I feel like I should start with posting a disclaimer. The disclaimer being that this run is not with 100% certainty taking place, as it is not officially on the ESA schedule (yet). The reason I'm still deciding to create this topic is that I'm 90-95% sure that it WILL happen and have even booked airplane tickets based on this premise / assumption.

So, how, when, what, you may ask. But not after realizing...YES, GTA V will be run at a major speedrunning marathon!! And it will feature 3 runners, following the 1 character = 1 speedrunner concept. Cool right? Zoton2 as Franklin, Meridianprime as Trevor and me (KVD) as Michael.

The channel that it will be streamed on: http://www.twitch.tv/esamarathon2

ESA schedule (it will be on Yellow Stream): http://www.speedrun.com/esa2015/schedule

The plan is that we will run GTA V (Any% NMS) overnight in one of the longer open blocks. To be precise, the one from the night of 3rd to 4th of July on stream I (starting at 1:25AM CEST after GTA Vice City bingo).

All that needs to be done now is for Meridian (and/or Zoton2) to chalk it up on the white board @ the ESA venue (the board is meant for submitting runs for the open blocks). We talked to the people running ESA and its schedule and they gave the ok and didn't foresee any problems.

It's a graveyard shift for us Europeans (in terms of timezone), but for people watching from other continents (especially Americans) it's right at the golden hours. Hope to see of many as you as possible! Let's go for sub-7h, KAPPA.

I suppose this will be of special interest to our relatively small (for now) community of GTA V runners: There will be a run of GTA V at the upcoming DreamHack Speedrun event, next Sunday, the 14th of June. It will start at roughly 20:20 CEST.¤

http://www.twitch.tv/DreamhackSpeedrun http://www.speedrun.com/dreamhack/schedule https://twitter.com/DHSpeedrun

MeridianPrime and me (KVD) will be doing a co-op run of the Any% no Missions Skips category (PC version). Though admittedly we are not the bee's knees at speedrunning this game (people like Dekap, Dates and Zoton are still quite superior in their mastery of this game), we have grinded it quite a bit the last couple of weeks, studying the latest strats and developing some new ones of our own. As a result we have improved our co-op PB to 7h25m (with gold splits currently at 6h51m). Long story short, we will do our best to provide an entertaining showcase of the game and it would be great (no, awesome even) if some of you could tune in to support us a little! :)

¤Please note that this could be a little bit off considering it's a marathon and all.

During the time it takes to do a run of this game, there is a lot of time for cool stuff to happen. Almost every run contains a few extraordinary moments (for better or for worse). I figured it'd be cool to have a topic to share these moments with other runners. I'll start with some notable moments from my run of yesterday:

I need a stunt double for Jimmy @ Father / Son:

Trevor Philips is an RPG Artist:

Getting rekt by Trevor Philips:

Worst txt message RNG ever @ Military Hardware (8th message!)

In this vid I compare a relatively straightforward drive (which is easy to measure and should always have equal circumstances) between Zoton's run and mine. Roughly 1 min into the video the driving part starts. Please ignore the Dutch talking / audio track in general. :D

So I played around with a lot of different graphic settings and it doesn't seem to impact it at all. Next I thought it might be camera angles (I set it to low, did license plate cam, etc.), but that doesn't seem to be it either. Then I figured it must be in the gameplay. After hours of trying and experimenting with different ways to hit that little bump (steering as little as possible, etc.), I still didn't catch a time as fast as Zoton's one on that drive. After a while I really got the impression that the car is articially slowed down at some parts (and for some reason this didn't happen in Zoton's run), like it can't quite switch a gear up (or even goes a gear down).

Could just be I'm imagining things here, but losing 3-5 secs everytime on such a short piece of road....I don't know, either I REALLY suck, or there is more to it than meets the eye, like a little gameplay ingredient I don't know about (certain part of the road not to drive on or whatever). What do you guys think?

Currently there are 3 categories defined for this game on speedrun.com, which are as follows:

-Any%: Timer starts when the prologue begins and ends when you lose control after the final mission. -Any% No Mission Skips: Timer starts when the prologue begins and ends when you lose control after the final mission. Additional Limitations: no failed mission skips. -Classic%: Timer starts when the prologue begins and ends when you lose control after the final mission. Additional Limitations: no fast travel via taxi service, no failed mission skips, and ending C.

