Texas, USAI like how this thread keeps cycling through the same set of games every page and a half or so
What is the user's name that you are speaking for? Who submitted the run and why are you speaking in his or her place?
Music without words, that can blend into the background, but changes often enough to promote creativity. My current playlist includes: Emancipator, Joe Satriani, Blackmill, Eric Johnson, Gareth Emery, Groove Armada, Chances End, Velours Perfect, Boom Bip, and RJD2. Pandora is good site for finding stuff that is similar to what you're looking for, but the advertisements tend to wreck the mood. For longer study sessions, there are some good youtube videos that are hours long if you search "study music" or "alpha waves".
When I lived in Seattle, my roommates had a whiteboard on the wall so we could leave notes for each other, usually grocery lists or special events, etc. I was the last one to leave for work in the morning, so if it was blank, I'd sometimes draw an anime character and a quote before I left for work. I didn't do too many of them, but I posted some of the ones that I liked online:
https://www.deviantart.com/sesamehoneytart/gallery/
I chose the Homura Akemi one for my profile pic because the quote seemed relevant to where I was at speedrunning at the time. I was somewhere between trying to one-up Demo's Elli Marriage time and trying to figure out the All-Photos for Harvest Moon 64, and basically all-around failing at all of it. So the quotes is: "I'll do it over and over, as many times as it takes. I will find the way out; the one path that will save me from this destiny of despair"
Oh interesting- so the run in question was submitted and self-verified by the game's only moderator. I thought maybe you were the mod asking about a recent submission.
If the run includes inputs that don't exist on the original arcade, it's not necessarily cheating, but I generally reject runs that use emulators to gain an advantage. Because this one is done by the game's mod (and is the only submission so far), maybe it's better to make a different title or a different category for emulator runs than ones done on the actual arcade. Have you gotten a response from the game's mod yet?
@Mitsunee I didn't have a good answer to some of the questions either, but maybe that'll be one of the results of the survey- that those questions that apply to other hobbies/sports/etc don't necessarily apply here. But, yeh, English translation is sort of a barrier. I tried to answer what I thought was being asked, but the wording for some of it was a bit weird.
Random jitters could indicate a spliced run. Can you link the video?
The argument is hardly ever as simple as "emulator vs console".
Consoles all have the same specs- you just turn it on and play the game. Emulator and machine specs can be modified to the point that different submissions- even those made with the same emulator- can run different enough that it can be considered a completely different console. We're talking things that aren't in the player's control: movement speed, framerates, load times, cycle counts, etc.
So when you have people running emulations with different settings, should we make a new sub-category for each type of emulator and settings? That's gets pretty complicated pretty quickly, so each game chooses a way to deal with this problem that best addresses the issues that come up for that particular game.
Some games accept all types of emulator runs Some games reject all types of emulator runs Some games accept emulator runs, but only with certain settings Some games accept emulator runs, but only if done with specific programs Some games accept emulator runs done before a certain cutoff date, but none after that Some games accept emulator runs, but hide them on the leaderboard Some games accept emulator runs, but keep them on a separate leaderboard Some games come up with some other strategy
Whatever works for that community
Oh! Pick me! I volunteer as tribute!
An excuse to talk about my swamp monster? Heck yeah! This one's for you @chryoyo - we have a lot in common. I've learned a good bit from you over my year and a half here, and hopefully I can help you out as well. My swamp monster isn't a fiance- she'd much rather be a princess than a queen. Her title comes from a comment she made early in the relationship. She complained that her hair is such a complete mess when she wakes up that she looks like a swamp monster. I didn't disagree; I just said yeh, but I bet you're a beautiful swamp monster, and she is.
Anxiety is a state of mind.
The swamp monster has a job that she hates because she earns a lot of money there. She's convinced that getting more money is worth the sacrifice. In her mind, it probably is. Having more money to deal with problems is a sort of peace of mind. I have a job that I love. I get to go to the airport every day and hang in and around airplanes. I actually look forward to going in to work because I love it, and when she brings up things she'd like to do some day, I make sure she knows that she most definitely can do that. All she has to do is allow herself to believe that she can.
The delicate balance is to make sure she's not taking advantage of you.
My swamp monster didn't know how much streaming meant to me at first. It's not just gaming- it's me hanging out with my friends- it's not just something I can get up from and come back to on a moment's notice. (It's also not something she can walk behind me wearing just a towel, which she has done on precisely one occasion that I promptly deleted)
You have to remember that you're there to make her stronger, not weaker.
For my swamp monster, anxiety isn't permanent. It's learned, and it can also be unlearned, but it's a long, long process. It's not that the fear is unnecessary; it's that she has an unnecessary amount of fear. As I learn more about her past and what she's been through, it makes more sense why she fears some of the things she does; but it also helps me show her that things are not always that way. For every bad thing she mentions happening to her, I manage to sandwich in two or three good things. For me, gratitude is about looking at what we have now that we used to want rather than what we want now and don't have. I flood her with gratitude, and I think it's ever-so-slowly starting to become her mindset as well.
