One of the most important factors in making a game fun to speedrun is that the speedrunner always has the possibility to do things to improve their time. (You could also just add the possibility of turning autosaving off, something that's seen in games occasionally.) Other possibilities include a debug menu / cheats to allow the player to place themself somewhere on the map. In the case where the levels are mostly independent of each other, it makes sense to add a level select mode which lets players practice the levels individually (and have resetting return the player to the start of the level in this mode). In games which have an autosave, this trick doesn't work, so you'll need some other method to make sections of the game easy to practice. This means that players can practice a section of the game by saving before it, and then repeatedly resetting back to their save. The most common way to deal with this is to have your reset command restore to the last save, but to also have some way to avoid saving (speedrunners normally omit as many saves as possible, frequently all of them, because they typically cost time thus if saving is optional and speedrunners never save, the reset command will reset a speedrun to the start of the game without any additional logic needed). Players also aren't necessarily going to want to reset to the start of the game it's common to want to practice sections of the game other than the start, then reset repeatedly after them (at least when you fail, and when trying to learn a difficult trick, sometimes even when you succeed). due to needing to show a publisher's logos), avoid a forced wait after a hardware reset. On console games, sometimes you can use the actual physical reset button on the console (or even the power switch!) for the purpose, although you still need to make sure the game loads back up as quickly as possible after a reset, which might be difficult using typical reset button implementations provide a reset code as well if you technically can't, or don't want to (e.g. Most games use their pause input as the first key in the sequence/chord in order ensure that it's never something that a player would need to enter in the normal course of gameplay. As such, a reset input is normally a sequence of multiple keys, or a chord (in which multiple keys are pressed at the same time) these are relatively easy to type intentionally, but unlikely to be typed by accident. However, speedrunners want to be able to input a reset without long waiting periods or going through several confirmation screens. Resetting the game is a pretty drastic thing to do if you care about your save file, so it's typically made difficult for casual players. You also need to think about how the speedrunner gives a reset input to the game. Ideally, a reset would take the speedrunner directly to immediately before the gameplay of the game started, such that the game would start with their next button press (dropping the runner right into the game is problematic as they need a chance to start their timer). Likewise, a reset cycle that goes through long loading screens or unskippable cutscenes is highly problematic. (If your game is short enough – and it's often hard to predict how long your game will be, especially with the potential existence of glitches – speedrunners will be in this mode throughout their entire runs.) If this requires resetting the console, going through a bunch of menus, manufacturer logos, and the like, the speedrunner isn't going to be happy. Towards the start of a run or practice session, any nontrivial mistake may cause a speedrunner to abandon the run and start again. As such, it is fairly vital that your reset cycle won't discourage players from running the game. Speedrunners typically take huge numbers of attempts, both in practice and as serious runs, in their quest to make the fastest speedrun possible. Not every attempted speedrun is a world record. Gameplay considerations Resetting and practice Most of this guide is basically just an in-depth explanation of what these goals imply about specific details of a game, but the general principles are important in their own right. Downtime causes boredom, and boring hobbies tend to be abandoned quickly.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |