Hi, sorry I totally forgot to write my feedback here, I'll try to summarize:

Overall experience was great, wasn't an (official :D ) runner this year but hat at least just as much fun this time.

Hosting was a great experience again, the microphone situation may have been a bit awkward but it was an okay solution and totally fine to work with. Still, the runner was hard to understand at times and a headset would help for that but I understand these things are expensive. Had a blast hosting again this year - thanks for letting me do the finale shift again - although I have the feeling I didn't reach the same level of energy this year. :( I hope to improve on that so I can be more enthusiastic as a host again next time! :) Sorry about that chocolate easter bunny, Mondstriker...

Accommodation worked fine, I was in the "deluxe" mass housing (thanks again, Weser <3 ). That disco night or whatever it was one evening was a bit of a bummer as it prevented me from sleeping but I don't want to complain. In general I had the feeling we were sharing the venue with more more other people this year than the last, which is not a huge deal in general, just being the shy nature of speedrunners it was a bit awkward at times.

Using the kitchen was pretty cool and doing my spazetti cooking session for everyone was great fun! Once again, it was a bit of improvisation because before and after other people were using the kitchen and thus some of the pots and pans were unavailable to me but I think we managed it. I always tried to keep the stuff I used clean and wash it once used. Others, however, didn't seem to do so - I remember a bunch of old spaghetti and sauce I had to throw away because nobody seemed to care anymore. The garbage bags got full pretty quick and I had no idea who to contact about that. Maybe I should have just asked but I naively assumed this would be taken care of by somebody at some time. Next time I know better and might be willing to be part of the garbage disposal group! :) And yes, I am one of the guilty as charged people who used the last night to have a good time with some other runners and get wasted, and we didn't clean up the bottles (mostly because we realized we have to leave for our trains). I sincerely apologise for that faux pas and I hope next year we can still have a nice final night but keeping things clean, maybe this time with some kind of glass garbage we have brought in preparation!

As for alcohol on the venue in general, I've heard some controversial opinions on that, but I generally agree on that clearly drunk people should not be allowed into the streaming room. I remember a certain runner during my hosting shift throwing down a chair simply because he was quite drunk already and while I myself don't have any problem with it, if viewers note that, they will wonder what kind of event that is and why they are allowed on the main venue. I don't think viewers recognised it this time, but I wouldn't want to risk it another time.

Anyway, that's all I can think of for now. Thank you so much, organisers, for making this event happen and I'm truly looking forward to seeing you all again next year - then as a runner again, hopefully! :)

ESA is over for more than a week now, but since I had some nice vacations in Stockholm and a successful job interview afterwards, I only now find the time to post in this thread. I hope it still gets read in time for next year's ESA!

Experience as an attendee:

Second ESA for me. Last year I slept in the mass housing, this year I decided to use the luxury of a hotel. Would probably do again. :) Way to walk to the venue wasn't too far, lots of stores around! The venue was very similar to last year, with the stream being a bit more its own area this time, which I liked. I also really liked the super duper comfy second stream! Too bad I didn't try out any of the other attractions like arcade machines and the melon controllers. Once again, super trusty community. Want to leave your expensive gear around? Okay, sure, it'll be in the same place 10 hours later. The WGW wifi was also fast and available practically all the time, which was nice this year as opposed to having to wait for the Fortnox Arena wifi to give you access. :D Honestly, not much I can criticize here. I think you did a great job, with the location this year, can't think of anything specific that needs to be improved. Doesn't mean there is nothing though!

