:D :D :D

Will there be a place to start scheduling the games? i.e. our availability?

I did my first run (~hour RTA, 50 minutes IGT) and realized another annoying thing about RTA for time attack mode.

You save about a second every time you finish a stage in time attack that is a new record in that file, since the game skips straight to stage select instead of bringing up the "retry/change vehicle/quit" menu. Meaning, with RTA, we would save ~30 seconds by making a new file with no records and have to keep copying that file for every reset. IMO this is a really dumb thing to require for a good time, whereas prioritizing IGT would completely ignore this.

Can you update my Super Bomberman R's estimate to be a 1:05 instead? My times have been much more reliable and shorter. Thanks!

Thanks for updating the Time Attack rules!

I would strongly argue against prioritizing RTA over IGT for these reasons, the main idea being to future-proof leaderboards whenever possible.

-If this game were released in future consoles with faster loads (i.e. if nintendo released a "new nintendo switch", which is very possible given their past history with black wii's and new 3ds), IGT would eliminate the discrepancies of that. This has happened for many, many games, both old and new, so it isn't out of the question at all.

-You can save several seconds of real time using the touch screen for several menus to select cups / tracks / cars. Obviously you can't use the touch screen if the switch is docked, so this brings the question of would this even be allowed? If a undocked switch capture was developed, it would be faster to record using this method too. Sticking to RTA would encourage a potential pay-to-win mentality that we want to avoid whenever possible; IGT would remove this discrepancy (again, future-proofing leaderboards).

-In stage-based games like this, I personally dislike having to add menus when the goal is to clear every stage/track as quickly as possible. IGT tracks just that, nothing else. This is a personal preference of mine though and isn't a strict objective argument.

-However, related to above, counting menuing means it's a factor in vehicle selection now. This isn't particularly realistic but theoretically if there were cases where just mashing A through the car selection is worth it over picking an actually faster vehicle for a track, I wouldn't be a fan of that (again admittedly personal preference). One example is Sonic Advance 3 All Stages, which is a category that does every stage in time attack mode, and timed by adding in-game time for every stage - the reasoning is the same, to ensure that menuing will not be a factor in team selection for each stage.

I would actually argue that the entire series should've done IGT in the first place. However, this isn't really the place for that; this thread is about this game only, but I don't think using the "previous games have done RTA" is a valid argument if all of the above could've potentially applied to those games too.

I can see why you would want to count the "entire game" with RTA; however, if it's something that isn't part of the core gameplay yet comes at the cost of potentially inconsistent loads/versions in the future that I've listed above, I personally don't think it's worth prioritizing RTA.

If you still aren't convinced, then I'm fine with sticking to real time since this isn't a game I have much say in and I won't bring it up anymore. However, given my past experiences with other game leaderboards that did NOT properly future-proof them, I would strongly recommend swapping to IGT now as opposed to when it becomes more of a real problem. This game has a working in-game time (at least as far as I know). I think it makes most sense to track both RTA and IGT, but prioritize IGT.

I actually haven't tried Hero Mode before so I'll take your word for that. But personally I would strongly advocate for IGT for the other two modes. Shouldn't be a particularly difficult transition either given the lack of runs on this leaderboards.

(I know I posted kinda outta nowhere since I never ran this game, but I do want to do some for-fun speedruns for this game since I've been having a blast with it, so I'm interested in hopping on)

I'm interested in doing some fun-runs via time attack mode for this game, and it's been a blast! However, in the full-game leaderboards, it seems like we go by real time when it seems to make more sense to go by in-game time by summing up the times. Is there any reason we don't use in-game time, and instead go by real-time?

To me, unless there's a timing exploit or inaccuracy, there isn't any reason to use real-time over summing up in-game times because it eliminates variance from potentially random loads. In particular, livesplit has the function to sum up in-game times for you.

(There also aren't any rules at all for the Time Attack full-game leaderboard... can a moderator fill this out?)

Thanks!

Run: Metroid: Zero Mission, and Sonic Advance 3

Required equipment: game carts, Nintendo Gamecube, GBA Player, controller, CRT TV

Equipment I will bring: everything above besides a TV

Dates i will be attending: May 20th-22nd

Can the marathon use my equipment for other runs: No

Paid

That's perfectly fair. I like the general feel overall, and I agree that it'd probably be best to wait for a game list before dealing with more edge cases.

I'm not sure if there are any DS submissions, and I don't remember the aspect ratio off the top of my head.

Here's an example layout of a nintendo DS layout that we used for the Metroid Marathon 2014: http://imgur.com/niG4jmd

The above layout would work well with games that want both screens shown somewhat equally, and the spacing works out well to not make it look awkward if it's important for the game (examples include sonic rush series and yoshi's island ds).

Would you be able to make a layout for GBA games as well? Those require a 3:2 aspect aspect ratio, after cropping out GBA player borders. I assume we don't want to include the entire GBA player borders (which is 4:3).

I do personally think the timers are a bit too big (though they should still be bigger than most of the other text), but that might just be me. Don't change this unless anyone else agrees with me on this.

As mentioned before, incorporating the NASA logo would be great too; it currently looks... a little bland (for a lack of a better word) and "lacking identity" without something like that.

In the f-zero gx double race layout, there seems to be a bit too much empty space in the lower-right corner. I'm not really sure what you can do about that, but I guess that might be resolved after incorporating the logo.

Still, I really like the layout otherwise. I especially like that the gameplay is on the right side of the first screenshot; people typically type in chats to the right of the stream, so it's a lot more convenient than if the gameplay is on the left side. I also like how you color code each word when spelling out NASA, since it makes it easyish to read but not take up unnecessary space with the spaces.

The only role that I'd be able to help with is judging submissions. I watch a variety of a lot of runs, so I'm pretty familiar with that (admittedly I've never done any judging but there's always a first for everything). I'm not a designer so making layouts isn't my thing, and I'll only be there for a weekend if I go, so I shouldn't really be on tech.

I was gonna ask if you missed some submissions in the "Date of submission" list, since all 5 of my submissions were put into two rows. Is this automated from the submissions form, or did you put this together manually? If manual, it'd be nice if you can put each game in their own row for readability sake.

Also, in both the "By Length" and "By Name" tabs, three of my games have doubles - metroid zero mission, fire emblem: radiant dawn, and wario land: shake it. Not sure if this is the case for anyone else since I'm lazy.

That's all I have to say about this, thanks a lot for putting this together!

Also would it be possible to not have the contact info in the google form NOT public? :x

Haven't seen this until now, but I'd be down for attending. IDK how many vacation days I can use for this event, along with AGDQ, SGDQ, and RPGLB, so I really doubt I'll attend for the entire week, probably just 2-3 days or something.

I COULD stay at a hotel but I'd rather just commute, it's only a 2 hour drive from Madison for me.

For now, I submitted 2 games. I'll submit more later after I see what else I run actively over the next few months. Not sure if there's any sort of deadline though?

I'll say that I'm interested in attending and will submit games, but I'm not committing anything yet until things are more certain. Good luck though, you have my support either way!