hello everyone,

I have a suggestion for 2 new category's to be added into super mario bros. category extensions..

TAS Sum of best

Both are legitimately interesting, and are also a great resource to have on there as we watch the progression of the WR in this great game.

Please post this suggestion in the Super Mario Bros Category Extensions forum instead to get the proper attention of the game's mods.

How are either of those even a category? TAS runs are not allowed on this site and are hosted on their own website called tasvideos.org. And what even is a “sum of best” run? Are you talking about a run that splices together all of the best segments from the community? That also isn’t allowed (splicing is cheating and is not allowed) and that doesn’t even make sense as a category since its not something you could even grind or run.

@Timmiluvs "Splicing together all of the best segments" is usually referred to as a Segmented Speedrun and it could actually be a valid form of competition, as long as it has its own separate board. People can compare their segmented runs against each other without it really being cheating.

The real problem arises when people splice together their best segments and then try to pass it off as a full game run done in one go, when those two are obviously not comparable, and that indeed is seen as cheating. Segmented Speedruns and one-segment full game runs should never mix.

[quote=MrMonsh]"Splicing together all of the best segments" is usually referred to as a Segmented Speedrun and it could actually be a valid form of competition, as long as it has its own separate board.[/quote] This is not entirely accurate. Segmented runs, in the traditional definition that was popular during the SDA days, did not contain any splicing nor where the rules that opened ended as a "sum of best".

Segmented Runs tended to have very specific rules, defining where the "segment" can begin and end (traditionally, it was based around save points within the game). Creating a segmented run based on arbitrary cutoff points usually wasn't allowed because inherently, the more segments you create, the more optimized a segment can become and the lower the final time can be when it's all spliced together. This is why "sum of best" runs and "segmented runs" aren't the same thing - someone with more splits will tend to have a lower sum of best than someone with fewer splits because the shorter the split, the better chance for granular optimizations that will lower the overall time when viewing them collectively.

Segmented runs tended to be based off concrete parts of the game (save points, completion of a disc in a multi-disc game, etc) to actually encourage optimization through routing and gameplay rather than having a competition seeing who can create the most granular segments. Not to mention, doing a segmented run around anything other than that tends to be impossible because it would be very hard to guarantee identical conditions across granular segments. Things like exp counts, item inventory, etc could differ across each attempt of a segment and a run across any set of segments that doesn't result in some form of saving means that you're probably not going to have consistent values for those things. That could skew future segments because maybe you got a level up earlier than normal for future/previous segments. This would essentially create a functionally impossible run that can't be replicated because the internal state of the game is messed up.

Also, segmented runs were not edited (spliced) together, they tended to be separate videos for each entire segment. That's why, in my opinion, a sum of best run doesn't make any sense because it's not really a run at all, it's an aggregation of best times for sections of the game that can be as granular as someone wants. It's useful as a time metric for determining a theoretical human best time, but it's not good for measuring any form of competition like a real run.

Of course, the segmented runs board should specifically define which segments it'd entail and where they'd begin and end. Creating a bazillion segments that are just "walk forward 40 meters" just to optimize every little inch of the game to max isn't really useful.

What I had more in mind was the idea that each split could be an entire level of the game, and as long as stuff from one level doesn't carry on to the next, a sum of best could very well work for a Segmented Run (given that in this scenario there's not much possibility for a garbled game state) and editing them together could work for the purpose of showing it off on the board, but I understand your point now. Sum of best usually leads to impossible states that don't really reflect on the theoretical best full game run possible.

The ComSoB is currently a 4:54.315, and you can see a really cool video about it here: It is slightly obsolete though because niftski beat the 8-4 world record the same day the video was uploaded Making a leaderboard for it doesn't make much sense though