I'm changing moderation for this game over to a well-known community member with knowledge of the game.

I'm working with some of the site's NES runners to turn over some games to active users well-involved in the NES speedrunning community.

I'm changing moderation for this game over to some well-known community members with knowledge of the game.

This board is a bit excessive on categories when compared with the rest of the site NES games. The categories are also highly isolated making it difficult to find and compare runs.

The site does not specifically standardize these things, but we're looking at coming up with some basic expectations for NES games. The wider NES speedrun community wants to implement some basic expectations for NES games on the site.

Flobeamer1922 submitted this video today: (Link=)

I tend to think he successfully found a way to execute the "Die with health win" I've speculated possible in the past. If you indeed managed that, congratulations on finding the glitch.

1: Myself and the other mods are trying to understand exactly how this route works. At a basic level we need to be able to reproduce it to know if it's legitimate. If you want to, you can just link us the movie file and specify the emulator version used, and that should be enough for us to confirm the route itself is legitimate. Alternatively, a set of things you are required to do would help us reproduce this.

2: The recording mechanism here is rather non-standard, and I'm not sure if we would want to allow this recording mechanism or not. The run is played back from an emulator movie file, and the sound is out of sync and/or sped up. This is possibly a result of bad capturing (use sync sound maybe?)

I'm not really accusing you of TASing this, because the movement doesn't look particularly crisp. It seems more like a demonstration played in real time and played back from a recording for simplifying capture. Playing the run back from a movie file is somewhat questionable as it leaves runs very susceptible to being TASed, and I'm unsure if that's something we would want to allow as a precedent.

If you can clarify point 1, the moderators can come to a consensus on point 2.

We can discuss how/if this affects categories after we sort this out. I would tend to think this just becomes the new "any%"

I'm changing moderation over to some well-known community members with knowledge of the game.

This board is pretty heavily out of step with the rest of the site NES games. The standard category uses turbo, which almost all games ban, and the category organization isn't particularly good. Putting 3 games on 3 different consoles under the same umbrella and splitting by console probably isn't ideal for this game.

The site does not specifically standardize these things, but we're looking at coming up with some basic expectations for NES games. The wider NES speedrun community wants to implement some basic expectations for NES games on the site so that all users can use all boards, as opposed to having the board supporting the ideals of whoever happened to request it first.

I did a comparison of Auchgard's any% Normal run vs mine out of curiosity to see where I lost so much time.

Enter Mild Town 5.9 11.9 (+6.0) (Kirk lost 6 seconds because he didn't skip cutscene) Leave Mild Town 42.2 46.9 (+4.9) (Auchgard's Mild Town was kind of bad by his own statement.) Leave Forest 1:02.1 1:07.0 (+4.9) Leave Fall Town 1:42.5 1:49.4 (+6.9) (Kirk lost 2 seconds to first fight) Leave Centaur Cave 2:02.9 2:13.0 (+10.1) (Auchgard had better fights.) Leave Burn Town 2:50.3 3:03.0 (+12.7) (Auchgard had better fights.) Leave Pyramid 3:33.1 3:50.5 (+17.4) (Auchgard had better fights.) Leave Moon Town 4:18.8 4:36.8 (+18.0) Enter Warp Room 4:56.9 5:15.5 (+18.6) Final Heart Door 6:48.7 7:05.3 (+16.6) (Auchgard uses Spider Cave first route, we both make some time consuming mistakes though.) Phase 1 7:09.9 7:25.2 (+15.3) (Auchgard grabs an extra flask here) Phase 2 7:29.0 7:43.3 (+14.3) Phase 3 7:47.5 7:58.3 (+10.8 ) (Kirk spends 3 flasks) Phase 4 8:29.1 8:45.1 (+16.0) (Auchgard has an extra 4 flasks.)

Conclusions: 1: Hit escape to skip opening cutscene and save 6 seconds lol. 2: Based on this comparison I still think there's a good chance Spider Cave last might be a couple seconds faster. Analyzing where Auchgard and I made mistakes in that section might give a more definitive answer. Darko's run does this route as well. 3: Auchgard spends about 1.5 seconds on the flask at the end. Auchgard's extra 4 flasks on this attempt save about 5.2 seconds or 1.3 seconds per flask. There's variability, so it's extremely close either way. Looking at the boss health memory and analyzing damage per second might give the real answer, but we're talking about a couple tenths either way. 4: Spending the flasks on the final phase probably makes it more consistent and probably faster overall, because the fight is shorter and you don't need to dodge as much.

