So I noticed that GolgAhri's runs only have 4 seconds of blackscreen before each race, where I am getting about 10-12 seconds of blackscreen before each race. It would be nice to save those 6-8 seconds per race, so I want to know what emulator Golg uses, and what plugins that allow this to happen.

I normally use Project 64 1.6, since that is the standard for speedrunning in most other games, but it seems for XG2 there may be a better one.

I have noticed that the rules don't mention anything about having weapons on or off for full-game categories. Furthermore, it just says that you need to complete the extreme contest, which to me means to qualify for all races and end the contest with more points than any other racer (in particular, it is not required to get first place in every race except in mirror). Because of this, I have found it faster in some races to run into my own proximity mines in order to kill myself and end the race early. I have found this can be done about once every 4 races without losing the point lead for the contest as a whole (so it can be done once in atomic, twice in critical mass, and three times in meltdown).

With the rules as they are stated, I don't see why this wouldn't be allowed, but I have noticed that the current runs on the leaderboard don't use this technique. I have submitted a run of every full-game category months ago, but it seems the only moderator for this game has disappeared off the face of the internet about a week before I submitted my first run for this game.

However, given this "deathwarping" tactic, I can imagine other runners may not like this, so it may be a good idea to have two different leaderboards for each category; one with weapons on and one with weapons off. In the weapons off case, killing yourself through any means would be banned (like running into walls until your health depletes, for instance, though I suspect that would be slower).

If ever moderation for this game becomes active again, this is probably something that should be decided.

With Zako's proposal to add categories for any% in addition to any% ISC, I think there are too many categories to display them in the way they currently are. I think we should stick with 3 types of categories (+miscellaneous) and have those further subdivided into others similar to how SR8 is divided into runs of v1.1 and v1.2, or games with fixed warps/no fixed warps. For example, we can have the 3 main category types be "custom series challenge" (maybe find a better name than that, but that refers to things like scrubs/standard challenge), then "main series challenges" (current apprentice/master) and finally "full series challenges" (since the series is not complete, these don't yet exist). Then for each type they can be split into any%, any% ISC, and 100%.

I think organizing the categories like that would make the leaderboard less cluttered, and then more categories can be added without having to have a ton of categories (if the any% categories get added that would be 6 categories, which is a lot).

Alright so this race should be happening relatively soon, but I don't have any idea on what would be a good time to do the race. I know some people might have to derust/learn some hacks to get ready, but that should be happening fairly soon and we are going to need to decide when to have the race, and hopefully we can find a time that works for everyone.

As far as I know the participants will be Muimania, MarvJungs, Katze, and me, which leaves me the odd one out in terms of time zones, since those three are in the same time zone, and I am about six hours behind them. So, if I have enough warning, I will try to just adjust my sleep schedule so that I can do the race whenever the rest of you want to, since I have no obligations for the next few weeks.

We can use this thread to figure out the scheduling since it is a place easily accessible to everyone in the race. Also, if anyone wants to join in on the scrubs challenge race, you can say so here, just hopefully you are available for whenever it ends up being scheduled.

With the way the rules are now, it is somewhat clunky to have to open different ROMs for each switch during a run. As far as I know, the only reason the rules are the way they are now is because that is what TsucnenT did in his runs, which were the first ever runs of this game. So, since no one even runs this game anymore anyway, I think the rules should be changed to make the run better.

Since having to open ROMs in the middle of the run is annoying and it takes some (small) amount of time for the ROMs to load, that can be some variability in the timing that would make things inconsistent based on load times of the ROMs. So because of that, I think that the switches should all be pressed before the run starts. So, for before the run starts, the runner can just make a save file with 0 stars and all 3 switches pressed. That way, there is no need to open ROMs during the run, and this will make the run itself smoother as well since there is no need to switch out ROMs during the run (which forces a reset of the game).

However, since doing this without any restrictions on the uses of the switch blocks would effectively remove the mechanics of the cap switches in the first place, I also propose that one must read the corresponding the sign before they ever use any of the blocks of that color (so in order to use shell boxes, the player must first read the yellow sign, etc.). This way the cap switch mechanic is still in the game, and there is no need to switch out ROMs during a run.