Next to any% there are two extra categories with their subsequent limitations. Let me state from the get-go that any speedrunning category (very) quickly loses its meaning once there are too many enforced artificial limitations. Just for completion’s sake I will list an example that I hope will illustrate that principle: think of an imaginery Super Mario Bros 1 category that involves warps, but not to world 8. You can use the same route as the normal any% route, but instead of warping to world 8, the rules would enforce you to warp to world 7. Yes, the inclusion of World 7 in the run would be fun. Clearly though, because of the very artificial and arbitrary prohibition of warping to world 8, this category would never be taken very seriously, let alone be included in the official categories for a website such as speedrun.com.

After the above it may perhaps be surprising that the category with the most limitations, Classic%, is the de-facto speedrunning category of choice for GTA V. It is the most popular among runners and is the default category on speedrun.com. However, to the mindset of a speedrunner, the limitations on mission skips and taxi travel are very intuitive. This is because they are in a sense game-breaking methodologies. Taxi travel involves calling a taxi whenever traveling of some duration needs to be done. Then instead of driving there (=gameplay), you skip the journey with the press of a button (=gameplay detracting). Note also, that speedrunning skill (journeying from A to B ) is replaced by RNG (taxi arrival times). Mission skips involve committing suicide 3 times in a row while on a mission. You can then skip the mission. I don’t think I even need to explain why this detracts from gameplay.

For these above examples it is fairly clear that they justify extra categories with their respective limitations. If these methods are used, they are pervasively present throughout the entire run, plus they are both very repetitive in nature. Therefore, a case can be made that they detract from the gameplaying / speedrunning / viewing experience. This is why there has been little to no debate about these additional limitations in the extra categories.

Now we get to the extra limitation though, the one that enforces which Ending is chosen. This limitation is incomparable to the other two and in my eyes even completely unnecessary and actually counter-intuitive from a speedrunning viewpoint.

If you are not in the know, the GTA V storyline has three different endings, which you are free to choose from: Ending A: Kill Trevor (default selected) Ending B: Kill Michael Ending C: Deathwish (kill off a bunch of bad guys)

The obvious impact on gameplay is that these are 3 completely different missions and that option C is by far the lengthiest option. The impact on storyline is that either 1 of the playable characters dies (A or B ) or that they all live (C). In comparison with taxi travel and mission skips, there is no clear reason whatsoever why ending A or B should be prohibited. Ending A and B are not game-breaking as they are not pervasively present and repetitive throughout the run. They are both run-of-the-mill missions, nothing more, nothing less. I’ve encountered two arguments for the enforced option C. One of them was that it is the moral thing to do. I had to laugh out loud when I encountered that one for the first time. Deciding GTA ruling on what is a morally ‘good’ in-game decision is quite the preposterous premise. It’d be comparable to being forced to adhere to statements in the bible when doing research on evolutionary biology.

The other argument was that no playable character in the GTA series has ever died before. Therefore, a case could be made that Classic% (the name refers to GTA old-school style) should use the option where all the playable characters survive, in order to be consistent with how previous GTA’s were played. I don’t think this argument holds much merit either. If you want to completely stick to how previous GTA’s were played you would not even be able to finish the game, as character swapping is not present in previous GTA games. Furthermore, the ending choice only has impact on what happens in the cinematics AFTER the run, which are technically not even part of the run as a showpiece.

The above reasoning aside, I will summarize the most important argument to get rid of the enforced option C in Classic % ruling. Unlike the limitation on taxi travel and mission skips, being limited to option C has no ground whatsoever from a game-playing perspective. Yes, another mission has to be played, but there is nothing game-breaking about that in and of itself. Enforcing an arbitrary and artificial limitation can only be justified when there is a very clear incentive for doing so. In this case that incentive is completely lacking. To revisit the Super Mario Bros 1 analogy, it’s akin to playing the game warpless AND having to shoot all bowsers. There is a good incentive for warpless (not skipping any levels), but not for having to shoot all bowsers. It’s of course not a perfect analogy, but I think you will get the point.

Hiya,

I'm new to these forums, but wanted to submit my time to the SMK ladder (and define some rules for the category while we are at it.) How do I do this and who do I need to contact?

Cheers, KVD