Yo. Could we get back to this?

I just returned to doing some HoMM3-runs. I pretty much routed LLtK and will probably do Liberation and the last one next week, before the ultimate full campaign run.

BUT before all this shit, I need to have a sound ruleset to adhere to. The problems I see highly relate to the thread some months ago, that ultimately led to nothing. Let me start this again as it is pretty crucial for future HoMM3-speedruns. I have two objections; one minor and a biggie.

• Timer start:

Either do one of two things:

Change the timer start to the first dialogue skip of each scenario.

Or stay true to the current rules and actually moderate, i. e. retime, runs that start the timer too late (it appears everyone does that, myself included). My vote is on this one.

It doesn’t really matter which one, consistency is the key. It just surprises me that timing is explicitly defined one way, but is practiced in another way in all runs.

• HD vs HD+ mod:

Is HD+ mod allowed or ONLY HD mod? Further down this path are tweaks allowed? There are some legacy runs that would get purged by the disallowance of HD+, including J0hna’s as he uses the “Replay Battle”-function which is not possible in an non-tweaked version of HD mod. As the HD mod is still being updated fairly regularly this puts us in a position where we are at the hands of the modders. They could integrate every tweak by default tomorrow and we would be forced to use them.

I understand and agree with your opposition of tweaks, but the problem is, as @snDRY posted in the previous thread, that the HD mod greatly interferes with vanilla version anyway. The worst crime of them all probably is that HD mod actually manipulates every single RNG-calculation. What I’m saying is that the “this is not vanilla”-argument is not valid, because we’ve already stepped so far away from vanilla that the bread crumbs we spread to find back has been eaten by nasty birds years ago.

My point isn’t that we should ban all HD mods altogether, but I am really curious as to how tweaks breaks your rules more than HD mod haven't already done. As far as I can see in earlier posts the mod got accepted as a QoL-thing, which turned out to have a shitload of side-effects that is generally frowned upon in most speedrunning communities. So we could either accept all these side-effects in their full glory or try to make a nice subjective ruleset carefully picking out the tweaks we like. This would require an exact and up-to-date guide to set up the game and in principle require all runners to show their tweaks-code before each run (... but let's use the honor system for that).

So, please make a decision and enforce it so I can run this game. Pick my poison, so to speak.

Sorry for replying fairly late; problems at home.

I assumed everyone started their timer at the campaign menu, but I do remember some players starting their runs on the first map instead. So sigh I'll have to re-time runs based on that, when a runner clicks the first dialogue box until to the last dialogue box.

I'm not saying to ban the HD mod in anyway, but it is one of the only mods I know that pretty much requires for use it to speedrun, so some discretion needed. By all means use it. I'm in favor of a making a subset of rules when using the HD mod. If a feature can be turned off and affects RNG manipulation, turn it off/don't use it at all during a run. So for example, don't have the HD+ box checked before starting the game/don't use 'Replay Battle'; don't use the Tavern Invite Hero feature; those sort of things. The honor system is far easier to manage that way too.

But if and when a feature of the HD Mod can't be turned off? Well, it'll be up for debate when that time comes.

Please bring up anything I have missed as the HD/HD+ mod adds a lot, like one tweak for CPU usage.

Fair enough. Home-stuff should be prioritized after all :)

Sorry for the timing-thing. I broke that rule too, just realized it was a thing before posting. Luckily it’s not that bad, it probably only adds a second or two to all runs.

So, we should decide on whether every tweak should be banned or not. As far as I can see these are the relevant tweaks available:

• HD+ (According to documentation-site it adds multiplayer-stuff, replayable battles, fixed RNG-calculations)
• Sys.CPU.ReduceUsage (Self-explanatory. Unsure if it affects anything relevant)
• UI.AdvMgr.SkipMadMsgs (Skips some messages like warnings when buying stuff)
• UI.ClipCursor (Mouse cannot leave the game window while holding down the Ctrl-key, really useful when playing in windowed mode and trying to scroll the map)
• UI.QuickArmyManagementode (Better army management. I am not completely sure what this exactly does)
• UI.RecruitDlg.Autoset (When recruiting creatures it decides what the initial number is set on)
• UI.Tavern.InviteHero (Enables you to choose what hero will join your tavern next)

It appears all the controversial stuff comes from the HD+-mod. I’m for banning it completely. The other tweaks seem fine, safe for InviteHero that was discussed before.

Heya I wanted to share my thoughts too but I sorta forgot.

I think it's a good idea to keep the mod allowed. Banning HD+ and all RNG manipulating features like Invite Hero and replay battle, while allowing the troop management features and other quality of life stuff. For upcoming updates I think we should assume any RNG manipulation thing banned and any big quality of life update... banned until it has been discussed? If the quality of life improvement has such a vast impact that it will make a very noticeable difference (time-wise) to runs without it.

The UI.QuickArmyManagementode thing could be any or all of the extra options for managing an army, like CTRL+click to get a single unit, CTRL+Shift+Click to fill army with 1 stacks, Alt+click to put all troops in garrison, managing troops from the adventure map screen without going into the hero information or maybe something with trading troops between heroes, there are so many troop-related options. :D

Sorry if my post was badly written, I'm tired (again)

I agree with everything Daniel says.

Assuming we enforce the HD+ ban the problem would be that almost every run recorded uses HD+. We can’t keep any runs as HD+ per default does the RNG-thing covered earlier. It’s a shame, but a fact nonetheless. As far as I can see that leaves us with two possibilities:

1. Purge everything that uses HD+ pretty much leaving the leaderboards empty and ready for new conquistadores.

2. Split the leaderboards into a strictly HD with limited tweaks and an HD+ with all tweaks allowed. This way we have the best of both worlds and we don’t have to abolish any runs. I know it’s suboptimal to have ~20 categories in a game 3 dudes are running, but it’s the only way I see possible if we want to ban HD+ and still keep old runs around.

I was stuck thinking on how to go about this, especially on if I had to go through every run and re-time them all. Ugh.

I am against clearing the entire leaderboards; not only would it be unfair to the other runners, it would also look bad to a passerby that possibly finds their run on YouTube/Twitch, but not on here.

So, even though it's ridiculous to have 20+ categories, that would be the better way to organize everything. What I can do to keep the categories to a minimum is have runners request a 'new' category when necessary. After this, all that's left to do is create a sticky post (should've done that so long ago, apologies) with the updated rules, and it'll be where you can request a new category for the leaderboards.

Uh, reminder for anyone reading this to reset your password on this site. Some security issues arose, as well as it seems they rolled back the site a couple days ago. Some forum posts seems to be gone now.

On topic, I was informed by @MiklMaar about an easier method of adding variables to all runs. Didn't see that button before, then I did, then the site/accounts got hacked, so I had to wait after the rollback. 8- All current runs posted are sub-categorized as 'HD+: Yes' and the leaderboards are now separated. After the eventual retiming of runs, some runs may change their HD+ category if they are found not using any HD+ features.

Now that I know variables and categories are a thing, I'll go make similar split categories in the other Heroes games as well. Oh, would anyone like a Cheater% category here as well?

Awesome, looks great. Thank you Adam. I'll start running next week or so, if not for anything then to at least have some runs on the boards.

Cheater% is not for me :)

Hey, I shoot in with a suggestion. When I installed HotA, I noticed in the HoMM3 folder there was a HotA file that made you play it without the HD+ Mod. It opens up the game in 4:3, like when opening HoMM3: Complete from the GOG GALAXY app.

So would it be ok to start a No HD+ category on https://www.speedrun.com/hommiii_hota ?

While it already have been created one, I wanted to ask about peoples opinion about this?