Jönköping, SwedenThere's so many things wrong with this leaderboard as it is and we will get to it but it takes time. In the meanwhile because nothing is clearly stated or very much enforced right now: here's some EXTREMELY COMMON RULES that leaderboards typically have and that we will add in the near future, but they are still in effect.
Include a reset, it should be part of submission video - NEVER USE LOAD STATES to start run attempts
If you play on emulator. Include in comments what software you are using. Emulator name and version release.
Game audio and video have to be present, if you cover anything up with subscription animations or playing loud music ontop of the game audio feedback, that is likely getting rejected.
This won't be all of it, but it's clear that some people do not know how the basics of how speedrunning works, and past mods is to blame for this, they never informed you. But it has to stop! Load stating is banned because it can lock you to getting the same exact enemy patterns 100% of the time, which puts you at advantage = cheating.
Can we get some and do we actually know what emulators were used by the current 28:xx emu runners?
Personally I enjoy being able to just look up a leaderboard and see from the various submissions, which characters seems to be most commonly used in the top to get an idea of what can compete well. Without having to look up individual submissions just to check what people run.
Example:
looking at MK runs, one of the reasons I absolutely will refuse to run certain games or categories is because of this game audio rule. Apparently its faster to speedrun games like MK3/UMK3 SNES by turning off game audio in the options. I do wonder if it was ever discussed among the community at the time, if there was a vote or what word is between runners today.
For me personally, its enough to be off-putting to me, this is something that imo should be its own category, put in misc or category extension but being forced to speedrun the game this way is just not appealing in my eyes (or ears). And I get that ya sure, "don't run the game then", but im also arguing that because of this one rule, it blocks runners like me from running the game, which could prevent community growth.
Taking MK3/UMK3 SNES as an example, this is the only way to run said port as of now, at least MK1 does have No Major Exploits. Technically if we're gonna talk about "fastest possible" then ya take PS2 Deadly Alliance for instance. Fastest possible would be plug out controller exploit, so you can beat the opponent during loading screen. Nobody wants to play like that though, if someone does, sure make a category for it. But dont make it the main one and force it down peoples throats just because its technically the fastest.
This has to be a community decision of course, but I want a discussion to be had as seemingly, there never was one?
Ignoring the fact that I die on phase 2 because I'm still learning the run at the moment of this recording.
It seems that you can slip through the propellers and avoid a death animation. It is extremely tight and prob a 1-2 frame window, the bigger issue being the x-position being in flux due to the camera at this segment of the map, making it absurdly hard. Nonetheless, it would be the faster kill in theory. This was recorded in realtime.
Feels about time to establish proper emulation rules, I myself plan to submit runs in the very near future. If you're unaware of what's generally allowed, check Contra III leaderboard. I'm also gonna include this
http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources/SNESAccuracyTests.html
Likewise if you check CV4 which is much more popular and competitive than this game generally. You can spot "ZSNES (all versions) and SNES9X (1.43 and below) are banned."
Seen accuracy test sheets up and to this revision, never past it. No idea if later ones are actually more accurate or not. Likewise I have co-op in mind as a secondary agenda and am wondering which revision are preferred for it.
Snes community itself is none existent, hoping to get lucky here.
This is an old relic used in the past, enforced by places like Twin Galaxies or SpeedDemosArchive. The modern world as it functions come speedrunning, is that every runner will have their own separate goals when it comes to speedruns.
Some of them will obviously attempt to 1CC as that's generally considered good and with minimal timeloss for the speedrun itself. Others however, will have a slightly less ambitious goal of just clearing the game and submitting a time, but not per se with 1CC in mind. Resulting in timeloss, but granted still a speedrun nonetheless..
1CC will only prevent this community growth and neglect runners of various different levels as the thought of attempting the game 1CC will effectively scare some individuals off.
I think it's for the this community's interest to get rid of it and broaden the acceptance of the general speedrunners capacity a bit wider.
Giving up learning this category because final boss makes me fall asleep, but here's some fast kills I came up with if anyone wants to take a crack at it.
Stage 1
Stage 5
https://www.twitch.tv/xenkaroshi/clip/ModernAlertDelicataTinyFace?filter=clips&range=7d&sort=time
"No 30 Lives Code" Should be selfexplanatory: Its called any% for the vast majority of us.
"Loop 2..." Refer to https://www.speedrun.com/ghosts_n_goblins but I'd argue "2 loops would suffice. Although they also specify for NES which is interesting as that brings us to...
"Any%" What happened here? It doesnt specify in the rules that its for ColecoVision at all, clearly thats what you intend with it judged by the 1 run up there though.. But the main category should act as a sub-category and not a category on its own. https://www.speedrun.com/sm64#1_Star Notice the Subcategories under the actual categories? the N64/VC/EMU ? This game should make use of NES and I assume CV for ColeccoVision..
Those are my main gripes just looking in on this board atm. I'm studying NES shmups chronologically released for the system on my down time as a means to discover new titles. That lead me here and... ya.. There's alot to straighten out when it comes to organizing with categories and rules here.
My two cents
I'm just gonna go ahead and say it, its been well over 2y. Nobody but Czar went ahead making and running the 30 lives misc. He recently returned with an improved any% time that's faster than his misc time. Why is it still a thing? You don't see a much more popularized game like Contra https://www.speedrun.com/contra allowing for such a thing, I dont see a point in Life Force doing so.
My two cents
So I have the dilemma of running games across multiple systems, but I'd still like to know when I hit that sweet cap of 50 NES speedruns. Is it entirely out of question to not just load in all games in your profile as standalone runs, but rather sorted by system category upon you just click each system individually to expand and show said runs and/or an indication by number for how many runs you have for each system.
