Hello,

On the matter of RTA timing: I'd agree all cutscene time duration (whether you skip it or not) should be included in that, especially with DtP 1-1 and 2-2 where timing the skip is actual cycle-manipulation (-> the stage parts in DtP are already loaded when the in-game cutscene starts and all the enemy cycles are started, so in a strict sense the run already starts with the cutscene). In my understanding RTA for this game is really just an informative measure and it heavily depends on loading times so it's not really comparable between platforms. It's a shame Bamco did not include time-attack mode for stages (at least they could've made the hundredth-seconds visible on the timer)...

Anyway another thing I want to mention is about IGT time calculation for IL runs: as I understand now, the time is determined by simply decrementing the start time from the end time. This by definition means the IGT is rounded DOWN to the final second. However the game does actually keep the in-game time in hundredth-seconds, so if you start the stage near the boundary of the next second, you'll "lose" the remaining part of that second. What I did to circumvent this is to try and pause the game right at the switch of a second, and create a save point there. It's extremely tedious, but should give the most precise timing for IL runs (that is if we continue using the in-game timer as the measure).

Your second paragraph is absolutely correct. It's a really dumb thing, but this is the game Bamco left us to make do with. Hence, why you probably want to stop playing an IL when it comes down to frames of optimisation.

I have updated the RTA timing definition accordingly, and will correct the few submissions that were timed with the old method that will now be inaccurate. (done) There may of course be the possibility that a few have slipped through the net, and for them, so be it. As RTA is not the main metric.

To not leave you with just this small reply, here are my thoughts on two smaller topics I have thought of recently :

1. Running with the tutorial panels on

To many of you, this may seem strange. Why play with a game feature that obnoxious goes in the way of of gameplay ? Panels whose design may also be perceived as questionable, for such a game with fundamentally simple mechanics. (Let’s never forget about Bamco’s major offense by spoiling the player about the extra stage right after beating 1-1)

Whatever the reasons may be, as it is to my knowledge, no such runs exist, so there hasn’t been much discussion.

That’s right. This just changed :

The first stage of L’sV can be a bit annoying with these, but other than that, the run mostly remains the same : undisturbed. Since DtP is shorter though, the game might be more condensed with them.

But now, I’m not bringing this up just for a statistical observation. No. Because as you might have guessed, these popups don’t only get in the way, they pause the IGT. And as such, the following question may be asked : are they acceptable to have in normal runs that don’t abuse the IGT ?

Personally, I don't think they’re problematic at all. Sure, they stop the run and the IGT. And, you can eternally wait on them. If someone does so to mitigate nerves for instance, that would be IGT abuse.

But these popups are usually placed in very safe places, so they could hardly be used for anything, outside the aforementioned case. It's like, you just skip them and then the gameplay resumes. It doesn't feel like the run flow is truly being hurt by them. They are about as annoying as the unskippable painfully slow camera movements the game forces the player to watch when triggering switches in 6-2. And after all, this is really just the game behaving as intended. That’s just how KPRS is.

Overall, they’re for the most part an inoffensive thing. Why you would have it on, I don't know, maybe you're simply unaware it can be turned off. But rule ethics wise, I do not see anything wrong with runs having them.

There are no known exploits with them, but interestingly, the music isn’t silent when they are displayed. So they’re functionally not quite like pausing.

2. Starting conditions for ILs

With the way the ILs section is laid out, there are no current restrictions related to the amount of lives you can have, and your gem count.

Since you can only do stage ILs when the game isn't beaten (or else the in-game time will vanish), your gem count will carry over from stage to stage. As for your extra life count, it always change regardless of your point in your playthrough. So you can have any number you want before heading on to an IL.

But, the advantage of having a lot of lives compared to other IL runs is negligible. People who submit Ils usually submit clean runs without many mistakes, and definitely without deaths. If there are, it’s on long and difficult levels to optimise like 6-2. The only advantage to having extra-lives, is that game-overs are avoidable, and death warping is possible. Indeed, difficult to death-warp with no lives left.

