Thanks, saving them and implementing them later.

Now, while the discussion is going on (though it might end soon), I would like to ask for a slight leaderboard variable change : pushing the difficulty categories before the mode category.

Assuming that in the future we consider adding special categories like "no skips" or "Low IGT", it's possible that we may need to add additional variables to create new categories. Which may be a reason why we may want to order these variables in terms of their relevancy, from most relevant to least.

Naturally you'd have the actual categories at the top, it's just mandatory. Then the difficulties, which is just normal behavior of the game. Nothing to be said And then you'd have the Support variable, not really supposed to be used for anything else than assist the player, but still a deliberate functionality by the developers. But then, you "may" (because it's completely unofficial, just proving a point) have a variable saying if you've used skips or not. Here we're already starting to completely break the game, but it's still easy to follow up upon. Finally then, you could have a Low IGT related variable, where at that point you just completely disrespect the game with overpowered tricks, and manipulate time at will to hopefully edge out normal speedruns IGT wise.

The last two's existence are still up to debate, but you can see that it would probably be interesting and fun to have these variables be in order. I also know that having potentially 5 category distinguishing variables is crazy and excessive, but it still seems like the easiest and simplest way to add these two speedrun types in the future, and still make the leaderboard readable and clean. Either way, let me know what you think. The change won't do anything to pending submissions, it will only reverse the order of two variables.

Exactly Neko. It's better that for now, we focus our attention on the simple and most popular categories.

Currently, we shouldn't try and establish special categories like no skips and Low IGT, because we don't really know how normal runs would look like (I sure don't), let alone these special speedruns. And also, if new techniques and glitches where to keep being found as we are discussing these categories, it would strongly make us lose time by having to spend additional time deliberating, each time. This latter issue actually happened as I was writing my full-game post, which as a result delayed it by a couple days, and is one of the reasons why I ended up postponing Low IGT category design discussions. In the future I'll be sure to not make this same mistake twice, not losing time on lower-priority stuff

Also, I realize that I will need the official english names of all the Lunatea's Veil remaster stages before I can add stage ILs (DtP will simply follow the "Vision X-X" structure). Can someone list them to me (plus the two extras) ?

Now, about ending this discussion and making the final changes, I do not have a deadline in mind. But if the thread quiets down in the following days, I'll assume that things are mostly settled, and it will probably be time to make the changes.

If you haven't read it yet or are planning a response though, please warn us.

(don't mind me, I just like to participate in the debate a lot, even if it means that I'm incidentally taking a lot of space and visibility)

Kollieflower :

Ultimately, what we're trying to do is make those IGT speedruns look like RTA speedruns, in the feel and pace of the run. Which is why disallowing the warping trick in general and moderating pausing and time management (at least at top level) is crucial in order to simulate such a speedrun. I'm repeating myself, but moderating pausing for lower level runs would probably be a waste of effort on the moderation side. The time-saves pausing yields are too insignificant at lower levels, compared to just playing better and using new/more optimised techniques. Thus runners are not really encouraged to use this trick (which would be a burden to them anyways, as it just goes in the way of gameplay and movement). So because of this, I statistically believe the timer won't be abused in general and trust that that players will most likely mind their business actually playing the game. And even then, these particular runs won't lose too much integrity out of it. Hence why, there would probably be no rules about general pausing for when the leaderboard opens.

FPS moderation is most specifically designed for PC runners since they're the only one who can affect the framerate of the run (and very easily so), regardless if it's intentional or not. Some people might unknowingly be playing on a completely different FPS than the game, while others, accustomed to other speedruns where FPS is a major component, might enter new games with different framerate values due to habits, or stemming from their first playthrough or something. Regardless of their reasons, we have already met KPRS runners that have done runs of the game with different framerates than the game intends, so it's only natural to expect more of them to come up in the future. Therefore why this point is important

In some way, allowing PC players to bind the Support move button to their controller is essential. I have heard that otherwise, setting the Support mode up for a one player usage is immensely more difficult to set up there than it is for console runners.

