Hello,

In light of some recent discussion on these forums, I am opening this thread for community members and runners alike to put forward their thoughts and feedback on some topics I will cover below.

#Important stuff

[big]New timing start[/big] As it stands now, the way we start timing is bad and inconsistent. The official start timing is currently "when control is gained over CJ" -- the reason this is bad is because you can sometimes gain control on a black screen, thus making it inconsistent.

My proposal is: start timing on cutscene skip. This is easily implemented as pretty much everyone uses tduva's autosplitter and this is how it starts timing. If anyone has an argument for changing timing to something else, I'd love to hear it.

[big]Subjective rule enforcement for WRs[/big] Currently, runs that will be considered for World Record are subject to extra scrutiny. For a run to be considered WR, it must begin from a fresh "new game" which includes the loading screen.

It has been brought to my attention that if we're going to subjectively force things like "fresh new game" for WRs only, it would stand to reason that we would relax on the rules for other "deficiencies" that impact the run on a similarly minor scale, such as accidental cheats.

My question is: do we enforce "WR rules" for all runs? And if we don't, do we "relax" the rules for non-WR runs and forgive things such as accidental cheats?

[big]All Missions[/big] With the addition of No Major Glitches to the leaderboard, All Missions is now in a bit of a weird spot. Its original purpose was to both function as an "NMG" category itself, while also being fleshed out and incorporating some optional mission chains. The question now is: do we change All Missions, or leave it in its current form?

A couple ideas for this have been explored already:

Powdinet's post, proposing All Story Missions: https://www.speedrun.com/post/x85zl MHMD's thread, further exploring this idea: https://www.speedrun.com/gtasa/thread/apick My own post in the above thread, proposing All Assets: https://www.speedrun.com/gtasa/thread/apick/2#9pmcy

#Other stuff

[big]Runs with no video[/big] Over the years, lots of run videos have been lost. Some of these were able to be restored (thanks to Twitch changing the way video URLs work), but some have been lost forever.

I personally believe that when you click on a run on these leaderboards, you should be able to watch it. Therefore, we've been updating run video links accordingly, and rejecting runs that no longer have proof.

If you stumble upon a run -- main category, misc category or IL -- that has no video, please let us know so we can update or reject it.

[big]ILs[/big] Over the last two week we've been hammering away at restoring the ILs board. We now have, as of writing, 482 IL runs on the board, or alternatively, 32 new IL runs per day.

If we are still missing any IL runs, please notify us in the appropriate thread. Do not discuss IL runs in this thread.

[big]FLYING[/big] All of FLYING's runs have been removed. This decision may or may not be permanent, pending new information. You can find more information here: https://www.speedrun.com/gtasa/thread/f3hsl

Many community members have been vocal about FLYING, his runs, and his tenure on our leaderboard. However, I am hoping we can focus on the future of our leaderboard and not waste more breath on the happenings with FLYING. As such, please avoid FLYING discussion in this thread. Thanks.

Whew. I think that covers everything. Feel free to leave your thought(s) on whatever you like. Thanks.

Topic timing start: I think this is an issue that hasn't got to much attention and i'm glad it's being talk about now.. I think the cutscene skip where the auto splitter starts should be the right "start time". Everyone has the assess to the auto splitter and it'll give a way more accurate timing for everyone. ( some runners have -0.80 "start time" when the auto splitter starts to compensate for the black screen to get control of CJ while some others do not have this. cause of that some runs are either 0.80 secs slower or faster )

Topic rules for WR: I think if we are going to make WR holders follow certain rules but all others be more relax is unfair to those who work hard to get a WR run. forcing more requirements than another runners so unfair I say have everyone follow the same rules.

Topic All Missions: This topic is bit of a double edge sword.. I think what Mhmm_FVC offer was a good one although I did not agree with the ruling with having GT skip ban in that run. My own opinion is we should add in all the city races and BMX and NRG challenge. This does add more time to a run but it makes it different than any other run that we have on the main board. With this change it'll mean a whole new clean slate to the All Missions run. What I don't want is a All Mission run that resembles a 100% run without the collectibles such as the " all assets " offer. I see the last mission " End Of The Line" having 3 checkpoints not 3 individual missions. Doing GT skip doesn't effect the ruling nor the name of the run as in other 3D GTA games allow IP and dupes in their "All Missions" why not have GT skip in SA?

