It's ok guys. Everything is going to be ok.

To recap, the Canon category is playing by the rules of the game both in maneuverability (on foot proverbially) and the path from A to B (the bounds of the graphics of the game - not just the hitboxes but the graphics).

Play any game you want and define what maneuvers are illegal where maneuvers are defined as only coming from the input of the controller.

Those illegal maneuvers would simply be anything that "breaks" the game inherently by either changing the top speed the developers had allowed or given the character or by increasing the distance the character can move beyond what is normally seen and allowable through the game. Thus, most or all linear type gains of motion should be legal and all exponential type of gains of motion should be illegal.

These illegal moves can be set individually for each game within your Canon run and need not be defined on the whole.

Edit: as stated previously this category may be combined with Any% completion and 100% completion and 100+% completion.

The "external equipment" phrase was proverbial and not literally external equipment. It referred to the nature of the power that external equipment can bring. Basically, there are some maneuvering glitches that don't just give you nice looking shoes. They give you rockets. And these "exponentiated" maneuvering glitches FUNCTION like external equipment relative to the original tools you had.

So that is why I said, to put it in simple terms you should only be able to make linear gains of height and speed in your movement and not exponential gains; as a general benchmark for understanding what would be "canon" to the tools the developer gave you.

If the developer doesn't block access from not collecting collectibles then you move on but this is simply the distinction of Any% completion and 100% which we've known the entire time. So you can do Canon-Any% and Canon-100% runs just fine.

Glitched runs is just taking away the path from point A to point B that the developers had made. And so its not cheating within that category but it is cheating the actual game. The Canon category simply plays through that path.

I know. But again, to do a race from point A to point B along a path is the race. To cut the path is cheating. That's just what it is. You can still do glitched runs as a category. That's perfectly fine but it can't be changed from the definition of what it means to cheat a race. You either give yourself boosts in your maneuverability to go faster than the competition through the aid of external equipment and not under your own power, or you do not actually run the entire path from point A to point B. That's it. Those are the only glitches possible and in ANY other context in the world its known as cheating. So call it what you want but it doesn't change what it is.

You don't understand. The word canon is a tool to understand how to do a speed run according to the way the game was made. It's not canon to the story. It's canon to the path of the game itself just like a race would be.

Utilizing the race analogy, if I'm on foot and you are on a pod racer and we run the same race then it doesn't really matter, the foot is the apple and the pod race is the orange. The means of our maneuvering was different. The Canon category simply says that everyone needs to run on foot where running on foot is analogous to using only the controls that the developer gives you in a way linearly moving. If you do speed boosts such as utilizing a grenade blast to boost you through or a roll cancel or a side jump and make a combination of those moves to go faster then by all means, you are still running on foot.

But if you stack those in an exponentiated way such that you go faster than the game actually allows you to go at all, then that would be a glitched maneuver like the pod racer. You have to use your head to understand just what would be linear (foot race) and what would be a pod race (exponential-ish).

It doesn't have to be defined. It can just be what is used in the Canon category for that game. But if you flow with the spirit of the category then it is quite sensible.

So then also, the path from A to B must be the proverbially canon path that the developers made, going from checkpoint to checkpoint while within the bounds of the game. And this would include cut scenes which you must watch if there is no means of pushing a button to skip it. Otherwise I would skip it to get a better time.

If the developer gives you a tool and you don't use it then you lose time. That is fairly missing the point of speed running. The developer intends for you to play through the game that they made, the challenges they present with the tools they gave you. This is not hard. You are playing devil's advocate but not really making good questions from it. Honestly this is not hard.

So in the case of roll-cancels that is an actual accepted maneuver that the developers made. It's just how you are applying them and you said it, it's not a glitch. So then, we do know what is a glitch and what is not. Roll canceling and general maneuvering tricks are totally acceptable as Canon from the developers toolbox they gave the players.

However, a hack would be maybe, roll canceling and stacking it somehow to gain otherworldly speed to skip through the whole level and get to the finish. In simple terms, maybe it should be linear types of maneuvering gains rather than exponential types of maneuvering gains. It's usually the exponentiated effects that are "inhuman" in nature.

