Hello! Recently, there has been a major breakthrough for Kula speedrunning as I have discovered a ton of new glitches that can be used to lower the time. Most of these glitches are completely fine to me for being used, but there are a couple that I think are a little problematic.

The first one is "Hiro Skip", which is a glitch that upon exiting to main menu on the very last bonus level in Hiro, Hills will appear on the main menu instead. This mean that when a new Arcade game is started, it's started from Hills instead, which means the IGT shown at the end of the game will not take in account for Hiro, effectively "skipping" it.

The second one is "CopyCat Skip". It is executed by exiting to the main menu after saving progress, loading up CopyCat and exiting while doing the second input. Upon loading up your save game, it will instantly complete it. This allows you to "skip" every 5th level in the game, as you can only save on every 5th level. So since the level is completed upon loading it, the IGT does not take that into account.

I have mixed feelings about these glitches, as this makes the run look like it's just constantly going in and out of the save just to save in-game time. Now, the auto-splitter that was developed will still take the in-game times in account regardless if you leave the save and come back (I'm pretty sure), which makes it so that the in-game timer in-game isn't abusable as much. Better yet, it makes it so that not everyone can just leave their save if they make a mistake, and load it back up and the in-game timer resets.

So is that what the preferred method of timing should be now, not the in-game time shown at the end of the game but with the autosplitter? Just wanted to get an opinion on this :)

The IGT calculated by the autosplitter matches the one displayed at the end of the game only if you don't perform those glitches. And that was fine before those glitches were considered.

I am looking at the submission I received and I'm kinda conflicted, because the internal game timer, as you correctly said, doesn't consider all those saves and reloads. Worse, it doesn't consider the fact people need do the entire Hiro normally before even "starting" the run. The point is doing all those glitches artificially lowers the game time, but RTA the run is considerably longer than the standard Any% for this reason.

Using the timer as displayed by the autosplitter can be fine (it supports every PS1 emulator) but excludes people who play on real hardware. Which is an issue simply because the current WR is still done on real hardware.

I need time to think about this. Pretty sure though glitched runs would probably be part of a separate category.

The run is accepted for now in the new category I created for it. For the time being, I think it's best to state both IGT and RTA for glitched categories.

To my mind there should be 4 categories:

1. "Arcade Any% RTA (Real Time Attack)"
2. "Arcade Any% IGT"
3. "Arcade Any% Glitched" (only with IGT)
4. "The Final" (only with RTA)

1-2. Why "Arcade Any% RTA" and "Arcade Any% IGT"? Because different strategies apply for RTA and IGT. If we speak about RTA, we should reach the exit as fast as possible without collecting fruits. In IGT we collect fruits (minus 3-4 seconds).

3. In "Arcade Any% Glitched" we use glitches to save IGT time. RTA doesn't matter in this category because when we save or load game it takes time in RTA. For example, level 21. If we speak about RTA, we can complete level without saving after level 20, and reach the exit for 2-3 seconds. It's more quickly than we'll save game progress, enter the CopyCat and after that load the saving progress. It takes long time. And again, our goal is saving IGT time.

4. And in "The Final" only RTA should be because IGT isn't shown in the game statistics after reaching the exit in level 170.

Okay since i got into an heavy discussion with Dima, I need to give my opinion on this whole situation as well. Fact is: SaturnKai changed Kula Speedrunning forever. The ammount of glitches he found is insane and it's up to everybody to judge that for themselves.

As for the categories and it's rules, this is how I would imagine it:

1. Arcade Any%: This one needs to stay completely glitch-free, period. It would not make sense to allow anybody to use any of the found glitches. Because even using one of them would invalidate all the runs on there. Adeyblue holds the world record for a reason and i would find it shitty if anyone was allowed to use glitches in a "Non-glitch" category, that just doesn't make any sense to me. Should it be allowed to reload the save file? Hmm i'm not so sure. First of all, only if the save file menu is completely empty at the start of the run, so nobody can trick the viewer by reloading other save files. Reloading doesn't necesarily make you better at the game, it just makes your runs less riddled with errors. As long as it is a single segment, that would be fine. The IGT measures the run just fine and can't be tricked.

There's more to this though since dima also wants a "Arcade any% RTA" category. I don't see any point in that either, because it is technically there. Just click on "Time" in the leaderboard. Just maybe renaming time to RTA would be enough. At the same time, I fully agree that the RTA should exclude any loading screens. For some reason, even though my pc is good, my load times are terrible (look at my glitched run) and it loads longer than real hardware. So to make it fair for everybody, RTA runs should exclude those. Because I agree with dima on this, that an RTA run is completely different from an IGT run. Collecting fruit in IGT is beneficial but not in RTA.

2. The new category "Arcade any% glitched" is fine as it is. This one should allow any glitch with save reloading, again as long as we can make sure the save file screen is empty before starting the run. The IGT once again is enough for this and I don't think RTA runs make sense in this category.

3. The Final. We also have this category now, which can only be measured as RTA, since there's no IGT. This should once again exclude loading times. But this category should remain for legit runs - just like the arcade leaderboard.

4. The Final Glitched. I swear this is the last one. You can use all glitches you use in arcade in this one as well and you can skip 1 level, the 11th one by using the copycat glitch. SaturnKai demonstrated the possible time in this category with his TAS. If we would add this one, i think it's complete.

I think we don't need the "Broken IGT" category we were talking about, since even if we would exclude the hiro skip and copycat glitch, the times we can achieve are still ludacris and we should make it even more awesome how much we can shorten the timer. I hope we can find a proper solution for everybody.