I think in general I'd see myself keeping the game vanilla at all time. I feel that modding it, even just for inoffensive aesthetic changes, would still harm the integrity of the runs. Like if you replace Klonoa's model to Sonic just for the visual giggle, to me it's just not KPRS anymore (another example : Stepping Wind to Snow Halation). If you put simple legit track remixes, I also don't know if they would do, even if they were to actually fit the game. Obviously though, outside the leaderboard, everything is possible. Don't let this hold you. As tracksuit said, it's probably better to disallow all mods for the time being. And let's not forget that console players do not have access to this luxuty, even down to very simple mods that try to fix the game like incorrectly animated cutscenes.

Rest I agree.

godjou : I get your concern. The truth is, my post was originally intented to have much more to say on the topic of the warping technique, but I ended up discarding it at the end. One reason for it was that we didn't (and still don't) know much about the possibilites and actual usefulness of the warping technique. Therefore, it is pointless to try and make exceptions to it, especially when... read further below. I am onboard with the idea that in the future, we could allow exceptional uses of this technique, for normal speedruns. But only after we have a clear enough picture of its uses and usefulness. For instance, in 1-2, the stage the warping trick has been discovered (by BobbyKaze), you would think that it saves a lot of time, and is a must go strategy if you want to be fast. But testing shows that the actual time-save is underwhelming. It's like 5 seconds slower than RTA, and even for IGT, it possibly only saves one second, and that if you play well enough. Suddenly, not that much interesting. This is the sort of thing we need to know in advance before we make any exceptions.

No, you are right in raising this doubt. Console runners can't really control the framerate, let alone have a counter for them, so they are not concerned with anything related to this point. But PC runners can absolutely control it, so if should most definitely be enforced on their end (if this is the path we go).

Either that, or you have the misfortune of playing on a terrible computer with very limited resources, which on top of making the game behave potentially differently (and funnily enough, something that console runners also can't reproduce), is just unfortunate anyways because then the game is a chore to play.

So to reiterate, maybe the enforced framerate (if there is one) for PC play should be 60. If for some computer reasons the FPS counter throughout the run progressively stagnates to other values likes 59 or 61, well, so be it, but it should at least start on 60. This last bit is simply about being flexible more than requiring extra rule text to be carried out. But in the end, I don't even know if this possible anyways.

I really only just used the 30-60 limit because that's what some people in the discord were saying about this topic. But now this should make more sense

Alright, let's finally get started with the full-game speedruns discussion (and more !). My apologies for the near weekly wait, it must have felt like an eternity to some and I completely understand that. New findings, realizations and discussions have kept pushing it back, until now.

My post is very long and exhaustive, it’s about 18k characters, and I would say it took me about 8 hours to write in total. Not counting the extra time spent thinking and debating these concepts, and talking with people. This isn’t to flex or to look goofy, but rather to warn people that this discussion is not to be taken lightly. This is not an exercise. I mean, how could it be. This is the most crucial, important moment of designing the leaderboard. This is it, the hardest part, right here, and we’re heading to it right now. This is where everything will play out... where the board will gain its official outlook. But only if we find a common ground to every single points discussed below. Some may be easy, but others might take a while...

Let alone with designing many leaderboards at all, the Klonoa community has never dealt with a game this big, this complex… I have personally learned so much with it, but saying it was easy to manage is simply not true. Many times I had to reconsider my opinions and become more tolerant of certain things, and I’m sure this will get happen countless more times in the future. I hope you may get to learn a thing or two yourself as well.

All this to say that this final-ish discussion will take time, and that a consensus won’t happen overnight. So, please take your time. I may have missed crucial points. Please point them out. For all we know, tomorrow might bring its new set of problems to solve. More reasons for this to take time. But at least, with this post it can finally take off.

