Classification of "cheating" in games

[Hisymak]

Hello, so I was thinking about various ways of "cheating" in computer/video games (including Doom), and I came up with my own theory about classification of different kinds of cheating. I'd like to summarize it here and know about your thoughts. Please note that the numbering has nothing to do with the degree of seriousness (i.e. category 2 is not considered "worse" than category 1 or vice versa, etc).

 

Category 0: Abusing built-in game features which are openly available. This can be mostly even not considered as real "cheating", but still I mention it here, as this can still give you extra advantages in the gameplay. The biggest example is save-scumming: you save your game and try to do something, and it you're not happy with the result (i.e. lost too much health, got a bad result in a RNG-driven action etc), you reload the game repeatedly until you get the best result. The next important example may be exploiting features added in source ports, which were not available in the vanilla game - i.e. freelook, jumping, crouching, rocket jumping in Doom ports in maps, which were designed for vanilla feature set. Another example is using an item carried over from the previous level, whereas the following level was not designed to be played with that item (best example is Jetpack in Duke Nukem 3D). Theoretically, even playing continuously Doom levels which were designed specifically for pistol start can be considered in this category, but this can be very debatable.

 

Category 1: Using built-in cheats. This one is pretty obvious and straightforward, and this is what is actually considered by most people as the real "cheating". IDDQD, IDKFA, IDCLIP, IDDT - nothing more needed to say! Using equivalent console commands in modern ports also counts here.

 

Category 2: Exploiting game bugs or level design errors. This way you can skip significant parts of levels (which were not meant by game designers to be skipped), or gain any other form of unintended advantage. The best example I can think of is Impossible Bullet Trick in Commander Keen 6.

 

Category 3: Hacking, save game manipulation, memory manipulation, and any other forms of external modifications of the game code, assets, or runtime data. External trainers or hardware (i.e. GameShark) also fall in there.

 

Which class of cheating you personally do, or think that is (not) okay to do in various situations (singleplayer, multiplayer, speedruns etc)?

I am personally trying not to do any cheating from any category in order to best enjoy and experience the game in a way "how it was intended to be played". However, I often save and reload game and don't consider that as cheating. Also in very bad situations when I cannot continue playing i.e. due to a map bug or just not being able to progress, I tolerate myself cheating from 0th category (i.e. jumping or rocket-jumping in vanilla Doom map, in case it's not explicitly disabled in MAPINFO etc), or VERY EXCEPTIONALLY do cheating from any other category.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Category 2 is the only one that isn't cheating. There is no difference between category 3 and 0 beside the tools used.

[MFG38]

I'll only say this regarding the whole matter, especially as far as Category 0 is concerned: people who keep jumping/crouching always enabled in GZDoom annoy me to no end. It's so painful to watch playthroughs of Doom wads, especially my own, where whoever played the game uses the jump - sometimes very liberally - when you're specifically supposed to not be able to jump. It can absolutely break some mapsets, and even when it's supposed to be disabled, it can still be circumvented with a simple cvar change. Kinda makes me wonder what the fuck the point of having the nojump/nocrouch keywords available in (Z)MAPINFO is if they don't even enforce what they so clearly imply to their fullest extent.

[Decay]

Reminds me of what was written in this book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cheating

 

Very good book, worth picking up if you're interested in this. Mia Consalvo is a leading scholar in game studies.

[Charlie Love]

50 minutes ago, MFG38 said:

I'll only say this regarding the whole matter, especially as far as Category 0 is concerned: people who keep jumping/crouching always enabled in GZDoom annoy me to no end. It's so painful to watch playthroughs of Doom wads, especially my own, where whoever played the game uses the jump - sometimes very liberally - when you're specifically supposed to not be able to jump. It can absolutely break some mapsets, and even when it's supposed to be disabled, it can still be circumvented with a simple cvar change. Kinda makes me wonder what the fuck the point of having the nojump/nocrouch keywords available in (Z)MAPINFO is if they don't even enforce what they so clearly imply to their fullest extent.

My favorites are the videos where they continue to use mouse look in software mode. So not only is it cheating, it's also nauseating.

