Sorry for delay, SRC wasn't notifying me of new threads, but that should be fixed now.

For 1, I was copying and pasting rules from another game where we require timers, as splice risk is a bigger deal there. But yeah, I don't think it's a concern here, I'll change the rule to say 'encouraged', not required. But I wouldn't recommend adding timers in post, can just leave it off if there wasn't a timer to begin with.

For 2, sure, Cheer Skip makes sense, and it would be anti-speedrun not to allow it, I'll remove the 'fade to black' bit.

I'll add the Discord link too.

I wouldn't expect it to be allowed in the speedrun, however the rules as currently stated don't technically forbid it, so I'm wondering if certain income fields should be explicitly excluded from the total. For instance selling equipment is another such income field.

It's a pretty fun twist on the RTS genre, I used to enjoy it as a kid. In most levels you can't really 'lose' - the enemy doesn't generally approach your territory, so you can build up and invade them at your own pace. So, signficantly less difficult than a lot of RTS games.

My only complaint is that a lot of the weapons and features you get in the game are completely outperformed by the grenades - which you get right at the start. So there isn't a lot of progression, since sticking with grenades all the way through the game seems to be the best approach. Some of the newer weapons are just too fiddly, or risk killing your own troops. Maybe they fixed this issue in the sequel (Multiwinia), however that game was multiplayer only.

So the replayability isn't great, but it's good for a one-time playthrough.

I assume some of those entries that the game counts as incomes, wouldn't be allowed to use? For instance, if you buy a $1 million farm, then sell it, you've immediately made $1 million 'income' appear in the table.

For the 'earn X' categories, how is 'money you've earned' precisely defined? Like do you add up all the incomes, ignoring the outcomes, for all the days you've played?

I've set the variable split to apply to all leaderboards yes.

I think if we had a separate Worms 2 Plus subcatgory, then there will be no need to limit resolution, as we are establishing in the definition of a category that it's a modification for Compatibility and Quality of Life.

Looking at the Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 page (https://www.speedrun.com/rct2), I see that they are doing something similar; they have 'Original' and 'OpenRCT' categories, the latter allowing the use of the open-source OpenRCT2 reimplementation to play the game.

I'll go ahead and add the sub-category, time will tell whether anyone is hardcore enough to tackle the original, either on an older windows, or through VirtualBox or something.

Since you mention hardware and emulators, I should point out that I have no issue with hardware, in fact I'm very much in favour of the use of emulators too. (If someone to run Worms 2 through VirtualBox for instance, that'd be fine by me). The issue is more of a software one, since a modded game is programmatically a different game from the original.

I'll do a bit more research on Worms 2 Plus, since from what I understand it is a bundle of things, some of which alter the executables, and some of which don't (for instance ReSolution). But I do agree, if it is clear enough that gameplay can't be affected then maybe it should be permitted. However I do think that we should restrict to originally-permitted resolutions - I'm not currently sure what those are.

I'm curious as to what you meant by Worms 2 Plus being 'approved' by GOG? Since I have the GOG version myself, however I didn't see anything about Worms 2 Plus, I had to find and install that manually.

At the very least though, I'm fine also with the backup option of making Worms 2 Plus a 'main' category/subcategory alongside Any%, there's no real reason it would have to be a Misc, that's just how we do it for Azure Dreams.

Hi RuffledBricks,

In most speedrun game communities I'm familiar with, any 3rd party patches are normally banned, since they alter the game, and it could be argued that it's not quite the same game being played as someone who is, say, speedrunning the original game on a Win 95 machine.

Usually these are banned regardless of whether the 3rd party devs claim it affects gameplay or not, since allowing it would be taking their word for it (including all future updates to the software), and there could be bugs or alterations that even the devs themselves are unaware of (which I have seen happen with other game patches).

I added the 3rd party mods ban, to keep in line with the general philosphy of speedrunning, however I'm open to looking for a compromise (after all, the ban technically excludes my own run that I made earlier this year).

