And he never came back...

Updated with the retrieval of some of Danzaiver's old speedruns !

No reactions to my post. Maybe the people are in a silent acceptance of these change ideas… but I just finished putting in place.

DCT ILs !

Some unforeseen situations I had to adapt to :

• I forgot “bosses” had timers too. So they just behave like ILs. (Race stages are perhaps a better name ?)

• The Garlen fight doesn’t have any vision clear message. I guess we'll time the end point of the fight the same way we do it in any%.

• Additionally, this fight doesn't award you any rank. So, no need to worry about no damage. And this is true for All S Ranks speedruns too !

• I've noticed some naming inconsistencies, or dubious naming choices in the EoD board (which can most likely be credited to me).

For instance, the EoD board has the main stages called “X-X” instead of “Vision X-X”. Even though the latter is the one to show up in-game.

The extra stages are called "EX-X" on the world map, or Vision EX-X" in-stage... and yet, we decided to call them "extra X"

For the sake of relative naming consistency, I used the same logic for the DCT names.

It's not a big issue, but it's kind of irksome. I won't change anything like this without your clear consent.

Hey. Let's start talking about DCT ILs. (People have been mainly asking about extra ILs, but I figured we can add the normal ones as well in one swift sweep).

For the general IL board structure, we'll take direct inspiration from EoD. But we also have to adapt to the new categories of this game.

Without further ado, here's what I devised :

• Any% level category.

I opted to not include the variant where you collect the sun stone, because, it doesn’t have a full-game speedrun counterpart. That and it feels rather unfulfilling. Wouldn’t be difficult to add in, in case you guys disagree.

• 100% level category, comprised of three run types :

° S rank

° 100% (with damage)

° 100% w/ the sun stone.

It’s possible that the 100% category for some stages out there may lead to look exactly like S rank ILs. If this happens, S rank submissions are to be favored.

The last one seems boring, as you’re mostly only switching strategies for one section (if the strategy even changes at all). But it does technically have a full-game run counterpart : all stages. I wouldn’t add it personally, but again, it’s your call. Also easy to add.

Just like in EoD, DCT has autoscroller stages. And we’ve confirmed via testing that out of the five (which are located on the X-7 stages this time), 1-7, 3-7 and 4-7 can be matched to the TAS without much effort and difficulty. Even when you pick up everything. This is because the screen scrolls slowly in those stages, so if you’re not too slow, you can catch up to it before the loading-zone gets accessible.

As such, these stages don’t have much speedrunning value, so I really think we shouldn’t bother with them. Much like EoD, we would still add these levels in, for a consistent IL board look, but submissions of them would be prohibited.

On the other hand, 2-7 and 5-7 are different by that they scroll up. You can’t buffer anything unless you play frame-perfectly (or even more precisely). It at least makes tying the max time a difficult but meaningful endeavor.

We’re also gonna reuse the EoD system when it comes to managing the extra ILs who happen to have a in-game timer. Those are extra 1, 3 and 5 (the rest are puzzle levels).

RTA will be the main metric (just like anything else), while IGT will be filled within the submission form via variables. There, you input the time and here we go.

For IGT, pausing would be banned, except for edge cases (stuff like accidentally pausing, for very briefs periods, during non-gameplay sections to give an example). But remember, you can still submit runs even with compromizing amounts of pausing in it. The IGT counterpart will be omitted, but the run will still be timed as RTA, as this is perfectly fine. Such that the time-attack spirit is kept alive. Oh and because the IGT times may be unreadable as more runs are being submitted, one trick is to filter the runs, in which you'll see the IGT variables people have submitted... and be able to find the fastest one (you can try this out on the EoD board). Absolutely wonderful.

Obviously, some categories might be unusable for certain levels. Garlen is the biggest example, as only any% suits him. You unfortunately can't make it clean, without making the back end extremely complicated and honestly miserable to use. With src anyways, simplicity is best.

So, tell me what you think. (I tried to cover everything but this was posted in a hurry, so sorry for the mistakes.)

It should be no surprise, anything related to the ProjectEris / autobleem for the PS Classic Mini should be allowed.

The official product already was using the standalone PCSX ReARMed emulator(*). And by using these projects, you get access to retroarch and its cores (if for some reason you don't use the base one)

(*) about it, I do note that we have yet to see full-run gameplay of it. It's to be left unspecified until one such submission emerges, or someone tests it out. Here's what amoser has to say about it :

So despite not having any familiarity with the PSX Classic, I have messed with PCSX ReARMed a bit. To my knowledge, its main benefit is its high performance on ARM-based CPUs. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to have much going for it. I'd say it's probably fine, but it's not generally considered especially accurate, and it struggled with some of the common graphical glitches (like the light shafts in 2-1 not rendering properly) for longer than most other emulators did, even though it seems like some of the issues might be fixed in the current release.