As this last point highlights, it would be ridiculous to limit your amount of carried extra lives so in turn you cannot do these strategies. If they are viable in full-game speedruns, then they should absolutely be in Ils. In general, it would be impossible to regulate. What starting conditions should you have before entering 6-1 ? Gelg Bolm ? No one can decide. Dreamstones are a more extreme version of extra lives. Get a hundred, get a life.

So, unless I am forgetting something, this is also a non issue.

Hello.

This is a very overdue post, but I have realized that there are concerning design flaws with the way we time IGT in the main stage ILs (excludes bosses, and extra stages). Let me elaborate.

Let’s start simple, with the DtP remaster. The IGT timer is at the top right of the screen, left of the dreamstone count.

When the stage directly begins with gameplay, Klonoa is not allowed to move for a short while as the stage view folds up on screen, which means the IGT doesn’t update. As such, it is easily readable. When the stage begins with a cutscene however, the HUD (which includes the timer) actually moves up and goes offscreen. This is so the HUD doesn’t get in the way of the cutscene. At the end of the cutscene, once gameplay resumes, the HUD finally lowers down.

But this means that, once you can move (so IGT activates), because the timer is so high up, there may or may not be frames where the timer simply isn’t verifiable. And even if there aren’t, it’s simply awful to read. At times, you can only discern the bottom pixels of the numbers.

But despite how catastrophic this may seen like, this is actually fine, and indirectly so thanks to the new RTA rules. As a recall, they new require the beginning point of the stage (when it loads) to be present in the submission proof. And, coincidentally enough, when the level starts into a cutscene, the HUD is on-screen for only a couple frames before it eventually flies up. It’s a bit out of the way, and there’s not that much footage of it, but it’s fully readable, even for a run played on a platform with crazy loading-times that can skip cutscenes in the blink an eye.

Use the buttons to see frame-by-frame, and look closely :

This is about the perfect example I could give of this. I didn’t realize it at first when saving the link, but before 2-2 begins, right before the cutscene, the timer second digit shows a 2, and after that, a 3. You can see how important this is for the verification of runs. Bullet dodged, nothing to change.

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Unfortunately, the next issue is not something I see DtP be able to extricate itself out of.

To reach the end of the 3-2, 5-2 and 6-1 stages, you need to stand on the end platform and be lifted up. After that happens, a fade-down process will happen, either white or dark. And such a fade-down fully covers up the IGT timer, making it impossible to read properly, which is problematic.

To be exact, 6-1’s fade-down isn’t much of worry, because the IGT stops counting noticeably before the fade-down. But for 3-2 and 5-2, you might as well be left to guess if the IGT incremented or not when it was being unreadable. As it doesn’t seem to stop in the slightest.

Case in point, this video : At 720p and below, you can barely see if the 2 digit changed to a 3 (unless you enable higher quality, but it would be a bad practice to assume everyone can record with such quality). But, the Joka cutscene shows it has changed.

Cutscene of which, is ultimately the simplest way of avoiding this issue. Simply have people record to the boss cutscene of 3-2 and 5-2. Which is very likely to happen naturally.

I will add this as a rule, but this still isn’t much of what you should be worried about...

.

...Because L’sV is where the real trouble begins.

This time, in this L’sV remake, the IGT timer is situated at the bottom right of the screen. It never moves around, and is always very readable… except in a lot of specific places.

In most stages of the game, character control is enabled at the same time that the IGT gets into view. This means that for 30 fps recordings, it’s possible that a IGT digit change that happens in the very first frame, isn’t being recorded, which could make the final IL time inaccurate by a frame (and give an unwarranted frame of leeway to the runner). Though much less frequent, this is also a thing at the end of some stages, like the Tat chase sequences in the Joilant chapter. Gameplay transitions right into a black screen.

It doesn’t end there. L’sV also have annoying black fade-down that can happen at the beginning of stages, making IGT really annoying to read.

