With DF hinting that it'll come to Steam, I'm wondering if we'll see a spike in popularity! With that in mind, I wanted to discuss making runs more standardized and/or accessible.

Sorry this isn't more organized, but I have a bunch of thoughts on these things:

A. Do runs have to act like you've opened the game for the first time? In other words, can you use saved parameter sets for world gen? Can you increase frame rate before your run even begins? Both of these represent big time saves; I have an old run of 23.83s with these tricks... but I never submitted because I'm not sure it's in the spirit of the rules.

B. Should loading times be counted? Counting loading times makes speedruns a little less accessible because slow computers take longer... but the game isn't terribly demanding to begin with. Maybe the best option is to time the game from "striking the earth" to crumbling? You could even start counting frames instead of timing (if the times become short enough).

C. How should different versions of the game be accounted for? (matters more or less depending on A and B are addressed)

In the AP category, would saving world parameters beforehand be allowed?

I definitely think it's agreeable that saved world parameters and embark kits shouldn't be allowed- even if it kills my most recent run.

For the longer runs (and maybe even shorter run categories too), I can definitely see how some parameters (embark points, Titan attack parameters) could really change things. It makes me feel like categories should be split into the default world gen and the advance world gen- where you just try to push the game to it's limits.

In advanced world gen, does changing the minimum pop and wealth requirements also change those requirements for a goblin siege? The advanced world gen category could have some interesting strategies if it doesn't make some categories trivial.

I just submitted a couple Fun% runs, and I ended up using the default would gen and default embark loadout because I wasn't sure what's allowed to be used. I can imagine that using saved advanced world parameters (or even just world gen seeds) or embark loadout could have a big impact on run times.