So just to briefly introduce myself: I'm the one who (accidentally) found the Cthonian skip. Since then I've (not as accidentally) found all kinds of other stuff and generally worked hard on the game in close collaboration with tigrou (who coded the Room Viewer etc.) in preparation of a few things. The main one is a segmented speedrun I will record perhaps starting later this year. It's taken ages already and there's always something new to test but at the same time feels like we're getting towards that particular goal now.

The run will then eventually be submitted on SDA. I might not even put it on YouTube. You might know me as an admin on SDA so you wouldn't be surprised to hear that I regard that site highly. I like the aspect of sharing deserving runs with an audience that doesn't consist only of those invested enough to go out of their way to look for runs for particular games, but also any speedrun "omnivores" who can appreciate quality when they see it, and preferrably with sufficient notes provided that anyone can follow what's happening (honestly a part of that quality). None of us have anything against this site BTW, we think the two (and the marathons etc.) fill different purposes and we do benefit from seeing what the best reported times are around the Internet when assessing runs in verification. Still, seeing as segmented runs don't really make sense to compete in, I don't see the point in submitting it here.

In any case, of the many new things I know about the game, a few could be applied to the SS category without this raising the difficulty even more from the already gnarly tricks NHG pulled off. I don't personally care to try to do the SS myself but if someone wants to go on a montage, and if you agree to submit the run on SDA afterwards (the only reason the fastest NHG time isn't on SDA is because I asked him to hold it off so we could submit both runs at the same time), then I could act as a consultant and help to find just the relevant information. You would have to show you have potential for executing on the same level as NHG of course. I'll ask NHG himself as well but he sounded like he was done with the game last time, so who knows. At any rate, at some point, I'm meaning to collate all the SS-ready new stuff into a separate part of the guide (which is linked below).

https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Alone_in_the_Dark_(1-3)/Game_Mechanics_and_Glitches

We haven't kept the public SDA thread active at all because I wanted to keep most of the new findings a surprise until the run is done so starting a private thread with me on SDA would be the way to go with this SS business (2024 EDIT*: Actually, going back to the public thread was always an alternative. Literally just trying to avoid unnecessary spoilers.) I'll try to remember to check back here at some point as well. I just find most people aren't serious enough to make significant contributions.

*(The part that says "2024 EDIT is the only edit.)

Jim Sterling's Jimquisition on the trends of modern "AAA" publishers:

The previous episode is about how gambling mechanics are another fixture nowadays, causing a huge spike in children gambling their parents' money away. There has to be someone reading this who still hasn't figured it out: there is nothing cool anymore about big big gaming firms and their big big mega titles, no matter what the horse bollocks can do. They're just like any other corporations.

Wrote a short preface and was hoping for discussion. Please leave comments on the SDA forum. Guest posting is enabled if you don't have a user.

https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/segmented_speedrunning_today.html