North Carolina, USAReorganization is complete! Solo is now separated for all categories and open for business. Submissions are open again if anybody wants to get to it.
Next to do is rules and figuring out how to time the old runs. I just confirmed quickly so I can comment on it, removing loads in L4D1 does work just the same as L4D2 and the timing method will be changing to that. For now until I can get proper rules written in and everything, refer to the L4D2 load removal method for timing runs here.
Alright, there we go. Check out the Level Leaderboard. So much easier to manage now.
I'll work on moving the campaign times into the Level Leaderboard sometime tomorrow.
Seems I've worked that out just as well and this categorizes it a bit more cleanly. Yay, learning. Thanks for the heads up. I guess I'll need to move the runs over again... a little notification spam never hurt anybody, right?
Hmm. I'm still fairly new to how speedrun.com is laid out so I'm trying to work through it. Do you mean adding a Miscellaneous tab to entries in the Level Leaderboard and placing the individual maps within that? I see how I could do that, which is essentially what I was doing before except within the Level Leaderboard.
So the Level Leaderboard would look like No Mercy, with a Solo and Co-op tab for full runs, then a Miscellaneous tab holding Individual Maps with subcategories for each map in a Solo and Co-op version. Is that what you mean?
Edit: Having a Solo/Co-op column seems to work well with this layout, I'll switch to that method.
That is where Miscellaneous is. I am still in the process of setting everything up right now, I've just finished moving the individual maps to their new home in Miscellaneous and the other campaigns have not been moved over to Level Leaderboard yet.
I actually have every campaign as an individual map category under Miscellaneous as its own, and then the campaign's maps as subcategories within that. Since I unfortunately can't have a subcategory in a subcategory, Solo and Co-op distinction will be handled with a column. Otherwise, I would have to create a new category for every individual map and mark it as Miscellaneous, which will then make the misc dropdown ridiculously long, so this is probably the better way.
All of the Miscellaneous categories have been added now, once I move other stuff around and remove the extra players column (because it's applied to everything right now) it will be ready.
Alright, I think I'll move forward with the category shifting as planned. One is up now as an example of what it will look like, under Miscellaneous you'll see "No Mercy Individual Maps" with five subcategories. I will need some time to make these changes since I will have to enter runs again manually as I move them over along the way so stand by, and in this transition I ask everybody to please hold any submissions until it's complete.
As for tracking all speedruns for a game, that is true within reason. The communities decide what they want to run in a game and what makes the most sense as a category based on the content of the game. It isn't entirely black and white. Super Mario 64, for example, has the 100% category of 120-star, and other categories based on when you unlock each boss. Technically you may be able to say tracking all possible categories would add getting all stars in only Whomp's Fortress, another category for all stars in only Bob-Omb Battlefield, categories for getting specifically 19 stars, there are so many ways for it to go. That doesn't make the most sense for the game, though, so the community doesn't run it like that.
Categories can also be based on how different they are from one another, with two categories that are so close in gameplay sometimes discounting one or the other for lack of variety. That would be the case with mutations as many of them don't really change much, especially when it comes to speedrunning. Mutations would need to be picked far more carefully for what unique contribution they may bring to a speedrun that isn't there in a regular run of the game, which is something we could visit down the road if looking for something new to do, I'm not sure. That's getting off topic however and would be a discussion for another day.
December 28th 2016,
After some discussion in the speedrunning Discord, we've come to the conclusion that the changelevel command should not be allowed, which was previously something that hadn't been discussed. Added a short new rule that it can't be used to rotate campaigns during a run. The few legacy runs from ages ago that use this command will be staying up. See this thread for more information about why it was disallowed,
We had a lengthy discussion in Discord today about if the changelevel command should be allowed in a run to rotate campaigns. When utilizing this command for changing maps to the beginning of a campaign, the normal intro cinematic will break and you will have partial control immediately sans moving your view until the "cutscene" in the background finishes.
Using changelevel in the console is the only circumstance under which the intro cinematics break, all other ways they will play normally. Keeping it would have been because a couple of accepted runs previously used it, and it isn't cheat-protected (although other non-cheat commands aren't allowed).
The reasons against using it were,
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There is no option through the intended game menus that cause the same effect, it can only happen using the console command.
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It will bypass the vote creation timer (3 minute wait between votes) that exists in version 2.0.9.1 and up, which means All Campaigns would be affected by this.
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It adds bots back to the server that were previously kicked by a Dark Carnival bug, when otherwise there is no other way to get them back besides restarting the server entirely.
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Most importantly, and what made the decision easy, is that unlike all other commands which are allowed, changelevel cannot be used on a Valve official server, only by the host themself.
With all of this considered a decision was reached to flatly disallow the usage of changelevel to rotate campaigns and break the intros and the rules have been updated to reflect that. Legacy runs using this are kept as making the rule retroactive is unfair, and they are easily beaten regardless since many new tricks have been found.
Thus concludes a L4D2 leaderboard history lesson!