As long as you go along with the spirit of the game then it becomes much more understandable. You can define your maneuvering illegal moves and set that as your Canon run. Then others just have to do the same and its a race.

But, we can't take things personally. To cheat a race is to go a different route than the route was made to be. If I set points A to B along a path and you cut the path, then you cheated. This is not an emotional thing. Skipping any portion of the game is just getting to point B through the unmarked path which is going out of bounds. Very easy to see and is an unemotional reality. I hope you can see that.

If cut scenes can be skipped by the developer's toolbox then you skip it. If they can't then they shouldn't be skipped by other less known mechanics. The developer needs to give you a working button that will skip the cut scene to skip it. Otherwise skipping it would not be Canon.

Lastly, please indicate another category of glitches.

Glitched runs is a category. But it's cheating the original game. I see no problem with those two statements but am wondering why you do.

Again, it's not hard to apply. There are literally only two categories of glitches: skips through out of bounds or some other mechanic that allows you to skip portions of the game - which is an obvious thing to be removed - and maneuvering glitches.

Maneuvering glitches are case by case. All you need to do is state for your run what maneuvers are illegal, that you are not using and as long as everyone else does the same then it is the community based definition of the Canon category for that game.

You don't need to completely define what it is for all games but as long as everyone does the same thing within any single game then it is comparing apples to apples and is a legitimate race.

Watch the cookie crumble and go from there. The community will adapt the maneuvering glitch definition for each game as they go along, as necessary and naturally.

It's not as difficult as you think if you think about it.

But I never delegitimized the glitched runs. I only said it was cheating. If you want to do TAS, grind RNG, glitch combed "speed" running then by all means, that is a category. But what it proves, more or less is who does the glitch the best/fastest, not who does the game the best/fastest.

So the Canon category fits the bill to determine precisely who runs the game in the fastest time.

It's obvious that skipping any portion of the game would not be legal in this category since the developers intended for you to play it. So playing less of the game by running out of the bounds of the game is obviously not allowed.

The only other aspect of glitches is simply maneuvering based glitches. How the actual player is allowed to move. And I think there is some room depending on the game on what sort of movement glitches are allowed.

Some movements don't really change the way the player is able to get around, but it just allows them to get around better using the original game's mechanics. However some movement's take advantage of mechanics that were never intended by the developer that may or may not be "inhuman" even in their implementation. And those maneuvers should obviously be not allowed.

But again, in each game, those maneuvers should be explicitly noted as legal or illegal as appropriate.

Of course you will all say these things. But a new category does in no way impede the others. There is no basis to delegitimize one category on the merits of others.

This category can be used by speed runners to ensure that the best speed runner will win and not the best glitcher. And that's up to the community if they want to do a Canon speed run, one that completes the game from A to B according to the challenges presented by the developers of the game.

That's it. No need to get argumentative.

To you it sounds boring. But I think people should do it and use the category if that's what they would rather compete in. All this TAS, glitch searching is just a competition at who can cheat the most. While it may seem fun, it changes the original spirit of what we were doing in the first place. Canonized speed runs will be sure that you will see who is truly the best speed runner of all time.

I think that there should be a new category for speed running.

This category called Canon or Canonized will simply be a play through of the game with any percent completion of the game or 100%+ completion of the game but the run is done completely as the developers intended.

This means no glitches of any kind except maybe controller based glitches that allow for better skilled handling. Each game should clearly define what is allowed for maneuverability in the Canon category.

This means that no skips of any kind are allowed that are not implemented by the developer in the game as is clear by the way the game was made originally.

Maybe this is equivalent to the Glitchless category but I think that it is more specific to the heart of what speed running is all about.

When you want to do a race, you don't want to do it by cutting corners since that would be cheating. It would be comparing how well one person can cheat versus the other instead of actually being able to do the game quickly, which requires more skill.

A lot of speed running is surrounded with so much RNG grinding and with so much glitch searching that it takes away from what speed running has really been all about this whole time, which is just a race.

And if we want to race to the finish then I think there ought to be a category that expresses the most familiar human level competition as possible and this would be the Canon category.

Instead of competing against the TAS or using the TAS so heavily, we would be literally seeing who can complete the actual game in the least time, using the game in the same spirit as the developers intended but in the fastest way possible.