Title gore, I know.
vod of the whole thing.
Summary: He wrote a script to grind out resets on Eden fast, originally for Heart/Blood Rites, but apparently stopped for Brimstone/Tammy as good enough. I quite like that approach honestly for grinding out a SEEDED run. This is not what happened here though?
He then practiced the seed a bunch of times for optimal movement/perfect mapping/additional item pickups.
He then did a "legit" run of it, without having the seeded marker on screen somehow, finished in 4:13 RTA and claimed that this was a non-seeded run because the seed marker wasn't on screen, and a non-TAS because he didn't use any tools for the very run itself. We all know this is technically correct only in a completely twisted way and complete nonsense in any reasonable way you look at it.
I want to have a premature discussion about this, it's not uploaded yet but he said he will upload it and apparently thinks there is nothing wrong with his approach. He also highlighted the run on his profile as an UNSEEDED 1 Char PB already, so there is that.
If this is not a joke and you intend to upload it as a 1 char WR like you said, you cannot be serious. This is wrong on so many levels and genuinely upsetting. I don't think I need to explain why exactly this is wrong, it's evident to anyone who read the upper description.
If this is just a joke, it still raises a bunch of questions. How was he able to replay the seed without it appearing as seeded? If there is a way to do it, apparently, it means we pretty much cannot trust any offline runs anymore because you can play a known seed without the marker appearing on screen, meaning you can't trust any submitted runs that weren't streamed and, depending on how the setup worked, maybe none at all if you can just do the preparation offline and then pretend the run was done legit. So, if someone still cares about this game and the legitemacy of its run, it's a problem for them.
Edit: The run is indeed submitted as a 1 Char WR as of right now. 
I expect it to be taken down immediately and that there will be some kind of consequences to him cheating like this. Because that's what it is.
Edit2: It was indeed rejected, thanks for the fast work, mods.
Well, from the VOD it seems he made the bot close the game when a good seed appeared. That way that seed run stayed as the "CONTINUE" option, with a 00:00:00 in-game timer. Then with the tracker he was able to practice it in a different save file, and later on do the "unseeded" one. I'd say the run is legit, but it starts from when the unseeded race actually begins. He can leave the game, but timer still goes on. Same case as when people leaves and continues so Greed is replaced with Super Greed.
So, basically he has a pretty legal 1:50:20 1char run :3
When he asked me for the "hold r for reset" file I created I told him this didn't seem right after he gave me his plan. I also told at some point while he was streaming that it'll be brought up on the forums and more than likely removed as, if nothing else, goes entirely against the spirit of the game. Not much more to say about it. People who upload runs like this will have them removed. The 1char category isn't one that anyone grinds for though, so it shouldn't be a big deal in the future.
The reason he was able to remove the achievement logo was he grabbed the seed, went to a new save file and ran the seed. Then went back to the original and continued.
I would compare this to people using performance enhancing drugs in a real sport. Where someone draws the line of what is a PED and what is legitimate training is up to the governing body, in this case Sillypears. However, I'm sure we can all agree that this is not legit in the slightest, and is pretty much just a seeded speedrun. Since Zamiell decided to submit it to the unseeded leader boards though, I think it's pretty clear that he should be called the Lance Armstrong of Isaac from now on.
tbf I have nothing against this reset thing he used, but since it's just seeded run, it doesn't really matter that he used it lol
I mean yeah, pretty much what starg09 said. I'd say the "first input" happened when the script closed the game and so the timer starts from there. And technically that'd be a "tool assisted speedrun" too since that input was made by the script and not him.
So that makes it either a really really long 1 character run including all that practice time, or a 4:11 seeded run. Don't really see how anyone would interpret it differently honestly.
We already had this discussion when that kid submitted the eden's blessing run
who in the actual hell thought this was legit, im actually suprised we had this discussion first input was taken when the run started not when he arbitrally decides
I can't even form a pratical thought about this since its so obviously tool asisted and submitting this as a wr is not only cancerous but stupid.