Pixel walking, you mean on the fences around the Church? Yup. That part is actually by far the easiest, it's hard to fall off once you're practiced. The hard part is getting a Tank spawn so you can use setups to boost up to that part, and then the crouch hop to get to the saferoom's exit door and end the level. Granted I haven't tried it in L4D1 yet, maybe it's lucky and the last crouch hop is easier... I'm not saying it's reasonable to expect to execute this but the idea is out there ready to infuriate anybody that wants to try it. Heh.
Sounds good. Thanks for the input, Canterlott. I think I'm leaning on each campaign having its own IM section, that will probably look cleaner and more organized.
(Working on looking at your timing to see if it was 2:05, juggling a bunch of conversations ATM)
Deagle unluckily posted simultaneously with me so that was great timing. I'll let a couple more posts come in before I make changes.
Ah, you mean the vocalize bug to start the church? Weeeeelllll.... there ¤is¤ a workaround for solo that I was playing around with in L4D2 that I know would work here, but it is very difficult. Still, technically one does exist...
I think the version column is good, it lets less serious runners still submit good times and serious runners can get their hands on the old version to squeeze out every last second. Seems to go alright for L4D2.
"Level Leaderboard" is changed to the campaigns, No Mercy, Death Toll, etc. with Solo and Co-op categories
"Full-game Leaderboard" is changed to All Campaigns Solo, All Campaigns Co-op, Original Campaigns Solo, Original Campaigns Co-op, Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous will have a category like "Individual Maps" (called it maps to differentiate better from Level Leaderboard?) and inside there will be subcategories for each map. Hopefully speedrun.com supports that many, I'll have to see. Probably a players column there for Solo and Co-op since I can't do subcategoryception and put a subcategory in a subcategory. Co-op doesn't even have any submissions for the maps anyway.
Actually, thinking about it, instead of just one big misc category with all of the levels, maybe it should be like "No Mercy Maps" or some such for each campaign. Hmm.
This will line the main categories up with L4D2 for parity and shift the maps over to a place where they don't feel as "necessary" to run and split the runner's attention while preserving the previous submissions, just shifted around a bit.
If you could port the autosplitter, bill, that'd be great! Thank you.
Ahhh it was you Cyberdemon, cool, appreciate you putting the word in to the site. I was thinking of taking that step soon myself so it seems you got to it faster. We'll get L4D1 up and running in no time, other runners are already interested in doing solos here after I told them there is no Rochelle or Jockeys.
As for the 1.0 Solo category, I don't think it would be a good idea to have a category solely requiring an old version. I can put a column in to differentiate version numbers like L4D2 does, though. I just don't want it to be an absolute requirement to submit. Dead Air 2 actually has a pipe bomb drop in newest (I think it works in L4D1?) you can do that works around that map. Are there any other huge skips in 1.0 that wouldn't have backups? I am not familiar with it yet myself. If there is a list anywhere of the differences that would also be good.
Hey folks, just a quick note that, when you submit the time in your run, please leave the milliseconds field 000 so it doesn't show on the leaderboards. The millisecond setting was instituted only to break a tie. Seeing that the vast majority of runs are still whole seconds apart it isn't necessary otherwise since it introduces clutter.
December 25th 2016,
Merry Christmas!
My gift to the leaderboards are three new miscellaneous categories to mess around with. "Parish Dash - Park", "Parish Dash - Quarter", and "Tutorial" are now up with Solo and Co-op subcategories. This was the only place I could fit in these meme categories without cluttering up the place elsewhere. The dash mutation is pretty cool. The tutorial map is good to round out speedrunning all "official" Valve maps (blame bill_play3 for telling me it existed).
Ah, also, I am considering the removal of the level leaderboards and shifting the individual campaigns there, like L4D2 does. Currently some of them have no submissions at all, co-op doesn't have any submissions, and the majority of the times are Freezard alone, SirRed alone, or several where it's just the two of them. I don't anticipate any new submissions would be coming in there, either. Running single levels sounds kind of maddening. Open to discussing it either way.
Hello everybody, today I received quite the surprise when I saw I was added as a series mod, hooray! I don't want to make drastic changes right away since I am coming into an established community (albeit a fairly vacant one at the moment) so here we have this thread.
For some time now I've been deeply involved in the L4D2 leaderboards and have worked with others there making changes to timing, etching out new rules, and so on. Now that I have the ability to do things here as well I would like to post about proposed changes that can be made to bring things in line with what's going on in the much more active L4D2 portion of the series so that both games have rules much closer to each other.
I see demo timing is used for RTA runs and there was discussion about that a while ago. In L4D2, we now use RTA with strictly the loads taken out to time easily and fairly, as the scoreboard appears for a consistent, scripted time and loads can be removed based on how long the icon shows in the upper-right. I assume that L4D1 will work the same which is something I plan to investigate. Demo timing has a very high barrier of entry for new runners especially and recording them is not the easiest during a run. Considering RTA runs are supposed to be timed beginning to end and the scoreboard is essentially a cutscene in this game, it seems to make more sense to keep all of that and time via video as we've been doing with L4D2. I'd like to change that here. We should be able to accurately re-time runs submitted here retroactively by adding whatever the flat time is from the end of a demo to loading start. I'll be investigating this further to make sure I have the right system in place to get correct times.