In the end, we don't have to delete the levels. So I kept them, and instead simply changed their name to reflect the fact that submissions aren’t allowed for them (+ small rules update). At least it keeps the IL board clear, and old runs aren't being deleted.

Case closed.

Hey. Umm... this is awkward.

In the ILs of this game, we happened to include the autoscroller stages (X-6, of which there are five)... but these are in reality very bare-bones for speedrunning.

We need to distinguish between two autoscroller stage types : right or upwards scrolling.

This first kind of stage (1-6, 3-6, 4-6) is subject to a massive issue : it’s possible to match the TAS time, even when collecting everything. And perhaps… too “’possible”.

The fastest way to clear these levels is to enter the room transitions / cannon at the earliest point possible… which is made easy by the slow autoscrolling you can catch up with.

And although having ILs that have confirmed “ceiling” times isn’t necessarily a problem, what’s the point of adding an IL for a stage that’s not only “solved”, but also not difficult to match in the slightest ?

I like to take the example of the Glass Joe fight IL from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. It’s a fight whose “ceiling” time was immediately found upon release. And recently, the moderators straight up removed the IL because matching the fastest time was incredibly easy literally anyone could do it, and way too many people submitted runs for it.

I know we’re not gonna get this kind of activity anytime soon. But still, let’s avoid the hassle altogether.

The second kind of stage (2-6, 5-6) are significantly harder to optimize.

While holding the right screen is very easy, catching up to vertical scrolling in an optimal fashion is a different story. You can’t catch up to it like you could when the screen was going right.

Rather, stepping on the path that leads to the loading-zone/cannon right as the screen allows you to is the goal. But not only would this require frame-perfect movement, as it turns out, these stages happen to be built in a way where you practically can’t reach them optimally to begin with.

As an exhibit, just look at the movement you need to do at the end of 5-6 for 100% : here

As you can see, despite the crazy movement, we're still very far from reaching the cannon early.

In this autoscroller type, these levels would be worthy of being ran. As even if the TAS time could get matched, it would be incredibly difficult. Matching these would be an actual mark of pride, as opposed to the right autoscrollers, which are a peace of cake in comparison.

So, I propose that we remove 1-6, 3-6 and 4-6; and keep 2-6 and 5-6.

As it turns out, there already is one run submitted for 1-6, by @Doomtune. He said he was fine with the run being removed if this decision gets through. So, yea.

Small (small ?) change post.

I’ve just done a small revamp of the way the ILs of extra 1 and 3 were handled. Originally, they had two categories depending on if you wanted to play RTA or IGT. But looking at the system back, I felt that it was extremely unneeded, as both categories basically amount to the same, and nobody is gonna play RTA just for that.

Instead, I made it so you can submit both the RTA (first) and IGT. The latter is a variable, and you write the time you got.

Because runs can and will become obsolete, if you want to see the fastest IGT time, go to the filters and see the shortest IGT time. Yea, it’s a bit stupid as well… but at least we cover both timing styles handily.

Oh, and don’t forget that pausing during gameplay (unless exceptions) will prohibit verification of your IGT time.

If that happens to you, select the “pause” variable. This is so that even if your run stops being eligible for IGT because of a pause, it can still be submitted for RTA.

It took me a while to retime the extra 1 runs, because they were under some weird inconsistent framerate of 46-47 frames per second.

The best way to record your run footage is if you strictly record at 60 fps (the native framerate). If you don’t, it can make the final time trickier to time, and might make your runs not exactly comparable to runs with different framerate (when you look at the millisecond count, the frame increments might not coincide).

It’s not so much of a deal that we should enforce 60 fps on runs. But it does mean that you probably don’t want to care too deeply about making one-frame improvements.

We should be doing the same pretty soon with the opening of DCT's extra ILs.

I was looking at the RTA rules the other day. I think we should remove the timing exceptions of Leptio and King of Sorrow.

For both fights, there are cutscenes, and you can move Klonoa before the IGT begins... so I find my argument about the contents happening before the fight not potentially impacting the IGT, a tad weak. Especially the fact that you can move.

This way, it's more consistent with the rest of the game, and it also makes more sense in general. RTA will always and systematically begin when the stage loads, including cutscenes.

I'll correct the RTA of the times involved, update the rules, and do a quick heads-up update to the posts that brought these changes in the first place (done)

Oh, and for the runs who don't show the prefight Leptio/King of Sorrow moments... we'll let them slide

News ! KPRS can now be purchased on the Epic store ! Woohoo!!!!