[ICID]

Frankly, I disagree with the notion that anything is "cheating" in singleplayer. Unlike cheating in multiplayer, what you do on your own time in singleplayer hurts no one. You want to use saves? Jumps? Play continuous? Use overpowered weapon packs? Godmode through the whole damn WAD? You go right ahead, as long as you're having fun. 

 

I feel this way about any singleplayer game, but especially with Classic Doom, since the strictest interpretation of "how it was intended to be played" requires you to play on 320x200 resolution on a 212 MB computer using only the keyboard, IWADS only - and even then, the developers included saves, difficulty settings, and cheat codes intentionally to allow players to customize their experience as they saw fit. That freedom to play how you want is part of the joy of the game - I say embrace it! :)

[Major Arlene]

2 minutes ago, ICID said:

Frankly, I disagree with the notion that anything is "cheating" in singleplayer. Unlike cheating in multiplayer, what you do on your own time in singleplayer hurts no one. You want to use saves? Jumps? Play continuous? Use overpowered weapon packs? Godmode through the whole damn WAD? You go right ahead, as long as you're having fun. 

 

I feel this way about any singleplayer game, but especially with Classic Doom, since the strictest interpretation of "how it was intended to be played" requires you to play on 320x200 resolution on a 212 MB computer using only the keyboard, IWADS only - and even then, the developers included saves, difficulty settings, and cheat codes intentionally to allow players to customize their experience as they saw fit. That freedom to play how you want is part of the joy of the game - I say embrace it! :)

I'd clarify that does not apply to things like Ironmans or IronEagles where it's done for a leaderboard, or for demos. Otherwise I'd agree.

[Gregor]

13 minutes ago, ICID said:

Frankly, I disagree with the notion that anything is "cheating" in singleplayer. Unlike cheating in multiplayer, what you do on your own time in singleplayer hurts no one. You want to use saves? Jumps? Play continuous? Use overpowered weapon packs? Godmode through the whole damn WAD? You go right ahead, as long as you're having fun. 

 

It's still cheating in that you "break" the intended challenges of map. It's like solving a chess problem by using chess program. You cheat yourself so-to-speak. Doom maps are a series of challenges. If you use things like mouse-look or jumping you are not beating the map. You might as well use idclip and just run straight to the exit. If that's fun for you, cool. But it's definitely cheating.

[HAK3180]

Using your numbers, I try to avoid category 0 because I find it less fun. I will say though, that saving vs. something like manual vertical aim seems to be a bit apples and oranges to me.

 

I try to avoid category 1 insofar as it is "spirit of the law" cheating. I will IDCLIP to avoid a long lift or something with no guilt whatsoever. If I've maxed a map and have already been inside the exit room and am now really far from it, I may just IDCLEV to the next map. To me, that kind of thing is letter of the law cheating but not spirit of the law cheating. 

 

I think game bugs and level design errors are very different things (category 2). If I "know what the mapper meant to do," I typically do not try to abuse what they actually did, especially if I'm playtesting. If there is a red key and a door marked with red but it actually just opens when you hump it, I'm still going to find the red key first. I think game bugs are fair game though. I definitely cloned my elixirs in Final Fantasy VII using W-item. I used the Cinnabar island trick in Pokémon Blue. I am not above wallrunning or firing rockets three stories above where the enemy is and still killing it. On the flipside, if I get screwed by blockmap, too bad. 

 

I don't do category 3 stuff. ^{Actually, what I described above may fall in this category. Well, I don't do it in Doom anyway.}

 

 

To use the phrase again, my main philosophy is to play within the spirit of the law. I basically ask myself, "Would I be annoyed if someone did this in my map?" And that question goes both ways.

