There is also the possibility of merely simplifying the duology down to "beat the two games as fast as you can, in a row, regardless of setting", which would most likely boil down to easy support runs of both games (maybe IGT abuse).

Alright, so about five days have passed, and some discussions have happened since, so we can probably move on.

Unfortunately, not a lot of people have given their input on this. It’s a bit unclear what we’ll do next, or if the path we'll take might end up being a good one in the long run. I personally have a lot of doubts and uncertainties with how to proceed.

But that definitely doesn’t mean we won’t add these categories. We’re gonna get started with something.

And I think it might ultimately be the safe move, to open up a category extension leaderboard (Which in the past I may have possibly wrongly called “misc category leaderboard”). This is because we will have full freedom of how we want these categories to look like (as in, not plenty of empty spaces. Or else, restrict the amount of ways to play the category in order to make it simpler to get into). A freedom we do not have with the main leaderboard. We may add any new categories there. It will be the second half of the leaderboard, in sort, with this one being the first.

Although there will be a news post about it once it opens up, I have this feeling that this extension leaderboard won’t have as much visibility as the main one. At the same time, any new category or way to play the game we will open from now on will probably never be as popular or close to the categories of the main leaderboard. So I don’t know if it will matter much.

If nothing gets said, I'll go and do the formalities to add the new board.

Posting in support of the category extension leaderboard.

Do we figure out how exactly the categories and their respective restrictions (or lack thereof) will look later, after the board has been created?

As for visibility, I'm sure we can let people know in the Discord somehow.

We'll definitely do it later. (Which probably equals to very soon)"

Alright then. Will add the board whenever I can.

A bit late, sorry.

So the category extension leaderboard has been created some time ago, it’s this : https://www.speedrun.com/klonoaprsce

Now we can start discussing about the categories themselves :

1. 0 dreamstones

This category is for Lunatea’s Veil only. As far as we know, something similar isn’t possible in the wii and remaster of the first game. It was an already existing category in the PS2 one, and we are considering importing over here.

Additionally, it requires the support jump. And a difficulty other than hard, because at some point, you need to take two points of damage.

The first question is, do we open multiple difficulties, or do we set it to only one ? If we set it to one, do we choose normal ?

Second question, do we allow pause abuse ? At high enough skill level, you wouldn’t need to pause warp to retry sections because you get them first try. But for everyone else, the ability would make itself be worthwhile,. As if you play on easy, without death planes around, bringing 15 hp Klonoa down would be a very tedious task. Since it’s a category of a lesser standing, maybe we could afford it.

For the timing, we could use IGT and time the game the same way we do in the normal speedruns.

We beat the main game without collecting any gems (implied : you can obviously die to go back in time). While it wouldn’t be necessary for verification, you could decide to show the global stage score screen at the end of the run. All of them should be at 0 by the end of things.

2. duology speedrun

Simply beat both games back to back.

Do we allow starting with 2 and finishing with 1 ?

We would keep IGT (I was considering writing about the idea RTA instead. But its downsides are numerous). This way the timing system would be very simple. It's the time of both games combined.

What difficulty ? What category ? What mode ? Any% normal standard/support ? Or else, the fastest ways to clear the games, as in easy support IGT abuse ? Speaking of the latter, how do we do, allow it unconditionally ?

3. Hurt Granny speedruns (name unconfirmed)

Would be the memiest category in the whole series so far. You start from the beginning of DtP, reach Gelg Bolm, hit granny with a Moo, free her and have her confront you.

Most importantly, how do we time the end of the run ? If we go IGT, then the only realistic way of ending the run would be after Gelg Bolm is defeated, as the timer would stop and be very easily readable. IGT stops during cutscenes, so we wouldn’t be able to do anything with ending the run at the exact line… unless we go RTA.

When you think about it… it’s basically a speedrun of the first half of the game, with this version of the Gelg Bolm fight being slightly different (different enough to affect the time ?). I assume everyone is still okay with this though.

Again, what category(ies) ? Pause abuse ?

Really not simple decisions.

I will probably have forgotten about certain game aspects, so my apologies in advance.

I omitted this, but for 3) Neil actually suggested the namy granny%.

If no one says anything (especially interested players), we may go with that instead of what I wrote.

After reading through what people have discussed both here on SRC and on the Discord these last few days, I have come to review my prior position.

I previously argued in favor of restricting the extra categories, in the interest of streamlining board structure and player experience. However, I am now of the opinion that such an approach would merely lead to arguments regarding how those categories should be restricted. It is likely that no agreement would be reached, leading into inevitable dissatisfaction.

