Recently, a trick has been discovered called the Menuglitch/Pauseglitch. For anyone unaware, here's a quick rundown of it: You do a parry-animation mid-air, get hit and pause at the same time (within a small time window). This will keep the game running but you will still have the menu open. If you now finish the fight and then quit out, you are able to skip the scorecard+contract, saving about 14 seconds per fight this is done on. Here is a quick video of it This is possible on Run&Guns aswell as all bosses except plane bosses. In a normal run (say Any%/All Bosses) this would save over 3 minutes if done on every boss.
Now, some people have voiced concerns that this trick might make the run considerably less enjoyable. We did get some mixed input from you, so we are putting up a poll to resolve this matter.
https://strawpoll.com/ygzdbwyp << This poll will run until Sunday, December 3rd 11:59 PM GMT (that's 5:59 PM EST). Before voting, we would like you to inform yourself about the Menuglitch, aswell as please try it out for yourself, as we think this heavily contributes to the decision. Note that if No Menuglitch is created as a seperate category, this will most likely be moved to a new Category Extensions leaderboard, or possibly just as a Misc. (though we currently prefer the former).
While we did get some other suggestions on how to handle this, we think that this will only make the boards even messier than they already are.
Thanks for taking your time to help with this decision, and happy running!
Just putting this here since it's worth mentioning:
Using menu glitch in ILs will result in your run being rejected, since we go off of the in-game time as shown on the scorecard. There isn't much of a reason to do this in ILs anyway since it doesn't save IGT, but I wanted to make sure people were aware of this, since I only just thought of it myself.
This also means that using this glitch will prevent you from submitting part of a full run for an IL submission for the same reason.
It's not that the glitch is "tough", it's that it ruins the speedrun of the game. Nobody will want to watch those runs and very few people will actually want to run the game that way. Allowing that glitch forces people to use that glitch (it saves an absurd amount of time) and really hurts the longevity of this game as a speedrun. Would be shooting yourself in the foot allowing that glitch, in my opinion (other than any% where anything should always be allowed). You like the glitch, run any%.
I'm not currently a runner, but I plan to run in future. I also moderate and provide rules for another game on SR. Having a similar issue as this one regarding that game aswell. A new glitch was found a few months back that was a huge timesave but it really broke the integrity and challenge of the game, making the category a cakewalk, and it would have affected a lot of runs. Removing huge sections of the game, and making the runs not very fun to play or watch! Soooo, i made a new category, with the agreement of the community of course, and it worked awesomely! Sooo, you gotta consider how it affects the challenge and ideals of the run, and whether it would make it less enjoyable to watch <3
Basically what the guy/gal above said (sorry, didn't read) :O
It seems silly to make this into a separate category just because it’s not visually appealing. Speedruns for me have always been about optimization. This glitch helps optimize the game, therefore it should be allowed in all categories besides glitchless IMO.
If you’re going to make separate categories for a specific glitch, then you’ll end up with a LOT of different categories. And I don’t want to see a leaderboard cluttered with so many different categories; that would make each individual category less competitive and ruin the speedrunning community for this game as a whole.
If you’re worried about the game turning viewers off of watching this, then make Glitchless the main category of the game and allow this glitch in all other categories.
I had a discussion with Goodigo about this in Discord but figured I should post my thoughts here as well.
One point I believe warrants further consideration is control schemes. With a "vanilla" control scheme on PS4 and Xbox controllers, this glitch is highly impractical due to the fact that your Cuphead movements with D-pad or Left stick will also move the menu. Likewise, if you make Cuphead jump or EX you will also register an input into the menu. Certain controller users (one that are NOT natively recognized by the game) that require manual mapping do not have this issue.
While it has been said that one can simply remap the Jump/EX actions to other buttons and this is just a matter of adapting to initially awkward controls, (PS4 for example can map movement to Right Stick, and Jump/EX to L2 and R2 to circumvent menuing inputs) this measure is only required on certain setups. Just to be clear, it is technically possible to move, jump, etc. during menu glitch but you will need to make sure you do not enable Vsync or retry/exit by accident. However, using a controller that requires manual mapping can be configured to make this a non-issue. This raises a few questions in my head.
- Will all controller schemes - even ones that can be remapped to facilitate movement/combat during menu glitch - continue to be allowed?