I didn't play through the various categories enough to have a good recollection of all the weirdness with percentages and extra bosses and whatever else.

I added Auchgard as mod since he seems to know the categories better than I do. Feel free to set up the timing rules as they make sense per category.

The original comment was this: ""I feel like time ending upon getting in the carriage after beating That Guy makes more sense, because that activates the ending that shows you your 102% completion. That being said, this is a 19:02 if time ending remains at defeating That Guy.""

From time to time users with varying reasons request their times not be listed on a board. Various communities have handled this in different ways, which leads to inconsistency from the site perspective. There has not historically been a site expectation or a rule on this topic.

Issues have occurred relating to this from time to time in the past, and issues have occurred on this topic prior to this site even existing. A common response to the situation seems to be the user taking the run down, or a substantial disagreement developing.

A rule on this would be worded something like the following: "If a runner requests their time not be listed on the boards, don't list it." Should the site have a rule like this?

Moving the discussion here to isolate it from the "The Site" thread. Please keep this specific topic out of that topic for now if possible.

Those posts are here: http://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/63nr7/157#2xyae

The issue of Megaman Leaderboards obviously has a lot of history, and the situation has always been suboptimal situation for a variety of reasons. API discussions have been had a few times and haven't happened due to a variety of reasons, including the time, effort, and coordination required.

The current argument goes something like the following: 1: Some users are of the opinion SRC should have moderation reflecting MMLB. 2: Some MMLB moderators don't want to spend additional effort synchronizing runs on SRC. 3: Some MMLB moderators decide not to let people submit on SRC because they don't want to use it or synchronize it.

It is and has been my opinion that there are some number of people who play Megaman games that want to track all of their runs on one site or with one API. I still find it ridiculous for users of another site to claim ownership of a board on a different site and tell other people they can't use it. I personally do not sanction the use of "NO RUNS HERE", I've been minimally tolerant of it for now because the situation is crappy, complex, and nuanced all around. I don't like it. Pac may have slightly varying opinions on the matter.

The person being proposed by a couple people to run the boards here seems strongly against Megaman runs being tracked on this site to some degree, and seems to regularly get into strong disagreements over the topic, one of which was the reason for why this topic is being discussed right now. In my opinion the users were requesting to not have to work with the person creating strong disagreements at this site, which I still find to be a pretty reasonable request given the circumstances.

Is there some middle ground in between "People can't track runs here" and "Board moderation isn't representing the community"? Serious question.

There is also this old thread on the topic: http://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/pb5j2

EDIT: Things seem fixed, need a few days to catch up.

Game Request Processing broke sometime Sunday with some code update that was pushed. I've brought it to the attention of the coders. The requests in pending actions are still in queue, we just can't process them without them breaking and deleting. There are ways to work around this, but they are quite painful.

New requests appear to be going in queue still.

About 3 requests were deleted as a result of the bug, those will have to be resubmitted unfortunately.

The queue was already about 12 days behind as it was, sorry about that.

Since the series mods opted to not moderate the series going forward, we're lacking moderators.

What does the community want us to do with the moderation of the other boards? I'll try to handle this over the next couple days if feedback is sufficient, but I'm not going to be refreshing this thread all night. My Twitch PMs are open as well.

Changes pertaining to previous "Memes" boards:

My perception is that calling it a "Memes" board somewhat makes the game name unprofessional, and subliminally encourages people to do stupid things with game covers and category names. We're changing the name to "Category Extensions", because that's what it technically is. Treat it like an extension of the board for now.

Consider the fact that some boards have been allowed this an exception, not the norm.

My opinion of "Category Extensions" is that it's fine only in the specific case for highly popular games as a temporary solution to a current shortcoming of the site. Misc categories are intending for tracking miscellaneous things. Separate boards are not intending for tracking miscellaneous things. I think the ideal situation would be that the site lets you have "multiple full game and IL boards" per board, such that there can be multiple tracked "boards" within one board. In my opinion, that's the issue creating most of the desire for separate tracking. My hope has been that we can get the functionality to merge these back eventually. In addition, any merging will be less of a headache if we can minimize the number of these that exist.

Category extensions MUST be added or approved of by moderators for the games they are based off of.