[Stupid Bunny]

I'd rank the graduated definitions of cheating (from most generous to most absurdly hardcore) as

 

- Using hacks/tools 

- Using jump or mouselook when you're explicitly told not to 

- Using built-in game cheats, unless you really need it to get out of a situation

- Using built-in game cheats at all

- Exploiting game bugs and map loopholes 

- Saving mid-level 

- Archvile jumps 

- Saving at all 

- Not forcing a pistol start every map 

- Playing with a mouse 

- Playing with anything besides the default vanilla keybindings 

- Not playing vanilla with low graphic quality at 320x200 on a 386 PC that was barely able to run Doom in 1993

- Using the automap

- Using powerups

- Using items

- Using weapons

- Moving

- Having the screen turned on

[Zulk RS]

I personally save-scum and jump/crouch and use freelook in WADs that were meant to be vanilla (jumping is very rare and only to avoid attacks more than breaking progression). I personally don't see save-scumming as Cheating (unless doing something like a Speedrun or Ironman challenge). Jumping and Crouching is actual cheating though. As for free-look still cheating but I find that the impact it has is not that gamebreaking so I don't see it as being super egregious. I don't however see using glitches and bugs as cheating though. I'm still practicing the 32-unit glide so I can use it in maps.

[chungy]

Cheating is harder to classify than the actual tools being used. The motive of the use of devices counts quite a lot toward whether an action is cheating or not, and probably whom it is directed to. I honestly never really consider abusing broken level design or game mechanics to be cheating and I may or may not abuse them myself in plays. An example I can think of, is pausing Mega Man 2 while using metal blade, before a bar of energy disappears, and it happens to let you use the weapon infinitely.

 

In an isolated setting and in single-player, the use of cheat codes, cheat devices, save-scumming: Quite often they're actually cheating, but it's easy to also ask "Who cares?"; like has been said, if someone is having fun, why should that be a problem? If they're being abused on the very first playthrough of a game, it's easy to argue the player is cheating themselves of the full experience. If it's a game that's been well-played, well-loved, and played through normally before, in-game cheat codes and external cheat devices might just add an extra layer of fun to the experience as you are now stretching the game beyond what it was designed to do.

 

Naturally, if the game is being played competitively, such as a Doom speedrun, nobody's going to accept a run where a player used cheat codes or devices to accomplish their feats. Even though the game is being run in a single-player mode, the intention in that case is to provide competition and comparison to other players, and the player has given themself and unfair advantage.

 

The issue of cheats in multi-player games are almost the same, though it leans far more often toward being wrong in that scenario. There are times that all the players in a game might agree that they're not going to be playing normally and it becomes OK to use these tools. For fun, not for competition, just like single-player. Heck, for console games, it's happened a couple times that I've wanted to play something like Mario Kart: Double Dash and don't have a memory card with everything unlocked. Almost nobody has an issue with just booting up an Action Replay and using the "Unlock Everything" code -- it doesn't change anything except to unlock all characters/karts/tracks.

[DuckReconMajor]

40 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

I'd clarify that does not apply to things like Ironmans or IronEagles where it's done for a leaderboard, or for demos. Otherwise I'd agree.

 

This reminds me of something that annoys me in some PC games, the lack of a "I'm playing around with cheats, please don't put me on any leaderboards or give me any Steam achievements" mode

[Gregor]

Category 0 is far too broad.

1. Using saves is one of the most basic features in a game. That's not cheating at all. Even if you make use of it prodigiously.

2. Doing continuous runs is no different than choosing to play the game on a lower difficulty. That's not really cheating either. Though you are definitely not getting the full experience this way compared to doing pistolstarts in most WADs.

2. However, by making use of features that were only programed in by the community like mouse-look or jumping you actually break the map by giving yourself an unnatural advantage and abilities you were never intended to have when tackling the map. That's where cheating really begins.

 

I think in general though it's difficult to define categories for cheating that apply to all kinds of games. Doom is very different from multiplayer games like, say, Warzone where hacking is the biggest issue.

 

 

 

[ICID]

44 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

I'd clarify that does not apply to things like Ironmans or IronEagles where it's done for a leaderboard, or for demos. Otherwise I'd agree.

 

Yep, absolutely correct. I don't exactly see this as "singleplayer" since it's a group activity, but I guess that is technically what it is.

 

Quote

It's still cheating in that you "break" the intended challenges of map...You cheat yourself so-to-speak.

 

With all due respect, my friend - I find this a profoundly depressing way to think of one's free time.

[Csucskos]

I'd say in general if you play single player you can not really cheat. In multiplayer (or speedrun on any instance when you are not the only audience) any tool that is was not aggreed on. I know it's a cheap answer but that's the truth. Do you consider cheating any% speedruns? When people just jump through walls and slide through small gaps? I don't. Or is Minecraft creative mode cheating? I'd say no.

