hi cabbage

Linux, PC, and Web have been added as Platform options.

Yo NotClyos!

"100%" was removed as it did not stand to benefit from being separated from Any%. There are no collectibles or checkpoint statistics, and its loose route requirement is indistinguishable from that which any other run on the Any% leaderboard could perform.

"Softlock%" was removed as it does not really stand to be a tracked category. Clipping into walls is fun, but if an entire category can be maxed out in a couple minutes it's not really worth competing in. Also, you just die to the timer so it isn't even a softlock :p

That being said, something doesn't need to be tracked for someone to enjoy doing it. Having a dedicated leaderboard should be reserved for something that has, to at least some extent, its own merits as a category. If you (or anyone else) can think of a unique category, I'll add it to the site.

Cheers, GG

First, you need to make sure you'll fully against a wall. Once you've done that, jump and then shoot your force ball on the very next frame. Good luck!

Hey!

Requesting a category extensions page for https://www.speedrun.com/battleblock_theater. Cheers!

In every Finale 1 (and Chapter 8's Finale 2), you still have to find and collect 3 gems before the exit opens. The Finale 2's for Chapters 1 through 7 have keys at the end that can be interacted with without needing to unlock them with gems first.

Running any level via the menu select, regardless of whether or not it's the last level in a given route, doesn't count as anything more than an IL speedrun. Any% is defined as a "Full-Game Leaderboard" category for a reason; you actually play through the full game. Individual Level speedruns (see - Level Leaderboard) have no such restriction, and that is what you're suggesting be added as a fullgame category.

I could similarly suggest that any run be accepted as any%, regardless of what level is chosen as a starting point.

[edit] I should mention that I do agree with the category name "Any%" being overused. A category name should define the route, not anything that could be jumped on as reaching the agreed-upon any% ending. It's also possible to do the opposite and have any% exceptions with additional exploits or route changes allowed, but as an appendage to the category name. Super Meat Boy has a few examples of miscellaneous Any% categories.

Hmm. I've never seen this before, but if it's like any other glitches in the game, it's probably a simultaneous event glitch. That being said, it's possible this is a one-off thing, but I'll list a couple things of note:

• The client player beats the level, and host dies afterwards. This is likely important, knowing how host vs client latency is handled. Whatever happens in the host's game takes priority, even if it's not what happened on the client's game. Some examples of this include rock grab deaths and movable block clips.

• At 1:11, host beats the level, followed by client dying afterwards. Notice how much more abrupt the level transition is - There is no wait time, because host doesn't need to take any time to validate player 2's death.

It might be possible to find some sort of setup for this, but I'd predict it would either have significant variance from player to player, or would be some sort of frame perfect explosion that would cost you an entire level's worth of time if you're a frame late.

Feel free to experiment, though. Neat find.

Hey, watch out. Xcvazer's ban hammah is stronger than most

Hey! You probably can't read this, but the current red text -green background - grey scene colour palette of this leaderboard is atrocious. Think it could be changed to something more legible?

Lol, nice. Reminds me of something similar that PJDiCesare and Mecharichter did a couple years back.

Leaderboards are not in constant need of modification. The two most important tasks moderators for a game need to be able to do is accurately verify and reject submissions. Youtubeman did not make any submissions which needed to be rejected, and has shown repeatedly that he's interested in improving the route, developing strategies, and actually going forward and doing runs himself.

Youtubeman went out of his way to fill the request of making a tutorial in order to become a staff member of this game. The only reason he was unmodded has been proven false, and therefore there is no reason not to reinstate his moderator status. Any counterarguments to this could only be formed through some sort of baseless spite. Saying "... since I haven't seen him do much for the leaderboards," completely ignores the issue and is blatantly incorrect.

Think it would be possible to tone down the green background? It's frying my eyeballs.

I love getting rick rolled, being taught how to make vertical slabs in Minecraft, and reading a run comment that says "pylly.fi". Perhaps run verification should be a thing? Seems like a similar thing to Barney's h&s game could happen here. It's not like the runs take long to watch in order to verify.

