I thought 2 weeks was a fair time to wait to hear your opinions. So what I read out of your comments seems that most are fine with a subcategory for separating cyborg vs non-cyborg runs. I just implemented that moments ago calling the variable "Combat" with the sub-categories being called "cyborg" & "player".

Let me know if you have any more suggestions/feedback about the implementation.

A recent run showcases a huge timesave from enabling the cyborg option for the Sa-Matra only:

Apparently this bug/feature has been known for a long time according to gamefaqs. Even with a very fast Sa-Matra fight it saves at least 40s, for most runs on the board probably more than 1.5min. Also one could use the cyborg for the other fights in the game to maybe get a time advantage (more on that below). I'd like to get some feedback from you guys regarding this topic how we should treat cyborg usage.

Some options for the leaderboard:

• Create a new category for any kind of Cyborg usage (resulting in e.g. Any% Cyborg & Any% no Cyborg)
• leave the runs in the Any% category but keep track of them with a variable (old runs getting Cyborg = off)
• Completely ban the cyborg usage (not a recommended option imo)

Some more information/thoughts about cyborg settings: The option is available in the ingame menu and has 3 settings, weak ("cyborg on" ingame), good ("cyborg on+" ingame) and awesome ("cyborg++" ingame). Any of these should trigger the Sa-Matra fight skip. The good and awesome cyborg accelerate combat by a lot (I might insert a showcase here). But the AI is limited in their combat abilities. I tested it on the (2x) Arilou vs (5x) Mycon fight in Beta Brahe and the (1x) Utwig fight vs the Sa-Matra guards (3x Ur-Quan & 3x Kohr-Ah). The Arilou only beat 1 Mycon each before dying. The Utwig beat 2-3 guards. A well practiced runner should not have too many troubles with these fights using only a single ship.

I could see the cyborg option appealing for new runners coming in. I know from casual streamers that ship combat is daunting at the beginning.

Even though this is a small leaderboard, I'd like to keep things orderly and deal with this now. Please share your thoughts on the topic as I'd like to involve the community in this decision.

Hello there new runner!

The Steam Deck is very capable of streaming/recording runs. I sometimes use it myself. The easier path by far is going for desktop mode, install OBS & use it to do desktop recording (make sure not to reveal any sensitive stuff on videos/stream). There is a difficult path setting up OBS for game mode. I tried it, but couldn't get it to work to my liking yet.

You find a broad guide about starting with recording here: https://www.speedrun.com/forums/streaming_recording_equipment/qlnmy and resources on the help pages: https://www.speedrun.com/support/learn/resources-for-speedrunners

my best to compare loadtimes via 60fps videos of MC speedruns on different hard/software. I recommend using the shortcuts "," & "." to go 1 frame back/forward in the video for close observing.

The 3 compared systems are:

• Windows 98 on an Intel Pentium 233 MHz (Toshiba Satellite Pro 480 CDT)
• modern = Windows 10 AMD 3600x
• WINE on Intel i7-7700HQ @ 2.80GHz × 8

Observations:

• Some modern runners have the "fade to black" as screen fades, some do not. Not sure what is causing this to appear or suppress it. I only put the modern example without the "fade to black" in the comparison for now.
• Win98 doesn't show the button being pressed when starting a campaign. WINE & modern Win both do that.
• Loading times are very machine dependent.

The last point leads me to the conclusion that we need to remove loading times for the speedrunning leaderboard. Which will be a pain for the moderator (currently me) to deal with. Unless somebody cares about making an autosplitter that deals with all those loading times. Also time start will probably move to the 1st frame in mission screen after the start of the campaign to account for the 1st loading screen.

I'm sorry that I'm missing the "next mission"/loading into logistics screen on Win98 currently. I'll provide it soonTM.

Looking forward for your feedback. Would be great if someone has any clue how to create an autosplitter that works for the game. Because it might be tricky with the different resolution patches that are out on the field.

I recommend opening a support ticket if you're ambitious to get that button back. Feedback in the forums is not always taken into consideration and their ticket system is probably how they prioritize.

For smth retro what comes to mind is The Lost Vikings on the SNES.

Since you seem to like retro RTS games:

• Dungeon Keeper 2

• Dune 2 (gotta love the "classic" command 1 unit at a time)

• MechCommander

Then you should go to the respective leaderboards of those games & contact the community there via a.) their Discord server or b.) writing in the leaderboard forum or c.) writing one of the mods in one of the platforms they have.

A couple of new games or categories, but also practice & marathon participation.

I think it might be possible to find a fitting distribution to any given split if there's not too many different types of tricks/RNG involved. Like in the RNG example: if everything that is in that split can be approximated by normal distribution, then the whole split can be treated so. With the platforming example it might be very individual: let's say you have the history all your attempts of a split. Then maybe by looking at a plot of that data you might see that for a particular trick you get it 90% of the times right the 1st time then have a gap before maybe 9% of the times to get it 2nd try and so on.

But I'd guess you'd have to be very careful with what you combine in a split. If you have normal distributed & tricks with maybe weird distributions in a split then the resulting distribution might be very weird. And then calculating things with such a "bad" data quality is probably not giving any desired result.

How are you running Livesplit on linux? wine? Livesplit one website? Are you sure it is Livesplit leading to the audio dropouts?

