I'm going into this community almost blind, does anybody know any worthwhile tips when attempting to run a game? I was thinking I'd watch other runs of games I want to play and see what I can learn from them, but I keep feeling there's more I can do to improve other than by just constantly playing
If runs of the game exist, definitely watch runs of the game and get a feel for all the things that can be done to speed up your time. Check to see if there are notes publicly available for it and check them out. If there aren't any, then follow along with the run and make your own. (I always encourage writing your own anyway because I personally learn a run better when I write my own stuff down, but others can learn just from reading and watching).
More than that, just watch, learn, study and practice a bit then you can start working on runs.
If you have any questions ask the people who run the game either in forums, a discord server, whatever they use.
If it's a game with no runs, routing it yourself can be hard but fun. Look for little things that can save time throughout the course of the run and try to optimize it yourself as much as you can at first. Chances are your first run will be awfully slow, but after that you can work on figuring out what felt slow and see how to change it up and optimize it make it faster. But once you get your run submitted here to the site (you can request the game if it doesn't exist http://www.speedrun.com/requestgame ) you may attract others and build a community for it.
Basically, it comes down to have fun and get used to the iterative cycle of
- study/learn
- practice
- run With some hunting, testing and optimizing thrown in if you feel like you have any ideas for different strats.
Hope this helped somewhat.
No problem. But yeah, personal notes help me a lot because I personally learn best when I write something down and look at it/watch it.
I just keep a pastebin account where I write down all of my notes for any games I run. I mostly only use them until I get really familiar with the game but it's always nice to have a little reference in case you brain fart during a run.
Plus other people can then use those notes as a basis for their own when they start running too.