United StatesWorth noting that I'm not saying "let's get rid of pausing and exiting in level". I'm saying let's either make a new category where you can't pause and exit to skip the star get cutscene, or let's make it so you can't Exit Course unless you're touching the ground like in vanilla. We don't have to get rid of anything.
For that second one, you could still Pause Exit to skip the star cutscene, you just would never accidentally exit too early. Most people probably wouldn't even notice a difference, but the sweaty try-hards who do notice the difference would be very thankful.
"taking your time making sure you have the star is definitly fine and i actually wonder why you want to pause frame 1 instead of just pausing exactly when you have the star"
Because it's faster. There are stars like WDW Secrets where you can long jump at them and you can Pause Exit before you have even made contact with the star, and then you collect the star during the fadeout as Mario falls into it*.* It's faster than taking your time and waiting until you have the star, and it is the natural evolution of the strat (at least for some stars) as the game gets more and more optimized.
Speedruns are all about going as fast as possible. If I don't do it, someone else will. And then I'll have to. That's kind of the nature of the beast. That's why I would rather this strat get restricted in some way before it gets out of control. Option 3 is my ideal solution as we get to keep the benefits of pause strats while eliminating the risks.
Now that I think of it, Option 3 might be the only solution. Even with Pause Anywhere disabled, you could still theoretically do the sweaty "Pause Exit before making contact with the star" strat.
Also, for what it's worth, I don't think the draw of CoopDX is pause strats. I think the draw is that it's the most accessible way to play SM64 online. Yeah, SM64 Online exists, but it's kind of a nightmare to get set up.
Thanks for taking the time to hear me out. I understand this is a lot of text in the year <current year>, especially in regards to a video game made for children. But in case you didn't read...
Tldr:
I think pause behavior should change so you cannot Exit Course while airborn, or I think Pause Anywhere should be Disabled, or it should be on a separate leaderboard so people who don’t like dealing with Pause Exiting don’t have to. While it does save a lot of time, some people actually want some down time between stars, and nobody likes losing runs because they hit Exit Course a frame too early.
Pro-Pause Strat Arguments
I understand that there are benefits to pause strats. But let's unpack them a bit.
But pause strats save time! They make the run shorter! It’s a QoL improvement!
Ehhhh yeah they save time, but I would argue it’s not worth losing runs to the Pause Exit Chicken minigame you have to play on every star. Also, it’s not like vanilla SM64 has tons of down time. It’s not like SMS where you have 30+ seconds between shines thanks to loading screens, menus, and cutscenes. In SM64, the down time is much more reasonable, and a lot of people actually appreciate that down time and use it to read chat, take a drink of water, change the song they’re listening to, etc. With pause strats, there’s basically no downtime at all throughout the entire run, which I actually find stressful and annoying.
It's also not like Co-op (or even console) SM64 runs are particularly long. 45ag and I were getting 120 2P runs around the 1-hour mark before we knew about pause strats. I'm sorry but a 1-hour run is a short run IMO--and that's the longest category this game has to offer.
But Pause Exiting makes routing more flexible!
I guess? Yes, Pause Exiting makes it so that the Lobby levels can be done almost in any order, at almost any point in the run, because the fastest castle movement for these levels becomes: pause > Exit to Lobby > move to the next level. This is objectively more flexible than vanilla–but not that much more flexible. You can still do this in vanilla, it just costs you a small, pretty much negligible amount of time in castle movement. When 45ag and I originally came up with our 2P 120 route, we were not aware of pause strats. Once we became aware, our route really didn’t change much. I reordered some of the Lobby levels, but…you still kinda have to do all the Basement levels in one trip, all the Upstairs levels in one trip, all the Tippy levels in one trip… IMO, the benefit of being able to re-order the Lobby levels without time loss is not worth the cost of losing runs to Pause Exit Chicken. In fact, I would argue that routing is more interesting with a little more restriction. Coming up with a 2P route before we knew about pause strats was fun. It was fun to find a route that minimized castle movement while allowing each of us to play our stronger levels and avoid our weaker ones.
Now, here are my arguments against pause strats.
Pause strats are not intuitive to console runners and make the transition from console to CoopDX harder than it needs to be.
These pause strats are simply not present on console. I recently entered a co-op bingo tournament where pause strats were banned because the TO believes that console runners should not be unfairly punished for not knowing co-op specific tech like this. And frankly, I agree. If you are coming from console and you’re not aware of the pause strats, you’re going to lose minutes. I feel like we should prioritize making the transition from console to CoopDX as seamless as possible. This is a pretty big seam.
Pause Exiting adds an unnecessary skill check to runs: menuing.
