I'm thinking of making a sourcemod package that could be used with the newest version of the game to remove some of the changes added in newer versions of the game, mainly exploit blocks and the vote creation timer. Game files do not have to be modified for this, only added using the plugin feature the game supports, similar to the script for the bhop category. These two things are easy, I could put it together if there was interest in people using this. Though, it shouldn't be leaderboard legal, at least until people agree on it. If someone would try to use it you would now have to verify these things, however there is a command to check if sourcemod is installed on the server, but making every run show this would be the only way to really properly verify runs. I have also been looking into enabling the save/load commands for segmenting or RTA, but this requires a bit more modification. It could also include some features that do not affect game play but are useful or wanted for speedruns.

What "exploit blocks" are there besides player clips and pushers? Console output would be quite easy to video-edit, so requiring a demo file would be safer, but I don't know if all the runners would want to go there.

I'm somewhat interested, because it might help with testing what's possible with good bhopping in the old version.

An intriguing idea but it would have to be carefully crafted to be identical to the old version since there are many more differences besides exploit fixes. AI pathing was also updated at some point after 2.0.0.8, I think? So bots may behave a bit differently, and probably much more exists. There are other things like Mall made easier, which would need to be reverted specifically if you can figure out the differences between the two versions. Oh, and the loading times too... 2.0.0.8 gives me some ¤huge¤ loading time gains compared to newest, so if loading times with the mod were still as slow as newest is I would have to skip using it by default, unfortunately.

That said, if running under the assumption that everything important which contributes to gameplay in any way could be made identical to 2.0.0.8, and loads were alright, I would massively support this idea as being able to run it without terribly-timed runtime crashes alone would be well worth it (I've lost runs that way!), not to mention the fact that 2.0.0.8 is absolutely vital to compete at the highest level and currently works on a complicated system of messaging and torrents right now which is terrible for new runners wanting to get into it.

I would, however, not support any different categories or differentiating these modded runs in any way, if that were the case I would rather just spend time running the "main" categories, if you get what I mean. They would need to be submitted the same as 2.0.0.8 is now, so that would be up to better minds than I to figure out if and how it is exploitable and if it can be thoroughly reverted.

[quote=mr.deagle]What "exploit blocks" are there besides player clips and pushers?[/quote]

Two off the top of my head are that boat which blocks a nice jesus spot in Swamp Fever 1, and the box on the table that blocks the jesus spot in Hard Rain finale. I've noticed other weird things too, like a forklift in Dark Carnival 2 outside of the med cabinet room before the ladder leading to the slide, it's there in the old version but not the new version. There is probably a lot more like that.

You can bhop in old versions too you know Kappa

The exploit blocks I'm referring to are actually specific entities called "env_player_blocker" (and "env_physics_blocker"? Not sure on this one) that are used to block most things in the game e.g. coaster skip, Dead Center 1 window, actual clipbrushes are pretty much identical in all cases as far as I know.

Any other differences are not really easy to fix, a few cvars could be changed but otherwise you would have to write some quite extensive plugins for that, and some things are not going to be changeable. However, a lot of these things do not really make an impact in the run, and this thing is not necessarily intended to replicate a specific version but more to provide a version which allows all the same things to be POSSIBLE on the newest and most convenient version.

If we were to actually time runs in a legitimate way loading times wouldn't (shouldn't) make a difference because we would be using in-game time, which would be perfectly possible to measure (and may even be now with some tools the game provides). It should be fairly easy to measure in-game time per each map at the very least and disregard loading times.

Any difference with map entities being added/removed/changed could be quite easily fixed, such as the forklift or the box, but changes to the "world" cannot be done without replacing the map files, e.g. Dark Carnival finale has an extra story on some of the buildings in newer versions (as you may have seen from the helicopter clipping through them).

Also there is an issue with the fact that no-one has a copy of the release version, so there may be some differences to how the maps were originally released, even 2.0.0.8 has at least one exploit block on a jesus spot on Swamp Fever finale, which may or may not have been present in the 2.0.0.0 release, but since the documentation for updates is quite limited this is untestable and unconfirmable.

The point of this is not to provide a replica of 2.0.0.8, if you wanted to play the closest thing to 2.0.0.8 then you would play on 2.0.0.8. Though for now I'm not sure what this would actually be, just more of my own experiment really, that probably shouldn't be valid for a speedrun because it is modifying the game in some non-official way.

On another note, I have made some progress in enabling the use of the save/load commands, however it seems that I can only add new flags and not remove existing ones without even more modification.

being able to play new version using this addon=people using sourcemod+metamod stripper to place all items exactly(in legal spawns ofc but all adrenalines for example) where they want without being detectable unless they submit multiple runs with the exact same item spawns. you cant use stripper on the old version.

In theory, anyone could do that already. And you can use stripper on old versions by finding an older version of source/metamod from their websites, and is pretty much an irrelevant issue so I'm not sure why you chose to mention that.