Guineahttps://hiddentrack.org.uk/shutin This site includes links to the game for sale on Steam, Humble Bundle, & itch.io.
Modifiers are definitely not intended for any of the categories, although I do think they would have their place in a misc category, one that mirrors Portalless's rules, but with modifiers allowed. Do let me know what you think of a category like that. Besides that, I will eventually update the rules for all categories to explicitly state modifiers aren't allowed.
I will preface that this is simply my opinion on the matter, and likely doesn't reflect the opinions of any other mods.
First, I will admit that there's a tricky situation when it comes to creating "All Levels" categories for a continuously updated game like this. "All Levels" reflects every level that is in the game at that time. Part of me is unsatisfied with the conclusion of "All Levels should just be updated to a new category whenever asked for" as Noice suggests, since it's an incomplete collection of the game's history. I also recognize, however, that having 10 subcategories for every collection of levels that the game has had at the time of an update is wasteful. Weighing the two options, I'm definitely of the opinion of simply creating a new "All Levels" category when requested as updates are released, while not retroactively creating a category for each update. No demand = no category.
I do think, however, "All Levels" and "All Levels+" as category names to differentiate between the levels required is too unclear. I'd like to propose using the version number in which the most recent level in the run was added. ("v1.7 Levels" for levels up to Space & Ballroom, "v1.8 Levels" for levels up to Rollercoaster, and "v1.9 Levels" for levels up to Metro. Original Levels can stay the same or be renamed to "v1.0 Levels", although I think Original is fine.)
While looking over all of the boards to inform myself for this post, I noticed some strange issues like the runs in All Levels for some categories (in particular Portalless) having too many levels being ran, with some of them doing 18 levels despite the rules saying the first 17 levels. This is why I disagree with naming the categories anything close to "All Levels", as it invites confusion. If/when the aforementioned categories are made, I'll move those runs to their correct categories.
I also noticed some vague or poorly formatted rules that I'll definitely look into refactoring, in particular explicitly listing all of the levels required for each category and acknowledging modifiers (the forum post of which I'll respond to after this). If there's any questions you guys have or clarifications you'd like for the rules, please let me know in a post or in the Discord and I'll look into it. Thank you for being patient, I understand that it's effectively been near total radio silence concerning a lot of issues, but I'm looking forward to addressing them with you all.
We created most of the rules for the game with the idea of keeping it as close to real hardware as we reasonably can. Stuff like using In Game Time and banning callvote were done to make the run more fair to the hypothetical real hardware speedrun of the same caliber. While allowing SST for fps_max commands which are purely cosmetic and don't affect the run, we feel that allowing that kind of modification that comes with SST goes against the spirit of the earlier precedent set by our previous rules. If it was possible to unlock the FPS through a launch option or editing a video settings file we'd most likely allow it, but allowing the direct modification of the game goes too far in our opinion,
I’m alright with adding that stuff, sent you a DM asking for a little more information before I add them to the boards 👍
I updated the rules to be on credits select, so I also went ahead and retimed all of the runs currently on the board to fit that.
Yes, any Game Boy emulator with Game Boy Camera support works, one of the runs on the boards uses BGB so that’s what I’d recommend.
Right now, the current rules for the game involve playing the shooting game and getting a score above 2000, playing the hurdles game and finishing the race with a time under 20 seconds, and then playing the credits. In Amipaso (アミパソ)'s run, these were the rules that they used to run the game, and Yuyukichi replicated those rules in their own run. You can see these rules in the "dialog" for Amipaso's run, where they explain those rulings in the voiceover and the subtitles. It's a bit arbitrary, but it's for a game that (primarily) doesn't truly have an end, plus it's to honor the history that the game used to be ran on before these boards came into existence. I'll update the rules to reflect these requirements, since they weren't really clear before.
I think the boards would make more sense to be split into three categories, a true full game category which includes the shooting game and hurdles game (like the current Any%), a category for just the shooting game, and a category for just the hurdles game. The ball and DJ games aren't part of full game nor should they have their own category, because they aren't really speedrunnable.
Regarding your concern about the NA release to the JP release, I timed the credits for both games and the NA version seems to be slower by only a few seconds, so I asked Yuyukichi to create a split in the boards for those versions.
Finally, I don't think there's a need to really specify the version of Super Game Boy being run on, because there aren't any runs that take advantage of the advantages that it might have, so a split isn't really necessary for distinguishing those versions until it becomes an actual issue. As long as the runs on hardware aren't significantly faster because of the clock speed, and as long as emulator runs use the stock clock speed, then I think it's fine.
I'll definitely talk to Yuyukichi about adding more categories for the shooting and hurdle games, as well as possibly updating the rules to be on credits select rather than on the "Be Happy" screen, as well as retiming the existing runs to that method, especially since it could eliminate the need for a region split. If you have any more concerns about the boards, as well as anyone else reading this post, feel free to let us know about it here!
TLDR: Don’t click, or at least don’t meaningfully interact with, Tumblr and DeviantArt connections on user profiles on SRC, as they make you vulnerable to phishing attacks if you try to log in to your account from there. If you don’t believe me, check the Tumblr and DeviantArt connections on my profile, which are implied to go to their respective sites, but clearly don’t.
A few weeks ago, I discovered a bug that could lead to phishing attacks on Tumblr and DeviantArt through SRC, and I reported it to the Support Hub and (the supposedly inactive) security@speedrun.com email. The bug report was marked internally as resolved, yet it still exists as a problem, even after the recent bug fix update, implying that Elo doesn’t see a reason to issue a fix for it. Therefore, I’m just gonna talk about it now so that SRC’s users are aware of it, and hopefully encourage Elo to fix the bug in the process.
Without getting into too much detail, you can put any URL you want in the connection field for the two platforms, and if you put a ? after the URL, any user who clicks the link will be directed to that user specified site, while SRC makes it look like it’s guaranteed to be the website that the icon represents. If a malicious user were to use a lookalike domain (like tumbir.(com) or devianlart.(com) for example), recreate the look of the website, and then ask for credentials, they would manage to convincingly fool users into giving their credentials, using the implied safety given by SRC and Elo. For the time being, until a fix is made, I wouldn’t recommend interacting with Tumblr or DeviantArt connections on profiles, or at the very least not inputting your credentials unless you’re sure that it’s the official site that it’s supposed to be.
Note to Elo staff: Please consider having more correspondence between reporter and staff, like whether or not the bug is being fixed or what reasons there are for the bug not being fixed, especially ones that put user safety at risk :) also bring back the security email thank you