 

Cheating is unfair advantage. If you play alone there are no such things.

[Charlie Love]

One thing that I think needs to be said is that cheating in a for fun singeplayer session often has the same stigma that it does in real life or multiplayer situations. Maybe it's because cheat codes aren't in games much anymore, but back in my day using moon gravity or infinite ammo in your play session was clearly cheating, but it was also quite fun. Cheating can be be very fun in games and you should neither feel bad about it or feel like you have to lie that you're cheating. Going against the intended experience will always be cheating in some way, but if you end up getting a better experience out of it. Who cares? Life is short, don't worry about what people who quite frankly don't actually care think.

[Gregor]

11 minutes ago, ICID said:

With all due respect, my friend - I find this a profoundly depressing way to think of one's free time.

 

All good. I personally for myself don't see much of a point in attempting a challenge when i'm not actually doing it as intended. Nothing depressing about it. And that's actually how most people approach Doom if i'm not very mistaken. ;)

But if you just wanna relax and have a good time there's of course no need for any of this.

[Mr. Freeze]

The only time I use idclip is when I'm on a map with either a spectacularly bad layout or progression. Sometimes saying "fuck it" and skipping a level is better usage of time than running around endlessly looking for a red key.

[KubaloBlackMT]

Freelook is a hard one for me, because as long as you have infinite monster height on it doesn't really matter right? Then again, being able to see the monster above you wasn't intended since the developers couldn't look up to see if his shots were precise enough.

 

I don't think it matters anyways since a lot of source ports technically change up the game-bits and such (especially GZDoom), so you're not really playing the intended game in reality. Classic Doom is sort of a sandbox tool to me, with all the editors and different ports and mechanics and mods and all. Especially since all of these things are easy to find and download.

 

Plus, if it's a slaughtermap or really long story-based map, the author probably expects you to save.

[Devalaous]

2 hours ago, MFG38 said:

Kinda makes me wonder what the fuck the point of having the nojump/nocrouch keywords available in (Z)MAPINFO is if they don't even enforce what they so clearly imply to their fullest extent.

 

Because its kinda dickish to forcibly control what players can and cant do on their own systems. Including it in the mapinfo is simply a 'this is how the recommended playstyle is', and even then I'd prefer people just say that in the text file. If it was changed down the line to totally overwrite my personal settings, I'd go into the wad and rip those lines out of the mapinfo every time out of principle. That said, I do not jump or crouch in a cheating manner, the only time I ever even use the jump is when ive fallen off a small ledge like a clumsy idiot and the way back up is several boring tedious minutes away, aka a quality of life timesaver. There is nothing to be gained by going that long way around when all the monsters are cleared and theres no hazards in play, it just consumes time out of my busy day.  Similarly, I have no qualms about IDCLIPing out of a broken room or bottomless pit instead of reloading a save or worse, starting a whole level again.

 

A young kid jumping out every window and up every ledge in something clearly vanilla is annoying, yes, but if they are having fun at the end of the day, not my call to stop it. Cheating fully is a hollow victory where you pretty much know that your not even getting the real experience but eh, as long as they aren't fucking up my games, live and let live.

On the other cheating topics; achievement systems in games caused ingame cheats to pretty much die out, as there was suddenly something more than personal pride and honour at stake. Sometimes its unfortunate, as some games had wonderfully glorious cheats that made games so much more fun (GTA's riot cheats for example), but it does also mean you actually have to develop the skill to beat the games now. I only ever got good at Doom once I stopped IDDQDing through the levels on UV and actually learned to play properly on the PSX version, as an obvious exmple

 

I have always loved the save editor type of cheats for RPGs and stuff, mostly from a curiosity side of things; finding secret party members dummied out of the game, or enabling guest party members permanently, discovering dummied items, and so forth. I remember finding out Kefka in FF6 was a programmed party member this way, ha.

