Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

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Lately, I've been thinking of what speedruns of DROD would be like.

I don't mean doing it in the least amount of turns, that's pretty much already optimized. I mean being able to solve the puzzles most efficiently (so, uh, least amount of turns, I guess that was partially relevant) AND with the fastest execution possible in real time.

I'm certainly not up to the task of speedrunning an entire DROD game, but I'd like to guesstimate the fastest times for each main entry, without knowing how fast it can take. Unless otherwise specified, these entail you don't bother with secret rooms, skip all cutscenes, and don't count loading times:

EDIT: Old ideal times are in spoilers for being severe overestimates of how short they can be. Think of the spoilered ones as being ideal "optimized TAS runs" where you input everything nearly instantaneously, and as fast as possible for the computer to still recognize it as an input. Anyhow, the more likely times:
• KDD 2.0: Likely 2-3 hours, maybe 1.25-2 hours if you use warps.
• JtRH: Likely 4-7 hours, maybe 2-4 hours if you use warps.
• TCB: Likely 6-8 hours.
• GatEB: Likely 2.25-4 hours. Currently the only run with any proof of its existence; the record stands at aboue ≈2.75 hours as of November 8th, 2017.
• TSS: Likely 8-10 hours, possibly even longer if going for the good ending.



Notice that despite the lengths of some of these runs (look at TSS!), it still somehow isn't able to hold a candle to the "longest WR speedruns" of certain games. 100% Animal Crossing speedruns--yes, people speedrun ANIMAL CROSSING--take much longer. A DROD speedrun is long, but it's certainly more feasible to speedrun than Animal Crossing; and I never thought I'd see the day where DROD is easier than Animal Crossing in some respect.

Anyone have any good ideas of what it'd be like, much less think they're up to the task of speedrunning DROD and completing a hold in the fastest real-world time? I'm anxiously excited to see if we can get anything going here!

EDIT: Somehow, DROD AE has a leaderboard on the speedrun website, but without any runs. I'm currently going through the process to see if I can get DROD as a series on there, though. If you (for some reason) want a link to the DROD AE leaderboard, here it is.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 11-08-2017 11:11 PM]

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

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After we released each of the updated holds, I replayed each of them to register completion of all the challenges. I decided to approach this as a "casual speedrun"; I tried to complete each segment quickly, but without going over each segment multiple times to get it really optimised as you would for a real speedrun. My times were roughly:

GatEB: 7 hours
KDD: 10 hours
JtRH and TCB: 20 hours
TSS: Didn't finish yet because of that challenge in CW I would aim for 30 hours for the good ending, and 40 hours for full 100% completion.

Obviously, going over the rooms in advance so you know exactly what to do in each room would lower the times quite a bit. But I still think your times are severe underestimates; 5 hours for TSS (883 rooms) is about 20 seconds per room, not accounting for the time wasted traversing rooms to reach level exits or plot points.

But actually doing these as speedruns (especially if you insisted on single-segment) would require a lot more preparation time than the run time, and it usually takes many runs to get a time the runner is happy with. There are very few speedruns of this length; I did watch some of a Persona 3 speedrun recently, which was around 45 hours (and yes, he did take a sleep break). So finding someone dedicated enough to do it is not necessarily impossible. Not me, though; I'd much rather spend the time playing other holds, though I will see if I can improve my "casual" times next time I find myself replaying the main holds.

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50th Skywatcher

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[Last edited by Nuntar at 11-05-2017 02:42 PM]

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

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Camwoodstock wrote:
I don't mean doing it in the least amount of turns, that's pretty much already optimized.

Interestingly enough it hasn't. There was talk in chat a while back about this actually. Though the actual rooms in KDD have been pretty well optimized for instance, no one has ever really tried optimizing the whole hold, or even a level for move count. These things are very different, since optimizing an individual room often costs you moves in the surrounding rooms. For example, you might waste moves in the room before to rotate your sword to the ideal orientation before entering. Or you might play through the room without clearing it first in order to get to the optimal entrance. I think it would be super interesting to try to optimize one of the main holds for move count.

