Virginia, USANotes/suggested changes:
I'm honestly not convinced going out of your way for 5 side rams is worth it in the early game. It almost exclusively wastes time and if you really need the challenge you can get it on the way out of the Underdune after the huge forced fight once you get past the two armored dropkickers. There's three unarmored buzzard vehicles that spawn on the way out without armor and you can two for one challenges by getting 5 buzzard vehicles and 5 side rams at the same time.
Refill your water in the Chum's hideout while getting the jag tip not in the first Camp in Jeet's territory. You have to wait for Chum to finish speaking before the item is interactable so you lose less time by filling the water here than anywhere else.
I actively avoid fury duration Griffa upgrade in the early game because it lets you drain your fury meter faster and therefore get more challenges through filling it quickly. Fury meter duration really only matters against bosses, and the only boss we fight early on is the top dog after scouting the Jaw who dies so fast it doesn't matter anyway.
After the first camp in Jeet's where you return the scrapbulance you should upgrade most of the Jack upgrades as doing it here increases your acceleration and top speed and saves driving time over waiting to do it until later. You can afford every upgrade as long as you only buy the first engine and exhaust upgrade which are required for the Jack.
If the top dog fight in Large Blade goes perfectly you'd be wasting time by killing him near the valve. You can run faster out of combat than it takes to lure him near it.
If you're looking to death warp after the boss (PC) you should probably loot the high value scrap before doing it, as there's another 30-40 scrap easily available in the area on the way back to the car.
In the Thrall Rustler's cave, you can bait the boss with the shield to charge at you and miss, then shoot him in the back with the shotgun while he's staggered. You're at full ammo because of the top dog fight, the shot will stun him and set him to low enough HP where one hit will finish him off. Extra shotgun shots can be used to clean up the rest of the fight since you will get a free refill when you visit Jeet's.
You didn't mention the third history relic in Gutgash's on the way, which is worth it to mention for a new player.
If you're trying to get a 25 combo on the jaw, you need to absolutely make sure the extra cars have spawned first. It's very easy to miss the 25 combo here even if they're all here, as with all the thunder harpoons going off they almost always are missing some health from explosions.
It's also possible to do a medium strat where you blow up cars with the thunder harpoon while taking down towers, because getting the automatic reload while attacking the gate gives you one more thunder harpoon afterwards which can help with the fight in front of Pink Eye's
When trying to get the thunder harpoon 5 people challenge in Pink Eye's area, running behind the enemies so you don't kick them into others helps a lot and makes it very uncommon to not get the challenge, but does waste some small amount of time.
It's the underdune not the underdome
If you're short on challenges, shooting out tires of moving vehicles is an easier backup challenge than pulling out 3 vehicles. Find any convoy route and park overlooking it and wait for the convoy to drive by. It feels slower but is guaranteed to be faster than pulling out vehicles unless you miss too many shots. You can do the same challenge to shoot out gas cans on moving vehicles as well.
You mentioned upgrading fists, but one jacket upgrade, and one wrist armor upgrade are also required at some point before Immortal Enemy.
On the second Scrotus fight, avoiding fury finishers will keep you from stunning him as often and losing time to the special animation on this fight where Max combo punches the stunned Scrotus.
On the dialogue with Chum after Immortal Enemy once Max says "The Car?" you can turn and start running.
The two dunes you check in the second underdune should always be the one on the right (ammo outside lets you aim for a potential triple kill) and the far left one with no enemies. There are three options, so new runners may not know this.
If your car is low health leading into taking down the landmover after fighting all the cars, you should save one thunderpoon as it lets you take out one side without taking massive damage with shotgun shots. You can trigger car exploding on the second one because the cutscene saves you.
Sorry, I'm a little confused by that response. If you're open to SC runs, then why is there a rule specifically disqualifying it on the board? Part of the issue here is that the rule on the leaderboard discourages people from doing runs that you want to see in order to change the rules. Maybe leave a note on the rules/this post that if sufficient interest in shown in softcore runs with deaths the boards will be changed to accommodate that? That would get the idea across that this isn't a final declaration?
I have to speak up and support amyrlinn here. Many speedrunners like to jump into a game that they don't know very well and learn the game by improving their times. This used to be called semi-blind running but has been struggling to find a new term for it to avoid the connotations involved with blindness.
SRC allows you to track your times and see your growth over time which is what a decent number of speedrunners get into the hobby to chase after. Even if your goal is to prevent forcing softcore to be the best way to play at the top end, that's something to address once SC runs are popping up. As you said yourself, very few runs of it were appearing on the boards, but I was talking to you all about this as you tried to figure out how to attract new runners.
Part of attracting new runners means new players. Forcing a deathless rule means that they cannot submit their learning runs, they cannot track their progress. Not everyone learns a speedrun by grinding practice until they're near-perfect. I would suggest adding as amyrlinn suggested an option while submitting that shows if you died or not, still require /deaths at the end to verify it. If a large number of softcore runs using softcore only skips pop up, then that's reason enough to un-merge the boards. But until then, why restrict new players out of a fear of something that isn't currently happening?
Forgot to hit save like a dummy, it's on now. @starsmiley
I would like to be made moderator of Mad Max (2015) https://www.speedrun.com/mad_max
Since the only moderator is currently inactive for over four years, their youtube has not been uploaded to in 4 years, and their twitter appears abandoned, I would also like them to be removed and for myself to be made the Super Moderator for the game.
I have had a run sitting in the queue for a month, and after I showed this game at a showcase there are people interested in the game, but the leaderboard needs some work and someone to be able to approve runs.
The only run on the 100% board doesn't get all the hydrants. The rules says there's 9 but there's 10.
-Inside the dog's room with the map in the circus -On main street -Below the Costume Shop -Cardboard cutout in the Junkyard -Outside of S-Corp headquarters -The robot in the S-Corp lbby -The shrubbery on the road west of the circus -The sapling to the right of the one-eyed bandit -The garden gnome in front of the broken down trailer -The cactus next to the junkyard.
I watched the run and the dog never peed on the sapling.
You are vastly overestimating the amount of effort involved.
- Pause on the score screen for 2-3 seconds before advancing.
- Go back through PB vod later and plug the times into a spreadsheet like this one https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CK_rB6_P89TP3YPlOR-ODXu6Vk7uCrT49cFQIkJxgtg/edit#gid=0 (go to file > Make a Copy if you want)
- Have IGT.
On some leaderboards the mods will even total it for you if you don't want to do it, just as long as they can access it easily.
I've speedrun other games where this was required due to RTA not being accurate at all. It takes maybe 5 minutes of effort per run.
I don't understand your logic. The static 15 minute missions are always 15 minutes, in a full game run that's never going to change why does that present a problem with timing? The point is that in a game that has a console and PC port with no major differences, timing in RTA with loads is a problem since it's difficult to make autosplitters for console. IGT is accurate, even with mistakes if you always hit restart from checkpoint.
If someone tries to skip a mission, that's literally cheating. The level leaderboards already use game time because it's accurate.
This game should prioritize IGT timing with one small clarification. Any deaths or restarts should always be "Restart from Checkpoint." When you restart from checkpoint the time you've already played gets added to your total flight time of the mission. Then at the end of every mission it shows your flight time on the mission recap screen where it shows all your kills. This is an accurate timer that helps account for version differences since it's all about mission timer not real time.
If for some reason, you had to exit a mission to change loadout, the mission time can be manually added by looking at how much time expired from the clock while you're paused.
In case you didn't check the update news on Steam, they pushed an update to the classic version of the game to include some remastered bug fixes. You need to open the betas tab on Steam and select [classic] to roll these back.
