March Mini Update

Howdy Silksong runners, now that some of the chaos of the poll has ended, it's given us some time to look over some smaller topics that were previously pushed aside. Firstly however -

The Speedpatch

You may have noticed runs using the beta speed patch are now being verified 🎉 The speedpatch is now fully legal for use in runs, however keep an eye out for any announced updates as they will be required when released.

Rule Changes

We've given some attention to repeated topics brought up in discussion, and amended the rules as follows.

Gameplay Rules

• Glitched runs are now allowed to quitout on failed cutscene skip attempts.
• Verifiers may reject your run if they determine it to be abusing the gameplay rules by purposefully hardlocking.

This doesn't effect most runners, but helps address the issue glitched runners are having with memory leaks, longer loads, and funky MMS timings. We're aware this solution isn't perfect, but hope it helps runners with piece of mind, knowing they are no longer forced to sit through unskippable cutscenes. Additionally an explicit rule has been added, that verifiers can (and will) reject runs if they believe a run has purposefully hardlocked at any point, to take advantage of existing rules. Ultimately, we are still working off a glorified honour system, and we hope we can trust our runners enough to not take advantage of the gameplay rules.

Game Settings

• If you change the VSync setting either during or before your run, you must have a clearly visible FPS display in your recording.

Originally this rule also referred to changing your frame rate via the in game frame rate cap. It was a rule grandfathered in from Hollow Knight, due to concerns of people editing config files. However the same does not apply to Silksong, and so you will no longer be required to show an fps counter, when only changing this cap. You will however still be required to show one when changing the Vsync settings, due to concerns of unstable Vsync usage, and potential cheating concerns of monitor refresh rate changes outside of view in recordings.

Breaks

Runs are no longer required to reach act 3 to take a break.

• After your first 30 minutes of gameplay, you may take a 10 minute break.
• Additionally, for every hour of run length, you may take another 10 minute break.
• Breaks may be combined; for example, taking a 20 minute break after playing for 1 hour.

You will still have access to unlimited (within reason) breaks after 3 hours.

• Breaks MUST be timestamped in the description of your run.

This does indeed now mean you can take breaks in runs that do not enter act 3. Such as Any%, Low%, AA1B, AA2B, Awoo%, and so on. The goal of this is to help with accessibility, allowing runners a well earned break in their runs, especially now that we have added some new longer categories to the boards that don't enter Act 3, while not overstepping on potential cheating issues with breaks too long. We hope this is a suitable compromise.

Autosplitter update

Additionally a change to the autosplitter has now been added. The file select screen will now be untimed, mainly to help taking breaks. To accommodate this the older ruling on breaks hasn't necessarily changed, but rather reworded to fit the behaviour.

• The timer should pause upon opening the file select menu, and continue after loading into your selected your file.

We will not be retiming any previous runs to account for this change. After briefly looking over runs that would be affected (i.e. tied runs on the leaderbaord) very few of them are affected at all by this change, and the tied runs that would end up being lowered by this change, are not lowered enough for us to necessitate a full board retime. We simply do not have the time or resources to make such a change. If you feel as though your run would be heavily impacted by this new timing, feel free to bring it up with a verifier or moderator in the speedrunning discord, and it can be discussed further.