[Zulk RS]

36 minutes ago, chungy said:

Cheating is harder to classify than the actual tools being used. The motive of the use of devices counts quite a lot toward whether an action is cheating or not, and probably whom it is directed to. I honestly never really consider abusing broken level design or game mechanics to be cheating and I may or may not abuse them myself in plays. An example I can think of, is pausing Mega Man 2 while using metal blade, before a bar of energy disappears, and it happens to let you use the weapon infinitely.

 

In an isolated setting and in single-player, the use of cheat codes, cheat devices, save-scumming: Quite often they're actually cheating, but it's easy to also ask "Who cares?"; like has been said, if someone is having fun, why should that be a problem? If they're being abused on the very first playthrough of a game, it's easy to argue the player is cheating themselves of the full experience. If it's a game that's been well-played, well-loved, and played through normally before, in-game cheat codes and external cheat devices might just add an extra layer of fun to the experience as you are now stretching the game beyond what it was designed to do.

 

Naturally, if the game is being played competitively, such as a Doom speedrun, nobody's going to accept a run where a player used cheat codes or devices to accomplish their feats. Even though the game is being run in a single-player mode, the intention in that case is to provide competition and comparison to other players, and the player has given themself and unfair advantage.

 

 

 

Generally agree and wish to add on top of this some things as well as provide a differing view on the few points I don't agree with.

 

Firstly, I never knew that you had such a glitch in MM2. I knew of the pause glitch in MM1 but didn't know you could get infinite metal blades in MM2. Very interesting.

 

On the topic of cheating in single player games, I think the reason people seem to not like cheating even in single-player games is mostly because it drastically changes the game being played. If you play Doom with IDFA on, it suddenly becomes a wholly different experience than it would be otherwise. Additionally, you can't really say you "Beat the game" if you play through the whole thing with IDFA and other cheats. That being said, I am less inclined to call "Save Scumming" as cheating because it is a feature built into the game and unlike cheats, it is right there at the main menu. Even abusing it, you don't end up with an experience that is not extremely different (though still different) as playing without saves and with Pistol Starts. I personally believe that save-scumming or playing continuous or playing on lower difficulties still allows you to say "I've beaten the game" and be valid.

 

I disagree with the notion of "Cheating themselves of the experience" because not everyone finds the same thing fun. Again, cheating in a game first time is less "Cheating themselves of the experience" and more "experiencing something different".

 

For Speedruns though, one accepted form of "Cheating" is using a tools to show a technique that may be possible in theory but whether or not it is in practice is something else entirely. An example would be Zero Master's TAS Pacifist run of Doom 2 MAP 30. So I guess for Speedruns, context and transparency is an important part of what is cheating and what isn't.

 

 

[BaileyTW]

I think as far as single player just playing on your own with no expectation of it being scrutinized by someone else, then what constituted cheating isn't as important of a question and is completely fine to leave up to the individual. For me, I like beating a thing under reasonable restrictions. For doom that's not only not save scumming (which for doom specifically I'd say is saving in the middle of a fight), but not using saves at all, a rule I'll probably break when I reach a long enough map, or when I'm doing a continuous playthrough. Most other things in game is fair game. If a fight is cheeseable, that's not my fault, that's the mapper's fault, though I usually will make at least a token effort not to cheese a thing especially if the cheese method is particularly boring. This is I guess my category zero, my "allow under all circumstances". My category one would be saving in the down time between fights on a particularly long map, or a map I do not believe respects my time, or on a replay of a map I just want to skip over a part I don't want to do many times, and my category 2 would include saving in the middle of fights, which I would probably allow myself if I do a map I do not at all expect myself to reasonably be able to complete. All else is category 3 unambiguous cheating for me. Not factoring stuff like jumping and mouse-looking cause I just don't want to do that. Haven't done a map where that's expected of me, doubt I will cause maps like that tend to melt cheap laptops like this.

 

Now, that is only single player and with no expectation that the play will be scrutinized. If I want my gameplay to be compared to others and there is a ruleset, there is only 2 categories and that's what's agreed upon to be the rules and what is agreed upon to be against them, and I guess the third category of specifically doing something that's an edge-case grey area of the rules, but like I don't want to put anyone on the spot by doing that without saying I'm explicitly doing that.

