Colorado, USAHello,
After hearing some feedback from several community members, I wanted to bring up a few potential rule changes that we can discuss if they should be implemented. I'm looking for thoughts from runners who already have times on these boards.
NES Trilogy, Famicom Trilogy and Pentathlon Currently, these categories have a fixed game order. I have had several requests asking to make the game order free like most of the SMAS categories are.
Super Marihour Implement a 30 second penalty-free threshold to switch between games like most of the other categories do. Current runs would be retimed to remove up to 30 seconds between each game. Removing the switch times between games puts more emphasis on the gameplay rather than having an advantage or disadvantage due to your setup. People playing on emulator or hardware using flash carts and AV switchers would definitely have an advantage over someone who has to physically swap cables between three different consoles.
Decathlon This is mostly just my suggestion, but I have thought of suggesting we add some "break time" that can be utilized for these extremely long categories. I don't know what a reasonable amount of time would be, but sitting for 8+ hours and getting penalized for taking a bathroom break or wanting to get up and move around occasionally seems a bit brutal to me.
Let me know your thoughts on these potential changes, as I'd like to have community feedback.
Please click the View Rules button on the leaderboard FIRST before posting questions. Many times, your questions on what's allowed, timing methods and all that good stuff are there.
Threads asking questions that are already answered in the rules will be deleted.
Clicking the View Rules first is good practice for any game you wish to speedrun, not just SMB1.
I have opened registration for my annual SMAS All Four Any% tournament. Details and the bracket can be found here:
https://challonge.com/2021_smas_all_four
If you have any questions, you can contact me directly through messaging or on Discord.
It's that time again! I've opened registration for the 2021 All Four Any% tournament. You can find the bracket and additional information here:
The Switch platform has been added. The Switch version is valid for all of the "All Four" categories. It is not permitted for "All Five" at this time.
You must use the built in "reset game" feature when switching between games. You cannot use any savestate or rewind functions during your run. Not even to switch games.
You may play the games in any order you wish for the "All Four" categories.
As a reminder, runs start when you press start on the title screen of the first game (1P/2P Select for SMB1/SMB3, SMB2 title screen and Mario/Luigi Select for SMB2J (Lost Levels)). Runs and segments end on touching the axe for SMB1 and SMB2J and entering the final door for SMB2USA and SMB3.
Switch version is permitted for the "J Timing" categories ONLY if you have Super Mario Collection (the Japanese version of All-Stars) and those categories have a significantly different set of rules, so please review them if you intend on running those categories.
Here's the bracket. Please read all of the info if you are interested in joining.
Game audio is now required for all submissions. No exceptions. If we can't hear the game audio, your run will be rejected.
Game audio is now required for all submissions. No exceptions. If we can't hear the game audio, your run will be rejected.
The developer of Mesen has implemented a "run-ahead" lag reduction feature on the emulator, which unfortunately leaves us no choice but to remove the emulator from our allowed list effective immediately.
Runs already approved will not be removed. Any future submissions will be rejected and there are no pending runs in the queue.
https://www.mesen.ca/docs/configuration/emulation.html will show you this section:
Run Ahead: Run ahead allows the reduction of input lag by the number of frames specified. CPU requirements increase proportionally with the number of run ahead frames specified.
Run ahead is currently not compatible with movies or netplay - the movies and netplay menus will be disabled if runahead is turned on. Note for speedrunners: Using features such as run ahead to reduce lag typically counts as cheating for the purposes of speed running.
The developer of Mesen has implemented a "run-ahead" lag reduction feature on the emulator, which unfortunately leaves us no choice but to remove the emulator from our allowed list effective immediately.
Runs already approved will not be removed. Any future submissions will be rejected and there are no pending runs in the queue.
https://www.mesen.ca/docs/configuration/emulation.html will show you this section:
Run Ahead: Run ahead allows the reduction of input lag by the number of frames specified. CPU requirements increase proportionally with the number of run ahead frames specified.
Run ahead is currently not compatible with movies or netplay - the movies and netplay menus will be disabled if runahead is turned on. Note for speedrunners: Using features such as run ahead to reduce lag typically counts as cheating for the purposes of speed running.
Here's the bracket. Please read all of the info if you are interested in joining.
We'd like to welcome @Darpey, @eddiecatgaming to the team!
Hello everyone, we are making rather significant changes to the CE leaderboard due to the non-sustainability of the current format and to address the number of complaints the SRC Full Mods have received from runners on this leaderboard. I will explain in further detail about "why" below the changes and possible changes we are making.