Experience as a runner:

Setup for the two runs I had went quite smoothly, not really some problems I encountered, except a very nervous Ladaur coming to me, asking whether I'm Zet and ready, while I had to rush back to take my keyboard with me. :D The pc crash during my Inside run was a bit unfortunate, but I understand that this is a live event and even the most expensive pcs aren't 100% reliable all the time. It eventually got resolved and the machine kept running smoothly until the end. Being able to see the chat is nice because you know what is going on. It is not so easy when chat is once again being toxic and just complaining how shitty the run is you're doing. Also I saw on youtube comments that it's a bit unnerving for viewers to see the runners constantly look in the corner which we did for the chat but I'm not sure if the viewers knew we were looking at the chat. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

As for the donation incentives, I totally understand the motivation, but maybe next year have them a little smaller in the first place. It feels odd as viewers, runners and attendees when you have incentives of 1000$ that suddenly shrink to a 200$ one because it's clear they wouldn't get matched. It lessens the value of those incentives a bit. I totally understand how hard it is to coordinate all of this so I see why it went wrong but for next year this would be something to keep in mind and learn from this year's problems. :)

Experience as a host:

Now, this was something completely new to me and it was a blast! Well, not completely new, as I did some hosting during ESA Germany but this was my first hosting experience at a "larger" event like this. Hosting shifts with two people is a nice idea since you can start a conversation with your shift partner as opposed to being awkward on the couch, not knowing what to say during intermissions. Unfortunately, both me and my host partner SirRouven couldn't attend the host briefing because we hadn't been on site yet back then. It would have been nice to get some detailed description of how the stream deck worked and what playing ads was like etc. Maybe have a constantly updated Google doc with a link pinned on the volunteer discord somewhere would be nice! Fingers and the other person in the hosting shift before our first one did their best to explain the equipment to us but in action we realized we had misunderstood what they had told us before in the crash course. Especially that the view wouldn't automatically shift back to host cam after the twitch ad was finished was something we weren't aware of. We sure made up for it during our second shift - which even 4chan seemed to have found comfy :D - so I guess it's a learning process, as always. Maybe, for next events, hosting pairs could be matched up as in one with more and one with less experience, but then again it's up to the hosts to find their shift partners. This might however, be a suggestion to host volunteers and also an encouragement to veteran hosts to also ask newcomers to partner up with them. :) I definitely want to be a host again next year and although two shifts seemed a bit slim, I understand that everyone should have the opportunity to get a shift, so not everyone can get inifite many hosting shifts. Mayyyybe organizers can look into giving hosts from previous events which the viewers reacted positively towards and which brought donations in and such a slight preference when distributing the shift times. But again, I don't want to advertise ignoring newcomers or the inexperienced. Just thinking out loud. :)

About the whole donation process - I know we're not GDQ and we don't want to look like we're selling out but I realize we had some difficulties reaching the match up goal. Maybe for next year, not all the tiny donations should be read by the hosts and the good cause (and hopefully the upcoming match) should be promoted a bit more, as well as the upcoming bid wars or donation incentives.

Now, my feedback post got way too long already, so I'll stop here! Thank you for giving us this wonderful event once again, I can only imagine how much work it must be. I heard rumors next year was set to be in a hotel again instead of Fortnox or something entirely different... I guess I'll just wait and let the revelation be a surprise to me. See you next year. Hopefully.

Hello Gelly,

you are absolutely right "who runs the game on other platforms, anyway?" is indeed NOT a valid argument. It was more meant to be a joke but I made it in the wrong context. :D

There is, however, indeed a method to find out the "true loadless" time for platforms the ingame timer is unavailable for. It includes frame counting after the (still incomplete...) guide and afterwards adding a certain amount of frames back to it to have the accurate count.

Unfortunately, until the next big SRC update, the dropdown menu will exists for all categories and all individual levels, even though it makes no sense for All Levels and IL4; there kinda is a workaround but that makes things a lot more cluttered and confusing, as all the variables for comparison would still appear for ALL categories, so a lot of the same variables would pop up and you wouldn't know which one is which. After the update we could have the variable truly only appear on those categories and levels for which it applies. (I hope...)

Resurrecting an old thread, including the answers from a retired moderator! :o

Anybody wants to put down their opinions about "true loadless" or not?