Instead, I would like to echo a line of thought that has been presented on the Discord, in favor of enforcing no restrictions. Apply the simplest definition of "beat the category as fast as you can," and let each player decide where their knowledge and interests lie, and how far they are willing to push them.

Of course a meta would take form for each category, but isn't the nature of any category to have a meta? It comes down to each player to decide which strategies and time saves they wish to adopt in pursuit of said meta.

I believe this approach would be easy to accept for more direct extra categories, such as 0 Dreamstones and Granny%.

As for the duology, however, it seems to me like there are two ways out:

• Apply the "no restrictions" principle and let the meta naturally form. I would even submit that in this case players could run the games with different settings (for example, maybe Easy is faster for KPRS1 and Normal is faster for KPRS2, or whatever).
• Keep all possible parametrization, which would mean we could even add the duology into the main board, as it would fit into the current structure anyway. This method, in turn, implies that both games would be played with the exact same settings.

Personally, at this point I would vote for the unrestricted duology, not only for the sake of simplicity, but in the spirit of seeing how fast both games can be done in a row when no holds are barred.

As for timing the duology, I maintain that it should simply be the IGT sum of both games. Not only is it a straightforward procedure with which we are all familiar, it should also put different platforms on a level playing field. As a Switch player, the load times would automatically dash my hopes of competing in RTA timing.

Concerning game order: in my experience, communities that build such categories for their franchises seem to try and make the games chronological (and the runs done back-to-back, of course).

Lastly, an issue was raised regarding the name of the category I mentioned above as "Granny%". I have heard from people who both love and hate the usage of % to name categories that don't really have anything to do with completion percentage, and in the end the choice seems mostly inoffensive.

For myself, I think it's funny, and see no problem with some lighthearted fun when naming meme/side categories. For example, Mario Odyssey has a category called Nipple%, and that's just comedy gold. They could've just called it Boxer Shorts, but went with the joke instead.

In our particular case, I don't know if it was intentional but I'm a fan of how Granny% comes across as a play on Any%.

Since then, most of the conversation has happened on the server.

Here is the summary of what we have agreed upon. It will be pushed forward if nothing else arises :

1. 0 Dreamstones

L’sV category. Will be in the category extension leaderboard. Timed using IGT, like a normal full-game run. Will have two sub-categories :

• Traditional (meant to replicate the category found on PS2 : normal support, no IGT Abuse)
• Unrestricted (our modern spin on the category. Basically your IGT abuse category. Relevant part is you can retry sections without as much penalty, which is more than handy in this difficult category. Also expected to be a couple minutes faster than traditional)

2. Granny%

DtP speedrun. Will be in the category extension leaderboard. Timed using IGT, time you get after defeating Gelg Bolm (technically, when you land on the ground after dealing the final hit, springs included). No gameplay specifications, IGT abuse is allowed.

3. Full Duology

Will be in the main leaderboard, therefore have access to all main sub-categories. Timed using IGT, we add up the time of both full-game runs (and the milliseconds of all three extras). The order of the games played is unimportant. As a recall, PC players must respect the FPS regulations, no matter the game.

After nearly three weeks, we have added the categories.

Sorry in advance, but I have moved duology to the second board. I have made a mistake in my planning for that category. It would have required the tweaking of all the sub-categories rules, and having their text include the case for when you play multiple games. A process which would have certainly overcomplicated them and made them very tiresome to read.

Have fun people.

A bit of sour news for the game.

It turns out that despite our attempt at balancing the platforms thanks to IGT timing, there can still be noticeable differences between them.

Well, we technically already knew this, with the element of lag. Less powerful consoles simply have a worse framerate that’s affecting the gameplay, and sometimes even the game’s physics (DtP). But this at most had a slim effect on runs, it’s not a very telling advantage (not mentioning frame loss, and the bother of playing a slower game).

There’s also PC having access to a way to bind the support move to the same keyboard runners play on. But for this, it’s generally assumed that you can get about the same level of proficiency with that move as you can with two controllers. You press one button at most every couple seconds.

So while these platform differences are there, they’re arguably unclear and unimportant.

Well, a new difference got found, and it’s the biggest one yet.

Ghadius is a peculiar boss fight in its Wii and KPRS iteration. Contrary to his PS1 counterpart, it seems like the entire fight is predetermined. Phase 1 enemy spawns, phase 2 trail directions… it’s all the same everytime you play the boss, RNG seems inexistent. This allows the boss to be quickly beatable consistently.

Well, it’s not exactly perfectly consistent. On Wii, there’s apparently two different outcomes for the direction of one specific enemy trail, late into phase 2. Which has a crucial effect on your ability of being able to beat him quickly. But this game is off-topic.