[TwinBeast]

I use heavy gl_picmip and enemies forced to fullbright green Keels in Quake Live, though this can be done from the settings menu easily. In some way I think it's cheating, but I'll also assume everyone having these settings, so I don't really care. Aim & wall hacks would go into the actual cheat category.

[xdarkmasterx]

Only 1 and 3 are cheating, IMO. Using cheats is perfectly fine as long as you don't do it online (unless you do it with the other players' permission), don't act like you beat the game "legit", and don't try to decieve people (ex: Making a video without revealing that it's tool-assisted).

 

0 and 2 aren't cheating by any means. It's up to the circumstances of the game and you to decide whether or not exploiting bugs is lame and unskillful :p.

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 hours ago, ICID said:

Frankly, I disagree with the notion that anything is "cheating" in singleplayer. Unlike cheating in multiplayer, what you do on your own time in singleplayer hurts no one. You want to use saves? Jumps? Play continuous? Use overpowered weapon packs? Godmode through the whole damn WAD? You go right ahead, as long as you're having fun. 

And how exactly does "hurting anybody" enter into this..?

 

If you enter a cheat code, such as IDDQD, then you cheated... That's why it's called cheat code...

2 hours ago, ICID said:

I feel this way about any singleplayer game, but especially with Classic Doom, since the strictest interpretation of "how it was intended to be played" requires you to play on 320x200 resolution on a 212 MB computer using only the keyboard, IWADS only - and even then, the developers included saves, difficulty settings, and cheat codes intentionally to allow players to customize their experience as they saw fit. That freedom to play how you want is part of the joy of the game - I say embrace it! :)

This right here is nonsense... If the intention was for players to cheat, then why go through the whole effort of placing weapons, ammo, health, armour...? Doom's cheat codes are primarily debug tools, left in the game because why not..? Your whole case about intentions is moot, because cheats are not active by default... So the experience they wanted you have in the first place is that you might die if you suck too much, and you might run outta certain types of ammo because there's only so much to go around...

 

Look at the manual and see what it says about what happens when you die... Not only is the intention for things to be able to kill you, because why else put it in a manual, but it also punishes you by putting you back at the start with only the pistol... Why go through that effort when they could have just as easily started players with the full arsenal..?

 

Saying "devs left cheat codes in the game, therefore it's not cheating when I use cheat codes" doesn't make any sense whatsoever... You realize that, yeah..?

 

Play how you want, all day every day... But don't claim that punching in IDDQD isn't cheating, because it clearly is...

[MFG38]

11 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

Because its kinda dickish to forcibly control what players can and cant do on their own systems. Including it in the mapinfo is simply a 'this is how the recommended playstyle is', and even then I'd prefer people just say that in the text file.

 

Calling it a "recommended playstyle" is kind of downplaying it with map(set)s that are not designed with such features in mind, though. Jumping isn't a thing in PrBoom+, for instance, and such things are rarely stated explicitly in the readmes of wads that target it. When wad authors state that a wad targets Boom compatibility, it's generally assumed that players will know not to use a non-Boom feature in them, but unfortunately, that's not always the case. There's a reason why disabling jumping/crouching in wads that target Boom is such a common practice - as I stated previously, jumping in particular runs the risk of breaking progression in said wads. I fully acknowledge that I'm biased, but players should reconsider playing a specific wad in the first place if they aren't willing to play by the mapper's rules. It's the metaphorical equivalent of giving the mapper the middle finger.

[Stupid Bunny]

If I'm being slightly more serious than before I guess I can pad out my definitions and thoughts a bit.  Let the stream of consciousness begin

 

To my mind, using any cheat code kind of tautologically counts as cheating to some extent (besides idmus, sorry I can only hear D_RUNNIN so many times in my life).  Now obviously some cheat codes are cheatier than others: idbeholdl isn't likely to offer more than a slight leg up in a room that the mapper probably made too dark anyway, while idclip can basically turn any level into an instant joke.  But even that has the condition of how long you use it for, and why: like idclipping out of someone's douchey inescapable death pit is more reasonable than just clipping directly to the exit on all 32 maps and claiming you are the next Zero Master.  But that doesn't change the fact that all of this is still, I think, cheating in as objective a sense as we can apply without trying to lawyer our way through every line of code and every offhand statement John Romero has made.