I wrote a summary at the end of most of the points, that way it is easy to get the gist of what I have said. Use the abbreviations of the elements for easier discussion.

I : Main points

I.a : Metric used to time the run

We have access to two distinct timing methods, that I will define as such : IGT, which is simply using and following the incorporated in-game timer of the game, and RTA, in order words how long would the run take in real time.

And already, we can see that RTA has a big disadvantage. Indeed, it counts loading-times and overall game performance in the final time, but the thing is, these two elements are slightly different depending on the platform you play on (let alone within the PC playerbase). Which means that playing on some platforms may end up being faster than others, solely based on the game itself and not because of the player.

Note that on its own, this isn't inherently a problem. You could still choose to run only against players who play on the same console as you, and live your day. But it would be less fun given that you would ultimately get to play with only a fragment of the playerbase. Which in return could unnecessarily incite people to spend money and buy faster versions of the game that they may already possess, just so they can play along other people. It would also make difficult to judge how fast a time really is, if all platforms were to have their own secluded leaderboards with varying time ranges. All these, when the game is supposed to be the same for everyone all along.

Although it is true that we do not currently have direct evidence of these loading-time and performance differences, and that such a leaderboard would still be very possible to manage (Door to Phantomile works like this), the fact remains that IGT is programmed in this game, and would allow to evade all these issues, much to our fun and wallet.

Everyone would be able to play on roughly the same game, there would be no real incentive to change platforms, it would be much easier to know how fast runs are… And times would be even easier than RTA runs to determine, not necessitating that we download videos to retime runs, since we can do it simply by looking at the final time (assuming they have the timer enabled, which would be absolutely mandatory if we were to really use the IGT metric).

So it seems that IGT is at face value a very good timing method. But is it truly perfect ?

I.b : IGT and pausing

So, you remember that in RTA timing, the run lasts real human time ? You can thus never allow yourself to slow down or take a break, at least until the run is over. Which sucks when the game gets exhausting, or when you have the nerves.

Well unfortunately, it looks like the IGT timer of Phantasy Reverie Series is flawed by this very aspect. The timer is currently programmed so that it stops when you have the game paused. Pausing is free to do, you can do it basically anywhere you feel like to, at the press of a button the entire run is paused and you're not getting penalized for it in the slightest. The timer is also not active when you are not in direct gameplay, like in the stage select map or cutscenes.

Furthermore, a trick called costume/difficulty warping technique has been found that also involves pausing. It's a pretty destructive trick because it allows teleportation to any checkpoints, you automatically regain your health if you play on easy and normal, you can reset the cycle of rooms. It can even be used to escape death if your health goes to zero but you don't touch a ground or death-plane yet (so the game still allows you to pause), at the cost of no extra lives (basically a way to cheese hard mode). But you can also go back in time and try Mirror-Fairy sections again. While it's definitely a very interesting trick (and honestly meme worthy), it has one major caveat if we time runs using IGT... because not only you would pause the timer (run) for like 8-10 seconds each time... you would have no reasons not to strike checkpoints from far away then constantly use the trick on every checkpoint you see in the hopes of saving a bit of time a little bit of walking…Because of this, its abusiveness, its likeliness to slow down the pace of runs considerably, and its use in obtaining the lowest IGT times by incidentally killing time rather than actually going fast through the game, this trick should probably be banned for normal speedruns. As for pausing the timer itself, either manually or by hanging on certain screens, they may not need to be regulated for now. It’s easy to improve one’s gameplay without relying on them. Such regulations may concern top level runs in the future, to ensure that they are speedruns that focus on going fast and having the timer run as much as possible.

I think that for now, and for the leaderboard completion sake, we should focus on normal runs, and leave aside runs that consist of getting the lowest IGT time possible by abusing everything the game. In the future, we may discuss adding it, and I believe it can have a place, but it would take significantly more time to discuss, and anyways we should really get more information about how this type of run would look like. Right now, there is barely any info on the matter, and new discoveries could change everything, so it really should be best that we leave it evolve. Same deal about allowing exceptions to the warping technique for interesting and handy uses only. We’ll discuss it at a later date.