I somewhat agree with RealRaptoReX. But I suppose there must be as "Arcade Any% IGT" as "Arcade Any% RTA". Because different strategies apply for RTA and IGT. If we speak about RTA, we should reach the exit as fast as possible without collecting fruits. In IGT we collect fruits (minus 3-4 seconds). It depends on what the speedrunners want to do: showing their best RTA or showing their best IGT. Because if your goal is showing the best RTA, then what's the point in collecting fruit? You're only wasting extra seconds for your RTA. And if your goal is showing the best IGT, then it makes sense to collect fruits (minus 3-4 seconds from your IGT). And here it doesn’t matter what RTA you have (50 minutes, at least 2 hours, anyway). And vice versa. If your goal is to show the best RTA, then it doesn't matter what IGT you have.

For example, my speedrun in Arcade Any%. My IGT is 34m 58s, my RTA is 43m 30s. But my RTA can be better than 43m 30s. Because there are levels which speedrunner can complete faster (without collecting fruits) and my RTA will be better. But at the same time my IGT will be worse than 34m 58s because I don't collect fruits. That's why there should be two categories. As you can see, these are two different strategies. And accordingly, these are two different videos, that is, two different speedruns, that's why there should be two leaderboards: "Arcade Any% IGT" and "Arcade Any% RTA" if we speak about "Arcade Any%". In the "Arcade Any% IGT" leaderboard there should be shown only our best IGT, without RTA. In the "Arcade Any% RTA" leaderboard there should be shown only our best RTA, without IGT. I don't know if you understood me or not, just don't know how else to describe this situation.

And RealRaptoReX is right. If we speak about RTA, RTA should exclude any loading screens because everything here depends on the hardware.

I thought for a while about this and this is my proposal:

1. Arcade Any% stays as it is, with IGT as its main timing method. As I previously said, the main point is the route keeps into consideration the fact you can collect the fruits to reduce the game timer.

2. Arcade glitched% should be considered in both IGT and RTA/Loadless. My main issue here is that the Hiro skip essentially skips 1/10th of the run before the IGT even starts ticking... and it's debatable whether you'd call it a skip as you need to do the entire Hiro anyway first. Which is exactly why a different timing method should ALSO be included alongside IGT. My idea here, however, is that Loadless should be its main timing method.

3. The Final can be measured with IGT, but the issue is the game doesn't show it clearly (you'd need to use the autosplitter or read the PS1 memory, so that needlessly overcomplicates things). Which is why I propose simply timing it as Loadless.

Keep in mind Loadless timing is fairly easy to do with the autosplitter, and keeps into consideration the fact load times are dependent on the emulator you're playing on (loads, for the most part, don't depend on your PC hardware). If you play without livesplit, or if you play on official hardware, runs would need to be retimed manually, which is not a great thing to do for glitched% but basically free on the other categories.

So essentially I propose this:

1. Arcade Any% (the current one) --> IGT, glitched banned
2. Arcade glitched% --> Loadless & IGT, loadless timing starts at the beginning of Hiro 1
3. The Final --> Loadless
4. The Final glitched --> Loadless

(My presence on the internet might be spotty for this weekend, but I'll be sure to read everything by the end of Sunday)

I think it's a little difficult. Everything can be done much easier.

1. Arcade Any% IGT (IGT is main timing method). Glitches like avoiding lasers, avoiding arrows, jumping 7-8 times should be allowed, as they can be used in each level. It depends more on the version of the game (Kula World, Roll Away or Kula Quest) and the skills of the speedrunner, how well he can use these glitches. Hiro Skip and CopyCat are banned.
2. Arcade Any% RTA (RTA is main timing method, with loads or without, admin decides). Glitches like avoiding lasers, avoiding arrows, jumping 7-8 times should be allowed, as they can be used in each level. It depends more on the version of the game (Kula World, Roll Away or Kula Quest) and the skills of the speedrunner, how well he can use these glitches. Hiro Skip and CopyCat are banned.

If we speak about Arcade Any%, you need to play ALL 150 levels. For me, this is the most important thing in Arcade Any%.

3. Arcade Any% Glitched. All glitches should be allowed. Hiro Skip and CopyCat too. It makes no sense to add RTA here, since these glitches (Hiro Skip and CopyCat) are designed to reduce IGT time.

But I'm not sure about the Final. Yes, maybe there should be "The Final" and "The Final Glitched". But only RTA should be there (with loads or without, admin decides). IGT isn't showed after the Final.

And I suppose we don't have to use livesplit, I think it's optional.

@Jujstme

In general, load times should never be counted. But let's look at the categories.

1. Arcade Any% should stay as it is, with IGT as its main timing method and collecting fruit to reduce it. NOT as dima proposed using glitches, that makes the glitched category pointless. Keep the leaderboard as it is with RTA and IGT present

2. Arcade glitched% - I'm fine with both ideas. Not loading any savefile and doing all glitches or with loading savefiles. If we choose to exclude runs with loading savefiles, that would make my run disqualified, but that's okay, since it isn't a good run anyway, i did that one for fun. RTA isn't really something we need in this category, IGT is fine.

3. The Final loadless and 4. The Final glitched loadless is fine to me as you said.

Autosplit is okay for me if it excludes the load times, that's a good solution to me. Real hardware runs need to be calculated manually then, but if that's okay for you, i'm okay with it.

Agree with RealRaptoReX, that RTA shouldn't be in Arcade Any% Glitched. RTA is simply mindless in this category. RTA as IGT should be in Arcade Any%. Admin decides, with loads or without (I mean loading time).

And I suppose we can load savefiles. It's CopyCat glitch. And if we use this glitch, then we can use it when we want. But no quicksave 😁