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The Corner of Randomness: SGDQ 2017

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Well, SGDQ (Summer Games Done Quick) is just a few days away. This most certainly means that Keri and I will be glued to our Twitch.TV streaming devices for a solid week. We’ll be texting and chatting in amazement as the various games we watch get absolutely destroyed. There will be plenty of hype as games such as NieR: Automata are completed in two hours, and the runner will do that while playing the game one-handed. It’s a stupid fun week of video game streaming.

I figured with SGDQ kicking off on Sunday, July 2, I would help newcomers with some of the terminology that is thrown around. Here are some of the phrases you might hear during the event.

PB: This stands for Personal Best. This is when the gamer achieves their best time in a run.

WR: World Record. That should be pretty self-explanatory.

Frames: Games tend to run as 30 or 60 FPS (frames per second). This means the game is drawing the world 30 or 60 times in one second. If you hear someone say this is a frame perfect thing they must do, that means they have fractions of a second to execute whatever it is that they are doing. 30FPS games are also considered more cinematic in presentation while 60FPS games tend to look much smoother during action sequences.

Save the frames. Kill the animals: The big finisher for any GDQ event is often a Super Metroid run of some sort. Sometimes it’s a race. Sometimes it’s two players one controller. At the end of the game, there is a small area that you can go to that has some animals that can be set free. Over the course of the event, people can donate as to whether or not these animals are saved, or a few frames of time are saved and they are left to die when the planet explodes. This is by far the biggest donation incentive and it gets pretty crazy as the game draws near to saving or killing the animals.

Version of the game: You’ll see a plenty of Japanese versions of games being run. This is done to save time. Sometimes it’s due to text being faster to plow through. Sometimes it is because certain glitches are not patched out.

This also applies to patch levels as well. In DOOM, they tend to run on an unpatched version of the game due to the glitches that exist. The version of the game is a very important part of speedrunning.

Optimized: This refers to the routing used to get through a game. If a game is optimized, it means that plenty of work has gone into finding the optimal route through a game. When a game is considered “optimized”, squeaking out fractions of a second to improve times comes down to player execution.

100%: Speedrunning a game and achieving 100% of all the tasks that need doing so the game says it is 100% complete.

Any%: Speedrunning the game, but beating it as fast as possible. This can mean bosses are skipped, quests are incomplete, and/or glitches used.

Glitchless: Glitches, such as clipping through the world, are not allowed to be used.

RNG: Random Number Generator. This can be how a boss attacks (like Dark Souls III bosses), what items are found, or just manipulating getting specific Pokémon to show up at the exact time they are needed.

OOB: Out of Bounds. Some glitches allow you to go outside of the game world and just cruise to the very end.

Bonus: DS Dad: A few GDQ events ago, an older gentleman was sitting towards the front of the audience. He was consistently playing his DS. He became dubbed “DS Dad” via Twitch chat. He has subsequently donated to the event (AGDQ 2017) thanks to Twitch chat. He has even done commentary a time or two. At this point, he is pretty much an icon for GDQ.

There are plenty more terms that I know I missed. However, this should be a good primer to help get any new watcher into the event. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go watch some 2016 VODs. Cuz I don’t have an addiction problem. DON’T JUDGE ME!

The Corner of Randomness: CEO 2017

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CEO took place last weekend. This is the last big FGC event before EVO steamrolls into town in July. The hotel was packed with participants, Twitch.TV streams rocked my screen almost all weekend, and there were plenty of upsets to keep me at the edge of my chair. I know EVO is basically the Super Bowl of the FGC, but these smaller events are just so much fun to watch.

There are plenty of videos for you to check out on twitch. Separate from some really crazy hyped matches, there were two things that have stuck with me since the event came to an end on Sunday. The first item is something I see as a very positive shift in the Fighting Game Community. I saw more females and transgendered players at the event. It’s not like a huge amount of players from these two groups, but enough that it was noticeable to me. This was more evident on Friday and Saturday nights as the pools were jam packed with participants. Still, it was good to see a more diverse grouping of players at the event.

