It took me about 200 wins to go from beginner to TGP.

MONKAS

Aerlien found a way to get to the Orphanage with Claire out of bounds from the library, hes streaming it at the moment https://www.twitch.tv/aerlien

IMO, OoB / No OoB should be in the category extensions while NG / NG+ should be on the main boards. Almost everyone seems dead set against doing runs with OoB skips, whereas plenty of people have expressed interest in NG+. Just my observation though.

The previous rules for NG+ said "any difficulty" so I did my runs on assisted, which now has no place on the board because it's Standard / Hardcore only? 😐️

With how much the boards are in flux, maybe it's best to hold off on speed running at the moment until the dust settles and the rules are known.

Glitchless wouldn't be an accurate name because of the presence of minor glitches like animation canceling on stairs. "No Major Glitches" also isn't entirely accurate because high FPS knifing isn't really all that major, stair animation canceling saves more time over the entire length of the run.

Personally, I'm a fan of breaking games and seeing the absolute fastest strategies possible, so I'd be doing any% runs but I don't see any problem with having separate categories for people who want to run a more limited ruleset that they prefer.

I didn't even realize Falcon wasn't the best rank for Normal, LOL.

I see your point Lucky_Rapidflower, However, the consensus in the community is usually against bifurcating the boards into categories unless there is popular demand for it. This was the case with the Emulator category that only came to be after several people expressed interest in it. So I think this will follow the same path, ie, be implemented when and if there's enough critical mass to justify it. If you want to advocate that other people should run best rank outside of Extreme, you can make the case on the MGSR discord, we're usually up to debating things like this.

Personally, I am concerned with speed only and don't really care about ranks, so I don't see myself doing rank runs, but I'd be interested in watching them for sure.

You need to find a strong weapon, usually on floors 15 and later to be able to beat the final bosses. You can beat the final bosses by constantly guard breaking them and attacking.

Each floor has a "fairy fountain" that can heal you to full HP and restore your weapons durability.

Floor 16 and 17 have potion rooms that have 2 Hi Potions and 2 X Potions respectively.

So Quest Mode runs are VASTLY different based on which category you are running. The most popular, and possibly the easiest to learn, is Hard Mode with Koji.

There are too many little things to put in a single post but I will outline some of the major stuff. We have a discord for Ehrgeiz and other Dream Factory games, and we'd be happy to get on voice and guide you through a run or answer questions that way. Here's the link: https://discord.gg/TRHp8Q

The most important tip is to always hug the walls in every room. This prevents the shutter traps from triggering and locking you in. Only move off the walls to pick up items. We barely level up our character and don't want to waste precious resources fighting random enemies.

There are two pumpkin rooms, one of floor 5, and another on floor 12. These are full of the pumpkin food item, which gives a lot of stamina. We always look for these rooms, and cram our inventory full of pumpkins so we don't starve on our way down.

You want to pick up any potions you find on the way, and always have potions equipped to your satchel. Potions in your satchel will automatically be used if you take damage that reduces your HP to zero.

You can "guard break" by pressing L1 when you are guarding with R1, this stuns enemies. Use it to get away from difficult situations, but this uses up some of your Stamina. We also use guard breaks to knock enemies on the ground and jump over them by pressing L1, especially when you are trapped in a narrow hallway and need to escape.

Ooh I like the idea of different character submissions not obsoleting each other. I will implement that for now. I would love to see other characters being used!

We had multiple difficulty categories but they seemed dead and redundant since the run is mostly the same, with slightly more annoying enemy AI. I'll consider displaying the settings as a variable, I think it might be too much clutter for what would almost always be identical across submissions since most people would run with the optimal settings.

Yea IGT should be default and RTA should be a variable.

I recently started using Dolphin Memory Engine, which is basically a scaled down version of Cheat Engine built specifically to work with the Dolphin emulator. I've since discovered a lot of interesting data about the game that I thought I'd share with the community. The information might not be immediately relevant to speed running, but it's nice to have it be available as a reference. It's a work in progress, and too voluminous to post in discord, where it would be difficult to retrieve due to the volume of messages there, so I'm gonna post it here and just edit the post as I find new things.

Player HP and Damage
----------------------------------------

Snake's maximum HP has a value of 100. If Snake takes damage and his HP is lowered to 32 or below, he enters the bleeding state.

