EnglandSDA has a lot more established, experienced people, Speedrun.com has a lot more newer people who are just discovering speedrunning.
As far as main differences go, SDA does not host leaderboards, nor are its featured runs necessarily the best existing runs for each game. I find them weirdly outdated actually. As a database of runs and up-to-date leaderboards, Speedrun.com is currently the best thing available, whereas SDA is more of a community forum and hosts a lot of information on GDQs and various marathons.
A concept like this is just completely arbitrary, is the thing. There's no way to judge this in a fair manner, and time/skill does not necessarily relate to experience with the game. I don't really see how this would be an improvement on the current system of leaderboards, where the better players are simply further up the rankings, that really tells you whatever you need to know about where people lie in a game on a percentile scale. Standards of measurement would also be entirely different across different games, also.
There's no substitute for just jumping straight in. Think about what games you would like to speedrun, maybe make a shortlist of games you enjoy playing and would enjoy speedrunning, then decide on a game and just give it a go. After your first run, seek out that game's community and ask for critique on your run, and where your biggest areas for improvement are. After that, it's a continual and gradual climb towards getting a better time. If there IS no community for your chosen game, that's fine too, as it's a rewarding feeling to do your own routing and to be able to successfully critically analyse your own runs and judge how you can improve.
Aiming for WR is always a good ambition to have. Even in uncontested games, the only time in which having WR is nothing special is when a runner is content to just set ANY 1st place time, then they sit on their laurels and don't improve it any further. I got the record for Sparkster - Easy a while ago now and have since pushed it further than I originally thought possible, and I'm still trying to further optimise the category. Waiting for my newest PB to be verified as we speak, actually.
As far as games with multiple runners goes, someone new aiming for WR is often the best thing that can happen for the game. Take a look at the WR history graph for QuackShot to see what I mean: http://www.speedrun.com/quackshot/gamestats
Months of relative inactivity, then a new runner comes along and challenges what we all thought was a very optimised time, the result being that the WR is now over 40 seconds faster than what it previously was.
If this is true, then it most certainly a case of moderator corruption, and the person in question should not be a moderator. As the others have said, take it up with the site admin, Pac, and present your case with evidence.
This almost certainly falls under using third-party software/assistance to help run the game, and so would very likely not be allowed, as it shouldn't be. Undertale has gone through its share of rule changes to standardise the game, and the constant goal has been to ensure the game is ran as close to its factory state as possible.
I believe this to be the correct course of action for the game, and it's likely that the moderators will be in unanimous agreement on that.
Would now be a bad time to bring up how I got perfect second half in a marathon?
Funnily enough your rating system caused me a lot of grief with the Undertale guys. I'm not blaming you because obviously you couldn't have predicted that was going to happen, but still. Feels bad, man.
So, how is everyone enjoying the submissions so far? Bring up anything that's particularly caught your eye or looks interesting.
Myself, I'm submitting 5 games for AGDQ: Sonic Adventure 2, Undertale, Sparkster Genesis, Sparkster SNES (Yes, they're two different games) and Rocket Knight. You can find full details of each run in the individual submissions.
As a personal recommendation, I highly suggest checking out Megaman Battle Network 1 and 2, submitted by Tterraj42 and Keizaron, respectively. If you like RNG manipulation in RPGs, those runs will blow your mind.
I mean, what happened there was really unfortunate and sucked for you, but it was made worse by an apparent lack of knowledge on how to handle that situation. Now you know to Approach Tsunderplane at the earliest opportunity, and then once you've gotten four successful Approach hits, you do not need to continue getting close to it, just stay in the safest spot you can manage.
I won't lie, you're probably going to struggle with a Pentium CPU. Be prepared to compromise on video settings in order to not drop a lot of frames, streaming takes a lot of processing power.
It's a good idea, but is harder to universalise than you think. The idea of image matching loading screens doesn't work for any game that goes to any lengths to mask the loading times, such as Metroid Prime. That problem where a door doesn't open for ages after you've shot it? That's because the game is loading the room behind the door; the time between shooting the door and it actually opening is in and of itself a loading time.
It's an odd example perhaps since the game doesn't hang or display a loading screen per se, but there is nontheless loading going on, and I imagine other games will have their own ways of doing this.
As far as lightening the load for your streaming settings, opt for 30FPS if you need to cut a setting. 60FPS is a lot more demanding, and will also require you to use a higher bitrate in order to avoid pixelation.
If you are indeed streaming older systems, I imagine you can get away with:
30FPS 480p 1500 bitrate
And that's at a push, you'll probably be able to mess with and lower those settings as necessary if you still have problems. I think Twitch throttles non-partnered streamers to 2500 bitrate anyway, so certainly don't bother with going for 3500.
Nice duplicate thread. Don't know why I don't have the power to delete this thread, but at least I can lock it!
I know JackofHearts personally, so I'll contact him tonight and ask what's up.
Movie Maker can split video files easily enough, then just render and upload it. If you're streaming, it's just a matter of cropping your Highlight.
^ Basically this. At the end of the day, it's the moderators of your game who decide the rules, including video evidence. If your game uses an ingame timer, then it's well worth making sure that the timer is visible in your video, even if it's low-quality. If your game goes by ingame time and the timer is impossible to discern in the video, that is more than sufficient grounds to reject a submission.
On the boards? No.
But by all means run it on your own.
Each game generally has its own individual ruleset, as it would be impractical to impose universal rules for all games on a system with parts that can be modified such as this when it may affect different games in different ways. Consult your relevant games' leaderboards or the mods in charge of them.