The FGC is notorious for the brotitude it has. Players can be stupid nice (Smug), while others will talk smack and piss in your Wheaties. What is very consistent is that the commentators treat the players with respect. It must be two or three years now that the Street Fighter commentators have referred to Ricki Ortiz by her chosen gender. Yeah, Twitch chat is still a Shit Lord when it comes to being an adult about these things, but it’s nice to see that these two groups of players are starting to feel comfortable enough to compete at these bigger events.

The second item isn’t such a happy one. Sunday was the last set of pools for several games. During the day, victors would be crowned in games such as Tekken 7, Injustice 2, Street Fighter V, and other games. If you ever watch an FGC event, but only have one day you can do so, watching the last day is always full of hype games. I started the morning watching the Street Fighter V DreamHack finals from Sweden. I’d then moved on to watch Tekken 7 followed by Injustice 2 Top 8 pools. Check out the Injustice 2 Top 8 pools if you can.

Now, most big events like this end with Street Fighter. There are a few reasons for this, but as much as some would like to see a different game closing out events, this is the way it is. This is where things fall apart. I had been streaming CEO all day with no issues. Capcom takes to the stream to close out CEO and suddenly nothing works. There would be some commentary, a few seconds of a match, and then the stream would go down. It comes up, runs their damn ads just fine, get into a match, and die again. This went on for about four or five matches before they got things under control.

It’s hard to give Capcom a pass on this. CEO streams ran just fine the whole weekend. I read that the hotel internet had went out during the Street Fighter V Top 8. They had to switch to a 4G card. That card wasn’t holding up. They had no other backup solution. I have been watching these streams enough to know that during big events, you bring more than one 4G card. You prepare for this type of situation. Capcom failed.

Sure, we got to watch the last few matches, which were pretty damned good, but many viewers left with a bad taste. It was bad enough that people started to Periscope the event so people could watch. With the negativity already surrounding Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, this was just more salt in the wound. Hopefully EVO won’t have such a sad ending.

CEO was very enjoyable to watch. There were plenty of upsets across the various games I was interested in. The hype train is now rolling out towards EVO. Man, where the hell did a year just disappear to?

The Corner of Randomness: Let’s Get Random

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Keri recently let me know of a new speedrun racing event that is currently going on. For those that might not know how this works, two (or more) gamers speedrun a game at the same time. The person who finishes first is the winner. There are brackets to proceed through. There is a ton of knowledge dropped. It is often intense and highly enjoyable.

One of the games currently being used in the race is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Yet, this one has a caveat to it. This is a game that is run through a randomizer. This means they use a ROM, run it through a special program that randomizes where all the items in the game show up. You might find the master sword in the very first chest you open. You might also get trolled something fierce and only find rupees for a substantial amount of time. It makes for some interesting runs.

So, of course I had to download the randomizer tool. I have now played two different games and that has yielded two very different experiences. In fact, this might be one of my new favorite ways to play an old childhood favorite. One of my runs was littered with rupees and keys, which meant key items were all acquired later in my play through. The second time I had a nice balance of key items to bland items. It was stupid fun and I look forward to a few more jaunts through a completely randomized Hyrule.

I know there is a tool to do this exact thing for Super Metroid. I might have to check that one out as well as that is another game I cherish from my younger years. I think the complexity of that one would be even more fun.

While I won’t be speedrunning this setup anytime soon, I will enjoy it casually. I just don’t have the ambition to learn route planning, or study the game deep enough to be able to compete. Yet, this is a great distraction at the moment. We all need a good distraction at times!

The Corner of Randomness: ESO

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Well, I finally cracked and took up ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) after wanting to try it for a few months. What finally triggered me to buy the game was seeing one of my brothers playing it. I hit him up on chat and he was kind enough to Share Play his game for a bit. We joked as he did quests, I tried to force Vlad the Heartless on a few of his decisions, and I got hooked. After doing this for two days, I broke down and purchased Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited.

