United StatesI'm going to copy my exact comments from the last layout change with respect to subcategories, as the majority of issues with them have not been fixed and in fact have only been made worse. Small credit where it's due, the extremely longstanding bug with the wrong category being selected on submitting to a subcategory has been fixed, and top level categories all show, but...
As mentioned in multiple forum threads, the change to how large amounts of categories are displayed is a huge step back for leaderboard usability. I'll be using 2 boards as my examples, the Witness Randomizer, and Ape Escape category extensions. https://www.speedrun.com/the_witness_randomizer https://www.speedrun.com/aece
To start, The Witness Randomizer is structured so that there are different randomizers as the main categories, and then specific types of run as subcategories. This is the only sensible way to structure it for comparisons, and there are 4 subcategories for each. There's plenty of space to display 4+ subcategories, and yet for some reason all of them are hidden behind a tiny drop-down. This is a problem- perhaps some games are better served by this, but having an override to "show all categories" in multiple rows would be a huge improvement. Or dynamically show as many as possible- in any case, this is top level important information that should not be hidden.
Ape Escape category extensions is even worse- again, it's divided by game and then category within a game, and it's very hard to sort through what categories are even there. The information should be visible. Make it visible.
My only other complaint is another longstanding decision - in the mod hub, it's probably better to show the date of the oldest submitted run for a game, rather than the most recent.
External tools also include things like puzzle solvers - generally, as long as you're doing the solving yourself, the inputs yourself, and not modifying the game beyond the randomizer, it's fair game to use.
So for instance if you wanted to keep a set of physical shapes near you to assist with shape puzzles, that's legal.
Also, AutoHotKey is specifically disallowed for macro/automation purposes. If you use it for a key rebind (one to one) then that would also be okay.
I came here to report the same issue - it seems tied to games that use the in-game time field, as I recently had a game added that only uses in-game time and there are 2 problems. The first is that obsolete runs always show on my profile, and the second is that all runs of the game are shown as "first" on a profile. Everything works as you'd expect on the leaderboard, just not profiles.
The infinite jump is pretty easy to perform in this game, so learning a category with or without it is probably pretty similar in difficulty. I would personally recommend any% over all monkeys as a starting point, but there really isn't a bad choice to start with. Here's some pros and cons from someone who's done them all:
Any% - shortest category, best resources specific to it, no really annoying monkeys necessary, boss luck has a huge impact on final time All monkeys - route is slightly fragile (getting an incorrect monkey on the wrong visit can cost a ton of time), some monkeys are very luck dependent or require knowing how their AI works to catch efficiently Any% no IJ - no really annoying monkeys necessary, run has to platform through most of the platforming gauntlets in the game, lots of unique ways to use the level design and terrain to skip places early All monkeys no IJ - few/no good resources/reference runs, everything from All monkeys and the no IJ changes
Personally I find the movement in no IJ extremely satisfying, especially for any%, but find that the routes for all monkeys categories are more interesting with IJ. In the end, though, there's still no bad choice. Give whatever you want a try and switch if it doesn't click.
Category and subcategory displays are still very bad for any game with more than 5-6 categories or any game that has 4+ subcategories. Again, please go back to displaying all of them in multiple rows, dynamically determine how many to show based on text (with 4, there's often room to show them all this is just terrible usability), or better yet give leaderboard mods the option to show all or have the paging on categories.
I kind of like how the information in the right column is accessible, but it definitely doesn't need to always be accessible. That's a perfect example of something that could be shown or hidden with an arrow button to show/hide it, as an improvement to both the original layout (easier to access) and the current layout (less wasted space).
Subcategories absolutely should not be under a drop-down menu- the way they were (listed as categories in a line below the categories) was significantly better. Hiding categories behind a drop-down at all hides them and generally makes the leaderboards much harder to use. This affects any game that has two or more axes that warrant separate categories, such as platform splits, version splits, categories in general, and so on. The rest of the changes are either unnecessary but fine, or a welcome addition I think, but the subcategory change is a gross mishandling of the system.