Explanation: The Ingame timer is capable of accurately cutting out the times when the game ¤actually¤ loads. We came up with a way to get "close to" loadless times way that was easy to apply on existing videos. With the new tool which practically every runner uses nowadays, this is not necessary anymore. Who runs the game on other platforms anyway? :D

Eevee was so kind and already did the math for existing runs, reassigning the times should not take too long.

Any other thoughts on this?

To be honest, this discussion is getting less resonance than I had expected, perhaps the currently running SGDQ event is preventing some to put their attention towards this thread.

I don't want to keep pushing this further and further away, so here's a proposition: We'll start introducing a drop down menu you can use to specify the game's version you've ran on. If this does indeed lead to confusion, awkwardness and frustration within the community, a full separation in form of different full leaderboards (which would imo have to include 2013, 2017 AND 2016) can still be introduced.

I'm still busy - yeah, sorry about the non updated backgrounds and trophies :< - but I've given this topic some thought over some train rides.

At the moment I don't have a very strong opinion about either to be honest. I do understand the points of both sides, many other games do it, like the Half-Life series; they separate the leaderboards for different engine versions. Also many other games separate their lbs for different releases (console/pc). So, in this regard, I'd understand splitting up the leaderboards for 140, especially since we also have access to the legacy version, thanks to Carlsen and Schmid! :)

However, intuitively, I feel like splitting the leaderboard for the engine change would - although it's indeed an engine change - be a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The difference in the versions is so small that no runner would get a time advantage over another version. 2017 seems to be easier in terms of certain early activations (esp. 2-3) but technically 2013 is faster due to actual possibility of early 3-4. I wouldn't see much trouble if 2013 and 2017 could be alongside each other on the same leaderboard, maybe separated with a checkbox, so you can still compare runs of the same version against each other, a bit like running Ocarina of Time on different platform releases.

The question is, if - when we split the leaderboard - should we also add a category for the 2016 version? This one is also vastly different and the Gameguy bridge is almost impossible RTA.

So, my personal opinion on this: Give the versions of the game a checkbox, runs of different versions can obsolete each other. but you can still compare runs of the same version if you wish. Same goes for IL board. Buuuut that's just my opinion and I didn't think it through as much as the long ass pastebin I wrote about the level order. :) Now discussion, please! Maybe we'll have the new, revised lbs up by the end of the week!

(To be honest, a lb separation after the THOTH update would be far more appropriate :D )

No runs invalid, any% will keep levels 1-3 as this is - as said by the developer himself - considered a bonus stage and level 3 still contains the ending sequence. A new category containing the 4th level will be introduced. The console versions all don't include the 4th stage so a separation of Any% (or whatever we're going to call it) and All Levels is advised. Also IL runs will be introduced . New ingame by Dalet timer is pretty much done, retiming of all runs might happen into "true loadless". I was superduper busy recently so I couldn't restructure the leaderboards as of yet. Legacy version is still available through the Steam beta tab.

For both Inside and The Swapper, I would prefer to use at least the mid-tier PC. These seem to be absolutely up for the task to run the games non laggy and in a pleasing aesthetic in 60fps. :)

http://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/k4ke7

Same variable for multiple (but not all) categories is in the works. We just have to wait for the update.

Bump.

Okay so, I thought we'd be through this, but apparently this topic is still bugging some people, so here we go again. I want to ask everyone interested in the debate to keep it to this thread only not because I want to keep the theme out of the Discord but because finding stuff again in the Discord is super confusing.

Here are the basic points:

• The xbox 360 version was the first released version of the game and is the most different to any other version (hidden eggs, no hard route, different menuing, less checkpoints...)