Speed running or optimizing for time doesn't really fit what DROD is all about, though I guess it could be done. It's not quite as patently absurd as speed running "The Witness" (a game that is thematically about taking your time to observe your surroundings). But it still doesn't quite feel like the concept of speed running makes sense when DROD is so heavily built around the concept of being turn based and not dependent on clock speed. If you really want to try though then best of luck to you! I would definitely at least be interested in seeing your move count totals for each level.

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mauvebutterfly
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In a sense, this is what the blind races are. I don't think you'll find too much interest in speedrunning DROD since it's already a niche game.

I think if you wanted to start something like this you'd be better off taking a short user-made hold and optimising that. Really though, a lot of the fun stuff about speedrunning won't really apply to DROD. Sure, you can plan a route involving warp skips, and both JtRH and GatEB have a level that can be skipped if you know how, but the vast majority of a DROD speedrun would just be memorizing solutions to rooms.

All that being said, I might be up for actually giving this kind of thing a try, at least once. I expect you to start it though. Pick a hold and record yourself completing it in one sitting, and I'll try to match your time. I'd recommend a shorter hold like maybe Blind Race #1, but if you want to do an official hold GatEB would probably be the quickest to prepare for.

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106th Skywatcher

Xindaris
Level: Smitemaster

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This is something I've thought about myself, in between watching AGDQ/SGDQ/etc. and the Blind Races. The fact that things like Zelda randomizers and mystery tournaments (speedrun a surprise list of games, aiming for a certain goal in each) have picked up so much popularity suggests there might be a place for something like our Blind Races in the speedrunning community, where a bunch of people try to make their way through something none of them have seen before (but with some familiar traits all of them know) as quickly as possible.

That being said, one of the most fascinating things to see in a speedrun is the game-breaking glitches that can be used to skip major portions of intended play. And honestly, for as many quirky things as there are in DROD, it's probably the least glitchy game I've ever seen. The game is pretty tightly put together overall; there's not really any way of sequence breaking an official hold or a reasonably well-put-together non-official hold that wasn't specifically designed by the builders. We even test our blind races sufficiently to not let people just ignore an entire level or such.

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109th Skywatcher

Here are some links to Things!

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 11-05-2017 03:11 PM]

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

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Insoluble wrote:
Though the actual rooms in KDD have been pretty well optimized for instance, no one has ever really tried optimizing the whole hold, or even a level for move count.

Actually we did try full level scores way back in the AE days, but the addition of official high scores in JtRH made the whole idea mostly obsolete. As seen in the first post, the full demoset at the time was just under six hours. Gives you some idea of how long an optimized full-hold playthrough would take. Of course these days you could play a bit more recklessly because you can undo mistakes more freely and many rooms have slightly faster solutions. Still, I can't imagine the hold getting much faster.

Xindaris wrote:
there might be a place for something like our Blind Races in the speedrunning community, where a bunch of people try to make their way through something none of them have seen before

Not surprisingly this is already a thing. In events like these people play random games without knowing what they'll get until just before the race begins. They even did a blind DROD race during one of the matches (there might be VODs somewhere on the racers' channels, but there was no restream with commentary or anything like that).

Ultimately I'll agree with Xindaris that turn-based puzzle games with minimal speed tricks don't make for very interesting speedruns. There's a few little things like the L7 skip in JtRH and the Daskeros Tower skip in GatEB, but the vast majority of your run is going to include the same solutions as a regular playthrough, just with most of the deaths/resets/waiting cut out.

Xindaris
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I think perhaps the issue with skips is that DROD is an extremely discrete game, in the sense that faster or more precise inputs aren't really functional terms in describing its gameplay. Anything you can do (real-time) fast in DROD, you can also do slowly, and, with very few (and ever fewer) obscure scripting-involved inconsistencies, every move is perfectly, precisely determined only by which single button you push.

