Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation for ev


Official tournaments, but also any competition, challenge of the week or other player initiative for competitive crawling.

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 15

Joined: Saturday, 23rd March 2019, 18:59

Post Friday, 5th February 2021, 18:21

Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation for ev

Hi, Lici/EnegeticOcto here.
I was given mod privilege on https://www.speedrun.com/dungeon_crawl_stone_soup/ and have separated out every species as it's own sub-category within 3 rune and 15 rune realtime runs. A lot of species don't have a run submitted in them at all since there is no video evidence of them so lots of them are free for the taking! Next step is to add new categories to further diversify possible strategies and hopefully spark more interest for speedrunning and theorycrafting(my favourite part) in members of DCSS community!
Some of my current ideas are:

    Seeded speedruns: this category would be a seeded run, 3 runes as well as 15 runes. It would be the same as the current way of running except for two things, being able to use a seed(thus knowing the layout of the dungeon as well as the items that you can plan your strategy around) and allowing offline runs(allowing us to make use of trunk seeds easier).
    Ziggurat speedruns: this category would require the player to complete a ziggurat along with beating the game(with any number of runes). Again, there would be a sub category for every species since the way to achieve the win would differ greatly between them
    MegaZiggurat speedruns: unlike previous categories this one would have no sub categories for separate species. The goal here would be to complete 27 ziggurats (the number isn't set in stone as of right know, I picked it just because it was iconic to the game) before beating the game. These runs would allow you to save during them since I suspect they could take a while!
    Great+Greaterplayer+Polytheist speedruns: the ultimate category.This category would not only measure the players ability to play fast but also to plan out combs, make use of every god, no matter how strong or weak they are. In order to get the total time you would add up all the played time from the start of your first game to the end of the final game along with any dead characters in between.

I would love to hear feedback on these ideas as well as hear any new ones! Thank you all for your support!

For this message the author Lici_the_Crawler has received thanks:
floatboth

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Sunday, 14th February 2021, 12:18

Re: Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation fo

Hi Lici/EnegeticOcto,

Your speedruns were really impressive, congratulations!

1.) I would like to ask you something I do not really get about real time speedruns. There are bots that can win crawl on its own, and then the realtime speed of the game just depends on the speed of the machine which runs crawl and the bot. My guess is that it can be really fast. Obviously this is not what you and other real time speedrunners do, but what are the (approximate) rules? How much automation is allowed to consider it a real-time speedrun and not an almost bot? What level of automation you are using?

2.) I like to play relatively fast (not compared to you), which does not mean that I am doing speedruns. My fastest win so far is 02:38:21 (with a MuWn) which is very far from a speedrun, but I usually clear every floor, enter portals, etc. , and some parts of the game just eats up time. Huge amount of popcorn, so to be safer you tend to run to and from a lot. I am personally interested of speeding up the boring parts of the game, and not as much skipping parts to make my game faster. What I would like to know if there are a way to reliably win under 2 hours with any (most) combinations, that is, streaking with a <2h time limit or something.

3.) Can we make such a category? Base idea:

Streak speedrun. Points = [streak length] / ([ longest game's length (realtime)] ^ 2)
You need to play a different class and race each time (both needs to be new independently).

Thanks in advance.
Last edited by sanka on Sunday, 14th February 2021, 12:29, edited 1 time in total.

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Sunday, 14th February 2021, 12:28

Re: Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation fo

One more idea for speedruns:

DUHZ speedrun: do a DUHZ (Dungeon->Dpeths-> 3 Hells -> Zot) speedrun. You are not allowed to enter lair/orc.

Similarly you can create different "challenge" speedruns, but I think DUHZ has realtively straigthforward rules and can be interesting.

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 15

Joined: Saturday, 23rd March 2019, 18:59

Post Sunday, 14th February 2021, 19:16

Re: Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation fo

sanka wrote:Hi Lici/EnegeticOcto,

Your speedruns were really impressive, congratulations!

1.) I would like to ask you something I do not really get about real time speedruns. There are bots that can win crawl on its own, and then the realtime speed of the game just depends on the speed of the machine which runs crawl and the bot. My guess is that it can be really fast. Obviously this is not what you and other real time speedrunners do, but what are the (approximate) rules? How much automation is allowed to consider it a real-time speedrun and not an almost bot? What level of automation you are using?