• In addition to the other changes, only the XBOX360 version has the option "Gore Filter" in the menu which will take some of the game's graphical morbidness. In one scene of the game, this will save a significant amount of time, as you won't have to wait for an animation to finish

• There's other scenes in this version wich are slower than all the other versions though (see the video below for more)

• Virtually nobody runs the game on 360 and those who did any% runs on it didn't use the gore filter

Some runners opted for banning the gore filter. Yajijy and me, the only active mods at the time, did not agree on that and we all had a nice little debate. I'll roughly outline my points again:

• Gore filter is a legit release of the game, on a legit platform; it's an option you can activate without even using a cheat code. No external tools are needed to access it

• Banning it would disregard the 360 version as a speedgame completely. People shouldn't be outraged because it saves time on the least popular version; people should just as well, in my opinion, be equally outraged if it turns out that very least popular version was the one which DIDN'T have the gore filter time save. This in our heads makes no points, so it seems improbably that banning the gore filter is in fact an objective and logical decision.

After a long debate the consensus seemed to be that by integrating a checkbox you can use when submitting the run which you would see in the lb's page would be a good way to deal with this problem. Now all of a sudden I see people demanding to get rid of the checkbox again but don't ban the gore filter after all which I would be okay with as well but I don't want to decide anything above anyone else just because I can.

Thanks to toothpickwilly who kindly compared 360 gore filtered against other platforms. See his video here:

Is it possible to have the same variable for multiple but not all categories?

E.g. in Limbo at the moment there is the "Gore Filter" option supposed to be available for two categories only but due to the way (it seems to me) it works, I can either apply it to one or all categories. And to apply it to a certain number of categories, the option appears twice in the filter which is inconvenient and ugly.

Is there something I'm missing? Or is there a possibility of an update in that regard in the future? :)

Cheers!

Hello, unfortunately I come with bad news from Zin. (He's not much of an active speedrunner, hence I am doing this post.) The THOTH Standard Coop run we were REALLY looking forward to can in the end no take place. :( We appreciate the consideration and hope to eventually be able to run it together at a live event. As opposed to ESA Germany, I don't think it's a good idea to run Standard Solo instead and thus run will have to be canceled without a replacement.

Sorry for any inconvenience, unfortunately IRL didn't agree with the run.

Hello runners,

after talking to Seb, I have created a Swapper discord server for all of us to join and talk about the speedrun and lore of this game.

Here's a link you can use to join it until the bots abuse it. MingLee Hope to see you all there! :)

https://discord.gg/as6cDNJ

I'm sorry, I totally forgot:

In case THOTH Standard Coop gets in, this can only happen on the weekend, not during the week. Sorry for being so late on this. :(

The next cuts are due soon and I'm afraid I cannot get the goals I hope I'd have by April 28th. I think about my progress of The Swapper and Inside the team is informed enough through the leaderboards. Otherwise, there's a few things I want to get rid off:

As much as a letdown it was that Zin had to opt out of ESA Germany, we have since met and he told me, he does not want to withdraw his THOTH Standard Coop (the category names changed since we submitted, former "any% coop") from ESA17 and would be committed doing this run, should we get in. We might not meet each other as often anymore, but just after a bit of training being rusty, we got in shape quickly again. :) That being said, what such a run might look like is pretty much like this:

As for the Swapper, you might want to take a look at my ESA Germany run to get an idea what a marathon run of this game can look like.

And last but not least, even though I don't run 140 actively right now, I got to do it as a bonus game at ESA Germany and the run went quite well. I hadn't touched it for one and a half months, so consider me being oiled up, the run would go way smoother even. :)

Hello, here's a few thoughts about the matter:

• Gore filter should be allowed imo. It's a legit method of playing the game on a legit release. That's how it works, some versions are faster than others. We wouldn't ban all of sad_david's run which had the gear glitch just because it's apparently macOS exclusive. So if you have the game on 360, congratz you just saved yourself a free ~4 seconds!
• As much as I dislike the name "Hard Route", I'm not really content with "Dark Route" either, as it doesn't imply its property of needing to be unlocked. I'd prefer "Special Route" or "Secret Route". For "Normal Route", I think "Standard Route" could work as well. Heck, do we need "Route" in the name at all? As far as I'm concerned, we might switch - SM64 style - to simply "egg" categories. How about "0 Eggs Standard Path", "0 Eggs Secret Path", "9 Eggs", "10/11 Eggs", "20 Eggs", "21 Eggs"? It might sound ridiculous at first but I would be down for that.