See this leaderboard for an example of what I'm talking about- there are categories for different groups, and subcategories for different categories. With the update, only one is visible.
A decent amount of games have their meme categories on the main boards, and another decent amount of games have serious, competitive categories with slightly arbitrary goals under misc., so even that correction doesn't solve the proposed issue. Even if you tried to limit things to just any% or 100%, it still falls short as some games have their main any% named something like "any% no S+Q" and their 100% "120 star" or "117%".
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.
Short answer: no Slightly less short answer: There are 149 levels in the game- I agree it's a bit daunting but that's just how the game is.
Long answer: Chip's Challenge already has shorter runs in getting the best times on individual levels, tracked here: https://scores.bitbusters.club/ Speedrun categories generally should beat or complete the game they're for and so any partial completion category has to have a very compelling reason to exist. 1-10 is the lesson levels, Nuts and Bolts and Brushfire and would be reasonable to get a set of perfect times along the way. 1-25 includes Blobnet at 23, which is arguably the hardest level to complete which would absolutely deter people. And so on for any other partial categories.
Additionally, both the MS and Lynx rulesets are also playable for free via Tile World, with the community levelsets freely available.
My thoughts on some categories: given how fast any% is, any category that involves getting somewhere and then finishing the game would almost definitely involve the any% setup to finish- essentially putting two runs in a row- and so I don't think it would be a particularly interesting category. That doesn't make the non-any% part a bad idea to me, however- I just think that it would be better served as a miscellaneous category that doesn't need to finish the game. The swamp island and leaving the map in all directions would fall under this, I think.
For categories other than any%/low%/100%, I think the way to go would be: Any% no major skips (follow the natural progression of archipelagos to reach the end of the game) All Exhibits (beat the game with reading all exhibits) All Friends (beat the game with all friends, might be too similar to 100%, depending on how the routing shakes out) And I think that probably covers the range of meaningful categories. All coffee/popcorn/benches might be good as well?
Going to second the problem with the recent date field change. I think that it's probably reasonable to require a date for current/future submissions (though I think that mods should still be able to add dateless runs), but not showing any run without a date on the leaderboards, when there are many legacy runs without dates for many games, is a pretty major bug.
As for how this would interact with leaderboard snapshots (show runs at or before X date) a run with an unknown date could just be assumed to be too recent. I suspect the bug is from treating Date: Current as "show all runs at or before today's date" when it should just show all runs.
Wait, why is skipping 1-1 with data from a previous save not NG+? I've played other games with cases of data not clearing properly (Spyro 2 with the infinite fireball powerup being possible to get onto a new file, Super Mario 63 can also use a deleted save to skip a boss) and neither of these are allowed in their respective non-NG+ categories.
Put another way- NG+ is anything you can't do from a fresh save. It just so happens that this game has a stronger NG+ in replaying levels on a finished save, but using data from a deleted save is still using data from another save and so NG+, yes?
Also, resetting medals during the run to get their rewards again is brilliant.
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.
- Dexter's Island, RC Car monkey. Much larger alert with the RC Car equipped. Can catch with water net.
- Thick Jungle, UFOless. Equip with net and neutral double from very far back. 60-70+% consistent.
- Dark Ruins fan monkey. Club or Radar are much more reliable than Net, as Net results in a very aggressive pattern.
- City Park 1st/Specter's Factory RC Car monkeys. Equip the hoop and they run out much more often.
- Other City Park RC Car monkey. Stand at a distance with the car.
- Cryptic Relics river monkey. Keep the club equipped as much as possible to increase the odds of close side.
- 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.
As a general rule, loading a save made during a run is fair game unless the category uses in-game time, as reloading the save would result in gameplay not counted on the timing method.
Some categories may specify no save and quit or similar, which would also disallow loading a save.
