It requires a good amount of expertise at the game to finish it in ~1 hour. This is definitely not pathetic. Good job on the run.

By the way, my PB is just under 1h, at about 58 minutes (which was my goal so I am probably not trying to improve it)

E: and I should add, that it took me several hundred hours to get to the point where I can beat the game in less than an hour, so yes, its definitely an accomplishment and you can be proud of your time.

as long as the actual run is done on the unmodified version of the game, it would be valid, yes.

However, if you are running on a modified version, you are effectively playing a different game.

yeah, it seems to treat rare items differently. My guess would be that there is several "slots", essentially one per enemy or so for a "regular" item. And then, on top of that, there is a chance, that a "rare" items drops on that stage, that is likely independent of the actual enemies on that stage (e.g. Moonstruck Horrors never drops twice on a stage even if it has several enemies).

The problem with re-specing after "eating" an item is, that that doesn't reset your piercing and resist stats. So it would only work if you were to eat something like, say, an icy katana that doesn't have either of those stats. But yes, in that case it would definitely be an option to "re-validate" the run.

About NMG. While I am personally a fan of this category, there has yet to be found an interesting "non-major" glitch in Sonny. Sonny 2 has some AI-breaking stuff with entering fights solo but I haven't seen this happen in Sonny 1 so far, so I don't know ... "NMG" would not be quite fitting as a name I'd say :D

But yeah, generell the way I see it that perfoming a glitch should not invalidate a run when it 1. was clearly perfomed accidentally AND 2. doesn't benefit the run in any way. In some cases like "accidentally deleting an Item which frees up inventory space that you would have to clean up anyways" could theoretically be adjusted with, say, a one-second penalty to adjust the "accidental time safe"

I finally found the motivation to time a few things in Sonny that I wanted to time for a long time. And then I decided to put them into a little video (although some of those were already known - but I decided to put them in anyways for completeness):

Suggestions, discussion, etc. are more then welcome :p

So, after getting destroyed 30 times in a row I finally managed to pull off a 27:17 today ^-^ ... still not fully satisfied with the run so I will probably not upload it yet (really want at least sub 27 xD)

anyways ... while rewatching the video, I noticed, that I somehow managed to delete one of my items during a menu (that menu was a total disaster, I somehow even managed to open the options afterwards instead of saving, lol ... luckily I didn't somehow still have an item under the cursor because that would have been RIP run xD)

so this is the moment, where it happened. I afterwards recreated that "glitch" (which I believe to be the exact same oversight that also makes it possible to wear Veradux' armor) and it turns out that it doesn't affect your stats because the overwritten item is not equipped to anyone ... on the contrary, it actually ended up hurting me, because I hat to re-buy that armor for Baron (just to realize that I didn't even need it because it was the wrong survivor's item for my setup, lol)

But that made me wonder ... Sonny is a game where NOT activating glitches can be a challenge in itself sometimes. How do you feel about situations like these where someone accidentally triggers something that can theoretically be considered a glitch but it doesn't actually benefit them?

okay, I am going to necro-doublepost my own thread now because (I can) I really don't feel like creating a new one with the exact same topic as another thread that is still on the front page. :p

Disclaimer: I am surrently routing out any% glitchless and managed to sneak in quite a few improvements to the route, so there is a hance, a new run will be submitted to that category in the not too far future ...

...what is the EXACT start and end of the run? I mean, "triggering the last cute scene", as pretty as it might sound, isn't all that accurate and when I eventually submit my run (which might or might not happen depending on whether I can endure the neverending agony that is speedrunning Sonny 1) I want to provide the most accurate time possible for that submission, because accurate start- & endpoints are important for proper run verification and management.

So, once again, I want to give my suggestions for those; down to the frame

any% categories:

• Timing starts on the first "black" frame after confirming the options (this frame is part of the run)
• Timing ends on the first frame, the "congratulations" screen is visible (this frame is NOT part of the run)

pretty straightforward, I'd say. Both of those events occur instantly and are as such ideal for timing purposes. Also, those are already the points that are used in current runs. Easy :)

now, for 100% categories: Start of time is obviously the same as for the any% categories. However, I can see two possible endpoints for 100% runs:

1. on the first fully "black" frame during the screen-fadeout after the Sinjid fight
2. on the first frame, the post-battle screen of that fight is fully visible (in both cases, that frame is NOT part of the run)

Unfortunately, there is no clear cutoff-point after the Sinjid fight. However, I already mentioned in my old post, that I think it's important to move endpoint of the run towards the post-battle screen as even after all enemies are defeated, there is still a few things that can happen before the fight actually ends: Your team mates, if you brought any, can use abilities on your team, you can take damage-over-time, etc. I'd say, off the two, 2. should be easier to check when re-timing a run (somethingsomethingvideosanddarkcolors) so that would be my suggestion here.

