We are planning to do a full Discussion of all rules for Diablo 2 speedrunning. The goal is to find a baseline of rules which most speedrunners are happy with. This however also means that some of you might not be happy with the end result.

I am assuming that it will be necessary to make polls for certain topics. Those will only be open for speedrunners.

The rule discussion will take place at the following times: 30 May 2020 at 6 PM CEST 30 May 2020 at 9 AM PDT 30 May 2020 at 12 PM EDT 31 May 2020 at 2AM AEST

Countdown Link: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20200530T18&p0=973&font=cursive&csz=1

https://discord.gg/hvXWUGh

In this discord I will manually give the role of speedrunner to anyone who has a completed run on this game.

I hope you will be available on that date and time - If not, we will not finalize decisions at that point - We want to give every speedrunner the opportunity to take part in potential votes.

For Benders issue we would have to ban tcp/ip resets again. Which obviously makes all the jail map farmers unhappy.

In the end there will be no way to accomadate all the wishes.

I will create a discord for a rule discussion date. Because I feel like we are at a point where we need to think about a hard reset and archive all the existing runs into a "legacy" place and starting from scratch. With a rule set that is discussed and decided up on by the community. And I think we need a proper discussion with polls on like every rule line for that. In this discussion we should talk about pretty much every starting parameter like "-ns" and stuff and come up with solutions that the majority of runners should vote on.

In the end. I am sick of having to discuss rules because of something every other week because someone started to abuse something that wasn't clarified well enough. I know we might lose some people by doing this aswell. But I think it is necessary to get on the same page for everyone and stick to that rule set for at least a couple of YEARS.

We have a script that will allow you to: use 2 timers in your layout 1 for the "real time" with load screens 1 for the "no load screens" time

the no load screens removes:

• All loading screens (Startting a char, Selecting a char, switching acts, tcp/ip loadscreen)
• Also the time between "click on save & quit" and the menu showing up -> while in the menu the timer runs again!

It is an easy set up of around 30 seconds or something like that and will be included in livesplit without any update on the program

My favourite suggestion is the following:

Banning -NS as a starting parameter and Add a second column for the no-loading time method

Then you can choose which you want to pick as your sorting method

So... I have discussed this matter a little bit further with some people and came to following conclusions:

-ns has the goal to reduce the loading times as much as possible (almost to a point of removing them) Therefor it would make sense to have a method to make no loading times a reality...

However this suggestion poses 1 fundamental issue: If we display both the currently used timing method of RTA in one column and the new "no loadingtimes" method in a second column this will lead to the following problem: "Do I care about no loading times" -> then I use the timing method for that "Do I care about the RTA times" -> then I have to use -ns in order to be competitive

In conclusion that means the community has to make a decission on wether or not they want to be forced into using -ns to be competitive or using the no loading screen method in the future.

The No loading screen method has the obvious advantage of making the game more playable and watchable over the "forced into -ns" method.

However the big downside is: How do we deal with all the existing runs that all have the RTA method - Do we do a hard reset for everyone (basically retireing the existing runs) or do we check all of the PBs for their loading times - which is a huge amount of work that none of our mods can reliable be expected to do!

I don't think any one person can really decide this - I suggest an over all discussion stream on one of the upcoming Saturday evenings.

Addition: It looks like there is a way to implement this into Livesplit: https://github.com/LiveSplit/LiveSplit/blob/master/Documentation/Auto-Splitters.md

Just to keep this in mind.

Long term the submissions will lead into a set of seeds being published. This is the reason for the user defined submission requirement in those categories.

The link to the map generation thing is something that is being done in MrLlamaSC's discord iirc.

I highly doubt that finding a "Jail map" will be the optimal way of doing things in a seeded run.

Personally I am not a fan of -ns. Just because it looses a lot of the game for me. But if you want to use it... Feel free to. I would probably only use it to remove the loading times from Jail runs.

If you guys as a community want to do an overall talk about the rules. I would be happy to do so. There is however the big issue as to - When, where and who would parcipate? Also... Managing such an event probably isn't very easy. B)

I would prefere to make this game have no loading times in the times (or making it 2 subcategories once again) over -ns. That makes the verification process pretty tough though. Imo that would require 2 seperate splits where 1 is doing RTA and 1 is doing no load times. And even then it will require a super reliable tool to make this happen. And thinking about it there are probably a lot of issues to deal with.

Having said all this. I am in the middle of my finals for my traineeship - So I don't have much time to organize a "Let's talk rules event". Especially early to mid of June.