Having played both games a fair amount (I've gotten excellent IL times on every level in both, and have the current top overall score on the remaster with more than double the next closest), the only real differences are:
- Enemies aren't static images (no difference in terms of gameplay as attacks take the same amount of time in both)
- Remastered has an endless mode (no difference for a speedrun)
The gameplay is 100% identical between the two- the only potential speedrun difference would be in an "all achievements" run. And the thing about that is achievements are tied to Steam account and not built-in save files, and so to verify such a run you would need a fresh account (or to achievement manager them away).
For the actual categories that have been run, everything is 100% comparable.
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.
You put down the platform you played the game on. So playing a PS1 game on a PS2 means the platform is PS2. Backwards compatible PS3 or VC there would be PS3 (or PSN, depending on the setup), and you'd only put PS1 (emu) if you played on an emulator, such as epsxe.
It has to be a supermod to add further mods- I have Dawgup on Steam, though, so I can potentially ping him to do something.
Invincibility: This is already a misc. subcategory. It's kind of moot for any% (can't afford it), so I'll probably adjust the subcategories so that it doesn't apply to any%. (edit: this is easier said than done, I'd actually need to quadruplicate the information and then set it as a filter for any% and a subcategory for the others)
100% no heavenly requirements wasn't added by me, but I cleaned it up significantly after it was added (listing the unobtainable medals, etc.). I can agree that for 100%, the difficulty modifier doesn't really matter and I think with how it's currently set up, setting it to filter is trivial.
Base game/expansion can't actually be distinguished by Web/PC, as the web version has the expansion if you pay on Kongregate. Dawgup (who didn't have the expansion at the time) was heavily against comparing across that barrier and I'm not the biggest fan that base game is disadvantaged there- moreso for NG+. Then again, other leaderboards have bigger differences compared directly. I'll need to think on this.
Heavenly runs can't be shown under unrestricted unless they're submitted under unrestricted as well, though this is something that can be done. Drawback of the site.
Here are my thoughts on the categories and why they are the way they are: Any% | Any% NG+ | 100% Base Game | Expansion These 2 groups pretty much need to be the main categories and subcategory- though Base and Expansion are comparable for the most part, 100% has some sizable differences and the lack of Dry NoLegs hurts NG+.
Unrestricted | Heavenly Difficulty has a large impact on the runs difficulty (duh). This matters more for ILs (where each difficulty is tracked separately- I think this is a good thing for ILs) though, so I wouldn't be opposed to removing this as a subcategory and placing the difficulty as part of the category itself- Any% and Any% Heavenly. Or perhaps just making it a filter instead, though that would put Heavenly runs at a large disadvantage relative to Normal, when directly compared.
No Cheats | Cheats | Invincibility This one seemed to matter quite a bit at the time, but now I'm less sure. See- at the time, Handicaps weren't known to actually make the run faster, so it seemed as though it was "base settings" | "any settings" | "seriously any settings" to accommodate a dodging run, a more resource management run with hoping for good powerup drops, and optimizing speedkills with invincibility. Now, it's a little different and I'm not sure what's best. My thought is that both base settings and cheat/handicap laden settings would be the way to go, but this would place the just handicapped runs (mostly in ILs) into a weird place of being suboptimal under the new paradigm. Maybe it could be adjusted to a filter instead of a subcategory?
Single Player | Multiplayer This is awkward to have placed, I will fully admit that. But as each side can't really be compared, either single player only or the way it currently is on this subcategory- and there have been multiplayer runs submitted.
Overall, categories for this game are a mess for 2 reasons: there are a lot of variables that can change the game, and the SRcom interface is poor for this sort of scenario.
Rules were vague because the site interface didn't actually let you place rules in by subcategory when I "fixed" the board a while back after being granted mod privileges. (Crow, TPB and grumpy are series mods, not sure on Dawgup, who had originally set up the boards with no rules, ILs as a filter so different levels were compared, and no 100% category because no one would do it) Now that it's been brought up, I've added additional clarifications and rules by subcategory.
Sorry for letting the runs sit for a week, by the way- I've been really busy the past couple weeks with IRL stuff, but most of it has settled down now.
