Notes have been updated to reflect the intentional death we take to smooth coin RNG, as well as other info from the TAS

(Copied from pastebin with minor edits)

After ESA 2016 I stated to Edenal and Planks that I wanted to get more involved with the tech side of ESA. I then second-guessed myself, saying i wasn't going to volunteer until the actual sign-ups went live, when I realised that despite the stress of last year's tech debacle I did want to do it again, and that I did indeed want to be more involved.

I was trusted with a senior tech role this year. Whether this was wise beforehand or not, it definitely seems to have gone well from my side of things. The guys I was working with were all capable, and even when their shifts were at ungodly hours they all stuck with it, and for that I am massively grateful. You all have my thanks, as do the rest of the seniors (Planks, Edenal, Oasiz and Zephyyrr)

The workflow for tech was far more intuitive this year, with ESAController being a massive help in setting things up. We had a few issues where we had to manually crop game feeds, but even this wasn't actually too bad, despite my protests at the time. Extron's cropping method is pretty non-intuitive, but I go tmy head around it in the end. Hopefully next event we can have a full set of presets for all the consoles that runs will be on in plenty of time. The mixer was initially a struggle to get used to since I'd never used a multi-layer digital mixer prior to the event, but after a few setups I got the hang of it, and after that point things were a lot smoother. We did notice that the headset on tech gave a very different impression of the audio balance than the speakers, so that will need to be kept in mind. The restream PC falling over a couple of times is obviously a fairly big problem, and will need to be looked at before the next event. Also, 46 hour limit on RTMP sucks.

Onto the rest of the ESA experience. The layout of the room and the tech station was a massive improvement, and Hall B was actually used properly this year, so many thanks to Rasmus for that. Actually having a decent amount of gaming PCs helped tech as well- we could just get runners to install their games on any practice PC they chose and move it over during setup. Much easier than having to deal with just two capable gaming machines. The amount of chairs and tables was far better as well, it never really felt like there weren't enough.

Other than when I was at tech I didn't watch much of the marathon. That said, I was around for a considerably larger number of hours than I actually was on shift for. The schedule was a mixed bag in my mind, though the team were very professional in their handling of it. I feel like there were perhaps too many Final Fantasy and GTA games, but they are very popular so I can see why they were included. I was initially very sceptical of the Super Mario 64 relay, but it ended up being a highlight of the marathon, so thanks to Fuzzy and Chrism for organising that. Hearing the cheering from the second stream room so regularly was fantastic and really added to the atmosphere.

The kiosk was a vast improvement from last year. Yes, the prices for drinks were higher, but the vastly wider choice was very much appreciated from my end. Whilst it was a slight bit frustrating when the card machine was broken and the times it was closed before the advertised time, overall it was a much better experience than the kiosk at ESA 2016 and their (quite frankly awful) hotdogs.

The one area that massively improved my overall experience most is having a bike. It is so much nicer being able to just hop on a bike to get into the centre if Växjö than having to walk 20+ minutes in each direction every time. Whether this is a problem with the location of the venue, I'm not entirely sure, but with a bike it becomes a relative non-issue, at least personally. Despite having my hotel room in the centre of town, I was fine with it.

Overall, this year's ESA was a far better experience from an event point of view. Everything that was a problem last year was at least improved, and while there are still a few issues still, there pretty much always will be and I'm sure the entire team will be working on improving things for ESA Winter and onward. Thank you all for putting on such a fantastic event, it was very much worth my while, both as a volunteer and as an attendee.

One thing I missed from my initial pastebin was the lanyards. They felt way too big and the design was based off of an already dead meme. A clear area for improvement next time. Same goes for the T-shirt design since it was basically the same.

This is in no particular order and I'll probably forget some people.

Riekelt: Thanks for being an all-round great guy and especially thanks for the Stroopwafel, they were as amazing as ever.

Grukk: For being the best old man I know, it's always a pleasure seeing you, even if you do go to bed at like 8PM.

