United StatesI think a boss rush style category, or at the least ILs, makes perfect sense here, but there's a lot of space to work with.
For example, another option here could be, a-la a 'NG+' style setting, is 'you can have 4 of anything you buy in a store, and 1 of every unique equippable' and make such a run a focus on the actual gauntlets themselves. or, alternately, a 'l60 with every class and only the minimum things required to get there, now go gear yourself up'. Or something like that. Do you have any insight there into what a 'hollow-ready' item set would be? I'd be leaning towards something complete like I indicated above, and we could have a save file as a reference.
For a 'full game + hollow' style category, I appreciate your insights, as that's definitely not something I've tested.
Feel free to join the speedrunning discord to talk about this more, and/or send me a video link of you doing the run and explaining your thoughts.
Small tech note: Zophar's submitted time is from a retime of local recording, the original twitch stream (about 1:43 in) has the same retime of 45.47:517 (via untwitch). the Youtube video retimes to 45:47.533 via multiple downloaders. It's possible that youtube conversion may require specific parameters to maintain recording timing, currently unknown. The twitch test, however, means it verifies as 45.47:517!
Congrats on a strong WR!
As a separate note, Twitch isn't a super-safe place for speedrun videos to live now, thanks to their upcoming deletion policy. https://www.speedrun.com/news/o2vko35l-twitch-runs-at-risk-are-now-visible-for-runners-moderators is a page on SRC talking about this situation. The rules aren't against it so you don't have to do anything, but if this matters to you, please consider an update. I'll be getting to my videos in early April myself. Thanks!
Yeah, there's minor things like that, I haven't fully documented them yet because I haven't gotten my hardware memory card through the game yet. Soon, I hope. I do have a completed emulator run though, so that's a start.
For what it's worth, even if you made it playable on hardware, the english version has at least one more button press than japanese, if not more, so you'd always be at a handicap ;)
Alright, so here's what I'm gonna do. i'm a little out of pocket due to RPG Limit Break, but the decision I'm on is 'there will be a board that allows anyone, but the rule is that it has to be contiguous play from character select'. i've proven that char select itself is not fixed RNG, so playing (and retrying normally) after that point is fair no matter the platform. I'm going to put this under the name 'Fastest Victory % No RNG Manip' .
I'm going to create an emulator only category that allows for rapid save stating, as long as your start to end is contiguous, so as to not get in the way of peoples' grind. My current name for it is 'Fastest Victory %'. This matches the general concept of Any% meaning anything goes, and conditionals being put on that. This does not mean that RNG manip is required or expected, just that it is possible and you will never be disqualified from the category for it. (Without requiring you to show more of your run, as in the FV%No RNG, I could never prove if you are or aren't, and neither can anyone else, so everyone goes in the same bucket!)
Conveniently, this means that the board you were already using for emulator Fastest Victory % is valid to submit for again, and is where rapid emulator runs will live! I will create the Fastest Victory % No RNG Manip category for future console and emu enjoyment.
Thanks to Pazuzu and JPTRON for their input, and all of everyone's understsanding. Wu Tang Forever!
Okay, quick test, this is pretty clearly exploitable: my opponent's moves are differently timed and chosen based on which pre-fight savestate I use, and whenever I hold the exact same button from the start (or none at all), the enemy actions are exactly the same. I would be willing to do a board or category that allows this, but I can't allow it in one that is mixed with console.
So the unknown here, and it's something i want to investigate as quickly as I can, is whether you can use a save state to get repetitive behavior on the part of the AI. I get it's a disk game and i don't love it. This, admittedly, is all a function of emulation and console being on the same board for these: if we separated them out then it would at least be fine. If people would prefer that so that they can keep grinding, I can do that instead. Otherwise, I'm just gonna need to find a bit of time to dig.
Unfortunately, as I was looking at runs, I realized I hadn't laid out emulator rules clearly enough, and so added this note to all category rules. This is standard practice for acceptable emulator runs across the site (to my knowledge). If we ever can confirm that save states don't preserve state in any exploitable way, I'd be glad to change the policy.
"For all categories where emulator is accepted, using save states, especially to initiate ILs or fastest victory, but even to initiate full game runs, is not allowed. We don't know enough about the game RNG to say that save states aren't allowing people to carry initial RNG over and grind a specific AI position in the RNG, and that's something you simply can't reproduce on hardware. If understood to my satisfaction, this policy could change. The game has the ability to quit out of fights and rematch which should be sufficient."
okay something's super weird with this video, and on the critical run the same sort of thing happens. I can see you're loading save states, but because we don't know how the RNG works exactly, while emulator is fine, I think I have to say using save states which may ensure an initial starting state has to be considered illegal until we, at some point, know how the RNG in the game actually works. I will make a post on the forums to this end.
Yeah, the last bosses in this game are no joke! Congratulations!
Welcome to the boards to a group of tight homies who submitted for Fastest Victory %. As some of their submissions indicated, at this scale ms actually matter, and so I enabled milliseconds for timing. To be clear, in the two full game categories, you're using IGT, so ms aren't measured or considered, however, in ILs and Fastest Victory%, RTA ms is the expected timing, so I'd definitely recommend everyone re-time their submissions in the future to get the most accurate timing. I might go back and fix up the two that weren't re-timed to have a more accurate time.
Again, welcome and thank you having fun with the game!
for future reference: you want the link that looks like https: //www.twitch.tv/videos/205606681 , the link you gave was via your personal video editor window which nobody else has access to
You can really tell it's the MISTer ATM from the light tile displacement that happens when you're running. And holy cow, the castle map looks WILD under MISTer.
First: thank you for your support! Look me up on twitch or discord if you want to talk more directly. If you have another catagory idea (all bosses, or just a shorter category like 'fastest complete the shareware version, so no leaving Module 1, defeat all bosses'), lmk and we can probably get it set up! If we get enough runners, splitting by class might also be a thing, or at least tagging runs with class. (A lot of people only got to play the shareware version, so the idea of doing a shareware-only category has always run in my mind as a possibility that might resonate with people who were small at the time and never got the full game.)
So for posterity: the issue with macros is that I am sure I could full-automate the entire run if I wanted if I was allowed to screen scrape, which would be indistinguishable from macros. Allowing macros would have to be carefully thought through, maybe a standardized set. The thing to cut against it, in my mind, is that RPG runs often consider menuing a skill, and this is menuing, so following their lead means not macroing menuing. So that's a soft no from me right now, but if more people show up with opinions about macroing, I'm open to discussion.
Heya everybody! Going to note some adminship changes and some of what we've done in an immediate sense.
First, Megami has retired, and elevated Me and Zophar to super admins, as two of the active runners of the game. Our first actions were to define the rules for the game and category which, simplified, are 'from gaining control to final hit' for timing. This meant having to retime a few of the older runs, but all for the better in terms of their times! We aren't going to be requiring hard frame timing unless we need to resolve a tie, although by all means frame-time your runs. (Our current setup is detwitch (the website) into avidemux (the software).)
A few weeks back I also added a resource on the things that I'm aware of being true in the game. If people know things that I have misrepresented, or didn't capture, please come and let me know, I can be found on discord or on what is our current discord (unless this place gets more active), which is Zophar's discord and linked in the main page.
That's it for the notes, back to enjoying the joys of Jim Hydlide.
