Actually, in the current git, any% is different from expert% (and from SuperTux% obviously).

If you finish 3rd of an expert GP, you get a "easy" cup. If you finish 4th of a SuperTux GP, you get an "easy" cup. This allows triple-skips, so an Any% has 4 races less than an expert% (though 8 more than 0.9.3's any%).

When I wrote "shortcuts", I didn't really think about in-track shortcuts, rather a way to unlock things faster.

For the "difficult challenge", maybe if there was one egghunt or two in story mode...

I think that at equal skill difference, the time difference would be greater in egghunt compared to normal races.

And yet more ghost mode improvements :

It would be fun having videos comparing 0.9.3 skillful ILs

@Alistair_Findlay, as you seem to have the better computer performance to record in higher graphics quality, if you are interested I can send you a few ghosts (tell me which tracks). You'll just have to check on GitHub to find my version with the ghost improvements. You'll also be able to switch from one ghost to the other with ctrl+F5.

[QUOTE]The amount of times I see this terrible excuse for lazy moderation is incredible. If you can’t watch runs closely, then don’t be a moderator, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t have the time to watch runs in full, then don’t be a mod and let someone who has the time take over. No shame in being busy and not being able to fully watch runs, but you shouldn’t be a moderator.[/QUOTE]

Look, I'm not saying that it wouldn't be better if all runs, including the 200th, were all watched in full by at least someone.

I'm not saying that top3/top10/... (depending on the game's competition, etc) runs shouldn't be treated with much more cautiousness (which mostly means full-watching).

I'm not saying that some games shouldn't get more moderators to get a more thorough verification.

I'm not saying that there are not some real lazy moderators who approve blindly.

What I'm saying is that your ideal of all runs being fully verified before approbation WON'T happen. I don't say you must like it, I don't say that I like it, I say this is an objective reality you can't get around, because of human nature, time constraints, etc.

Just look at this if you want to be disheartened about the level of check for a lot of runs : https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/45e1en/a_question_to_speedruncom_moderators_how_do_you/

Read it, and come tell me again if you think you can really get >90% of SRC moderators to only ever approve a run they have watched in full.

Rather than saying "either each run must be 100% verified or let waiting undefinitely", which in practice leads to "lightly checked run are marked the same way as fully verified runs, and other moderators/community members have no way to know which is which" ; my proposed system allows a much better correction : 1)other mods/users can know which run to look at with more attention (especially, another mod can do full verifications for runs lacking it) ; 2)if a mod were to mark as "verified" a run which don't follow the category rules (in a way which pass through light checks), the community can see he's not fit to moderate and have him ousted, which should mostly guarantee that the "verified" label is only applied when truly warranted.

[QUOTE]I just went through this with a community I’m a part of - the moderation team made this exact same excuse and I warned them it was lazy moderation. Guess what happened - spliced runs made it through.[/QUOTE] This doesn't surprise me in the least, and I'm not saying they shouldn't have done a better job.

But the goal of my proposition is precisely to catch them at a higher rate and sooner in similar situations.

[QUOTE]What you just described for SMO is exactly why communities of mods have this compromise. If you’re not closely watching a run that’s 155th on the LB or a run that’s 9 hours long, that’s okay because that game gets a lot of runs and for runs that low on the LB it’s understandable.[/QUOTE] Well, that's my point. Those runs should be marked in a "approved but not fully verified" state.

I didn't advocate in the least being careless for times on the top of the leaderboard.

It was to get an improvement in that kind of situation : [QUOTE]Should we be watching segments of the run at the minimum? Absolutely. Can anyone expect us to watch the run in full? Hell no.[/QUOTE]

Separate note : 0.9.0 and 0.9.1 are currently mixed in the ILs, but the kart were split in 3 types with a revision of kart characteristics between those 2 versions, so in theory this should make them separate...

@brmbrmcar

@Dugglez is not active at all here, I don't see the point of having him as super-moderator for STK. Verifier would be enough, if he wished to come back later, I think.

@UbuntuJackson is very active verifying runs and is trustworthy, I'd put him as super-moderator for an easier management of mods in the future.

I'd also like to myself get moderator, would be nice to be able to verify runs, sticky forum posts, etc.

Maybe we could add ILs for track in reverse ? The strategies and gameplay change slightly between the two, as "long straigt, curve, short straight" is not symmetrical, for example.

However, adding it for all difficulties would create an enormous amount of ILs.

And tbh, I don't like having categories nobody run, wants to run, which don't add anything, and seems to be just here waiting for some stupid kid to claim a bunch of "WR".

I'm not a big fan in the gate skip, at least in its 0.9.3 iteration. It just makes the run shorter, but with the proper technique learned, it makes the overall run easier (expert% requires to pull off some track specific-tricks like the mansion skip twice ; and require to pull-off a double-skip in a 4-tracks GP ; both of which are very skill-selecting).

I like more GP skips, as messing up can be catastrophic, but it's still very much in control of the player.

Part of what make a game "speedrunning-friendly" is making the time of a run less luck-based and more skill-dependent. Even with a normal run through all levels, random events (items) often average out enough that the better time is the more skillful-one ; and at worst the better player will get better luck over a few tries. Still, the time difference between "excellent skill" and "decent skill" is not that big. It's shaving off these last percents which is the hardest, and if say in 0.9.4 a SuperTux% run takes 1h30m with extraordinary skill but 1h35m with good skill, we have just too small of a gap, there is no "wow factor".

So what is needed are things which are harder to pull-off, not random, and can make a significant difference.

