Just gonna dump this here - this is an old doc of stuff I put together when Summoning Salt was making his S2 WR progression video. Covers off the early history as best I can:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n_aEYctGcStjYcseQPZAmOR8UQCqplroWIxcFmDPu78/edit

First two changes have been implemented to the 3DB leaderboards. Kickasspancakes and I will work on adding the RTA times to the Sonic 1 and 2 leaderboards in the coming days.

So having come back onto the mod team for these games there's a couple of loose ends that I intend to tie up in the leaderboards themselves. From least controversial to most controversial, they are as follows:

1. 3DB - Change end time to be on fade out of PP3/Final Fight The difference between the final hit and the fadeout of these two stages is exactly 360 frames, according to Kyd who made the recent TAS. This therefore requires no labour to retime apart from going in and adding six seconds to everyone's times. The logic for making the change is essentially that the game isn't over until the screen fades out, as noted by the in game time in that final stage itself. (It's also easier to split, which is less important.) It created weird issues with manual IGT for console runners where that stage's time wasn't being counted at all until it was added manually at the end. On balance, especially if IGT is being kept as a supplementary piece of data on the leaderboards, it makes sense to have the IGT in the final stage be accurate to what the game actually displays.

2. 3DB - Separate any% runs by platform Somewhat contradictory to the previous point, but since real time is the preferred timing method for the game, in the interest of fairness you can't have Saturn (or PC) runs on the same board. It's still worth having IGT as a point of comparison, but it has its own timing and verification issues (especially in the event of there being a death in a run) and it doesn't make a lot of sense to rely on it entirely.

3. Sonic 1 and 2 - Add RTA-TB as, at least, a secondary timing method This is the one that is likely to cause the most conjecture, as it has come up several times and not a lot has been done about it. In the interest of full disclosure, here's a (non-exhaustive) list of pros and cons I came up with for preferring RTA-TB for timing these games: Pros: Accurately times stages to units less than a second, changes pausing from a "free" way to line up tricks to a process to be optimised Cons: Unfair on old runs performed to existing rules, introduces mild randomness with the capsules, potential differences in lag between emulator and console

I've already talked a lot about the pros when we changed S3&K over, so to consider the cons for these games in turn:

• Unfair on old runs - This is never a good excuse not to make a change. If the change is for the better overall, the longer you wait to make it, the more runs are affected, the harder it is to make the change, the more inertia there is against it. Rinse and repeat. I'll be collecting data on how this would change the order of existing runs, if at all, over the next day or two.
• Mild randomness with capsules - Annoying, yes, but less than a second between various runs, according to research by Zurggriff. Much less than the potential variance between runs due to not counting fractions of a second.
• Lag differences - This is not completely well understood yet but BenInSweden has been working on it. It appears that pretty much every other release of the games, including the Steam version, has less lag than playing on an original Genesis, which makes the case for IGT stronger. This is largely why I'm not proposing making RTA-TB the primary method right now, but I'd like to have more points of data to make an informed decision from.

Interesting you say that, because level select -does- screw up the pause buffering - if you use either B or C to activate the spindash, those buttons progress the game while paused, so the spindash will be held too long (and A risks soft reset). It's much easier just to practice it from a save file. Interesting you found a way around it though!

I think we now have enough hard data to say that no emeralds and all emeralds for Sonic are pretty close in potential, and therefore that whichever method you choose should be considered just a matter of preference and be on the same board. (Incidentally, you also bring up the valid point that the rules need to be clarified around when timing ends if the boards are merged.) For Tails and Knuckles getting the emeralds is clearly faster due to lack of Egg Reverie and that's why they've been on one board for a long time.

As for how this would play out on the Plus leaderboards, it isn't up to me but if I had to guess: Encore has longer emerald stages where it may not be worthwhile getting them, for Ray there's conjecture over whether they are faster and for Mighty there's conjecture over whether anyone will care.

Hey I'm really sorry about this! I've been travelling the last few weeks and have only just got home as of yesterday, so I'm spending today catching up on things. That run is now verified.

As for being a mod though, not a blight on you at all but I'm going to say no for now, if for no other reason than even if you do continue to improve most communities consider self-verifying your runs bad form. The good news is now I know to keep an eye on this board. :>

You can now submit to a dedicated All Emeralds board, in both Sonic and S+T categories. To do so, change the "Run Type" under the time from "Beat the game" to "All Emeralds".

All Emeralds runs that were previously on the Sonic and S+T charts have been retimed and moved across. All Emeralds runs end at the last hit on Egg Reverie.

Happy running!

I think what we were waiting for in general was to find out whether All Emeralds would actually be -faster- with the special stage trick. While that's still a live discussion I think we'll keep the charts merged, but if it becomes clear that it won't be faster it will make sense to split them up. This might also differ per character, Tails in particular is more likely to be faster with all emeralds because he doesn't play the extra boss.

Glitchless with this game has always had real problems, and I don't think there's a solution that would properly satisfy everyone (I have glitchless runs that I've done with my own definition, but others contest using the space above the screen, as just one example), but I think it's important to note that there's nothing to stop you submitting a glitchless run to the existing leaderboard. You can still set a time under your own conditions and submit it and we'll be happy to have it (none more so than me, who is constantly bemused by the lack of attention this game gets).

As for all emeralds, that's just a case of lack of demand. The best way to make a case for there being a leaderboard for all emeralds is to do some runs yourself and see just how far you can push it - and ideally, get others involved too.

As of now the timing has been changed over for this game (as well as 8-bit Sonic 1). This has actually affected the leaderboard for Knuckles, I was two seconds ahead of HDL by in-game time but now I'm three seconds behind.

When you go to submit a run there is now "time" and "in-game time" options. The "time" parameter is the one that will count. If you don't want to calculate the run without the time bonuses, just put your RTA time in here (from file select to fade to white) and one of the verifiers will take care of it. You can also submit an IGT but it's no longer necessary.

S3&K has been timed using the game's timer for as long as I have run it, but recently it hasn't sat well with me that (in particular) the act of hitting the signpost to try and collect a particular item on the act 1 boss map doesn't cost any time. To that end, I came up with a new timing system, which I've explained my detailed thoughts on here: http://pastebin.com/P71hmybW

Additionally I've polled the Sonic community at large to see what they think, and it appears the preference is for this change to be made, but only for this game: see https://www.strawpoll.me/10743592 and https://www.strawpoll.me/10743594 . (Feel free to add your voices to those polls if you're familiar with the game!)

Now probably my biggest question is, if I were to revamp the leaderboard in this way: how should I list the times? It's not strictly real-time and nor is it game time. The closest speedrun.com offers is "time without loads" which is heavily misleading, unless I can change it to "time without bonuses" or whatever it would need to be.

Thoughts?

My understanding is that Original mode sufficiently replicates the original game that it can be used, but I've never played it so that's not definitive.