Making a game speedrun friendly?
4 years ago
United States

I'd like to make the game I'm working on friendly and appealing to speedrunners, but since I'm not really a speedrunner myself, I figured I'd ask the speedrun community how best to do this.

From a technical standpoint, I figure I should at least have:

  • A game timer for the whole run of the game.
  • A timer for each level.

Is there a way to connect these timers to speedrun software (or at least expose a way to make it easier for the speedrun software to identify when the game starts, levels change, etc?)

I imagine the game timer should only count actual gameplay ticks, not loading time (to make it fair and consistent for different systems), right? What about pausing the game?

From an appeal standpoint, this is what I'm working on that I hope speedrunners will find attractive:

  • Momentum based movement, where you can gain and maintain speed.
  • Mechanics like adding velocity on jumps so you can jump on ramps or ledges while moving up to gain extra height to find shortcuts and such.
  • Crouch sliding to build speed on downward slopes
  • Speedrun mode (enables timer display and skips non-gameplay portions of the game, like cutscenes)
  • Attacks that can be used for mobility as well as combat, like a punch that gives a small burst of speed forward, but can also be used to punch off walls for an even larger impulse.
  • More advanced movement abilities that unlock as the game progresses, like acceleration based grapple swinging.
  • No RNG.
  • 100hz physics update rate for super fluid movement on high refresh rate monitors.

Do these sound appealing? What types of things would make you interested in speedrunning a game? Fist of the Forgotten is the name of the game I'm working on, by the way.

Imaproshaman and Krayzar like this
Lorraine, France

About external software, livesplit autosplitter scripts are based on reading the game's memory, so clear accessible flags would help a lot. If they are burried under a bunch of pointers it may be difficult to track them. But if the game already include a reliable timer it may not be necessary.

A fast pace movement based game sure sounds appealing for speedrunning. It may depend on runners' taste in games but if it's well built you probably will get a healthy SR community.

Imaproshaman and jitspoe like this
Valhalla

I've been getting into game development myself and right up front I'd say that trying to target a niche audience probably isn't the best idea for a game overall. I understand the appeal, certainly, but what speedrunners want from a game varies greatly.

In-game timers are cool and all, and if they're done correctly, sure, people would probably use that to track time...but they'll also use splits. Thing is, most runners like to split. They don't like to wait through end credits to see if they PB'd or not. Timers are great for IL runs for sure, as it eliminates the use of splits (see Celeste, ge007, etc). My only issue with a visible in-game timer always running, is for the casual player it immediately instills a sense of urgency to beat the levels as fast as possible, which, if you put a lot of effort into your game's environments, art, etc. The person playing the game might not take the time to appreciate such things, just a thought.

It seems you have a good idea of how you want your game to play. Fast paced, fluid, but you seem to be approaching it from a "this is what a speedrunner wants" perspective, which like I stated before, varies from runner to runner. There's no doubt in my mind that someone would want a game like that, but maybe some people want something more tuned back, where they could possibly find their own exploits to speed things up.

Lastly would be no RNG. I get it. Speedrunners hate RNG, so they say. The casual doesn't, in fact they love it, even if they say otherwise. It can add an element of surprise to your game that makes things exciting. I think a good compromise would be making very minor things random. For some speedrunners, just finding ways to manipulate the "randomness" is part of conquering the game. Take that away and it could leave things feeling a bit cold and sterile.

That's just my take. I love the idea and love speedrunning, but catering your game to speedfolk seems like it should come 2nd or even 3rd, with number 1 being "how do I make the best game I can?"

Edit: just realized you've worked on actual well-known projects. Hopefully it didn't come off too "this is how you should do it"

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman, jitspoe and 5 others like this
United States

Pausing shouldn't stop the timer in speedrun mode. That could lead to pause buffering tricks that kind of ruin your vision of pace for the game.

I wouldn't worry too much about making sure it interacts well with splitting software out of the gate. So long as you're willing to modify things if folks eventually do have a problem with creating an auto splitter, you'll be fine.

Imaproshaman, jitspoe, and Quivico like this
Canada

I definitely want to echo what Komrade is saying. There are things you can do to make the game more interesting and more accessible to the speedrunning community, and wanting to do those things make sense, but it's important to remember that speedrunners make up an incredibly small portion of your audience. To put this in perspective, Super Mario Odyssey, one of the most popular speedgames right now, has sold 14+ million copies but only has 1.6k total runners and ~150 active runners (based on speedrun.com statistics).

More importantly than anything, make sure your game is good for anyone who plays it. If the game isn't fun for casual players, it probably won't be fun for speedrunners either. As for the specific points, most of the things you've mentioned sound fantastic to me, but make sure they all fit with the design of your game and are enjoyable, worthwhile additions, and that you're not doing them just to target speedrunners.

[quote]Speedrun mode (enables timer display and skips non-gameplay portions of the game, like cutscenes)[/quote]

If you make the timer display an option (which you should do anyway) and if you make the cutscenes and stuff skippable for casual players (which you should do anyway) then there's no need to have this IMO. I've never been a huge fan of "speedrun mode" type things and if that's all it's doing then there's not much reason for it to be a completely separate thing when they could (and should) be options available to anyone playing the game.