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/klonoa-phantasy-reverie-series?lang=en-US

What does this imply ? Well, I'll start with this lazily taken screenshot :

We're currently not sure about whether or not the autosplitter will work on there. Someone will have to try it out... at least for whoever has this port and decides to speedrun with it... when that'll happen...

There is also the question of knowing the provided version of the game. Which is 99.9% likely to be v1.1... but that's left to be confirmed.

The achievements look like the same (didn't do a thorough comparison, but nothing special seems to be standing out).

If I have to guess, this new way to access the game won't really impact the way we handle things. It's a PC game, it has to respect FPS regulations and so forth.

But boy that sure is news.

Clarified the end run point writing as it ended up being misleading. Run doesn't end as the screen becomes fully white, but as soon as it begins being white.

Added @inconsistent as verifier.

Leaderboard update :

• About the KEmulator. Which I called wrong earlier, it’s called “KEmulator nnmod". It’s a modded version of the “KEmulator”, an old emulator from 2000s. Well, we’re gonna need to wait for updates, because it’s (c-l-e-a-r-l-y) not ready yet :

• Interesting info about the “MEXA emulator” (which should also be called this way, and not just “MEXA”. This term only refers to a set of APIs from SoftBank. This emulator, that they developed, is called after it).

It turns out there really was a keyboard access to the softkeys that skip cutscenes (the buttons next to the “clear” button). We don't need the mouse for them anymore. It’s F2 and F3 for the left and right button respectively.

Oh, and this should’ve been mentioned : there is a menu to remap keys. But it only allows you to rebind jump and shoot. So it still doesn't fix the issue of the directional keys being all over the place, requiring you to use a remapping software if you want to stay sane while playing this. Good news though, as it means we can duplicate these actions at least.

To access this menu, you first have to press the softkeys in order to open the option menu.

You go to “キー配置変更”(Change key mapping). You move the cursor with the arrow keys, and press enter (center phone button) to make the changes. Finally, you have to press the left softkey, (決定 on the bottom left of the screen) which saves the changes. The right softkey, which triggers “キーリセット» on the top left, will reset them.

• If you’re not having sound when playing the game, first make sure that it’s turned on at all, pressing the "*" button. If you’re still not having sound, there is one potential troubleshoot :

right click on the emulator, go into properties, enter the compatibility tab. You have to change compatibility mode to that of Windows XP.

Apparently, the audio DLL file is incorrectly programmed, and it fails with versions of Windows New Technology that are too high.

• (change done) Final development about the naming of this leaderboard. We’ll ultimately change it to "mobile version". It’s apparently a convention when it comes to that sort of thing, hence why "phone port" does a little less.

Everyone will know what it refers to, and won’t ever mistake it with a future Klonoa phone game release… because let’s not forget the game is still named « Door to Phantomile » (yes Balneor, trust me on this). Sorry for the ruckus everyone. It really shouldn't have dragged on for this long.

I'll also change the leaderboard link to it.

• I’ve since come to understand that there is a trend for these Japanese phone games to have many versions across many phone models. Not to mention taking emulators into account. It's a huge maze.

I realize that managing all these playing setups from a speedrunning standpoint is an unprecendented challenge for the Klonoa series. The only saving grace is that right now, we only have this one dump, on Parasonic phones originally(x). That means there is only one way to play this game right now. That’s easy enough to handle.

In order to make things easier to manage for the leaderboard in the long run, and to help with knowing what gameplay comes from what setup, I think we should enforce players to show their emulator in the footage video.

For the MEXA emulator, luckily, it’s very simple. Just capture the main emulator windows itself.

The other emulators are banned because of emulation quality. But if this were to change, the player would have to show clear footage of what emulator they’re using. This will be specified in the rules.

I was also considering making a distinction over emulator versions, but I think things would go way too out of hand if we did that.

Of course, if you’re playing a dump of the game no one has access to, the run can’t be verified until it’s publicly available to play on.

(x) not SoftBank, unlike what I previously said many times. SoftBank apparently only is the carrier. The phone itself has been manufactured by Panasonic. Yea it’s such a mess...)

That should be it to now. Changes.

Category has been added ! I named it "Any% (Demo)".

I'll have to get around changing the leaderboard name to "i-appli". It doesn't look like I can just change it like that, I may have to ask a site admin. Either way, won't be done today.

Oh, and @TwoSpacesSG pointed out that the "KEmulator" emulator, on windows, has recently just started supporting SoftBank. But apparently it's far from functioning well just yet. According to him on Discord : "it's even less ready so far, with various graphical issues and no jumping [...]. But the next release is planned for the middle of next month so we will see."