By the way, sorry if this comes over as "pseudo-modding" from my part but I believe, that exact specifications for start and end of a run are important enough to warrant a bit of such pseudo-modding, because if we assume, that there will be runs in the future, chances are that we will eventually have two runs with almost the same time (to give an example: one of my Sonny 2 test runs a few years ago was 6 frames behind my PB)

well, generally it is the way that projectile attacks (like magic bolt and electro bolt) are slightly faster than melee attacks as it skips the move-towards-the-enemy as well as the move-back-home parts. What's REALLY fast though are guaranteed-hit attacks as they hit instantly and don't shoot a projectile. Unfortunately, there is no such attack available for sonny in this game (unlike in sonny 2, where ... withdrawal is a thing).

But okay, let me try to summarize what I remember about time-saves and time-wastes regarding animations:

• as mentioned, melee attacks are slightly slower than ranged attacks

• whenever a unit receives either damage or healing over time, a damage popup occurs that takes roughly one second. Multiple effects on the same unit don't waste additional time as they are calculated against each other. This is actually much more important to keep in mind than one might think for the glitchless category. Basically, using stuff like wound loses one second per turn, UNLESS that enemy has already been poisoned by veradux: in that case, using wound doesn't lose time (because the enemy already gets the over-time popup anyway - can make for some interesting on-the-fly decisions in glitchless, not so much in any%)

• I actually never tested if focus regeneration or autosave lose any time. Might be worth timing that.

• another consideration is, that menuing is quite slow in this game. So it would probably be a good idea to figure out, how many items we need to "eat" in order to get certain ohkos and how long that takes. But then again, it's very hard to say that without knowing the exakt damage (and crit) formula and with the amount of randomness regarding item drops, meh ...

Pokemon Red/Blue (and all Generation 1 cartridge games basically). You basically wrongwarp from your house to the hall of fame. Run done. It's stupid (and hilarious to watch when the game starts glitching out) :D https://www.speedrun.com/pkmnredblue/run/y2dxj3jz

I've already done some experimenting with that and I agree that we should probably split the training between both zones. I believe, doing one training fight early in zone 2 also helps you with 1 or 2 fights but I don't recall the exact details. Plus, it doesn't actually affect your final level where you do the training. The question will be, what is the perfect distribution for training?

E: I had a quick look at my old notes and they say that you should do one training fight after stage 11 (the assassin) because doing it before assassin would mean that you do enough damage to force him into shadow blend (which you want to avoid). Now, I didn't do that much optimization so I don't know whether one fight is the right number but I am relatively sure that after stage 11 is the best time to do the training.

E2: okay, I was thinking about the any% glitchless route now but it shouldn't be much different for any% either because I don't think you will be able to eat so much stuff that you can oneshot the assassin - but okay, I am not tooo familiar with that route (because I don't like any% all that much).

I have to say, I do like the idea of that. So for IL (or generally shorter) categories, the following would come to my mind:

• beat zone X individually
• beat zone 1+2 (because it's an achievement)
• beate zone 6+7 (so basically "heroic postgame")

I'd say, during preperation of the run, no training may be used. Whether, whether not and which teammates are used, is up to the player. During preperation, it is obviously allowed to reset for items, it is allowed to respec in advance (for the bonus stats you get when respeccing the first time). And all the inventory/shop/etc. management stuff is obviously also allowed during preperation.

So, the category that I consider the most promising here, would be "beat zone 6+7". I have been interested in doing/routing this for some time and I already tried a few things with psychological. But the reason, why I never started seriously routing this is, because it would involve playing through heroic competitively and I don't think I WANT to do that (insert blood hound flashbacks here).

Of course, before those can become categories, the rules have to be discussed and geninune interest to actually run those categories should exist (and to be honest, while discussing that, we could also get rid of some of the existing categories that nobody uses). But yeah, zone runs in general definitely sound interesting - maybe not all zones, but expecially zone 6+7 is something I would personally like to runy myself someday.

