Deciding Standards, Community Voice In, What Do We Want

λ Half-Life
1

This is probably long overdue. A lot of people are desiring some standard(s) for competition most notably in SS runs. This is very complicated subject as there are so many different versions of Half-Life, goldsource and its mods. With many Pros and Cons on different levels to each every difference and feature.

I personally am very much in favor of creating our own custom framework, a long the lines of what AG was for the HLDM community. This can fix the game in its obviously favor in most cases, something Valve could, and should easily do but just won’t.

There’s a lot to debate, but I feel we as a community are mature and advanced to enough undertake this and ultimately satisfy the vast majority of everyone’s desires for a stronger community and better gaming and viewing experience. This is a very important matter that needs fair and adequate community involvement and should be carefully and arduously done.

I’ll update this as necessary with points of discussion.

     ===Criteria===

-Uncapped bhop … Largely in agreement
-Framework … Very much in the air
-jumping method … previous polls for scripted runs suggest tribes/quake style AG supports special over mouse wheel
(special script jump, shotgun script jump, quake style, tribes style, mousewheel/hardware scripts, 3rd party scripts)

Matter of Business
Do you support a mod, injection, something else, only strictly vanilla; what is the best type of framework to use going forward? What are the pros and cons with each.

2

Why dont we do like the SDA quake community and have 1 standard version on their website that everyone uses?

Also: Yes i support a mod or injection/AHK script

3

A standard version is the goal, one that will satisfy and help the community the greatest.

I would say that whatever is used, it’s a major PRO to consider ease of installation, encapsulation and amount of tweaks/time it takes to be up and running on level playing field with everyone else. IE friendly to new people looking to join the community with less questions and confusion to spring up.

4

The way I see it:

I think that someone who has interest of running this game(s) shouldn’t have to download any mods or any injections. I’m sure the person just wants to pick up the game and start rolling. Or maybe download an older version (Typically when a important glitch has patched out or something).

Position: Strictly vanilla (view might change).

5

Strictly vanilla would be ideal in terms of ease of access, just requires buying downloading and installing. I’m sure most of the us would love that, IF that version was good. Unfortunately there is a host problems and downsides with just using the latest steam version.:

The largest probably being the horrendous jump cap, 170% to 110.5%, only added for CS and to lesson the learning curve.

Not to mention that Valve would be in control of this at all times with the ability to change things on a whim at any time by whatever clueless disconnected employee’s discretion (they’ve proven that they have no employees with any knowledge over the higher tier goldsource communities and their game play or any such connections, plans or willingness to work with the community), and if there’s one thing we’ve learned we don’t Valve to be involved. As soon as Valve makes another horrible change we’d be back to requiring downloading something extra.

6

I speedrun for fun, and I find going super fast fun, so I would have no interest running the current Steam build. But I also have no interest in making a competitive run, so I can always just stick with NGHL whilst the community moves to strictly vanilla. But something along the lines of NGHL is what interests me.

Actually, a mod would probably be preferable (to a seperate client) because then you could host it on the SourceRuns front page without any copyright issues.

7

In terms of competition, I’m not quite sure how adding/removing different features to try and improve the gameplay would be good. I see the point tho, seeing Half-Life speedrunning as more of a regular multiplayer mod, such as CPMA or AG. But problem would always be that you’d just be altering things in favor of cutting the speedrun time down.

At what point would you be changing to much?

With alterations and minor tweaks at different intervals, competing would not really work well. In fact, with added alterations we’d stop and ask ourselves, why did we just waste x amount of years creating this product, only to realize that if we waited we could of had more efficient features and cut down even more time.

All of it is arbitrary, and doesn’t make sense. I don’t think that there is a good solution to any of these problems, either you’d have this swamp, or by following official versions you end up being displeased about something. (such as autojump scripts not working well on 100fps or a cancer bhop cap with which fixes scripts by getting 1000fps etc)
The only thing that could possibly make sense to me is by simply removing the bhop cap that the shitty CS community managed to add. Effectively ruining pretty much every other goldsrc game. And let’s not forget, that the sole reason CS exists is thanks to Half-Life.

I shall remain on the fence until the swamp is removed and the gameplay is fixed. Before I jump down, that is.
:-\

8
With alterations and minor tweaks at different intervals, competing would not really work well. In fact, with added alterations we'd stop and ask ourselves, why did we just waste x amount of years creating this product, only to realize that if we waited we could of had more efficient features and cut down even more time.

Right, this would be a big problem if such changes were allowed on a whim at any given time at a sole person’s discretion; that’d like relying on Valve and steam games. Either once established, no changes allowed, or a pre-established strict criteria that wouldn’t allow significant changes, like a constitution, that for any such changes to occur would have to adhere to and be approved for a good reason.

Fortunately I don’t see many significant changes being necessary once a good standard is established. We do however need to be careful with what is established, there’s a lot to consider.

9

I really don’t care what game version/mod is being used as long as the speed isn’t capped and there are no demo recording issues.

