05-27-2016, 08:33 AM
I sent this to ben but he didnt reply meaning it probably wasnt what he was looking for, but seeing as i spent a little time on this I thought I might post it so it wasn't a total waste of time, even if you do ridicule me mercilessly... (this is a kinda second draft of the first half)
A short history of speedrunning: GTA: Vice City
The origins of speedrunning Vice City can be traced all the way back to February 2005, when a man by the name of Andy Nelson submitted a 2:27:26 segmented run to SDA (SpeedDemosArchive) played on the PS2 version of the game. His record stood for almost three years until the next contender cannibalK9 stepped in, submitting the first PC run of the game in April 2008, coming in at 1:52.59. It should be noted also that CannibalK9 was the first single segment run. Both of these runs unfortunately have long since had their video evidence lost from the internet, and this is long before the days of Twitch and the ability to watch them live. You may be or may not be surprised at these times too, the demographic that most fondly remembers this game probably spent hundreds if not thousands of hours attempting to finish this game, or go for 100% completion.
For the next few years improvements to the game continued to be made, and the time fell accordingly. A community IRC channel served as the main communications channel for ideas to be pooled and tested. Weekly races were held on Tuesdays which served as the basis for many long standing glitches to be found, such as the ability to take phone calls without Tommy entering the slow and restrictive phone call animation. Many people began to grind the game hard, as the route became more optimised, even strats that could save five to ten seconds became a necessity in order to post a respectable time.
The game was about to be turned on its head however, as a huge development came to light in August 2014.
The community that had built up by that point were always aware that the PC version of the game contained the ability to create replays using the F1, F2 and F3 keys, (they had actually been used in runs for a few months already) but were not aware of their game breaking potential until someone called bastant2 demonstrated the ability to create replays over the locations of "Rampages". Y'see, the international Steam version contains [7] different language options, two of which - French and German - are censored as required by the laws in those countries. He discovered that by starting the game in a censored language, going to a spot where a rampage icon would spawn, saving a replay over it, then switching the language back to an uncensored version, you started producing interesting results when playing that replay back. Not only does it allow you to buy assets such as The Malibu Club and Kauffman Cabs without spending any money, it has some other consequences the developers overlooked too. Let me explain.
The game code in VC is governed in part by a single bit of data in the game code called the OnMissionFlag. If this bit is set to 0, you are in free roam mode and are free to do whatever you like, but, when you trigger a mission, the mission script will change this bit to "1" so the game knows to not allow you to start other missions. You may or may not see where this is going by now, but if you haven't cottoned on, I'll explain further.
When you start a rampage with the replay that is saved over the icon, it doesn't change the OMF, meaning that you can start a mission twice. The best demonstration of this is one of the very first missions - Jury Fury.
By walking into the mission marker with just three seconds remaining on the timer of the replay started rampage, the mission starts once, then, once the timer runs out, starts again. This is because when you first entered the mission marker the OnMF was 0, then starting Jury Fury changed it to 1. Then, once the rampage failed, it was changed back to 0, leaving you to start the mission a second time.
You may remember that a guy gets run over at the very beginning of that mission? Well, now two identical people get run over in the exact same place by the exact same car. Then, a few seconds later, when the game script attempts to load in the two cars that it intends for you to smash up with the hammer the guy that got run over drops, it tries to load in a second set of cars in the same place - the mission code is running twice concurrently remember. The collision detection then does the hard work for you, damaging the first set of cars with the second set, meaning you no longer have to drive all the way over there to do it yourself. The mission passes in less than 20 seconds. Luckily, the hilarious cutscenes where the jurors run for their lives screaming, still play.
A short history of speedrunning: GTA: Vice City
The origins of speedrunning Vice City can be traced all the way back to February 2005, when a man by the name of Andy Nelson submitted a 2:27:26 segmented run to SDA (SpeedDemosArchive) played on the PS2 version of the game. His record stood for almost three years until the next contender cannibalK9 stepped in, submitting the first PC run of the game in April 2008, coming in at 1:52.59. It should be noted also that CannibalK9 was the first single segment run. Both of these runs unfortunately have long since had their video evidence lost from the internet, and this is long before the days of Twitch and the ability to watch them live. You may be or may not be surprised at these times too, the demographic that most fondly remembers this game probably spent hundreds if not thousands of hours attempting to finish this game, or go for 100% completion.
For the next few years improvements to the game continued to be made, and the time fell accordingly. A community IRC channel served as the main communications channel for ideas to be pooled and tested. Weekly races were held on Tuesdays which served as the basis for many long standing glitches to be found, such as the ability to take phone calls without Tommy entering the slow and restrictive phone call animation. Many people began to grind the game hard, as the route became more optimised, even strats that could save five to ten seconds became a necessity in order to post a respectable time.
The game was about to be turned on its head however, as a huge development came to light in August 2014.
The community that had built up by that point were always aware that the PC version of the game contained the ability to create replays using the F1, F2 and F3 keys, (they had actually been used in runs for a few months already) but were not aware of their game breaking potential until someone called bastant2 demonstrated the ability to create replays over the locations of "Rampages". Y'see, the international Steam version contains [7] different language options, two of which - French and German - are censored as required by the laws in those countries. He discovered that by starting the game in a censored language, going to a spot where a rampage icon would spawn, saving a replay over it, then switching the language back to an uncensored version, you started producing interesting results when playing that replay back. Not only does it allow you to buy assets such as The Malibu Club and Kauffman Cabs without spending any money, it has some other consequences the developers overlooked too. Let me explain.
The game code in VC is governed in part by a single bit of data in the game code called the OnMissionFlag. If this bit is set to 0, you are in free roam mode and are free to do whatever you like, but, when you trigger a mission, the mission script will change this bit to "1" so the game knows to not allow you to start other missions. You may or may not see where this is going by now, but if you haven't cottoned on, I'll explain further.
When you start a rampage with the replay that is saved over the icon, it doesn't change the OMF, meaning that you can start a mission twice. The best demonstration of this is one of the very first missions - Jury Fury.
By walking into the mission marker with just three seconds remaining on the timer of the replay started rampage, the mission starts once, then, once the timer runs out, starts again. This is because when you first entered the mission marker the OnMF was 0, then starting Jury Fury changed it to 1. Then, once the rampage failed, it was changed back to 0, leaving you to start the mission a second time.
You may remember that a guy gets run over at the very beginning of that mission? Well, now two identical people get run over in the exact same place by the exact same car. Then, a few seconds later, when the game script attempts to load in the two cars that it intends for you to smash up with the hammer the guy that got run over drops, it tries to load in a second set of cars in the same place - the mission code is running twice concurrently remember. The collision detection then does the hard work for you, damaging the first set of cars with the second set, meaning you no longer have to drive all the way over there to do it yourself. The mission passes in less than 20 seconds. Luckily, the hilarious cutscenes where the jurors run for their lives screaming, still play.