When you start an explantion with wrote a script to automate something, that record is no longer you doing the work thats a tool assisted run.
Hey guys, as you can already tell by now, I decided to do a 1 character run for fun that would push the boundaries of the category! Obviously I wasn't sure if it is going to be accepted or not, and if it doesn't, that's completely fine. There's no reason to get real emotional or heated though. ;) I'll probably write more later to address some of the points made in this thread, as obviously I am a racer first and foremost but this category really intrigues me and I might want to try it again in the future!
[quote=Pibonacci]We all know this is technically correct[/quote]
technically correct, the best kind of correct =p
Without getting overly verbose, the run that I submitted was a funny "loophole" that is predicated on the following two conventions:
- Timing starts at the first frame of movement.
- You are allowed to save and quit and resume your run at any point.
I spoke with Hyphenated about this and we decided that it would be better to change the first rule, as it closest aligns with the spirit of the category. (See the other new thread in this forum.) The top runs for each category will likely have to be retimed and may have to add a second, I'm not sure.
Furthermore, he's said that he doesn't have a problem with the resetting strategy that I used, since it occurs before the actual run (and the timer) starts.
I'm going to mess around with 1 char WR attempts in the future. I actually got a run going today but I got a really long womb XL. =(
Alright, since the post with probably the most people agreeing in the history of this forum got locked and thus is gonna disappear without a resolution, might as well post my thoughts here again.
Thanks, btw, sillypears, for your excellent moderation. You claim to not attack me personally, yet you ignore my reasonable points, claim I'm just out to have an argument for the sake of an argument, threaten to remove my insignificant runs because they used the way less impactful missinghud while not addressing the question of the world record run being removed at all, and then lock down the discussion without it being resolved. I question your neutrality on this subject based on the previous points.
For the record, remove all my runs if you want IF it also means removing the TAS WR, I don't care.
Original post:
- It's not running the vanilla game. You cannot hold R on Eden, and thereby see like what, 5x as many seeds as anyone playing the vanilla game, drastically reducing your time investment to get a viable seed, creating an unfair advantage.
- The first input of the run, holding R to start it, is done by a tool. The run is thereby clearly a TAS. End of discussion.
- Resetting is part of the time investment for a run, whether it counts towards the time or not. In Spelunky, an any% run takes 2 minutes, but finding the good shop needed for it takes maybe 2 hours, so during the run, you feel incredibly pressured because the total time investment for this run was 2 hours. Finding the perfect seed is part of the time investment, you gain a huge advantage in terms of your resources by letting a tool do this, even if the tool had to normally reset Eden by going back to the menu. Let me make a comparison. In Dark Souls 1, you need to get a random drop weapon to start a speedrun. How about I just mod my droprate to 100%? On the actual run, there is no difference to any other run that actually has the weapon, so this is totally fine to do right? No, it's not, because it gives me a huge advantage cutting out the time spent on failed attempts, which are part of running the game.
I really don't understand how anyone can be fine with this run. It's insulting to the runners who actually did invest their own sweat and time into getting their runs, and thereby disrespectful and insulting to the whole community.
If I would guess why mod deleted thread, I would guess it's that because there is no need for more than 1 thread on the same topic >_> EDIT: threads have been locked, not deleted, they just go to the bottom :P
Alright, since the post with probably the most people agreeing in the history of this forum got locked and thus is gonna disappear without a resolution, might as well post my thoughts here again. Thanks, btw, sillypears, for your excellent moderation. You claim to not attack me personally, yet you ignore my reasonable points, claim I'm just out to have an argument for the sake of an argument, threaten to remove my insignificant runs because they used the way less impactful missinghud while not addressing the question of the world record run being removed at all, and then lock down the discussion without it being resolved. I question your neutrality on this subject based on the previous points. For the record, remove all my runs if you want IF it also means removing the TAS WR, I don't care.
