Rule Overhaul

While I was working on the leaderboard for the new category, I went ahead and overhauled the rules page for both the game rules and rules for every category. Most of it was for cosmetic and clarity reasons, but there's a couple of additions and changes.

All Chapters, All Keys, and the new category have a new rule: Players must enter and exit every chapter through the maps intended entrances and exits.

This is a vast improvement over the previous rule of "you must enter a chapter within a 30x30 block radius from the sign." This rule basically existed to allow for Fence Hop to be reasonable, but also introduced a weird gray-area between the acceptable way to enter a chapter. Since Fence Hop is now a completely obsolete strat, however, the rule can now be straight forward.

There is also a new section for rules related to mods. In short, game performance enhancing mods (OptiFine, Sodium, Starlight) and shader mods are allowed, while more powerful gameplay-changing mods (LoTAS) are banned. This list will continue to be updated as needed.

Don't accidentally do runs on a practice instance! LoTAS is banned!

Let's talk about the new category.

New Category: No Skips!

This is a category I've been thinking about for a long time, but was having various issues making a reality.

The original name for this category was "Intended Route" and then at some point was "Intended%," but my issues with those names were in how vague they were. What could be considered as "intended?" Is every tiny timesaving strat "unintended?" Where is the line between strats that are banned because they aren't "intended?" Something as simple as Bar Hop probably wasn't "intended." Or was it? Does it fucking matter?

As of yesterday I finally decided on the name "No Skips" which is much more straight forward and solves the problems with the original name.

The run requirements are exactly what you'd think. No major or minor skips are allowed. This includes Grim Skip, Sewer Skip, Clint and Steal, Library Skip, City Escape, Brew Co. Skip, Pigs Escape, Freezer Route, YMCA Skip, Office Skip, Meeting Skip, School Skip, Cinema Skip and City Skip. That's a long ass list. Just goes to show how open ended and interesting this map is.

The other problem to solve with this category was the wool burning issue. The intended route for this game includes a few places where you're forced to wait for wool to burn, and this can take anywhere from three to up to 60 seconds, and sometimes maybe not even happen at all. You can just stand there like a dumbass and nothing could happen after a full minute. It sucks, which is why in every other category we avoid this wool burning RNG in every way possible (Clint and Steal, Early Burn, and Cinema Skip all exist for this purpose). In No Skips, however, there aren't any possible ways to skip burning wool. Which is why this category has an exclusive map rule:

"While obtaining the key item Flint and Steel is required, players are allowed to break Black Wool by hand when necessary to avoid inconsistent, run-killing RNG."

No other category is planned to have this rule going forward. It would feel weird making obtaining the Flint and Steel required for All Chapters and All Keys when it basically already is for these categories anyway, even if you only use it once.

As for the run itself, this is the new longest and most parkour-dense category in the map, which is what makes it so exciting. Depending on how optimized the run gets, this could end up being arguably the hardest category. I'm very excited to try it out and see what I can do, and I hope some others follow suit.

TLDR because I like writing and these news posts end up being long as a result:

Double check the rules page. Game rules and category rules for every category have been updated.

New category bans all skips but allows breaking black wool by hand. New longest category and this new black wool rule makes it actually fun.