Even swamp monsters can shine brighter than every star in the night sky.
Anxiety isn't an easy thing to deal with, for anyone involved, but it sounds like you've found something beautiful.
If it's not even on the site, it's a bit early for version to really matter yet; the original games through DOSBOX or GOG should be equally acceptable. It's also possible that you can also find them here: https://classicreload.com
I have some games like that too. The bad news is that you can't use the usual signs. The good news is that if it was spliced, you know exactly where to look for it. Cheaters are lazy by nature, otherwise they'd actually, ya know, play the game normally. A few things I check for:
- Make sure the numbers are consistent from screen to screen. Lives, money, points, timer, etc. You know your game better than anyone else does.
- @vercadia mentioned above, but make sure the timing of the black screen is consistent.
- If there's background music, make sure it is the same volume from one screen to the next. If it is spliced, it's likely done over the course of several sessions and your cheater might have changed the volume settings between sessions for other things.
- If it uses a webcam or similar, look for times when your suspected cheater looks away from the screen while doing an action, sets the controller down, or the inputs are obviously off. (not touching the 'A' button but the character is attacking, etc.) Be careful, because newer runners either don't know or forget to sync everything before streaming.
- Faking surprise on a webcam. Either you expected it or you didn't; there's no reason to fake surprise. Someone who fakes being surprised wants viewers to think a thing happened "accidentally" or "randomly", which only really happens when that person is hiding something.
I think @ShikenNuggets hit it on the head there. I joined this site a few years after it was already up and running, but from my understanding, SDA attempted to create site-wide rules based on the earliest games, namely Quake and Metroid, but as the sr community grew to encompass a wider variety of games, these early rules that worked well with some games couldn't necessarily be applied or were more difficult to apply to others. What is considered "out of bounds"? If you access an area early, is that out of bounds? Is it accessing an area the developer didn't intend? etc.
There is such a wide variety of different kinds of games out there that there is always an exception to the rule. Below is a great video explaining the history of one of these difficult to pin down definitions: what is considered "out of bounds"?
A lot of communities didn't like being pushed around and being told how to rule their own games, so they broke off and made their own site. For example, Donkey Kong Country moved here: https://dkcspeedruns.com/Main_Page.
This site (speedrun.com) was attractive because it gave rights to the runners rather than the site-wide admins under the pretense that the individual game's runners would each have more knowledge about how the rules for their respective games should be handled. SDA is still used for a lot of older games (Quake comes to mind first, but far from the only one), but I don't think you're going to find a specific time that these changed because it wasn't one big shift. Each community is in a different stage of the process and moves to wherever best fits their need.
One of the unique things about this site is that we're made up of a bunch of separate communities that aren't necessarily bound together by any rules. I want to say that this is the reason that cheating has diminished on this site; each community has its own moderator(s) to review each submission rather than a few admins (who don't necessarily even know the game) trying to spot cheating over the entire site. It guarantees that both the run will be viewed by someone who cares about the game and someone who is knowledgable about it. That's not to say cheating doesn't happen anymore, but you'd have to put so much work into cheating that you might as well learn the game and have fun playing it instead.
Mac user here. Can confirm OBS works on Mac. Download link:
https://cdn-fastly.obsproject.com/downloads/obs-mac-21.1.1-installer.pkg
The external camera ban improves quality, but does not prevent cheating.
Before I go too far, I'm going to call NEUTRAL here, and instead use this as a teaching moment for everyone:
"Timers can’t detect cheating unless the person cheating is an actual moron." - This is an Ad Hominem attack, a logical fallacy that uses personal attacks rather than logical arguments. More than just an insult, it is an insult that is used in place of evidence supporting a conclusion.
"I think it's because you're way outside the norm on enforcement of video timers for RTA." - This is a Bandwagon Fallacy, a logical fallacy that assumes something is true because other people agree with it. The broad acceptance or popularity of something doesn't always mean that the acceptance is justified. This isn't a popularity contest.
"In the past, admins and full mods have intervened in this type of situation" - This is an Appeal to Authority, a logical fallacy that uses an authority figure's opinion rather than making an argument. There is no reference to prior interventions, nor reasons why this situation is similar to the ones in question. The only argument is the opinion of admins and full mods at some point in time somewhere, and an expert's opinion cannot be used in place of concrete evidence.
"I hope that means that if a brand new runner didn't comply, but they acted in good faith, and they plan to improve, then maybe you let that run sit on the leaderboards for a couple weeks while they try to PB with a compliant video. Or something to that effect." - This is a Straw Man argument, a logical fallacy where you create an easy target to attack rather than addressing the actual situation. Your argument targets a situation that you made up or one that is made up of only pieces of the whole picture because it's easier to attack than the real thing.
