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Crotch Bat posted:Going unverified is really the simplest and best answer. SDA borderlines on being Twin Galaxies at this point and there's simply no need. You think funkdoc or Cosmo are cheating on their latest runs? With the prevalence of Twitch being a huge go-to for new WRs there's really no reason to wait 9 months to verify what thousands saw happen live, especially from trusted runners. I don't think Cosmo or Funkdoc would cheat, but if there is nothing in place to verify runs for world records then people will cheat especially if it means potentially bringing in the number of viewers Cosmo gets to potentially be partnered and start earning add revenue. ( Even if it is less revenue than everyone assumes. ) I don't speedrun, i just watch a lot...but from the way they talk it feels like they feel like they have a community and while i'm sure there are improvements to the process to be made I can't imagine they want a wild west scenario based on the good faith of streamers on the internet.
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Nov 22, 2012 16:08
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mfcrocker posted:I don't really agree. If the run is the fastest it should be up there, even if there's a bunch of mistakes. It's a bit tougher when it comes to new categories/games but I still reckon having a crappy time up is better than no time at all. SDA hosts high-quality runs, both in video quality and gameplay (in theory, at least). If enough people see that your run isn't really so good, or doesn't use a lot of certain strategies (say, a slower route than what is known to be faster in real-time) then your run probably doesn't belong on the site. In case anyone's still confused here: SDA is not a WR site, and it doesn't aim to be one. The best time doesn't need to be up there, especially if the best time is kind of lovely. Quality over quantity, I guess. This isn't defending the verification process that currently exists--just trying to clear a few things up. People involved in the backend of SDA can feel free to correct anything here. The truth is that a lot of runs do not need the current verification process, and the verification process should not take as long as it does anyway. I like the idea of open verification, but I think there should be a few restrictions. Let's say your game is Super Mario World, and you have a short, high-quality run (hardly improvable). There is a large number of people who know this game. Hundreds of people saw you get the time live. The game page is there. If a verifier is taking too long, you can easily replace them and get the verification done in the same day. I don't see why this kind of run should take more than at most, a week to get on the site if the runner has their commentary and comments as they submit. Cosmo has mentioned working on a leaderboards site before. Check out http://www.deertier.com/RealTime.aspx and http://zeldaspeedruns.com/leaderboards/oot/any if you aren't familiar with them. You have the best times, videos, and some general standards to go by. Most likely, you'll need a video to be on leaderboards in the future. This opens the doors to international players, people who don't have a fancy recording setup, or people who play on emulator (for certain games, emulators etc). If a run is cheated, people will probably figure it out, and if your time isn't great, it's out there. I think this is the kind of site people will want, just from reading the past few pages here. If this site was done well, I do think it would make SDA (as a speedrun hosting site) a bit less relevant, but SDA still has its purpose for having high-quality runs and some credibility.
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Nov 22, 2012 16:44
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Keyboard Kid posted:Cosmo has mentioned working on a leaderboards site before. Check out http://www.deertier.com/RealTime.aspx and http://zeldaspeedruns.com/leaderboards/oot/any if you aren't familiar with them. You have the best times, videos, and some general standards to go by. Most likely, you'll need a video to be on leaderboards in the future. This opens the doors to international players, people who don't have a fancy recording setup, or people who play on emulator (for certain games, emulators etc). If a run is cheated, people will probably figure it out, and if your time isn't great, it's out there. I think this is the kind of site people will want, just from reading the past few pages here. If this site was done well, I do think it would make SDA (as a speedrun hosting site) a bit less relevant, but SDA still has its purpose for having high-quality runs and some credibility. I think you're right on this regard.
