Massachusetts, USASo, it has been a while since we did one of those. I know Adam usually takes charge on them, but we felt that I would do this topic more justice, so here we go. The rules for the PAL categories right now are, as many of you probably know, very washy.
For anyone who doesn't know what I mean, allow me to explain. PAL runs with a signal called PAL50, and that 50 is an important number. It signifies that LM runs at 25fps. Now, this becomes an issue when people who are not from Europe try to run the version. In order to run the game, many people convert the signal to NTSC, which often means loading the game at 30fps. That's not just a visual change, however; the game actually will often run at 30fps. If you don't know what that means, very simply, every 6 seconds in PAL is 5 seconds in NTSC. That's a lot of time in a speedrun. This isn't the only issue with loading PAL, however. Some runners even load the game at 25fps, but it's still not fair to the European runners. Loading the game from an app instead of the disc channel will often reduce lag/load times.
There are several ways to be able to see the game without loading it in an NTSC signal. The obvious one is to buy a PAL tv, but that's expensive and unrealistic. For most runners, the easiest way to do this is probably to buy a cheap standard definition capture card that can convert the signal. An example is my ion video 2 pc, which converts the signal with no delay. You can also buy a signal converter, however I have no experience with it and cannot confirm how much delay it would have.
Okay, I know that's a lot to understand, so let me explain what I'm trying to say. I am proposing that we ban loading PAL LM from anything other than the default disc channel, to keep loading times/framerate/lag consistent between all runners. As we have little to no way to know what version people already on the leaderboards have run on, I propose leaving all times up. None of the times on the leaderboards are very optimal, and the 100% world record is on disc channel anyway. The downside to this is that runners will need to both buy a disc, and find a way to convert the signal so that they can run it. In my opinion, that's worth the fairness of competition. Let me know what you guys think, so that we can make the rules benefit everyone.
Also, I just want to mention briefly. I know that a lot of people don't care about PAL. That doesn't mean we should just brush it under the rug. If you can't look at it as a legitimate category, then please don't bother commenting.
None of us are too hard to contact, the discord is probably the easiest way, but there's probably a dozen different places you could send me a message that I'd get back to you quickly
If someone submits a good time with no video, it's not valid in the first place lol. We're not going to approve some random kid's claim to wr with no evidence he even knows how to play the game
By all means feel free to do runs that way, I'm just letting you know that they won't be accepted to the category lol. I'm not sure how it's "kinda lame" to have Out of Bounds banned in Any% Out of Bounds lmao. If you want, you are allowed to submit a run completed that way to Any%, though
Having any% named correctly would be neat, I support it
New route still works on the English version, and is marginally faster than the old route afaik. The text skips obviously don't work, though
Freeloaders should be fine, it is preferable that people run on a Wii from the disc channel, however if you're not able to do that then what you described is fine. ATM we don't have a lot of info about how freeloaders compare to normal loading, but they aren't specifically banned. We should look into it more as a community
Because we don't clear the dining room, so if he hides in there you need to get an extra boo, which is a huge time loss
An idea was just brought up by SamuelHellJackson involving the new Any% (No OoB) route. He proposes that we adapt to the butler cycle in order to save more time. Currently, nobody has timed any of these options in order to double check that they are optimal, but based on logic they should be. It's worth noting that in scenarios where you catch the laundry boo early, it is likely fastest to send him into kitchen at 0hp, because you can suck him up as he is traveling to the center of the kitchen after being unveiled. Also, if the boo goes into the hallway instead of the kitchen, continue on as normal. There is a chance that he goes into Hidden Room instead of Dining Room, in which case your run isn't dead. If he isn't in the Hidden Room, however, gg wp.
So I suppose the optimal things to do go as follows On worst butler cycle: collect hat in dark room, laundry boo early, beat shivers, get the mouse hole, and mirror warp from hidden room On bad butler cycle: collect hat in dark room, send laundry boo into kitchen, open mouse hole, get shivers, mirror warp from hidden room On medium to good butler cycle: skip chest animation with hat, open chest, open mouse hole, walk back through laundry room
Obviously the most important thing with this concept is to react well to situations. You need to know how much time you have in your butler cycle, and when to back down as opposed to continuing trying to optimize. If you miss the butler, you lose astronomical time, so that should always be priority
If you are playing on a GameCube, you want to use a Freeloader, yes. Most players use a Wii with the Priiloader hack in order to run the game, but Freeloader is acceptable. As long as you load the disc (on the Wii, you must load through the disc channel as opposed to a separate app) you are playing fairly.
...What you're proposing isn't possible, you still need 40 boos to enter King Boo. It would also be a really pointless category even if you could do it :P
Since people seem a bit confused, let me chime in here. As long as you are loading through the disc channel on your Wii, chances are that whatever you're doing is fine. For the sake of lessening the variables, it'd be nice if you unlocked the region with priiloader and used a JP disc, but it's ultimately not a bad thing as long as you're not doing anything to create an unfair advantage.
Having the one supermod is so that we don't have to bother speedrun.com staff every time we have an issue, they will not be a dictator.
Supermod votes: Gc- Reasonable, responsible
Normal mod votes: Nimbus- Intelligent, reasonable DeathJohnson- Has an unrivaled understanding of several categories, very intelligent and reasonable guy
There is absolutely no reason to rush to decisions, the only reason to even begin to imply that is for personal gain. For the good of the community, at least have the respect to have the decision be made with some thought. I'm disgusted by the premise. If it was so urgent, then why didn't any of you comment when I brought this up multiple times weeks ago, in multiple different places? This notion is immature. As far as decisions for who should be supermod, age in the community is entirely irrelevant. Availability is important, being too busy to take part in the community is a bad quality for someone in charge. That's not an excuse. As far as who should be supermodded, it appears to me like we need restructuring. Gc has been powering the recent movement to clean up the community, and doing a great job, yet he's not even a moderator, while Veman and Linkus remain entirely inactive, with invalid times, and modded. I believe that Gc deserves mod, if not supermod. I agree entirely with Nimbus' comments towards Smoof and Boohead, with respect to both of them they are bad leaders at this point in time. I believe that it's important for us to come to a consensus of what we want our community to be seen as by outsiders, and to mod people who will be good for the community instead of people who have been around longer or have better times.
Chaoslink, you're clearly not thinking from an objective standpoint. No disrespect, but what you're saying is biased and represents a narrowminded opinion. "glitched is a bad category anyway" this upsets me. You're not taking this seriously. You're not trying to be fair to everyone. And excuse me for targeting you with this comment, it's not personal. It's just a good example of what's wrong with how people view problems like this. Just because the category isn't popular, or you personally don't like it, does NOT in any way mean that the rules are fine being unfair. That sentiment is ridiculous and leads to the problems that we're trying to fix.
I agree with the proposal. I believe that it's unfair to have times on the leaderboards from a version that other players are not allowed to use, especially considering the majority of the categories have world records set on this version that was deemed too unfair for use. I was a huge proponent of banning USB loader originally, and wanted USB times banned. I still want this, and the compromises we've met have been illogical, especially when paired together.
