Here's some clarifications:

• The plans are still the same, recording a segmented speedrun etc. But I'm not giving any more ETAs cause we keep finding more stuff and I keep underestimating how long it will take me. At this point, TBH, if NHG wants to submit the most recent run on SDA, as I think was his intention, that might be a good idea. I'm saying this here cause I've been unable to contact him recently through SDA.
• I am using my own definition of what's valuable (in a collective way) and what isn't. Of course I am. It would be immoral for me to sacrifice time dedicated to increasing the collective benefit for someone's selfish goals, in some sense.
• This part needs a few more words... "In any case, of the many new things I know about the game, a few could be applied to the SS category without this raising the difficulty even more from the already gnarly tricks NHG pulled off." So I'm going to be clear: when I wrote that I had a few things in mind but honestly not that many that I was 100% sure were SS-worthy. Of course that depends on your own ambition as well, and also depends on what else has been found in the meantime. Some things really just have to be looked into by someone dedicated (cause it's hard work, in many cases!) And please note, MOST OF THE TRICKS ARE/WERE ALREADY IN THE GUIDE (everything I've had time to edit in), I didn't have a special list of them that I'm hoarding (which is what someone kind of accused me of earlier). When I said "I could act as a consultant and help to find just the relevant information" I meant just that: to FIND the relevant information in there, because I know it's a lot to take in and because the runner doesn't strictly have to know all of it. If you want to try and do whatever on your own, go ahead, I don't care. My end of the deal is the SDA submission. Otherwise I'm simply not going to prioritize thinking about non-segmented categories cause I'm not personally interested in running those, at least not now.
• I didn't define what "You would have to show you have potential for executing on the same level as NHG of course." meant and why I said it. Nothing that I've found has made it super-easy to improve on NHG's time per se. Far from it, AFAIK. If you can't pull off the long clip to E2R8, it might be you can't match his time at all regardless. But this is something I wanted to expand on: I will, of course, collaborate with anyone who wants to do some of the testing/strategizing part without doing the actual running part of the speedrun. I just want to see you're gonna do something useful to increase the knowledge that exists. Most people, in my experience, aren't up to that and they end up being a net resource drain when they contact me. I've always been welcoming but again, it's taking away from the collective benefits if you're not ready to sweat a bit and do independent work too. So yeah, to say "I want an SDA submission" only applies to if you actually plan to run the game at all.
• Again, to be doubly clear, I'm only posing as a "gatekeeper" here because we should avoid duplicate efforts. For example, you might be looking into something that me and tigrou already did but I just didn't have time to add to the Guide yet.

Peace out!

Oh and I almost forgot: so about a year ago, someone said they wanted to try and improve on NHG's time. I don't know if that's still happening. In any case, at that time I immediately went ahead and created a list of potential tricks you should look into for SS efforts. That list is in a very tentative state, as you'll see. I've now edited it into the part of the Guide which is about the SS run (the w/ glitches). So probably there's spoilers in there for some future run but you've been warned.

While I happen to be logged on here, let me answer this as well...

I think I can confirm off the top of my head that going to the dining room isn't beneficial to any% w/ glitches runs (as that's referred to over here). You don't get anything from that room and instead you can just sideways clip through the E3R1 door to E3R13 to get the lighter and maybe collision clip through to R11 and E5 (I haven't tested that BTW but it's explained in the Guide). Generally luring monsters to a different place to use them for clipping is super-slow because they move so slowly. And lastly, I can't imagine anywhere good to clip to from E3R12 anyhow (dining room).

FFS... I never got any kind of notification for N.H.G/NHG himself replying to that XD And now we're through COVID. Hang on, I've got contacts in China...

I have been asked about this stuff by someone on SDA. After doing some back and forth with them, I will update this thread as well. As you can tell, I don't really log onto SRC very frequently at all.

So just to briefly introduce myself: I'm the one who (accidentally) found the Cthonian skip. Since then I've (not as accidentally) found all kinds of other stuff and generally worked hard on the game in close collaboration with tigrou (who coded the Room Viewer etc.) in preparation of a few things. The main one is a segmented speedrun I will record perhaps starting later this year. It's taken ages already and there's always something new to test but at the same time feels like we're getting towards that particular goal now.

