Welcome to the gaiden

There's currently no flashcart specific rules, other than the obvious things you can't do on console(in other words don't use savestates in your submitted run).

Other than that, the only exception is if a glitch/bug occurs that lets you beat the game faster. A handful of runners have at times gotten the game to skip parts of the game(an example is the jaquio skip, where it loads the 3rd final bossfight in the 2nd's room).

^ these are very rare; we don't know how they work nor have confirmation that they're possible on the original cart. If you were to finish a PB with that, it would likely fall under the "That's highly impressive, but not allowed" category. Again, very rare and generally not a concern. :)

hey sorry for the late reply. I just got all notifications from quite a while suddenly in one go it seems.

Yeah, this is doable. I mostly didn't add it since I don't know the special ending :P

As a person of some of those non-existent communities I do agree that simply having a board doesn't give you a community on that game directly. What you're missing is the meta community(which I do admit may not necessarily need a leaderboard?). There's some communities that are more based around finding and doing interesting runs than them being a community centered around one run. I've been shocked several times by people who'd tell me they knew me from some obscure run I did years ago. Just because there's not many runners doesn't mean no one's seeing the leaderboard.

One notable example from me is picoban, a random sokoban style game that I literally thought no one on earth cared about, but somehow my run has nearly 3k views. No one's ever told me they've watched that run, but I get to know that people have seen it. Communities aren't always loud and in your face.

A bigger example of the above is the 'NES community' where there's a lot of games with less than 10 runners, but tons and tons of NES runners will still know those games and the runners. Again, a meta community is present there.

And while I do agree that a community growing around a game may not always happen, I also think you're downplaying the effects that a game's leaderboard can have. Marathon organizers, multi-game races organizers and sometimes even developers themselves will look on speedrun.com for a certain game. Having a leaderboard with just one run is often enough for them to gather: game length, lack of runners and whether there's something interesting to be done there

Heck there's literally the Obscure Speedruns Club that explicity looks at speedrun leaderboards to check how many runners there are and only accept games with max 15 runners over the board.

Besides all that, I do want to mention that if you took those final words from secks as aggressive, maybe consider that that's exactly what the rules themselves said. I got pretty upset when I saw that line and I definitely don't think that throwing it back at you guys is that aggressive. I run some games where the devs have said people told them it looked like a 2 week dev cycle, while they had worked on it for 2 years. To me this rule just comes across as a recurring pattern from the site(I don't remember people in particular) to look down on games for little reason.

To bring this to an end, I do think the needing optimization for speedrunning rule is a bit weird. A big part of speedrunning is finding new strats and glitches. There's some games that got brought down by several minutes just by finding something new or just one new person running the game making the discovery. I imagine you guys have certain type of games in mind, but the rule as it is now doesn't appear to me like something anyone, including speedrun.com moderators, can accurately judge any game on.

I have no idea how they work, so I'm adding ClassicOne as a mod because looking at his speedrun history he does seem trustworthy.

This way at least one mod knows what's up

I'm not one of the mods, but looking at all emulated runs on here I noticed they all use FCEUX.

I don't think that's necessarily a required emulator, though. There's a bunch of NES emulators and on my previous laptop FCEUX just happened to run terrible, so I played my own games with Nestopia. Nowadays I'm playing games with Mesen.

Here's a few things to think about in an emulator:

• Does the emulator run well on your computer while recording(FCEUX/Mesen/Others ran awful once I started recording on my previous device).

• Does it show input? Not necessary, but usually highly appreciated. Nestopia didn't have this, so I switched to Mesen now.

• Being able to show a frame count. This one's usually only for popular games and when you're going for WRs.

• Is the emu somewhat accurate? FCEUX is pretty low on this, but it still runs fine for most people, so obviously this isn't a requirement. As long as it plays correctly(no emu specific things that a console player can't do).

No emulator will be exactly like playing it on console, but I think with the above you have pretty good coverage with what could be considered a speedrun friendly emulator. Assuming you don't use L+R, turbo, etc. any emulator is likely fine, but if it doesn't run well, I suggest you pick another one instead of suffer through massive lag, skipping, etc. :P

The ones I saw when I opened it in a browser with no plugins ¯_(ツ)_/¯

(btw not seeing the ads means we don't even see that privacy policy :P )

Hey, I guess a follow up to this thread by @ViruseReturns https://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/kkewi

Currently on https://www.speedrun.com/legal it just talks about the copyrights of uploaded content and content that's linked to.