[quote]No RNG[/quote]

You can certainly make a good game without RNG (AFAIK Celeste has no RNG, as an example), but again, make sure this fits the design and that the game is better without it before you commit to doing this. Don't rip it out just because 0.00001% of your audience might not want it.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman, jitspoe and 2 others like this
United States

Going to mirror the other comments on RNG. A potential middle ground, depending on how your game is set up, is to make the first instance of a screen a set pattern, and if the character dies, let RNG handle repeats. Alternatively, the game could remove certain RNG elements if the file timer is under a certain amount (as with encounter enemies in Shovel Knight). Another thing that hasn't been mentioned here is support after the game launches. If bugs which don't impact normal gameplay are found, it's considered nice to leave them in for speedrunners, who can use them to get creative (and thus have more fun).

Imaproshaman and jitspoe like this
United States

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I'm not catering the game specifically to speedrunners. That's way too niche, as some of you suggested. I just thought it would be nice to make a game with speedrunning in mind as kind of a secondary thing.

I was planning to have the speedrun mode with timers and such be a thing that's unlocked after playing through the story casually, so no urgency to run through the levels as fast as possible until you've completed the game at least once. Also planning to make the game casual-friendly, but with shortcut paths and mechanics to make speed runs fun and interesting that regular players may never even know existed (and the available mechanics and geo will probably provide shortcuts that even I don't exist. :))

Interesting points on the RNG. I think the RNG that really drives speedrunners crazy is stuff like Larry in Super Meat Boy, where being unlucky can add a LOT of time to your run. I don't currently have any particular designs that are calling for RNG right now, but I'll look to prioritize fun if the time arises. :)

ShikenNuggets: Curious what you don't like about the idea of a speedrun mode. I was thinking it would be good idea to have it be a separate thing instead of a timer setting because: a) I don't want people to feel the need to rush through the first playthrough if they happen to go into the settings and enable the timer. b) Might introduce some people to the concept of speedrunning if they weren't previously familiar with it. Could help grow the speedrun community. It would pretty much just be the difference between "Start new game" and "Start new speedrun", or something like that. Are there any specific games that you're thinking of that implement this poorly?

Imaproshaman likes this
Canada

[quote=jitspoe]Curious what you don't like about the idea of a speedrun mode[/quote]

I just don't see any benefit to locking features behind a "speedrun" wall when they could just as easily be available to everyone on the first playthrough. It's also problematic if you're combining several features together that are only accessible from that game mode. For example, what if on a second playthrough I want to be able to skip cutscenes but I still don't want to see the timer? Or what if the speedrunning community just decides to use real-time, and as a result many runners would rather not see the in-game timer at all? It creates an "all-or-nothing" problem when there's no good reason for it.

[quote=jitspoe]I don't want people to feel the need to rush through the first playthrough if they happen to go into the settings and enable the timer[/quote]

IMO, this is a very bad justification. What if a player happens to go into the settings and turns up the mouse sensitivity to the point where the game is pretty much unplayable for them? Or what if they invert the control stick direction when they would prefer un-inverted? Or what if they turn the graphics settings up so high that the game runs at 2 FPS? Or what if they turn on a colourblind mode and it makes the game look all weird to them?

...then they can go back into the settings and fix it. Yes, the player can "ruin" their experience if they screw around with the settings like an idiot. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have settings. If a player turns on the timer without understanding what it is, they can just as easily turn it back off. And hey, maybe they want to rush through the game on their first playthrough. Or maybe they want to see how long it takes to get through the game, or any particular section of the game, on their first attempt. Or maybe they just like seeing the timer. Why deprive them of that?

[quote=jitspoe]Might introduce some people to the concept of speedrunning[/quote]

Eh... I don't think so. At this point most people who play games have at least heard of speedrunning (if only because of large-scale charity events like GDQ), so I really can't imagine that just having the word "speedrun" displayed prominently would make much of an impact (if any) in that regard. There's not really any hard data on this that I can reference, but at a glance, games with speedrun modes don't seem to be any more popular as speed-games than ones without them.

Imaproshaman and Quivico like this
Valhalla

Personally I just think a "speedrun mode" puts a lot of thoughts into the player's mind about how the game should be played. I'm more a fan of these things occurring naturally rather than them being intended, since that kind of defeats the idea behind speedrunning (not doing things the intended way).

Then again I'm big on "less is more" and when I see new indie and/or retro throwback games slap on 10 different modes, I just lose interest. I still go back to Shovel Knight being a great recent example of just making one solid ass game. Haven't played since 2014 so for all I know it's different now, but the upfront simplicity of the game made it very appealing.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
SioN, Imaproshaman and 3 others like this
United States

Cool. Thanks for the feedback. It's certainly easier to add a timer option than a whole separate speedrun mode. I appreciate the perspective. It's not quite what I expected, but that's why I asked. :)

Krayzar and ShikenNuggets like this