Speedrunning: Investigation Phase
From SDA Knowledge Base
NOTE: This page is a work in progress.
Contents
Introduction
Many newcomers to speedrunning are eager to get started on a game they're fond of but have little understanding about how to actually go through the process of learning a game from scratch. In the grand scheme of things, I divide a generic speedrunning process as the culmination of three distinct phases: Investigation, Routing, and Execution. Execution is self-explanatory, but Investigation and Routing are often lumped into the same category when they in fact focus on very different things. For the purposes of this document, Routing will refer to the process of planning a run and optimizations. Investigation covers the initial process of understanding and exploring a game in order to make Routing and Execution proceed more efficiently. The topics below will cover some of the basic steps as well as some useful tips and techniques for completing the Investigation phase for any particular game. An example of the full process is available in Appendix A.
