Awesome Games Done Quick 2015

[Galenmereth]

For anyone not in the know, "Games Done Quick" is a twice-annual event: Awesome Games Done Quick in January, and Summer Games Done Quick in June/July. It's a whole week of 24/7 speedruns of all kinds of games from all the best in the speedrunning community, and all the while they will take donations, which all go -- completely uncut -- directly to a charity. For example, in last SGDQ, they raised over $1.5m for a charity that works to cure diabetes type 1. This time, for AGDQ, it's for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Donations are encouraged by various elements in the games being run being up for vote, like saving all the animals in the Metroid speedrun.

Personally, I love watching these events because I learn a ton about game design just watching these talented people play all these great (and some not so great, but still entertaining) games.

The Twitch stream can be found here: http://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick

You can find the schedule and more info here: https://gamesdonequick.com/schedule

Have fun watching, and come here to talk about the fun moments that are bound to pop up!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I love watching these! I always learn something about my favorite games that I never knew and it absolutely blows my freaking mind. They always do the streams for a good cause, too. I didn't know it was happening, thanks for letting us know!

 

[Goldstorm]

This just made my week! I had no idea they were streaming live this early.

I'm going to donate the rest of my money. Let's kick cancers butt!

 

[Sharm]

Ooh! I get to catch it live this time! I've been enjoying the previous runs on youtube.

 

[Nirwanda]

This looks so good, too bad my slow connection completely ruins it, it skips entire parts during its constant loading times.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Time. 9:38PM EST. Did anyone else just see them hack Pokemon Red to stream the Twitch chat on a Gameboy emulator?  How does this even work? How does Pokemon Red know how to make all those various symbols and emoticons people are making? That's nuts!

 

[Galenmereth]

I saw it Ms Littlefish; it was glorious! Below is my explanation of what happened:

Spoiler

Put simply -- and I only know the medium-not-so-simple version myself -- the way Pokèmon Red / Blue reads variables from memory is very direct, due to memory limitations on the GameBoy and cartridge space limitations for storing its game data. The way items and the 6 Pokèmon in your party is stored is in very limited chunks of data, tied directly to memory "slots" in the hardware, so to speak. This saves on space and memory.

Each item slot in the player's inventory, and each slot for the 6 Pokèmon in your party, normally link to a "protected memory bank", so that you can't affect the rest of the code by changing them. However, what these "hackers" (the original meaning of the word) figured out was that if you initiate a save game sequence, then turn off the console at 1 specific frame, the game doesn't properly "close off" the surrounding memory, resulting in the player having 255 slots for Pokèmon in their party. This doesn't seem exciting, but remember how each Pokèmon slot and each item slot link to a specific protected memory bank? Well, many of the 255 Pokèmon slots will now also affect the same memory banks as some of the item slots, because they don't actually have their own slots in the hardware's memory. In essence, it is now possible to affect these memory banks in an "unprotected" way.

Normally, you can only change item id and quantity. But with this save game glitch, you can now also affect the rest of the bytes for this memory bank. With years of experimentation, people figured out how to utilize this to pretty much make the game do whatever they want. And that's how the "Pokèmon Red plays Twitch Chat" hack works. However, one misunderstanding is that Pokèmon Red was connected to the internet; it was actually not. This whole sequence of changes to the game requires a lot of button presses, and some of them so specific they need to be done in 1 frame out of ~28 to even work. This is where the TASbot (Tool Assisted), a program running on a PC that is connected to a controller, makes this repeatable with 100% success. It can input the button presses at exact frames, and as quickly as required.

This is also how Twitch Chat was brought over to Pokèmon Red: Via the laptop, to the controller, through the SNES, and finally into the Pokèmon Red cartridge. But it's no less impressive, because the guy still had to program a chat display program, complete with emoticons and ASCII art support, right into Pokèmon Red's code via manipulating bits through the methods described above.

Incidentally, this type of memory manipulation glitch is also how you can actually catch Mew in the original Red / Blue cartridges by doing a seemingly insane sequence of events correctly in the game, tricking it into enabling the flag that makes you fight Mew. If you're interested, have a read here: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jdonald/pokemon/mewglitch.html

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I can't say that I understand it that much more but thanks for that explanation. I think the tool assisted segments have been some of the most interesting. I'm not much of a programming mind but it's interesting to see inside the game like that.

I've been waiting for DKC2 all day. Ah! It keeps getting delayed! Currently watching the Legend of Zelda race that keeps going back and forth, sometimes with the lead barely being a screen. Gah!

 

[Galenmereth]

That Zelda run was so exciting just now! Too bad for Darkwing with the bad luck at the end there, but nice dark Link finish. DKC2 coming up right now. It's 01:39am, but I gotta stay up for this.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I know! First it got postponed from about 1PM EST to 5:30 EST, and now it's getting late all around. But it's finally happening. I'm making my donation on this game but it's hard to pick what I want to bid on. I sort of want to see OoT blindfolded.

 

[nio kasgami]

awww....sad my internet is to much crappy  

I would love to watch this !

 

[Scythuz]

Looking forward to when the runs get put up on youtube!

 

[Galenmereth]

A lot of them are already out on YouTube, actually. Have a look at the official channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOWDU-iokgQTudah5-4kAIQ

 

[Nivlacart]

The Battleblock Theatre one had me jumping out of my chair from the sheer genius.

 

[Galenmereth]

That Tetris Grandmaster exhibition block... I think I forgot my jaw on the floor for near an hour.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

A guy playing Yoshi Island themes on the accordion during a blindfolded speed run? I think this is officially the best AGDQ ever.

 

[Scythuz]

A lot of them are already out on YouTube, actually. Have a look at the official channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOWDU-iokgQTudah5-4kAIQ

*Spits out drink*  Tor - you're a gentleman, a scholar and a vendor of speedruns!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Scythuz. Prepare to lose sleep as you tell yourself, "Just one more speed run tonight. This one is even one of my favorite games!" 

 

[Sharm]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned what happened at the end of Mischief Makers yesterday. I cried.


They got a lot of developers commenting on these runs, those are my favorites. It's always fun to have someone do a trick and hear the developer go "what?!" The blindfold runs are great too, I'm looking forward to OoT if the goal gets met.

 

[markjacks]

Great stuff Galenmereth!