Change 1: Moving categories to the main leaderboard
We have decided to move a few categories to the main leaderboard as we believe they are a better fit over there than on this leaderboard. Here are the categories:
- Glitchless
- 2nd Quest
- 2nd Quest Warpless
- Co-op
- Co-op Warpless
I will be submitting these to the SRC admins to move those over for us. I'm told it generally happens pretty quickly, within a few days, but since that's outside our control, we can't give a definitive ETA.
Change 2: Dropping milliseconds from times
We will be dropping millseconds from the times for some categories and implementing thresholds for the others where milliseconds will be used. This leaderboard is not intended to be taken as seriously as the main leaderboard, and as such, does not necessarily warrant framecounting a very high percentage of the runs that are submitted. This is probably the biggest change requested from the other mods and some were rather vocal about it. It's rather painful to go into the queue and see 10, 20, 30 or more 1-1 Fire Mario runs and they all are currently framecounted. We have to download and/or use tools for every single one of these and it drastically slows down the verification process.
Change 3: Onboarding new verifiers
We will be reaching out to some folks in the community to onboard as verifiers for (only) this leaderboard. Several have decided to step down (due to lack of interest) and a few were removed due to a very extended period of time of inactivity.
If you are contacted to become a verifier, please take a little time and think about it first. If you aren't interested or you don't think you'll have enough time to set aside, please decline the invitation. Having the sword next to your name is not meant to be just some free status symbol and you're a part of the "cool kids club." You're expected to contribute.
Change 4: Category Requests
At this time, we will be officially not accepting requests for new categories. We will be locking or deleting that thread. New requests will likely not receive a response and are subject to deletion as it will clutter up the forum. We have 42 categories currently, and that should be more than enough to keep everyone entertained.
Possible change: Migrating categories externally
PLEASE NOTE: This is just a possibility. We are not going to do this, if the rest of the changes above resolve the issues to an acceptable level within the community. If we continue to have issues, we may have to proceed with this, and we already voted on the categories to keep and the ones to migrate. It would remove about half of the categories.
In this scenario, I would download all of the data for each category using the API and put it in a Google Spreadsheet or some other format for interested members of the community to take and manage themselves. There would be no data loss and we would wait for the other party to get everything together before removing from this leaderboard. A deadline would be implemented for submissions, so that the data can be migrated and anything submitted after that date would be rejected.
Once again, this is plan only if it comes to necessity, but I wanted to be transparent about it.
This is all in an effort to strike a balance between the community and the moderators and verifiers. Runners want their runs verified in a reasonably timely manner and mods want the verification process to be more reasonable. I probably sound like a broken record with some of this but I'll say it again.
Please remember that we volunteer our time to the community to manage the leaderboard and verify runs. We aren't paid and we receive nothing in return besides an occasional "thanks." We also have our own obligations and life priorities to take care of as well. Work, school, streaming, etc. Sometimes unexpected or unfortunate things happen in our lives that interfere and that's a possiblity for any mod/verifier, past, present and future.
That being said, mods and verifiers will be subject to removal if they are absent for extended periods of time (several months) or are no longer interested in verifying runs. There's no hard feelings in those situations, but it would free up some spaces to onboard some new folks to help us out.
To start wrapping this up, we're going this route because the previous attempts have not worked. We have gone through 2 or 3 rounds of adding more mods per the request of the community, but yet we're in the same situation once again. So the "just add more mods" has only been effective for a few months each time we've done it, so this is an effort for a more long-term solution (address the underlying issues) in hopes that we aren't right back into this situation in a few months again.
I apologize that this ended up being kind of long, but I felt it was necessary.
Also, yes, we are behind in verifications as many of us were at AGDQ last week, so bear with us on that while we try to get caught up.
Hi everyone, I'm pleased to announce the 2020 Super Mario All-Stars All Four Any% tournament starting in February. Anyone is welcome to join.
Please read the entire information section before joining.
I will start off by saying before you submit an idea, there's a very very high chance it's going to be declined.
Why? Several reasons are possible from the following:
- We already have 42 categories which is already too many in my opinion
- It's a slight variation from an existing category
- It doesn't make logical sense
- Nobody has done runs of it or is interested in doing so
- It has complicated or silly rules (ex. stomp every third goomba) that makes it a pain to both run and verify
- It can only be done on emulator
New ideas need to be unique, and with the amount of categories that we already have, I feel about every feasible idea has been exhausted at this point.