Topic IL: Glad to see IL's back up for the runners who took the time to do those runs it's a shame what happen to those runs in the first place. But we live in the here and now, However I know this isn't a topic you ask for a ruling on but may I ask if the rules of the IL be better? Meaning how do we really know someone didn't put in a cheat to get a hydra? not calling anyone out for cheating please do not get me wrong!! My offer is " Start the game a fresh start using the provided save file ( that will have to be made and a new from ) time starts when starting the mission and time stops when mission is pass. " All of that must be showed in the video but given how of a mess IL was not to long ago I can fully understand if this idea being shot down.

Topic Flying: Not even going there.

I'd advocate for relaxing rules for beginner runners with not-so-fast runs. In GTA3, I and others have accepted runs that are for instance accidentally NG+ (because of forgetting to delete old replay), accidentally loaded a wrong save (happens to very beginners who do safety saves even in any%). Of course the main culprit of SA (accidental cheats) is not present in GTA3.

But I honestly think that honest rule breaking mistakes that don't involve the player gaining any time should be forgiven for new runners with sub-par times. Repeated offences in my experiences don't happen, so by the time someone gets good, they won't make the same accidental mistakes. Of course, these minor rule breaking runs are given a notification from the mods in the comment under the run.

The same mentality goes for rules like fresh game start. For new people with sub-par times, it won't matter in the end and they will be less annoyed with playing the game if they don't need to restart the game all the time.

About timing, have you looked into applying the same timing start as in GTA3 and VC? If that's impossible, I'd agree with cutscene skip as that's the second best option. Of course it needs to be figured out how much time difference it is between old timing and new timing, maybe the lb times are needed to be modified if the timing change happens.

I’ll comment on the load bar start time that blacklev mention. From my own experience I’ve had that bar filled then fade out fast but other times slower then the time before. I don’t know know how consistent it is and how much time it takes unlike GTA 3 where you can skip the cutscene right after the load bar finishes. However I would like to see if it’s just myself who has this issue where the game sometimes takes longer to start the cutscene and if that is the case I don’t think it’ll be fair to make a WR holder reset cause the game took longer to load up and time was lost to that.

Timing Start Fully agree with the proposal. Nothing more to add.

Rule Enforcement Now, this one's a bit trickier. Do I agree that a 6h+ run should not be denied if they quickly reset on Big Smoke without restarting the game? Yes, I would agree with that. Should this run be denied if an accidental cheat was entered like Sunny Weather or Health,Armor&Money? Unless the latter gave them any sort of advantage, I don't see why it should be denied. The problem is, where do we draw the line? Different time-barriers have already been mentioned, but I'm not a fan. Why should a 4:29:57 be treated differently from a 4:30:06? So in this case, the former would've been wise to waste 3 seconds in their run so that they could receive more leniency.

When running this by myself, I end up with more questions than answers. If these added rules were defined as tightly as Top 3 / Top 5 only, why would runners that are themselves only capable of about a 4:30 time not use an "accidental" cheat to their advantage? (Hot Dog Skip, early LV armor, etc.) Of course this is a bit cynical, but I think it should be considered. How slow does a run need to be for us to collectively not care what goes on in it? Should there even be such a case? I'm leaning towards 'No'.

@Makkebakke if one accidentally entered hesoyam, then the run should definitely be denied, as the runner obv gets an advantage (refilled armor and hp)

i agree on the weather cheat, though

imagine being 3 hours into the run, you are 5 minutes ahead of your pb, the weather is sunny (!) and then you accidentally enter a sunny weather cheat, which gave you no advantage whatsoever, as the weather was clear before the cheat was entered. imo the run should still be valid, if that happens

Timing: No brainer imo, change it (unless I'm overlooking an issue)

WR Rules I feel really torn about this, but the bottom line is if it's already being done with non-fresh restart rules then it makes sense to also do it for accidental cheats. I would say that similarly to the non-fresh restart rule any accidental cheats must be noted in the comments of the submission (like how swimming times currently have to be noted)

All Missions Don't really have an opinion on this one. I would hope that whatever happens it makes it so the category has a purpose and it isn't just another NMG.