Keep in mind that we need something which could be accepted into the base game.

I see two ways of doing this :

1. Make some challenges punishing : doable, but with little margin for error. Realistically, this can only be done for itemless SuperTux challenges.
2. Create "shortcuts" : while the casual players would complete the challenges and get the unlock normally, managing to do some extra-skillfull action could be rewarded with an extra making the overall completion shorter.

Any good idea of "shortcuts" which the main STK developers may accept ?

Speedrun.com should probably add a third status to runs, something akin to "approved but not fully verified".

Let's be honest, moderators won't be able to watch all the submitted runs in full, and paying attention to all the details during the full run. They can and should do basic checks (does the run seem correctly timed, is the skill level on some random portion consistent with the claimed time), but they often just can't watch it all. Things like splicing can get through this.

Rather than aiming for an ideal-but-impossible standard of "all runs are fully verified" ; allow the moderator to mark a more accurate verification status for the run :

• Rejected (checked and the run was invalid)
• Approved (basic checks, seemed ok, but not thoroughly checked)
• Verified (fully watched, and checks against known cheating techniques)

For runs approved before adding the new status, they should default to "approved" - easier for moderators to mark them as verified if they indeed were fully verified than trying to track down in old runs those that have been only quickly approved but are marked misleadingly as "verified" - a verified run is always approved but the contrary is false.

"Approved" times would appear normally in the leaderboards, but they'd be some indication somewhere about their moderation status (not in a way illegitimizing the run : innocent until proved guilty). Then, a second moderator or a community member would be able to know that the run has only passed basic checks and would be able to check it more fully if they wish so (because they have time to do so, or are suspicious).

It may also be useful that a run can be marked "verified" by multiple moderators, the system displaying who has done so. One full-verification would be often plenty, but for WRs and such, it may come in handy.

Announcing a change you will love : ghost mode improvements.

Demonstration here :

I can get Thunderbird drops quite often on Cornfield now. Never in Cocoa though.

On the other hand, longer turn radius should mean that skids on straights are easier to pull-off. That would make the best setting more situational.

This applies to 0.9.3 and probably to all 0.8.x and 0.9.x versions released to date.

Video demonstrating this :

Karts with a shorter turn radius are probably better for ILs and full-game runs, though in most situations, with proper skidding use, you're not limited by turn radius.

I personally hit the spot slightly more to the left, but with the kart rotated a bit more to the right, and turning right at the moment I hit the spot. This, and red skidding, helped me to get it very reliable.

For the fastest gate skip, I think the start point is from Cornfield Crossing's spot as I did in my any% WR. You start farther, but you only have to do a half-circle versus a full circle.

It depends how you view ILs. Sure, expert IL have some relevance for full-run training (though the zippers do change the balance), and you could apply that reasoning for intermediate as training for intermediate% and novice as training for novice%. But if you view ILs as a competitive field, the non-supertux difficulties are second-tier filler. Someone interesting in full-game run training would certainly be able to go through a tab to get access to the results.

That said, grouping the results in tabs by version rather than by difficulty also makes sense. Not sure if there is a clean way to combine this... The ideal imho would be the SuperTux results on the front page of ILs, and then having it version by version in tabs, but that may be not doable with the current speedrun.com framework.

There is also the question of what to do with tracks who are dropped from one version to another. Should ILs only feature the official levels of a given version, or also include all official levels previously dropped since 0.8.1 ? There are already some times on dropped levels, but long-term this may create an ever-growing list of outdated levels.

Official new : there won't be a possibility to do a gate skip anymore in 0.9.4.

Why ?

SuperTuxKart will have a new overworld. No much detail yet about how it will be ; we can only guess it'll look nicer than the current one, hard to tell if overworld navigation will change.

The gate opens not according to points but according to challenges : when all challenges (except the last) have been completed, it opens.

The bubble of the last challenge unlocks under the minimum number of points you have when finishing all challenges in easy.

It's official : there will be a SuperTux difficulty in Story Mode in 0.9.4 ; the changes for this have been merged tonight. See : https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/pull/3207

The main changes in short :

• SuperTux difficulty added to all the challenges. A lot of them still use timer limits as the AI is not yet good enough to replace it.
• More karts in challenges, will go from 4 to 10 instead of 3 to 5.
• Some changes in what races are in which GP (candela city is now part of the 3rd GP ; volcano Island of the 2nd GP, and Northern Resort of the 4th, which is at 5 races now)
• GP challenges are worth 3 times as much points as normal 1-race challenges
• Easy/medium/hard challenges are now worth 6/7/8 points instead of 8/9/10 (the supertux one are worth 10).
• SuperTux difficulty unlocked at 250 points, rather than after the boss race against Nolok. (Planned : an alternative unlock route, harder but faster).
• Awards a GP cup of an inferior level if the player has a good enough position. For example in an expert challenge GP, finishing 2nd doesn't mean getting nothing, but getting a silver cup. (From a speedrunning pov, this offers some interesting skip possibilities for an any% ; though not for a SuperTux%).

A 100% requires by nature completing all challenges in the game at the highest difficulty, so it will always include an expert%. But as it's expert% + achievements and there are not much achievements, that is a category without much interest currently.

The old timer mod is indeed obsolete. Not sure about the speedometer mod. I'd keep it around, even though I wouldn't use it myself.

I don't understand how Antedilvian Abyss was ever faster, at least in Expert. I get a Shifting Sands lap in 40-42s ; while an Antediluvian Abyss one is more 44-46s. The red skidding boost are not easy to do well on Abyss.