This ain’t a JRPG. I don’t run SM64 because I like menuing. I run this game because I like moving the red hat guy. "Bing bing wahoo" and whatnot. I hate losing time to menuing errors. Plain and simple. I think it’s a dumb mechanic that is against the spirit of the game. And like I said already, the better you get at CoopDX, the more seriously you take it, the more you are going to try to optimize, the more likely you are to lose that game of Pause Exit Chicken.
Pause Strats Explained
For those who have no clue what I am talking about... Pausing behaves differently in CoopDX than in vanilla/console. In CoopDX, pausing the game does not actually freeze the game–it just brings up the pause menu. Also, unlike on console, you do not need to be grounded to Exit Course in CoopDX. These two elements combine to allow for some cheesy strats called Pause Entering and Pause Exiting. Pause Entering is where you pause the game right as you are entering a painting and then quickly unpause. It skips the fade-to-white transition and just brings you right to the star select screen, saving a few seconds. Pause Exiting is where you pause and Exit Course as you are collecting a star. This skips the cutscene of grabbing the star and immediately kicks you out of the level, saving like 10 seconds per star. This is massive. Pause Entering and Pause Exiting combine to save several minutes over the course of a 120 star run.
So what's the issue? "Pause Exit Chicken"
Well, Pause Entering is fine. It saves time and adds no risk. Pause Exiting, however, honestly feels kind of toxic–not because it saves time, but because it adds huge risk to the run. As you try to optimize more and more, you eventually realize that the optimal way to Pause Exit is to cut it as close as possible. You can actually hit Exit Course before even grabbing the star, and then fall into the star during the fade out. Maybe you can see where this is going…. It creates a toxic game of Pause Exit Chicken where you are trying to Exit Course on the earliest possible frame, which risks you not collecting the star…
We’ve all been there, I’m sure. My teammate and I have ruined plenty of perfectly good runs because one of us accidentally hits Exit Course a frame too early and the star does not count as collected. And you have to play this game of chicken 120 times per run. (Well, minus the 100 coins stars and Bowser reds I guess…) Point is, it is infuriating to lose a run this way, and it will happen to you eventually.
This game of chicken could actually be eliminated if pausing behaved like on vanilla (see option 3 of my proposal)–where you cannot Exit Course while airborne. Theoretically Pause Exiting would be virtually riskless as long as you had to wait for Mario to be grounded before the “Exit Course” option would appear on the pause menu.
(Can we also talk about the fact that hitting the Start button while the game is already paused does not simply unpause the game, rather, it executes the menu option that you have selected. So you can potentially realize, “Oh crap, I’m not lined up with the star. Let me unpause and re-align myself.” only to find yourself booted out of the level because you just hit Start on “Exit Course”. I hate when games do this.)
Let me preface this post by saying that I am aware this is a hot take. If you disagree with me, that’s fine. This is not an attack. Your opinion is valid. Let’s keep discussion civil!
With that out of the way, this has been bothering me the entire time I’ve been running SM64CoopDX. At this point I’ve been running CoopDX long enough that I think my opinion is informed and valid. My buddy and I even held the WR for 2P Vanilla 120 Star for a few days–so this isn’t the opinion of some rando, but of someone who deeply cares about and is pushing the game.
I propose that* any one of the following* changes should be made:
1.) The “Pause Anywhere” server setting should be Disabled for speedruns on the leaderboard
2.) or, there should be separate leaderboards / categories for “Pause Anywhere” being Enabled or Disabled
3.) or, “Pause Anywhere” can be allowed, but the behavior of the pause menu should change so that, like in vanilla SM64, you cannot Exit Course while airborn–you must be touching the ground for this option to appear on the menu. This change would need to be done either with a mod or a feature request to the developer.
I've been running this game and following the forums for years and I just have to ask... what is with all the "new category idea" threads?
I'm not even trying to be a jerk here. I am just genuinely amazed that this has been a consistent thing for years, despite the mods making it abundantly clear they will not consider category ideas submitted through forum threads.
For those who post these threads...why? Have you gotten bored with Any% and the dozens of other categories that exist? Do you really think there should be more categories?
I notice a lot of the ideas that get posted are basically just Any% + some arbitrary thing... so like, is it for memes?
Is it for clout? Do you want to be able to say, "I came up with an official speedrun category"?
Is it newbies who just haven't read like a single other thread and really want to create a category for one of the above reasons?
I dunno man, I'm just genuinely trying to wrap my head around this. I've been speedrunning for years and have never had a "new category idea". I feel like we have so, so many great categories to run. And if you get bored with SMO, there's like infinite other games you could run too...
I'm not trying to discourage peoples' ideas. I'll just say this: If you have a new category idea, just go through the following steps.
1.) Ask yourself, "Is this idea distinct enough from all the other existing categories? Or is it just a slight variation of some other existing category?"