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Nov 22, 2012 17:03
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One thing not mentioned yet which has been a huge barrier for my submissions is the encoding policies on SDA. I've made several posts bitching about my constant troubles with Anri-Chan, SDA's requisite encoding program, and my options are to either dick around with codecs and VirtualDub settings (I have tried this multiple times and I'm not at all tech-savvy in this regard) or torrent a needlessly loving gigantic ultra-quality 250 megabyte-per-minute .avi file of my game from 1997 (which I can't get to work anyways, as seen in posts between myself and UA in the thread). The only reason this bothers me so much is because I KNOW the only thing being enforced is a filetype standard, not a quality standard. I say this because my old rear end Blast Corps any% which was captured off of a VHS tape, looks like poo poo, and has a significant audio delay for several minutes at a time, got accepted just because it was fed through ~*~Anri-Chan~*~. But any moderately sized and significantly higher quality .wmv's I want to send are auto-rejected on principle (or mocked, in the case of my Quest 64 april fool's low%). Life would be way easier if there was a youtube aggregate of speedruns so tech morons like me could just hit "EXPORT TO YOUTUBE" in Windows Movie Maker and have everything be out of my hands.
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Nov 22, 2012 17:59
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This is something I've thought about recently too. SDA obviously isn't going to migrate away from self-hosting. But their self-hosting isn't particularly amazing anymore, considering that basically they offer at most 480p videos, whereas you can get 720p videos from Youtube these days. I'm 100% sure there are good reasons why they don't use higher resolution, higher bitrate videos on their site (bandwidth-related reasons I'm sure). But at the end of the day, what do you get? Well, you put in a lot of extra effort with video encoding, and this is not an inherently bad thing, in my opinion. But if you're going to put forth the effort, you might as well get a really high-quality end result. But you don't really with SDA. I do think a lot of the criticism of SDA is kind of missing the point, or it's coming from people who don't really know what they're talking about and are just repeating what one particular speedrunner and their stream monsters say. But I have had issues with their video encoding for a while, not necessarily because what they do is bad in principle but when the end result is not much better than Youtube in the best cases, it seems like there isn't as much of a point in being anal.
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Nov 22, 2012 18:49
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Rising-Grandpa posted:This is something I've thought about recently too. SDA obviously isn't going to migrate away from self-hosting. But their self-hosting isn't particularly amazing anymore, considering that basically they offer at most 480p videos, whereas you can get 720p videos from Youtube these days. I think there are some 720p videos (particularly for PC games), but it's hard to tell since the video pages only list vague things like "high quality" or "insane quality" with no explanation of the resolution or bitrate for those categories  As for verification, it's a tough system to run properly when it relies on community members to 1) step up and volunteer, 2) download and watch the videos, 3) check the timing, improvements and possible cheating, 4) write up a review and post it. I know from personal experience there are SDA members who will post in a thread saying they are excited for a run and can't wait to see it, and then when the runner submits no one bothers to verify.
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Nov 22, 2012 19:32
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Yeah the quality ratings need to be renamed. Insane quality on that site usually means "bigger than 640x480 and using a modern codec" while "normal quality" is a muddy XVID encode at 320x240. I mean hell they did make sense years back but not so much anymore. Though one thing SDA does that Youtube doesn't is provide videos at above 30 FPS which is useful for some games to see stuff right.
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Nov 22, 2012 19:49
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Fair enough. I guess I have seen "insane quality" a couple of times, I forgot. Still, it seems silly to me to be such a stickler about the encoding method if the end result is mediocre most of the time. Having said that, the idea of a standard of video quality is definitely nice in principle. I honestly think it would be so much easier if they used a program like MeGUI instead of Anri-Chan, but that's not gonna change. And yeah, 60fps is a huge advantage of self-hosting, that's very true. Even with games that don't have sprite flickering or whatever, 60fps always looks way better. A lot of runs are not in 60fps though, but I think that has to do with runners not submitting 60fps videos when they could or should. Anyway I'm not sure how much more can really be said. SDA obviously can improve a lot but I think a lot of the complaints are coming from people not really that interested in the thing that SDA wants to offer, and that's fine, because there are other sites cropping up. I don't think it needs to be framed as a "community divide" or whatever.