Now I know Morrowind was due to release this week, but I went with Tamriel Unlimited as it was $30. I figured by the time I got through the current content, I’d then be ready to see what Morrowind had to offer. I regret it a little bit as this means my ESO time will be a bit more expensive, but I am weak.

As for ESO itself, I’m really liking it. I know when the game first released it didn’t have that warm of a reception. Yet, I’ve been enjoying my time in the game. It feels like a solid Elder Scrolls game, but with random people coming and going throughout the world. I do enjoy the random people scattered about as it makes the world feel much more alive than say something like Skyrim.

After a few days of playing, I also spent the $15 so I could get an XP bonus as well as getting access to the crafting bag. I do wish that $15 included some more niceties as there is only so much I will be able to buy with the in-game currency (crowns), and once I’ve done the DLC included with the monthly subscription fee, there isn’t much to really justify the cost.

I’m glad I finally bit the bullet and bought ESO. My time so far has been enjoyable. I’ve grouped with my brother to handle some of the more difficult quests that I couldn’t complete on my own. The world events happen pretty frequently and add a bit of distraction from all the fetch quests. So yeah, if you’ve ever debated playing ESO, I’d recommend giving it a try, especially if you enjoy Elder Scrolls games!

The Corner of Randomness: RPG Limit Break

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Last Sunday I was bumming around Twitch.TV looking for something new to watch. I happened to stumble on a channel called RPG Limit Break. The name of the channel is what intrigued me and drew me in to check it out. Then I heard the commentator chatting about what was going on, and I instantly recognized them as one of the folks that commentates for the GDQ events. I decided to stick around and check this new channel out.

Well, it turns out that RPG Limit Break is not much different from a GDQ event. This is an almost week long (Sunday – Friday) donation event. Instead of donations going to the Prevent Cancer Foundation, they are instead sent to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). Players also speedrun games, but they are restricted to RPGs. I’ve also noticed that they tend not to glitch a 40-hour game into a 10-minute run. Instead, there is a lot more RNG manipulation and using game mechanics to beat the game quickly. Quick is also a relative term as games could run as long as six and a half hours long.

I’ve spent the past week checking out various runs. I couldn’t actually sit and watch a longer run the whole way through as I’m busy getting my home remodeled so I can sell it and move…again. However, what I have been able to catch has been highly enjoyable. Most of the folks on the couch share a ton of information on what is going on. How the runner is manipulating game/system memory, fudging RNG, or avoiding various encounters all in a hope to knock just a few seconds off their total time. It’s been extremely enjoyable.

Yet, timing is a bitch. On Thursday, news broke out that Chris Cornell had passed away. Later that day, it was released that he had hung himself. Now, I’m not one that really gets all emotional over a celebrity/artist death. We don’t know one another. It’s not like I was calling Cornell to ask how his weekend went. However his death has weighed heavy on me.

When I was at one of my lowest points, I would listen to a lot of Soundgarden. I won’t say it’s what pulled me from the dark abyss that almost ended my life, but it was a very significant part of my life then. In later years, Audioslave would play another role in helping me deal with life as well. The fact that Cornell hung himself is a bitter pill. While we didn’t know one another in any significant form, his music helped pull me through some very dark patches in my life.

Like I said, timing is a bitch. Here I’ve been watching a stream all week where gamers are now raising money ($86,207 at the time of this writing) to help fund mental illness awareness. Almost at the very end of this event, a musician commits suicide. You bet your ass that I sent in a donation. It wasn’t much, but I know that anything can help.

Today is the last day of RPG Limit Break. You can easily check their VODs for games you might be interested in. I’d also encourage you to check out NAMI.

You know, gamers get a lot of shit for being toxic on the internet. We are often stereotyped as basement dwellers. Yet, we can pull together and do amazing things. Events like this, the GDQs, Child’s Play, and so many more show just how much we truly do care for our fellow humans.

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