When pianist's current Bowser's Fury PB was cross-posted to r/speedrun, I skimmed through it to check shine counts at each bell as I've been doing for records, as that seems to be the main way time is saved in the run. I noticed something strange, however- I'll copy what I wrote there here.

[quote]I was jumping around through the run to check shine counts at each bell, and noticed the timer freeze at 25:36.66 from 25:58 to 26:31 in the video, where it resumes. So I checked when the timer starts and ends in the run, and it goes from 0:21 to 31:39 in the video for a time of 31:18 (plus or minus a second or two), which adds up with the timer being paused for 33 seconds.[/quote]

I figured that this was something that should be brought up so that the mods were aware of a potential error, or so that the reason why can be explained.

It has recently been discovered that what gadget is being held affects monkey behavior. These effects are fairly small, but have substantial impacts in some notable places, including 3 of the most inconsistent monkeys in the game becoming much more reliable.

1. Dexter's Island, RC Car monkey. Much larger alert with the RC Car equipped. Can catch with water net.
2. Thick Jungle, UFOless. Equip with net and neutral double from very far back. 60-70+% consistent.
3. Dark Ruins fan monkey. Club or Radar are much more reliable than Net, as Net results in a very aggressive pattern.
4. City Park 1st/Specter's Factory RC Car monkeys. Equip the hoop and they run out much more often.
5. Other City Park RC Car monkey. Stand at a distance with the car.
6. Cryptic Relics river monkey. Keep the club equipped as much as possible to increase the odds of close side.
7. Primordial Ooze 100% first visit ending. Jump from the 2nd monkey with the stun club instead of the net.

Additionally, srgtsilent did some testing on Specter with different gadgets as well. Statistical significance is still low, but having the hoop or sling selected appears to give better luck on average than other gadgets.

Letter Quest and its Remaster are functionally the same game for speedrunning, and have been coexisting on the same board for a while. At some point, an additional (poorly managed) leaderboard was added, brought to my attention by Jumpyluff.

The correct board: https://www.speedrun.com/Letter_Quest_Grimms_Journey/ Pretty standard categories.

The duplicate, unnecessary board: https://www.speedrun.com/letter_quest_grimms_journey_remastered The only runs are in "Death%" (a main category?) and "Endless 1k" which is literally making a half decent word in Endless mode and calling it a run. Does not have 100% or NG+ categories.

I was looking into the runs here and noticed that Zen_Aku's game seemed to be running faster than gerudokupo's. So I decided to look into it to see if I was crazy, and if I wasn't, whether it meant a game was running slow or a game was running fast. Here are my findings: https://imgur.com/a/yuuw3oE

As shown, Zen_Aku's game is running faster, and from my own timings (not recorded) gerudokupo's game is running the same speed as mine. This obviously creates a problem where incorrect emulation is granting a sizable advantage- if the 18:38 was running the same speed as the 19:34, it would be roughly 21:00!

The simplest course of action would be to remove the offending runs that have the game running too fast. In the past when the game speed increase has been an accident, however, I've seen run timings adjusted to what they "should" have been to not invalidate them entirely.

For now, this is an academic inquiry as I'm hoping to be able to contact the mod in question. But in case that falls through, I'm wondering what the correct procedure would be for fixing the problems- would I need to request mod privileges myself to fix things? Normally I'd just drop a forum post in the game and ping on Twitter, but the mod has no linked Twitter with Twitch whispers off and a private Steam profile. Compounding the issue, it's a DOS game and I noted that the mods' runs are running 13% faster than default settings (confirmed on several machines and vs. other gameplay footage).

The game(s) are Math Rescue and Word Rescue, because I recently set up DOSbox to play them again and, naturally, ended up going for ILs in Math Rescue as it had an in-game timer. Which took me to the SRcom pages, with runs, and a poorly played time on a level with no tech 1 second faster than possible at default speed.

Assuming I can't get in contact and get mod privileges, what would be the correct etiquette? My thoughts would be to adjust the time on the runs to what the run would have been at normal speed (Word Rescue would add 8 seconds per minute, Math Rescue would add 9 seconds per minute, both timed to the frame on long, straight stretches) with a note similar to what was done for Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and its 62.5 (instead of 60) FPS runs rather than reject. Polishing up the categories and rules are a given.

tl;dr DOS game speedrunning can be a mess, sole "active" mod can't be contacted, has game running too fast (I hesitate to call it cheating as it's likely inadvertent), and only has a single category for Math Rescue due to thinking higher difficulties are impossible (they aren't), wondering about the "correct" course of action.