Maja: For putting up with both Grukk as a partner and Joka as a brother. I'm not sure how you do it :P

Joka: For inspiring me to finally play Ori, which I'll start in a few days. That game looks amazing and beautiful and your run made it look even better than I'd thought it was.

btrim: For coming all the way from the States to a small town in Sweden to see our little group for a week or so. I hope we made it worth the trip.

Rasmus: For being the best damn flürganüser we could have hoped for, and the nights in the Bishop's

Alowishus: For actually following through when saying you have a loaf of bread in your spare bed, and for letting me store my luggage after checking out.

Pinggas: For somehow making a McDonald's game look somewhat entertaining, and for some great craic over the the few days you were in town.

Zoda: For having me playtest one of your Mega Maker levels. It made me realise how annoyingly tight some of the platforming in the MM games can be.

Maxie: For being a great roomie again, and for picking a better hotel than Scandic.

Zoton: For all the work you've put into the layouts and speedcontrol, and for not breaking it all too much by messing with production. Sorry for telling you not to touch stuff so much :P

Edenal: For both listening to the issues of past ESAs and doing something about them, and for buying me drinks even if I ended up not being very sensible after drinking them! Also, for having me on as a senior tech this year.

Planks: For trusting me enough to have me as a senior tech, showing me how to use the mixer and inserting a dose of sense when I lacked it while drunk.

SoeZee: I don't know how you have the amount of energy you do, but it was certainly infectious!

Flicky: For instantly realising upon seeing me that I'd been exercising and had lost weight. Your presence at ESA will be sadly missed and I'm sad I only got to speak to you that one time.

I'm sure there are others, but that's all I can think of from the top of my head. Until next year!

I would like to withdraw the Castle of Illusion race between myself and Tenebrae. I've not been feeling it during practice, and would quite like to attend ESA without the pressure of having a run.

I'm not 100% sure if Tenebrae would want to continue with it as a solo run, but we've discussed it in the past and think it's not as entertaining a run as a solo effort. You'll want to confirm that with him though.

A lot of the points here are either already known by the organisers (I have talked to Planks/Edenal about a few things already) or are kinda obvious, but I want to get them down here so I have a record of them.

As an attendee/runner/tech volunteer:

• Setup day was fine in terms of not getting wristbands etc IMO, it was already made clear beforehand that it was not a day that everyone should be showing up to and that only people willing to move stuff and help set up should come along to the venue. In terms of the actual length of time needed for setup, I feel there should have been an extra day in order to be able to test the setup and make sure all the equipment was there. A lot of the Dreamhack stuff just wasn’t there until days later. I’m not sure if that was due to a miscommunication somewhere, but something to be worked on as a whole.
• The atmosphere of the whole event felt great. Basically anyone that wasn’t actively hosting/running/doing tech was approachable and friendly and I didn’t meet anyone that wasn’t genuinely great to be around. Not a piece of feedback for the overall event organisation, but still important for a community-focused thing.
• It felt like there were enough CRTs. I never had any issues finding one, even if I did have to sit somewhere away from people that I was having a conversation with.
• Attendance fees were so, so cheap considering the length of the event and the cost of putting something like this together. I know it’s more than previous years, but to me it’s still an absolute bargain for over a week.
• Wristbands. Sturdy enough to survive the event and beyond, small and light enough to make me entirely forget I had it on after a few hours. Definitely a good choice to go with fabric for them.
• There was basically always a head tech guy or two around. This was probably due to the number of tech issues we had during the stream, but I’ll talk about those later.
• The couches around the stream area were great. Comfy and had a real sense of friendliness about being on them. Would recommend doing that again next year. The corner couch especially worked well for the hosting area
• The T-Shirt and hoodies are great. The NES guys may complain about the buttons on that particular part of the T-Shirt design, but they can shush. :P
• The actual games selected were a good mix. Thanks are in order for having a decent amount of Master System and Genesis games, something that has been severely lacking in GDQs.
• Massive shoutouts to the people that went around tidying up. I saw Tompa pretty much constantly at it and it made the whole atmosphere of the event much nicer. English labelling on the bins would have helped people know what stuff goes in which one, though.
• The Northern Sky guys were great. The kiosk was always manned for late-night energy drink/cola requirements and they were always really friendly. Really helped during the tech slog.

