“…is an object in some category,” yes. Also, when all you have is a deductive system, you have a category. When all you have is a directed graph, you have a category. When all you have is an FSM, you have a category.
The original insight that led to this note was from Zelda 3. To traverse a superroom in that game, we traverse some of its rooms. To traverse a room, we start at a cutscene called the door animation, and end at another door. Rooms naturally form a graph and speedrunners rely heavily on the topology of that graph, particularly when playing randomized room layouts. So, one day when I was playing a randomized copy of Zelda 3, I thought about how a TAS script might automatically discover routes through the randomized graph, and realized that there is a complex interplay between the room graph and the item layout.
When someone writes “A speedrun is an athletic manipulation of a video game which transitions to a specified state” are they doing it as a sarcastic commentary on academic writing, or are they serious?
In any case, the wikipedia definition is more precise
Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible.
“Specified state” may refer to the objective of the category. “100%” generally requires you complete a game with a particular set of other actions accomplished first. The Wikipedia definition is appropriate to “any%” which is probably the most popular category. It’s a little like describing Newtonian mechanics as “What goes up must come down.”
So I imagine the author is getting precise about the definition in order to, in the finest speedrunning tradition, identify the wildest loopholes possible.
Think of the software and hardware that you’re currently using. What makes it distinct from a video game? What is the difference, exactly, between credits and CTF? Is every machine a weird machine?
Think like a speedrunner. When is ACE allowed for any%? What is a marathon strat and why is it different from a strat? In Super Metroid, does it count as swag to save the animals?
Even the definition you chose shows some of the problem. Is a speedrunner having a ludic experience? One of the games I run has multiple five-minute stretches where I press a single button every few frames like a drum machine; it does not feel playful to me, but makes me feel like I’m back in my high-school drumline.
I’ve had this note on my whiteboard, stored as jargon and section titles, for several years. I’m mostly sharing it so that I can remove it from my list of things to write up. I strongly expect that this note will get no traction among experienced TAS’ers until somebody demonstrates a successful application of the principles, but that’s life.
‘When all you have is category theory, everything…’
“…is an object in some category,” yes. Also, when all you have is a deductive system, you have a category. When all you have is a directed graph, you have a category. When all you have is an FSM, you have a category.
The original insight that led to this note was from Zelda 3. To traverse a superroom in that game, we traverse some of its rooms. To traverse a room, we start at a cutscene called the door animation, and end at another door. Rooms naturally form a graph and speedrunners rely heavily on the topology of that graph, particularly when playing randomized room layouts. So, one day when I was playing a randomized copy of Zelda 3, I thought about how a TAS script might automatically discover routes through the randomized graph, and realized that there is a complex interplay between the room graph and the item layout.
When someone writes “A speedrun is an athletic manipulation of a video game which transitions to a specified state” are they doing it as a sarcastic commentary on academic writing, or are they serious?
In any case, the wikipedia definition is more precise
“Specified state” may refer to the objective of the category. “100%” generally requires you complete a game with a particular set of other actions accomplished first. The Wikipedia definition is appropriate to “any%” which is probably the most popular category. It’s a little like describing Newtonian mechanics as “What goes up must come down.”
So I imagine the author is getting precise about the definition in order to, in the finest speedrunning tradition, identify the wildest loopholes possible.
Oh, I’m always sarcastic, for sure. Consider…
Think of the software and hardware that you’re currently using. What makes it distinct from a video game? What is the difference, exactly, between credits and CTF? Is every machine a weird machine?
Think like a speedrunner. When is ACE allowed for any%? What is a marathon strat and why is it different from a strat? In Super Metroid, does it count as swag to save the animals?
Even the definition you chose shows some of the problem. Is a speedrunner having a ludic experience? One of the games I run has multiple five-minute stretches where I press a single button every few frames like a drum machine; it does not feel playful to me, but makes me feel like I’m back in my high-school drumline.
I’ve had this note on my whiteboard, stored as jargon and section titles, for several years. I’m mostly sharing it so that I can remove it from my list of things to write up. I strongly expect that this note will get no traction among experienced TAS’ers until somebody demonstrates a successful application of the principles, but that’s life.