I see that there's currently only an "any%" category for the game, with no difficulty settings or 100%. I also noticed that the comment on episode 1 said that the higher difficulties don't work, which isn't correct- they just have a slightly different requirement. Anyway, proposed categories (assuming for all 3 episodes but I can't personally say for episodes 2 or 3):

Easy: Requires collecting any 10 numbers to open the door. Medium/Hard: Requires collecting all 20 numbers to open the door. The difference here is in Gruzzle behavior- Hard has them respawn and be "smarter", as well as having less slime available. 100%: Requires collecting all post-level bonuses. This requires not having "Skip problems" selected and collecting the numbers from 0-9 twice, getting all trucks correct, getting all problems correct, collecting all collectibles, and accessing all secret areas. Damage can be taken. Due to the forced math problems, a "100% collection" category that meets all of the above requirements without the math problems would probably be a better category- less RNG from the mid-level problems, no interruptions.

In summary: Any% Easy, Any% Medium/Hard, All Collectibles, and 100% would be the ideal category list for this game.

The Ape Escape speedrunning community has a Discord of its own. It's still a little small due to some historic overlap with other communities, but it's still there.

So, here's the invite: https://discord.gg/8CQxxBT

On the behalf of the AE speedrunning community, we hope to see you in here soon! :)

I have the PS1 version of this game, and the Puzzle Mode has 100 stages there- and they're also completely different than the Arcade version. Can we get a console category?

Pretty much exactly that. Posts are limited per page, so why aren't threads?

The Ape Escape speedrunning community has a Discord of its own. It's still a little small due to some historic overlap with other communities, but it's still there.

So, here's the invite: https://discord.gg/8CQxxBT

On the behalf of the AE speedrunning community, we hope to see you in here soon! :)

Any% and NG+ are pretty obvious, but what is the definition for 100%?

All stars? (120 stars + 40 challenge stars. This is obviously part.) All achievements? (these are tracked by save file) All quests? Shop sold out? Max book levels? (distinct from shops for remastered)

Personally, I would lean towards all stars, achievements and quests, but could see an argument for any of those. It'd be nice to have confirmation before doing a run to make sure my run is valid, or doesn't waste time farming unnecessarily.

Exactly what the title says- I can remove existing icons fine, but when I try to upload a new one (square PNG, with transparency) the site just goes back to the old one.

Am I doing something wrong here, or is it still bugged? I remember having this issue over a year ago...

In addition to just winging it or trying to execute the 402, I've found a few different approaches of handling this level reliably with minimum difficulty.

First up is a 361 from a year ago- there isn't much "one attempt" timing involved here and you can always save the level with careful rams.

Secondly is a 370 from today- a little more of the level is choreographed and it shows a more timing intensive method of dealing with the start and end areas.

Last is a route capable of 376 with all waits and slide delay bits planned out. You can drop moves throughout the long hallway and still make it, but this is definitely more prone to failure. That being said, it's still easy enough that I'd feel confident using it in runs.

It has recently come to our (my) attention that different platforms of running the game have vastly different lag, and this heavily impacts certain time attack routes. In the interest of fair competition, I am proposing the following changes to the time attack section:

1. PS1/PS2 and PS3/Emulator subcategories This has the effect of keeping the laggy versions together and unbanning emulator with its incorrect lag emulation. Emulation would still be at a disadvantage here, and could potentially be split off into its own category. PSTV and Vita would be categorized under 'laggy' and 'lagless' after further testing. Different PS2 models do vary slightly, but this is a matter of frames instead of tenths.

2. Reasoning eednob has obtained several timestops on PS3 beyond what is even possible on PS2. Hot Springs yielded a 2.37 on the third attempt, where the best known PS2 start is 2.38 out of thousands of starts. Dexter's Island was more obscene, quickly getting a 3.52 when the best ever PS2 start is 3.72, a full 0.2 difference. To me, this is too much for the versions to be compared.