Category added... two days late because I didn't bother setting up an alarm for it. Not that we were in a hurry.

Now it's your turn. Run producing time.

(oh god, SRC has put a character limit on posts, and I just crossed it... and my message wasn't that large... help)

Now for side topics :

Although the MEXA emulator is quite different to the other emulators we’re been using for Klonoa (a window comprised of multiple smaller windows), you’d still only need to show the game screen for the run to be valid. To get the game and to set it up, please check out @inconsistent’s guide.

As far as I know, and according to inconsistent, this is the only emulator who's able to run the game for now : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giOneeHSBd0

In the future, J2ME Loader may be able to run the game after it develops SoftBank support (which is what this demo runs on). To be exact, the JL-Mod (a fork of this first one) also allows emulation of the game… but we’re not going to allow it in all likelihood, as this video illustrates perfectly why :

Even then, these two would be Android phone only. I guess we’ll have to investigate how the J2ME Loader one works before allowing it to be used for the leaderboard, once it comes. But as it is PC, the MEXA emulator still seems like the obvious choice here.

There lastly is MahoLator, a Windows emulator of the game. Once it has SoftBank support, it may also be used.

It’s also important to clarify that the game does have a widescreen “version”. I’ll be honest, I have no idea how these things work at all or how they're categorized. The fact is, we can currently run the game through the MEXA emulator, and it does so in widescreen mode. I’m not able to tell if the program has a settings where you can change that, I haven't heard of anything of the like anywhere at least. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but as of right now, that’s what we know we have for sure. (This is how the game normally looks like : )

I am also wondering about the potential gameplay/ run difference of playing on either modes. It probably won’t matter for this demo, but I feel like it has a high chance of impacting the full game. But, no point speculating until we get our hands on it.

Given this emulator key layout is all over the place and the program doesn’t allow rebinds, I think it’d be only fair to allow input binders. Like reWASD.

I also need to change the name of the overall leaderboard. “930” is the name of one of the phone that supports the game, but there would be others… so it’s not truly indicative.

At first, I was leaning towards changing it to “java”, since it’s technically what it runs on. And I thought, there would be little risk of a new Klonoa game dropping out that’s also being on a java based platform.

But I grew okay with using “i-appli”, since that is the service you'd get the game from.

We may still colloquially use java to easily refer to it (like in the Discord), but I think this would be an optimal name now. Again though, that's just this post's take.

As usual, if there are no replies, I’ll add all of this next week.

With the dump of the demo of the Japanese exclusive phone port of Door to Phantomile (https://twitter.com/RockmanCosmo/status/1775894870093353178), our dreams of playing this awesome game has suddenly become tangible ! Huge thanks and congrats for this breakthrough to these computer gentlemen ! Also huge thanks to the geniuses responsible for programming these emulators. It’s scary how easy it is for our brain to completely forget about the existence of these formidable souls.

To learn more about the port itself : https://lostmediawiki.com/Klonoa:Door_to_Phantomile(lost_mobile_port_of_PlayStation_2.5D_platformer;_2008)#Gallery

To make running the demo possible, and to anticipate a future dump of the full game (assuming it does… god, that would be one of the biggest Klonoa gaming piece of news ever), here’s to this leaderboard.

And as for its first category, it shall be on the demo (what do we prefer, between calling it demo or trial ???). Here’s how it could look like :

Run would be timed RTA (given it’s so short, we would most likely time it in milliseconds). To make things simple for now, and because the demo is bare-bones for other goals (you don’t have 1-2, and they scrapped even the second half of 1-1 ! And Rongo-Lango only takes 2 hits), let’s only focus on any% for now.

As for the run timing points :

• beginning point : knowing that you have to go through a bunch of menus, including saying “no” (”いいえ”) at one of them to disable tutorials which would otherwise slow us down, I suggest that we start once 1-1 has actually loaded. So, upon seeing the stage view, like in PS1 DtP.

There’s technically nothing wrong with choosing to start the run once you’re past the title screen instead. I’m not a huge fan of it myself, because I’d rather not want to deal with clearing all the various pre-game screens everytime I do a run. Especially because you have to use your mouse to click on a button that’s unbindable to skip them. It’s not really part of the gameplay. And it’s a demo, so menus are even more irrelevant. But that's just me.

• ending point : upon the screen turning white by delivering the final blow ? Or, upon the end "push any key" message ? Ehh, I think it’s slightly better to do it as the boss is defeated. Again, it’s a demo, and this is more like a IL type beat category. Better have it end when the objective is accomplished than to delay it. Again though, my take.