So for now, it could be enough to ban the warping technique from speedruns. In the future, we might consider warping use exceptions, regulate pausing for top level play, and new categories for these tricks. This way, the only real drawback to IGT timing would be solved.

I.c : Timing the full-game speedrun

Starting from now, I assume that we time the game in IGT. If this were to not be the case, defining runs in RTA would not be a worrying thought, as there appear to exist clear timing points we could use.

So if we time using IGT... we simply go by the final time. Or rather, the final second, due to there not being milliseconds. As a side note, in Wii² this timer seems to start roughly as you gain control of Klonoa the first time (but not quite on the frame). But as for L'sV²... the timer starts half a second past that. Weird but okay. At least, the way the timer stops at the end of the game is obvious and clear.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear to be all that simple. For instance, the general in-game timer doesn't show up during the timed extra stages, and as a matter of fact, it considers the run paused if you play them. How would we go about timing 100% speedruns (which would probably be getting all dreamstones and save all phantomilians) ?

A simple solution is that we add the time of these extra stages to the final timer count, at the end of the run. Only small issue with this practice : the most precise time unit value the in-game timer tracks are seconds. Which means that it would be gameplay-wise possible to gain one second by adding up the fictive millisecond counts of the in-game and extra timers, but the final time wouldn’t count it because it doesn’t count milliseconds, nor the time spent on the extras. A second sure is annoying, but is it really that much when talking about 100% runs ?

Similarly, as far as we know, it is impossible to start a normal stage with the timer set at zero (outside of the first stage of both games). It will always start with some extra time carried over from previous stages. There, the way to time the run using IGT would be to take the beginning stage time, and subtract it from the time of the end of the stage. It sucks, because it entails that depending on when exactly you start the level, and the remaining time before the seconds digit updates, you could play with a one second IL disadvantage if the counter were to update as soon as you start the level. Which truly sucks for small stages such as 1-1 (though maybe not as much for longer stages like Kingdom of Sorrow). I do personally not see a way to solve this issue, without relying on RTA. Either people reset the stage as soon as a second ticks so that they can avoid this issue, in other simulating the timer starting at zero (which doesn’t sound that painful all things considered since you can easily do that from a failed attempt), or you simply wouldn’t want to care about stage optimizations when there remains only one second left to save.

Lastly, I would still argue that we should keep RTA around, but as a side, information based run metric. Its use would be to tell us how long has the run/IL actually lasted for, which is always nice to have around when it comes to IGT. It's very simple to define : RTA starts and stops accordingly to IGT. Since it's not as important as IGT, exact accuracy is not required, after all we are only looking for a rough estimate of the real time duration of the run. Thanks to this extra gap of flexibility, timing RTA wouldn’t require anyone to download videos for frame-by-frame rewind. Hence also not necessary to fill out for players.

So basically, assuming we go IGT, we would use the in-game timer for everything. Easy. When running 100% or normal stages ILs, however, we would have little choice but to make simple arithmetic calculations to calculate the final time. The timer not having milliseconds and being potentially inaccurate by a second in the aforementioned categories is really not great, but I guess there are still ways to get around it. Anyways, I don’t personally think that a single second is big enough to fully argue against IGT timing. And, we would still keep RTA, just to know how long the run has lasted outside of the game.

With this, I have now brought to your attention the main points we need to address in order to be able to design full-game speedruns, at least their main outlines.

Unfortunately, we are not done yet. There are a number of smaller, but still important points we have to address before we can fully set home.

II : Side points

II.a : Framerates

The Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is a game that officially runs in 60 FPS, but the actual framerate of the game isn’t exactly perfectly continuous at all times. Especially on some platforms, like the Switch, the framerate might drag down to 50 FPS. It truly does suck, as it makes overall gameplay less accurate. In this instance, it’s perfectly reasonable to want to upgrade to a better version of the game.