The run will then eventually be submitted on SDA. I might not even put it on YouTube. You might know me as an admin on SDA so you wouldn't be surprised to hear that I regard that site highly. I like the aspect of sharing deserving runs with an audience that doesn't consist only of those invested enough to go out of their way to look for runs for particular games, but also any speedrun "omnivores" who can appreciate quality when they see it, and preferrably with sufficient notes provided that anyone can follow what's happening (honestly a part of that quality). None of us have anything against this site BTW, we think the two (and the marathons etc.) fill different purposes and we do benefit from seeing what the best reported times are around the Internet when assessing runs in verification. Still, seeing as segmented runs don't really make sense to compete in, I don't see the point in submitting it here.

In any case, of the many new things I know about the game, a few could be applied to the SS category without this raising the difficulty even more from the already gnarly tricks NHG pulled off. I don't personally care to try to do the SS myself but if someone wants to go on a montage, and if you agree to submit the run on SDA afterwards (the only reason the fastest NHG time isn't on SDA is because I asked him to hold it off so we could submit both runs at the same time), then I could act as a consultant and help to find just the relevant information. You would have to show you have potential for executing on the same level as NHG of course. I'll ask NHG himself as well but he sounded like he was done with the game last time, so who knows. At any rate, at some point, I'm meaning to collate all the SS-ready new stuff into a separate part of the guide (which is linked below).

https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Alone_in_the_Dark_(1-3)/Game_Mechanics_and_Glitches

We haven't kept the public SDA thread active at all because I wanted to keep most of the new findings a surprise until the run is done so starting a private thread with me on SDA would be the way to go with this SS business (2024 EDIT*: Actually, going back to the public thread was always an alternative. Literally just trying to avoid unnecessary spoilers.) I'll try to remember to check back here at some point as well. I just find most people aren't serious enough to make significant contributions.

*(The part that says "2024 EDIT is the only edit.)

Jim Sterling's Jimquisition on the trends of modern "AAA" publishers:

The previous episode is about how gambling mechanics are another fixture nowadays, causing a huge spike in children gambling their parents' money away. There has to be someone reading this who still hasn't figured it out: there is nothing cool anymore about big big gaming firms and their big big mega titles, no matter what the horse bollocks can do. They're just like any other corporations.

Wrote a short preface and was hoping for discussion. Please leave comments on the SDA forum. Guest posting is enabled if you don't have a user.

https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/segmented_speedrunning_today.html

Thanks, guys! KennyMan, you pointed out some stuff I should have realized and that seems very reasonable to assume plays a big part in this. I'm going to write a little piece on segmented running on SDA and I'll mention those for sure.

Hi all, just sent this to the GDQ guys but figured why not ESA as well. I'm assuming this isn't already a thing...

I'm writing on behalf of Speed Demos Archive. It seems that an unfortunate side effect of the live events is overshadowing other kinds of speedrunning: there's a tendency for a much greater percentage of runs, at least of those submitted to us, to be done in single-segment compared to segmented or ILs these days. This is probably a direct influence of marathons. Thus I was wondering whether there was a chance to give generic speedrun sites like SDA, but of course also at least Speedrun.com and Speedrunslive.com, shout-outs here and there, with a concise but informative breakdown of what each of them are all about so people at least know they're out there and which site is most likely going to serve their interests.

As a random thought, if you agree that there is no particular reason why segmented runs need to be cast aside, could there be a showcase of new and previously unpublished major segmented speedruns with time allotted to allow someone to pause or slow it down in places to give it a live commentary? I'm sure there are many people out there only interested in this kind of running who currently have no such opportunities.

So obviously the latter would require rescheduling so something to think about in the future maybe?

Speed Demos Archive has posted a reply to clear a few misunderstandings people seemed to have about the site.

https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/sdas_response_to_stuff_that_came_up_in_the_speedrunning_survey.html

Post comments there, not here please.