10

What you are trying to achieve with this thread has already been and is being achieved. Yes there are always going to be a few people who disagree and will do their own thing and that’s fine, but the majority of the community wants to run as vanilla as possible (using WON DLLs under NGHL/Steam for SS/RTA due to continuous demo recording & better load times, WON version or WON DLLs for segmented runs depending on how WON version runs on people’s PCs etc, Steam version for TASing due to high FPS etc).

Requesting that an admin lock this thread.

11

wat

When and where was this consensus arrived at? Judging by the segmented runs that has been made recently and the ones that currently are in the process of being made, this is not at all the case. The only recent segmented projects that uses WON I know of is a couple of runs that you started. (most of which has already died?)

12

This topic is about Single-Segment and RTA runs. Segmented runs is another matter.

13

Look, everyone is obviously free to use whatever client/mod/build/version they choose for running. The majority agreement is that as long as it doesn’t make use of exclusive features that weren’t in the original versions of the game (and make sure that it doesn’t combine features from both versions also), it will be viewed as a legit run by the community.

The main concern in differences is that if you are using over 100fps, you must be playing with capped bhop to replicate the Steam version’s capabilities. If you are playing with uncapped bhop, you must be using no more than 100fps to replicate the WON version’s capabilities. If out of anything, you can’t deny that is the main thing that has been agreed on, no matter if it’s SS/RTA/segmented/TAS, whatever.

EDIT: There are obviously exceptions where a mod does not have capped bhop and so it is legit to use the uncapped combination.

The WON DLLs decision was just decided as the most optimal solution to creating a legit standard for SS/RTA runs and the leaderboard format itself and I am only offering it as a suggestion for people to use for segmented runs also if they are aiming for creating a run that is viewed as legit by the community. As I’ve said previously, if you don’t care about your runs being viewed as legit then that’s fine, free world.

Takyon, all of the segmented runs recently released (HL21, AoM etc), as well as in progress (HC2, GMC etc) are runs that were started before this discussion was going on. I have not started any segmented runs other than GMC which I left because I was not able to compete with you using high FPS. Even if that was not the case now I would not return to it because I don’t agree with using unofficial patches to take advantage of features that aren’t in the original game. If you mean OP4 Re-run, I did not even start that run, pruno did, and we agreed on using the WON version with autojump by making an inside vote, however I recently suggested that a TAS of the game on the Steam version with the new tricks (which only save roughly a minute in total) would probably be more worth it and so no progress has been made since.

As much as SpiderWaffle has implied it, neither me or anyone else is trying to dictate anything. I simply brought up the discussion about this stuff to people in the SS/RTA community and most of them said that they only used Bunnymod because that’s what everyone else was using, they didn’t know about the exclusive features and when informed were happy to switch to a more legit alternative. I only put the rules into place as a moderator on the leaderboards.

Even if you somehow convince everyone else that using modifications to go fast in a legit run is justifiable, the rules on the leaderboard won’t change because the players there are happy with what we have.

14

Not using a custom server DLL for RL, it has uncapped bhop by itself.

You can do that but then you cannot submit that to the leaderboards and you need to specify what you used.

15

Again, I question when and where this ‘majority agreement’ was arrived at. If it’s just and idea that most people in your circle agree on, it’s not exactly concrete enough justify locking this thread and not having this discussion.

Edit:

Same with GMC.

16

I already mentioned in the other thread that this has been agreed on in the IRC channel (which is not a ‘circle’, in fact the reason the channel was made was to replace outdated Skype/Steam groups that were not as accessible or popular so that it could be the opposite of a small circle of people). It’s not a single discussion, but a number of discussions and debates over time as well as a lot of analysing and researching being done by several people that have resulted to this and as I also showed in the other thread there is evidence to suggest that people are agreeing to it and following up on it, with the TAS projects and the SS/RTA runs. No new community-based segmented runs have been started since this ‘overhaul’ so it’s sort of irrelevant to use those as an argument right now.

Yes, but you are using an unofficial patch which allows you to run the game on Steam, meaning you can take advantage of over 100fps which is not in the original game which was only released on WON.

17

The patch doesen’t allow you to play on steam, check the files it actually adds. It’s mostly UI bitmaps and .res files. No server/client changes are made with the patch.

18

But even still, you are playing it on the Steam engine which the game was never released on. You’re running it as a mod, not an official game, therefore it’s not the same. It would be different if you limited yourself to 100fps because then you would only be achieving what is possible in the original game anyway, but using a more modern engine for convenience that doesn’t directly assist in time saved.

19

The same goes for pretty much every mod released before the speed cap got introduced. Probably RL as well as it’s most likely based on an older server .dll (WON) that doesen’t have the speed cap. (unless the devs went out of their way removing the speedcap from the source code for whatever reason, doesen’t seem likely in most cases)

20

As I edited into my post, that’s fine if you’re going to limit yourself to what is actually possible in the released version, but once you bring it into another engine and take advantage of the extra capabilities of that engine you’re straying from the original characteristics and therefore modifying the game. The whole point of a legitimate speedrun is to be able to show how fast the game can possibly be done from a fresh install of the game. Arguably it’s a little more lenient for mods because they’re simply folders that you download and extract to the client of your choice so even casual players would do the same, but GMC was an officially released retail game, so it’s not possible to use over 100fps from a fresh install of that game and a Steam engine run using over that is not representing the original game.