Regarding "agreement to rules": that is tough to get if a community is not very active. People are sometimes not checking the rules, or maybe only did at some point before the current ruleset was established. So people learn when they overstep the rules and when you make them aware of that. On the other hand, if a community is active, e.g. on a discord it is relatively easy to vote how to establish rules & categories.

Random thought on what more can be done: Some emulators allow using scripts to record logs. I've heard that you could use this to make a "speedrun log". A cheater would then need to fake the log too. Which I guess is pretty hard if they don't know what would be log entries of valid runs. But you'd need to: a.) know how to script this & b.) know what are good indicators of a "real" run that are hard to fake when cheating. No clue how to do this, or if this is even possible with the emulator you use.

I still don't get it. What would make it more difficult? For somebody with video editing knowledge it is not difficult to fake a desktop and insert that in the video. I think this is rule is exaggerating a bit.

If you fear for somebody using an unfair emulator I'd look into what is happening at the game window. E.g. if you see faster gameplay than should be possible or unexpected framerates, loadtimes, etc.

While I'm not running the game (yet). I am still interested why you'd need a full desktop capture? From some other games I run it is needed to show the top bar of the windowed mode, showing the program name & specifics. I'd think that to be enough for this case too, so why would you need to see the taskbar?

Greetings Rick & welcome to the SRC-community!

It is the right place to try speedruns ;-) or just learning some strats for casual playthroughs.

Just submit it with the comment of adding the new platform. That is the preferred way I think.

Hello driver Reiko!

Most of the people on this site are runners, but ofc there are also a fair share of raceing game drivers. Enjoy the stay, keep the pedal to the metal!

An interesting proposal from the thread creator. But highly impractical for the wide range of speedrun communities in my opinion.

Writing down some of my thoughts:

1. There is no money / benefits in speedrunning available to pay an independent mod system on the implemented scale at SRC.
2. On some leaderboards there might be space to establish mod-only & non-mod leaderboards. But many games have so many categories which would make it a mess. (Especially leaderboards which are already a mess.) You could also introduce variables telling you if it was submitted by a mod. Maybe a bit less messy, but still extra effort to maintain on the boards.
3. Also how does one count a run which was done by a runner when he was still a mod, but quit being a mod after? Or the other way around: a "common" runner becoming mod after. How can you be sure that somebody doesn't just create an alternative account to avoid the limitations for mods?
4. Many games are very inactive. Current SRC policy about a pending run is that if mods are not responding within a given time the runner gets to request mod-status to verify it themselves. That would need to be changed somehow as the runner suddenly is the mod. Which leaderboard shall it be? Runner-board or mod-board or suddenly not allowed to have a run on the board?
5. Points 1-4 are the reason I say this is highly impractical. I don't see a path for implementation in the next years. Not unless the speedrun communities have a drastic change of mind.
6. In most games I run mods are one of the most engaging people of the community. I have yet to encounter one that is keeping secrets. Usually it is the other way around: mods are happy to share their knowledge of the game. Or maybe I and/or these communities I'm familiar with just haven't found their secrets yet.
7. It is not weird to me that mods usually occupy top places on leaderboards. The people who care very much about the game & carry a lot of knowledge about it will usually do quite good in runs and invest a lot of time in runs. They might lack other skills like dexterity if the game requires it, but not all do.
8. It probably not so surprising that most people that reply to this thread are mods in 1 or more games. Somebody can probably give some statistics for that. I suspect mods are in general more active on the SRC forums as they have to come to the site more often anyways to do mod-duties.
9. Would I be interested in having independent mods in my speed-games? Hell YEAH! It would be cool. I'd happily resign from my mod-duties and not do that unpaid job. I can watch the runs then of my own will and not try to analyze them for suspicious content. But as pointed out in 5. --> I just can't see that happening any time soon.

A bit off-topic: I recently discussed with my brother the use of AI to assist in finding cheaters in speedruns. AI could try to learn what is suspicious and point out those parts to the mods. I rate that more realistically than this thread's topic.

You can already order your followed games: go to your settings -> under "Communities" in "Games you follow" you can order them

Interesting topic as I might also have a case. But I'm not done with analysis on my case yet and would not care to distinguish (yet) as we only have 4 runners in total.

My thoughts on the topic: I don't think there are many runs / categories yet where it really matters. Linux gaming got a big push with the Steam Deck, but i'm not so sure about Linux speedrunning. I would not differentiate Proton & WINE as their function is basically the same. So I'd at max add "Linux WINE/Proton". The community will find out eventually under which version the game runs most optimal (if they care). And if you argue about performance differences between Proton & Wine: Technically you'd need to keep track of Proton/Wine versions. As performance also depends greatly on the version. Also on some versions it might not be possible to play the game (even newer ones). Same for Windows releases actually (compatibility mode is far from perfect to play older games). A Windows 98 native game plays runs different under Windows 7 with compatibility. I haven't seen a leaderboard keep track of that yet.

I think it makes sense to rename PC to Windows so that it is clear what is meant with that. Moderators interpret it quite differently. Technically nowadays you can submit a game with console "PC" and the emulator flag to mark as Wine/Proton. I'd be fine with that style of marking for now.

I'm interested for @LiftedStarfish 's examples.