United StatesHey, all. I've had a crazy few years that slowed me down significantly in doing anything video game related. I was worried that I had completely bombed as a moderator of this game, but it looks like we haven't had much activity anyway.
I'm here for the foreseeable future and am happy to work with such a reliable, passionate crew.
So, where do we go from here? I've fancied myself as as ambassador of this particular series of Double Dragon games (#1-3 on NES and the NES-inspired #4; btw, do we have a name for this series? I usually think of it as the NES series, but that would be inaccurate for 4). It's an underappreciated speedgame series, even among NES speedrunners, but DD4 is the one that always gets left by the wayside. I think there's some untapped potential in this game, but it may never see its shining moment.
Maybe we need more categories? [Kappa]
Alright, then. Looks like it's time to get to work. A1 already approved the run in question. I'll touch base with Antho and A1 like you asked.
Be well, James. Even if you're not able to focus fully on DD4, your periodic input will be welcome and appreciated if and when you can spare it.
TTYL.
I'll add that even when it's not stated, it's generally understood that Turbo/Autofire is banned in speedrunning NES games. There might be exceptions that I'm not aware of, or sub-categories of certain games, but you should expect to not be allowed to use it otherwise.
Thanks, NightmareJames.
I don't know if you saw what I said before I edited them this morning, but I realized I had a major tone problem and made some important changes to the 2 previous posts I made on the matter.
Of course the Discord isn't official, it's just a chat hangout. The issue was discussed there because multiple people felt like they were shut down cold on this site and didn't understand why. I spoke up, and ultimately said more than I should have, because these are people that I like and respect, this is a game series I feel a personal connection towards and because I plan on doing DD4 speedruns, myself, very soon.
We'll be seeing each other around, hopefully on good terms after moving past this, and hopefully doing our respective part to remind others how great the Double Dragon series is.
To add some context to the question about Double Dragon 4.
The supposed vote that was conducted by Nightmarejames is claimed to have occurred in a group that nobody can confirm even exists. It does not exist on speedrun.com, it does not exist on Steam, I couldn't find it on Discord and there are only 2 Google hits for "Brawler's Network" - 1 of them being Nightmarejames post and the other being entirely irrelevant. Who was supposedly polled? Nobody with times currently posted have been active in submitting more runs, and Nightmarejames is shutting down discussion from people interested in running the game. I suspect that the reason why there were not enough votes is because there was no actual poll, or, it was a posted somewhere where nobody would participate and no current or prospective runners would have access.
The Double Dragon Discord where we actively engage in discussions about speedruns of the Double Dragon series may be small, but has 4 times as many participants than there are people who have EVER submitted Double Dragon IV runs on speedrun.com. When someone shared the link to the Discord in the Double Dragon IV forum, it was quickly deleted by a moderator, presumably Nightmarejames.
He says "we have been running well" but there have been no new entries in 8 months and multiple people who WANT to speedrun the game but are hesitant due to the category disagreement.
There are other members of the Double Dragon community who are interested in speedrunning the game as well as trusted moderators of the series who would be happy to step in as moderators for Double Dragon IV if needed. Please consider helping so we won't have to start our own leaderboard platform elsewhere for just this one game, when we'd rather have the whole series unified here on speedrun.com
[Edit] I made some changes to my word choices to fix my tone and deleted 2 paragraphs that had nothing to do with the original issue.
Welcome, Super Double Dragon players!
Welcome, Double Dragon V players!
I know that this is more of a Battletoads game than a Double Dragon game, but if you'd like, you can all consider yourselves welcome to join the Double Dragon Discord, where there's channel dedicated to BT&DD.
I know that this is more of a Battletoads game than a Double Dragon game, but if you'd like, you can all consider yourselves welcome to join the Double Dragon Discord, where there's channel dedicated to BT&DD.
Welcome, GB Double Dragon runners!
Oh, this works for me because I use a foot pedal. For those without a foot pedal, it's probably a pain to try to hit a key on a keyboard the exact moment you have to start moving in the game.
I just do it by feel. It's a slight moment after the screen finishes loading before you gain control. I'm pretty sure the music sub-consciously helps accuracy, but I don't deliberately pay attention to it.
Another way to do it would be to time the difference between the screen loading- when the black bar reaches all the way to the right- and your character loading, then have that be your buffer. Just hit the timer as soon as the screen loads.
I wish I thought of that sooner, because I think I might like to do that form now on xD
We're in very strong agreement here that we don't want to allow Game Overs.
Unless I missed something along the way, it sounds like only reason why we're hesitating because we want to be fair to runners who used a different rule set before it's changed. I'm not sure there's really a single solution that fixes this conflict.
Maybe some of you are more creative than I am, but I only see a handful of ways this could go.
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Don't change anything.
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Make new categories.
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Change the rules for Coop and accept that we have to reject old runs.
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Define a ruleset that allows for certain (possibly arbitrary) exceptions to disallowing the Game Over abuse.
None of these are clean solutions, but I think in at least outlining the options, we can have some kind of agreement on which ones are worse than others.
How about just an added filter instead of a different board? Game Over Abuse YES/NO or something like it.
Thanks for bringing this up, and for opening the floor to our comments!
You feelings reflect my own. To remove either player from the game is entirely against the spirit of what a co-op run is. This is, of course, just an opinion and opinions vary.
Then again, and I think this might be the semantic smoking gun that supersedes all opinion, when one player gets a game over, and is removed from play, the run is no longer cooperative.
I think it's fair to say that if at any point the run is not cooperative, then the run is invalid, even if the other player can return to the game later. Compare- if one is doing a no-oob run, the run is invalid once you go out of bounds and it makes no difference that you come back inbounds to finish the game.
Following this logic, there could be separate categories for a "2 Players" run and a "Cooperative" run, with the side effect being that it smacks of leaderboard and WR inflation. It wouldn't bother me to do this, but I'm not a mod and I know not everyone likes overly specialized categories.
At some point, he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. He never gave me a specific reason why.
He hasn't entirely disappeared, though. He has other accounts and he sometimes reappears.