On KPRS, it was thought that the boss fight behaved the exact same way perfectly consistently, no matter the difficulty (at least for full-game runs – ILs varies a bit). Alas, this is where this new info comes in. As just like in Wii, there is a very specific enemy trail in phase 2 that can bounce a different way. But unlike this being due to RNG, it seems to be entirely dependent on the platform you’re playing on...?

Take a look at the trail going towards the top left of the screen :

https:/ /youtu.be/q8NoEVA9qzs?t=2543

For instance, you can play on PC, and always have that enemy trail go down, which allows for a faster kill. But if you play on Switch or PS5, it’ll always go up, disallowing that time-save and losing roughly 7 seconds overall.

Note that this time-save is only relevant on easy, as Ghadius has 9 hit points instead of 10. A different strategy would need to be used for other difficulties.

Not all platforms have been tested, we’re not 100% sure if it’s exclusive to PC... either way, it’s an unmistakable gameplay difference disadvantageous to many platforms.

As regrettable as this is though, I would disagree with it threatening the health of the leaderboard.

Sure, a large amount of runs of the game are on easy standard, so they have to deal with this problematic Ghadius. But it’s not present anywhere else, neither in DtP’s other categories, and in the fundamentally different sequel. And with the fact that it only affects ~~7 seconds... It’s simply not worth it to introduce a platform split for these categories.

Not that it would be possible to add in the leaderboard anyways. It’s just all too rigid for it.

At least platform filtering is a thing if you’re genuinely bothered.

But yea, I felt it was important enough to mention here.

Thanks to @NeilLegend for the help with this, he was the first one who discovered it.

Quick clarification post about something that was brought up recently :

There should be nothing wrong with assigning the cutscene skip action and the cutscene fastforward action within the use of a single button, in order to make these actions slightly more comfortable to use.

News ! KPRS can now be purchased on the Epic store ! Woohoo!!!!

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/klonoa-phantasy-reverie-series?lang=en-US

What does this imply ? Well, I'll start with this lazily taken screenshot :

We're currently not sure about whether or not the autosplitter will work on there. Someone will have to try it out... at least for whoever has this port and decides to speedrun with it... when that'll happen...

There is also the question of knowing the provided version of the game. Which is 99.9% likely to be v1.1... but that's left to be confirmed.

The achievements look like the same (didn't do a thorough comparison, but nothing special seems to be standing out).

If I have to guess, this new way to access the game won't really impact the way we handle things. It's a PC game, it has to respect FPS regulations and so forth.

But boy that sure is news.

I was looking at the RTA rules the other day. I think we should remove the timing exceptions of Leptio and King of Sorrow.

For both fights, there are cutscenes, and you can move Klonoa before the IGT begins... so I find my argument about the contents happening before the fight not potentially impacting the IGT, a tad weak. Especially the fact that you can move.

This way, it's more consistent with the rest of the game, and it also makes more sense in general. RTA will always and systematically begin when the stage loads, including cutscenes.

I'll correct the RTA of the times involved, update the rules, and do a quick heads-up update to the posts that brought these changes in the first place (done)

Oh, and for the runs who don't show the prefight Leptio/King of Sorrow moments... we'll let them slide

(Full post split in two separate post because of src text limit. Part 1)

This update post was overdue.

New post, new strats, new technique with crazy potential... and more unfortunate news about the fundamental balance between consoles.

@NeilLegend has been fervently glitchhunting, and it definitely payed out :

• 4-2 wind hop trick

See this video for an explanation of the trick (). Compare the same thing on PC ()

So as you can see, for the wind hop to work, you need to stay on the final wind current for a short period of time. But to gain the necessary height to clear the jump, you can normally count on the wind currents to propel you very high during that period.

But as seen in the console clip, the currents there give nowhere as much height as on PC, making the trick impossible. Doesn’t work on PS5 and Switch.

This is a top level strat that only saves a couple seconds over normal play, and on certain categories.

• Huge new IGT abuse technique

Alternatively :

This is a pretty wild find. Tetons are supposed to pop off automatically, but they just don’t if you keep pausing and unpausing perfectly ?? When doing so, a single game frame elapses, in which the Teton continues to rise up without bursting.

Doing this in 1-1 to immediately climb onto the Lephise statue hill (that you can easily reach in support mode speedruns) saves 7 seconds, and could potentially save more if you also use it on the last screen of Balue’s Tower (if you’re wondering, Tetons also become resistant to ceilings in this one-frame game state)

This is a really unique trick that also makes you wonder what else can be tampered with by pausing this way. And speaking off, that video was done in real-time, without the use of TAS. It’s even an actual IL submission (or at least until he removed it as there was no consensus about the legality of this trick). What gives ?