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Nov 22, 2012 20:11
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Rising-Grandpa posted:This is something I've thought about recently too. SDA obviously isn't going to migrate away from self-hosting. But their self-hosting isn't particularly amazing anymore, considering that basically they offer at most 480p videos, whereas you can get 720p videos from Youtube these days. I'm 100% sure there are good reasons why they don't use higher resolution, higher bitrate videos on their site (bandwidth-related reasons I'm sure). There's a very good reason for this. First off, any game pre-HD console obviously doesn't make sense to publish at 720p because the games are 480p at BEST (some Gamecube games, for example). Then you have people who have a newer console but don't have a means of capturing component/hdmi, so they have to resort to ugly-rear end composite or s-video. So that leaves PC games and newer consoles captured with relatively expensive hardware. An update was posted yesterday and two (sorta three) of the games have 720p or higher available: Shadow Complex and Arkham City. Left 4 Dead sorta counts, but it's also four views stacked together so that skews things a bit. Still, that's 2 out of 7 of the games that have 720p, and 4 of those games are PS1-era or earlier so 720p wouldn't make any sense ANYWAY. On another note I don't know why people keep thinking I'm defending the huge delay between submission and final posting, because if it bothered me I wouldn't be making a new backend to begin with. When I submitted my first Blaster Master run, it was on the front page just over a month later, but the overall volume of runs was a LOT lower back then. I see no reason we can't get back to that sort of speed (or better). Most of the work I've done has just been in the backend to help keep poo poo organized. For example, Verification was spread out across SEVEN Google docs before, now it's all in one central page and much more automated. Stuff like runner information and timing was contained in a pair of huge moderator threads, now it's all properly stored in a database. I hope that some time in January I'll be able to be able to say something like "We need to migrate the 700 run pages into the new system, here's how you can help!" Time to go eat some turkey.
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Nov 22, 2012 20:27
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Yeah okay, my point was pretty poo poo then. I'm a Half-Life/Half-Life 2 runner, and I mostly pay attention to PC runs, so I literally wasn't thinking about consoles at all. That was pretty stupid. My thoughts were mostly focused around the fact that so many PC runs don't look very good on SDA even when they've had the ability to be in 720p for a long time, and the fact that coolkid's Half-Life SS run is only in 480p and 30fps... But I guess those are probably more to do with the runners? If you're encouraging PC runners to upload with that quality and they're not doing it, then it's really their fault. So yeah, disregard what I said. Having 240p be "normal" quality in most cases is still kinda dated though.
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Nov 22, 2012 20:44
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Truthfully for the runs submitted in less than ideal quality originals, they shouldn't be going into low res xvid encodes anymore. It just results in a blurry mess, even more so then the original video is.
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Nov 22, 2012 20:51
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0xwas just got a new WR in Paper Mario. 
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Nov 22, 2012 21:19
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I think speedruns should be captured and hosted at 60 fps with a floating though decent resolution and bitrate, we all know the value of 60 right? Still think that 1080p60fps TAS videos of Gameboy and Atari 2600 games are loving nuts.
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Nov 22, 2012 21:44
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Since goons seem to know best why don't we just start our own speed run site?
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Nov 22, 2012 21:55
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MrLonghair posted:I think speedruns should be captured and hosted at 60 fps with a floating though decent resolution and bitrate, we all know the value of 60 right? That's because youtube always puts 240p or whatever video resolution at a low bitrate and the scaling is gnarly if you blow it up. If you upload it at a really high resolution scaled in a clean way, it'll look much cleaner.
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Nov 22, 2012 22:08
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It would be nice if the finished SDA would still allow the linking (through youtube or whatever) of unverified runs from verified users (users who have more than one verified run) on the main page. So you can run a search and find runs for games that might not be verified yet, and it would be clearly marked with a (!) sign. You could then have a search filter for verified and unverified ones, with verified runs being hosted on site with off site mirrors as back up. You could then also search by runner. Kind of like how that let's play archive worked.
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Nov 22, 2012 22:12
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Lblitzer posted:Since goons seem to know best why don't we just start our own speed run site? For the 2 months it would be active it would be far superior to SDA. Then, in usual goon fashion, people would get bored and quit doing anything and go back to the original.
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Nov 22, 2012 23:15
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Speaking of the leaderboards, Cosmo did kind of a Q&A/brainstorming session with some of SRL today, and I have to say that I really like the concept behind it (trying to come closer to a conglomerated world record site, video proof required, instant posting of times, timing rules to be a game-by-game basis, ability to flag sketchy runs, no minimum video quality or gameplay quality required). If it all comes together, it's going to be really cool, and I think with the rise of streaming speedruns (and more and more people asking about world records), trying to get that world record site established would be great. I don't know if it's going to obsolete SDA, but that's not the goal of it.
