We need to talk about the rules for any%
3 years ago
South Holland, Netherlands

The current rules are literally this:"Complete the third zone and trigger the last cute scene of the game in the least amount of time." I read this as follows: Completely play the 3rd zone, and get the final cutscene to play (I like the spelling error). However, 6 months ago, LuniRSC posted a video to the forum with a (for me) new glitch. Yesterday I thought of a way to make a technically legit speedrun for any% using these rules. We need to talk about this.

  1. Requiring you to play the entire 3rd zone feels weird for any%. We might need a revision of the rules, mainly to make it more obvious what is actually necessary and what isn't.
  2. We also need to discuss whether to allow this or not. And if we don't allow this, how will we ban this?
Edited by the author 3 years ago
IschmarVI and LuniRSC like this
South Holland, Netherlands

My initial ideas are the following:

  1. The wording needs to change drastically. For example for any%: Trigger the credits page. Timing starts when you click "Click here to START!", and ends when the credits page shows up. any% glitchless: Trigger the credits page without using the item-eating glitch, or the loading glitch or any other glitch. Timing starts when you click "Click here to START!", and ends when the credits page shows up. 100%: Beat all the fights in the game, including zone 4. Timing starts when you click "Click here to START!", and ends when Sinjid has been defeated, and the game has faded out.

  2. I'm in favor of banning this. If any% doesn't require the entirety of zone 3 anymore, the any% speedrun would become at least 15 minutes of setup, then a severely random amount of time to die to the first enemy, and finally to load back to the paladin fight, where we oneshot him, and end time. This is basically a credits warp with some random time loss, and the best time will be the person who gets the luckiest during that first fight. That would probably make for a very boring speedrun. Also every new run would require the same 15 minutes of setup, so it's basically an any% run where time only starts on the final boss.

So how do we ban it? Well, techincally speaking this run is New Game + (NG+), so if we disallow creating pre-made savefiles to load back into, we're done. However, you can't delete savefiles, which is an issue. This forces runners to run this game in incognito mode, without adblocker, which hurts a lot in my opinion. It is a solution, but I'm not happy with it. Luckily I don't run any%, so it's less of an issue for me.

Another solution would be to rename any% to any%-no loading glitch, and just ban the loading glitch from this category. Techically this would also create a new any% category where this is allowed, which is fine with me. The only issue I have with this solution is that this also immediately bans the debug mode glitch, which might be an interesting run, once we find a way to actually finish that run. However, that can also be fixed with a new category where the loading glitch is only allowed with empty save files.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Ukraine

An absolutely phenomenal run. I haven't thought of this strategy myself and I honestly think it is indeed quite overpowered. That also does mean that with the Saveless Slot Reload Glitch (as the Sonny wiki says) it's also possible for the player to load a save file before the Sinjid fight, so I guess a 100% glitchless is also needed.

I am very thankful for you experimenting with the glitch and proud that I could find something like this for the community. P.S. This glitch has appeared on the internet about 10 years ago (jeez) and I myself found it like 3 years ago.

Germany

What I dislike most of the wording is that it doesn't state, if and if yes, what you are allowed to load during a run. My strong reccomendation is to more or less adopt the ruleset from the sonny 2 leaderboard, namely this part:

"The entire run must be completed in a way that can be done from a "clean file". As such, using/loading save files, that have been created before the start of the run is banned. Creating several save files during the same run is allowed.

Performing out-of-game actions such as editing or deleting save files during the run is banned."

This means, you are only allowed to load files that are either "clean files" or that you created DURING the run. That would make the setup itself already part of the run (and as such, the timer would start upon creation of the setup file, not of the actual run file). I believe that would already be enough to solve the issue. Fun fact, even with that rule, the run would still be legit but as the setup would now be part of it it would actually be slower than the current record by several minutes.

Other than that, I am more or less fine with breaking the game in half because thats basically the point of any% (glitched) and the game also has a glitchless category ... that is, as long as it doesn't take away pretty much everything the game has (shoutouts to pokemon red/blue save corruption runs that finish in less than a minute)

I also agree that the wording for whats required to end the run is pretty vague (and I also like the typo). Considering that the "congratulations" screen is where all the runners have split I would say its a good Idea to say that that screen is the end of the run. A positive side effect is that this also prevents you from skipping paladin fight which makes some potential "omni skips" impossible.

But yea, definitely a huge thanks to you for breaking this series apart ^-^

E: other than that, this run definitely opens up the possibility for a "new game +" category but the question is ... would this category be any fun in the first place? I am not so sure about that ... xD

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Sowwhats likes this
Ukraine

NG+ could be set up, but it is indeed kind of boring as setup itself involves time, however I think the idea itself is pretty neat and the result is very satisfying. Here's how I imagine NG+ Any% will work:

Start a new game, rack up progress to a point when you think it's enough (Grinding to Galiant is the most viable strategy imo). Perform the glitch and then defeat the Paladin and get to the ending screen. If NG+ 100% will be real at some point, grind to Sinjid and perform the glitch, everything else is self explanatory.

Also wow, a huge figure in Sonny speedruns has showed up, neat.

P.P.S. I have absolutely no experience in speedruns tbh -w-