Other people might want to have a different variation of these rules, those being remove the sign restrictions, but have a blank save file at the beginning of the run (which would lead to the beginning of the run being them opening each ROM in turn and pressing each switch right away and then playing the game with complete access to switch blocks from there). Their reasoning for this seems to be something along the lines of 'the passwords for the ROMs are known before the run starts, so there is no need to use the signs to restrict the opening of the ROMs'. The problem with this is that it completely removes the mechanic of the cap switches in the game. It is the same as having to spend the first 3 or so minutes of the run doing nothing and then playing the game from there as if the cap switches never existed and the blocks were always accessible. But at that point, there is no reason to require a blank save file other than to keep the rules consistent with other ROMhacks. But that is somewhat the same philosophy that led to BLJ being banned in any% ISC categories of games that didn't even have a skip for the final star door that used a BLJ.

I think it makes the most sense to use a save file with the switches already pressed, and then prohibit the use of colored boxes (any interaction with the boxes, including standing on top of the boxes, etc.) until the corresponding sign has been read. It may seem weird when these rules are compared to other games, but I don't see why we have to make the rules of this game pragmatically stupid based on what the rules are for other games.

I would hope that a decision about the rules regarding this is made before RHDQ happens, since I will have to be running a 97 star in it, and would like to have the rules I proposed for it, since those rules would make the game less awkward to run while keeping the spirit of the cap switches intact. Until I get a response on this I will run the game with the current rules (must read the sign before opening the ROM containing the switch).

Since To the Moon may be released pretty soon, there are questions of whether it should be allowed to fill the slot of SR2 in a srubs/standard challenge. I figured before making a decision on it I should get an idea of what people in the community want the rules to be. Obviously this will depend on certain factors that can only be known after the game is released, such as how difficult the hack is and how long the speedrun categories of it take.

In the second post of this thread I will try to keep an updated list of the possible options of how to handle the existence of To the Moon for the purposes of the scrubs/standard challenge along with a condensed list of reasons why each option may be a good idea.

I understand that this may come down to simply being an opinion, and that I will probably be biased toward favoring requiring Remnant of Doom to be run in the challenges, and that maybe other people could feel differently about that, which is pretty much why I am making this thread in the first place. While I will look at anything anyone says and examine their reasoning, for things that are a matter of preference or opinion, I will weigh more heavily the opinions of those that I have evidence to believe are more likely of actually running an SRC some time in the future. As a result, the more speedruns that someone has on the leaderboards across the star revenge games, the more I will give weight to their preferences.

Since Brodute is going to continue making hacks for the next few years, any run with the current definition of the apprentice challenge or master's challenge will be invalidated with the release of a new hack. Because of that, I think it is a good idea to define some fixed categories for this challenge that will not be invalidated by new releases.

Currently the scrub's/standard challenges work pretty well as a staple category for people to get into, and they will change as new hacks are released, but it gives people the choice of what they want to run, so they are probably good things to keep (and there are already existing runs of them so getting rid of them wouldn't be a good idea).

As suggestions for categories to replace the apprentice/master's challenges, I would think that night of doom should be required in them, so possibly a category like "main series 100%" as the basic rule, which would mean SR1, SR2, SR3, SR4, SR5, SR6, SR7, and SR8 all 100% in a row might be a good idea. Similarly there could be a "main series any% intended star count" as another one, where it is the same games, but any% intended star count instead of 100%.

I say "any% intended star count" because some of the games will have skips that allow you to do any% with very few stars, but I wouldn't want to ban specific techniques such as BLJ in SR6 50 star or in SR7 61 star, since I think it is much better to be able to use anything available in the game, and have the real requirement of the run just be the star count of the last required star door. I suppose another way to put it would be no star door skips, but that would ruin SR7.5 82 star because the mips clip for the switches and early green switch.

Either way, if you guys aren't going to just cede control of the modding of this game over to me, we should probably agree with how we will define the categories so that they can be more playable than the ones we currently have. Once the series is complete we can add back the current apprentice/master's challenges, calling them "full series any% intended star count" and "full series 100%" or something.

Also we can add miscellaneous categories similar to the SR1 run-a-thon, like an SR6 run-a-thon or an SR7 run-a-thon.