I strongly suspect that Vanakyria is cheating all his records in Don't Starve.
Checking his account, upon creating an account on speedrun.com he submitted 6 different world record runs on his first attempt. He has gone on to post 17 more World Records in Don't Starve, once in a bulk post 11 at one time, then another 6 at one time. I'd stake my reputation on a gamble to show that Vanakyria is not a legit runner of this game, and that he is merely acting as if runs are luck and padding them out so that they are just close enough to previous records to be believable but not quite enough wrong turns to not be first (for example, both best ending titles he beat by 50 seconds).
Doing research with members of my stream and the Don't Starve community we found a way to seed a run without it being visible at all by the current recording requirements. You can still show world preferences and generate a "random" world for the camera, while the game files are actually loading up a known seed that you have a map for. To the best of my ability we have been unable to find a way around this and actually verify that a run is legitimate.
So we as a community need to find a way to actually verify runs, because presently, anyone can take any record they so choose.
As proof of concept I have uploaded the first (at least first to be admitted) seeded run of Don't Starve. I ask that the mod and any members who check this forum do their best to find a way to delegitimize this run for reasons other than "well you just went in all the right directions as if you already knew." Because, that could still be luck and is nothing but circumstantial evidence. I posted this run on a dummy account to the mod and I'll post the video here.
In an effort to help people find a way to verify runs in the future I will also post how to seed this run in a (presently) undetectable way.
In the scripts folder of your Don't Starve game (or in the scripts folder for DLC1 [RoG] or DLC2 [SW]) open your worldgen_main LUA file with any file read (such as notepad) at the VERY top of the file is a commented out line of code allowing you to seed a world:
--SEED = 372000 -- Force roads test level 3
Simply remove the first "--" to make it not commented and insert the seed of your choosing. This is completely hidden from current video recording requirements.
As for how to find a seed, when opening a random world simply type
print(GetWorld().meta.seed)
and this will give you the seed of that world. By using a mod to reveal the map and show extra icons you can load a random world, quickly check the map to see if it would be good to run, and if it is, just print screen the map follow a believable route through the world, and get a new world record. Similar seeding can be done for adventure mode even.
So again, this post is a call to action. Because as it stands, no record, not even the "slow" runs on this board, can be believed. I've tried really hard to find a new way to verify runs, the things I've tried and why they have failed:
-Showing dev log at the start of the map; this doesn't show that it was seeded in anyway.
-Showing the world generated by going though the platform to world 2; you can change the seed while the game is "generating" the first world and that screen doesn't show a mouse so we couldn't even track it to see that the mouse left the screen to go and change the file back to random.
The only way I can currently think of that MAY work, is requiring DS to be windowed and that you do a screen capture (showing your task bar and mouse). This seems like it would be really invasive though and I may just not be creative enough to show how to cheat this method yet.
So please. If you care at all about the integrity of these runs, @Redlof and anyone else in this community, we need to figure out SOMETHING to actually verify runs.
Solution has been found. Use console or iOS versions of Don't Starve where the system is locked down thus preventing the modification of the program or it's data files.
