The search bar only works once, and if I backspace what I'm typing to search for something else, then it never drops down again until I open a new page to search "for the first time" again. Sometimes it never opens the search dropdown at all, and hitting enter after a search keyword just append "?" to the current page url. The notifications # icon never goes away after viewing them, and it's very hard to see at a glance each notification without mousing over each of them to show the different background color and help differentiate between each one. (I did clear cache, actually completely uninstalled/reinstalled browser as well, like others before me have said, but that hasn't done anything for me in regard to the notifications or search). As well as not being able to diffrentiate between each nofitication themselves, there's also no way to differentiate between the x number of new messages and the couple old ones that also show in the dropdown.
I'm not a fan of the white backgrounds everywhere, dropdowns, buttons in the top right of boards, background of the rules popup, background for login, search, etc. and it's not affected by the theme selection, which is the worst part so I can't even change it. I don't like the rules being a popup in general, I like how they were integrated onto the board itself previously.
The Filter, Rules, and Submit buttons in the top right of leaderboards aren't very individually eye-catching (they all look the same) like they used to be when they were colored text instead of buttons. There's also a whole bunch of empty space to the left of those buttons. The text on the left-side sidebar is far too small now, and there's too much spacing/padding between each line. Even on a submitted run's page, the Edit/Reject/Delete/Verify links are hidden in a submenu when there's plenty of extra space to show all of them like it was previously. This right here is just straight-up ugly, having the real time and in-game time headers be links that appear as a different color than the other headers - there should be small down arrows to the right of headers that can be sorted by, and their color should conform to the "heading 2" color.
I'm not much of a fan of the top bar on submitted run pages, I think that should be a bottom bar below the video with the filters, region, platform, date, etc., but the top info (category, runner, time, place) should be centered above the video like it was previously. Right now it looks like all the more important (top) info was just shoved into the top left corner, but all the lesser (bottom) info is still front and center?
IL table boards ("show all") don't have any background color on hover, and clicking the time for an IL goes to /game/undefined ? Also the mouse cursor is a text cursor instead of a hand to even indicate that clicking on the time would link to something.
On the editgame page, the genre/engine/developer/etc. have an x underneath each entry when there's plenty of space to put the x to the right side of each. The Extra Variables table goes horizontally outside the edges of the box. Every box has the top info too close to the next line. The fullgame categories box should likely have hr's between each category since there's so many options stacked one above another.
The top navbar is far too large now. The search could easily fit between the "..." and "Pending Actions" buttons, with the site logo on the far left to condense it down.
Personally, I much preferred the old layout overall, and it would be nice to be able to toggle between the two layouts in our settings.
It would be really helpful for newer runners of the game to have a little "?" or "what is this?" to mouseover on the run submission page and figure out what that variable means (we could type a short description for each variable in the game settings). It would especially be helpful if you're using acronyms for the variables.
The official maps aren't being updated at all during the Early Access period because the devs are only updating Adventure mode in their own internal/private build. They're waiting until very near the full release date to release all of the new Adventure stuff in one big update, so it will be a major change when they do release it.
As for controls, you can use whatever you want, but you do need to be able to do rotation, steering, jump/wings, and boost all at the same time, so if your control scheme doesn't allow you to do that, then you need to make some edits to it. This is why I mentioned the shoulder buttons on controller instead of the face buttons. They are already bound by default so you don't have to make any edits.
Well first thing, it's not really the best idea to be doing Adventure runs currently since they'll all be instantly invalidated with every new build, and then invalidated again when the game comes out of early access. The way we have the board set up right now is just to support anyone submitting times for any recent build number, but the boards will be cleared, all submissions deleted, when the game comes out of early access. We'll then do some restructuring, likely removing the ILs board completely, since the in-game ones work perfectly fine, and replay mode is an upcoming feature, so you can view the times in-game after that update, and we'll likely also change the timing method to be more consistent instead of what it's listed as on the rules right now - Instead of begin timing when gain control and end timing when it cuts to black at the end of Destination Unknown, we'll likely change it to begin timing when you click "restart" (or "adventure") from the main menu, and end timing when you hit the finish in the Credits map. This new timing method is more consistent with the game's predecessor, Nitronic Rush although NR runs don't include the Credits map because it's simply a straight, "hold boost," map.
Next, it'd be a good idea to come join in the Distance community Discord server - Discord is a webchat similar to IRC, and it also has optional voice channels if you want to use voice. It's quite active, currently 64 people are in there - Take note that this isn't a "Distance speedrunning" server, it's just the general Distance community server, so many of the people aren't runners, although there are also many of us who do ILs in there as well. The Distance community also has a weekly community multiplayer get-together event called Speedy Saturday, info here.