I agree with ZeldaCrasher here. While the rules rely only on vsync status, this rule fails to recognize runners who have refresh rates higher than 60hz. This will lead to a hardware race and will result in a bias towards equipment over skill. Coming from a game where anything other than 60fps causes serious physics changes and speed advantages, it is hardly a question to level the playing field for anyone who wishes to participate.

-GG

Regarding runners who choose to submit and then redact their runs at a later date, specifically would-be records:

I've dealt with in the past regarding this issue, and it lies in the authority the submitter has over the submissions themselves. In most boards, moderator verification is required; this is a standard thing. If the submitter edits his comment or changes some detail, this also requires verification. Again, nothing strange here. How, then, is it reasonable to give people who submit runs (esp. record runs) the authority to remove their runs without some sort of verification? I'll use Limbo as an example.

Just within the past few months, a previous multiple-record holder for every category deleted his entire history of runs and records, invalidating over a year's worth of world record progression in the statistics section of the leaderboard. Of course, everyone has been upset by this, and there's no known way to retrieve these record statistics. Anyone who might be searching for the progression of said categories, and the game as a whole, will now and in the future be unable to know what actually happened in the past. No sensible person would erase or burn away a history book of facts, would they?

I'll refer back to what previous posts have been saying. If this website is to retain any credibility as far as accurate record progression is concerned, a few people's feelings are going to be hurt. The runners in question who chose to put in the time to climb to the top of the boards, however, will have to "face the consequences" of having their runs on the boards permanently - if not in one state or another. Just as any sort of credible real-life records cannot be erased because "I don't want to be attached to this anymore," so the same standard should be set here.

It's one of those things that needs to have an immediate change in guidelines. If a slow transition to whatever future rules lies ahead is to take place, there might as well not be any change. Exceptions to these rules lead to complete disintegration of integrity.

-GG

Alright!

 Now that there's been some hefty discussion, I can definitely see where my original arguments were flawed. Special thanks to Develo for explaining in detail his thought process for defining the categories - using a method that made it easy to see why things are currently defined as they are. With that and Soxdye's in-depth game knowledge, it's pretty clear that the two categories shouldn't be merged, and the proposed new category fits neither of the current definitions. Just to clarify everything now and moving forward, this is what I understand to be true. I'll try to describe these in a method that would make it understandable to a new player.

NG - This category is what you would be required to run, by default, if you were to launch Castle Crashers on a completely new game file. That is, only the four main knights are able to be selected upon the opening character selection. The boomerang, bow, shovel, any potions, sandwiches, gold, weapons, animal orbs, etc - all of these are intuitively banned because none of these would be available upon the most strict of NG definitions. Bare bones category, only for the best runners to play to optimisation.

NG+ - Very similar to NG, but in many ways, completely different. Here is where your platform starts to have an effect on the category. As you play through NG, you unlock characters along the way through a few different ways - be it beating arenas, clearing the game with various characters, or unlocking them through ulterior means, such as purchasing other Behemoth titles. That being said, you will have to have played through the game, or a portion of the game, in a NG setting in order to even select other characters. This, by definition, makes all other possible characters an NG+ selection. This separates them from the primary four characters, who are all designed (from a physical perspective) very similarly. On top of all this, because it would be possible to unlock the boomerang, shovel, and bow in a NG setting, it is logical to allow these at the start of a NG+ run. Any combination of Weapons and Animal Orbs are also allowed, though they must be obtained through the Weapons Frog and Animal Ark respectively after beginning a run.

 Platform variance:
    Console - Gold transfers between characters, and is therefore allowed at the start of NG+ runs. This saves time from having to collect gold along the route.
    Steam    - Gold does not transfer between characters. Therefore, no gold is allowed at the start of NG+ runs on the Steam version. This makes gold routing as important as the NG route if any purchasing is to be made.

That's where the leaderboards current stand, and the NG and NG+ definitions apply in a similar manner in co-op runs. Now, the category merge I originally proposed is completely unreasonable upon seeing the differences between them. A new category or subcategory is clearly required. Here are a few possible solutions I've come up with for a category that removes level, run preliminaries, and equippable restrictions.