Factors:

• Large number of runners on main board
• Misc categories not providing sufficient mechanism for tracking.
• Official commercial releases only
• Probably other stuff

If you don't meet these criteria, you probably don't have a strong need for one. This policy also somewhat applies to Multi-Game boards.

If people start adding really stupid ones, I will start deleting them.

Also, any comments on site limitations necessitating the desire for these boards would be appreciated. Why not use misc categories? Do we need something slightly different? Is there something we can do in the short term that doesn't require massive restructuring?

One of the previous moderators got at least temp banned for shitting up discord and being a general nuisance to other users. I don't know all the details. If he wants to sort that out with site staff he is welcome to.

One of his buddies decided it would be a good idea to add the previous moderator's ban evading account as a moderator, so I removed him as well. These users seem to also like adding their friends who don't run the games, so those people were all removed as well. The site keeps logs of all of this.

One user does run the games and hasn't caused any issues yet that I've seen, but he's certainly not in with a great crowd, lol

I wrote a script to brute force Charabom battles a while back: ( http://pastebin.com/qMGpPB4J ) It's coded specific to Andlar and Pteradon, but could easily be generalized. The results are at the end of the post. The charabom fights in the gba bomberman appear to follow the same mechanics.

RPGodfather: In your latest run, you chose the wrong action order for the Pteradon battle. I believe all combinations of attack patterns in my run are optimal both for theoretically fastest and most chance of winning fights and mashability, so I'd recommend referencing those. You need level 17 andlar for 51 HP and then some combination of attack and special meeting the requirements at the end of the post. Also, are you playing on gamecube, white wii, or black wii? I'm just curious on the details, I've never tested black wii for this game.

Also check this out, dunno if anything there is useful:

The rest of this post is a copy paste of a PM I wrote to sio-kedelic a while back. sio-kedelic and I were disputing the viability of one particular potion, I tend to think he was correct, but my post below not reflect this. In my route listed here, the one lightening card out of the way in the glacier level and the associated stats can be traded out for a different lightening card and other stats.

Route: 1-1, 3-1, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 3-2, 2-5, 2-6, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, 3-3, 3-4, 3-5, 3-6.

I intend to finish 3-2 without pommy. It saves about 20 seconds or so and I think the glitch can be done somewhat reliably if you pay close attention to where the guy is when laying the bombs.

Expected time saved with this route: 20 seconds from finishing 3-2 without pommy. (Calculated pretty accurately.) 15 seconds from better stat routing. (I calculated this one pretty heavily.) Hopefully 10+ seconds between 1-2 and 3-1 by not collecting stats in 1-2 and also having pommy in 1-2. (This is kind of a guess at the moment. I know the beginning cycle is set, but the later ones are hard to predict.)

I can probably compare the total times of our 1-2 and 3-1 and see who comes out ahead. I have to account for the fact that you opted to grab the potions in 1-2 and 3-1 obviously.

I can say for certain that even if I did go to 1-2 after 1-1, I would not get the potion. The potion in 3-1 that requires water bombs is only 2 seconds faster than some of the stats I am getting. The only real benefit possible would be getting stats in 1-2 instead of 3-1. I think it would be slower though. I spend about 11 seconds collecting stats in 3-1. I'm fairly confident that using pommy in 1-2 and having speed will save more than that.

My Stegodon fight has a 1/3 chance of ending on turn 2 and otherwise ends on turn 4. My Kai-Man fight usually ends on turn 4 or 5, but it can rarely take until turn 7 if I recall correctly.

I'll still time 1-2 completed with pommy and compare all of the relevant information. It only modifies my route slightly.

You'll note also that I don't get the extra speed in 1-1. I think it is slower.

I did a rough test of speed values for speed stats 1-6.

1: 10 (Getting a pair of boots would save 1s every 6s.) 2: 12 (Getting a pair of boots would save 1s every 7s.) 3: 14 (Getting a pair of boots would save 1s every 8s.) 4: 16 (Getting a pair of boots would save 1s every 9s.) 5: 18 (Getting a pair of boots would save 1s every 10s.) 6: 20

Second column is either time for powerup or type of Charabom stat. X is random stat or no stat. N is "don't get that last stat."