However, I do not want this decision to be seen as protecting "my" records, even though this is half true. Let me quote myself from earlier today in the Discord. : [1:43 AM] IHNN: Is it bad that I feel like the fairest thing to do is also the thing that advantages me the most? [1:43 AM] IHNN: (subcat for PS1/PS2 and subcat for PS3/Emu) [1:43 AM] eednob: I don't think we should do that [1:44 AM] eednob: But, I can see how you feel that way [1:44 AM] IHNN: I'm too invested in this to step back and make an actually objective decision [1:44 AM] IHNN: But I still feel like I'd want that split even if I came along with PS3 to beat existing times [1:45 AM] parsoFish: egh it feels so bad splitting official hardware [1:45 AM] IHNN: (would also allow unbanning emu from time attacks- less lag means no problem when compared with even LESS lag) [1:45 AM] parsoFish: if im honest [1:46 AM] IHNN: Like I feel like if it's split it's because I don't want my times getting beaten, which is half true [1:46 AM] IHNN: I don't mind if they're beaten [1:46 AM] IHNN: I just don't want it to be because of hardware putting a worse played time on top/skewing things ... [2:07 AM] eednob: Ps3 isn't really fair

So, I turn the discussion over to the community. What are your thoughts?

Currently, the Expansion and Base Game are split on all full game categories, and merged for all IL categories. This thread is meant to get an idea for if that's how it should be.

I'll start with the easiest- 100% and 100% No Heavenly Requirement have slightly different definitions based on if you're playing the base game or the expansion. These two are staying split no matter what, as the goal changes, not just the route.

Any% and Any% NG+, then, are currently split. But should they be? The difference seems to be the same as for the ILs, where the two are merged. As far as I can tell, the only difference for these categories is that Dry NoLegs, Slime Bunny and Phyrnna are options to use. Does such a small difference warrant a full category split, or just a variable filter to show which runs were on which version?

I believe some ILs are advantaged by using the expansion version, which in turn would give both Any% categories a small overall advantage- but this is still a smaller difference than platform differences in other games.

Personally, especially given the fact that there have been 2 run submitters so far, anything that allows direct comparisons should- so I would be in favor of the any%/NG+ category split being dropped to a variable filter, like with the ILs.

IN SUMMARY: I'm considering moving the base/expansion subcategory for the any% categories into just a filter, depending on other opinions

edit: for anyone looking at this now, I was added as a mod and fixed it up. Assigning the runs correctly was a nightmare, though...

http://www.speedrun.com/bh2/individual_levels Note the 6 times on this page. (also note the categories that should be subcategories with the actual categories as each individual level / entire world)

http://www.speedrun.com/bh2/World_1#Any_No_invincibility Note that now the time is 7:27 instead of 1:14.

http://www.speedrun.com/user/Dawgup/individual_levels It gets worse here- I can't find a link to any of the runs here. Clicking any just brings you to the second link, which only shows 7:27.

I honestly have no clue what's going on with these leaderboards other than they're basically unusable in the current state.

See title- I'm curious to see why people choose certain games.

For me, I was recently gifted Helen's Mysterious Castle. The night after I got it, I was looking for a relatively light, quick RPG to play through- and that looked like it fit the bill. It did, and I enjoyed the game enough to play through it all at once. From there, I looked up if there were any runs of it, and there were 2! Looking through, certain parts of the route seemed improvable, so I started rerouting the game. Finished my first run (of bad ending) just a bit ago, beating the previous record by nearly 3 minutes as a result of these changes.

I'd been looking for an RPG speedrun for a while and this hit all the bullet points I was looking for: ¤ Fun game casually (obviously, I have to like the game) ¤ Good soundtrack (I have to like listening to it) ¤ Low mashing impact (my mashing speed is pretty bad) ¤ Relatively short (so I can fit it in more easily) ¤ High action to downtime ratio (for high interest) ¤ Very few "luck or die" moments (obviously an annoyance- with my route there is one in the first 25% of the run and that's it)

This in particular nails the action to downtime- there are a few moments of cutscene that last about a minute each which serve as nice breathers from the fast running speed to avoid running into wandering enemy encounters. I've only finished one run so far but I can definitely see myself sticking with this game for a while.

tl;dr Helen's Mysterious Castle was a perfect fit for what I was looking for, tell me about why you run the most recent game you picked up. Or the most interesting pick. I just want to hear about the reasoning :)

Loadless timings are currently usually done in one of three ways, all of which can only work in a few specific scenarios.