~ The tech schedule was mostly stuck to. A few people didn’t show up for their shifts for various reasons, which is an issue when things are timetabled for everyone being where they are meant to be. That said, people did generally stick around when that happened, so there weren’t any times where there was nobody on tech. ~ The location of the venue was pretty meh in the end. It wasn’t so far away from everything that I ever felt I couldn’t go into town, but something slightly more central would definitely have been preferred. ~ Scandic felt like a motel. I stayed in a twin room so didn’t have the issues the guys staying in 3-4 person rooms had, but to have the noise notices stuck up on all the ESA guys’ rooms when it was a minority making noise was a big problem and really soured the mood. Next time I think I’d rather stay at Royal Corner. ~ The game selection process really didn’t need 3 rounds of cuts. The length of time it took to know whether a game is in or out was kinda long, but it wasn’t too much of a problem for me personally as I was planning on attending regardless of whether I got a game in.

• Chairs. There just weren’t enough at the venue at all. It felt like a constant battle to find one that wasn’t being used. Definitely get/rent more for next year.

I’ll split the tech issues into bullet points, as doing them all in one would just create a massive wall of text. I spent a considerable amount of time around the tech station, so this might be more in-depth than needed or wanted.

¤ OSSCs: The OSSCs ended up being a massive disappointment when it came to the setup we had. The capture cards were consistently losing sync with them which made them basically unusable.

¤ Nobody was given a chance to learn the setup before their shifts on tech. This led to a lot of situations where the main option for getting something sorted ended up being “Ask Planks”. While Planks is definitely great at sorting stuff out, it led to him getting massively sleep deprived over the course of the marathon. Not great. Definitely something that needs improving for next year, some sort of video tutorials on how to use the racks and setup would be a great first step.

¤ Audio levels. For the first couple of days, at least, audio levels were a bit of a mess. Even further into the marathon the hosts’ audio levels were often too low. I suspect leaving hosts in control of their levels was a mistake given they were not instructed in how to manage that side of things. Audio when it came to adverts was also not great, first not having audio at all from them and then blasting peoples’ ears out. That did improve later on, but shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

¤ Anyone that watched the stream knows that the setups were far too long in a lot of cases. Batman in particular was the worst of the setups in terms of length. This ties in a lot with my next point.

¤ Reliability of the capture setup was just not there. Things were constantly breaking it seems, and we ended up being down to one capture card that we could use for anything that wasn’t straight through HDMI capture. Major changes needed here.

¤ Communication between tech and hosts needs to improve, in that 2 way communication needs to be a thing, rather that just having a “tech ready” light. Being able to tell the hosts they’ll be on in x seconds or that the game is going to take x minutes to set up without having to physically run over and tell them would be a massive improvement to start with.

¤ XSPLIT. Yes, they were a sponsor. Yes, they provided stuff for the marathon. Their software is a heap of junk and I’ll be glad to be rid of it. It really, really should not be taking up to a minute to make simple changes on a machine with 12 cores, 24 threads and 48GB RAM. It just shouldn’t. That it did is utterly unacceptable. There’s a reason GDQ have gone with OBS Studio, and as soon as we can get it working on that machine we should too.

¤ Communication between tech shifts needs to improve. There’s a couple of ways to do this. Either some sort of logbook where changes to setups etc get noted, or have staggered shifts.

¤ Given some hindsight, I feel the stream would have possibly felt less empty if it were held in Hall B. Hall A had a lot of seating around the outside that was obviously empty and very hard to hide on any camera angles. Really made the room feel a lot emptier than it actually was.