S1-1 bomb beginning 2 speed beginning 3 bomb right after rock 1.5 bomb by next stump 2 STATS Andlar 1,2,3,4 speed after log 3 STATS Second log X,X,heart

S3-1 firepower beginning right 2 speed with potion 1 STATS Beginning A bomb up from double 2 STATS Before Kick 1, 2nd half of level bomb by sand pole 1 speed after two poles 1 STATS Sand X,X,X STATS Sand X speed by other pole 1 firepower by last pole 1 firepower after door 2

S2-1 STATS Kai Man 1,2,3,4 STATS Before Boulder X STATS By Fish Switch X,X,X

S2-2 STATS Beginning A STATS Before Ship 1 X,X STATS Ligon X,A,4,3,1,2 STATS Vortex 1,2,3,N STATS Around Big Ship 1,3,X

S2-4 STATS Present X STATS Glacier 3,3,4,A firepower Glacier STATS Down Ramp 1,2,3,N STATS After Ramp 3,4 STATS End Potion A

S3-2 STATS Right of switch 3,N

Final Andlar stats going into Pteradon: 13,14,19,14 and 15 random drops.

Moveset: Skillfully, Get Wild!, Other

The script suggests I use Skillfully first. It is because the Round 2 attacks that cause me to lose give less possibility for certain moves to be chosen in certain places Round 1. Because of the move choices, he actually has a very low chance of defending first two turns in a row (2/30), so it makes sense to special first on turn 1 and it actually gains wins in the 64/120 battles. In the 68/120 battles I don't think it matters what is chosen first. Get Wild! is the obvious second round choice, and some fights need the extra attack to kill.

ANDLAR STATS: Atk, Spec Atk, Probability of winning out of 120. //22 18 = 56 //19,19 = 68 //18,20 = 68 ///17,20 = 64 //16,20 = 64 //17,21 = 68 //13,21 = 64 //16,22 = 68 //12,22 = 64 //15,23 = 68

Edit: See also, this video:

I'm adding this series for Super Mario 64 Rom Hacks, which lets you guys add your own games. Per this post ( http://www.speedrun.com/post/crc9h ) I'm adding FrostyZako as mod to all the rom hacks, since he moderates over half of them anyway and has been requesting many of the additions recently. I'll leave it to them to decide who else to add. (The series doesn't search well in the search bar for some reason.) I'd recommend having at least a few people as super mods on the series.

Site staff still has to label games as "Rom Hacks" and attach them to SM64 for consistency, due to functionality not being implemented to for selected users to handle that currently. If you need to ping us to do so, do that here: http://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/be179

If the SM64 mods want anyone removed due to inactivity or disinterest in maintaining the rom hacks let me know. I haven't heard much discussion on that topic, so maybe it's fine as is. You may want to ping me in the "The Site" forum if I don't follow up on discussion in this thread.

I'd recommend creating a forum thread here for requesting game additions, since the site doesn't have a great way to forward game requests, so we can just point people to a thread to post in. (Similar to this thread: http://www.speedrun.com/iwbtgfg/thread/toidu )

It is my understanding that there wasn't good consensus on the recent changes. The current situation appears to be having multiple people restructuring things to fit their vision, so I am moving a few people to normal mod in hopes that the remaining super mods can resolve the situation. I understand the reasoning behind wanting to utilize the subcategories, however, for a board this large doing this change likely should've warranted more discussion than occurred.

The board category layouts should represent majority community opinion. Site staff has scripts to move this data around within categories if any help is needed to do that.

• Kirk

Hard mode makes some enemies move slightly differently. Enemies shoot more and different types of bullets. Master mode then speeds up battles by 33% including your character, enemies, the intro and outro, and enemies deal double damage. In all difficulties, enemies have the same health and you deal the same amount of damage.

The final door in Normal requires 60 hearts. Collecting all the chest hearts is certainly fastest.

The final door in Hard/Master requires 75 hearts, which is all but 3 hearts up to that point. There are various doors in the run that require all but a couple hearts, so it's probably fastest to clear things as you pass them. Unfortunately this makes any% very similar to 100%.

I recommend getting the chocolate box extra power for the final boss on Hard/Master but not Normal.

100% does not require keys. 101% requires you open no chests prior to opening the Jealous Chest in Moon Town. On all difficulties this allows skipping exactly one battle.

Regen may be useful in Master 101%, but it's probably worthless in all other difficulties.

If you hold right on the difficulty selection screen for 5 seconds you unlock a pointless difficulty that just kills you every battle.