 

Is it cheating to jump when the map designer told you not to?  I mean, yes.  That isn't even a question I think.  I'd make the same argument as above that it's somewhat more forgivable if you only do it when like the mapper has put in a boring running puzzle of 32-high walls and the only way to get back on top of it is to run around for 20 minutes to get back to the beginning, but it's still cheating.

 

Is saving cheating?  I've heard people say it is.  I'm reluctant to agree because in this case it's a feature that's right there in the menu and clearly not meant to be hidden away for the people on the CompuServe forums to share with each other.  I guess it comes up because it can be abused to brute-force one's way through tight spots, quicksaving after every successful hit against an enemy until after a thousand hours you've managed to string together enough lucky calls.  The problem here is that there's a much bigger gray area than the above examples, where clearly saving just once in a run isn't cheating, and I would safely say saving multiple times within a level isn't cheating because, again, it's a basic feature of the game and also I see no reason to force myself to repeatedly play through the same 30 minutes of a map just so I can get to the one part where I actually die repeatedly.  I have better things to do with my time.  But if I'm saving literally every second--and I've done this on occasion, though not for a long time--then, well, clearly I'm in over my head and/or the mapmaker is making me fight too many revenants.  And in this case, it's possible I'll be able to cowboy up and just keep trying the same shit over and over until I do the sequence without any saves, but it's more likely that I'll just end up giving up or cheating through the sequence anyway.  So I guess by my own very arbitrary definition I'll call savescumming a tool for the desperate more than an actual cheat.  (Also worth noting that savescumming has a potential to hideously backfire in a way more conservative saving doesn't.  I have many rockets up the bum to attest to that.)

 

I don't think exploiting actual bugs and mapping loopholes counts, because usually it's either something like a rocket or archvile jump that is actually meant to be exploited in a few spots, and so seems fair game in others; or else it's the sort of thing that involves fidgeting around in front of some bars or finding weird blockmap nonsense that are so obscure and hard to repeat that they're usually more difficult to pull off than just playing the map legit.  Like I'm not going to get on the ass of some speedmapper for doing some arcane trick that I couldn't hope to ever do properly (although I'm not gonna get on anyone's ass for any of this, to be fair).  

 

I don't know enough about tools and hacks to really comment on them.  Ostensibly since they fundamentally change the mechanics or dynamics of the game they most safely meet the definition of cheating, but at the same time a TAS is a real skill of its own and at any rate is performed with a totally different intention than an actual run.  If someone's using a mod or deHackEd that gives Doomguy 10,000 hp and makes all the demons die when they see you then, well, hope you're having fun dude

 

tl;dr

 

"It don't matter.  None of this matters." ~Carl

[Sergeant G]

Categories 1 and 3 are what I avoid the most. I do not allow myself to use the cheat codes in DOOM under normal circumstances. I might drop into a level to answer a question or test a specific problem in that level, so I'd make some use of the codes to get where I'm going. 

But to say I've beaten or even really played a game, I have to get through it without category 3. Categories 0 and 2 may not be cheating in the strictest sense under all circumstances.

The whole excercise is sorta a duel between player and developer. They're supposed to have anticipated, detected and corrected any such vulnerabilities before they ship you the game. 

I get it about doing it the way you're supposed to so. But because it's possible to do things you're not supposed to do, strictly speaking...in other games that's enabled me to do some pretty extreme stunts, which were challenging and a lot of fun, so I am glad the idiosyncrasies are there to explore potentially.

[lwks]

Category 2 is really funny, I'm not sure but I think if you ask to the speedrun community they'll tell you that "if it's in the game then it's ok" or something like that, if memory serves "no exploits" is a separate speedrun category for most games, I somewhat get it but I'm a subscriber to the "intended experience" school of thought though

 

Edit: Ofc I'm not talking about cheat codes, they're clearly not intended for the gameplay, maybe taking them out of the game in the final stretch would cost time? Maybe it's convinient to leave them there in case they need it to test future updates? And it's not like the game you're developing is going to turn out into a global hit and obsessed people are going to reverse engineer the game's code to find those cheat codes anyways...right guys...?

Edited August 27, 2021 by lwks