We sometimes give the answer of "you can have your own leaderboard elsewhere" because that's our stance and we're rejecting the submission. I understand folks want a record on here, but if we accepted every idea that has been proposed, we'd probably have somewhere around 200 categories on this board which is absurd. Nobody wants to be a moderator of a nightmare like that. If you want to run some other leaderboard of miscellaneous runs, you are free to do so.
A friendly reminder that this is a Category Extensions (or meme) board. With the exception of possibly 2 or 3 categories, this board is not intended to be taken seriously like the main leaderboard. The categories are meant to be fun, lighthearted and give you a little break from the main categories.
SMB1/SMB2J main leaderboard runs are always given higher priority over runs on this leaderboard because we're the same group of moderators.
Hello everyone. We're happy to announce open registration for the 2019 Warpless Tournament! Registration is open from now until June 2nd at noon EDT. The tournament will offically start on June 3rd. Using the feedback from last year's tournament, we're keeping the format the same with a few minor differences. There will be a prize pool that anyone can pitch in if they wish when that is completely setup. That is by no means a requirement and there's no pressure to do so. Only if you want to.
Please read ALL of the details on the bracket before you join. That's your responsiblity.
If you're intersted in doing commentary for races, let us know and we'll go over that with you.
The process for scheduling races will be a little different this year and we will provide details on that when we have everything we need.
SpeedGaming will be handling most of our restreams again. Please respect their time and efforts by being on time and attentive. Matches not able to be fit into their schedule may be restreamed on the SMB1Community channel.
Your @Admins are: roopert83, Tecate, Xeroxfiend and tjk113 if you have issues or questions.
Here's the bracket: https://smb1.challonge.com/smb1warpless2019
Let's have a fun and successful tournament! :)
Hi, there's a SRC site-wide issue where your submitted runs may not show in pending on your side. I've been seeing a lot of duplicate submissions and I figure this is the reason why. When you do submit your run, we DO see it on our side even if you don't see it on yours.
This is the thread that mentions the issue: https://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/mbiuw
Hopefully they will get this fixed soon, but nothing we can do about it unfortunately.
Please welcome @GTAce99, @xeroxfiend and @ImDangerous20 to the moderation team!
I wanted to take a few minutes and speak about this debacle that has happened over the last several days and maybe a few other things thrown in. Fair warning, this might be long winded.
First and foremost, posting tirades isn't really beneficial to anyone. It doesn't help you, it doesn't help us and it doesn't help anyone else. It's good at increasing toxicity and drama in the community. That's about it. I have plenty of other sources of undesirable drama in my real life. I do not like seeing it here. To be honest, sometimes having to deal with it here makes me wonder if all of this is even worth it for me to stick around.
We don't need performance reports, spreadsheets, screenshots and finger pointing. Especially with incomplete and inaccurate data. We're not employees and we're not sports players. We volunteer our free time for this. We're not paid. We aren't given any proverbial cookies. It's mostly a thankless job and there will never be a situation of where everyone is happy with the decisions that we make. I think some people have a misconception of what this position is and what it entails. To be straight honest with you, in my opinion, I find being a mod kind of a pain in the ass. From the outside, this seems like it seems like verifying runs should be an easy task with minimal time invested. I mean it could be that way. We could just glance at the runs to make sure it exists and just accept it. The queue could be knocked down real quick if we did it that way. However, since we value the integrity of the leaderboards, we do our best to uphold that integrity. Yes, it does take longer to do that. Verifying a 5 minute run takes longer than a 6 or 7 minute run due to the extra work that has to be put into verifying those. Frame counts, Bowser patterns, looking for cheating indicators very closely, asking the other mods to take a second look, etc.
I would like to remind everyone about a fact that we may forget about sometimes. This is a hobby. Nothing more. Nothing less. Everyone uses their leisure time to participate. Whether you're a moderator, runner or even just a viewer, this is a hobby. Nobody is losing money or going hungry or experiencing some major life crisis if their run isn't verified on their timeframe. In the grand scheme of life, it's not really THAT important. I'm trying to not declare bankruptcy or lose my home and vehicle because of a really bad event that happened almost 3 years ago. That's why I've disappeared, I've been working 80 hour weeks to get my life in order. So to me, there's a lot more important things to worry about of actual significance than "when is my run going to get verified?"
That being said, we do understand that many of you don't find the wait times acceptable, we hear you. We have reached out to three people in the community to join the moderation team. All three of them have confirmed interest and have all passed the testing process that we administer to verify competence and verification skills. If they accept, they will be added very soon.