1. The game is a PC game and has an autosplitter that removes loads by checking memory addresses. Obviously, this won't work for console.
2. A flat conversion is used- say console X takes 5 minutes of loading total, while console Y takes 7. You'd take the final times and subtract the amount of loads by console. This works alright for, say, Crash 4, but loads can vary between models of the same console, or even different playthroughs on the exact same console! This also only works when all runs have the same amount of load screens- some games will have different routes, or mistakes that add a load. (for example, Spyro EtD has a load after a death) Therefore, this method only works for some games, but when it does work, it works well.
3. Runs are timed RTA and then the video of the run is manually gone through to remove loads. This works with very high accuracy on every game, but also takes by far the most effort of these three methods as EVERY run will need to be retimed, as opposed to only timing one or two runs.

None of these solutions are ideal and I've thought about this conundrum a fair amount, and I think I've come up with two possible solutions that essentially automate option 3.

The first of these methods would be a program that takes a video of a run and automatically removes the loads, outputting a new video file with the loads removed. This has a potential issue of removing parts of gameplay that are actually loads, but image matching algorithms could be loaded with "this is a load". I'm envisioning inputting a list of images (or better, videos, but this would make implementation harder) that show what loads are (in the case of images, start and stop points) and having similar frames be removed. This probably wouldn't work too well, but was the first idea I had that showed some potential.

The second method, and the one I believe would actually work for 99% of games, is a cross between methods 1 and 3 above, using the idea behind the universal load remover. This could be an add-on to LiveSplit or a separate running program that just counts how long the run has spent on loads. It would rely on image matching again: I'm envisioning a UI that would allow the user to define a load as: ¤ A start point. This would just be an image file, and the user would be able to specify certain portions of the screen to look at. ¤ An end point. Same as above. ¤ An offset. Many games wouldn't allow finding the exact start or endpoint of a load, but this could be worked around by counting how many frames early or late the comparison frame is, and adding this value to the load time for a given load. For example, in Spyro games level loads start with a fadeout. This can start from anywhere in a level, from entering a portal or pausing and selecting "Exit Level". This fadeout has fixed time, and would be the offset before the consistent animation. ¤ Optionally, a similarity. If the load would look similar to gameplay, the user could specify that it needs to be 95+% similar to count as a match. If the angling can be different, then perhaps only a 30 or 40% match would count. ¤ The same method could potentially be used for universal autosplitting. This could be run either live, comparing to a preview window, or on a finished run, allowing easy retroactive retiming.

There are two main downsides to this idea: the first is the obvious one, that every load would need to be manually configured. However, this would only need to be done once, and it's slightly more work than retiming one run for method 3 above, and the definition of a "load" can be standardized by the community for each load. The other downside is almost as obvious: this hypothetical program would be a fairly complex technical challenge. I'd do it myself, but I don't have the technical know-how. But I have the idea and have been mentally tweaking the specifics of it for a couple years now, just never really shared it. It came up on the Sprash discord today and I figured I should post the idea in case someone wants to try to work on it or refine the idea.

So: any thoughts?

I died in the menuing and completely skipped an attack in the struggle phase of Asriel...or something like that. Not sure if this is known, but it's pretty cool :P

So I checked out his run to see if there were any strategies I might have missed...and was quite surprised to see Rumia taken down over 6 seconds faster! So I looked a little further, first to see if my game was lagging, but then I noticed that his game was running at 62.50 FPS instead of the usual 60.

Running some numbers, his game is running a little over 4% faster than mine. 2:01 Rumia vs. 2:07 is 121 seconds vs. 127, but 121¤62.5 (7562 frames) vs. 127¤60 (7620 frames). This is without taking into account decimals, variances in split timing, or any potential improvements, but it still shows that for every minute of gameplay, he gains 2.5 seconds. That's...kind of an unacceptable disparity. There's three options here:

1. Force 60 FPS. This is the easiest and best option. Alternatively, if he can't get the game to run at 60 FPS, a framerate adjustment could be done (20:31 = 1,231 seconds, 1,231 seconds ¤ 62.5 frames per second = 76,937 frames, and 76,937 frames at 60 per second = ~1,282.3 seconds, which is 51 additional seconds. 20:31 + 0:51 = 21:22).
2. Allow any framerate. This is a bad call since the vpatch can set the framerate to literally anything: I would grind out a 120 FPS clear, and that would be unassailable without also clearing at 120 FPS, or close to it.
3. Leave the boards as is. This is also a fairly bad call since so much of the game autoscrolls for free timesave just by running the game incorrectly.

These sorts of framerate decisions would likely end up applying to every game, so choose wisely (hint: option 1 with faster runs disallowed is the easiest for moderation, option 1 with the adjustment is the easiest for the players, options 2 and 3 are both very flawed)