- If so, should we allow PS4/Xbox controller users to remap their actions using JoyToKey for example (as long as all inputs are 1:1) to keep all control schemes on even footing? Or should we accept the fact that PS4/Xbox controllers are unable to use D-pad/Left Stick/X/O - and those who wish to utilize those keys need to get a different controller/use keyboard?
- If not, how would control scheme limitations be reasonably enforced?
Looking forward to everyone's thoughts on the matter.
You wouldn't have the menu up for a short time, it would be up for most of the fight. On top of that, it mutes the music! This game is known for its amazing art and music and it would be totally obscured. Can you imagine doing a run of that at a GDQ event (or any other)? They'd never approve a run like that. In any event, it should be allowed in any%. Any% is already a rather pointless category for this game, so making it exclusive to any% would actually make that category MORE interesting. Make lemonade out of lemons doing that.
It’s worth mentioning that the menu glitch only lowers the background music volume. It does NOT completely mute it (clarifying this point for people out there that might misinterpret what MCAaronIce said earlier). The menu also takes up roughly 16% of the screen, so it does not obscure a considerably large portion of the screen like people seem to think.
RE: “GDQ would not approve this”: This is an irrelevant point to make when deciding whether to allow a glitch in speedruns. I also completely disagree. This glitch is comparable to the Undertale punch card skip (which WAS approved and run at GDQ). The punch card skip involved abusing an overlay in order to skip cutscenes (sound familiar?). It was also used to skip major boss battles and entire sections of the game. The menu skip glitch is far less gamebreaking since you’re only skipping the results screen and contract animation rather than skipping significant parts of the game.
One can argue that it makes the game more interesting to watch since there’s less pointless downtime in between boss battles, and there will be a lot of variation in seeing when a runner decides to activate the glitch during a fight.
EDIT: If you’re really concerned about viewers missing out on some of the wonderful art and music that this game has to offer, then you might as well ban all categories except 100% Glitchless. The All Bosses category completely skips 5 entire levels worth of music/art work (6 if you count the tutorial), WSE shortens the boss fights to the point where viewers are only hearing ~30 seconds out of a 3+ minute musical composition, and phase skip glitches rob the viewer of some beautiful final phase artwork (Hilda, Beppi, Djimmi, Grim, Dr. Kahl’s Robot, Rumor) not to mention the 6 King Dice minibosses that would not be seen at all in a non-100% run.
Just going to add in on this. Speedruns aren't supposed to be defined by their difficulty or what is taken out of the game. The points above about GDQ, audio, and video are light weight problems that shouldn't take a matter in whether we create a new category or not. GDQ, we have a lot of different categories, it doesn't have to be limited to a category with the menu glitch if we were to go into GDQ and this isn't even about speedrunning events anyways. Audio shouldn't even matter, but it does because of the viewer. As speedrunning can be entertaining to the viewer, the first priority is speedrunning to get a better time, as Jason2890 says above, we basically already cut out a lot of the audio. Video, as it is annoying to see the menu in the middle of the screen, the speedrun isn't concerned by what appears on screen. I personally disagree in making another category with no menu glitch. At this point it just looks like any new somewhat major glitch that is found will result in another category made.
I think it should be included in all runs except glitchless. I really don't like the idea of making a separate category since I think Any% and All bosses is the same run done the same way except you beat the devil. So making the menu glitch a different category is just cluttering the categories for this game. And would you make a different category for Menu glitch Any%/ Menu glitch All bosses ? The whole point of this site is to do the games as quickly as possible. Music/Art shouldn't matter we are not here to judge a game by those aspects. We are here to pass games fast. I would understand if the glitch was game breaking but it's not. You still have to pass each level and that still requires skill. And if people watch other runs that runners spend a good amount of time glitching through walls or running through a black screen to get somewhere then people will watch cuphead with the menu glitch. If it's a problem for events then you simply don't do the menu glitch for the event. Nothing changes for the whole run except people have to wait for the game to give you your time and grade.
For each argument that it's all about beating the game as quickly as possible, I agree, which is why it should be allowed in any%. All other categories are already some form of arbitrary rules that either makes the run more fun, more interesting, more challenging, etc, otherwise there would be no need for other categories for any games except any%. Personally, I wouldn't add any new categories, I would just specify that the existing categories (except any%) do not allow the glitch. No extra clutter. I think GUITARMACIST points out a lot of issues to consider as well, given how much the glitch is going to rely on odd controller setups or force keyboard use, which may push less people to want to run the game. I would hope part of the consideration is to allow for the game's community to grow and thrive.