2.) Ask yourself, "Is this a category that I can genuinely see a lot of people wanting to run? Like more than once as a meme?"
3.) If you answered yes to both those questions, try routing and running it yourself. See how it feels. See if you stick to your original answers or if your answers change.
4.) If you still think your idea is solid, go ahead and submit it through the proper channels--not through a forum post. It drives the mods crazy--and they're the ones who you really need to convince, so...
Hey is there a new link to this this sheet? The link seems to be broken.
Hmmm... honestly not a bad idea. I think it would be a little more interesting if SMO had some kind of big exploit similar to SBLJ or ACE. As it stands now, the category would be two exploit-centric runs and one pretty vanilla/glitchless that's also significantly longer than the other two.
Hey is it okay to put an emote over Mario's face for the life counter? It isn't covering the "dynamic" part of the HUD element, but I'd rather check before risking my runs being rejected.
Heyyo,
So I tried to use the Google Drive link to download v2.3 but I get a message saying,
"Sorry, this file is infected with a virus.
Only the owner is allowed to download infected files."
Not sure if it's real or not but it won't even allow me to download...
Hey guys, I'm a huge casual Pikmin fan who is thinking of getting into speedrunning Pikmin 1. I have put dozens of hours into both the OG GC version as well as the Wii NPC version (which I own digitally on my Wii U).
I really enjoy the Wii's IR motion controls for Pikmin and think they may be the definitive best control scheme. Plus I really enjoy the QoL features of the NPC version (slightly less stupid Pikmin, being able to switch Pikmin with the d-pad, etc)
However I also really like C-throwing on the GC version and find the controller very comfortable.
I haven't even played the Switch version so I am not really aware if there are any benefits.
My question is, between GC, Wii/WiiU, and Switch, which is the best version to speedrun? Or rather, which version do YOU speedrun, and why?
Sounds like Whomps 8 + SBLJ. I personally don't see the value in that. But then, I'm a 70/120 runner who doesn't see the appeal in 0/1/16 Star, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
But, as far as rulesets go, I think this is a valid suggestion. It's exactly as arbitrary as 16 Star. If a category where SBLJ is banned but everything else is allowed (16 Star) exists, then I don't see why a category where LBLJ is banned but everything else is allowed (8/9 Star) can't exist.
The thing is, 16 Star has the the value of being beginner-friendly. It's short, and the mandatory major skips are pretty easy to learn.
8/9 Star does not have that value. SBLJ is a huge barrier to entry, and if you're taking the time to learn it, it's probably just to get a 0/1 Star run (which is true Any%) on the board. Why add Whomps 8 to that? And if you just want a short category where you collect stars, why not just run 16 Star, where you don't have to do SBLJ? Or just do IL's? Basically, there's no selling point to this category. You're not getting anything here that you can't get from other categories.
Yeah I would think Secrets don't count since the "Secrets" are actually just invisible objects/trigger points. The coin is just placed as a courtesy to the player so you have some sort of visual que/hint.
Neat idea for a run though. The 100/reds are some of my favorite stars in the game (long, uninterrupted sections of movement), and this could be a fun way to practice them.
You can't just say "Please don't tell me to follow the rules" just to avoid following the rules.
While the category submission process is far from perfect, there are many reasons why it is what is, one of them being to avoid duplicate category submissions.
Maybe this is a hot take, but I think if a category idea is really good, you would be passionate enough about it to check if it already exists, try it yourself, and go through the proper channels. If you can't even muster up the motivation to try it yourself, why would you expect anyone else to care about it?
Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude or attack you personally or anything. I'm just at a point where I've lost all patience for these kinds of posts. I'm trying to help you understand why a lot of us role our eyes at these sorts of posts.
Yeah adding CE's also feels a bit arbitrary to me.
I've seen people do "Main Board Marathon" runs in the SMO community, which is exactly what you're describing. Unfortunately, there's no leaderboard for it.
Honestly though, now that the SM64 league is going, having a leaderboard for this would be pretty cool. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is considering just doing Main Board Marathons to farm PB's for the league.
Actually, I don't think the Sunshine outfit becomes available until post-game, so it would be Any% (picking up some Luigi Hint Arts along the way), then buy an outfit and go to Seaside.
But yeah, if these runs sound like fun to you, do some runs of them and submit the idea in Tech's pinned thread:
I like it. It's like Thread Locked% but you don't have to deal with the RNG of how long it takes Tech to notice the post.
@Gorganim Rip Talkatoo% because technically it's just Any%. (And most other categories for that matter.)
@DMBOS_27YT But anyway, I'll tell you the same general thing I tell everyone who has a new category idea.
1.) Do a run. Try the run yourself and see if it's something worth doing more than once, or instead of something like Darker Side.
2.) Check the pinned thread on how to submit category ideas.