(to be clear, it's as soon as the screen starts getting white. Not once it fully is.)

Hey guys, like usual, this will be the official leaderboard discussion thread.

Hey guys. Because people are showing interest to it, I think it might finally be time to start discussing about a 100% category(ies).

Although the main reason we’ve been waiting on adding it for so long was simply due to lack of player activity, it also proved to be a challenge to define this game’s 100% category, because of the existence of this reverse mode and its tokens. And for a long time, it was thought that two categories would be needed to cover this game’s 100% aspect.

But after some investigation, it turns out we only really need one category. And the breakthough was that the game actually keeps your dreamstone score regardless of the version of the stage you play. You don’t need to go for 150 dreamstones twice for each stage.

You do still need to beat them and acquire their tokens, which isn’t a short task given you have to rebeat the bosses as well. But it’s a lot more bearable than having to do two whole hundos.

It’s still a long category, so in the future, I wouldn’t be surprised if we still were to create a “main game only 100%” category, mimicking the runs that can be done with a lot of the other Klonoa games.

But, at long last, let’s get into creating this category. As usual, I’ll be providing a baseline for us to potentially tweak based on your opinion, or new relevant game information. Just so we’re on the same page.

Here we go :

You must beat the game both in normal and reverse mode. You must also complete the extra stage, get at least 150 dreamstones per stage (only once per stage, in either mode), and finally get all tokens. The stage order for reverse mode is yours to choose.

The run would be timed RTA. It would begin on a new save-file, sharing the same beginning point as any% :

“Timing starts on the first frame that the player selects "yes", after creating their save-file. When this happens, the "no" button appears as if it was selected, before falling down.”

Now the end point of the run is interesting. One of the requirement for unlocking extra stage and reverse mode is beating Nahatomb. So, you can only go for reverse mode related objectives after first properly beating the game. But this would imply that the run would just end after beating the last stage containing the last token (doesn’t have to be 6-2).

And, it would be fair to end the run on that. After all, all of the stages are already unlocked in reverse mode by default, such that they don’t have to be beaten. And the only concrete incentive to enter those stages is to get their tokens, nothing more.

But what would arguably be just as fair, is to require the player to beat Nahatomb in reverse mode after gathering the tokens.

It would give closure to the run, but not only that, think about it : by this point, we’ll have already beaten every single boss reversed, except this one. And even though reverse mode by itself doesn’t have much value or reason to be played other than those brutal tokens... the game still sort of implies there is a challenge here : beating the stages in reverse. I’m personally leaning towards this run plan.

And last but not least, it makes timing the end of the run super easy :

“Timing ends when the last health bar of the reversed version of the final boss turns red. If you can, record up to the following cutscene.”

A couple extra points of note :

• Reverse mode doesn’t include the extra stage. It’s simply not accessible in that mode. Go ask the developers why.

• Just like any%, we would maintain a split between console, and emulator/USB runs.

I believe that’s everything, please correct me if I'm wrong.

If there’s too little feedback or replies, I’ll have the category be added in a week from now.

Hey. Someone has recently done a run on PS2 emulation with Namcollection, so we figured it was a good time to make an update post about the legality of PS2 emulation in general.

The run :

Overall, me and amoser are still deeming unfavorable the use of PS2 emulation as a playing setup for speedruns of this game. It is a concern of loading-times and emulation quality.

We have looked at the footage of this run. Overall, outside of a couple visual glitches that are imperceptible but for the experienced, the game looked perfectly stable and consistent.

There is, however, a big but. While the loading-times of room-to-room transitions do look consistent, those met during the save screen, or the pre-boss waiting segments are, for an unexplained reason, significantly slower than on a real setup. It’s not just that they take longer to load, but the game animations seem slowed down as well. So much that it’s even slower than 50 Hz gameplay ! This is definitely not normal.

As a recall, while we do allow emulation, we require for it to always be slower than the fastest current and official setup of the game, which is a real PS2 + Namcollection disc. This is to stay within the realm of real, achievable gameplay.

Applying this fact to this run, it looks like this emulated gameplay is fine, since it technically is slower. However, we do not find this conclusive, as we have no guarantee that the results would be the same between everyone’s vastly different computers specs. Not just that, but this loading-time bug could end up being fixed in the future, and make this emulation fast again. With a real risk of it taking over the real deal.

Let it be said : PS2 has advanced tremendously, and it’s quite impressive that it’s able to emulate the game this well now. But it still has some ways to go to match the degree of perfection and stability PS1 emulation has. This said, PS2 emulation can definitely be used with DtP for speedrunning practice, or even to do research on.

The vods of the relay race are here ! -