But the PC platform has it different. Indeed, on PC it is possible to play the game at higher FPS counts. Some computers may even do it by default. And it has been discovered that the game does seem to behave differently depending on the framerate. Although we do not know the impact of high fps runs on the game as a whole, according to the following videos, we can only imagine :

This thus brings the problematic of allowing custom FPS runs. Should we enforce Fps regulations for PC, or distinguish their runs altogether ?

Well, it is a personal stance, but I find it obvious that everyone should play under the same game constraints, so it’s a fair playing field, and 60 fps gameplay can’t be cheesed out. This doesn’t mean that the behavior and effects of high fps should never be studied with the game. I completely encourage it, and I’m all up for more funny glitches and interesting game breaking stuff to be found. Perhaps then, high fps speedruns may be considered.

If we do set up a fps limit, this is how I would suggest it to be done. Bear in mind that I am in no way knowledgeable about PC spedrunning so my opinion may not have much wisdom. But we all gotta begin somewhere.

The FPS may be limited between 30 and 60 (don’t mistake it with lag, but rather the game running at normal speed but with overall less frames being displayed per second). The FPS value needs to be consistent over the run, so obviously, spontaneous out of range framerate counts are tolerable. It’s also acceptable if the framerate for some reasons stays barely outside the range, for instance at 61 fps, as even though we do not have sufficient data on its consequences, the impact of a single extra frame seems insignificant. Not only crossing the former limit is proven to slightly affect the game, at that point, we might as well consider your game defective and not acceptable to run on. For the latter limit, it’s just to prevent impossible gameplay and unforeseen consequences to take place, and to be in line with console runs.

Now for the cumbersome part of this decision. To ensure that we can see the runner’s framerate, we would henceforth enforce PC runs to not only have a FPS counter on their run (Steam’s built in FPS counter, others software like geforce experience, Rivatuner...), but to also force the game FPS to 60 using other programs… a guide might have to be written to help players with setting this up. Of course, this choice may imply rejecting runs that do not not respect this. Including some of the already pending runs, which couldn’t have known. Anyways, this is only my proposal, and this is a forum discussion thread for a reason.

If we choose to separate PC runs (using a 4th variable for category separation), then no rules would need to be emitted at all (though it would still be handy to know the general framerate of runs).

Small note, lag strats are yet to be found.

II.b : Support move binding

The Support action button need a second controller in order to be used. On most platforms, this will mean that players will juggle two controllers at once. But PC players have the possibility to avoid this trouble, by binding the Support move button onto the same input device through various means. It is susceptible of making Support mode speedruns slightly easier. And as far as I know, it is way less accessible if not completely unavailable for console based platform runners.

The main problem here is that policing this potentially advantageous practice seems only possible via extremely strict policies. Such as, asking for real-time handcam proof to make sure that they play with two distinct controllers. Furthermore, it remains to be proven if this input bind actually gives any actual real benefit for PC runners. Such that this point might not be a concern until we reach super top level territory, and even then, it will need to be debated.

So, personally, I would leave the matter be.

II.c : Game versions

Usually, game gets updated. And when it comes to speedrunning, games might sometimes receive gameplay changes that thus affect the overall running experience. Will this happen with this game ? Have things already happened ? The question is mostly left open. This game may very well remain the same, or suffer the same fate as Super Mario Odyssey, with updates bringing significant gameplay changes, and nearly inaccessible updates.

This is just for information.

II.d : Mods

Should we allow runs performed on a game that has mods installed ? For texture or music changes ? Even for fixing the broken cutscenes in the Lunatea’s Veil remaster ? (https://github.com/entriphy/KPRS_Mods/releases/tag/20220715) This will also concern PC runs the most. I think that all types of mods should be banned for the simple reason that non-PC platforms can’t have them anyways. But this is also a new territory for me, so please share your ideas.

