Hey everyone! I wanted to give an update on the DLC categories move and bring up an idea to completely change the Jack’s 55th Birthday categories.

The DLC move is almost complete. We currently have every run for Not a Hero, End of Zoe, 21, Daughters, Bedroom, and Ethan Must Die in their respective new DLC sub-games and will be removing those runs from the main game IL’s soon. We have been doing our best to make sure every run has been moved correctly, with each mod taking a second and third look over the runs to ensure that things are correct, but we are only human (except for maybe Yossy? Verdict is still out on that one) so please let us know if any of your runs in the new DLC boards have any problems/issues so that we can get them fixed ASAP!

We have intentionally not moved any of the Jack’s 55th Birthday runs to the new DLC boards yet because there has been an idea proposed that we wanted to bring to the community first. As it stands today, the Jack’s 55th Birthday categories are not actually a speedrun. These categories are more like a quick draw contest with some completion requirements afterwards. The times listed do not truly represent the amount of time it takes to complete a “run”. What these times do represent is how fast someone was able to land their first shot on one of the molded.

For anyone not familiar with the Jack’s 55th Birthday DLC, here’s an explanation of what it is. The primary goal is to feed Jack until he is full. Each level has various food items spread throughout which fill Jack’s “full meter” with each item having a specific amount of points that it fills, and certain food combinations give additional “fill points” to help make Jack full faster. While this is the main goal of this DLC, there is also a timer associated with each level and you must feed Jack before that timer runs out. The more time left on your timer, the higher your rank for that level. In order to get the best times, you must gain bonus time which causes the main timer to “pause” while you use that bonus time. Bonus time is achieved through damaging and killing the molded enemies throughout the level.

The “speedrun” of this category as it exists today is based on getting that initial shot on the first molded you come across as fast as possible so that you can get the main timer to pause, then damaging and killing molded throughout the remainder of the run so you don’t lose that paused timer time. In most of the runs that initial shot happens in the first 3 seconds of the run, meaning that as long as you can damage and kill enough of the other molded enemies in the level you will know in the first 3 seconds what your “run” time will be. The remainder of the run can be done at whatever pace you choose so long as you don’t run out of bonus time before getting Jack to be full, and you can “farm” that bonus time. Technically, a WR run in a category of this version of Jack’s 55th could be significantly longer than the last place run since we are only looking at how fast you can get that first shot.

What is being proposed for Jack’s 55th is that the run be changed to an actual speedrun based on how fast you can complete the main goal of making Jack full. Here are the proposed rules for all categories:

[quote]Beat the stage by feeding Jack as fast as possible

Timed via in-game time. Run Time = Stage Time + Total Bonus Time - Time Remaining - Remaining Bonus Time.

A valid VOD for submission must include the entire run and setup from the time you gain control of Mia until and including the end of stage results screen.

All runs must have Game and Microphone audio only. No part of the game footage/audio is to be eliminated for any reason. Pausing is allowed for strategic reasons only. For clarification see the submission guidelines.

See submission guidelines for clarifications and additional info. https://docs.google.com/document/d/14v6wDcDhxqYPTc-V76e33pInzsutEkdvhD7RH-ChZBM/edit?usp=sharing [/quote]

For sub-categories we could do New Game and New Game+ modes:

[quote]New Game – Golden Crowbar, Golden Blaster, Circular Saw, Map based items (such as the red and blue blasters), and all unlocked item bonuses are NOT allowed. Use only the box items for the given stage. [/quote]

[quote]New Game+ - All unlocked items and all map items are allowed. [/quote]

What this will change for the Jack’s 55th Birthday categories is that the submissions will be based on the entire run instead of how many resets you can do until you hit that perfect millisecond in the first 3 seconds of the run. It will change the categories to be actual speedruns that force the runners to be efficient with menuing and fine tune their movement for the best times. I have a comparison video of a mediocre attempt at this new proposed idea for these runs vs my current PB for the same level/stage you can see here for a point of reference.

Personally, I have a lot to lose, at least in terms of time spent, on making these changes as I have spent a significant amount of time doing these runs the current way over the last couple of years and have runs submitted for all 24 categories. Having said that, I would much rather see this DLC get a proper speedrun than keep the current version of the run which, to me, has always felt more like a high-score quick draw type of thing than a speedrun. We would love to get some feedback from the community before any changes be put into motion though, so please let us know your thoughts!

Edit: Adding this since I didn't directly mention it anywhere above. The plan for when the new categories would be created is that the current/existing runs would simply be removed from the boards.

"Technically, a WR run in a category of this version of Jack’s 55th could be significantly longer than the last place run since we are only looking at how fast you can get that first shot." <--- I think that is the main reason why it should be changed to an "actual speedrun" run. I think this change would definitely bring in more runners to run this since it's more motivating to find strats to complete getting Jack full ASAP, rather than grind hours just to get the first shot to be a frame to a few frames faster than the other runners.

This change is logical to me, and if it does go through, I'm sorry, ZGL, that all your runs are going to be removed as well as others that ran this DLC.

Just a head up, I'm going to leave this post up a little longer for anyone else that wants to give their opinion/feedback on the Jack's 55th Birthday changes. If we don't hear any negative response back about this after a short bit longer then we'll go ahead and make the changes to the categories and start accepting the new version of the run.

Thanks @NixIssues for the response so far, and to anyone that has "liked" the original post already! As someone who really enjoys the Jack's 55th DLC, I'm excited for the prospect of these changes to actually come to fruition. I've been wanting to make these changes for 2 years at this point.

After a month with no response in favor of keeping the current ruleset, we will be changing the rules for all of the Jack's 55th categories as was mentioned above. I'm excited for the Jack's 55th DLC to finally have a proper speedrun where the time tracked will actually represent the amount of time it takes to complete the run as opposed to how quickly you could get off the first shot. The rules will be changed on the new DLC sub-game boards today and we will begin accepting the new version of the run as soon as the change is completed. For anyone interested in running the new Jack's 55th categories, be on the lookout on the Banned Footage DLC boards forums for some helpful information (as soon as I finish the damn thing I've been working on lol)

As a reminder, ALL of the submissions for these categories under the old rule set WILL BE DELETED. We appreciate the effort and skill that was put into each of those categories in the past, but look forward to seeing what everyone is able to do with the new ruleset and a proper speedrun of these categories!

Edit: Instead of making another post/notification for everyone I wanted to just go ahead and add on to this one that the rules have been changed and submissions are now being accepted for Jack's 55th categories. Please submit runs to the new boards at https://www.speedrun.com/re7bfdlc#Jacks_55th_Birthday