https://www.speedrun.com/sinjid_shadow_of_the_warrior/runs/y8k3llxy
SizoQ has a spicy new glitched Sinjid run which uses some unothodox strategies to run faster. It's a very impressive run, but some of the tricks utilized might be brushing up against the rules, so we figured we should have a talk about it.
The most important trick in question here is that SizoQ switches from one enemy to the next right after killing them, which fulfills the rule requirement of "An opponent is only considered defeated once dead". But because SizoQ does this, they never ends up actually marking the opponent as "defeated" in the game engine itself. The downside with this is that the portals won't be marked as being fully completed/defeated, and the player can't exit the Shadow Temple to trigger the credit screen.
So the question is, is this a problem? I honestly could go either way on this: On one hand, opponents and monsters are being defeated, which is the actual challenging content that we speedrunners are competing against. On the other hand, the game/savefile itself will not consider the game beaten, as the portals are still undefeated and the credit screen cannot be triggered. Does it qualify as a 100% runthough of the game?
Please share your viewpoints here!
In my view there is no question whether or not the run is within the bounds of the current rule set – it is. All levels/enemies have been defeated, which is stated in the rules as the win condition. The question is whether or not it should be. I argue that it should. Switching between enemies doesn’t trivialize anything, rather it adds depths and possibilities to the category, which makes for more interesting runs.
I don’t really see a problem in the game not flagging the levels as completed in the underlying code. I imagine that is also the case for many other speed running games in the glitch category. It would be a shame to limit the category based on a flag not being raised, when all the content has been completed. Doing shenanigans like this is what makes the category interesting.
I very much agree it's within the current rules, and you make a good argument as to why it should stay that way.
Part of the issue that makes me a bit uneasy comes from the fact that you can't trigger the credit screen, which is the way the game is setup: you defeat the enemies, then you leave the temple, that's how you win the game. In fact, most speedrun rules end the timer when you hit the credit screen, and some clever speedrunners even exploit this by doing "credit warps" and the like. It's the standard way of doing things.
We are however doing it differently by ending the timer when the final attack hits the final enemy of the run, and you don't even need to wait for the boss death animation to play out, much less make it over to the credit screen.
But overall I don't have a super strong objection to keeping it this way, it's just a bit of a weird situation overall. If somebody were to load up your savefile after you complete your speedrun it wouldn't look like you actually beat the game.
The best comparison I can think about are other games where you have a progress percentage on your savefile like Super Metroid or Donkey Kong Country, it increments as you beat bosses and get collectables. It would be kinda weird if their 100% category ended their save-file at 16% progression when the run was over, because have they actually done a "100% run"?
To me, I don’t think reaching the credits screen is important. That’s not the goal of the glitchless run either. Time stops when you beat all enemies because ultimately that’s the content of the game. I think it makes sense to transfer that into a glitched category—100%ing the game means beating every enemy
That's fair. I think if I were setting it up from the very start I would have gone with time being at the credits, but the way we have it now is fine too.