Well… you’re probably guessed it now. It’s no coincidence. There a human way to pause this well.

If you hold escape after quitting the pause menu, the game will buffer it upon returning into the game. A truly broken tool here.

...Except it’s only available on the PC version. The controls are programmed differently. Ba-dum-tss.

This behavior is also possible on Wii, however it can't be used for anything meaningful. This is mainly because you can't pause-buffer in that game, as the game has a delay before you’re allowed to pause again.

On the other hand this behavior isn’t possible with PR2 either.

Anyways… would this be allowed outside of IGT abuse? Pretty clearly not, as using this pause-buffering technique to achieve anything takes several minutes. You can see it for yourself with the presented video. Not speedrun-spirit friendly. But it's a very welcome addition to IGT abuse.

(Full post split in two separate post because of src text limit. Part 2)

• Switch differences

This one is quite shocking… but the way the Switch is set-up (in handheld or docked mode) would also seem to impact the game.

Neil has tested both configurations on Ghadius, and confirmed that the enemies in phase 2 could take different directions.

(Neil also felt that there were some IGT running differences between docked and handheld, but I tested this and couldn’t find a difference : )

• Still yet more Ghadius fight shenanigans

There’s been some extra weirdness about the second phase of this fight again.

But the first big piece of news about Ghadius is that Neil did find a top level strat for the second phase that matches the speed of the original PC exclusive strat while being available on the previously disadvantaged platforms.

Along with it he also figured out the broad requirements for these fights to happen :

° Old strat (more specifically a failed attempt of it where one of the trails went up instead of down at the very end, because of the platform being something other than PC) :

You need PC with Vsync off OR have the game screen be at a 16:10 ratio while in fullscreen to ensure this enemy pattern happens.

° New strat :

This is possible and afaik the only possible strat on console. On PC, you need to turn Vsync on. Or have a different screen ratio or not be in fullscreen.

Neil attempts to provide an explanation for the fullscreen requirement, saying that “it's weird. my guess is that playing in windowed mode introduces a bit of lag that can impact the angle at which the dark moos bounce off of the wheel. playing a game in full screen typically puts its processes at higher priority (which reduces the chance of this lag)”

By the end however, he stresses that «"every ghadius is personalized". So it's a matter of analyzing second phase behavior on your own to determine which of the different observed sets are present in your game.»

• Another potential game version difference

Outside of ISJ, we are 99% confident we know of a second way to determine the version of KPRS in-game. When pausing the game, the capitalization of the « How to play » option can be different. It’s in full caps for v1.0.0, whereas the v1.0.1 has normalized writing : https://imgur.com/a/HmrkUDK

Oh, lastly, Neil has argued about shortening the names of the father categories of the leaderboard. Namely by removing the “Klonoa” name. The reason being that the name of KPRS categories were unreasonably long, sometimes to the point where they couldn’t be displayed properly on LiveSplit. Indeed, when you want to show the category you’re playing on the window of the program, it’s forced to first indicate the father category “Klonoa:Door to Phantomile” before listing the actual category specification you’re playing.

Although I believe we would need a bit more discussion when it comes to change/shortening the entire name of the father categories, I agreed that the word “Klonoa” could be removed safely without much impact on the overall outlook of the leaderboard and categories, for the sake of better LiveSplit display. (and if you’re wondering, it doesn’t affect the way the autosplitter works).

The change was proposed on the discord server in august of this year, and the few people who replied were okay with it so we pushed it.

Thanks to Neil again for his work and his tremendous help.

(co-written) Hey guys. Update post about the leaderboard.

As you all may know, the Steam Deck is a platform in which KPRS is fully playable (according to the Steam Store Page). That being said, use of this platform has not been seen until now, with @Leahp’s runs.

Neil and I have dug up information on it. We concluded the Steam Deck behaves more like a PC than a console (it is effectively a portable Linux machine).

For one, the Steam Deck supports an FPS Display, a 60 fps cap toggle, and possesses the ability to run certain games above 60 FPS. Additionally, the Steam Deck can be modded to significantly increase the FPS (up to 120). And the modding for it seems pretty accessible.

By now, we have accumulated enough knowledge to conclude that the game behaves differently at different frame rates outside of a certain range. Thus, we will be enforcing FPS regulation rules to Steam Deck to ensure a level playing field with both standard PC and console runs moving forward.

Thanks to Neil as usual for his help with this.