I agree on the level unlock issue though if you stick to the same routing as the base game there should be no issue.

In fact from a speedrun standpoint I would prefer the fixed version as it would allow for many more routing options!

Regardless it's not official and the legality of the program may also be questioned.

The radar zoom I doubt will make much of a difference in any run, except for maybe in some late game levels but there are few use cases to jump across the map a lot as far as I can remember

I still stand by allowing it. Again, worst case we move it to a different category at a later stage.

Hi RingtailRider,

I would allow it. The community is very small and there are little to no active runners going for good times. Faking times currently doesn't seem like an issue.

Besides, everything in RR is fixed. There is no random chance that can be altered, so any form of cheating would be simple to detect by just putting two runs side-by-side.

My only concern is whether openLLR runs the game just slightly faster than the base game. Or e.g. has faster teleportation animations. If it's an exact clone it's fine, but I'm not sure if it's exact up to the frame.

For now I would consider that as too much detail to take into consideration for new submissions.

But my view may change over time.

Worst case we move the openLLR runs to another category.

Hi Allison,

Emu is for runs from an emulator and Native is when the run is performed directly from disk on pc. I personally used an emulator because I couldn't get the game to run on Windows.. 8? (I think it was at the time) Maybe Win 10/11 has better support for older games nowadays

So yes DOSbox is counted as an emulator, as you're not directly running the game on the "official" hardware. Same for VirtualBox or any other kind of software to run a version of Windows on top of another.

I don't think it makes much of a difference time-wise but regardless it's best to keep them as seperate categories. :)

Good luck with your run!

Cool! Hope to see something from your end soon! :)

Yes, this is still on-going!

However, there aren't any more runs submitted lately (it's kind of sad, really). If you submit however, there's at least one person who will have a look at it!

Hope to see your runs in the future!

Hmm.. To decide, I'll list the pros and cons of requiring teleportation to be counted in the speedrun time (as far as I know them):

Pros:

• Strategy for individual level can be ported to Any%, allowing for bidirectional improvement (update in Any% adjusts strat in individual and/or vice versa)
• It's easier to frametime your final time, as you don't have to do anything during teleportation and therefore can immediatly press the "Stop timer" key at the right frame (also true if teleportation time is consistent, making millisecs more precise).

Cons:

• Your recording has to be 5-10 seconds longer.

I legitimately tried to objectively find Cons for this standpoint, but I cannot find any at all (except for subjective ones that I didnt list such as "It feels like.." etc.).

I don't see any reason at the moment to not count teleportation. In fact, I'd even consider it a drawback if you don't.

I'd like to hear some proper arguments for this subject to consider from your sides; Currently you're just saying "I disagree" without giving any input.

Personally, I would opt for starting the timer when the level starts (after loading), stop the timer whenever you see the finish screen.

Yes, you'd have to sit through the teleportation animation, but it also adds a layer of depth, as you have to start beaming up buildings prematurely. It therefore becomes part of the strategy of that level.

Also, this makes it really easy to retime; it's consistent and easy to detect the start and end frame of the run. Another benefit would be that a new level strategy can be immediatly ported over to Any%, allowing for constructive improvement of that category through the individual levels.

As promised, although a little late, I'm going to post about what I thought of this run after routing it a bit. I routed all the way up to DotK, so I'll be mostly mentioning that. Also note that this is about the PC version, so I was limited to just a few tricks to make things work.

The quick answer to my own question here is: Even if the run would become a thing, it still wouldn't fulfill the goals that I had in mind when I thought of this at the start. The point of this category was to create a hybrid between Any% and Glitchless% and, in contrary to what you might expect, this actually requires very many tricks, much like in Any%.

The reason for this is rather simple: You need PCM literally everywhere. It's the way to speed up your fight, but also your way to still play through the game (as you need to visit most areas) after you've defeated the hoodlums. Although I must admit that it was great fun to cheese Master Kaag with the infinite rocket, having to do so many PCMs with so many different timings one after another quickly becomes tedious; When you miss one, there's no option other than to restart, or play the game as if it was Glitchless (which is slower). (+ the fact that the controls mess up and that the camera control is awful in PCM = Not that much fun :S)

The amount of hoodlums in the game doesn't seem that horrible. Yes, there are plenty of hoodlums, but at least 95% of those are in the main areas. You barely have to sidetrack to get them all and even if you have to, you can still turn that into one smooth path by using a trick (such as a superjump), to drop into that sidetrack, only to return to the main area rather quickly.