Thanks!

Rules are outlined on speedrun.com. LUA and macros that involve tab and o aren't allowed. So only automatic things are autoexploration and autofighting. I personally use G> macro as well as macros for healing and summoning demons. I also rebound my autoexplore to *(this is more of a personal preference, if someone plays with vi-keys o is better for sure). The resources section on speedrun.com has my RC files if you want to check them out.

sanka wrote:2.) I like to play relatively fast (not compared to you), which does not mean that I am doing speedruns. My fastest win so far is 02:38:21 (with a MuWn) which is very far from a speedrun, but I usually clear every floor, enter portals, etc. , and some parts of the game just eats up time. Huge amount of popcorn, so to be safer you tend to run to and from a lot. I am personally interested of speeding up the boring parts of the game, and not as much skipping parts to make my game faster. What I would like to know if there are a way to reliably win under 2 hours with any (most) combinations, that is, streaking with a <2h time limit or something.


Looking at my tourney games (if I exclude my challenge runs and 3 combos I played super tilted and just dying over and over again) I won 51.6% of my games with an avg win time of 2:04 (and avg time if I include deaths 1:06). I mostly got this by going o-tab build(high AC + big damage weapon), ozo's fridge rush > az, or abusing something like OP god, irradiate or throwing(turns out 16 throwing boomerangs with +4 slay own everything in zot). I also dove depths because depths take way too long. Streaking games while winning stuff like DE does sound very hard, but I believe some players could do it(not me :P).

sanka wrote:3.) Can we make such a category? Base idea:

Streak speedrun. Points = [streak length] / ([ longest game's length (realtime)] ^ 2)
You need to play a different class and race each time (both needs to be new independently).

Thanks in advance.


That was my intention with the greaterplayer + polytheist category. Since dying would also count towards your time the focus should be on consistency over pure speed.

sanka wrote:One more idea for speedruns:

DUHZ speedrun: do a DUHZ (Dungeon->Dpeths-> 3 Hells -> Zot) speedrun. You are not allowed to enter lair/orc.

Similarly you can create different "challenge" speedruns, but I think DUHZ has realtively straigthforward rules and can be interesting.


Cool idea, tho I'm going to gold of on adding more categories for now since quite a few people noted that too many categories is problematic! If you do decide to do a run of sorts send it to me and I can make a category but beware, p0werm0de has videos of his DUHZ runs :P

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Monday, 15th February 2021, 13:33

Re: Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation fo

Thanks for the answers!

I most likely do not really get the "great(er)player + polytheist" category: do you actually need to win every race/class just to take part (get a score)? This means an awful lot of time to get a score (even if you do speedruns), so my problem is that in this category the first milestone (actually completing a "run") takes too much time. In the streak version you are in the race immediately after your first (or maybe second) win. But maybe you have a different scoring mechanism in your mind, that does measure partially completing all races/classes/gods.

I personally most likely won't submit DUHZ speedruns soon, I am way to week a player for that (yet).

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 15

Joined: Saturday, 23rd March 2019, 18:59

Post Tuesday, 16th February 2021, 21:07

Re: Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation fo

sanka wrote:Thanks for the answers!

I most likely do not really get the "great(er)player + polytheist" category: do you actually need to win every race/class just to take part (get a score)? This means an awful lot of time to get a score (even if you do speedruns), so my problem is that in this category the first milestone (actually completing a "run") takes too much time. In the streak version you are in the race immediately after your first (or maybe second) win. But maybe you have a different scoring mechanism in your mind, that does measure partially completing all races/classes/gods.


Yes to greaterplayer thing. So how would you measure streaks? Problem is you have 2 variables that you can't really compare. Like is a 10 streak that took 20 hours better or worse than an 8 streak that took 15? You could say it's 10 streak speedrun but then it becomes just 10 easiest combos streak instead of requiring people to play stuff like deep elf for example.

Halls Hopper

Posts: 74

Joined: Monday, 1st April 2013, 15:42

Post Tuesday, 3rd August 2021, 19:28

Re: Speedrunning: looking for new ideas and an invitation fo

There was a NetHack speedrun at the recent ESA marathon, can we hope for a DCSS marathon run in the future? :)

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