Minnesota, USAI know I'm far from the first person to say it, but in hopes that site staff see it, I'm adding my voice to the criticism about ads, because this is honestly ridiculous. I understand wanting to place ads on a free website. I can deal with a banner ad or two, but the amount of ads right now is absurd. I'm just gonna avoid going to the site if this is what I'm greeted with every time. I'm not asking you to remove ads entirely because I know that won't happen, but please just tone it down.
I am currently in the process of learning Any%, but noticed the "All Modern Stages" and "All Classic Stages" categories. I was wondering if there would be any interest creating a new category that combines the two. I already plan to run something akin to this as practice for Any% (regardless of if this category is actually added or not). I realize this would essentially be Any% without the bosses, minibosses, and missions, but I believe that makes a significant difference. This category would be more digestible than Any%, may be more enjoyable for some runners, and I think it would have the potential to bring in new runners and do well at marathons, especially if given legitimacy by being added to the leaderboards. Let me know what y'all think.
Elo/SRC staff, y'all need to do something about comments, like, yesterday. Spam is one thing, but this has also created a big opportunity for relatively unmoderated harassment, and the fact that images and videos can be embedded means people are posting straight up NSFW stuff.
The only way we can moderate this is by:
- Actually looking at it in the first place, which is an issue for larger communities who can't possibly keep tabs on the comments of every single run (not to mention that we're volunteer moderators who have actual lives outside of this, and we shouldn't be expected to consistently subject ourselves to whatever we may find in these comments).
- Deleting and reporting the comment, in which case the commenter in question can just post again until someone finally reviews the report and takes appropriate action.
As I'm sure you're aware, there are quite a few minors on this website, who may now be unwittingly subjected to... 18+ content, potentially in the comments of their own run(s). Shut this down ASAP, and give us an option to disable comments for our runs and the games that we moderate, as well as the ability to ban users from commenting. Personally, I'm not sure automatically embedding images/videos is a great idea either. Alternatively, just remove comments entirely; this is a disaster.
Edit: Wait, apparently the commenter has the power to restore their deleted comments? Yeah, this is a complete and utter failure. Do something about it, now. People are leaving the site because of this, and I think it may be a legal issue as well.
Edit 2: I have direct confirmation that Elo staff are aware of this, especially the legal issue bit. Here's hoping changes are made quickly.
I was viewing the leaderboards and noticed that there isn't a variable for digital or physical game version. Given the large difference in load times, it seems like a useful thing to add. This variable would allow people to better gauge a player's skill level (which would be particularly helpful for marathon organizers like myself), and, of course, allow runners to more easily compare their times with those on the same version of the game.
Last night, I had a really silly idea. Play through all the co-op events by myself. It's possible, and I plan to do runs of it soon, so I added it as a miscellaneous category on our leaderboards.
More misc. categories will likely be added in the future, including Subspace Emissary Debug% (abusing debug mode in Subspace to play as Sonic, Giga Bowser, etc), and a category just for the Great Maze (because I've had requests for that).
That's all. Hope you enjoy the new categories!
To eliminate the advantage that emulators and USB loaders provide due to faster loading times, the Boss Battles category will now be tracked with the in-game time instead of RTA. There are a few runs on the leaderboard without videos, so I couldn't get in-game times for them; those will remain on the leaderboard for archive purposes, but will automatically be last place (assuming I can do this; if not, I'll remove them).
However, in-game time does not keep track of the room between boss fights. Getting hearts to heal obviously takes time, so you must add four seconds to your time for every heart you get in your run.
The Boss Battles leaderboards may look a bit off as I implement this change. If you see anything wrong in the next few hours, feel free to say something, but chances are that I'm still working on things. I'll post a reply here when I'm done, too.
A similar change may come to All-Star soon, especially if it becomes more active.
As for the other rule, any and all top 3 runs must have a video along with their submission, unless said run would be last place in the category. If it's the first-ever run for a category, a video is still required. This has basically been an unwritten rule for a few months, so I figured I'd make it official.
As always, I appreciate your feedback, support, and cooperation! Don't hesitate to contact me (preferably on Discord) if you have any questions or concerns.
I had a request to switch the timing method for Boss Battles from real time to in-game time, and this applies to All-Star as well. Because All-Star and Boss-Battles already keep track of in-game time, it would be very easy to switch for those categories.
Doing this would remove the advantage that USB loaders and emulators have due to their faster load times, making the leaderboards more fair. Currently, due to how optimized Boss Battles (and possibly All-Star) is, it's necessary to run on emulator to compete for the world record. Changing to in-game time would fix this.
There are two issues with this, however: First is getting hearts to heal between levels. Obviously, this takes time, but in-game time is paused during these transitions. A proposed solution is to simply add four seconds per heart, and top runs pick up very few hearts, if any, to begin with. The second issue is that some runs on the leaderboard don't have videos, so it's impossible to find in-game time for those. I would like to keep these runs on the leaderboard, but put them in last place, as they wouldn't have an in-game time listed.
I was going to do this for Classic as well, but the timer for Classic counts down for each individual level, meaning that runners would have to find their times for each level and add them together, which I think is very tedious. However, I am open to splitting the leaderboards for Classic into console and emulator categories. With how optimized Classic is, this might be necessary.
I wanted to run these changes by the community before implementing them, so let me know what you think, both about switching to in-game time for All-Star and Boss Battles, and splitting the leaderboards into console and emulator categories for Classic.
EDIT: USB loaders are counted as emulators.
Tomorrow (Sunday, March 4th) at around 6:00 PM central time (subject to change), Shadrake, Swanner, and I are doing an All Events race for MidWinter SpeedSprinter, a speedrunning marathon raising money for Maria Soria, whose son is currently fighting leukemia. We are currently the top three runners in this category, so it should be an entertaining race, and it's for a good cause. After the race, Shadrake is running Subspace Emissary!
The run isn't till tomorrow evening, but the marathon is in progress right now, and has raised $490 as of this post. You can watch at http://twitch.tv/midwestspeedfest, look at the schedule at https://horaro.org/speedsprinter/schedule, and donate at https://www.speedrun.com/MidWinter_SpeedSprinter . Keep an eye on the schedule to see exactly when the All Events race and Subspace Emissary speedrun will be.
For those of you who don't know, we have a Smash speedrunning Discord, featuring 64, Melee, Brawl, Sm4sh, and, of course, PM. It's a great place to hang out with other speedrunners and discuss strategies, share PBs, and whatever else you might want to do. I'm also very active in it, so if you need to ask me a question or suggest something, this Discord works much better than a forum post.
Invite: https://discord.gg/EK4RZMG
Well, that didn't work. The problem with using the in-game timer is that some characters' times are combined. As in, it takes the lowest time for one character and counts it as the best time for multiple characters. This happens with Sheik/Zelda, Samus/ZSS, Lucario/Mewtwo, Roy/Marth, and Charizard/Ivysaur/Squirtle. Oh well, I tried.
This means we'll have to go back to timing runs normally. Emulators and USB loaders will not be banned, but do not compare the times. Thanks for your cooperation.
Thanks to CountGooby for bringing this issue to my attention.
I was looking through the level leaderboard, and I noticed that both Sonic and Snake are not listed. Can this be fixed? Is there a specific reason for this?
