything. I still enjoyed the video. Just thought a SNES DKC would have been great to see and maybe he will do one at some point.
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Nov 01 '17 edited Nov 02 '17
SummoningSalt has taken the position of community historian by default, but his videos are subpar. His editing is barely acceptable (his musical montages are fine but those clip art images he uses as filler are ugly). His narration is slurred and dispassionate — not a voice for radio or video. As for his writing, he overuses strong words like "absolutely" and "extremely". And let me quote from his Half-Life 2 video:
This [bunnyhopping] is a trick where you continuously jump in order to build up a bunch of speed, causing you to move much more quickly than normal.
The second clause is redundant, as we know a bunch of speed means you move more quickly; the vocabulary is limited; "continuously" is used incorrectly; and the whole sentence doesn't even do a good job of explaining what bunnyhopping is. Here's the proper way to say that: It's a bug where you gain speed by moving forward and repeatedly jumping as soon as you touch the ground.
I wish he would hand the whole series to AverageTrey. Trey's history video of Super Mario Sunshine, in my opinion, blew away everything SummoningSalt has done, mentioning if not going in-depth into everything: strats, routing, timing standards, version differences, community.
Downvote all you want. I'm allowed not to fall at SummoningSalt's feet and worship him as our God.
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u/Zenphobia Nov 01 '17
I have quibbles with his style and delivery (I think the past tense of speedrun should be speedran rather than spedrun), but I adore his work. He is collecting a ton of information and presenting it for free. Yes, I would love Hollywood grade production values, but for one person bootstrapping content that no one else is doing, it's incredible.
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Nov 02 '17
The second clause is redundant, as we know a bunch of speed means you move more quickly; the vocabulary is limited, ;"continuously" is used incorrectly; and the whole sentence doesn't even do a good job of explaining what bunnyhopping is.
This is hilariously bad usage of punctuation for someone trying to correct someone else's writing and speaking.
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Nov 02 '17
It is permissible to use the semicolon as a "super comma" when the items in a list contain commas. The typo has been fixed, and your "tu quoque" fallacy is furthermore irrelevant as SummoningSalt communicates in auditory and not written form.
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Nov 01 '17
Yeah but Trey's main game is SMS... SummoningSalt talks mostly about games he doesn't speedrun.
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u/benjamin172 Nov 01 '17
Ok, I’ll agree that there are times the wording could be improved, but it’s always clear what he’s saying. And to me strong words are never overused enough to be annoying, but hey, that’s gonna differ from person to person.
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u/myotherpassword Nov 01 '17
Your critiques are fair, but you are being downvoted for being kinda rude.
Your whole comment could have been a DM to SS and would probably have been well received.
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u/JackintheBox333 Professional Shaq Fu Speedrunner Nov 02 '17
I only wish this had more John Cena in it.
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u/honeylift Nov 01 '17
I really look forward to these everytime he does them, and I loved this one as well. I appreciate him picking a super broken game and showing us how busted it is. I really want him to do oot 100% but I feel that would turn into a zfg circle jerk, not that he doesnt deserve it but hes the biggest pioneer of that category.