If there is any official statement by Playdead as to how the "Hard Route" is 'officially' called, we might integrate this into the name. But I doubt it, since Playdead are staying silent about their games' content most of the time. :P

Something I might want to add (and not just edit my post because it might get overlooked otherwise):

As a host:

For future events it might be cool to have a nice overview about the schedule and their donation incentives as a host. While we might not want to overdo it like at certain other events, it's nice to let viewers know for which upcoming games incentives do exist.

The incentive list was a bit hard to get a clear overview from and as such presenting it as a host - which I thankfully didn't have to do myself - was pretty hard. I don't want to say, we hosts are lazy idiots who don't want to do some thinking of their own, but let's face it: We need to tell the audience as clear and precise as possible what's going on, if we have to think about it every few words, our communication with the viewers will be worse. Especially for those with less experience!

I'd be willing to help out on the hosting issues for next year's event. :)

Edit: Okay, I edit this time, this is something very minor but should imo actually be considered for an international event - on the pc the games are played on, Steam should be set to English as the default language, then most games will have English as their main language as well. I think some viewers were confused about the games having German text on screen. :D

Abusing the FlixBus WiFi for writing some feedback. Kappa

I'm a friend of long words, but I'm trying to keep it short:

As an attendee:

Honestly, I liked the location. I even regretted a bit I stayed in Berlin and not in Potsdam, that gave me about 1 hour travel time each day to and from the venue. The internet problems suck of course and if the event grows - what we all hope it does - there needs to be space for more people!

As a runner:

As far as I'm concerned, things went smooth. Of course it's bummer we couldn't download the larger games via Steam on site; for me that wasn't a problem since the games I run are all fairly small and I just brought them on a USB stick. Being ahead of schedule was something I wasn't used to before but then again, I have only visited ESA16 so far and there the schedule... well, I guess everyone knows. :D Cool we could do Bonus games and honestly, having me run spontaneously 140 was a dream come true as I always wanted to run this game at marathon from the moment I started speedrunning it. :) There was a bit of a lack of decent practice pcs, but I understand that these are not cheap to get. If there is the opportunity however, would be cool, since not every runner of pc game also has a gaming laptop.

As a host:

Hosting was a new experience for me and I hope I did a good enough job. Sorry to all runners I might have interrupted by trying to read a donation. Speaking of donation: Would it be possible to give donators who don't have an SRC account the ability to enter a name as well? Also please fix if somebody else writes "ZEEEE~EEEEET" in the donation text that the site layout will freak out again. :D Over my three shifts I think, my hosting abilities did improve and I really enjoyed getting to do the finale! For future events, it would be cool if we'd have some kind of cheat sheet, maybe as a laminated piece of paper, where a view standard sentences about our partners stand on. At my first hosting shift I really didn't know what to say about our partners most of the time. I'd be willing to help out with such a sheet for next time. I'd definitely like to be a host again at another event. :)

As a viewer:

I think the stream went smooth after initial connectivity problems, but for next time: Please check spelling errors beforehand ("Safe" instead of "Save the Children"). What people suggested could actually be a good idea: A local time clock on stream so viewers know why it's empty at 4am in the morning local time. Also I saw chat asking a few times who was hosting at the moment, without trying to get any benefit out of it, but maybe that could be faded in and out of the stream every once in a while? ALSO: Titles of the music tracks which are played during setup!!!

I ¤think¤ that's about what I have to say. Good luck on future events and see you all hopefully at ESA17! :D

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