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Nov 23, 2012 00:57
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furry drum circle posted:...Anri-Chan, SDA's requisite encoding program... What kind of sperg names a video encoding program "Anri-Chan"?
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Nov 23, 2012 01:33
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Krenzo posted:What kind of sperg names a video encoding program "Anri-Chan"? Hopefully a sperg with good taste in turn-based strategy games.
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Nov 23, 2012 07:21
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CVagts posted:Speaking of the leaderboards, Cosmo did kind of a Q&A/brainstorming session with some of SRL today, and I have to say that I really like the concept behind it (trying to come closer to a conglomerated world record site, video proof required, instant posting of times, timing rules to be a game-by-game basis, ability to flag sketchy runs, no minimum video quality or gameplay quality required). Apparently he's been sketching mockups for the site 
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Nov 23, 2012 11:36
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He's a web designer for a living, I guess, and he designed SRL so I'm expecting good things.
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Nov 23, 2012 11:51
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Just a reminder that the Hurricane Sandy speedrun marathon is starting today. http://hurricanesandython.com/
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Nov 23, 2012 15:54
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Vakal posted:Just a reminder that the Hurricane Sandy speedrun marathon is starting today. My computer just had to blow the power supply again. 
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Nov 23, 2012 16:08
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As someone who has terrible internet speed, the player on the SDA website isn't even slightly usable.
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Nov 23, 2012 16:13
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Puwexil is about to start a FF7 single-segment run. http://www.twitch.tv/puwexil
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Nov 23, 2012 16:16
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Vakal posted:Just a reminder that the Hurricane Sandy speedrun marathon is starting today. Why do these marathons' domains just iframe to a place holding their site? 
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Nov 23, 2012 16:31
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romscout is doing a low level SMRPG run to pass time until Sandython. Finishing the game at level 3. http://www.twitch.tv/romscout
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Nov 23, 2012 17:48
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Demon's Gate is 2-for-2 against Puwexil. 
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Nov 23, 2012 21:21
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mfcrocker posted:Apparently he's been sketching mockups for the site He actually just posted one on Twitter that looks really good.
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Nov 23, 2012 22:51
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iPodschun posted:romscout is doing a low level SMRPG run to pass time until Sandython. Finishing the game at level 3. Rom's been stuck on Belome 2 for like an hour and a half now. Bad egg luck is just scuttling him
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Nov 23, 2012 23:13
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Kyrosiris posted:He actually just posted one on Twitter that looks really good. From what I've heard there will be no cap on how many times can be posted (i.e. no top x cutoff), so I'm assuming at some point he'll have to have pages so that people can scroll through them more easily. And there will probably be at least some integration with the race part of SRL, so that you can click someone's race profile and also see their leaderboard times (and vice versa). I really like the way this is looking and hope it can come together as planned.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:15
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Kyrosiris posted:He actually just posted one on Twitter that looks really good. This is exactly what I was hoping he would do with SRL.  I can't wait for this to be complete and implemented! E: For SM64 120 star TAS updates, the person uploading the run says it will probably be up tonight or tomorrow morning.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:27
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Any input on why the Hurricane Sandython is offline? Shouldn't it be running right now?
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Nov 24, 2012 00:30
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Obscure Risk posted:For SM64 120 star TAS updates, the person uploading the run says it will probably be up tonight or tomorrow morning.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:36
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Pizzatime posted:Any input on why the Hurricane Sandython is offline? Shouldn't it be running right now? It doesn't start until 10pm EST, so 3.25 hours from now.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:48
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Pizzatime posted:Any input on why the Hurricane Sandython is offline? Shouldn't it be running right now? The first game is scheduled to start in about 3 hours.
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Nov 24, 2012 00:48
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Obscure Risk posted:E: For SM64 120 star TAS updates, the person uploading the run says it will probably be up tonight or tomorrow morning. 
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Nov 24, 2012 00:51
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I just noticed Amnesia: The Dark Decent is one of the games being ran in Sandython. Has anyone watched those before? I'm tempted to stay up to watch it, it's gotta be entertaining.
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Nov 24, 2012 02:10
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Lots of out of bounds stuff, if you're into those types of runs.
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Nov 24, 2012 02:25
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