Are speed run recordings representative of actual game time?

Discuss Chaos Strikes Back for Windows and Linux, an unofficial port of Chaos Strikes Back to PC by Paul Stevens, as well as CSBuild, an associated dungeon editor.

Moderator: Zyx

Forum rules
Please read the Forum rules and policies before posting.
Post Reply
User avatar
Gambit37
Should eat more pies
Posts: 13720
Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
Location: Location, Location
Contact:

Are speed run recordings representative of actual game time?

Post by Gambit37 »

split from this thread about magic/melee
ian_scho wrote:
Banky wrote:But I'm kind of curious how a pure fighter such as Stamm would do on his own.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho5E05Bi3bU
;)
That simply can't be realtime gameplay, no-one can move that fast! I thought the same when watching Antman's speed-runs. How do you possibly do this without some form of cheating?
Last edited by Gambit37 on Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
zoom
Grand Master
Posts: 1819
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2003 1:27 am
Location: far away but close enough

Post by zoom »

you can set the playback speed (csbwin fast ultrafast etc)
User avatar
Gambit37
Should eat more pies
Posts: 13720
Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
Location: Location, Location
Contact:

Post by Gambit37 »

Were they played back at normal speed? If not, those Youtube titles are very misleading!!!!!
User avatar
zoom
Grand Master
Posts: 1819
Joined: Tue Sep 23, 2003 1:27 am
Location: far away but close enough

Post by zoom »

I'd say: no it's not played back at "normal speed" for dungeon master but it seems it is played back at the default playback speed (which is faster than normal )...
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4319
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Post by Paul Stevens »

It was obviously played back with
the 'Extra Ticks' option. This should
be turned off for playbacks or things
go much too fast.
User avatar
Gambit37
Should eat more pies
Posts: 13720
Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
Location: Location, Location
Contact:

Post by Gambit37 »

What does "Extra ticks" actually mean?

The Stamm DM video on You tube is about 20 minutes long which matches the claimed game time. But it clearly plays much too fast, no one can navigate that quickly.
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4319
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Post by Paul Stevens »

The original Atari code added one
tick (about 1/6 second) to the clock
whenever the party moved. I think
this was probably because the Atari
was not fast enough to keep up with
all the monsters moving about and
repainting the viewport and everything.
And it therefore sometimes missed
a tick, causing thing to go too slow.
So they skipped ahead. This is only
a guess. At any rate, CSBwin has an
option to NOT add that extra tick.

Try a playback both ways and you
will see that the difference is obvious.

The playback may also have been at
a higher than normal speed. Or it may be
that the recording process introduced
an error. Anybody know how this
was recorded to be put on youtube? I'd
like to know.
User avatar
Trantor
Duke of Banville
Posts: 2466
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:16 am
Location: Berlin, Germany
Contact:

Post by Trantor »

If I'm not mistaken, that youtube video is PaulH's record run that is confirmed to take 31:45 minutes. So yes, the video does run too fast. Maybe Paul can confirm it's his speed run record?
User avatar
T0Mi
Expert
Posts: 324
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 10:21 pm
Location: schland

Post by T0Mi »

as a sidenote:
CSBwin can turn a dungeon into some kind of turn-based gameplay experience if the game speed is set very low.
This can be quite interesting, each tick can be used for an action by the player (access inventory, equip ice wind, invoke wind, leave inventory, step right, etc.)

That way it is even possible to deal with the powerful monsters in Conflux's hell. (I once recorded such a run with CSBwinCE, but wasn't able to replay it on the PC)
User avatar
Antman
DMwiki contributor
Posts: 517
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2003 9:05 am
Location: Lost in TOC

Post by Antman »

Extra ticks makes the game too slow while having it off makes it go too so the actual speed the game is played at is somewhere in the middle. I think this is because the game cannot go faster than 6 moves per second, so once you start going faster than that, which is easy with the boots of speed especially, the game speeds up to meet you, so game seconds become faster than real seconds.

Easy to see on CSBWin if you open up a game and set it to halve size so you can watch the timer going up while you are doing nothing, then hold down the turn key which turns you faster than 6 moves per second and you can see the timer speeds up to match you accordingly. The problem is CSBWin plays back recordings at strictly 6 moves per second so actually moving faster than 6 moves per seconds gains you nothing in CSBWin's timer when recording, which is kind of sad because my record times are actually substantially lower in real time while I'm recording them and it's like an unbreakable limit that helps plateau record times because you might be moving much faster than someone....say Paul H haha!!.... but it means nothing if you are both going over 6 moves per second because the game caps you at that limit.

This is easy to see in CSBWin as well, just do what I mentioned before but record it, then watch the replay with and without extra ticks on. Also, my CSB record is on youtube, found it a couple of years ago. Also, me playing my teeth, yikes!
User avatar
PaulH
Ghastly gastropod
Posts: 3763
Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2002 10:27 pm
Location: Level 6

Re: Are speed run recordings representative of actual game time?

Post by PaulH »

Just seen this thread. remember sleeping speeds up the clock, so the end time will not be the real time.

Looking at the YouTube recoring, that is the speed I played the game at. No cheating. Extra Ticks on.

EDIT: actually it does seem a little faster when switching from the backpack. Everytime I tried doing runs with extra ticks off, I was slower.
Post Reply

Return to “Chaos Strikes Back for Windows & Linux (CSBWin) / CSBuild”