About developing the leaderboard
1 year ago
France

This will be the main thread for holding discussions about adding rules, categories... This is a presentation post that might be updated as time goes on with extra information. Actual discussion will occur below.

As of the 30th of july 2022, the leaderboards are open. It took 23 days, or a bit more than three weeks. Thank you for your patience.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Cannydeku likes this
France

Game is out too soon for us be able to properly design categories, or even consider speedrunning it at all. The game should first and foremost be enjoyed to some extent before starting to get weird with them. We've waited so long.

For now, and because we don't know the future yet, we will probably settle with simple "beat the game and get to credits as fast as possible"-like any% categories, for both individual games. Naturally, Others categories, and an IL section may be considered as we go and depending on activity.

For now I'll go set up the main frame of the boards.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
France

Did.

Rules will get made as we all get familiar with the game. By then, submitting runs should become official soon.

England

I am thinking of doing an any % run was wondering what the start and end will be. Would it be the same as Door to phantomile original ? Which I believe was when you can first move and health bar goes to zero. I'm completely new to this so wont have any weird stuff going on haha .

Mexico

I think it should be mostly the same as Klonoa Wiimake. But I noticed some stuff, like skipping cutscenes takes a little longer and some glitches that you could do in the Wiimake are not available here. It seems that, by just eyeing the time, the avg for the game should be a little less than an hour. Unless someone finds some new glitches or strats

France

A lot of the discussion has happened on the Discord server

Later today or tomorrow I'll summarize everything that has been said in this thread for accessibility and so we can soon decide how to further shape the board to be operational

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Bernaeon likes this
France

In the meantime I'll work on adding boss time-attack ILs

Timing method is IGT so it's easy to set up

Only concern is that future updates could change the fights somehow idk But that seems unlikely And so far we do not know if updates have fixed the game in any way

Edit : Wait, actually I think that pausing during these should** be banned So to prevent pause abuse The ILs are also short enough to the point that there'd be no reason why you wouldn't be able to resist not pressing it

Edit² I will wait for people's thoughts before doing anything with the ban Added some bosses, but I need the exact names of the remaining bosses in English as they are in the game The IL category names are also intentional, as it will also be the place for stage ILs in a future. We could also add stuff like 100% and so on

Edit²² Same deal with the extra stages

Edit²²² Used placeholders for them. The IL board for bosses and extras is mostly operational

Edited by the author 1 year ago
France

I'd like that we get something out of the way when it comes to ILs.

I think we should consider banning the use of pause during them. Pausing in this game stops the timer.

Although I don't think the following problems will concern the vast majority of us, it can be exploited to make certain tricks slightly easier, read ahead, or to simply catch a break. And since these ILs usually are very short, I don't think this will bother anyone, but I'd like to ask regardless.

If it is accepted, I think I will will add a simple rule about it in the ILs section. It will thus be officially open for new runs.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Italy

I would agree on banning pauses in IL stages for all the stated reasons. I'm not sure about pauses in full game runs, but that's for another discussion.

United Kingdom

I'm in favour of banning pauses in IL runs since it's unknown if it can be exploited to mess with the timer.

Verifieramoser
He/Him, She/Her, They/Them
1 year ago

I personally don't care one way or another about pausing but it is something worth thinking about. I think the arguments for banning it are fairly obvious, but I think I think one reasonable argument in favor of allowing it is that it allows the "optimal" play within the constraints of the game's timer. ILs generally are good for showcasing things that are humanly possible to do but not realistic for a full game run, so it feels a little weird to add rules that makes it harder to do things than in full game categories. And I wouldn't want to add pausing for all full game runs if it's at all avoidable (although a standard rule against excessive pausing might be reasonable).

I notice the Sonic 2 ILs just have a variable for it (both for ILs and the whole game, in fact), which is an interesting approach.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Mexico

I would say the pause should be banned. I mean, there really is no need to stop the timer for frame perfect tricks, this is no Monkey Ball, so I guess there shouldn't be a need to pause at all

France

Interesting, Amoser. (src leaderboard he is referring to https://www.speedrun.com/s2/levels)

I'll make it clear immediately, I have absolutely no inherent problem with abusing pause, and if anything encourage people to explore it. Low in-game times challenges are a truly underrated gameplay branch. It doesn't hurt to consider.

But until clear potential is found and developed with this type of play for this game, I am not sure if it is important enough to be added in the board. Not that it would take long to. This is because our board is most centered about traditional speedrunning. That's all we currently have at our disposal to care about.

So it looks like we'll probably ban pausing for ILs, but eventually add it in some shape of form if it later gets relevant and semi-popular.

