Germany@ResolutionSSB Since your 2nd post might be referencing my post in https://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/3avn5 I'll try to clear up what you might be misunderstanding.
First of all, I do agree that the game request rules do need an overhaul to better reflect the current standards. However, that overhaul might not be what you seem to be expecting. The "long list" you're referring to is not an actual existing list of bullet points. In my post I was merely giving a few examples of what I had encountered in the game request queue on that day.
However, and that is something that you criticized, each submission will still be looked at on a per case basis and different people will handle them according to their individual interpretation. If they think the game would not be a good addition to the site, then they will reject it and provide a reason why they did. That is after trying to look at the bigger picture and trying to make an educated judgment. It is not after looking at only a few seconds of a video and going through a checklist of fixed denial reasons! (unless there are obvious issues with form data or the user's account) And different individuals may have different interpretations or simply see/miss something that another staff member would not have seen/missed. If needed, difficult cases are discussed with other staff members. I think the system and workflow we have in place right now is working reasonably well.
The variety of games out there, as well as the variety of game requests (user info, game footage, provided game info, provided outlook what the speedrun(s) will look like, ...) make it not feasible to put up hard rules. There would always be edge cases and exceptions. Users are encouraged to use their own judgment on what would be a good addition to the site when it comes to submitting a game request and they are encouraged to use the whole request form to make their case of why their game is a good addition to the site. But more often than not, that is not how things are. There will always be people who just submit anything they play, or those who deliberately submit bad content to troll staff or simply for the memes, or people whose submissions strongly indicate that they are not fit to moderate a board on this site, etc. There has to be some quality control. Using it retroactively, however, is difficult, so while bringing up examples from the past does help for showcasing certain standards, it cannot be used to justify or dispute current decisions.
All that said, there will always be those who feel treated unfairly. I don't think that can be avoided. However, by discussing those cases openly and in a calm way, I'm hoping we can spread a better understanding of what it means to have quality standards on this site.
You're better off asking game-specific questions in the respective game's forum: https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/forum
I want to add that recording in-game replays is a bit of an edge case since, depending on the game and platform, they can be easily tinkered with. Live recordings are generally preferred as proof. If the game you have in mind is already on the site, I'd contact the moderators first and ask about it.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions, @Th3B0r3d! Memes are fine, but I hope you understand that we can't track them all.
While I was not the one who rejected this as a webgame, I can guess why it wasn't ultimately accepted. Does the game look like a 3-year-old made it and does it take less than 5 minutes to complete? We're currently not accepting any trivial content, whether that's
- a Steam Greenlight game where you just repeatedly have to hit a button to progress through the story,
- a private programming project that simply doesn't meet the standards of the site,
- a mobile game with only scores and no speedrun relevance,
- a random browser game, maybe the 17th clone of another popular game, that takes 2 minutes to complete
- ...
The list is long. There's a lot of low-quality content that gets submitted to the website on a daily basis. Staff is looking at every submission to determine whether we should track this on the site or not. There's usually not much to discuss if the submission gets rejected due to quality concerns. Maybe you could have been given a more detailed explanation, but that's all I have to add. The wording in the game request rules is very generalized because we simply can't cover every case. I hope that helps clear up a few things.
@Dracaarys You're right about the expired accounts. I opened a thread on the game's forum, asking the mod to update their information as well as to reorganize the board, since there doesn't seem to be any speedrun-relevant content on there. If there's no positive response within the next couple of weeks, I honestly don't see a reason to even keep the game on the site.
As far as I can tell, there is zero speedrun-relevant content on this board (I didn't check every single category, so feel free to point me towards anything that I've missed). I strongly recommend reorganizing this board to be more speedrun-relevant. At least the main categories should be actual speedruns. Although, personally, I'd get rid of all the scores, you could still keep them under Misc., if really needed. Also, @JayKayGame, most of your social media links are expired. Please update them so users can reach out to you if they have questions or suggestions.
9 days does not count as inactive. Have you tried reaching them via their social media?
There are so many things wrong with that board, I don't even know where to start.