1. Create a subcategory for NG and NG+ to allow for a previously-played character. This would not add any new categories to the leaderboards, but instead allow access to a secondary leaderboard for each of the current categories, accessible via two buttons. This would create additional possibilities for competition, as absorbing NG and NG+ into one unrestricted category would more than likely obsolete any possible competition regarding the NG characters. Though this subcategorization may seem conflicting under the NG and NG+ criteria, it is possible to add, and therefore modify, rules for each subcategory. A possible name for this subcategory may be "No Restrictions."

2. Create an additional category to encompass both NG and NG+ Pre-leveled speedrunning. This would allow for a runner to "ROFLstomp" (~Develo) their way through the game in a manner much faster than any of the current categories allow. This would also be massively more accessible to lesser-skilled runners who may have difficulty achieving competitive times in NG and NG+. Therefore, it may be beneficial to add a new category by the name "No Restrictions."

I think that just about covers everything. It's been very interesting learning about this game, the history behind it, and the different views from members of the community. I know this is absolutely ridiculously long-winded, but I feel as though it's necessary to avoid any possible confusion in the future.

Tl;dr: Don't merge or modify NG and/or NG+. Polish the rules a bit. Add a new (sub)category to allow for competition among unrestricted runs.

Thank you!

-GG

Hey!

After doing some research, I've come to the conclusion that there are no runs occurring due to a few different reasons. Let's go over some history before I elaborate on that, though.

Speed Demos Archive used to be ¤¤the¤¤ hub for all things speedrunning back when this game was released. Naturally, that's where I looked to find some thread, run, or discussion regarding the formation of the current and past categories, the corresponding rules of these categories, and any record runs of the time that were considered good enough to make the cut for their own pages. I found one submission - the complete dissertation of Miku Uyama's Any% NG record of 1:14:34. This was run even longer ago than I thought, with the post being dated May 22, 2009. Considering the game was only released August 27, 2008, it is /absolutely/ remarkable this record has gone untouched for nearly a decade. Nobody's even come close - second place is nearly two minutes off from this ancient record. The post can be found here: http://speeddemosarchive.com/CastleCrashers.html

Now, also included in that post, there's a single sentence near the top of the page that was clearly agreed upon. "Category Note: Characters are not considered separate categories for a new game run because there are not enough differences between the characters." Never actually having read src's rules on the NG and NG+ categories myself (I always wondered by NG+ was so much slower), it's quite obvious a bit has changed over time and doesn't reflect the old rules for NG and NG+. Here, the rules for NG state that the character chosen 'be played with one of the four starting knights.' When was this changed? I couldn't find any discussion regarding it. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough, but I don't see a reason for this restriction.

Now, the most significant issue I see with the current rules lie in NG+. Aside from having some wording changed around in the rules found here, this is the only /actual/ change in NG+ rules (besides shovel and boomerang, which are essentially useless, and ironically could not be obtained without leveling up at least once) - "Can be on any character." Hold on, that doesn't sound like proper rules for NG+. SDA stated that there wasn't enough of a significant change among NG characters to warrant different categories. Doesn't NG+ imply that you've beaten the game before, and have access to a previously-played character? Would the route not stay the same, but the character be of a much higher level? This is what seems intuitive, and is widely accepted among the rules for NG+ among countless games that have such a category.

All that having been said, I am in strong favour of merging the current NG and NG+ categories into a single NG category. This is what the rules were agreed upon shortly after the game's release, and the best runs, still today, abide by them. I am also in favour of updating the NG+ rules to proper NG+ standards, allow the use of previously-played characters. Obviously, the levels would still need to be beaten in NG sequence (the only questionable route change being moon skip and its application in a NG+ setting). I do believe that the modernization of these categories would not only increase the game's activity as a speedgame, make for several very interesting NG+ routing choices, and allow for a fair playing field to the currently unjustly-separated NG and NG+ runs.

Thank you.

-GG

I agree with this. As stated above, the fact that this is even possible will give rise to speedruns using it. It makes the most sense to use a timing method which encompasses the entire route, where IGT doesn't account for a setup.

Similarly, Super Meat Boy has misc. categories for Any% in which other massive glitches lead to an absurdly short time.

Hey! I just finished watching soxdye's run, and I noticed that at the end of the run he says he's "two minutes off the record now." After a quick search, I found this run.

Is there a reason this isn't listed as the world record for this category? Dated June 12, 2011 - 1:14:34.