Oh ... and yes, the amount of gold is always the same when not factoring in selling stuff.

whats also nice, using flashpoint actually downloads the games onto your system which means you also have them safe in case something haoppens to flashpoint. Other than that, there are still other applications that can execute flash (WinAmp is one of them actually, kek)

What I dislike most of the wording is that it doesn't state, if and if yes, what you are allowed to load during a run. My strong reccomendation is to more or less adopt the ruleset from the sonny 2 leaderboard, namely this part:

"The entire run must be completed in a way that can be done from a "clean file". As such, using/loading save files, that have been created before the start of the run is banned. Creating several save files during the same run is allowed.

Performing out-of-game actions such as editing or deleting save files during the run is banned."

This means, you are only allowed to load files that are either "clean files" or that you created DURING the run. That would make the setup itself already part of the run (and as such, the timer would start upon creation of the setup file, not of the actual run file). I believe that would already be enough to solve the issue. Fun fact, even with that rule, the run would still be legit but as the setup would now be part of it it would actually be slower than the current record by several minutes.

Other than that, I am more or less fine with breaking the game in half because thats basically the point of any% (glitched) and the game also has a glitchless category ... that is, as long as it doesn't take away pretty much everything the game has (shoutouts to pokemon red/blue save corruption runs that finish in less than a minute)

I also agree that the wording for whats required to end the run is pretty vague (and I also like the typo). Considering that the "congratulations" screen is where all the runners have split I would say its a good Idea to say that that screen is the end of the run. A positive side effect is that this also prevents you from skipping paladin fight which makes some potential "omni skips" impossible.

But yea, definitely a huge thanks to you for breaking this series apart ^-^

E: other than that, this run definitely opens up the possibility for a "new game +" category but the question is ... would this category be any fun in the first place? I am not so sure about that ... xD

New category is created. I simply moved Mooles's run to a new category and changed the old any% into the new NMG, because its less work that way.

I handled it the way that I simply banned any interaction with the PvP arena. I think, that should take care of everything that would be considered "major" glitch for now. If not, please let me know so that I can come up with a better ruleset :p

Also I've done some routing for NMG and was able to get some improvements to both time and safety. Will probably try and go for the sub 40 when I find motivation to actually RUN the route, lol

Alright, I think, if there are no objections, I will just add a, let's call it "draft" for a NMG category to the leaderboard. For now, I believe, it will be enough to simply ban access to the PvP arena as all the "game-breaking" stuff appears to be related to that. This way, no runs have to be invalidated or moved to a category they don't really fit in. Regarding AI manipulation, I don't think it needs to be banned for the time being as the only fight we currently "break" with it is baron by making him attack himself. But when you consider, that even without that, you would still have to wait for him basically destroying himself, it doesn't even make that much of a difference, lol. So I would say, breaking the game by a "moderate" amount is okay.

Of course, as MoolesMun already mentioned, we will have to evaluate future glitches case-by-case but I don't see this as a bad thing if it allows us to create a category that is genuinely fun to run and watch.

Oh .. what about the other categories? I know, they are empty, but to be honest, I think, they should be considered "NMG" categories as well. Because I don't see any reason why we should have a category that intentionally has harder fights just to then skip them anyways...

oh right, I totally forgot ... there is also baron fight.

In that regard I want to be honest ... I really don't like baron glitchless because its slow, kind of an autoscroller and you can definitely die in that fight. So basically, no major glitches could allow messing with the AI by entering fights alone and stuff like destroying items faster but bans the truly gamebreaking stuff that skips chapters.

Well, should be self-explanatory. Considering, there is a glitch that basically allows you to skip the game, the difference between any% and any% glitchless should definitely be enough to justify them to be separate categories.

There is one little problem that needs to be addressed though before that split can be done. More specifically, there is one "minor glitch" that I used in my run, which is, deleting Items by "dragging" them out of the inventory and then entering the next fight. As this IS technically a glitch, it should thus not be allowed by definition of a glitchless category.

But then again, that glitch hardly affects anything and its only purpose is to (maybe?) safe a few seconds, so invalidating that run for that sole reason seems a bit extreme as well.

So that leaves us with two options for the new category.

1. we call it "any% glitchless" and I have to make a new run (which is fine because I want to pick up this game again anyways and push for the sub 40)

2. we call it "any% no major glitches" and allow that inventory glitch thing - this way, none of the runs have to be invalidated.