To me, "All Teensies" as a category seems to actually fulfill the goal that this category was supposed to have just fine, and that would be the actual category of interest to me in this case, so I might try something there (although no runs exists yet for All Teensies on PC iirc).

So in short: Although this category had some interesting different routes that you'd never see in any other category, the huge amounts of PCM required just makes it really hard to run this game consistently (and not really fun at all), especially when you're on different hardware setups all the time!

Hope that informs you all. Thanks again for the responses and have a great day! :)

@Thextera: Ah, of course. - I'll definitely still try and do this! :)

@Wizboy73: I see your point; The "All Teensies" already is very similar of course. I totally overlooked that category. :S - I feel like a lot of the hoodlums are centered in one area of a level, but that might just be me not really remembering it correctly (especially the later stages might be very annoying). - I personally don't think it'll be a lot like No Major Glitches, as you can still skip areas that don't contain hoodlums, but I get the point where that category isn't being played a bunch, so this one won't be played as much either, as it shares a bunch of similarities.

To everyone: I'm going to make a little run of this, see what it feels like & if I had fun, I'll probably stick to that type for myself. - After I've done a run I'll post some impressions here (hopefully soon-ish) about what I liked and what I didn't like and how similar it turned out to be to existing categories (I'll check out the All Teensies and see the skips they do there aswell).

Thanks for the responses! :)

@ShadowWolf: Could you explain your "train of thoughts" a bit more as to why you don't think this will be suitable as a speedrun category?

Hey peeps!

As a long time fan of the game, I was looking to get into speedrunning R3 aswell, however, I felt like the categories didn't really suit me. - Any% has just way too many ridiculous skips (making for a not so fun experience when playing & watching + hard to get into as a new runner!), whereas Glitchless still requires you to do horrible RNG shoe and the horrors called Desert Of The Knaaren and Longest Shortcut.

So, here's my random thought; How about a category where you have to kill ALL hoodlums (excluding the final boss with the random walkers, including taunting André, including Hoodoos)?

The idea here is that you can allow all the cool skips from Any% to skip major areas, BUT, you do force the runners to play through a lot of the game, making for a nice (hopefully entertaining) hybrid between Any% and Glitchless. - You can skip all the annoying bits; No more Longest Shortcut (no hoodlums there) & Desert of the Knaaren becomes cheese, but pretty worlds like Land of the Livid Dead, Hoodlum Factory and Summit Beyond The Clouds remain to be played properly (most of the time).

I think that this would be a great way to create a more enjoyable category for both the runner aswell as the viewer and I'd like to hear what other people think. - I'll try to throw together one of these runs soon-ish to give an impression in order for it to be destroyed 2 days later.

I have no idea how hard this is to pull off, but I'm going to try anyhow. Perhaps this is absolutely ridiculous (let me know if that's the case so I'm not wasting my time!); That remains to be seen.

Let me know if this is something worth looking into! Suggestions for a proper category name are always welcome too! ("Obliterate%"? "Extinction%"? ...) :)

~Gavin

P.S.: Apologies if this isn't the way to put out proposals like these, but I'm really new to this site & I have no idea what the usual "workflow" is here. - Feel free to let me know! :)

There is no definition for 100% yet; Except that (in my opinion) it should simply be: "Complete all levels". - The tutorials are not fun & really tedious to an extent where I'd approve a run which doesn't complete the tutorials.

This is indeed no issue.

The game saves ONLY whenever you complete a level. Loading a savefile would have no point, except maybe losing a couple of seconds throughout the entire run due to menueing.

There is one exploit with this, but it doesn't help you a lot. - Rock Raiders tends to save not only the levels, but also the skills that the Rock Raiders have, which allow you to start the first level with fully equipped Raiders. However, since there's plenty of time to train the raiders throughout the run itself, there's no point in having to come fully equipped from the start. Does lift some of the brain power required to memorize stuff.

Do keep in mind that this rule allows you to do "single segment" runs, where it's actually in parts. You could have a backup save just before a level you have a lot of randomization on (Frozen Frenzy, cough, cough) and if it fails, jump to that save and cut out the previous footage. - This is really hard to detect, as the only way to see this is by tracking the mouse cursor on the screen. This can again also be cheated easily with something like a script, which always puts the mouse in a certain position; You do this for just two/three levels and use a unique script for each and taadaa; Magical "single segment" run.

In short; It's hard to confirm whether this has been done (easy to cut out in post-editing, practically cheating) + using it doesn't give you much of a benefit when used correctly, so there's no need to ban it.

P.S.: That's also why I'm not taking the rules very seriously. This category is super easy to cheat in due to the lack of continuity between the previous screen and the menu screen; They're two seperate things.