Verifieramoser
He/Him, She/Her, They/Them
1 year ago

So my thinking with the pausing is that there are actually already some frame perfect tricks; stopping the timer admittedly doesn't necessarily help with them, but that could change in the future. The game is still only a few days old so, as with the costume swap issue, I'm not sure it's wise to make assumptions about what strategic advantage something does or doesn't provide until we gather a bit more data.

So all other things being equal, I think I'd probably lean slightly toward allowing pausing with a variable for it. It seems to work well for Sonic 2, and I tend not to find it necessary to add additional rules on top of what the game itself permits you to do unless there's a really compelling reason that the developers overlooked, especially for IGT-based categories.

But since everyone else who has responded both here and on discord seems to be in favor of banning it altogether I think maybe we ought to just go with that for now. I'm not opposed to banning it at all.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Nazzareno likes this
Italy

Banning the pause now would also not conflict with any future related discovery, which would happen if we had to ban it in six months after runs full of pauses (very unlike scenario, but still). I would keep it flexible as well and keep myself open to whatever we find we can do, and eventually re-allow pausing if it actually has some interesting usage.

France

To me, the difference between the costume swap technique and this one, is that the former is already gaining a lot of attention and investigation, despite probably being a living miracle of a trick. Whereas general IGT pausing abuse strategies must have been possible since the dawn of video-games, but actually seeing speedrunners use them as we speak is also unbelievably rare.

I don't have memory of many games that actively use the latter. Some Sonic games, Minecraft (which later adressed it), and some other game kinda like Time Crysis. Outside of these, I just don't have mental picture of it. simply just not a picture in my mind It's just nowhere to be seen. As if it was simply not a natural thought for more traditional speedrunners. I acknowledge that this is a narrow point to make for me, especially because time and time again you proved to me you had the cutting edge against me lol. And I haven't been in many IGT communities. So that point only relates to me, but I still strongly doubt pausing strategies will take much relevance.

People are way more likely to use the costume warping technique (and for PC users, to find a way to bind the support move button into a single input device) than something that's not quite real-time speedrunning and that I always keep forgetting it even exist in the first place. Even though if anything I'm the first one to encourage players to have fun exploring this path and potentially finding interesting things.

It would be great albeit specific that there were to exist leaderboards site like src where you could submit lowest IGT challenge runs. But I don't think that's our job here. Else everything will become cluttered with fundamentally incomparable achievements.

Anyways, you're right that it seems most people are leaning onto this decision, so let's call it over.

I'll make the leaderboard and rule changes later this evening, and we'll finally accept ILs runs. This post will be updated when it's done.

And then, we'll move to full-game runs discussion.

France

Well actually Nazzareno, you remind me that the costume warping trick could be used in ILs (see this ) Although it involves pausing, it's not as problematic because your focus is not on reading what's ahead or setting up a trick in the fight, but timing the pause on the earliest frame that you hit the clock or lose your last hit point so you can go through the menu and swap clothes the most optimal way to the IGT.

That stuff sure is a bit cheesy to the IL, but it's really a punctual use so it's alright. It's like the death phase skip of Cursed Leorina in the original game, and the clock death warps of DtP's Balue's Tower. Standard pausing can be done anywhere, anytime, how many times you want.

So I think that there should be an exception for it. There should simply be a limit to how long you can stay on the menu, so that you don't use it to evade pressure. I think that as long as the players don't hang in the pause it should be okay.

I know it's a lot to take in, but still, what it will truly means for players is to simply not pause in ILs, except when you go for the costume swapping trick, and be fast. Shouldn't be a lot ! That means that if for the costume swapping technique you press pause too early, you have to reset the run, since once you come back to the game, your next pause input for the trick is virtually guaranteed. You have to get it first try.

Aaaaanyways... I'll set up the rules soon.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
amoser likes this
Verifieramoser
He/Him, She/Her, They/Them
1 year ago

Well, Monkey Ball is a really good example of games where pausing makes a significant difference in how it's played. But I agree this game probably doesn't seem conducive to anything like that...

except that the costume swap trick (and/or difficulty swap which seems like it might be a viable substitute for people who don't have access to the costumes) ALREADY requires pausing, doesn't it? I didn't even really think of that until just now.

Balneor likes this
United Kingdom

If the board is split between difficulties (which I do think it should be), changing difficulties for the warp would invalidate the run, surely?

Verifieramoser
He/Him, She/Her, They/Them
1 year ago

That's true, but I'd personally say changing between difficulties ought to just count for the lowest difficulty used. So if you only swap between hard and normal I don't see a reason (yet) that the run shouldn't still count for the normal difficulty category. Unless there's a way to abuse this that I'm not thinking of.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
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Latest news
Category Extensions Leaderboard added

After nearly three weeks of discussion, here it is, along with three new categories : (You can quickly access it from the "leaderboard" tab).

Have fun, and as always, make sure to point out issues or bugs.

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