Looking at the tools, I can see that ReSolution on its own doesn't actually modify the executables, rather it hooks the game while it is playing. So perhaps an argument could be made to allow ReSolution. Are you able to get the game running on ReSolution alone? I think I was able to do so myself, before I tried out Worms 2 Plus.

There is of course the counter-argument that upgrading the resolution gives an unfair advantage to modders, since they can for instance aim more accurately at far away targets. At the top speedrunning level, perhaps this doesn't matter so much, since one would usually be memorising positions. But still an issue to consider.

There is also the possiblity of having a 'Worms 2 Plus' category extension, in addition to generic Any%. This would be a misc category which would allow this approved bundle, and anyone who happened to be running the original game would be eligible to submit to Any%. This is the solution we used in the Azure Dreams speedrunning community; we have misc categories that permit use of Adrando; a Github software that adds bug fixes and Quality of Life upgrades to the game.

It's a segmented run, should be in the IL boards, not the full-game category.

There's also no RTA timer (which is one of the rules), and there is no video for mission 42. Not sure why this is accepted lol.

Done

Not necessarily true for all RTA runs, many speedrun games require Livesplit or some timer visible. Video timestamps are an inaccurate measure of real-time due to video compression.

No

• I believe the correct time for splitting a category should be after major issues have developed, not before.
• The reasoning behind the original split was because people speculated that people would stop running the category otherwise. However I see no empirical evidence of that happening, after uniting the categories people were still running it. Has any runner actually stated they no longer want to run due to Garuda?
• We have a wide variety of categories now that people can switch to if they prefer, so it doesn't really matter if some people don't want to run Any%. It's not like AD speedrunning will die. I don't really run Any% myself.
• Garuda is a big boost, but I'm not convinced it is completely OP. Every time I get it I die or lose Garuda, and you can also get good RNG with elevators that theoretically would outperform Garuda.
• Split categories gets a bit confusing, especially having to submit your run to both each time.

Minecraft doesn't have dogs btw. It does have wolves though.

Thanks for your thoughts. It's true that I'm a fan of the name 'Any%' mainly because it gives a common-ground category that different games can be compared with each other on, but certainly the name doesn't matter much and 'All Missions' is great.

I was interested in running full-game (not a fan of IL personally), however I realised that there is no Any% category (any difficulty allowed), and instead it is restricted to Hardcore only.

I realise this is done mainly with IL in mind, because if a run fails you can just restart without penalty. However for full-game, restarting a level or reloading a save incurs a huge time penalty.

In my view, any game with a clear ending should at least have a canonical Any% full-game category. Restricting to only Hardcore is perhaps a tad contrived and not in the speedrun spirit of 'beating the game as fast as possible'?

Oh I see, yes then I agree about the saving and loading for level runs.

You mentioned something about 'weird strategies' with F12. I am unaware of any, my understanding was that it just skips time, so less waiting around. Perhaps there's more to it than I originally understood. Can you give an example of such a strategy that is considered weird?

Oh I see. If full-game is RTA, is there any reason then for F12 not being allowed in that category?

Also, on that note, why would saving and loading not be permitted in level-runs?

Ok, to me it still seems a bit anti-speedrun to remove a game mechanic which speeds things up, but I can understand if people are already invested in level runs without it and don't want to change.

But since nobody seems interested in running the full-game campaigns under the current rules, and it takes a long time to run without F12, couldn't it be considered to allow it at least for the full-game categories?

Personally I'm not too interested in level-runs, I find full-game runs more enjoyable. And I'd be interested to run, but without F12 it seems like it would be too much unnecessary waiting.

I understand using ingame for individual missions, but wouldn't RTA be easier for full-game? No having to add up the individual times, just hit your splits each mission. I'd have thought most people would find Livesplit more convenient for this, hence why it's the common method people use.

Personally am only really interested in full-game runs.