Sayuri is correct. As long as we can tell what's going on you can record with whatever you've got.

Alright this thread has been up long enough for people to get their opinions in. It seems most people are on board with In-Game Time for the purpose of having no loading disadvantage for any of the consoles, so that will be the timing method going forward (I'll retime the current runs linked in this thread when I make the boards). I'm gonna go ahead and say no to the ideas of Real Time as main timing method or using both, because the only thing it really tracks that Game Time doesn't is "who has the faster loads". The current ruleset will look as followed:

• Complete the 3 stages of the Episode Shadow DLC.
• Both running from a new game and running from a completed file are allowed.
• In-Game Time is to be used for this category. Add up your final stage of every stage. If you restarted a stage, add up the time you spent in the stage up untill the restart too.
• The run must be completed in 1 sitting with minimal time spent in between stages.

If there's any last minute points y'all would like to bring up now would be the time, I'll make the leaderboard tomorrow. It'll be under misc for now, if it consistently gets a lot of traffic I'll move it to main. I'll leave the thread up afterwards as the go-to thread for discussion of the category.

Except there is a point, because the entire idea is to do them all in 1 sitting which would be a rule? Whether you're adding up real seconds or in-game seconds doesn't matter there and I'd rather include as many people as possible since there's nothing worthwhile happening outside of the actual stages. Weak argument for Real time tbh.

Alright since there seem to be more people claiming to run Episode Shadow now and are asking for leaderboards, let's get things a little more organized. Here's what I need from y'all:

• Ruleset suggestions. Can't have a category without rules and now is the time to discuss them. Think timing method (Real time, vs in-game time), New Game vs completed file, etc.
• Links to the runs that have been done to verify that people are seriously running this ~ Please make sure these are properly highlighted, if your run is somewhere in a several hour long streamvod or just has a significant amount of other content before the actual run it will be ignored since they would be rejected from the leaderboard anyway.

As for my personal suggestions for the ruleset:

• In-game time as the timing method (in other words, just adding up the times gotten on each stage + any stage restarts). Real time would once again make PC the fastest by loads alone and unlike Any% there's nothing else of value going on in between the stages. This would make the category equal across all platforms
• Both running from new game and running on a completed file allowed. Nothing in the stages actually changes when running on a completed file vs a new game and this would cut out some unnecessary downtime for those that want to.

Discuss away I'd say!

For future reference, if you want to request leaderboards it would significantly benefit your request if you had a lot of this stuff already organized and ready to show along with making the request.

Splitting the board up even further would result in some fairly sad small boards, but yeah your runs are more than welcome on the board atm, you get to choose what you do and do not do in your runs.

If the playerbase grows at any point for both skills and no skills then a splti would be in order.

Since it's the exact same route on a different console, I'm gonna say no for Any%, not gonna make 4 leaderboards for 1 category, it's messy as fuck. For there to be different categories there needs to be a difference in the actual gameplay. That said if you wanna see what the best Switch time or the best PS4 time is, etc. the site has a filter function to only show runs of that platform. Similar effect, less messy. (As for the optimizations argument, those get found in Individual Level runs anyway, which are already equal for all platforms)

That said I've been discussing the following categories with other runners:

• Shadow DLC (All 3 shadow stages from either a new or completed game)
• NG+ All Stages (All story, extra and secret stages on a completed save) These are way more friendly towards 'in-game time' as a timing method, allowing all consoles to be even. Once people actually get proper videos up for said categories I'm more than happy to add them to the leaderboards.

There's no difference, so feel free to use the Shadow skin

I would say everything in the game yeah, but honestly everything's up for debate and it all depends what people find enjoyable to run. Noone's done anything like it so far.

One could argue 100% means absolutely everything, including missions and whatnot (unlock ALL the avatar shit lol) All Red Rings would seem more fun in that case, but it all depends on what people wanna do.

As for leaderboards, as with every category that has been suggested, we're gonna need active runners that seriously care about the categories before ima add leaderboards and so far none of the other requests have gotten to that point.

Could certainly be interesting. I've seen some mission ILs and some of them have quite interesting strats.

I don't want to add leaderboards that are gonna be (near) empty though so I'd like to see runs and interest from others first :)

I'll keep an eye out to see if there's more interest (as in people actually doing runs). If it happens then yeah boards are in order. For NG+ categories I'm personally thinking in-game time so that loading times cease to be a factor and all consoles are equal. Just adding up the final times of each stage (+ restarts if someone does them)

As far as I'm aware you can't play as super sonic untill you beat a stage so the DLC is irrelevant to Any%. If this is not the case let me know.

Of course a NG+ kind of category would work (as in play from a completed file), but as per usual you guys gotta start requesting these things more thoroughly. Is there more than 1 runner? Is someone actively running atm? What timing method and ruleset do you suggest? Give more things to start the discussion than "Can you make this a leaderboard please"

Yep this has happened to Sayuri, thebluemania and me before (two runs in a row for me too lol) it sucks and there's no sign of a patch atm so it just kinda really sucks atm

Then run it, you don't need a leaderboard to do some joke runs

I'm more than willing to add leaderboards when people run it as a serious category of course, but runs come first.

since the game breaking KT glitch is patched on PS4, the best category to run is NG Any% for NG+ Any% you really want PS3

Not sure exactly, but I'd estimate it loses at least 10+ minutes to PC PS4 loses a few minutes to PC and Xbox One is probably around the same ballpark as PS4

We already have the Sonic Forces channel in the overall Sonic Speedrunning Discord. I recommend joining that instead, that's where people have been since before launch: https://discord.gg/XRsRwRU

It's the same community, The Sonic Center was just the site the commmunity used before speedrun.com became a thing and there's no point in transferring everything over, unless a lot more people want it for whatever reason. Untill then, just use The Sonic Center.

IL speedruns can be found on The Sonic Center at http://www.soniccenter.org/rankings/sonic_colors_wii :)

Yeah speed-wise there's no difference, but on Normal the score screen also won't show your time since it doesn't get recorded. I like to be able to see what in-game time I got on a stage, thus hard mode

Also I don't wanna lie to the game and claim I've never played a Sonic game before :^)