We removed automatic association of runs to newly registered users, so we'll handle requests to attach non-user runs here. We can also handle deleting fake registered accounts here or in the account deletions thread.

The way to do this now is to simply edit and save a run, and it will be linked to a newly existing user. Game moderators can handle this, or we can do it in this site thread.

A Tweet linked here or Twitch PM (to me) is probably the easiest way to verify the person who registered the account is the person who did the run.

We'll see how this goes, if anyone has ideas to improve how this works let us know.

Mega Man X4 Moderation/Category Discussion

Comparing the two of these as was brought up by Orsa: http://www.speedrun.com/mmx4 http://jokaah.com/mmrta/index.php?game=15

Noted differences:

• Time conversions
• Is timing start and stop different as well?
• Tracks 3 Ultimate Armor categories
• Tracks low% Zero

I need to know how you would propose changing these things (and anything else) over the short term (perhaps with consideration to future site features if worth noting.)

I've never played X4, nor do I know much about it in particular, but I've played X1-3

The following comment were copied from the moderation request thread: http://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/63nr7/16

[quote="Orsa"] Out of the two current mods, one does not even play the game, and the other has little to no involvement in the community. Both also have very different views on rules and categories from the majority of the community. I've talked to several other prominent community members, and we would be much happier with a leaderboard that more closely reflects the rules and categories listed on mmrta. [/quote]

From observations of runs listed, both appear to play the game. I inquired about different rules/categories above. I get the claim "I've talked to several other prominent community members" quite often, but I'll give you some benefit of the doubt here.

[quote="MopeyJoe"] The two current mods go out of their way to have differing view points as the rest of the community and it makes the leaderboards a bad representation of the community. Orsa and I are active runners of X4 (myself more-so than Orsa) so it would be much better if we were to have super mod status of the X4 leaderboard and the two current mods removed. [/quote]

• Any particular instances of "going out of their way." ? There's a major difference between having a different opinion and intentionally having a different opinion.
• "It makes the leaderboards a bad representation of the community." - It just looks like a differently organized data set to me. "It's suboptimal" or "It's a bad way to lay out the data" are fair arguments, but unless it's intentionally negligent for some reason I haven't been informed of, from my perspective I don't know that I'd describe it as a "bad representation of the community".

[quote="Orsa"] this is probably something that should be handled on a case-by-case basis, but i can offer my opinion for the two games i help to moderate (mm8 and mmx5). we try to keep the boards as close as possible to what is listed on jokaah, as we feel that the rules and categories listed on jokaah accurately reflect the viewpoints of the community. we also link to the other site directly, in case our leaderboard becomes inaccurate or out-of-date.

mmx4 should probably function similarly to 8 and x5, as the vast majority of the community agrees on the rules and categories listed on mmrta. [/quote]

Indeed we have been handling most Mega Man games on a case by case basis because there seems to be a fair amount of dissent, especially in the X series.

I'm not trying to take sides, I'm just asking for information. Any additional information will help us make a more informed decision.

• Kirkq

Due to recent events, site staff has been discussing adding a content license to the site.

The content license would generally cover the user generated text content, along with content created on this site (This is just a generalization for now). All external images and video content shown within this site are the copyright of their respective owners.

The license brought up that looks to be most applicable to our situation is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical 4.0 International

Please read: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Having a license on the data still allows the site to do the following: 1: speedrun.com reserves the right to change the licensing of the data at any point. 2: speedrun.com reserves the right to issue other specific licenses to certain sites at its discretion. (If a site has ads, it needs our permission, which would be granted in some cases.)

It is wholly necessary to add some sort of license at this point to clarify the current ambiguity and establish expectations. We acknowledge that we're adding a license later than preferable, and site staff can work to accommodate individual concerns.

Site staff wishes to allows individual users to retain a sensible level of personal use ability for their self-created content on the site. How exactly this is expressed in the terms is to be determined.

I am not a lawyer, and I am still learning about the nuances of this.

Question, comments, concerns?

I'm removing the series moderators for now and I put them as moderators in a couple of the games where it made sense. Mario and Zelda also have no series moderators. No issues were brought up, but it seems to make the most sense given that series moderators didn't have power in most of the games anyway. I just noticed this when I was adding more games to the series.

If the series as a whole wants to organize some people to put "in charge", I'm mostly fine with this, but for now it seems like the games want to operate on their own for the most part.