This effectively means the entire website is not GDPR compliant, even if only on the basis of a lack of transparency on the usage or duration of keeping each user's data.

According to the regulation, this applies to personal data, in particular if a person can be referenced by an identifier. Both usernames and emails are examples of identifiers.

Looking through the site, I can't find any mention of what happens to someone's data if they use the site. The ads are served by Wikia, which has their own privacy policy and settings, but I do not believe those apply to speedrun.com's data, especially in regards to a user's account.

8 months and no real improvements on this front ¯_(ツ)_/¯

In case you haven't seen it, here's the trailer for UFO 50, a collection of 50 NES inspired games by Mossmouth Games(developers behind Spelunky).

The reason I'm mentioning this is at 1:00. It's ..and the mooncats! But with a different look, so possibly different stages/physics/etc.

But yeah, since it's not just the dev of mooncats working on it, but the actual game being in it, I figured I'd make a forum thread too. Hype

I usually make the first person to beat my PB in a game the 2nd mod, but in this case maybe figured I'd ask first if someone wants to be a mod :P

Also, should I add milliseconds to the timings?

I imagine the mods could just add Switch as a platform, but in case they don't, you could add it under NESClassic, since that's using the same emulator and I don't think Ninja Gaiden is one of those games that was changed for Online features.

Sorry for the late reply, yeah, I added both a new subcategory for the HD version, even though I'm not sure if it differs too much? and I added the 100% category.

I've also added you as a mod, since it's better to have someone around who knows the HD version :P

Yeah, just reject it. Exceptions shouldn't be the way to move forward, if there's something wrong with the rules, that should be discussed in said game's forums. That's not on you to set up, however, that's on this other runner to provide good argumentation to change them.

"All I had to do was record a bit longer" and "I'm the only runner doing this category" are not good arguments.

Yeah, after some thought I do agree that it's perhaps idealistic to assume less threats will come up. Also agree with that it's not truly hurting anyone.

I just don't think "not notable" is ever the reason of rejection, though. A game being trivial, or low quality certainly can come into play, but lack of notability isn't even being used to reject games, so I feel it's somewhat the most dishonest of all the reasons mentioned.

See, from my point of view, you're not even disagreeing with me.

"I get the point of the "not notable" reason.." "..But there's plenty of games who don't fit any of those three and will pass.." "..So "not notable" is not the reason other games get rejected.." "..Even something like "Nah, this looks like a silly run" is better than "this game isn't notable"."

^ this isn't something any of you are disagreeing with.

"speedgame was rejected because the game is terrible/can't really be ran fast" - @Komrade AKA "Not notable" is not the reason. "I'm making a judgment call this game is trash and doesn't meet the subjective quality threshold" let's not pretend there's some kind of objective standard barometer for quality of a speedgame" - @6oliath AKA "Not notable" is not the reason.

My point isn't to discuss the meaning of "notable", it's to outright say it's not even close, in any way or shape, to the reason a game is being rejected. I get WHY it's used(I even give an example and mention the terrible/irrelevant flashgames line), but that has nothing to do with "notability".

In fact, @6oliath pretty much agrees with me, because the entirety of half his reply is about how it doesn't mean "not notable" but rather just "Nah" or "this doesn't mean the quality we've chosen..".

Most of the topic you guys seem to try to be fighting against, is another topic entirely, which is what @CardsOfTheHeart brought up, about whether quality of a game (at least as a speedrun) should matter. And that is a topic that can always continue, but I think all of you are so far not disagreeing with me.

So let me repeat my point in a different way: I'm fine with mods saying "Nah, game's not good enough for the site", but again, that has NOTHING to do with a game being notable or not. So simply stop using the word, and we can partially bury that discussion.

Yeah, and to be fair, I think "No, this isn't good enough" would be better. It comes off as more honest. "Not notable" just comes off as silly.

