It was suggested that moderators should make more use of the News Forum when we change stuff around the community. In the event that it was needed, I want to list the changes that were carried on in the last 7 months. Mainly by me, Remy was consulted for major stuff

I made this announcement without Remy because I didn't think it was anything worth asking about

1. New categories added

2. Category Split on Speed Skating. Emulator Rules added.

• Split

The main goal of the split is to make sure that players play at the same level. "Fast tapping" is way easier on Emulator than Console. It made a major difference in Speed Skating, so Console players were left at a disadvantage.

No other IL has so many submitted emulator runs. But so long there is not an unfair disadvantage, then there won't be a split in other ILs.

For future Splits in category, I want to say. We won't split a category, unless: A. There are enough Emu runs to justify the Split. B. There is a clear and unfair advantage in Emulator.

• Rules

I asked the Emulator players for feedback, because I had to make sure I could tell the difference between gameplay and TAS. But I couldn't force harsh enough rules that players would feel that submitting runs is not worth the effort.

3. Obsoleted runs wouldn't show up, so I re-verified them.

Almost every Obsoleted run was 'Orphan'. I don't really understand what happened, but I reversed things back to normal.

Kieron also rejected runs that were verified before. The users deleted their Youtube channel after a few years, so the video couldn't be viewed, and so Kieron thought it looked bad (I guess). I undid that, because even Spielpro (one of the old moderators) had his videos unavailable. The videos were reviewed by a moderator and met the rules back then.

4. Change in regards to Emulator Rules in some Full-Game categories.

5. Change about Emulator Rules on Speed Skating

I made a mistake about the preferred emulator. MelonDS does not have a tool which displays inputs. Only Bizhawk does.

6. Rules about verifying runs without video (it's allowed, but with limits), on the Forum.

7. Rules about Emulator on minigame categories (a cheater confessed, so we had to update the rules)

8. I made the url shorter, for easy access.

I guess 'Van10DS' would make more sense, but the Wii version wasn't using the current url. So I made it mine.

Speedrun.com/van10

9. Change to the Background Image and Game Thumbnail.

1. New changes incoming:

A. I'm probably going to defeat my poorly recorded records (All Olympic Events, All Events). The community should have a video quality standard. If I wasn't the moderator myself, nobody would have verified my runs. I regret not using a better camera, and editing the video.

Once I defeat myself, I will update the rules so that there cannot be any cuts to the gameplay (my camera is really bad, I did not cut the footage willingly), or edits like the ones I used. I understand recording Nintendo DS is hard, but my videos are too bad. I regret not having had better foresight about this topic.

If anybody feels interested, go ahead. But the speedrun is still very optimized despite the fact that there's no competition.

B. Barely anybody has played the "All Olympic Events", "Win All Events", "All Dream Events", "All Events" categories anyways, so I might just hide them on "Misc" or "Other". Until more players submit runs.

It's visually ugly that there are 3 categories with only 1 or 2 runs on the "main Full Game categories", and on top of that, the video quality (of my videos) is just hard to watch.

I feel that would not be a "major" change, but I will ask Remy about it. Acting unilaterally is not my thing.

But anyways, I have found that the categories are too long to be popular, the players seem to care more about ILs. ¡Understandably so! But I intended to add more color to the available categories

I asked the players on Discord before adding them, so that's why I feel this was not poorly intended. JenteJ has pointed out that most players are not on Discord, so I will be asking about this stuff in here (Forums) next time. I feel that's where the disconnection might have come from.

Maybe I will try, and ask you guys about adding other categories, around 3-8 minutes long. The jump would be smaller than going from categories of barely 1 minute, to categories of 20 minutes.

C. Rules about RNG manipulation (long text, go to D. if bored)

This change is a fan favourite. I (Chall99) discovered RNG manipulation. Some players have felt frustrated about it and have suggested a Category Split. But there is still a big issue. Well, actually there are 2.

First, unless the player admits to RNG manipulation, the moderator and viewer will never know if the run is using RNG manipulation.

Second, there are not enough runs that use RNG manipulation. But even if there were enough runs to justify splitting a category, RNG manipulation does not necessarily leave the player at a disadvantage in every category.