EDIT: Forgot the no videos bit. I wouldn't remove them. They WERE verified by someone. None of the ones without videos are particularly high tier so the only issue I can think of with hiding cheating isn't really a problem. Not sure removing historical runs is necessary. It's also committing to checking every run forever for a working video.

New timing start While I agree that the current timing is bad and starting the time on cutscene would be better, keep in mind that with this new timing waiting for the cutscene to end would be faster by some milliseconds. Not that I expect anyone to do this.

Subjective rule enforcement for WRs Like blacklev said, we usually ignore some minor rule breaks that don't affect the run. For example, an accidental NG+ run that wasn't top tier (around a 1:24 time) was verified because it's such a minor mistake that didn't affect anything. However this is an entirely case by case scenario. Would I accept a run with INEEDSOMEHELP or any of its hashes? No. Cheated vehicles spawns? Maybe, if the vehicle wasn't used and it caused a timeloss overall. How would I know if it's a timeloss? Cheating a sports car will load the sports car into memory, which could be abused heavily in LV for example (edit: there are actually no sports car cheats that will affect car spawns in a positive way, as all fast car cheats are for cars that usually don't spawn, except if you use the NINJATOWN or EVERYONEISRICH cheats which would definitely not be verified). Weather cheats? You're heavily influencing weather patterns, and can easily be abused to remove rain in troublesome spots. It would be entirely up to the mod team to discuss how to handle any specific run but cheats affect way more than just the immediate cheat activation. It's also so easy to find a way to prevent cheats that honestly I don't even see why this issue exists.

As for the game restart, someone in a stream mentioned that if you don't do it you can skip one of the driving school golds people usually get. I don't know anything about this but maybe allow lower-tier runs to do it as long as they do the route as it would be required in a run where the game was restarted.

Runs with no video

I understand why you're doing this but I don't agree with it. These runs were performed and verified and were victims of malicious twitch or youtube activity, I don't see why the runners have to be punished by having their times removed after being verified

Timing start

Powdinet already covered the small issues with this, but it's better than what we have currently.

Subjectivity

Enforce it for everyone, only making people follow the rules because they are going for good times is really silly imo. There are known ways to circumvent accidental cheats so if you get one in a run it's entirely your fault and you shouldn't have your run accepted due to some inconsistent strictness. Adding more arbitrariness such as "run will be denied for X cheat but not for Y cheat when done accidentally" is ridiculous. You're on PB pace and have it ruined by an avoidable WASD cheat, if you chose to do nothing about it (Using AHK for example) you absolutely deserve to have your run rejected. Good players going for good times shouldn't be punished and made to follow stricter rules just because they're good.

Edit - MakkeBakke also makes a good point in saying someone who has say a 4:29:59 pace run could easily stall time to push themselves over these proposed arbitrary timeslots. And to anyone saying "nobody will do that" this is SA we're talking about.

All Missions

Something needs to be done, as currently the "All Missions" category doesn't include completely every mission as the title suggests. Personally I've never ran the category and never plan to run it, but having AM that doesn't involve completing all missions is just absurd.

Removing runs without video

I don't agree with this at all, if a run was verified to be legit at the time it should stay on the leaderboard regardless of whether the video still exists. You're removing a huge part of the leaderboard's history by wiping these runs. It's twitch's fault for being stupid and wiping runs, and while the runner is partly to blaming for trusting twitch in the first place, my point still stands.

Change name to all story missions and include gt skip. Category is gonna become 1000x times better.

Timing

Cutscene skip is a good start for it.

AM

Pretty much what thriving said.

WR rules

I'd personally keep it like it is, but if others want some other solution, so be it.

Runs with no vids

I fixed all the runs with missing vids that I could, so I'm fine with the rest being removed if a vid for them doesn't surface.

Timing start and game start rule

The timer should start after the loading bar disappears after fresh game start, and yes every run should have the same ruleset as WRs currently have. Old runs can be retimed by adding however many seconds it takes from loading bar disappearance to control gain. (If the time it takes is inconsistent then the cutscene skip is the best option). Regardless all runs should require fresh game start.

Accidental cheats should never be allowed, as they may affect the game in unforeseen ways. There are ways to avoid this from happening, so there is no reason to accept it.

