I added a preliminary 1-1 with rules and categories. Tell me, if I should change something.

[quote]Warp exits => Of course, but in another category like 1-1 1-2 1-2 (Warp) 1-3 1-4 ... etc because having multiple goals for a single category is most of the time a bad idea. [/quote] If you just go by warp or warpless, 4-2 is still completely different between the warp to world 5 or to world 6 and very slightly different between the warp to world 6 and to world 7 or 8.

Is that something that should be tracked? The site can now sort by descending order so you could just put the ingame time as milliseconds until a better implementation happens sometime in the future. (by real time would be a nightmare to moderate since frames would matter and you can't time that accurately in many cases) Imho it would be nice to have for some hard levels like 8-4 with 316 remaining and of course it would be added to Lost Levels too, which has many challenging ILs. Some rule details (savestate at start, warp exits, starting big/fire mario, PAL, all-stars, ... allowed/seperate category/banned?) would have to be worked out, but right now I wonder if it's wanted or unwanted.

Oh, you're right, lower is not always better. But I still feel that getting the optimal spot on the rope is part of the run.

Then you hit the rope too high. The lower you hit it, the sooner the chandelier drops.

I don't think timing from when the flame disappears is a good approach because how can you guarantee that you hit the exact spot every time?

I tried timing from this moment to when the boss explodes. While you can speed up the time until the health bar is completely black by throwing axes, that has no effect on anything else. It's purely cosmetic and should not be the end of timing imho.

In 7 out of 7 new recordings of the download version and in my PB video I get 3.333s for that. Then I went to check the videos of #2-#4 and they all yield 3.366s (or close enough to fall within the fpsrate margin). Then I tried making a new recording from the kongregate.com website and it yielded 3.366s for me too. So the online version is indeed slower.

Taking the boss explosion as the end of timing seems consistent and useful to me.

The lower you hit the rope the better.

But in fact there is sometimes seemingly random lag after the boss has been killed. Maybe that would justify changing the end of timing to the boss being killed? My logic for the current rule was just that it is equivalent to the SDA standard but with a more obvious visual clue, so I'm not opposed to changing it to remove lag differences.

The king is only in check, not checkmate.

[quote]1) A normal run where you never load a saved game or checkpoint. I think that's "single segment"[/quote] Yeah, I accidentally described the opposite.

It can have two meanings:

1. A normal run where you have loaded a saved game or checkpoint.

2. A run where you use saves frequently and only keep the best attemps that you later edit together. Such a run can be done by a team over multiple months in the extreme case.

I know this will sound extremely silly: I'm not sure if the current categorization is very sensible. It doesn't save as much time as I thought and honestly it is sometimes hard to tell, if a glitch occured or not, even when going frame by frame through the video: in some situations it could be that the top card and then the card below it went to the top right decks and it could also be that the card below went and then the top card went.

There are imho 2 good choices for SNES/SFC emulators:

BizHawk has bsnes/higan integrated, which is known for its great accuracy there are 2 versions of it, one for weak PCs with a bit less accuracy and one for strong PCs that is very accurate I don't recommend using higan directly, because it has great input delay. Cons:

• games with special chips (e.g. Yoshi's Island or MMX3) need A LOT of computing power
• the accuracy is not perfect, at least the Yoshi's Island community bans Bizhawk because it has less lag than a real SNES

Snes9x has some small input lag and runs at a slightly slower framerate, but can run every game with a normal PC

I replaced them with backups.

http://www.speedrun.com/post/z90b8 [quote]I can certainly do that, but I'd like some more feedback on if everyone likes this or if it should be an option or something.[/quote] Update on this? I think most people like it.

You outdid Resident Evil 4! Congratulations! :)

I think replacing guides with a wiki would be best, but I know it's easier said than done.

[quote]2) We've technically already figured this out. FDS Minus World is a separate category, but it's not taken seriously as it seemingly doesn't really "beat the game." I feel like we should address that issue when/if it actually becomes a problem. [/quote] There are reasons that I'd rather figure this out before than after:

1. A runner should know, if his run will count before he puts in the effort. Nobody likes to put in a thousand attempts to be then told that the run doesn't count, when it says nothing like that in the rules.
2. It's a common accusation in cases like these that the people rejecting the run are trying to protect their WR or are clinging to old routes. I wasn't thinking so much about big glitches like the Minus World Ending as slight differences in say the GBA version adding up to a second of time save over the NES version.

My personal views on these matters: SMB1

1. Yes, it's better for inclusiveness as long as the difference remains small.

SMB2j

1. Yes, it's better for inclusiveness as long as the difference remains small.
2. This is a really tricky subject. I would feel silly whether I use a savestate myself or whether I disregard a better time on a technicality. An important factor is that holding Start while loading the savestate would make the RNG much more predictable, which would make it more enjoyable to run but also increases the advantage of using a savestate a lot.

General

1. Yes, although I prefer them to run at the correct framerate.
2. Imho a time improvement that comes from playing a slightly different game with the same title is no improvement at all and it's silly that runs could be obsoleted for the sole reason that a future release is faster. This is obviously a controversial topic in the speedrun community with Zelda runners mostly saying anything goes and going as far as importing consoles from China and using specific memory cards for faster saving and SM64 having seperate leaderboards and only N64 WRs being respected and a bunch of other communities being on either side of the issue.
3. Yes, if someone submits a fake good time or fake WR that is not too obvious but also doesn't really have much proof to it, there is really nothing that can be done about it. Though I see that people with weak PCs or slow/no internet would have reason to dislike it.

SMB1

1. Should Wii VC, Wii U VC, 3DS VC and GBA times be converted, if it's possible?

SMB2j

1. Should Wii VC times for SNES be converted?
2. How should runs that use a savestate for faster resets be treated? Pedantically it's against the rules, but there are several relevant SNES runs that use it on the leaderboards right now. Should we remove them and disregard their current WR status or do a grandfather clause and reject future runs that do it or allow it?

General questions

1. Should emulator times at 60fps (or 59.94fps for snes9x) be converted to the correct framerate?
2. Should versions other than the original release (Famicom cartridge for SMB1, Famicom disk for SMB2j, Super Famicom for All-Stars categories) become a seperate category, if they turn out to be faster and not convertable? (e.g. a 3DS-only glitch being found that makes it faster than the original release)
3. Should there be cutoff points for how much proof is required? Right now all runs are pretty much judged the same, the only exception being the rejected 4:57.58 run that would probably have been accepted had it been a minute slower. We could say that a video is only required from like 5:20 down and from sub5 down it's required to stream attempts (and similiar cutoffs for other categories).

Depending on the decisions, we need to know the relevant differences for Wii U VC, 3DS VC and GBA versions. I would really appreciate if someone recorded a few loops of the title screen autoplay and a playthrough of any of these versions (preferably uploaded at the original framerate of the recording), so we can check stuff like the framerate and lag.

It's kind of funny, when their rules reference stuff like time without loads, which doesn't even exist in their system.

Alternatively you can abuse the run submission system to send a message to all the mods via the run notes (or just use the forum, though I admit I check it rarely). To adress one point you made earlier though: I don't see a point in a 2nd quest category for SMB1, it's too similiar. Nobody needs "Luigi 2nd Quest Any%", "Both Characters Both Quests Warpless", etc. categories that would be virtually the same as the existing ones except for the quality of the runs.