III : Details

This last chapter groups a bunch of elements that are too small to have their own points.

• For full-game speedruns, you should play the game on a new save-file. That way you would start the same way as everyone else, with the same amount of extra lives, same game integrity.

• Support mode is a setting you can choose in the option panel, and a gauge will show up at the bottom right of the screen. It is not the same as actually using the Support move. If you submit a run in the Standard category, but in which the Support mode is enabled, but you never use the move once in the run, the submission should still be worthy of being submitted in the Standard mode category.

• For top level only, but in order to mitigate pausing in full game- runs, you would be required to have the Support mode activated before the run, or at the very least, right as the run begins, as doing it there is mostly insignificant.

• Again, for top level runs of the current speedruns, runs might need to need to be single segment.

• In most cases, a given submission might not be able to fill two separate categories. For instance, you wouldn’t be able to submit a boss IL performed on the hard difficulty and normal, even if the runs would prove to be be exactly identical to one another regardless. An exception could however be made, that you could reuse footage of full-game runs to submit IL times (excepted for bosses, since they have their own dedicated time-attack mode with milliseconds).

• Using a costume in the run is allowed.

• No skips/glitchless runs might be considered in the future, though not for the same reasons that IGT optimisation runs.

Alright, that is finally the bottom of it. Again, let me know what I may have missed with this investigation. And most importantly, thank you for your time.

(blame src for condensed text)

And for the Lunatea's Veil remaster, its physics are very much like the original PS2 game, and most tricks and skips are carried over from there. Surprisingly enough.

If this is your first speedrunning experience, I suggest taking it easy by doing runs where you don't learn any skips for now. Where you try to press on through the game. Getting familiar with the levels and bosses. Then, you may desire to switch out to what you find most fun : running on other difficulties, using skips...

NOT the post you are expecting. Just clarifying that I verified a couple IL runs to test with the custom trophies and see how the submissions would look like. I didn't verify any of the PC ILs... because some discovery about higher fps counts than 60 affecting gameplay will make them (as well as full game-runs) have to be delayed. Sorry in advance, but it might not be a good time for PC submissions right now.

Let's try them !

...We won't get to see them till runs are in the board. But I may finally review some of the short ILs ones down to test this with

I just verified a couple runs, and they seem to be working ! Many thanks ! We don't have any boardst hat have more than one run, so look forward to the moment we'll get to see the other thophies.

Ooh, I ddn't think of that. Great idea ! Think you could retrieve one for the small heart containers ? (even if it doesn't spin it's okay)

Given their size are small, using the ones with more frames wouldn't be a problem I think.

That discussion will officially happen soon. Just know that as long as you have the game recorded, and the in-game timer on, there will most likely be no problems with anyone's runs.

Don't forget the 4th can be changed as well. Definitely possible to reuse them, but maybe there's something better or original. I'll leave that matter off to you all

A lot of tricks are very surprisingly compatible, even the totally out-of-place end cutscene of Kingdom of Sorrow. That's all I can know to say, and others will be able to help you and us better. I'd also still like to know if displacement wall-clips are carried over

Geez... don't have a lot of time, and the server is so active and everyday there's a new supervillain causing havoc in the leaderboard...

Though tomorrow it will get better a bit, and we might finally get progress with full time runs and other smaller errands

Two things :

I don't know if ILs are actually ready given all the once again new findings. For instance, it turns out that you cannot activate Support Mode until you are in a stage. While the act of having Support move enabled won't be enough to move your Standard run to the Support mode categories (only when the player use the move at least once), if you are actually going for Support runs of anything, you should set it up before you start your run. Setting it up during the IL attempt will have the run be deemed unacceptable because pausing is banned. It's definitely less problematic for full-game runs, especially if you do it in the very first seconds of the first stage... but I don't think it will threaten the integrity of speedruns unless we're talking about top level ones, in which it would be expected be regulated to at the very most the beginning of the first played stage. (Anyways, I don't see why you wouldn't want to have it be activated as soon as possible)

• It should probably be mandatory that in the rules you are required to have the timer enabled. Cause if you don't... well gg we can't time your run Obviously that doesn't concern timed ILs since they don't have one. Just use the timer they provide

Day #2 of me ranting about NamcoBandai over updating timer so that it allows milliseconds

Sorry if this isn't very clear

Looking forward to your 69 dreamstones speedruns and routing then.