Runs with no video

If a run was verified at the time of submission it should be given the benefit of doubt and in my opinion it should not be removed from the leaderboard. Of course broken urls should be fixed if possible, or be replaced with mirrored videos if they exist. Perhaps a comment can be added to the run entries to clarify that there was a verified video but it is now unfortunately unavailable.

Timing and subjective and cheats:

Make it the same as GTA3 and VC for timing start. Once the loading screen is gone start time. Honestly everyone should restart the game between resets. Since I found out in GTA3 the longer you have the game running, the more out of sync in game timing gets, I've always restarted my game in any game I run. It's pretty much known that some values aren't removed when you start a new game without restarting. Enough for me to say restart. Isn't there an FPS thing you can do to make startup almost instant? If this is the case, you have no excuse other than laziness for restarting your game. Accidental cheats shouldn't be allowed, use AHK to avoid it.

Runs with no video:

Read: Eben post on this because I agree with him

All Missions:

"We want all story missions category, no we don't we want no major glitches category, no we don't we want all missions" how about do a run of the category, get interest in the category and then it might be added? So bored of all these category changes whenever they feel like complaining.

FLYING:

I know you said no mention of this but here is a suggestion. How about give him until the 30th of October (1 month after his runs have been removed) to prove himself and if he has nothing, perm ban him. Fool me once etc... We shouldn't have any tolerance for this anymore after the last few months.

[quote]Make it the same as GTA3 and VC for timing start. Once the loading screen is gone start time. [/quote]

Yes

[quote]The timer should start after the loading bar disappears after fresh game start, and yes every run should have the same ruleset as WRs currently have. Old runs can be retimed by adding however many seconds it takes from loading bar disappearance to control gain. (If the time it takes is inconsistent then the cutscene skip is the best option). Regardless all runs should require fresh game start.[/quote]

Yes!

EDIT:

About runs with no video proof... Like most people said, they should stay. Once they got verified - they stay verified (unless later we find out they were cheated or something).

Maybe for runs without video proof we need to create a separate category? Like "The museum of ancient historical runs", with all respect to the work of our great ancestors

I understand that I am nobody in GTA SA speedruns (except for several IL's). But still, if THERE IS NO VIDEO for a run - then THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that the run is made without cheating, scripts, cuts, or unacceptable violations of the rules of GTA SA speedruns. You can not even claim that run without video proof EXISTS!

@Tier4Jean "But still, if THERE IS NO VIDEO for a run - then THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that the run is made without cheating, scripts, cuts, or unacceptable violations of the rules of GTA SA speedruns."

This is absolutely false, there is evidence because a moderator of the game verified it. There is no better evidence than a mod saying they watched the video and were happy with it being on the leaderboard.

If you don't trust the mods, then that's on you.

The only thought on this that I have is yea, they were verified at some point, but there's no way to retroactively know if they're legit. If the run has something against the rules that wasn't caught by the mod, we can never know, because the video is gone.

All things considered, it's a pretty small issue, but I appreciate the discussion. It is a shame that old, legendary runs/runners can no longer be seen. The good news is, I've only rejected them, so we can always re-verify if the videos emerge or if we decide to allow these ancient non-video runs back onto the boards.

I left out this topic because it slipped my mind but I also wanted to discuss the frame limiter. Should we consider lifting the rule enforcing frame limiter? If we do, should we enforce a "max FPS" like 60?

I see a few merits to this: (1) if frame limiter was truly a necessity it wouldn't be needed as a rule - people would just play with it ON all the time anyway. (2) it's an in-game option that everyone has access to, what makes it different than "vehicle density" in IV era games? (3) higher frame rates allow for "better" pause buffering, allowing more people to skip lines and get the FIAB om0 call too (maybe, idk if anyone has issues with this right now), and (4) who wants to play with 25 FPS anyway?

Drawbacks are of course: physics oddities, higher barrier to entry (maybe), ES dupe is most consistent with 25 FPS, and maybe some other stuff that suffers at higher FPS (Madd Dogg, randomly dying, etc)

If you argue that the same rules for WR runs should be applied to all runs, then argue that runs that have had their video lost should stay on the leaderboard, does that mean WR runs with lost video should stay as well?

Similarly, there is a workaround for accidental cheats so runs with them should not count, there are workarounds for losing your video, if you lose it and don't have a back up that's your fault.