As of 7/17/20, there exists a vastly different Xenogears route created by a combination of French players/TASers (Kadmony and Bif among them I believe, others potentially) that Chuckolator/Chuckorita finished a run of successfully which can be viewed here:

This is really an amazing host of discoveries and is breathing life into this beloved classic for its speedrun. Thank you to those that worked, a good lot to be sure, on this undertaking.

That said, the question of categories and distribution to the proper place for this new run is an important one. I have at least temporarily split these up into all previous runs being labeled under Any% No Major Glitches RTA and the new run from Chuck solely occupying the former Any% RTA category. I would like to open up a discussion to all comers, but most principally those involved in the new run to decide what to shift the leader boards around to if it is not currently fitting.

Things to consider:

1. Should the old runs/old route and new run/future runs with new route be split up into separate categories at all? If not, for what reason(s)?
2. If they should be separated, how and with what rules?
3. What should the order of the categories be? In other words, what should be the main category and what reasoning for it being so? (Though other order considerations of any kind can certainly be brought up too.)

Contact Pt 2:

Contact Pt 3:

Cheers.

So can we get that in the rules? : )

Wondered this for sometime and have always erred on the side of timing ending when I see the damage from the attack of whoever is hitting land. However, the rules are unclear here. Here are some things to consider:

Does it mean when I select the last attack input to hit Ultimecia? And if that is the case, then won't when she dies depend on who is attacking as characters have different attack animation lengths? What about people who aren't running and have to wait for a potential standing animation before the final hit?

Does it mean when I hear the sound of the attack? This is better perhaps, but still obfuscated by what part of the sound of the attack one is listening to as there are parts of attack sounds prior to it landing on its target.

Does it mean when I begin to see Ultimecia's recoil death animation from the final hit begin? Based only on looking at in Twitch's VoD player, it seems to either follow the frame after the damage appears or coincide with it. One of these two (with damage being slightly less ambiguous as it seems to appear in a single frame) would probably have the least disagreement over where it lands as it takes into consideration all previous grievances mentioned and circumnavigates them by simply being slightly later and being visual based.

Just to mention while on topic, an alternative would be to shift timing completely to when the camera switches to focusing on Ultimecia, but that would create its own issues with existing runs.

Looking for clarity on this. Thanks kindly guys!

I agree with Windows. If you really love this game and want to see it flourish as a speedrun, saying that the main category needs to be run on an old OS to be competitive and to play it in French is just doing it a massive disservice. Main PC category (or categories with split for remaster) should be W10 default and English.

On the point of language, if you want to have a French category, fine, but make it a secondary category. It's not the fastest language. Japanese is. If you want to run Japanese version, get that and run it. It's possible if your goal is really the fastest time possible. Otherwise have some sense and have it be the language that the majority of the world speaks.

Oh Sudo, thanks! MMaxwell actually helped me out, but appreciate it.

Having same issue. Help would be greatly appreciated.

There is a category in the Miscellaneous section called "Sessions %" that breaks the run into 3 chunks that can be done at your own pace. Read more here: https://www.speedrun.com/Xenogears/full_game#Miscellaneous The remaining categories are all RTA, Real Time Attack meaning that the timer continues to run no matter what until the run is completed. The Fast Text categories shorten the run by about 5.5-6 hours also. I would encourage you to look at the all of the leaderboard more to understand the categories and how long they take better.

We have running ability from the start in the PSX version, so when we get Thief ability, we get 4x speed. So movement is more precarious in the PSX version I'd say. Other than that, load times for menus/battles are far slower than the SNES translation. I think at least under 4:25 is possible for PSX version, so it's not that much slower. Route-wise, I've been learning Zinfogel's Dragon Power route with no issues so far, steproute wise too. So it's same game other than running speed and slow loading times for certain parts.

Contact nickynoel and she would be more than happy to help I bet Yuubi. I only started running the game for the PS1 version and have made notes for that, but they need a LOT of work.

So basically, most people are in favor of 100 Floor Glitch being allowed I think we can say. As for the name for this category, here's a strawpoll with everyone's suggestions for changing it: http://www.strawpoll.me/13073669 . We'll go for the same thing as last time and let this poll last until next Tuesday (6/6), then I can change the definition and name to what is chosen.

So everyone wants a name change basically as well as definition change/update of some kind. I'm not sure how best we should hash this out. I like the logic of Alex with not necessarily disallowing warps. Would separate it farther from glitchless and allow for much more interesting routing than what it currently is (which is just pure rng fest mostly). And allowing 100 Floor Glitch would be part of this.

I was always under the impression that the distinction between Any% and the Town% was that you don't just go to Credits asap and played the game "mostly" normally. So the only thing that was really disallowed was the Credits Skip/Warp but anything else was fair game. I'm fine either way really, but I have a slight leaning towards allowing the 100 Floor Glitch since it never was stated otherwise that it couldn't be. Could make for some very interesting routing possibilities.

Since Dark Cloud has been getting a bit of resurgence lately for speedrunning, I brought up the topic of possibly renaming some of the categories in the general Discord channel, namely the Town% and Town% Glitchless categories. Hikage and I had a bit of conversation on it and wanted to hear others' opinions on the matter since apparently the name "Town%" was originally just a joke placeholder name that was never changed due to inactive mods. So first, here is a poll. Should the Town% category have a name change? https://strawpoll.com/728dg6s Today is 5/15. We'll keep the poll open until 5/22 at the time of this post to gauge opinion on this and then if people desire a name change, we can move forward in deciding a proper name.

Next, as far as the definition for this category (regardless of name change) currently is as follows:

"Complete the game as fast as possible. Timer starts once START is pressed. Timer ends at last hit of the Dark Genie.

All glitches are permitted, including Glitch Menu. However you may not use Glitch Menu to warp to any location, scene, or event."

Hikage pointed out to me that due to this wording, there is no reason that the 100 Floor Glitch should be forbidden from runs. I am not too familiar with the glitch myself, but here are TheGlitchKing's videos on the subject: and . As long as no one has any objection to allowing this in the category (whatever name it ends up becoming/staying), I can update the definition a bit to make clear that it is allowed.

Not allowing official consoles with official versions of the games seems highly perplexing to me whether or not they are faster or slower than disc based consoles. What is the compelling argument for disallowing these?

At the very least, make a digital category to put digital console runs and emulators. It would be better if a system is made to just have them be on the main leaderboard to be honest (especially official consoles that run official versions of the game), but know that banning digital consoles and emulators is highbrow and reflects a certain amount of smugness present in the community that puts forth such rules.

It would be nice if there could at least be an emulator category. I still find it overly harsh to say that "yes, if you want to do a speedrun of game x, you must spend several hundreds of dollars to qualify for a time on any part of our leaderboard."