If you think there is a need for more than a single post on this topic, then I don't think you understand the point of moderation. I locked them. The content is still there. This forum just moves them to the bottom. Plus, you posted all of this in an AFTERBIRTH forum, for a Rebirth run. Honestly, this thread should have been deleted, however the end result of the discussion is pertinent to Afterbirth, so it wasn't removed. To your point about MissingHUD being "minimal", using a 3rd party tool to code inject into the entirety of your run sounds like it is far less than minimal. It is also reading memory which we are clearly not supposed to have. If we all agree that any MissingHUD runs would be removed, yours and anyone else who used it during it would be removed. Again, this would have to be based on what the community would agree upon. From some of the posts, people would enjoy being able to reset on Eden and wish it was already part of the game. Also I wasn't threatening to do anything. I was merely saying that why should we allow one thing and not the other because one person thinks they are insignificant. The majority of people who I ask about MissingHUD actually find THAT to be a bit more insulting to a speedrunner of this game.
- It's not running the vanilla game. You cannot hold R on Eden, and thereby see like what, 5x as many seeds as anyone playing the vanilla game, drastically reducing your time investment to get a viable seed, creating an unfair advantage.
Holding R is the typical way to play the game on all other chars. The actual loop in the game code applies to ALL characters, however there is a block that stops the resetting due to the Eden token stuff (from what I can tell). The point of the 1 character record that Zamiell was trying to attain required him to reset and be present. If he had taken this method and got the synergy he wanted after 30 seconds, would it have been as big of a deal? He would have added about 1-2 minutes max onto the actual time it took him to find the seed. If he was not present and aware of what was happening, any time he was not present for would still be part of the total time. Also see point about MissingHUD as "not running the vanilla game"
- The first input of the run, holding R to start it, is done by a tool. The run is thereby clearly a TAS. End of discussion.
Would it have been any different if he was ACTUALLY holding R? Should he just hold R using the tool next time? Because if that's the case, then we're using a mechanic in the game (resetting using R) being done by him. From everything I've seen the Eden Tokens are the only reason resetting on Eden doesn't happen, as when you fix the code loop, you don't have tokens removed, which is negligible as the file I created (that a majority of people use and which is actually a hacked file and not legit), can be given as many tokens as you want.
- Resetting is part of the time investment for a run, whether it counts towards the time or not. In Spelunky, an any% run takes 2 minutes, but finding the good shop needed for it takes maybe 2 hours, so during the run, you feel incredibly pressured because the total time investment for this run was 2 hours. Finding the perfect seed is part of the time investment, you gain a huge advantage in terms of your resources by letting a tool do this, even if the tool had to normally reset Eden by going back to the menu. Let me make a comparison. In Dark Souls 1, you need to get a random drop weapon to start a speedrun. How about I just mod my droprate to 100%? On the actual run, there is no difference to any other run that actually has the weapon, so this is totally fine to do right? No, it's not, because it gives me a huge advantage cutting out the time spent on failed attempts, which are part of running the game.
The fact is, he is resetting. And he's not doing it during a multi-char run, nor is he trying to do a multi-char run, so his time investment is smaller no matter what. He could just as easily reset any other character for a Curse of the Labyrinth while waiting to find the Isaac's Heart and Blood Rights. I have a feeling the time investment for that would actually be greater, but he could do it without using Eden. This isn't Dark Souls 1 or Spelunky and I know nothing about these games. I know nothing of what making the drop rate 100% does to the rest of the game. We are all free to make a community decision we would all like.
I do not feel disrespected or insulted by what Zamiell has done at all, so speaking for "the whole community" is a bit pretentious. You're more than welcome to say how you feel but why speak for everyone when you actually spoken to everyone?
Just for the record, I personally don't feel strongly about this either way. Consider me neutral - I will be completely fine with whatever the community decides.
I do think that as a community we should strive to respect each other and be nice though.
