This entire thing is a clusterfuck and the mods involved in that issue are a collective disgrace.
@Liv For games where Score is the fundamental objective such as Guitar Hero I agree, but for legit speedgames where score attacking is possible, it serves a very useful purpose; it forces you to play the game in a way not normally required in the regular speedroute, which is great for expanding your skillset in the game. Executing the route quickly doesn't necessarily mean you're good at 'the game', but getting high scores everywhere quite often requires a very comprehensive understanding of the game and how to get the most out of everything.
A lot of the time, this can actually be reduced down to a simple formula regardless of the game's genre; time spent making inputs vs time spent waiting.
If your game has lots of dead time between sets of inputs, and those inputs don't last very long, chances are your game is not particularly interesting as a speedrun. By contrast, if you're always forced to be making inputs and there are few opportunities in the run to just not do anything, odds are good that your speedrun is pretty technical and demanding.
This effectively transcends genres, as it's very possible to have platformers with extended autoscroller section, and then have RPG runs where you just never stop inputting. The first game that comes to mind of that ilk is Megaman Battle Network, in which you select New Game and then basically perform constant inputs for 80 minutes, whilst never having more than a second or two at most to just not do anything.
Hardest difficulty tends to be a good benchmark for speedrunning. If there are difficulties that aren't "substantially different" then that could be a reason to not include them.
Manipulations are much stricter to execute than you may originally anticipate. It's impossible to say what you're doing wrong without seeing a video of yourself performing the manips, but the exact manner in which you see a manipulation performed in a demo video is the precise method that you HAVE to use in order to nail it. There's no such thing as being "close enough" with executing manips.
The only thing that can be happening outside of player error is an IGT0 failure, but I know nothing about Any% NSC manips so I can't say for certain if those can occur.
@oddtom A wrong warp is not a physics exploit, it's a coding exploit.
Superbouncing in Sonic Adventure 2 fits the bill here. The physics in that game are super dynamic, with a great emphasis on, well, going fast.
A Superbounce is performed by bouncing before you come into contact with a wall. Doesn't sound like much, but that's because the application is variable; coming into contact with a wall whilst in the bounce form immediately converts your horizontal speed into vertical speed.
In other words, bounce into a wall whilst barely moving and you won't notice a difference. Bounce into a wall whilst moving as fast as possible, and you will go much higher than was ever intended. Virtually no walls in the game are solid beyond a certain height.
"- Cheating isin't tolerated and will result in all your runs getting deleted from our speedrun page and rejection for all your future runs."
The fact that the moderators of that game felt the need to include that second rule says to me that their judgment about what should be taken as a given and what is common sense isn't completely sound.
Antiviruses will flag up any and all .exe files they don't like. As long as it's been vouched for by the community (As it was made by someone in the community) just whitelist it.