I personally would rather go with the first solution because its "cleaner" but both would be fine to me.

regarding Dux' AI. I am almost 100% positive that it's an if clause. Based on what's standing on the wiki, it appears, that the game distinguishes between "defensive" moves and, well .. "non-defensive" moves I guess. Then, for every AI-controlled unit in the game, there are 2 percentage-HP-thresholds. If the current percentage health of a potential target for a defensive ability is below the first threshold but above the second one, there is a 50% base chance that the AI chooses a defensive ability (so basically a coin flip). If the HP percentage is below both thresholds, there is a 100% base chance that the AI chooses a defensive ability.

I say "base" chance because for enemies there appears to be a modified that varies from stage to stage that also influences the odds of using a defensive ability. For most stages with one opponent (but for some multi-foe stages as well) that modifier is 100% or 1 but for most stages with more than opponent it is below 1, thus reducing the chance for defensive abilities. When it comes to the players party, I assume that that multiplier is either 1 or isn't used at all. But then again, there are also a few AI bugs (which might also be the reason why dux sometimes simply refuses to heal?). Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anything about Dux's HP-threshold values (should be 3 sets, one for each stance).

Besides that, the game apparently creates a set of "possible skills" and randomly chooses one of them. I assume that the game first rolls whether the ability is "defensive" or not and then randomly chooses one ability within that set that is not on cooldown. The target is probably determined after move selection with defensive abilities always being used on the target with the lowest percentage(?) health (or sometimes on the user due to a strange bug) while for non-defensive abilities, the AI has a unit-dependent chance to automatically target the foe with the lowest absolute effective health (health + shield strength). Otherwise, a target is picked at random. But then again, this is mostly based on Wiki-stuff and observation, so it's not 100% guaranteed to work exactly like this.

Back to RNG manip, what you said pretty much sums up my assumption. Yet again, I lack the technical knowledge to actually do RNG research myself but for Sonny, there is a high chance, that there won't be many ways to actually manipulate the RNG in a reliable fashion.

That means, back to grinding for any% glitchless I guess ... well, once I find the time for it.

That's definitely unfortunate. I was actually looking forward to see the strategy you are using but well, guess it can't be helped and it is more than understandable that you don't want to run Legend% by regular means, because it perhaps one of the most frustrating categories on speedrun.com.

But to sum it up.

The glitch (let's call it "PvP save corruption" because that's pretty much what it is) allows you to essentially "skip" any stage you want as well as class-"merging". However, two limitations apply.

1. you won't get the legend achievement if you use the glitch
2. you can no longer beat the game if you skip mayor (because it registers the fight as "done" without actually doing it thus rendering the congratulations screen inaccessible)

Well, considering these two factors I will make a (temporary?) ruling. At least not, until someone finds a route, that would turn the run into an uncompetetive category, which appears not to be the case for now.

Thus, PvP save corruption is allowed for now.

I played around a little with that class "merging" glitch and it seems that we have a little problem:

Apparently it IS actually possible to skip the entire game with that glitch, even without the need to erase save files. All you have to do is to have an existing save game and at least one empty save slot, you go to the PvP Arena, select the existing file as Player one and the empty one as player two, performing the glitch as usual. But after that, you can also create the new save file over an existing one and the glitch STILL works.

Moreover, it appears that it actually IS possible to skip bosses. If you reached the final fight of a stage and then perform the glitch, the game puts you back on the map you have been before. However, it becomes possible to access the next zone via the world map.

Considering this, I see three possibilities:

• allow the glitch and accept, that any% might become "stage 1 simulator".
• ban the glitch and forfeit the possibility to do cool things with class-merging
• make a more complex ruling, but that again would appear too arbitrary for my liking.

I think, there is no better solution than to ban this glitch, even though I really don't like to.

Edit: come to think of it ... I don't know if you can actually get to the "congratulations" screen this way. If not, it might not be neccesary to ban the glitch. I will test that now and see what happens.

Edit2: Okay, so you can't get to the congratulations screen by using that glitch, so you have to at least fight the mayor. I'm afraid, this is still too game-breaking though as all you have to do is to make sure, that you are able to win that fight (shock combo anyone?) and then you can basically skip the entire rest (except for cutscene only stages which also give you a nice chunk of experience).