For example, RNG manipulation in Ski Jumping is so hard it barely offers an advantage. It's faster to just reset the event. So if somebody chose to use RNG manipulation, it could be fair.

Minigames are another story. It is a VERY clear disadvantage. It's so easy to find a seed and ruin the speedrun. But as I have said, there are barely any submitted runs (beyond mine). So I can't just split every minigame into 2 categories, only for the other category to have 1 single run of myself. That would look very narcissistic haha.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SKIP if you bored

I guess I could ban RNG manipulation in minigames and delete my runs. But I'm not sure that would be fair either. It feels wrong that there are runs with RNG manipulation, because lots of players had already performed runs without RNG manips. But if the categories had been created with the knowledge that this technique existed (and there was not a category split), I feel it wouldn't have been an issue, because no vanilla runs would have been underminded.

In a way, I feel like I have killed minigames accidentally. (((deleted bc too long)))

So I'm afraid the minigame categories will be left on this awkward spot for some time. It is even more awkward because Big_Brain admitted to cheating, so now some minigame World Records are on a weird spot, seconds behind what the record was claimed to be.

Anyways, TLDR

As of now, RNG manipulation is in diapers. Until it becomes relevant on ILs or Full Game runs, or until more runs are submitted, I just can't split categories.

I can't split every minigame into 2 categories, only for the other category to have 1 single run of myself. That's odd.

Even if I deleted my runs of the minigame categories, and forbid RNG manipulation, anybody could do it and the moderators would never know. There is no way to know... Most runs would be left in an awkward spot anyways, seconds behind their current World Record.

I dislike saying that "the best thing to do is to not develop the technique further", which we can't do without lua scripting anyways. But that seems to be it...

Even so, RNG manipulation would be relevant for: Short Track, Biathlon, Cross Country, Ski Cross Racing, Snowboarding and Extreme Snowboarding. To avoid blue shells and achieve great CPU boosts.

If the seed is freeuse for everybody, then the RNG pattern would be very easy to identify for the moderators: there could be a category split, unlike with minigames. Another question is whether there should be a category split, which would be asked to the community. But it's too hard to find the GodSeeds without lua scripting capacity, so that won't happen any time soon.

D. Rules about Pauses.

It's fairly common on the Mario & Sonic Games to Pause to achieve a record. I don't recall if Cyberscore or VGR had categories that explicitely used Pauses.

Vancouver DS does not generally have events where pausing offers an advantage. In fact, I have tried this several times on some events, but I only had fun in Figure Skating.

It's rough on your fingers and drains both the soul and the fun. But pause strats are very common in speedruning.

As of now, nobody uses them enough to justify creating rules about them. So I hope this texts helps the player understand that it's not seen as cheating, but it could be interpreted as a way to leave pauseless players at a disadvantage. So consider the idea:

"For future Splits in category, I want to say. We won't split a category, unless: A. There are enough runs that Pause to justify the Split. B. There is a clear and unfair advantage in Pausing."

If the category is no fun, then nobody will play with pauses.

But sometimes, Pauses are not enough to justify splitting a category anyways, because they do not create a big disadvantage to pauseless players.

For example:

I have used pauses in Ski Jumping. I tried to defeat the "Balance" section by pausing in every possible frame. After doing that, I concluded that it was harder and slower than just playing normal, it was no fun, and it should be banned.

But then I decided to use Pauses in Ski Jumping, only to see in which direction was the wind blowing. That didn't offer me a huge or unfair advantage, it just improved my consistency slightly.

Still. The speedruns work with an "in-game" timer, so pausing every frame or lots of times would defeat the goal of "speedruning". You can't go minutes slower in Real Time, just to be 1 or 2 seconds faster according to the in-game Time. Pauses should be proportionate with the goal of "speedruning".

Score Events are different, but I hope the overall logic of what the moderators might think has been made clear.

I hope that, despite the fact that no rules have been made officially, everybody has an insight of the way Pauses are viewed.

The Misc categories won't exit "Misc" until 3 runs have been submitted. This is to prevent the frontpage of the Game from flooding with several Empty categories. It'd look bad.

Dear Vancouver DS players, they are finally here. You can now submit runs of the score events and Nordic Combined. Look at the rules for each event how to submit the score. Good luck on the grind everyone!!!