For questions or subjects unrelated to this thread, please at least make a separate thread for them.

Bernaeon : Most of these IGT timer pauses are alright because there's really nothing you can do during these specific moments. Most are pretty harmless too.

But there are some interesting exceptions.

Opening doors. Normally there's nothing you can do during them, but if you use the Support move in L'sV, you will gain control of Klonoa much earlier and save a bit of time. The one million dollar question is, how does the IGT behave around this in DtP² and L'sV² ? Someone should really record how it plays out.

There is also this one with cannons that stop the timer. Which is weird, because you can still "move" Klonoa by doing taunts. But, most importantly, you can glitch them like this (https://youtu.be/6uWlIGY6z_Q?t=1645>) And someone should also really record what happens to the IGT. It's mostly exclusive to one place, but you never know if it may just freeze the timer for the rest of the stage...

This aside, there will be world map staying duration limits, similarly to pausing limits (again, both for top play only).

I guess the leaderboards are functional, but some more new stuff have come up again. Maybe we should stop making promises.

What I wrote for the IL rules in my small spare time this lunch :

" Beat the boss or stage as fast as possible. Currently, only timed ILs are available. For them, you must input the final time of your run in the IGT column. Have the last digit be a zero.

Input if you have used the Support move or not.

Input the difficulty level you have played on. In ILs, the act of pausing, and the costume/difficulty warping technique (and incidentally, switching difficulties) are banned for the three main difficulties, but a special difficulty called low IGT allows them back. "

Assuming people think this is fine when I come back this evening, the Il section will be opened and runs should finally be verified. Make sure to update the information of your various IL submissions to fit these rules, in case they were to remain.

IGT allows runs from every platforms to be comparable (at least time-wise, as some version/platforms might suffer from slight fps inconsistencies which may affect the game a little bit), and it's built in from the get go, meaning that people don't have to worry about timing their run or anything, they can just play and get a time by the end of it. it's super comvenient The only known problem with IGT is player pausing, and that can be mitigated fairly easily. Can you list us the things you've found that the IGT timer seems to not count towards the time of the run, or be flawed about ?

I'm not sure what you mean by the costume swappig technique being cumbersome in IGT ? You mean that doing it all the time is tiresome ? I mean, that's why low IGT exist. You don't have to be fast all the time, you can take breaks everytime you want. Hence why it's more like a logistical challenge than a speedrun.

Anyways, even if we switched to RTA everywhere, we would still have to deal with these pausing techniques in the IGT ILs. And right now, the solution we've come up with seems infinitely more elegant than this.

About still making an exception to costume/difficulty warping techniques in standard full-game speedruns, I think I will first leave it to the players to find as many uses as they can for it, uses that would provide a real advantage, even if we were running RTA (so it's not just measly IGT time-saves low IGT would be fond of).

[5 min edit : To be honest I'm still not fond of allowing these tricks in standard speedruns. Even if it were to be used only two times, you still get to reset the stage and enemies cycles if there are, regain your health like it's nothing, and if players don't have costumes, they'd have to change difficulty which is also supposed to be prohibited (and definitely bannable if you switch from easy to something else). So basically there would still be people who do not have access to the trick like probably me.]

Board redesigned anyways. I added a 4th difficulty setting, it will be the one concerned with low IGT. Unfortunately, no matter how small the names are, if you have 4 different values for a variable, and you create categories out of them, they will be displayed through a button that you have to click to make them unfold. Ugly, but a site limitation.

