(warning that this turned out to be a lot longer that i planned, so uh... yeah)

i have some thoughts about the game request rules as someone . i also discussed them with some indie-speedrunning friends of mine, seckswrecks and baldjared (secks later put the screenshot of the rules i made on twitter and got some more feedback from there). i'll try to organise these various thoughts. here's the screenshot of the rules i'm not really a fan of:

i'll try to go through them in order.

1. the first sentence doesn't seem relevant to the actual quality of the game itself, and instead focuses on predetermined judgements of what is expected to come from different stores (e.g. itch) or platforms (e.g.) mobile. even steam, with a large monopoly, is included in this judgement for some reason. i think this is biased (for lack of a better word) against indie games: games that come from platforms that are perceived as being of "lower-quality" in some way don't really deserve to be judged based on that perception imo. i think there are plenty of quality games on itch, and in any case, a game being "good" or "bad" doesn't reflect its qualities as a speedgame necessarily. i think a game should be looked at based on its own merits as a speedgame rather than given extra scrutiny based on where it's sold - besides, what makes a good speedgame is also at least partly subjective. seckswrecks also pointed out that an assumption has been made that a game will at all be on one of these storefronts or a similar one in the first place, when it might not be on a store catalogue at all - that wouldn't make such a game better or worse as a speedgame, though.

2. the first bullet point is again not something i feel has a bearing on whether something is a good speedgame or not. Sexy Hiking takes under a minute RTA and is still a speedgame with optimisation work put into it and different things to find. it's not a speedgame that's more or less "reasonable" because of its length; it's just... the length that it is, and it's not wrong for being that. Celeste Classic is another one that baldjared pointed out to me. it's a very optimised little game and one that a decent number of people have put time into, and the fact that it takes under 3 minutes to speedrun its 100% category doesn't change how good of a speedgame it is. it's still good, it's just short and good instead of long and good. it deserves to be respected on its own terms and merits rather than be subjected to an arbitrary standard of what should be "enough". even Super Mario Bros. has the Minus World Ending category, which takes a similar amount of time to Celeste (edit: Classic) 100%, but still has value and good qualities as a speedrun. i also feel this rule is biased against a lot of indie games - small game jam projects or deliberately shorter experiences could still be good speedgames, even if they don't take much time. those are the main themes here, really - i feel these rules hold games to standards that ultimately have no bearing on their speedrun value, and i also feel that they do a disservice to indie games, because a lot of indie games fall under at least one of these things and they don't deserve, in my opinion, to be judged more harshly than "larger" titles because of that.

3. the second bullet point is again a question of a game's "casual" qualities vs. its speedrunning qualities. i believe a "bad" or poorly-made game can still be an excellent speedgame, and that it should be judged on the latter. to go back to Sexy Hiking, it's a B-game looks like it was drawn in MS Paint, has no soundtrack and makes a really loud "well done" sound when you beat one of its levels, but people still speedrun it, enjoy it and gather some worth from it. things that might make it conventionally "bad" or "low-effort" don't affect how good of a speedgame it can be, as these are different qualities. the game Brilliant Bob is ostensibly shovelware that uses default Unity assets, the devs of which got banned from the Steam store for asset-flipping, but through an extended jump glitch, it was able to become a fun, interesting speedgame that had some serious optimisation put into it. Miner Ultra Adventures was made in Blender, an engine never designed to run full games, and goes so far in its lack of effort as to use unlicensed, default-instrument MIDIs of at least one Green Day song in its soundtrack, but serious work was put into it, and it even made it into a GDQ! the fact that it was poorly-made by conventional standards didn't change the fact that at least a few people found it fun to play, put time into, and optimise. it's still a perfectly legitimate speedgame. these examples and all others like them (imo) shouldn't be cast off as speedgames because of casual standards.