As for routes, until the replay mode is added to the game, we keep a youtube playlist available here, and if you see my name on any of the in-game leaderboards for a map we don't have in the playlist, I don't mind recording a video. You can also ask in the Discord if there's a route you want a video for. A majority of us are more concerned with solo sprint right now instead of Adventure, for the same reasons I gave above, so none of the current Adventure routes are really documented except in the couple runs Cyclops and I have posted.
The only real "tips" I can give is that this game is really mechanical, very much muscle memory and basically no RNG at all, so it comes down to practice, over and over, training your muscle memory for each individual map. Other than that, if you're using a controller you'll want to use the shoulder buttons for boost and jump/wings instead of the face buttons. The shoulders are already bound by default, so you don't have to mess with any config/rebinding to set them up. Using the shoulders instead of the face allows your thumbs to be free for steering and rotation control at the same time as boosting and jumping. If you play on keyboard like Cyclops and I, then you should have no problems with that. Keyboard is typically much more difficult/awkward to initially learn on, but it is easier to become more proficient with after you've learned the basics. Controller is typically easier to learn on, but harder to become proficient with. It's personal preference mostly, and the devs are currently doing some more balance changes in an experimental build to ensure that controller and keyboard players can fairly compete.
For example, if one category is "no esc" where you aren't allowed to hit the Esc button, then a variable/filter for a glitch that requires hitting Esc isn't a necessary variable on that category. As it is right now, you can only set a variable for all categories or only one, but you can't set it to "all except one" (or "all except these few") unless you list the same variable x amount of times and set them all to each different individual category, which just becomes a mess in the game settings page if you're listing the same variable over and over.
If the option is available to you, you can also set a custom URL:
And then on your speedrun.com profile settings, enter the "c/<custom-name>":
- Have an option to allow anyone to submit a guide, same as submitting a run, and require verification before it is actually posted as a guide.
- Allow super mods to edit the guide author name (possibly to even list the author as a non speedrun.com member, or list multiple authors)
- Allow mods to manually reorder the list of guides
- Allow other users to filter/search the guides, possibly have a tags system so guides could be tagged with specific categories for that game
- Ability to preview a guide before posting, or have a hidden "work-in-progress" guides section for only the mods
Love the guides system, just seems a bit basic right now, but it is nice to get that information out there rather than always having to find someone who runs the game to teach each new runner everything.
This thread is pretty old, but it wasn't too far down, so I figured I should put this here.
There are also cases like this: http://www.speedrun.com/Distance Steam early access (pc) game that gets weekly/monthly updates which instantly invalidates all previous runs, and once the game is fully released, it's likely people would rather use the release version than to keep old/incomplete versions backed up.
Similar to Steam's community hub where they have a Discussions section for forums (which is already on this site for individual games), and a separate Announcements section for devs to post important event information. It would be really nice if game mods could post to an Announcements section, to get information out to all the runners of that game easily (maybe a new skip was found, or the game is going to featured be in a marathon, etc.) - Now I know the current forum system can be used for this type of thing, but with the upcoming notification update, Announcements could be followed/subscribed to by the runners (separate from subscribing to forums), so they can get notification of new "important events" pertaining to that game. If someone subscribes to the whole forums for a specific game, then they'd be notified of posts about more trivial things like someone asking how to set up for a skip instead of just the important events. Having an Announcements section could help separate out the type of content runners are being notified of when talking about each individual game.
Possibly the option of having each game list their IRC server/channel in the game settings and then have a chat page linked on the sidebar with an embedded IRC webchat that would go to that game's listed server/channel would be nice. I'm sure most games have an IRC channel, but it's a bit difficult to get that info out to new runners (who possibly have never used IRC before).
As for the site's channel, I'm not really sure where that could go :3
This should also remove the emulator option entirely (not show emulators as banned) - especially for PC games there isn't really emulation for, so it's not specifically banned, but it's not possible so it's useless to even have the emulator option.
Using a game I run as an example: http://www.speedrun.com/Antichamber
Typically there will be an overall "Any%" for most games, as well as other alternate "any% some restriction" categories. These don't really work as variables because variables can be left blank (which would also be neat, a tickbox to make a certain variable required) and if you're running a different category, you'd want it to show up on a separate list.
For Antichamber, there's the overall Any% which is typical, and there's also Any% No Esc, Any% All Guns, and Any% Jumpless which should all be sub-categories of the main Any%. Any times submitted to these three categories should have their time included on the main Any% list as well, if it is the fastest time they've gotten out of all the Any% categories.