This is as opposed to things like the fairly recently-discovered Barrier Skip of Windwaker, where you have to do some precise sequence of button presses from just the right position, face just the right angle, and then do something else to warp past the barrier around Hyrule Castle. It's something based on some precise details of the ingame physics and the geometry of the barrier in question, and it was thought to be impossible for years until someone found a way to do it, and later people found ways to do it somewhat consistently. I don't think DROD is capable of having breakthroughs like that, speedrunning-wise. Even in terms of ingame secrets like the also fairly recently discovered fact that Molgera dies instantly if you use forest water on her, I think we basically already know everything there is to know about the official holds, at least collectively.

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109th Skywatcher

Here are some links to Things!

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[Last edited by Xindaris at 11-05-2017 06:58 PM]

averagemoe
Level: Smiter

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Seems to me like figuring it out is just a simple matter of taking the number of moves in the most efficient play through, and multiplying it by an amount of time per move.

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There are two types of sheep in the world. Those who jump off a bridge when told to, and those who jump off a bridge when told not to. Don't be either.

Rabscuttle
Level: Smitemaster

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Doom wrote:

Insoluble wrote:
Though the actual rooms in KDD have been pretty well optimized for instance, no one has ever really tried optimizing the whole hold, or even a level for move count.

Actually we did try full level scores way back in the AE days, but the addition of official high scores in JtRH made the whole idea mostly obsolete. As seen in the first post, the full demoset at the time was just under six hours. Gives you some idea of how long an optimized full-hold playthrough would take. Of course these days you could play a bit more recklessly because you can undo mistakes more freely and many rooms have slightly faster solutions. Still, I can't imagine the hold getting much faster.

woo! level demos!
Dang, I had so much more free time 13 years ago.

I'm not sure if the "full hold demos" that I posted in that thread still work... (you may need to import the original kdd hold.. somehow?), but if they do you should check them out to see how a semi-optimised hold playthrough could look. I took the demo files and made the moves uniform time, and strung each level together. I recall I had to delete the final room on each level because stairs automatically ended the demo playback.

I also tried running something similar later: http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=30114&page=0#296379
I think I was going to do more with it at the time, but then a drive crashed and I lost some tools that I had written. :/

mauvebutterfly
Level: Smitemaster

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File: GunthroSpeedrun.png (27.8 KB)
Downloaded 723 times.
License: Public Domain

mauvebutterfly wrote:
All that being said, I might be up for actually giving this kind of thing a try, at least once. I expect you to start it though.

Okay, I lied. I did a run of GatEB. Not optimised at all, since the only room I practised in advance was the Daskeros Tower skip, and I hadn't done any routing, but it gave me a feel for what it would be like to play DROD with a focus on speed instead of precision.

I guess this would technically be called an any% run. I also did it in 2 segments, taking a break after the end of Smuggler's Maze. That was mostly since I didn't know how much time the whole hold would take though, and I'd probably just do full single-segment if I were to attempt this again.



Some thoughts:

*Linchpin rooms aren't really that fun to run. They aren't necessarily bad, but there isn't really any effort that goes into them once you know the solution.

*Hoard rooms are a lot of fun to try to do quickly. This is where I think you'll see the biggest difference in times between players of different skill levels.

*Platform "bridge-building" and "Tetris" rooms suck when trying to go quickly.

*The shallow water level, Grotto Hideout, also kind of sucks to do quickly.

*Memorise all the orb puzzles in advance (obviously)

*Soldier rooms (at least in GatEB) are kind of awesome. The soldiers are actually really helpful about clearing stuff for you, and you rarely need to actually pay attention to them.

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106th Skywatcher

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 115
Registered: 07-02-2014
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mauvebutterfly wrote:

mauvebutterfly wrote:
All that being said, I might be up for actually giving this kind of thing a try, at least once. I expect you to start it though.

Okay, I lied. I did a run of GatEB. Not optimised at all, since the only room I practised in advance was the Daskeros Tower skip, and I hadn't done any routing, but it gave me a feel for what it would be like to play DROD with a focus on speed instead of precision.

I guess this would technically be called an any% run. I also did it in 2 segments, taking a break after the end of Smuggler's Maze. That was mostly since I didn't know how much time the whole hold would take though, and I'd probably just do full single-segment if I were to attempt this again.

Click here to view the secret text

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Some thoughts:

*Linchpin rooms aren't really that fun to run. They aren't necessarily bad, but there isn't really any effort that goes into them once you know the solution.