4. the last bullet point is the one i like the least. i'm the only person on a few leaderboards on this site, but i still put time and effort into developing the games i run, and i still think they're good speedgames that should have equal standing to any other. it might not be as efficient as a team effort but i work on optimising those games, and i care about making my runs of them "good" (not that that's how a game with a small player-base should be judged). the number of people playing a game doesn't change its quality as a speedgame. again, i feel this disproportionately impacts indie games (which typically have smaller audiences, and in some cases have very little audience at all).

i drafted most of this a few hours ago so some discussion has gone on since i started writing it. i appreciate the clarifications that have been offered. that being said i still think what i have to say here is relevant. i always want to look out for indie games, since they're what got me speedrunning and what keep me speedrunning, and i want the site to be a home for any game that has a place as a speedgame, regardless of its other qualities. i recognise the right of the staff to curate the site how they want, but the rules to me seemed like they were an attempt to make the site seem "official" and/or "legitimate" in some capacity by having a chosen selection of games that are "up to standard." (this is also an observation that baldjared made.) i don't think that's necessary - if a game can be run and someone is, i feel like it can have a spot here, no matter how much of a "fad" it may be. it's ok to let people enjoy what they want to and then move on. not every game's gotta be a bustling hub of players forever. putting a little time into a smaller project can be fun, and there's nothing wrong with that in my view. i appreciate that more game submissions means more work for the site staff and pre-vetting them with rules would alleviate that, but in the interests of fairness for every speedgame i think each one should get a chance on its own "speedrunnability". i hope that makes sense.

thanks for reading and considering what i have to say. i appreciate that you're taking community feedback, and i appreciate what you all do for the site, its members, and the speedrunning community. i mean no personal judgement by what i'm saying. thanks again. :)

np! thanks a bunch ^^

The Analgesic Productions Discord server has a channel in it for speedrunning - at the moment the discussion is largely about Even the Ocean, but it's for all Analgesic games, so Anodyne would fit there, too! I added it to the leaderboard sidebar for Even the Ocean, and I think it would be great to add it here as well, if you wanted to. Here's an invite link: https://discord.gg/34KpJ9g

Thanks. :)

hi! glad to see a leaderboard for this game has been made. i want to be an active participant in setting this game's community up and figuring out the leaderboard management, strats, routing etc. etc. so i made a discord server for Woten speedrunning! https://discord.gg/DkkpsRv

i thought it would be the best place to talk about things moving forward. hope to see you there! thanks ^^

that's fair, it makes sense to me.

and great, i was wondering if there was a discord for this game, thanks! i'll get in there and nose around a bit, it might be a little while before i start getting into this game but i'll see what's going on at least. thanks. :)

edit: that link redirects to the discord site homepage for me, weird?

edit edit: i found a rainworld server on discord but it isn't speedrun-specific, is that the one you use? i can see it's got a speedrun channel in it

i'm currently just an outside observer (although i'm quite interested in possibly getting into running this) but i think Any% Skipless (what the wr vod is titled) sounds better than Pebbles% for a category name. again, currently got no sway in this community so do with that what you will and don't worry about it too much, but just a thought, especially since Any% Skipless seems to be what it's called off the leaderboards. :)

i love this game, though. beat it casually last night and it was amazing. normally i don't play games in long stretches and i take breaks between sessions, but i racked up 20+ hours in the span of a few days - haven't been that engrossed in a game in years. i'll certainly be taking a look at running this. i watched Avant's Pebbles run just now and it was fantastic. a bunch of stuff i don't understand with some glitches and the movement but it was really cool. :)

is there anywhere i can find news of this game coming to steam soon? i've seen the dev teasing a new world on Twitter, but nothing about a PC release. that would solve a ton of issues with recording/timer/input method.

i understand hesitating on alternate input methods, i felt the same before i found out this game was added to SRC. don't know how easy it would be to verify whether someone has used one, though - with my setup, controller gameplay vs. touchscreen gameplay looks exactly the same.

thank you! that would be great. autofire would be like turbo - holding down a button would behave like mashing it - and double mapping is either putting more than one action on one button or putting one action on more than one button (so having jump mapped to two face buttons, for example). neither seem too useful in this game because its controls are so simple, but if other input methods are allowed i still feel they should be banned.

hi! i was thinking of running this game and it's nice that there are others who are interested in it.

i have a similar question about input methods - i was thinking of using a gamepad-to-touchscreen input mapper (which requires root) to use a controller instead of touch. i do think that helps out, just due to having physical buttons instead of a flat surface with no response. what are your thoughts on that? i would have been inclined to allow alternate input methods (maybe with an added leaderboard column to disclose what's being used), but maybe that's just for my own personal gain. now i know that there are others interested, what are your thoughts on it? i'm able to use regular touch input if it's decided that other input methods are banned, although i do think it would be nice to have physical buttons to press. knowing that that's not natively supported by the game is what makes me hesitate.