Well... included the rules for glide wrapper: A lot of people need to use it in order to even play the game. As far as I know it is even a by blizzard tollerated "mod".

for reset macro / script: Yes, scripting in speedrunning is a problem if they are used DURING the actual run - not while resetting. It really saves some time, if you do hours up on hours of resets. Even then it is not a huge thing.

for mouse capture: I don't see how you even could enforce this. - Even if stated in the rules it is literally impossible to prove that someone is using such tools. (also yes they are technically a third party program which are forbidden)

In the end speedrunning always will have the aspect of "trust".

you guys are just looking for loop holes at this point right? If someone really wants to write a 20 pages rule book that nobody will read - go ahead...

Reset-Script / macro are fine for resetting.

I don't see what your issue is - It saves maybe 20 minutes per 4-5 hour stream - And only if you go for a specific town exit.

Also: For a lot of ppl the game is not playable without glide wrapper. And - How do you prove that someone is using a mouse capturing program? We don't have time to watch every run and put our eyes to scan mode in order to see if the mouse might have left the window if such a program is not used.

Alright - since there are no further comments on the cached maps - "Deal with it" is the option we are going with.

The categories have been added and should work fine with your submissions now.

Looks like you are right - i thought it does effect a lot more then those 2 areas

but durance alone can be a pain ^^ memorizing that seems really annoying <.<

So... I guess that most ppl are interested in it being with -seed active...

You guys got any thoughts on how to deal with the cached maps in a hell run? options:

• Deal with it
• Remove map file from the save folder
• Remove -seed before starting nightmare

thats true...

in the end I am still gonna enjoy -seed inactive otherwhise it will come down to wp hopping to manipulate shrines or find that one gg map that has and xp shrine in cold plains and then hopp into jail

with -seed inactive you at least can use any seed that has the correct layout with monster spawn.

After playing around a little bit with the -seed active:

Looks like the drops get somewhat randomized after a certain amount of distance from the waypoint at least. e.g.: Countess dropped me different Runes on 20 runs in a row (always walking the same approach route inside of her tower lvl 5

Also the boss groups on the way changed quite a few times.

For all the Jail lvling lowers: IF you have -seed active the amount of champ spawns you get in the location will be fix from the waypoint. The only way to change the amount of champs would be to click on a different waypoint first. This means if your seed has a 2 champ spawn when you go to jail lvl 1 instantly it might be a 4 champ spawn from another waypoint

This, in my opinion is one more reason for the -seed command to be inactive

For those who want to check that out themselves - here is the DEC seed: 1977424993

I think it should be either of the 2 options I dislike -seed active - but i will do some testing on how this would effect things

I am not sure how interesting this would be for px and p8 runners. We probably could do both options (active -seed and inactive -seed) if we dont include px and p8 in those categories...

As mentioned a couple of times already: The goal is not to replace the currently available categories. Those will remain the main categories. We are planning to add them as new Main categories next to them.

First draft:

Rules:

1. The Character has to be created with the -seed ####### starting parameter active.
2. Everyone is free to find their own map seed to use.
3. The starting parameter has to stay active
4. Timer starts on first movement.
5. Changing the seed is not allowed

Submission Rules: a ) The Seed number has to be shared in its DECIMAL form.

Reason for the rules:

1. This is the point of the category
2. We don't want to force you into using a specific map seed.
3. looks like ppl want to have it active
4. Since the char creation process is a bit lengthy it makes no sense to make that the starting point of the run.

a ) Helping the verification process and giving people the chance to compete on your map.

Hello everyone,

after having a lengthy discussion on my stream yesterday I think it is necessary to add a way to redurce the grind that the top runners are forced into to compete by some of the currently evolving strategies.

For this reason we are willing to add new Main Categories for "seeded maps".

What does this mean? Generally speaking: Every map that is being played has a "seed number" attached to it. Using the starting parameter "-seed xxxxxxxx" (x being the seed number) you can force your game to use this map seed on every new character that is being created.

Pros:

• You can play your Map over and over again untill you are happy with the result.
• You can share your seed with others to compete with them on the same map.
• You can try out the seed of others - They may be better?
• Removes the Grind for a random Map. (This is especially important for Streamers, which most of the Runners are)
• Runners can "practice" their strategies in this category to get prepared for the unseeded category. -> Increasing the skill lvl in later portions of the game.

Problems:

• The RNG gets really wanky if you play with an active -seed parameter in your game.
• How can we figure out the Seed number? -> I know that third party programs like Maphacks and the Hero Editor are capable of doing so. But is there a way that is more convenient? -> A simple Program that only shows the Seed on screen is needed.
• With an active -seed parameter, a lot of things go crazy in Nightmare and Hell.

It has been a long time since I have played around with -seed. I did that back when I was doing my 100% segmented speedrun. I am sure there might be a number of problems that I am not aware of.

For this reason I would like to open this Thread for discussion on these topics. In Post 2 I will post a list of Rules that are open for discussion.

you can submit a run at any time there just might be some ironing out errors made during the fix