Don't let all these negative points take away from the fact that as an attendee I had loads of fun at ESA this year and definitely want to come back. I think next year I want to take a more active role in tech to try and make some of these issues go away.

This is NOT the case. Taxis can, I believe, charge what they want so long as they are clear and have their fares displayed both inside and outside of the taxi. The taxi industry is rather deregulated in Sweden and it is easy to pay more than you should if you don't pay attention to the fares.

The information they have to display should look like this:

Senior techs are Edenal, Planks, Oasiz and Zephyyrr. I believe hosts will have their own schedule.

[Updated 5th August 2020]

Red Twin Info for Chiki Chiki Boys

These notes are probably best followed while watching a run- they may not make much sense without a reference as they are very wordy.

Character name: The character name is important as it determines the luck stat (which affects coin drops) - see http://tasvideos.org/6169S.html and https://gist.github.com/realmonster/43378aef010cd8371e7f9ee3347c42c2 for details. Any name with 31 next to it in the full name list is viable.

General tips: Magic bombs explode when they touch any edge of the screen, you can use this to kill bosses more quickly. If you decide against the sword upgrade - good luck, you're likely losing minutes just to trash enemies taking two hits instead of one and bosses taking longer to sword down. Don't be afraid to damage boost through cycle-based stuff- it's unlikely you'll die to anything, and there's plenty of health around.

Level Order: Round 2->3->1

In Round 2, you need to get a minimum of 9000 coins to buy the first sword upgrade, but at least 10200 is preferred so you can buy an extra magic. Get close to the miniboss so the second bomb kills him. Head down grabbing the coins on the chains and the magic at the bottom. Head along the top route Be patient with the dragon boss, it has the longest invulnerability frames of any boss in the game. In the shop, buy the sword and as many bombs as you can afford.

In Round 3, the rows of 3 yellow fish at the start drop 500 coins if you kill them all. The miniboss can be killed in one magic if you get the timing and position right, hit it at the bottom and hope it keeps jumping- it's not guaranteed. What you do next depends on how much magic you have left after the miniboss. If you have 0, you need to take a death before or at the very start of the boss fight, then use the refilled magic on it, sword swingng the rest. If you have 1 (the preferred situation) then you kill the first phase with that, take a death in the intermission and use 3 of the refilled magic bomber to finish it off. In the shop, buy as many bombs as you can afford.

In Round 1, pick up the magic at the end of the first area before the miniboss becomes vulnerable. if you have less than max health you can take advantage of the i-frames that the health pickup in the middle gives you to make the quick kill on the miniboss easier. Take the upper route when you enter the next area- there is a chest that only takes an extra second to access with at least 500 coins inside. Grab the magic, and if you are low in coins you can swing at the sign next to it for some more. The boss in this level can be a jerk, his main body doesn't become vulnerable until his arms have been destroyed. The ball is a terrible magic in all respects and it's what you have to deal with the boss with. Good luck- the boss can take 10 seconds from you if it wants to. In the shop, buy as many bombs as you can afford and move on.

In all of the round 4 levels, it is your main job to ensure that you have 6000 coins at the end of each level in order to buy a full set of bombs. This is simple in 4-1. The upper route, where you take the platforms along, costs 5 seconds but nets you several thousand easy coins, which should be enough with the addition of the chest towards the boss room. The miniboss has a skip that I don't fully understand how it works. My understanding is that you need to keep the sprites from being onscreen, damage the boss to the point where a double-hit from a bomb will kill it, and then ensure as much of the dragon as possible is obscured. I haven't managed to get it to 100% consistency yet, but that is what I know about the skip, which saves at least 10 seconds.

