IsraelWell, check out the Mirror's Edge Catalyst leaderboard: https://www.speedrun.com/mec There are several leaderboards for full game categories, and there are also leaderboards for each individual level (You can switch between full-game leaderboard and level leaderboard on the left menu).
You can run whatever you like.
Probably should go here: https://www.speedrun.com/the_site/thread/g79jt
Are you talking about the date field in the run submission form, which states when the run itself was done?
[Quote]The chasm is a bit trickier, but it's a classic lock-and-key scenario in disguise. The lock is the chasm and the key is the jetpack. I'm not as sure about this one anymore.[/Quote]
You got me thinking about that one too. I liked the term "lock-and-key scenario in disguise", I didn't thought like that before. But I think the situation is more complex than that. My point is that even with your definition of OOB, not all sequence breaks can be considered as OOB.
We can make a distinction between closed barriers (like a physical locked gate) and open barriers (like the chasm). With a closed barrier, we can pinpoint the the exact time and place where you crossed the barrier and went out of bounds. But with open barrier, when exactly do you enter the "out of bounds" area? How much time you spend there, and when do you leave that area?
If we talk about the lock-and-key metaphor: By clipping through a close barrier you skip the key; but with an open barrier, my opinion is that you don't skip the key, you use another unintended key.
Instead of the chasm example, I will give another example to an open barrier: Let's say you need to get to the top of a small cliff of a mountain, and you are at the bottom of that cliff. The intended way to get there is to do a long trek on the mountain, which ends on the top of that cliff. Now let's say that due to an oversight from the developers, you managed to get your hands on a ladder (which is used for another purpose), and get it to the cliff and just used that to climb. Therefore, skipping the entire mountain section of the game.
Let's also say that after getting to the top of that cliff with whatever way, you can get down easily by sliding down, as an intended shortcut that skips going through the long path I mentioned, so the player won't have to backtrack.
The act of getting to the top of the cliff is the "lock", the path through the mountain is the intended "key", and the ladder was also a "key" which the developer didn't anticipate.
Can you say that any "out of bounds" was involved in that case?
To give a real example of that cliff scenario, take a look at this Hollow Knight any% run, about 25 seconds from the given timestamp. The player climb on a small cliff that leads to an area (Resting Grounds) which you are supposed to enter much later, skipping about 3 entire areas of the game in the process. You can get to the resting grounds in many other (intended) ways, and that small cliff can be climbed easily with relevant skills, but you don't have them in this point in the game. Instead of acquiring the relevant skill to climb the cliff, the player abuse the fact that you can bounce on a shade created after you die, and use that instead (as the ladder).
Again, can you say that any out of bounds was involved in that case? I still think the chasm example is a similar scenario to this one.
@oddtom Okay, I wasn't thinking that way before, and you got me thinking about re-evaluating my definitions. I agree with you that the term "playable area" was vague and not well defined. I tried to think of a new definition that will cover my thinking of out-of-bounds and in-bounds as I explained it before.
The term "Playable area" conveys any place that you can be in and "play" there. We can say that you still "play" the game, whenever you are inside the bounds or outside. If I'll say instead "The area where you are supposed to be according to the developers" - this matches your definition, that crossing every barrier is being out of bounds, even for a very short time. But it won't match my perspective that some kinds of barriers are still not out-of-bounds.
The length of the walls also has something to do with it... I'll focus on external walls for a bit. As you said, in a perfect cube house, the boundary extends inward with the wall, and the interior area of the wall also counts as out of the boundaries of the room. If the wall is wide enough, than being inside the wall or outside the wall both counts as OOB. But now, let's assume that the wall is very thin, and for practical purposes its width is 0. In that case, there are 3 possible scenarios: you are completely inside the interior of the house, you are completely outside the interior of the house, and you are half-inside/half-outside by standing right at the position of the wall. Let's also assume that the time it takes to cross the wall is very short - because the width is 0, the time to cross the wall is also 0... so I'm ditching the third option for convenience.
With those assumptions, you can only be "inside" or "outside". And if you cross an interior wall or a barrier (with width 0), you actually move from "inside" to another "inside", so no "out-of-bounds" was involved.
