I did testing on a K6-2 300Mhz, and yes it has 2 ISA slot, one of which is where I put the Sound Blaster 16.
Compiling an SDL port of Quake quake gives you 90% performance at 320x200 and 97% at 640x480 compared to the original. That's about 45fps which isn't bad I think.
SDL3 should now work with any i386+ with a VGA and 4MB of RAM which is roughly the requirements of Doom.
Groobo has records in several other games, he also held previous records for Diablo, the previous runs looks like they have less issues so it seems to be something that escalated from just replacing one or two levels in the video in to making changes to the game and splicing everything together from unrelated runs.
That's why you post the seed. If Diablo seeds the RNG from the current time, the rules should at least require posting the approximate time range (e.g. down to a minute). NTP also isn't hard.
Minecraft allows the use of an external tool that extracts the player coordinates to help triangulate the stronghold (there are runners who can do the triangulation in their heads in 10-20s (check out Couriway) but that will easily be a huge difference for a WR).
Timers need to hook into the game to trigger start/stop (WR attemps are often retimed from VOD, sometimes a close tie in a 4h+ run is resolved to single frames). If Diablo runs are to be taken seriously, a tool should exist to extract/inject the seed for verification.
1: Yes, setting the time isn't a modification of hardware.
2: No, because then you could just give yourself hacked items (items are based on their item seed) to one-shot Diablo. Where would the limit be if save editing were allowed? Why go down all the stairs when you could just change your current level to the last one by editing the save?
3: The rules are guidelines for what you can expect your run to be rejected for, not an exhaustive list. The discrepancy is probably just a case of the rule specifically targeting issues that have come up, while the summary simply states that, in general, any modification is not allowed. I don't see the conflict, just apply both. After all, if you were allowed to mod the game, you could just make the win condition talking to Pepin when you first enter town, and now you can beat the game in a few seconds.
> The implication is that there is some form of RNG manipulation in Diablo 1 that would have been allowed, but the actual form of manipulation that groobo used wasn't it. If that's true, the article should have covered what would have been allowed and why this was different. As written, this looks more like the journalist didn't bother reading what groobo said about his video.
The simple rule is that you can use any manipulation as long as it relies only on the game itself. This includes starting the game at a specific system time.
Some of Groobo's claims are simply impossible to achieve through RNG manipulation in Diablo. For example, item drops are predetermined at game start and are not influenced by the runtime RNG. The only way to alter them would be by using a tool to modify the game’s memory. In one of his older videos, such a tool can be seen running in the taskbar. He also admits to using one to skip through levels while searching for a good level set to run. While that isn't a problem in itself, the tool must be off during the actual run.
Evidently, it wasn’t off for the final fight, and that's also the only plausible explanation for the item drops seen during the run. If he knew of a legitimate way to manipulate drops, he could simply explain it to clear things up.
This TAS demonstrates a lot of what can be done within Diablo's mechanics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwoqd4arI0
- Boot the game at a specific point after Windows startup to get a perfect shop.
- Enter a new game at a specific system time to generate ideal levels.
- Split gold to manipulate RNG.
- Wait for the monster AI to advance RNG.
> While there isn't an explicit continuity requirement in 2009, the difference between fighting a boss at level 26 vs level 12 is large enough that I'm comfortable assuming it violated an implicit requirement. I'm also curious about whether your level is displayed on screen - which would imply that the video isn't just segmented but assembled from edited frames - or not. This finding appears to have been glossed over because it's not in the original report on the video. But the journalist should have exercised better judgment.
The level is only shown when opening the character panel, which does happen a few times. However, you can also estimate the level based on the amount of mana consumed by spells. He is evidently level 12, but his damage output matches that of a level 26 hero. Most likely, this was achieved by modifying the base damage formula used to calculate fireball damage.
If you check the source article, you can watch a recreation using an unmodified game with a level 12 hero, where the fight desynchronizes, and the hero dies. In contrast, when fireball damage is artificially enhanced, the gameplay remains synchronized throughout the fight.
From what I understood, Groobo had come to the understanding that 19 fireballs would have been enough with perfect RNG based his calculations using number from various strategy guides.
A lot of what happens in this run can be explained as him simply wanting to create the perfect run but making bad assumptions regarding what could actually be done legitimately and ending up with an impossible run instead.
I would agree with you but SDA is very picky with what they will accept as evidence against a video, since the changing inventory doesn't affect anything it could have been a mistake in replicating the segments when optimizing the run, but would not actually have affected things. In the end it was a combination of the inability to reproduce the level with item drops and the impossible end fight that got them to decide to pull the record.
Here is the TAS we produced for Diablo (the original goal before we got side tracked by the issue found in what as supposed to be the baseline): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiwoqd4arI0
Being a segmented run is not a problem, the issue is that the segments are not from the same save meaning that the RNG could never produce the given levels in a single run, which is a requirement for segmented runs.
But yeah a lot of the "it's obviously cheating" comments seems to be from people not realizing that the player is allowed to re run the level and no required to go in blind, some of them may only have played it multiplayer where there isn't a save state for the game.
Hmm... I'm not familiar with the speedrunning community. However, if I check the rules it cites, while it does say this today[1]:
> There obviously needs to be continuity between segments in terms of inventory, experience points or whatever is applicable for the individual game.
> manually editing/adding/removing game files is generally not allowed
If I check the Wayback Machine, it doesn't go all the way back to 2009 when the run was done. Earliest is 2012, and there it doesn't say anything about continuity or editing/adding/removing game files.[2]
If you don't mention the rules that are too obvious to mention, someone will think they can put together a segmented speed run with their best times from each dungeon level smooshed together into one run. After all, that's a lot of good segments.
And a little bit of 'rng forcing' using outside tools to get drops they want that they can't get and then tweak your fireball damage to make things work for the final boss.
Thats just not what a segmented run is. Just like any game that allows save-states, you could abuse save states to retry any part of 'the run' changing the entire save file to a different run and 'splicing' them together is splicing, which is not allowed. Tweaking fireball damage is literally hacking the game to get the desired result. Unless you find a way to perform ACE with your inputs. Which is not the case here.
Which is probably why they have clarified the rules since then. And why they have always had judges evaluate the submissions to check that the comply with the spirit of the rules.
The problem is that the menu is not part of the timed portion of the video and is just there for the viewer. In his response the runner said he simply used an old random intro he had when he combined the segments.
The disappearing item might not have been enough either since it would not have had any consequence and could have been a simple continuity issue when redoing segments.
If it was the only thinks we had pointed out it likely would not have been removed based on the response from SDA.
This doesn't sound like DevilutionX, I think what you might have tried Belzebub which is an entirely different project with no relations. The game play adheres closely to the original and only bug fixes are addressed.