Videos should absolutely be necessary for every submission. Requiring people to contact the runners for demos just to see what a run looks like is pretty unreasonable.
I'm still working on trying to figure out how to best handle adding Expert (and lower) to the L4D2 boards. That could be ported here eventually.
I'd like to split co-op and solo categories so solo runs become viable. It's the most popular in L4D2 and is an attractive option for new runners that don't want the pressure of running with a team or, even more importantly, can't get a good team together to compete. Spectators seem impressed that one person can complete the game by themselves, too.
I'll post more if I think of anything. Hope to hear from some of you guys soon. I will likely go ahead with making changes if there isn't a response for a while, just wanted to make sure I try to voice everything first for discussion.
December 21st 2016,
Updated the platforms for accuracy, the game isn't even available on PS3 like was available before. I actually attempted to remove it entirely to see what it was like with the column gone, but it turns out that just leaves a blank platform column instead! Grr. We'll go with this for now. Side effect, removing the platforms wiped their entry in all submissions and it didn't save them to reapply when I added it back. Good stuff, speedrun.com. Not hard to add back since it's basically all PC anyway.
Added milliseconds to the boards since we have our first real seconds tie! MrFailzz and burhac both have a 9:07 on Ravenholm. Since we have a reliable way to get an accurate game time, milliseconds have been instituted for use as a tiebreaker. Everything having a time down to the hundredth may look confusing, so a small bit has been added to the rules stating not to submit anything in the millisecond field unless in case of a tie. It doesn't print it if you leave it zeroed.
Banned "emulators" with a setting so that checkbox doesn't show up anymore. No more PC emulation on your PC allowed!
Another custom campaign category is up, "Urban Flight (Custom)"!
The L4D2 leaderboards are using an easy loadless method now where we cut out the loading icon which is when true loading time happens. Just thought I'd mention, it'd be pretty easy to port here and stuff. Or something. Anything, really.
You actually can still connect to a dedicated server on custom campaigns, I just got into Drop Dead Gorges on one. And then had a lovely perk selection menu on the side. I hadn't even considered that as I never used these servers, so, I guess it should definitely be a requirement to use a local server.
Now, I know there is a difference between the lobby local server and the map command as the lobby doesn't allow cheats, I think it may set up a dedicated and then connect to it, while the map command is a true listen server? I am honestly not sure really on their exact differences and if it really matters.
Either way, hosting a server will be required... I think the next step may be to test joining servers both with the map command and the lobby mid-load to see what happens. Ideally, if it allows them to join during the poster, and it waits for everybody to be fully loaded like it does when you vote campaign, it will be consistent with the other categories and everybody will be in when the campaign loads. I'm not expecting that, but... it sure would be nice.
Solo would work well with the disconnect; map method, although I would like to try and keep the methods consistent across the categories if at all possible.
Fair point on hardware being an issue again if somebody can't get in quickly enough, although this is already something that can happen in loadless co-op runs on any level but the first. There just isn't a way to even out all of the loading times, so it has to be a "good enough" kind of thing by resuming time on the first-loaded player. I wonder if time taken to join the lobby can be affected by hardware as well? And then everybody will be a different character which is confusing if they don't choose, but choosing takes time. Hmm. You know, there isn't another way to keep everybody the same character otherwise, is there... well, let's get some mid-load joining and stuff investigated first so we know more about how it will work and then pick it up from there. We still have a lot of individual runs to do so there is time to take on this to get it as right as we can. Who knew that figuring out how to best switch between campaigns would be the hardest part of the whole deal? Good googly moogly are there a lot of variables to consider.
Do note that, with the option where you go through the lobby, players will still have to reconnect either to the lobby before it launches or while it is loading, likely while loading being the fastest route. I think you can join while a lobby is connecting? Either way, people will have to rejoin the server each campaign. Likely everybody can get in before the intro finishes (besides Drop Dead Gorges which has none), but if they don't load in time then I guess bots will have to be acceptable until then. As long as something crazy doesn't happen like different players come in, that shouldn't have an affect on a run's legitimacy.
As for taking out time while in the menu, ideally it should really count into time. Generally RTA categories start timing when the player takes control (after the first intro flyby), and stops when they lose it (when the escape vehicle sequence starts) at the end of the run. You do still have full control in the menus and can potentially go through them to launch the next campaign faster or slower than another runner. That is why I'm wondering if allowing both might be unfair, since if none of the players are able to host their own server with the disconnect command, it will impose a penalty on the team that has to use the lobby. The only way to avoid that situation would then be to discount time spent in the menus and have the disconnect command be the recommended way to do it, but, time should be counted there...
Rawr, so complicated! Stupid lack of campaign voting.
Considering that menu time really should count and that it is unfair to require a team to be able to host a server, I'm leaning just a bit towards just using the menus myself and banning the use of the map command to switch campaigns. I need to try switching them via the menu myself to make sure it feels alright and there isn't anything weird I'm not accounting for.
By the way, no matter how we work it out, if we ever find a bug like Dark Carnival that kicks bots we won't be able to take advantage of it without votes, boo! I really hope that doesn't happen, that will be painful knowing we can't use it.
