Hello!

Maxim Any% has grown to be really competitive, with a multitude of runners from many countries. The runs that are submitted uses Both Hardware (DSLite), as well as Emulators (VBA RR-V-24, Bizhawk, WiiUVC, others). Concidering that the top times are now hunting for mere frames, I felt the need to do some extensive investigation into the accuracy of emulators, since a frame could mean the difference between #1 and #2 at this point.

The main focus of my investigations has been the amount of frames it takes to transition from one screen to the other, showing without a doubt that there are many differences between emulators. My full research is pretty selfexplanatory and can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1il4q4AjNEPI0WpcEABWLf7hkTE2sshJrmlEwoNnQj5Q/edit#gid=0

The new proposed rules for run submissions of ANY Maxim Cathegory are:

• IF Emulator on computer is used, Bizhawk 2.2.1 OR later, along with the GBA BIOS and mGBA core MUST be used. VBA-NEXT has been proven to be inaccurate.

• WiiUVC is an exception to above rule, it is perfectly fine to use it

• The runs must (at least at the end), show the Bizhawk window with the mGBA core in the bottom left corner, to make it easier for the mods to verify the runs.

• No Turbo or Autofire-option may be used. This rule has been in effect before but never explicitly stated.

These rules conform well with the Metroid: Zero Mission scene and has worked well for them. The investigation into the preferred emulation has also been the same. Reference: https://www.speedrun.com/mzm/thread/syvkl

In Addition to the investigation done, the need to adjust some times on the leaderboards are well motivated. Runs made prior to this post has been made will have time-adjustments (Explanation can be found in the above linked document):

SORP Yu #1: 30,67 -> 31,07

NOVel #2: 31.93. No change, performed on DsLite (Original Hardware)

Charleon #3: 32.11 -> 31.93 (Tied for #2)

Gossyo and T2-CVHD: Unchanged, played on WiiUVC

Any feedback and/or objections to this proposal will be welcome, but if no solid argument can be made, these new rules and timeconversions will be made in a couple of days. The rule for Emulator is in effect now when this message is posted

Hello Everyone, and welcome to speedcontrol!

I've been developing speedcontrol since December last year, and I'm finally feeling confident enough to go public and create awareness of it, since it's a tool I've designed for the speedrunning scene as a whole! My main aim for now is to get more people to try it out experimentally to get feedback and make it better. It was previously used throughout the whole pre-ESA-Marathon where it was very well appreciated.

Speedcontrol is a nodecg bundle (same technology was used for AGDQ for example) developed for the speedrunning scene which helps the people organizing the stream for marathons greatly by automating tasks that would before would have meant manual work for people working with the overlay / stream side of things, such as:

¤ Twitch Integration (Upon starting a new run it automatically changes the played game on twitch). You can also specify and update the stream title directly from the dashboard! this way you won't ahve any need to keep a twitch window open for managing stream title / game played

¤ Horaro schedule import; paste a horaro schedule link and press import, and VOILAH! There will be no need to manually change any text fields on the overlay at all, Estimates, runners, game information will be pulled from horaro and put into a local database, so the only thing you'd need to do is press "Play next game" to update all the information on the overlay

¤ Optionally you can add runs manually which comes in two flavors; 1. The first alternative is to use an automatic sync with speedrun.com. All information is pulled from speedrun.com, which means when you add a runnername and choose it based on the runners speedrun.com name, you automatically get all the information such as twitch link, etc. This also works for games, getting the correct name, and cathegories for said game. 2.Add games and runners by using free text (manual input for runner names and their twitch handles, if speedrun.com integration is not preferred)

¤ Support for custom animations; in Pre-esa marathon we faded in an animated finish-flag with the finish-time whenever a person in the race finished. Also a twitchicon faded in and the runner name was exchanged to his twitchhandle every now and then (look at pre-esa twitch vods ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkd2f6JAHslJPSQ5a9zYL09Ie-LugT8eB) for reference).

¤Once the schedule is imported from horaro, or runs are added manually you can drag around the run items as you'd like, to reposition runs in the list/ remove runs from the list, in case there are any schedule updates.

¤ Everything is handled from a dashboard that runs in google chrome by surfing to http://localhost:9090, and it can also be accessible from external computers if you give other co-hosts your IP (this has not been tested yet though, and might mean further configration steps to your nodecg instance)

¤ Timer is built into the dashboard, and contains separate split-buttons for all runners, dynamically changing if a 2, 3 or 4p race is currently playing, to remove the need of a third party timer like LiveSplit, providing a tailormade interface having online marathons in mind

¤ All Items on the overlay is fully configurable during run-time, but should really be configured before the marathon, which means that you can change positions of the game-capture cutout of the background, moving timers, moving player nameplates, game information, etc, etc.

¤ Oh no! Runner X and Runner Y nameplates are under the wrong gamefeed! No problem, the "Player Layout" element of speedcontrol lets you click and drag the player to the correct gamefeed.

I've put together 3 video tutorials showing off what speedcontrol can do, howto set it up and operate it:

Instructions, and information can be found in it's github repository here:

https://github.com/Charleon/nodecg-speedcontrol

speedcontrol is not done by any means, but It's in good shape to be tested for marathons, and to receive feedback from users to ensure it develops in the right way, which is pretty much why I'm trying to create awareness of it here! If there are people that might want to use it for their own Online/Offline Marathons, please let me know, and I just might customize the look & feel to your liking! or if you just want to test it out and give feedback i would be just as happy.

In the future I aim to create some videotutorials on how to customize it fully with your own graphics, as well as make it easier for people to actually do it on their own.

For those who actually want to give a shot at customizing it themselves, please give me a holler! It shouldn't be harder than just replacing some images and alter some css attributes (Since it's based on HTML afterall)

Hello! don't know if this forum is monitored by admins, but it's to my belief that it would be good to split the Any% cathegory into "Any% no 0HP Glitch" and "Any% 0HP Glitch", due to many reasons:

"Any% no 0HP Glitch" is the main competitive cathegory that everyone plays, and I hate it to have my 9:32 listed on the Any% leaderboard. it could also discourage people to actually run the game since the glitch required is a double frame-perfect trick followed by a strict fault-less playthrough because of strict potion management. The "Any% no 0HP Glitch" cathegory is much more lenient and fun to play, a good start for newcomers, which is why I feel it to be pretty misleading to have my 09:32 on the leaderboard since I'm one of VERY few runners that actually runs the new batshit-crazy route.

I'm not a mod of this game on here but if anyone has the power to create new leaderboards for this game i strongly suggest to do so, knowing it's an AoS community-approved decision.