next »

[Kaede]

Hi,

I had posted about live racing there but now I think it is better to make a new, dedicated topic for it.
Following Nicco's advice (thank you) after a bit of talking, I have just created a group which people interested in live racing can join. This should allow people to more easily find fellow players to race with.

This group purpose is to help SMB players organizing live races. If you would like to race SMB, come join our group !

What is a live race ? Here are the ingredients to a live race :
1. several players being present in the same place IRL or over the Internet (IRC is a good place to do so), at a given moment.
2. Rules. Eg. beat every level in world 2. Beat the game 'any %' (ie start from 1-1 and from there, beat Dr Foetus). Rules can be different from race to race and can be discussed.
3. Some sort of 'arbiter' who starts the race when everyone is ready, count points, etc. This is easy and IRC bots can do it for us.
4. When a player has reached the goal he tells it to this 'arbiter'. A player can of course give up any time in the race.
5. When everyone has finished a ranking is set.

Not mandatory :
(6.) Streaming. Streaming allows spectators to follow races in real time, which adds to the fun factor. There are good free tools to do this (check Speedrunslive 'tools' page. Personally I'd recommend xsplit).
(7.) If not streaming, there is always recording.
Is both a proof of the claimed performance (if needed), and a trace of the race. There are free or non-free tools to do this (eg FRAPS).
(9.) Commentators. Mostly for big races I suppose, but some races can be commented in real time.
10. FUN ! (this one is mandatory and can't be prevented :))

Since they already have a racing community and the ressources (website, ranking system, IRC channel, IRC bot) I suggest that to gather at #speedrunslive (see http://www.speedrunslive.com/) when looking forward to racing SMB.

Speedrunslive SMB page (I had to put this out of the quote tags for the link to work)

[TheSuperMeatMan]

Sounds cool, Im in 

[Mopjoyovans]

I'm def in, it's cool you created a group for this!  I'm Mundungu on SDA and Steam btw, Mopjoyovans is just my XBLA tag.

[Kaede]

Many people eventually showed some interested in live racing, more than I thought initially.

We now have 20 members in the Steam SMB Live Runners group and 12 races have been played at the initiative of the group.
Some new players every week. If it goes on we might be able to play some even bigger races :)

Once a few more people in the group have played their first race and finalized their streaming set up (for those who want to stream), I think we could for instance schedule races and/or play a race with a small prize attached to it (most probably Steam game gift), as someone has suggested to me some time ago.

[StealthAngel667]

Many people eventually showed some interested in live racing, more than I thought initially.

We now have 20 members in the Steam SMB Live Runners group and 12 races have been played at the initiative of the group.
Some new players every week. If it goes on we might be able to play some even bigger races :)

Once a few more people in the group have played their first race and finalized their streaming set up (for those who want to stream), I think we could for instance schedule races and/or play a race with a small prize attached to it (most probably Steam game gift), as someone has suggested to me some time ago.

This sounds like a lot of fun. I recommend these races to anyone who's decent at SMB. It's a great way to get better at the game.

[Kaede]

(This is a copy of the message I have just posted as an announcement in the Steam group :)

Hi all,

So far all races have been decided and organized on the fly, according to the group members online status.
It has been working relatively well, seeing we played a fair numbers of races so far, but the group now has enough members so we could schedule events and more regular races, that will probably allow more people in and may also make the SRL rankings more meaningful.

So, our first scheduled race will take place this Sunday (10th July 2011) around 7~8PM GMT+1. If you want to join, you can talk to me directly on Steam (or on the group page), or simply be online and active on Speedrunslive IRC channel before the race starts (I use the same nick there: Kaede), follow the events and enter the race.

If you want any help with routes, strategies, I suggest watching this video : http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13187645 (quite a decent run from joe).

See you soon.

[TunnelingEffect]

This looks interesting, I will try and participate.

[Kaede]

Welcome in, them. The more the merrier.