Activate 720p, and try to discern the end digit : This time there are no hidden digit change, mostly because I didn’t bother looking look for one. But you can very easily see it could happen.

It’s clear the IGT wasn’t designed for speedrunning. And as IGT seems like it will remain the main timing metric, we have to make changes to ensure main stage ILs are 100% working.

Which we can. And I don’t like what I came up with. But, this is the Klonoa Wahoo game we’re left with. A game where switching Klonoa’s outfit saves time. A game where you can use Hyupow as a support jump in freaking DtP. A game where outfits are mostly locked off from people in a lot of consoles except Japanese customers. A game whose latest merchandising strategy to please fans, was on relying on a lottery scratch. A game where they left broken animations. This game’s just good enough, so as a results, our speedrun definition methods can only be good enough.

Alright. The only way to guaranteed what was the starting time of an IL… is by forcing runners to show how the timer was, before the attempt started.

Which, in all likelihood, won’t be a very difficult thing to do ! If you’re grinding, you’ll be resetting a lot. And, the timer is readable from a pause. So, just include the moment right before you restart. And just for safety, when you start running an IL, please retry once, so you can guaranteed that your submission will never have any timing problems.

For the end stage cases though... it's no use. There are absolutely no way of viewing the timer at any given time, except during gameplay.

.

...for an unknown reason, and by miracle, at the beginning of Sea of tears, the IGT timer... doesn’t count time for a short while ? Even though we can absolutely move. This is highly perceptible if you create a new save-file, and start moving as soon as you can. The first digit increment of the timer will feel like it has taken more than a second to happen. Like 1.3-5 seconds. And interestingly, it does this as well when you reset the stage. So, even if you pause right before a digit increment happens, and retry, upon playing again, the increment will inexplicably not happen immediately.

This small time of IGT inactivity at the start of Sea of Tears, is the only thing that I know that we can use to accurately time the end of a L’sV main stage IL run. What you need to do is, again, very simple : finish an IL run but continue to record, access the world map, play Sea of Tears. There is no other way.

There is no other way. Or are there ? Have I missed something ? If there aren’t, and that we go with this, then this all sucks. But at the end of this whole ordeal, the things you must do to ensure your time is fully verifiable, would be just simple knowledge. Please don’t be dissuaded to run ILs because of that. Outside these hurdles, the system is perfect, for all consoles.

.

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Big tl;dr about how we would time main stage ILs henceforth (which excludes bosses, and extra stages). In other words, how you can guaranteed your run will always be presentable no matter what, and not have compromising timing issues :

• DtP : Any IL submission footage mush show the beginning of the stage, when it gets displayed on screen. The recording may end when you reach the end of the stage, except for 3-2 and 5-2 where you need to record up to seconds of the boss cutscene (ideally without trying to skip it).

• L’sV : Any IL submission footage must show the reset of the previous attempt before this one (or, if lack thereof, an intentional stage reset. And, playing Sea of Tears after creating a save-file with a 0:00 in the timer is fine). They must continue to record footage after finishing their IL, and record up to the opening gameplay seconds of Sea of Tears.

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There may be cases in which an omission may be excusable. Take a look at this run. You can clearly see in both the beginning and end of the run that the timer wouldn’t have time to increment sneakily. But, this was a lucky instance.

Finally, please do not hesitate to ask for help from moderators.

[Changes made after five days]

Nudging my way in here to share some inputs on this forum:

The two main categories that the board is taking on right now for both pr1 and pr2 is Any% and 100%, with variants for both standard and support mode runs. But, what of the categories from the original games that had you clearing all levels without having to worry about gem count?

Naturally, there are pain points in both games 100% for getting not only all phantomilians and dolls respectively, but also getting the mininum of 150 gems for each stage [and as current WR holder for 100% on all difficulties for DtP Pr1 as of the time of this post, I would know.]. Well, I completed two runs to showcase DtP's All Visions category and LsV Any% All Stages categories respectively.