Why would they be doing it wrong? A campaign sensu StarCraft leaderboard consists of a full playthrough of all missions for a race. It's completing the "story mode" of the game given certain start conditions (=race). If anything, one could suggest having an any% category that includes times from all races. What @Klagarn was asking about was creating ILs for every single level (360 ILs of only a few seconds each). All Worlds IS the only category that actually finishes the game, in "story mode", as far as I understand the game. If there was another completable game mode or a way to play through the game with a certain restriction, then that would justify another full-game category. The NSMBW comparison above was very fitting. I don't see a reason for putting the individual worlds anywhere but under Level Leaderboard. If really needed, all the 360 individual levels could go there as well, as sub-categories of the ILs (worlds). Whether that effort would be justified is what we're discussing here, I guess. My recommendation is keeping it simple. It's up to @Klagarn in the end.
Check if your TV has a "game mode". Most modern LCDs and OLEDs have something like that.
Do you have the right video signal selected under "Configure video"? My GV-USB2 defaults to Composite and I have to manually switch to S-Video. It should work on the default settings; no need to tinker with those. If it doesn't then there's only guessing left. Do you have the most recent drivers for your operating system? (The ones that come on the Mini-CD are outdated and you can download the most recent ones online if you provide the serial number of your device) Other than that I can only think of broken cables or a hardware failure of the device itself (does it work with AmarecTV?)
If you want to use the RGB video signal your options are either an OSSC or a Framemeister+Scart-to-RGB adapter cable. I'm not exactly sure about the Framemeister, but the OSSC then outputs DVI or HDMI which then can be captured with a respective capture card.
Edit: Scart to S-Video adapters do exist, but chances are that those pins aren't used in the PAL GC either. Someone else might know more about this.
Honestly, your approach seems needlessly messy. Segments (=individual worlds) are not full-game categories and therefore should not be declared as such. "All worlds" is the any% of the story mode as far as I can tell and as such the only full-game category that is not multiplayer or open mode. Individual worlds could be set up as IL categories. (That's pretty much exactly what @Backspaced recommended above) Would it serve any purpose to have single level ILs when most (all?) of the game is just pattern memorization and a subsequent click orgy? Spare yourself the effort and keep it simple! Your PB VOD for world 1 is incomplete, btw.
"The only instance I can see frame drops affecting accurate retimings is when there are frames drops on the very moment that you start timing or stop timing for the run. Even then it's not like the split timer will necessarily prove useful as there is no way to verify that the timer was started or stopped accurately in the first place anyways."
@Twan_Jones You're missing something crucial. Depending on the recording method and device, dropped frames are actually missing from the recording (my old Dazzle DVC100 has that issue, e.g.). That means that you would re-time an actual RTA second @30fps with 1 dropped frame as 0.967s, e.g. On the other hand, encoding lag (or buffering) can add duplicate frames to the recording - which can be impossible to tell apart from the game itself lagging just by the footage alone. In both instances, counting frames and comparing to the time span that has passed on the on-screen timer can help you identify such cases.
While this is not exactly on-topic, splits CAN serve a crucial purpose if they accompany video footage, as they can help you identify frame drops or encoding lag, which could otherwise go unnoticed and result in inaccurate timing of the run. I'd always recommend having splits (or generally just a timer) in your submission. You don't have to look at them during the run or even do anything, except starting them. It's additional information that can help others assess the footage.
Just a general note: lag is part of many retro games and lag reduction is often a crucial part of the speedrun strategies. Emulators that don't emulate lag properly (or not at all) are usually not allowed for speedrunning. Well-known examples are ZSNES or Snes9X v1.41 for SNES or VBA and all its derivates for Game Boy. Especially if a speedrun is measured in realtime, an emulator should be as accurate to the console as possible, including framerate, load times and lag.
Can confirm: GBi (on either the deprecated LL (=low latency) or the more recent speedrun setting) is one of the standards for Game Boy speedrunning. For more information about GB speedrunning you can also visit http://www.gbrunners.com/game-boy-speedrunning-explained .
Thanks for that piece of info. I had just found this post on a forum (sadly without a source) that seems to confirm this:
"The imprint will be 2 numbers, at minimum. If that's all there is, then it's a v1.0. However, if there's a letter after it, then it'll be an alternate version. If there's an A, then it's a v1.1. B is a v1.2. C is v1.3, etc."
Edit: I just went through some of my carts and can confirm that the ones with a letter A are all rev. 1.1. Edit 2: Found the possible source of the post I had read 1st: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/how_to_identify_your_games_version__how_to_identify_fake_gba_carts.html