Now, focusing a bit on interior bounds. If an interior wall inside the room is wide enough so that you can stand completely inside it, I can think about the interior of that wall as an extension of the exterior wall, in the sense that the interior of that wall was never a part of "inside the house". It's like in math, where you can reshape geometric shapes while still preserving some properties of the shape, and the two shapes are considered "topologically equal". (This is an oversimplification of course).
How about I propose this new definition: First, In-Bounds will be defined as every place in the game where you can physically be at any certain time of the game, according to the dev intended logic. Then, my "Out-of-Bounds" will be defined as any place in the game where another person, standing at any place In-Bounds, won't be able to make eye contact with you. Either because you are too far away from him, or because a solid physical barrier separates between you.
You can probably find many edge cases in that, but I'm too tired to think about that further right now.
Gotta say, @FernandoEsra, It's really an interesting topic to think about. I always took the term OOB for granted until now.
@oddtom Well, as I see it, I don't quite agree with you on the definition of the going "out of bounds" only as the act of crossing a boundary or a barrier. (Again, this boils down to personal interpretation of what exactly is out of bounds).
I think that in general, when people are talking about the term of out-of-bounds, they are talking mostly about "external boundaries", as opposed to "internal boundaries". Most of the barriers you described are internal boundaries - you are not suppose to cross them according to the dev intended logic, but they still resides in the "playable area".
As an allegory I will take your house or apartment for example. Imagine that we set a hypothetical game that is supposed to be played only in the interior of your house, and nowhere else. Your house is full of physical barriers - walls, floor and ceiling, and some objects like a bed or table. If you use a glitch to clip through the wall, floor or ceiling to the neighbors apartments; then you are out of the boundaries of your apartment (and went out of the bounds of the game). But what if you use a glitch to clip into your table, or cross a wall that separates between different rooms in your house? You did cross a physical barrier, but you are still inside the interior of your own house, and thus can be consider in-bounds.
Some example in gaming terms:
- You skip a series of quests to get a key, by clipping through a locked gate in your village (which you were supposed to unlock much later)
- You cross Super Mario 64 "endless stairs corridor", by building up enough speed to skip its collision check
- You use unintended mechanics to get enough momentum to cross a chasm, a chasm which you were suppose to get across later by using a jetpack (that you don't have right now).
All of those are sequence breaks caused by bypassing a barrier, but I don't consider any of them to be "out of bounds". If the barrier can be unlocked or removed later, this is agreeing with the statement that this barrier was inside a playable area all along.
One exception in my definition I can think of, is about clipping through big walls. If we take the Jak 2 picture I posted above as an example - there is an entire town you can explore (and also get out of its external bounds), but the walls that separate sections in the town are way bigger and wider than your playable character. I do consider clipping through those walls as going "out of bounds", even though you are clearly still inside the town.
You break site rules if you post any links to pirated games. Nothing is said about advertising the games (after all, it is logical to want to direct runners to the game page). If you post links to official game page, or post links to games that are free anyway (browser games or itch.io, for example), it is perfectly fine.
When you submit a multi-player run, you need to state which player you are (for example player 1), and your username will fill automatically. The name of the other player is a free text box and you can write whatever you want.
If you write the username of an exist user, then the run will also be linked to their profile. If you write a name which doesn't exist in the site, it will be grayed out (I think that is considered as a "guest").
For example, check out @Sterling runs for LEGO star wars - He had one run with "Brother 1", and a second run with "Brother 2".
It seems you may want to run glitchless categories in games which can last 30-60 minutes. I would recommend you to also state what type of games you would like to run, as they are all very different from each other (3D platformers, 2D sidescroller platformers, Metroidvanias, racing games, RPG, first person shooters, etc). Otherwise this thread is just gonna end up with people throwing a bunch of random games.
Well, in that case of cgggd, the whole game is still high-score based, not just the highscores category. A category of speedrunning a game to an arbitrary highscore count is still based on that highscore, IMO. (Maybe we can call it a middle ground between the two)
If a game fully complies with the game request rules, it can still be okay to add few categories that do not. I'm stating that based on the conversation about real life categories in this thread: https://www.speedrun.com/the_site/thread/pa4bi As long as there is an actual game, no one seems to care much about the leaderboard also having miscellaneous categories with non-game activity.