Door to Phantomile All Visions:

.

Lunatea's Veil Any% All Stages:

To simplify things, both are under the alias of "All Visions" since the label essentially embodies the same concept.

There are points I make towards the inclusion of this as a category for PRS: -> This is a category for completionists that don't want to bother with getting collectible that amount to nothing of a payoff [dreamstones]. Basically becomes a faster version of 100% as a result. Other games have a focus on beating the game while collecting things tied to a certain objective [Sly 1 All Keys, All Vaults, etc.] -> This category can be opened to use of Any% tricks [particularly death warps] as collection of phantomilians and dolls carries over death [gems sadly do not]. This is unique to KPRS since this preservation property is not in the original games. -> It pays homage to the category existing in the original games [as a result, why not include it as a category for the remake?]

In any case, this post is really meant to make a statement about All Visions and draw attention to the existence of these showcases [as rusty as they may be since my focus was to just get them done]. Unofficial as of now, but maybe with enough interest that can change. :)

Before anything else, let me remind everyone that I’m just one voice, one coming from someone who doesn’t even play the game. It’s not a voice of authority, neither can it be on discussions like these.

Personally, I already knew this category was fully viable to be added because of DtP & L’sV precedents. And to some extent, the leaderboard was designed with the thought of allowing room to future categories such as this one.

Needless to say, it’s very easy to add. The question to me, wasn’t if we would ever get to opening it, but rather when. Because, adding something like all visions here, would also imply adding stage IL categories (cause why not simply do both when we can). And the small itch I had with that, is that there was going to be so many more empty leaderboards, than there already is at the moment because nobody plays them (especially ILs). Why would that annoy me, well it’s because simply adding so much to the already not super active game leaderboard, even if it was a valid category, just for one person to do like one or a couple runs, that didn’t sit right with me. And quite clearly, were you not here, I would have no idea as to when would this subject ever be brought up by. Possibly, only years after the leaderboard’s opening, after most of the boards are filled up with runs. Maybe I’m simply annoyed that this would all be happening too early.

But anyways, I’m personally willing to look past that, because it looks like others runners would be motivated enough for it.

Run and timing definition wise, it could be around the same as 100% given they play so similarly.

This could be the rules for the full-game category (these are mostly copies and paste with small tweaks to fit the category) :

“ Beat the game and the extra stage(s).

You are required to start the run on a fresh save-file. For L'sV, you have free choice over the order you want to tackle the two extra stages and the final boss. There you may also quit the game to skip the credit cutscene.

To determine the final time, take the in-game final time after beating the final boss, and add to it the time of the extra stages, in seconds. Submit the resulting time. For L'sV, check if the milliseconds of both extra stages make up a second or not.

. “

Dot is intentional. And this, the rules for ILs :

“ Beat the stage as fast as possible, while saving all Phantomilians. For DtP, bosses are to not be included in the X-2 stages.

Boss attempts only count in boss time attack mode. You also cannot do main game stage ILs after you beat the game because of the lack of IGT timer, though you can still submit times coming from full-game runs themselves.

About timing the run :

• For the main game stages, simply do a calculation by taking the final time and removing the beginning time of the stage, to the second.
• For the extra stages and boss time-attack, simply input the final time to the millisecond.

Additional info for the main stages : For DtP, after completing 3-2 and 5-2, make sure to record up to the boss fight. For L'sV, before the winning attempt, make sure you are showing the game being paused and retried over. After the attempt, go to the world map and enter Sea of Tears, then record up to the first second of gameplay.

If you are unsure, please ask for help. “

As for the name, it’s hard to say. PS1 DtP uses “All Visions” whereas PS2 L’sV uses “All Stages”. All visions is a fitting name for the stages and the franchise. And in terms of clarity it might have the edge over all stages, because you know for sure it counts the bosses and extras. But all stages is a simple and more conventional name for speedrunning. Personally I think I like the former more.