*Hoard rooms are a lot of fun to try to do quickly. This is where I think you'll see the biggest difference in times between players of different skill levels.

*Platform "bridge-building" and "Tetris" rooms suck when trying to go quickly.

*The shallow water level, Grotto Hideout, also kind of sucks to do quickly.

*Memorise all the orb puzzles in advance (obviously)

*Soldier rooms (at least in GatEB) are kind of awesome. The soldiers are actually really helpful about clearing stuff for you, and you rarely need to actually pay attention to them.

Well cramp my style, someone's actually already tried a full Gunthro Run! I'm actually quite shocked at how long the final time is, though I guess my times imply VERY quick input of the proper moves to clear the room (and, of course, zero bothering with secret rooms unless they're beneficial, like the KDD/JtRH warps).

Still, for a first attempt at a "fast Gunthro run", seeing it be sub-3 hours is insane knowing how long it took me personally.

____________________________
Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

mauvebutterfly
Level: Smitemaster

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For the record I didn't enter a single secret room during the run. I think those 8 secrets must be story related or mandatory rooms behind blue doors or something.

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106th Skywatcher

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 115
Registered: 07-02-2014
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mauvebutterfly wrote:
For the record I didn't enter a single secret room during the run. I think those 8 secrets must be story related or mandatory rooms behind blue doors or something.

Possibly? I can't quite remember how GatEB handles secret rooms, so that might need insight. At any rate, seeing someone clear GatEB, arguably one of the longer holds, in under 3 hours is, frankly, impressive.

Also, funny tidbit I found out: While DROD is a long game, there's longer speedruns out there. People 100% speedrun Animal Crossing. Seriously. And that record is currently at 22 hours. Putting it this way, it takes longer to speedrun 100%ing Animal Crossing, than it does to speedrun DROD... I never thought I'd see the day where DROD is easier than Animal Crossing in some regard, and that amuses me to no end.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
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The secrets total is across all saves. I just tested by starting a new game on jfflpnk, which can be completed immediately. When I did so, the stats said I had found 13 secrets.

mauvebutterfly
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That seems like a weird choice, but it makes sense when I think about it. It was probably done that way so that your secrets at the end would include any that you restored to.

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106th Skywatcher

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

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Camwoodstock wrote: Also, funny tidbit I found out: While DROD is a long game, there's longer speedruns out there. People 100% speedrun Animal Crossing. Seriously. And that record is currently at 22 hours.

As I mentioned above, I watched some of a Persona 3 speedrun recently: 43:37. I didn't stick around to watch the whole thing but I left it open in the background so I could congratulate the runner when he finished.

I might have a go at improving my GatEB time, now that my 7:10 has been beaten by a long way although the two are not directly comparable since mine is a 100% time (all rooms, all challenges). Did you have any success in getting the other DRODs accepted on speedrun.com? If not then I might try, I've opened an account there.

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50th Skywatcher

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

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Nuntar wrote:

Camwoodstock wrote: Also, funny tidbit I found out: While DROD is a long game, there's longer speedruns out there. People 100% speedrun Animal Crossing. Seriously. And that record is currently at 22 hours.

As I mentioned above, I watched some of a Persona 3 speedrun recently: 43:37. I didn't stick around to watch the whole thing but I left it open in the background so I could congratulate the runner when he finished.

I might have a go at improving my GatEB time, now that my 7:10 has been beaten by a long way although the two are not directly comparable since mine is a 100% time (all rooms, all challenges). Did you have any success in getting the other DRODs accepted on speedrun.com? If not then I might try, I've opened an account there.

Getting the game onto Speedrun.com is in the works; it's currently in pending.