Sources of Damage (tested on extreme):

Bleeding: 1 damage every 3 seconds, only deals damage if HP > 1.
Cigarettes: 1 damage every second , only deals damage if HP > 33.
Explosions: 40 damage if within ~65 pixel radius of the source. 20 damage if between ~66 and ~111 pixel radius of the source. 0 damage if more than 111 pixels away from the source. Explosions are generated by C4, Grenades, Nikita missiles and Stinger missiles. Claymore explosions have different damage ranges but also apply either 40 or 20 damage.
Stun or Chaff: If a Stun or Chaff blows up in Snakes hand, it deals 10 damage.
Genome Solider Shot: 10 damage.
Genome Soldier Melee: 5 damage.

Movement during Animation
---------------------------------------------------

Many of Snakes animations move him a few pixels forward or backwards during the course of the animation. Knowing precisely how much snake moves and at what part in the animation could come in handy for precise movement related stuff.

Nikita Bash (Press B with Nikita equipped)
Frame 0: 0 (Input Frame)
Frame 3: +1
Frame 9: +1
Frame 15: +1
Frame 17: -1
Frame 21: -1
Frame 23: -1
Frame 30: +1
Frame 34: +1
Frame 35: +1
Frame 36: +1
Frame 37: +1
Frame 38: +1
Frame 39: +2
Frame 40: +1
Frame 41: +1
Frame 42: +2
Frame 43: +2
Frame 44: +1
Frame 45: +1
Frame 47: +1
Frame 50: +1
Frame 56: +1
Frame 79: -1
Frame 86: -1
Frame 93: -1
Frame 98: -1
Frame 104: -1
Frame 121: 0 (Final Frame)
Net Movement: +14

More info to be posted as I find it...

Thanks! I looked at Zigzag's run. So the timing starts when "Now Loading" disappears and ends at the final input lighting up on the display? I think putting that in the rules would be helpful for newer runners. Also, the timing for combo challenge runs should include milliseconds I think, considering that if the runs get optimized the times will be very very close.

I did an attempt of the combo challenge run with Goku (Super Saiyan). I am not sure how the run is supposed to be timed. There are two possible ways in my opinion. You can display "elapsed time" on screen (it's hidden by default), and just add the times together. The problem with that is that if you reset the stage by pressing select, the timer for the combo goes back to zero.

Alternatively, timing with real time would mean times would be inaccurate slightly and for such a short run with low variation, little timing inaccuracies can be significant. Also we'd have to determine a starting and stopping point for time.

I think it would be best to use the in-game timer, but make a rule against resetting the stage with the select button. That way we can get 100% accurate timing for combo challenge runs that would be comparable against all systems and platforms.

Timed using in-game timer, my run was as follows:

Combo 1 - 2.71
Combo 2 - 3.37
Combo 3 - 4.91
Combo 4 - 0.70
Combo 5 - 2.47
Combo 6 - 3.37
Combo 7 - 4.84
Combo 8 - 2.37
Combo 9 - 5.13
Combo 10 - 12.11

Total: 41.98

I ran on an HDD, and I noticed the areas load faster if you have loaded into them once before starting the run. Vince's run may be benefitting from this "loading trick." Some other games behave this way as well.

Best way to do it is to go to collectible mode and just enter every area and leave, then start your run. See if that helps you gain some time, Kevin. Good luck!

I really like this glitch and I think in general, glitches makes runs a lot more exciting to do and watch.

My personal philosophy on "any%" speedruns is that everything is legal as long as you can do it on your first playthrough without using "external" tools. So simply using the Save Glitch to make all the necessary saves should be totally fine. Relying on pre-made saves, even if you don't actually load them, is a little iffy, but I can see the fairness angle considering different people require a different # of saves. Using a corrupted pre-made save created by an external tool is a clever work around but it's definitely crossing a line I think, and shouldn't be used.

I'm gonna lean towards allowing the Save Glitch under the conditions Tromboncino lays out.

A friend just lost a massive WR run because of disc read error BibleThump

https://clips.twitch.tv/UninterestedUninterestedCheetahPRChase

I think the new Arcade and Treasure Battle categories broke the 100% category. When I go to filters on the 100% story category I can see options to filter by character, which should only be for Arcade / Treasure Battle categories.

My guess is your run is still on the board and it's still first place, its just not displaying properly because the variables from different category accidentally got introduced into 100%. It's not terribly difficult to fix, so it'll be back to the way it was fairly soon.

pros: you save $120 not having to buy a copy of misadventures of tron bonne

That's right. You hit the final split right after activating the rage art. I think that makes sense since it's the final player input required and it's just cutscenes after that.

Also, I can't see your run on the board for some reason. I have to adjust the filter (by setting filter for Format to Any) to see it. Are SSD runs hidden by default?