I realize that this decision would imply going about changing the name of either one of these category names of the old games, so they’re all in line with one another. Would be cooler if we can.

With that said, I'll wait that this discussion continues if it needs to. And I will go ahead and ping the KPRS people in the server for more feedback.

Also, to my knowledge, the Mommet Doll piece preservation through death thing is actually a thing with og L’sV. Not with DtP though. It might be with the Wii version however.

Responding to your points:

I went ahead and checked both OG LsV and Wii Klonoa and can confirm that collection preservation is not in those games. Even if there should be versions that HAVE it, it wouldn't pertain to this discussion much more than a simple talking point. PRS having it at all is a plus.

I understand the argument for empty leaderboards. Understandably, the inclusion of this category for both games would have to start with a few runs with more being completed over time. And even with this in mind, this category would likely still compare on the lower echelon in shadow of Any%. That's how it is on the original game leaderboards now, too. I don't think that undermines the value of the run, though.

Yea. The presence has a similar approach to 100%. It's basically the category minus the dreamstones requirement and would be a more friendly completionist category for new runners. I labeled it a gateway to 100% since it establishes a core foundation needed to take on 100%.

Ruleset looks about right to me. Before I took to the shape of all visions, I was more concerned about a category called "All Phantomilians/Dolls" where you just grab the dolls and beat the game without having to worry about the extra stages. In this light, the extra visions would be redundant since there are no phantomilians or dolls to collect in them. However, the point being made about the inclusion since the come about AS A RESULT of collecting them then shifted the focus for inclusion. And for the most part, I think that's fine and it works [difference in both would be time minus any time spent in extra visions].

I'm personally in favor for All Visions [who was the person that named the LsV categories Any% All Stages with a game that has VISIONS?] since: -> Thematically appropriate -> Arguably as simple as All Stages -> Every clear in the game is shown as: -> VISION CLEAR -> Rolls right off the tongue

Not gonna lie, I'm in disbelief by this information. I genuinely thinks there's more to it than just something in my head. It might be a version difference as you say, though unlikely. Nevertheless, I wasn’t making a point, simply an attempt at clarifying information that I felt was incorrect.

I believe we have already talked about this in the server, but I completely get this collectible/stage distinction. Ex : grabbing all phantomilians and clearing all stages/visions. These are both valid to run on, it’s simply that because they don’t have a lot of differences (only one stage), and that the second category concept seems much more meaningful to me that I feel it's more worthy of having a place.

I don’t know who came up with the term, though there would be inherently nothing wrong with not coming up with it. Elsiz was the one who came up with the “All Visions” DtP terminology (which originally was all in upper case). But if he hadn’t done that, I don’t know who would have since. Maybe you somehow. It’s a name that’s personnalized to the Klonoa universe, much like any% popkaless (instead of support) of og L’sV is more like a cultural name. Although these names are fun for us, I can understand how one wouldn’t want to use them, as they may appear noisy and uncommunicative on the concept of the actual category to people. In the end though I don’t think there’s any real harm, as long as the names make sense with context and are within reasonable bounds, which they clearly achieve.

But overall, nothing I have to say.

Category added.

I thought a week or so had passed, doesn't seem to be the case. But with the little attention this subject garners, and the general nonproblematic nature of this add, I think it'll be fine.

[Edit2 on the 30th of august 2024, clarifying certain parts]. [Edit1 on the 24th of march 2023] Hello again.

With this post, I’ll be sure to remove any semblance of doubts that KPRS’s IGT system can’t be much worse than the trainwreck it already is.

Yes that’s right. After reading this, you’ll just start applauding out of sheer respect.

So before we start getting into the “new” stuff, quick recall about the autosplitter as we will talk about it a lot.

The autosplitter, developed by TheDementedSalad and NickRPGreen, is a PC tool that allows to measure the IGT time of runs performed in both games of this remaster. And that, with milliseconds of precision, a level of precision not achievable in full-game runs. This is because it directly connects to the code of the game and extracts the time value. It’s programmed to do more than just this, but for the sake of the post, this will be enough.