As an aside, the devs have said they plan to patch the game, so there will be more categories to this game. This is always something that will have to be reevaluated. It's worth watching how the runs grow and change and adjusting as that happens. Nothing is set in stone forever, our opinions may change as glitches and strategies evolve.
“I think GUITARMACIST points out a lot of issues to consider as well, given how much the glitch is going to rely on odd controller setups or force keyboard use”
Odd controller setups are not mandatory for the glitch, and keyboard use is not forced. Odd controller setups may make the glitch easier for some people to execute, but it’s by no means a requirement. Same with WSE. Remapping weapon swap to a different button makes it easier to do for most people, but it’s not required.
It just seems nitpicky to have categories where only “some” glitches are allowed when a glitchless category already exists.
Glitchless = no glitches allowed All other categories = glitches allowed
This is how it is right now, and that makes sense to me and likely makes sense to any outsider that may be considering speedrunning Cuphead in the future. What you guys are proposing is:
Glitchless = no glitches allowed Any% = all glitches allowed All Bosses = some arbitrary amount of glitches are permitted, but not all of them.
You’re worried about this glitch pushing less people to run this game, correct? Consider how it’ll look when a person that may want to run Cuphead comes here, realizes there are a dozen different categories, and has to spend time reading rules on each category to figure out exactly which glitches are allowed in each category.
When a “Glitchless” category exists for a game, it’s intuitive to assume that any non-Glitchless category allows any and all glitches. If I wasn’t already into speedrunning Cuphead, I would be really turned off of the game if I found out that there were different sets of glitches permitted in each category.
On another note: can we just rename Any% to “Bad Ending” and All Bosses to “Good Ending”? All Bosses isn’t really all bosses since you skip 6 of the King Dice bosses, and All Bosses is still a form of Any%.
Also, on the subject of attracting new runners to the game: I would think this glitch would actually bring more new runners to the game than it would deter, so I disagree with the notion that it should be banned because some people “might” not want to speedrun the game in the future.
As things stood before this glitch, it was pretty clear that TMR, K_Prime, and Cosmic were pretty far ahead of everyone else in terms of full game runs. A newer player might watch one of their runs and say “well, I’ll never be that good, so I won’t even bother”. Now with the introduction of the menu glitch, a newer player might see how easy it is to execute and how much time could be saved and figure they’ll give it a shot because ANYONE has a shot at a high ranking time right now. It’ll be awhile until you have fully optimized runs with the menu glitch. The top of the leaderboard will likely involve a mix of some people that get the menu glitch on most bosses with not-the-greatest execution on the boss fights themselves, others that have really good boss fights but may have missed the menu glitch a few times, and others that have nearly perfect boss fights and minimal menu glitch usage all with similar times. More glitches and new discoveries make speedrunning more competitive, not less.
I don't see an issue with segregating the categories into 1) completely glitchless, 2) completely glitched, and 3) a happy medium between. In fact many games have this setup in their community. Undertale for example has several categories due to the nature of the game and that does not seem to be hurting their community. In fact, it brings people closer because different types of people get attached to different categories. Some people want to run fully glitched runs - that's great - but not everyone wants to play that way. Completely glitchless is just as boring for me. Some of us prefer to play a happy medium. Adding another category would make the game more inclusive, and not necessarily less competitive.
Jason, in regards to your suggestion about renaming the categories, that isn't something we're planning on doing. I think the names work as they are and Any% is literally just beat the game and All Bosses is literally beat all bosses. There is a bit of room for discussion (which we've had already and I don't want to have again if I can help it) on whether the KD "bosses" are actually bosses or not and we came to a decision with a lot of community input that they shouldn't be counted as bosses. It's one of those things that regardless of what we do, there's going to be a significant split in the community. The name is liable to change if/when more bosses get added as well, so for the time being, we're just leaving it alone.
Also, I appreciate the feedback, but I'd suggest keeping this thread on topic, especially since it's a hot issue right now.
Fair enough. Sorry for the slight derail. I wasn’t aware of the discussion of the King Dice bosses beforehand (I didn’t get the game til a couple weeks after it came out and missed all the early discussion) but if that’s what the community decided then that’s fair.
No, it's perfectly fine! I can't blame you for not being here for it! Sorry if that came off as rude or anything :)