In 4-2, use one bomb on the first miniboss (the repeat of the Round 3 miniboss, this time without healthbar but with two blue fish instead of one) and sword swing the rest of its health down. The second miniboss takes two bombs and one sword swing to kill, I usually alternate the two actions. There are chests hidden behind the two pillars at each stage of this section, 4 of them contains coins, one has a star (that just gives points) and one of them contains a blue health pickup. In the next area there's a fairy that, if you are low on coins and have full health, you can swim into for a 50/50 chance at an extra magic. If you are not at full health, it acts as a blue health pickup. There is a hidden chest on the upper level of this area, which has 500 coins inside. Pick up the magic, damage boost through the rotating spikes and pick up the health in the next area's hidden chest to gain more i-frames that should allow you to get to the boss faster. Kill the boss with 3 bombs once it becomes vulnerable. If you end up being a bit short on coins there is an extra magic in the next level.

In 4-3, head straight to the right unless you need the magic on the upper path. You can damage boost through the falling spikes to save a few seconds on each set. This miniboss is annoying, he is immune whenever he is jumping and whenever he has his sword up to parry. He takes two magic to kill if you get lucky, but you may need to sword swing at him, and how long it takes is entirely RNG. The TAS has a manipulation to get the best pattern but I've not been able to replicate this RTA. The first hit with the magic should be free. Let the skull hit the floor and pick up the 500 coins.

The flames in the next area have coins behind them, but you shouldn't need them unless you are really low on coins. The boss is immune whenever his wings are not spread. As per any boss in this route, he takes 3 bombs to kill. The boss drops 10 coins that are each worth at least 500 each. Pick them all up before you grab the scroll.

4-4 onwards is stupidly easy for coins. The first section of 4-4 is an autoscroller, with chests along the way that contain 500 coins each, with a blue health pickup half way up and a red health pickup available if needed on the left hand side of the miniboss room. Said miniboss is a repeat of the scorpion boss. Use two bombs on it and sword swing the rest. Try to have full health for the next section. There are two fairies, each giving a 50% chance of getting a bonus magic, and these will make the next bossfight much faster. The guys on clouds in this area will push you back really far, avoid them as much as possible- it's quicker to wait for them to leave the screen. The boss is a 2 parter. The first phase has longer invulnerability frames so use magic on that. If you have 5 magic, use 3 on the first form and 2 on the second. If not, scale back magic use based on the assumption that the second form is better to swing at.

The climb in 4-5 is all about speed, ignore the magic on the way up- you should have 5 anyway and using one just lags the game, slowing you down overall. When you get to the top you will be put into the next area. Ignore the first fairy. I don't think it's possible to avoid the second one without losing more time than you would have gained otherwise. The miniboss here takes two magic and a sword swing to kill, I alternate to push him to the edge of the screen, ensuring both magic uses hit. The main boss himself takes 3 magic and a sword swing to kill. Remember, not every position he goes to will allow you to get a hit on him, sometimes he phases straight back out- be careful of this. Ensure you have at least 5000 coins at the point you touch the scroll here, and if you want to go for best ending, grab the key from the hidden chest in his crystal ball while the cutscene is ongoing.

4-6 is an autoscroller. Avoid being hit on the way down, and stand as close to the centre of the screen at the end for the fastest possible transition out of the level.

You can transition from the coin collection section to the fall to the boss slightly faster by jumping to the bottom of the screen manually, be careful not to do it too early as this can lose the time back. The final boss is a pushover, 3 magic and it's done. Grab the scroll at the soonest opportunity and you're done.

Update on Chiki Chiki Boys:

Since getting a PB of 18:58 a couple of weeks ago I've been working on consistency. No-resets have been going extremely well, and I feel I'm at the point where I can reduce the estimate to 20:00.

I know, I just oversimplified the language I used. I'll edit my response to correct it :)

Anyone can, though if you're not collecting from the event you'll need to pay postage.

The runner follow buttons is a FrankerFaceZ thing. SirStendec is most likely the best point of call for getting that set up.

Don't forget: The newcomers are always mafia. Always.

