I was wondering why there isn't a glitchless category for this game. There are tons of glitches in this game and it would be interesting to see how people get around to beating it quickly without using any game-breaking glitches. For those who know a lot about BFBB and have been playing it since childhood (such as myself) but don't really know most glitches, or just can't seem to get them right, it would be good for them to show off their stuff even without glitches.
I tried to run the game without glitches, and 1. it's hard to define what counts as a glitch in a game with this complex of a movement system, 2. your options are very limited as to what spats you can get, 3. it just was not an interesting run. it just felt like i was playing casually but just kinda quick. banning only 1 glitch for a category creates many unique workarounds, but you don't really get that sense when you ban them all.
Nothing stops you from submitting an any% or 100% run using a route with few or no glitches. If someone wants to run the game but doesn't want to learn the tricks—which is totally respectable, a lot of these tricks are hard—they can get right into seeing what kind of time they get by playing more-or-less casually. And if they want a better time, they can start incorporating tricks and skips.
As for "showing off" a run without glitches, I'll echo OrionYTP: it isn't that interesting. BFBB predominantly gets its movement tech from the physics exploits; it isn't like SpongeBob's vanilla moveset is spectacular. With games such as SM64 or WL4, no glitches are required for showing off precise movement. On the other hand, BFBB's run heavily benefits from exploits such as cruise-boosting and Hans disable.
What's wrong with new players submitting their times to the main categories? There's nothing wrong with having a slow time compared to the rest of the leaderboard.
That's fair, but I think that should be addressed by telling new runners that speedrunning is about personal achievement and much less about competition against others. Leaderboards have always (ideally) been about preserving the game's history, as well as allowing individuals to gauge their own improvements over time.
while there isn't a category that bans all glitches, we do have restriction categories that each ban a specific glitch:
on the main boards:
- "no cb" bans cruise-boosting, which is the main movement exploit in the game.
on the extension boards:
- "no sba" bans skee-ball abuse, which is the shiny object generation exploit that adds 8 krabs spatulas to the run.
- "no hd" bans hans disable, which is the out of bounds detection exploit.
I will agree with what everyone said above. Cruise boosting is such a blessing to this game, and honestly, it feels better playing with than without it. You can do a run without glitches, but you will have 10 times as much fun learning how to cruise boost and do the tricks.
People can have fun doing whatever they want; my point is that there is no concrete justification to add a glitchless category that would only serve to overlap the existing categories' purposes. If someone wants to be competitive, they learn the tricks at their own pace. If they're having fun playing more-or-less casually, they aren't competing with others and should be happy with the times they get and the personal goals they set out to accomplish.
The 100 Under 1 challenge was a success! Thanks to all the runners who achieved sub hour in Battle for Bikini Bottom.
Watch the original announcement here:
We reached 102 under 1, amounting to $2,400 for combatting childhood cancer.
