Any% RTA and Any% No Major Glitches RTA, i.e. "The New Xenogears Stuff"
3 years ago
United States

As of 7/17/20, there exists a vastly different Xenogears route created by a combination of French players/TASers (Kadmony and Bif among them I believe, others potentially) that Chuckolator/Chuckorita finished a run of successfully which can be viewed here:

This is really an amazing host of discoveries and is breathing life into this beloved classic for its speedrun. Thank you to those that worked, a good lot to be sure, on this undertaking.

That said, the question of categories and distribution to the proper place for this new run is an important one. I have at least temporarily split these up into all previous runs being labeled under Any% No Major Glitches RTA and the new run from Chuck solely occupying the former Any% RTA category. I would like to open up a discussion to all comers, but most principally those involved in the new run to decide what to shift the leader boards around to if it is not currently fitting.

Things to consider:

  1. Should the old runs/old route and new run/future runs with new route be split up into separate categories at all? If not, for what reason(s)?
  2. If they should be separated, how and with what rules?
  3. What should the order of the categories be? In other words, what should be the main category and what reasoning for it being so? (Though other order considerations of any kind can certainly be brought up too.)
France

There is no point denying that these new things tear a bit the game appart, meaning that a "no-major glitches" makes sense.

That being said, the skipped parts are mostly long dialogs and uninteresting (as speedrunning matters of course)

In addition to that, it shows that a lot of stuff is still do be discovered in the game, and it can also gives many ideas to other glitch hunters (even in other games)

For these reasons I think that Any % should remain the main category

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Canada
  1. I don't have an issue with category separation. They're fundamentally different runs and while the new skips aren't cheating by any means, I don't have an issue with making a space for people who don't want to fiddle with glitchy disc swaps and multiple consoles.

  2. In the no major glitches category, obviously kernel menu would be banned. I don't have an opinion as to whether you guys would want to ban the desert skip in that category or not.

  3. As the fastest way of beating the game using only Xenogears discs on official hardware, Any% should be listed first. The fact that I'm alone on the list at the moment should not be relevant to the matter - people looking at the leaderboards should be shown the fastest legitimate time first and foremost, with the ability to browse restrictive categories afterwards. (In this case, "legitimate" is defined as the standards I just stated.) As a sidenote, there is at least one person I know of who is seriously interested in competing with these new glitches as well, so I won't be alone on the list for long. If the reason it isn't already listed first is that there's only one run at the moment, it seems silly to delay an inevitable change just because you're waiting for someone else to do it.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
France
  • Bif and me are the only people who discovered and worked out Kernel Menu.

  • this new run is obviously any% and there is no reason it would not be frontpage.

  • if you want to keep your time (whose main input is SCPH-7k) you can create a no major glitch/glitchless cat with no KM, no cd-swap sequence break, no no-load glitch.

general leaderboard should be fixed looking forward :

  • any% fast text using gameshark is obviously miscellaneous.

  • being allowed in some places or not for no reason, turbo is not handled properly. Either allow turbo in any% or create a separate, non misc cat allowing turbo in any%.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Ontario, Canada

I understand that since I don't run this game yet and was only appointed a few days ago, take my opinions with a grain of salt at least until I have a time on the leaderboard ;)

Category Separation

Chiming to say that I agree with Chuck on all counts. I haven't dived enough into the run myself yet to understand whether desert skip should be allowed in Any% NMG yet or not, but once that info is available to me and my PS2 arrives, i'll have a better feel for how to think about it :)

Turbo

I think turbo should be considered to be allowed for at least some categories. I'll explain my reasons why:

This is mostly coming from my history speedrunning SMRPG, a game that allows turbo in every category (except Low Level, because memes). The admins & top runners had this discussion a few years ago, and most agreed to allow it. The reasoning was threefold:

  1. it's better for runners ergonomically to prevent RSIs. And that run is only 3 hours long, not 14. I think it would be unfortunate for a speedrun of a game to be in direct conflict with the runner's health.
  2. The SNES has officially licensed turbo controllers (Super Joy Card). The PS2 also has these (turbo Hori), so the "unofficial hardware" can of worms is not opened.
  3. turbo in SMRPG does not provide any gameplay advantage beyond automatic text advancing. This is where I'm not totally sure if my reasoning translates to Xenogears. In SMRPG there are no things like turbo-required RNG manips, and this is because of the unique case of the SNES where the console framerate is 60.0988, which turbo controllers cannot perfectly match, therefore turbo-reliant RNG manips are impossible. I am unsure if the PS2 is similar, because I think if RNG manips were found that are only possible to complete with a turbo controller, that probably wouldn't be a good thing for the game. Curious what others think.

A Challenger Approaches - Segmented Runs

I don't really have any settled opinions on this yet, but thought I'd bring it up and hope people would be open-minded about a discussion. I had the idea in a conversation with Chuck to suggest allowing segmented runs for 100%, solely because the run is so long and I, once again, think it would be unfortunate for a speedrun of a game to be in direct conflict with the runner's health. I think that a line to potentially draw is to allow segmented runs for any speedrun that requires less than 7 hours of sleep per 24 hours, so therefore, any speedrun where world record is 17 hours or greater, therefore Any% NMG and 100%, but NOT Any%.

What do you all think?

Edited by the author 3 years ago
France

I don't really have any thought on NMG category ... I guess eventually disc swapping in the middle of the game might be consider a major glitches

About Turbo you take a fair point there ... I never thought about the related health problem, I always saw it as kind of endurance thing but in the end it might end baddly for your hand/wrist (and possibly your controller too) That's also right that there is at the moment no known exploit with the Turbo, it might only slows you down if you do it the wrong time (ask Bif for RNG manip .... that's hell in this game ...)

Absolutely no problem with Segmented 100%. But I still think all the "Misc" leaderboard should be back with the US leaderboard, as the game used is exactly the same, and as running those in japanese would mean other categories as well

And concerning your first point the route is kinda ultra-safe and a bit brainless too ;)

Canada

Okay, all who posted seem to be in agreement that Any% should be in front, so I've gone and done that. Discussion about this glitch can be debated in this topic but I've a few other things I want to bring up that I felt was best to separate into a different topic, which you can view here: https://www.speedrun.com/xenogears/thread/ws3mz/1#8x68d

The current status of the Misc. tab can be decided after other things. In particular, should we decide to change certain current rules, Misc. might be rendered obsolete completely, so let's see where things go.

Edited by the author 3 years ago