Update on my submissions:

Chiki Chiki Boys: Since I submitted I have improved my PB to 19:38. http://www.speedrun.com/run/7yl178km - I've also been consistently getting sub-21 runs since discovering new strats, so I don't think there's any real chance that not beating the estimate will be a thing.

Castle of Illusion: I haven't had much chance to practice this yet, though I did a no-reset at the start of the week and got a 19:01. As for the race, Tenebrae has told me he won't be making it to ESA, so if you still want the game to be in, it would now be as a solo run.

World of Illusion: As Tenebrae cannot make it, our team will not be in the Co-op race. As far as I know the other three teams will be there.

[big][big][center]Pre-ESA Online Marathon Schedule[/center][/big][/big]

The first draft schedule was up for a couple of days, and we only needed to make a minor change to fit people in. As such, we are willing to call the schedule official at this point.

https://horaro.org/preesa/schedule

The incentives listed are not final, and we do not yet have monetary amounts attached to them. This will be done closer to the marathon.

We all look forward to seeing your runs, and hope you are practising for the marathon. As a reminder, you are welcome to bring any co-commentators along, so long as they know how to use Discord and are available set up at the time of your run.

@Nord If you edited your post after your initial submission chances are we missed them. There'd likely not have been time for Bully, and there were quite a lot of FPS submitted so Postal 2 probably wouldn't have made it either. Apologies for not seeing them earlier, but they would have been cut.

Thanks for letting us know your availability though. :)

@tHmCs Does that include Friday as well, or just Saturday and Sunday?

[big][big][centre]ESA Pre-Marathon Cuts & More Info[/centre][/big][/big]

Thanks to everyone that submitted games for the marathon. We've had a look at all the submissions that were put in before the deadline and are now ready to announce which games have made it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fm24K5P_cbfMYVjJ21wDpNYZysDBLXwMKQjC31EGLuw

There are three lists. Those in green are successful, and will be included in the schedule. Those in red have not been chosen, and those in the second sheet in orange are on the waitlist, and will be included if space opens up for them in case of dropouts, clashes in availability, etc.

We had over 160 hours of total submissions to fit into a 60 hour schedule, so please understand if your game is not one of those included.

If you feel your game isn't justified in not being included, feel free to contact myself or Riekelt and we will give you our reasoning for not doing so.

Speaking of availability, it is vital that everyone that has not done so makes us aware of their availability during the marathon. If you are on the waitlist or successful lists, please let us know your availability before the 16th. As before, if you do not, we will assume you are always available.

We'd also like to open up some runs to races. There are strictly limited places for this, and we are only opening this up to 2 player races. We will be choosing which games become races from anyone that does request this.

[big]This will only be allowed when the original runner agrees, and they must be the one to contact either myself or Riekelt[/big]

Congratulations to everyone that has successfully made it in, commiserations to those that didn't. As a reminder, the first Schedule draft should be made available on the 16th January.

[big][big][centre]Submissions are now closed[/centre][/big][/big]

Anything that is submitted after this post will not be considered for inclusion. Thank you to everyone that has submitted.

[big][big][center]Submission Deadline Information[/center][/big][/big]

We have had a lot of submissions in the short time that we have had this thread up, so thank you to everyone that has submitted a game. In the interest of not leaving people hanging with regards to whether their runs are in or not, we have some information regarding the submission deadline and when cuts will be announced.

[big][big][center]Submissions will be closing on Jan 9th at 23:59 CET[/center][/big][/big]

Note that having submitted is no guarantee that you will get a run, we have limited time in the marathon and a lot of submissions.

[big][big][center]Cuts will be announced on Jan 13th[/center][/big][/big]

[big][big][center]The first Schedule Draft should be published on 16th Jan[/center][/big][/big]

It is really important that we know when people will be available for their runs. If you do not tell us, we will assume you are always available. This was an oversight in the original submission form. Blame Edenal!