Also, I am aware longer speedruns exist; IIRC, there's a game that literally takes over 301 hours (though that's only to 100% the game, since getting certain stuff requires 300 hours of gameplay), and I think there was a Digimon game that was long enough to the point where the runner nearly died trying to run the game due to its absurd length. I just chose Animal Crossing 100%, because it amuses me that speedrunning a game as relaxed as Animal Crossing is exponentially harder than speedrunning a game like DROD.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 115
Registered: 07-02-2014
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Update on the situation of getting the game onto speedrun.com: still it hasn't been verified yet. But, I'd like to ask a question: Can someone write a guide for the Gunthro Daskero's Tower skip? I know speedrun.com has a feature where you can include guides about how to preform glitches, and given the Daskero's Tower skip is pretty much the ONLY glitch known, a guide on how to execute it would be good.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

superluminal
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 75
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What is this "tower skip" everyone keeps talking about?

I didn't know DROD had content glitches like that.

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spacelike

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

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We call them "unintended solutions" rather than glitches; a "glitch" is usually something wrong (or at least unintended) with the programming, not a flaw in the level design.

This challenge allows the entirety of Daskeros Tower to be skipped, since the mechanism that's intended to enforce dropping the blue door actually doesn't require it. There's a similar skip in JtRH Level 7.

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50th Skywatcher

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 115
Registered: 07-02-2014
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UPDATE: We're going to need a video run before DROD can be added to speedrun.com; I just got the notification the application was sadly rejected. I'll probably do a quick run of a specific KDD level (likely Level 1) and submit that.

Nuntar wrote:
We call them "unintended solutions" rather than glitches; a "glitch" is usually something wrong (or at least unintended) with the programming, not a flaw in the level design.

This challenge allows the entirety of Daskeros Tower to be skipped, since the mechanism that's intended to enforce dropping the blue door actually doesn't require it. There's a similar skip in JtRH Level 7.

Ohhh, THAT challenge. I remember being stumped from Gunthro because I was wanting to do challenges as I was given them (I play via steam) and that room was a PAIN. Making things worse, earlier releases of Gunthro had a bugged out demo system so I couldn't just download and import a demo; no, someone (I forget who but they have my eternal greatfulness) had to UPLOAD THEIR DEMO TO YOUTUBE JUST SO I COULD SEE IT. Now I understand. All anecdotes aside, I think that video could be easily repurposed to showcase the tower skip.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 11-20-2017 05:35 PM]

Camwoodstock
Level: Master Delver

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File: Gunthro Splits Blank.txt (372 bytes)
Downloaded 44 times.
License: Public Domain

I come bearing a new resource--a very basic file for GatEB Speedrun Splits, for use with Time Split Tracker, a speedrun timer program! All times are left blank so it will default to whatever times you had set. This can be used to specifically time how long each segment in particular is.

The splits are as follows:
* The prologue, up to the first level of the Outer Walls. Split ends when you enter the stairs taking you to Outer Walls.
* The Outer Walls themselves. Ends when you step on the stairs to go to the next level.
* The two court stages. Each one ends as you hit the stairs. See a pattern here?
* Then is a split for assembling the gang, and all the levels entailed within that particular section. Rather than make a split for every level, I figured it'd be better to just have a split for that entire section. Split ends as you transition over to Smuggler's Maze.
* Then is a split for Smuggler's Maze. Since this level is forced after you assemble the gang, I figured it gets its own split. End after leaving and arriving at Englos.
* Then, a split for all of the coast of Englos. Not much to say, it's a similar story to assembling the gang. Split ends as you arrive at Englos' Keep.
* Then, a split for the actual Englos' Keep stage. Again, it's forced to be done next, so go figure. End split upon exiting Englos' Keep and being taken to Akandia.
* Then, a split for all of the Akandia stages. Surely you can see a pattern here, yes? Stop split on the entry to the Inner Chambers.
* Then, as the last regular level's split, a split for the Inner Chambers and the climax level. Stop after landing on the exit doors.
* Finally, the epilogue's split. Split--and run--ends when the "hold stats" appears on screen for the end of the hold.

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Camwoodstock - The Epic Blunder, Dugan's Best Janitor, Rooted Hold Runner, Lowest Point Watcher, and 132nd Skywatcher (and 13th Gel Authority)
Mastered all of GatEB, KDD 2.0, JtRH, and TCB! | Saw The Second Sky! (lots of secrets left!)

Her/him | & | Steam | Backloggery

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[Last edited by Camwoodstock at 01-27-2018 09:01 PM]