"There's no reason an experienced runner can't add a live timer. Conversely, there's no reason an experienced runner can't add a timer in post, edited into the video, completely unlinked to the run and worse than useless for verification purposes." - This is a Hasty Generalization, a logical fallacy that makes claims without sufficient evidence. There are definitely reasons that exist for both situations; this claim is simply not true.
"But mobile and web gamers know just how easy it is to play with or add in a timer..." - This is another Appeal to Authority, a logical fallacy that relies on using the word of a trusted authority (in this case, "web gamers") rather than facts to argue a point. Even if you do speak for every mobile and web gamer, an expert's opinion cannot be used in place of concrete evidence.
"Before anyone throws shade at me (because it always happens)..." - This is an Appeal to Pity, a logical fallacy targeting the emotional sensitivity of others when it's not strictly related to the argument. You're preemptively asking the reader to make a decision based on pity rather than on facts or arguments made.
"And teaching takes time -- it's not much of a shortcut if you consider the time I put in to ensure players know/can use the resources I've found for them." - This is a Red Herring, a logical fallacy where an argument is made that seems to be related, but is not actually related at all. 6oliath originally claimed that standardizing videos was a shortcut because it lowers the effort required to verify videos. The argument made doesn't deny (or even address) these claims, but instead addresses a new topic that was not part of the original argument.
You actually make one of the only real arguments here. Looks good to me :-)
A lot of the stuff currently out there on cheating has a lot of hate in it, so take it all with an appropriate amount of salt. (Ironically, most of the content you mentioned looking at for research contains a LOT of salt.)
You've probably picked up on this, because just about every post above brings it up, but from what I've seen, cheating is not a common issue at all. It's not that there aren't cheaters out there, but cheating doesn't appeal to the type of people that join (and stay) with this community. We tend to be motivated by doing our best, where cheaters tend to be motivated by other people's praise.
When it does happen, it's usually done in the same, predictable manner thinking it's "clever". They appear out of nowhere with an amazing time or performance, but there's always something off about it. Sometimes it's immediately obvious; sometimes it just looks fishy and it takes a week of watching it to figure out why.
The problem with this is that most moderators know their games inside and out. We've pushed the game to its limits and tried all sorts of things with it; things most people have never though of even trying. (Who even thinks of pouring forest water on Kalle Demos?) We know the odds of something happening and we know how difficult certain maneuvers are. We know how long the cutscenes and loading screens are (sometimes to the millisecond or more), even if we haven't timed them simply because we've sat through them so many times that it's nearly muscle memory.
The cheater will solidly defend his or her run as we try to figure out what that person did different, not because we want to prove the run was cheated, but because we all want to improve our times too. The controller cams and on-screen keyboards aren't there to prove the run isn't cheated; it's there to show everyone else how to do some of the things we're doing or to catch the precise inputs we made if something cool happens that we want to repeat later.
At some point during this process, the cheater realizes that we know a lot more about the game than he or she first realized. As we hone in on the part where the cheating took place, the defensive attitude evolves into making excuses ("I didn't have the right emulator settings", "my recording device messed up", "well I've always played it like this, so…", "I didn't know the rules..", etc.
Now, sometimes there are people who legitimately don't know the rules (and it's better to assume that is the case every time), but cheaters tend to take it personally when we can point out specifically where the run is off from the expectation. We're singling that run out or we're ganging up on him or her because we're jealous. Not that this kind of thing doesn't happen- it does- but that's the pattern.
So the result is that the cheater will either stick around and start to learn that he or she never had to cheat in the first place, or the cheater will storm off and we'll never see that person again. The community is better off either way.
If you are going to write an article about the history of cheating, I'd request that you also research about why cheating occurs and how infrequently it happens (you just don't hear stories about all the legitimate runs being submitted all the time). There's not a lot of cheating around here, because we don't really keep score. There are those that do, for sure, but it tends to be less of a "me vs you" and more of a "me + you vs. the game".
TL;DR: Most of us are aware that we are adults playing video games. We don't cheat because being "the best" is not really that important (nobody's perfect) and we don't take ourselves that seriously, because life's short and tough and we're trying to make the best of it. It's not about the times; it's about the community.
Yeh, we've all done it at least once. Sometimes more. I think it's part of the initiation, but pictures don't usually count for much around here. Not just because of proof reasons, but it's just plain fun to watch someone go through the whole thing. There's this look that people get on their face when they realize that they haven't messed up yet and that this might finally be the one time when everything works out perfect, and now everything's just that much more tense, and it's a pretty cool process to watch. Plus, if we can see the strats, we can help each other improve; maybe see some things we could do to better our runs or point out some stuff that you could have done to make yours better in the future. The good news is, if you did it once, you can do it again.
