The reason this rule exists is to ensure no one is resetting through the use of "load state".
Resetting that way can potentially affect RNG among other things which is why many leaderboards (particularly NES games) enforce this rule. By not showing the hard reset at all, mods are left to guess if the game was properly reset prior to the attempt.
Now recently we've had a couple of runs rejected due to this rule and some confusion was had by both runners and mods alike so I decided to make this thread to kind of get a discussion going here.
Ultimately we can just re-verify the rejected runs but keep the rule as is and give a hard deadline day to beginning enforcing this rule for all runners moving forward or we can change it to be more lenient for accessibility.
Either is fine with me for different reasons. Now as far as I understood with the game, RNG is not set upon a reset but rather based on your actions in-game so being more lenient with the rule would be fine but there might be something I don't know about with the game that others might know which leaves the idea of keeping the rule as is a reasonable choice as well
"The reason this rule exists is to ensure no one is resetting through the use of "load state"."
I assume you are talking about if someone puts a load state at the start of the game? Sounds like a bad attempt at preventing cheating. You would have an hard time telling if the thing was TASed anyway. As far as randomness goes...I do not really believe this to be a factor. All the enemies seem to do the same stuff as long as you do the same motions. This is not like some Yugioh games where you can manip the game via resets and get some highly unlikely stuff to happen. Also it is counterproductive to enforce something that might prevent really good legit runs from being submitted.
For these reasons I am against this reset rule.
Save States do effect the RNG of the game. I've proven this on stream with the start of the Mr. X fight, where he swings away from you on one save state and toward you on another.
The game appears to lock into an RNG% on console start, even with resets the games RNG seems locked. For example, on one console power-up the level 6 ninjas may have a 90% chance of grouping for an Atomic Drop where as the next console power-up they only have a 10% chance. This is why I sometimes power-off my console when I keep getting bad RNG in the same spots. Or, why I switch strats during a certain part since I've had bad RNG with my primary strat.
The RNG of the game appears to be by the frame by the pixel. Your actions effect enemy behavior depending on which frame/pixel you are on. This gets mixed with RNG lock so you may get the same result with the same actions on one power-up but a completely different RNG lock on the next. Just watch any top speedrunner on the first section of the first level and you'll get an idea of how random the game can be.
That's my experience with the game. I think reset is a good idea. I can go into more detail on any of this if people want.
@CoolHandMike In most cases when people do load state to reset and start a new attempt, it's not done with the intention to cheat, it's done to cut down on downtime and jump right back in on a new attempt. Now perhaps the rule was put into place to prevent cheating via TASing, I personally don't know since this rule was before I became a mod for this leaderboard.
Regardless though, this rule has also come to affect people running on later official releases of the game that do run off an emulator (like PS4 for example) which as far as we know doesn't have TAS'ing capabilities (with official releases it's about detecting potential splices) which leads us to where we are now...which is some the mod team contemplating tweaking the rules slightly or just throwing down the hammer and enforcing the rule as it currently stands.
I'm open to either option but I do wish to know more about what Anthopants has found. Enemies have certain AI quirks that happen based around a player's every action and players can take advantage of that to get ideal results so we're not really worried about them. But bosses are a tougher wall to crack on that note. I know as an Axel player, you want an aggressive pattern from Mr. X to get him caught in the side special loop until a Donovan comes in with the uppercut.
If that is something that is affected based around a hard reset then I do feel that's reason enough to preserve the rule but others haven't been able to spot what Anthopants has either so I'm currently conflicted on this matter.
There is also the fact that sometimes Anthopants has to literally turn off the console because the RNG of certain fights feels set to the point that a hard reset doesn't seem to change it which kind of blurs the line between a hard reset and loading state off the emulator to reset the game and that makes it sound like they have the same function and purpose so what's the difference?
Now you all know why I made this thread lol.
Right now some of the mods are leaning towards at least making the official releases of the game (that do run off an emulator) an exception to the rule but I do think we all need to come to a consensus with unofficial emulators as well with regards to all this.