I get the point of the "not notable" reason, but unless a game is tied to a movie/show, big franchise or became a big hit, you can probably guess that it's not notable. But there's plenty of games who don't fit any of those three and will pass. Games that very few people have heard of will pass. So "not notable" is not the reason other games get rejected, otherwise the mods are being contradictory. Even something like "Nah, this looks like a silly run" is better than "this game isn't notable".

Example: I never requested a leaderboard for this indie game called On Tario, because it just seemed silly.

Is the game notable? Well I've never played another game where you progress through the story by just moving some buildings up and down, so a rather notable feature. Do I think it's good enough for a leaderboard? No. The game can be argued to be notable, but even if it isn't, that's not the real reason I didn't request a leaderboard for it. (At the time I didn't even know that "not notable" was a reason to reject games here)

tl;dr: just ask what makes a game notable/deserving of a leaderboard on the request page and be done with it

Here's a screenshot of the page when you request a new game:

Notice how it doesn't mention the word notable or notability and I highlighted the "Not accepting.." "..trivial flash games" line. Even when you pick single game and scroll down it won't mention it.

Apparently no one's willing to give a definition of what notable is(I can tell you, most of the games accepted even after the rules change aren't what I'd ever consider "notable"). That's fine, for the same reason people have different thoughts on what's "good music".

"explain why the game is notable" - @NihilistComedyHour at https://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/p4s90

Just add this to the request page and you might just motivate people enough to do this, before they learn that they should have somehow known to check the forums to learn about this being a relatively new requirement. Like everyone else naturally does, of course :)

Yeah I see where you're coming from.

It's just that with a lot of games that I play, I just can't really tell when they're "notable". It's surprising when I see one game not make the cut, but others that don't seem "better" get a pass. It makes me wonder whether the next slew of games I run are worth requesting a board for, and to be quite honest, the answer seems to be "You can't know, until you try.", which is sadly a bit disheartening.

Thank you for answering, though, I hope you guys can sort it out. I imagine it's not a happy situation for either side.

Not entirely. I submit them expecting them to be approved, but I am aware that I don't always get that right. There's been a few times when I'd submit a game and saw it got rejected for being too short, so I don't submit games that are under a minute length anymore.

But "notable" is so subjective, that I generally don't know when it applies or not. I don't know what makes one game "notable" if it's not a big game. Games like Legend of Xenia I didn't think where very notable(seemed like just a LoZ clone to me), but I immediately got a few runners, including the developers joining it.

My problem here isn't that I don't think these are not worthy of submitting, I see them all as fit. I just don't see what made you say "Ah, this platformer is just not notable. There is nothing here worthy of speedrun.com" when you saw LDA and then later looked at Frog King and said "Ah, this is perfect for the site."

I'm not asking this to get you to accept this leaderboard, but rather to help me not waste anyone's time in the future. I will keep running a bunch of indie games, I already have a bunch I had practiced and I don't mind not requesting their leaderboard, but on the flipside I won't know when to actually request any leaderboard at all.

EDIT: I do agree that as a topic, the idea is the same as that thread, except I felt it got too derailed by the time I made this one.

We're not talking about adding rules to all games on the site(I do admit I thought that was what this was about initially when I read "global rules"), this is more about moderators getting a way to show that a rule applies to every category in a game, without needing to copypaste it all over.

Did you see the link that @Timmiluvs put in his reply to you? Here's a screenshot if you're lazy:

Those "GLOBAL RULES" and "EMULATOR RULES" are put in every single category for that game, it's redundant. I don't blame the mods of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, it's just that the site currently has no way of doing this. If you want a rule to apply on every category, this is currently the only way.

Again, this has nothing to do with adding some rule to every leaderboard on the site or "some crappy flash games" or whatever. It's a problem more relevant to larger games with various categories anyways.

Yeah I've had this with a few of my games. An example being https://www.speedrun.com/The_Lair where:

"Timing starts when you've selected the difficulty and get control of the character.

Timing ends on final hit on the boss."

appears in every category's description, the only variation is "Must be played on X difficulty" which is on the nose, but I figured I'd add it. I've also seen PICO-8 games like it having the rule "Put it in Web if played in browser, PC if played on the PICO-8" and redundantly put them in each category. A "this rule fits every category in this game" rule does seem seem like a nice addition.