When we reach out to people when we add new mods, we take more into consideration than just an ability to time runs. Maturity, involvement in the community, and your general character all matter. We like people who we believe make good ambassadors to the community and have the skillset to time runs as well. We have enough drama as it is. Someone can be great at timing runs, but if they are generally a jacksass and troll around on the Internet may not be a good fit.
Also, it seems like some people think we're a group of "good ol' boys" who hold our heads high up in the clouds and don't care about the rest of the community. I'm sorry if you feel this way, but I don't really think that's the case. I'll go into lesser known streams, people just starting out and offer support and tips if they desire them. Of course that's when I have time to do so when I have it. I just ask you who think that to take some time and really think about it instead of acting on your own or someone else's knee-jerk reaction.
That's the main part that I want to talk about but I'll touch on a few other subjects.
As you all saw, Pellsson was banned from the Mario Discord server for some comments that he made in the chat. First of all, I feel that we are all grateful for his contributions to creating a practice ROM for the community. I don't think anyone feels any differently on that front. When I found out he was banned, I was a little skeptical myself, I'll be honest about that. Then I saw what was posted, and I understand why now. While there's some debate on whether or not he should have been banned, here's my thoughts. It was the correct decision. Does it suck? Yes it does. However, the rules were very much broken. They did not show any favoritism. I find it a bit hypocritical that people complain that the Mario communities show favoritism, but when favoritism is not shown (in this case) and the correct action was taken, people are complaining that he shouldn't have been banned because he's a big contributor. That's favoritism. You can't have it both ways that suits what you like. I am also a person who tries to avoid favoritism. I like to follow the rules as defined and I don't really care if you're "X popular player."
Pellsson has also deleted his SRC account and deleted his posts according to the audit logs (yes we have those) if you all are wondering about that. Maybe he will come back around at some point, and maybe he won't.
I also want to remind you all that the Mario Discord is ran by the SMB3 folks. Well I am a moderator for the SMB3 board, so I'm like the one lone person sort of in the middle. None of the SMB1 moderators have mod privileges in that Discord, including myself. If anyone has an issue with how things are handled there, you need to take it up with them. We cannot help you.
Adding more categories to the CE (meme) board. We currently have 41 categories on the CE board. I feel that is sufficient. Heck, I personally feel it's too many. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't remove some of the categories, but I don't know how many more good categories could be added. I'm not sure how getting bored with the game and it's stale is an issue with this many categories alongside the main game categories. If you're that bored with it with that many to choose from, it might be time to start working on a new game. Some folks are doing their own unofficial leaderboards for other categories and that's perfectly fine. Y'all do your thing.
I have also noticed some rumblings about people getting their runs verified immediately or at least ahead of others. Now I can't speak with 100% accuracy on this as I don't micromanage things like that, but here's an explanation why. We do go to various people streams and watch them live. If they get a PB and we're already there and know that it's real and already know the time, we can just go ahead and verify the run. We already have the information we need. We may have already timed it. Once it shows up in the queue, there's not really much we need to do about it besides accept it. I have done this as well although I'm not lucky enough to catch people PB that often. Aside from that, when I verify runs, I pick the oldest and go down the line typically. I feel this is how it generally is for the rest of the mod team, but like I said I don't monitor that.
I think that's about all I had on my mind at this time and I'll say one last thing to wrap this up. If you have issues or concerns on how things are done, you can ask us privately or if you bring it up in the forums, try to do so in a calm and thought out manner. We're not some evil government that rules with an iron fist that is waiting to be overthrown by the people with flaming arrows and pitchforks. We aren't perfect and we make mistakes just like anyone else. Just try to be civil and chill out a bit.
This might be cliche, but, "it's just a video game."
If you have an unofficial leaderboard, Discord server or whatever, you can post it here.
Put all of the relevant information in one post. If information needs to be added or changed, edit your post. Don't post another response.
This thread is not intended for conversations and comments. Any of those will be deleted.
Since I'm somewhat back, I'm trying to spend a little time cleaning up the forums when I have a few free minutes of time here and there.
Having an unofficial leaderboard and all that is perfectly fine. Y'all have your fun, I don't really care one way or another and I don't want to make people discouraged or feel looked down upon because they want to run "unofficial" categories. This clogging up the forums with it is getting absurd and out of hand though and it needs to be dealt with.
Please keep discussions of unofficial things outside of the forums. I will likely do some purging of threads within a few days or at the very least, locking them.
As a side note, if you necro the threads with no useful information to warrant pushing it back to the top, I'm deleting your post so that it goes back where it belongs.