For ILs, I merged any% Standard and Support to just any% (and added 100% cause why not). Within the IL sections, you can choose if you've used Support mode or not.

Note that we still can't accept ILs because the rules are not written for all these things yet. I'm not sure if I will be able to get to them in 30 minutes, but I will try. Be on the lookout. [EDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT : Nope. Tomorrow at best.]

Another note, I have disabled the parameter that makes it so empty time column will still show regardless. This is because :

• For full game runs, we may still accompany IGT timing with RTA timing as a supplementary metric (but overall less important, and not meant to be perfectly accurate)
• For timed ILs such as the extras and bosses, we will fill in only the IGT column
• For non-in-game timer stages such as the main game stages, we will fill only the RTA column.

I honestly thought we were done with this, but you asked a very good question, also in the server we suddenly realized that the costume/difficulty warping technique is actually super broken.

(I've just said this in the server, but for clarity sake) Basically, the problem with the trick is that you can exploit all checkpoints by shooting them from far away, and just warp yourself to them, saving some walking time. You could also force different, better cycles out of rooms. On top of that, it completely refills your health, at the cost of nothing. You can even cheat death, because if you lose all your HP, but not touch the ground or a death-plane, pausing is still allowed ! And the timer is put on hold all the way through.

Since that's like way too overpowered, and completely changes the way the game is played, it seems pretty clear that it will at the very least require its own area in the leaderboard. And while we're at it, we should enable that area or category complete pausing permission. That way, people who want to fully abide by the game's limits now really can ! This way of play could go under the name of low IGT. The other categories, while still under the IGT metric, are intended to play out like continuous, real time speedruns with few IGT timer pauses. And lastly, perhaps a bit controversial but I will suggest it regardless : a complete permission for that category to be able to change the difficulty as you go, 24/24h. All that in the hopes of lowering the IGT even more, and also so everyone have access to the category and techniques in some shape or form. Because of this last point, it would mean that the focus point of low IGT is not on clearing something the fastest way under a given difficulty, but simply beating it the fastest way, that the game allows for, period. Honestly, I'm hooked. (Bosses ILs won't have access to the warping trick because the fight will reset if you do so, even Nahatomb. But you can still pause and set up tricks)

About whether or not the trick will be allowed in the other, already existing, more straightforward categories like any% standard/support : Since changing difficulty or switching costumes cause the warping, it will probably be disallowed for them. So in these categories, playing exclusively under one given difficulty will be mandatory. And pausing is still planned to be regulated, though only for top profile runs that await us in the future.

(This may all sound a bit confusing, because I'm partially responding and going over things that has been said on the server)

This seems like hell to redesign the leaderboard around though.

Well actually Nazzareno, you remind me that the costume warping trick could be used in ILs (see this ) Although it involves pausing, it's not as problematic because your focus is not on reading what's ahead or setting up a trick in the fight, but timing the pause on the earliest frame that you hit the clock or lose your last hit point so you can go through the menu and swap clothes the most optimal way to the IGT.

That stuff sure is a bit cheesy to the IL, but it's really a punctual use so it's alright. It's like the death phase skip of Cursed Leorina in the original game, and the clock death warps of DtP's Balue's Tower. Standard pausing can be done anywhere, anytime, how many times you want.

So I think that there should be an exception for it. There should simply be a limit to how long you can stay on the menu, so that you don't use it to evade pressure. I think that as long as the players don't hang in the pause it should be okay.

I know it's a lot to take in, but still, what it will truly means for players is to simply not pause in ILs, except when you go for the costume swapping trick, and be fast. Shouldn't be a lot ! That means that if for the costume swapping technique you press pause too early, you have to reset the run, since once you come back to the game, your next pause input for the trick is virtually guaranteed. You have to get it first try.

Aaaaanyways... I'll set up the rules soon.