I have added character doubles to the available character selection when submitting a run. Kung Lao/Kung Lao runners rejoice!

If y'all have any questions or concerns just let me know.

Smoke% and Smoke% (Coop) have both been added! My limited testing shows the run should be ~20min long, but I myself haven't completed any runs to submit. I do not see obvious places where out-of-bounds tricks will break the run so for now I will leave it as one category, but if routing is found then I will split the categories into glitched/glitchless.

I also recommend playing from a mostly completed game file so that cutscenes and platforming abilities will be unlocked.

If anyone has any questions, suggestions or concerns feel free to let me know.

It seems like the vote is in favor of adding the new category lol. I will do some testing on routing and stuff to make sure it's viable, then I'll add the page.

I was thinking of different ways of spicing up the game, and a category that came to mind was Smoke %. Im not sure if this run has been suggested or completed before, but i do have some rules.

Timer starts on Interact with Smoke starting the first Smoke mission. (Recomended to use a completed file, then backtrack to the living forest that way all the necessary platform skills are unlocked already.)

Players finish all 5 Smoke missions as fast as possible.

Timer ends after final Smoke dialogue box closes after the 5th mission is turned in.

100% open to suggestions and citicism. I'm just thinking that newer, more fun categories could interest more players. It will also show off slightly different routing and areas.

The only hesitation I have with an All Bosses category is that it doesn't really add much to the run overall. The routing changes very little from "All medallion" runs in that it only really adds extra backtracking. There's also the issue that it will need 6 categories for just All Bosses since the No OoB/OoB Normal/Hard Solo/Coop splits will still need to be made. I'm not sure we have the player base to justify that much more clutter at the current time.

I know older titles are usually ran on hardest difficulty as tradition to an extent. Since the leaderboards are being worked on, I figured I'd toss in a conversation about Hard Mode in Shaolin Monks.

From my limited experience (I did about an hour of testing on the onis and mini boss in Goro's Lair) hard mode increases damage recieved by about 33%-ish. I don't see much change in the amount of health enemies have or their battle behavior. I think it's a semi-significant enough reason to talk about if runs should be easy mode/hard mode only or if there needs to be a split.

I honestly don't have a particular outcome in mind, but I was wondering what the community had in mind. I'm am also attempting to prepare this game for a GDQ submission so I thought we could iron out a couple of kinks like this. Thank you all for reading and I am excited to see what y'all say.

If anyone knows more about it in depth, I would love to hear more on it. I don't think it's a massive change, but if more people start running the game they may wonder why Hard Mode isn't ran.

I say we just rename glitchless to No OoB and call it good. I think everything under that line is free game.

It isn't as simple as "run another category". To determine what would even be allowed in the "Glitchless" category would require drastic lines to be drawn in the sand.

Does damage boosting through the fire in Wu-Shei cause as much of an issue as the Sky-Box skip bypassing Lightning Pole in wasteland? Is damage boosting even a glitch? It is an intended mechanic of the game, the only difference is how it is utilized by the players.

Does being able to perform the additional multalities and brutalities, that one wouldn't normally get until unlocking the particular Red Koin it is tied to later in the game, mean that the run is invalid because a beginner wouldn't know the inputs without looking them up or first unlocking them? If so that would require a NG+ style ruling since some multalities and brutalities may be more effective or faster than others.

Does infinitely staggering Shao-Kahn at the end defeat the purpose of the difficulty of the boss, thus making the run not "clean"?

I agreed originally that Out of Bounds creates a massive rift in how the game is played. It single-handedly bypasses a majority of the game, and no other character can even begin to compete with Kung Lao in terms of speed. But I think to split it even further into absolutely no glitches or exploits being allowed is antithetical to the premise of speedrunning. Especially since we don't even know what all glitches exist and to what degree.

There is no such thing as running in a fair way though. Each character is different in the speed that they can run the game. Even if we take out every single glitch and exploit in the entire run, one character will still be the fastest over the others regardless. Whether it is from a gap skip or being able to beat bosses faster by having better stagger mechanics. It still ends in one character being the best, so if that is the case then what we would need to instill is a character-by-character category which would be extremely tedious.

I think that the category split as it currently stands is fine. Maybe ammending the glitchless category to just No OoB would be better than detailing and excluding each and every glitch or exploit. Scorpion being able to cross the gap in Wasteland before the Goro fight is much different than Kung Lao being able to skip the entirety of sections by breaking the full boundaries of the game.

If it wouldn't cause too much of a headache with leaderboard changes or anything like that, I am in favor of splitting the category into glitchless and OOB/Allowed runs.