i also have some root software that allows me to stream my phone's screen to OBS, so i'd be using that with LiveSplit as if running on any other platform. i assume that would be allowed?

thanks. :)

edit: btw, how about a discord for this game? i can get that set up. i know it's a small community, but i feel like it's easier than the SRC forums.

edit 2: this is what i use to stream my phone to OBS: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobzapp.screenstream (root only required for audio)

this is what i use to map inputs to a controller: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.catalyst06.gc2tpro

i have left, right and jump set up on the dpad/left stick and A, as well as start to pause and select to press level 1 to start a run. obviously i feel that autofire/double-mapping that gives extra features ought to be banned, but other than that, the only upside to this is having physical buttons. i think it helps my gameplay a bit; noticably, although not a massive improvement. can still play the game just fine with raw touch.

np mate, gl with the marathon :)

"¤ Schedule: October 29 ¤ Marathon Dates: October 15-19"

i assume you meant November for the marathon dates? jsyk

excellent! thank you! the program does indeed track relative time as normal (for the record, it does have a setting to "freeze" time, although i haven't messed with it).

ok, i didn't know that about Linux. thanks.

thank you! there's no rush, it's ok. i'll keep testing setups and seeing what works from an in-game perspective. it does seem to me so far that day of the month and time of day also have an effect on the Servants' RNG, that might be important to find whatever you're looking for.

thanks again!

edit: bit of a weird question, but presumably if there's no concrete link found between the system clock and the Servants' RNG, then changing the system clock (either globally or on a per-application basis) would be allowed even as a placebo, as there's nothing conclusive to suggest banning it. at least that's how i feel. does that make sense? i guess i want to hold onto what works for me, even if it's discovered that there's no reason why it should work in the first place.

i'll give it a go, but i have no gamedev or coding knowledge. worth a shot, though

edit: had a look through the code for the Servants, and i wasn't able to find anything about the system clock. given how little i know, though, that doesn't mean much. the system clock has been the only working theory to explain the inconsistencies in Servants RNG manipulation that i've come across so far.

i have reason to believe that the RNG for the Servants boss fight is partially controlled by your system's date and time. i had to find a consistent setup in April when i grinded 100%, and when i came back to derust in July for a marathon, i discovered that what i used to do wasn't as consistent anymore, so i found another new setup. i then didn't play the game for a few days over the transition from July to August, and when i came back, i found that my setup had stopped working again. i realised what had happened and eventually had the idea of changing my system date. doing this immediately made my July setup consistent again. my setup seems to work best with my date and time set to the 15th July at 17:00 (timezone probably doesn't matter, but in case it does, it's BST).

before i seriously started grinding runs again, i wanted to talk about this, because this sort of stuff hasn't (to my knowledge) come up with this game before. how do we feel about the legality of messing with the system clock? personally i feel it should be 100% allowed, since there's no modification of game files going on and having to find a new setup every month would be horrendous and unnecessary.

on another, slightly related note, i came across a program that allows you to run a specific program at a certain date and time without modifying your system's entire clock. it's called RunAsDate (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/run_as_date.html,), and doesn't seem to modify game files either. how do we feel about programs like this? this specific one is free, easy to use, and doesn't seem to work any differently for Anodyne than modifying your system clock globally. again, i think this should be 100% allowed for the three prior reasons, but i wanted to raise the issue before i PBd with it and discovered no-one wanted runs of that nature to be valid.

thanks!

(side note: i can set up a Discord server for this game's community if anyone think's it'd be beneficial. i know the community is quite small and intermittently active, but it might help with communication, and might also help to attract new runners, especially through things like the 12 Hour Challenge.)

(edit: an unrelated thought: Anodyne is also available for Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, and i feel it would be cool to add those to the list of platforms on the leaderboard. not a huge deal, really, though, although it might help with discovery if someone's searching SRC by platform.)

np, hope you have fun with the game ^^

my b, forgot to add that to the rules. you can find Starlight here: https://amorphous.itch.io/starlight

thanks! and no problem. :D

to one of the mods of the leaderboard: could you update the release date of Anodyne to include its month and day? it hasn't been changed since SRC got that feature. i don't mean to sound pushy, though, and it's definitely not an emergency, i just think it would be a nice thing to have for the sake of accuracy and polish on the leaderboard.

Anodyne was first released on February 4, 2013.

thanks. :)

nice! races will be cool once full-game categories are fleshed out imo