It’s important to note that, the autosplitter is currently not an accepted official way to measure time. For that, we rely on the in-game timer of the game, which must be displayed in the video of any submitted run as you know. This is so for two main reasons :

• We aren’t sure if its autosplitting function is fully reliable yet. As a matter of fact, it tends to break during the final boss of both games. And that, on all possible categories of the game.
• Consoles players don’t have access to the autosplitter, and thus to milliseconds of precision. To not create a division between players with milliseconds and without, and to infuriate people who cannot have access to it, we have all runs be timed the same way. If there were significant difference between console and PC, it could maybe have been awarded its separate leaderboard for more lenient changes, but this isn’t the case.

But, as far as the actual time tracking function of the autosplitter is concerned, it seems to be reliable. The autosplitter and IGT (in-game timer of the main game) are supposed to be synchronized to one another. By word of NickRPGreen, one of the autosplitter maintainers who is specialized in L’sV : “If it helps, I just want to confirm that the autosplitter's IGT is a direct mirror of the game's IGT. If the autosplitter's IGT is doing something funky, that's because the game is doing it. It's not counting anything, it's taking the value directly from the game's memory.” If we look at this video which uses it, (), we can easily see that when the IGT increments by a second, the corresponding autosplitter time (in green) does the exact same thing. For every seconds. So there must be some reliable truth in it. Of course, we are never away from a bug that could cause the autosplitter to not display the value correctly, or that it accidentally doesn’t count frame when it should and vice-versa. But even if it could be, we currently haven’t found an issue with it. For this discussion, I will consider it as reliable. And when you’ll see the results of my investigation, you won’t doubt it.

With that out of the way, we can move one to the actual subject. I should mention that it only concerns L’sV (as in, not immediately found to be present in DtP). And that it’s only really relevant for the main stage ILs. Yup, decidedly, we can never stop on complexifying ILs of that game.

It’s been recently found out that in L’sV, the IGT increments in places we previously didn’t know of. It happens once you complete a stage, but right before the game displays the world map loading screen. The screen is completely black when that happens.

Since this IGT increase happens during essentially non-gameplay places, in a visually undetectable way, I don’t think I would be wrong in claiming that this wouldn’t have been discovered anytime soon, were it not for the autosplitter. And we can thank these two runs for that : ( / ) As indeed, they had the autosplitter on, and they picked up on these almost invisible increases. Pay close attention to the LiveSplit time : You can clearly see that it increases by 0.02 seconds to the IGT, right before the loading-screen initiation.

And this, is where it matters the most : The stage clearly ends with a 26:13 door entrance (which freezes the IGT), but upon Biskarsh, it begin on a 26:14. And in the opening frames of the stage and boss being loaded, you can see the IGT displaying 26:14, even though the autosplitter is not counting any single bit of time for four entire frames (60 fps). We’ll get to this weird boss IGT kick off later.

The autosplitter also does show the IGT increasing by 0.02 seconds. Ultimate proof that it’s not just the IGT imagining things, but actual natural IGT behavior.

Hating it yet ? Let’s get into the bottom of it.

This “hidden” IGT increase doesn’t seem to happen with bosses. It also doesn’t concern the extra stages, as the IGT is disabled during them. We can see it being the case because the autosplitter isn’t active during them, and after beating these stages, the IGT resumes without any time increase.

Where it does happen, is with every single main game stages, except for one. Right before the game puts us through that loading-zone, every single stage add either 0.01 or 0.02 seconds to the IGT. Now, Empty Sea of Tears doesn’t behave like this. Indeed, the time is added right as you enter the Fordon (cannon), before the cutscene with the dream voice. And this stage seems to add between 0.02 and 0.04 seconds for some maxiweird reason. The one stage that does not seem to be affected by this IGT increase, is Forgotten Path. Which doesn’t add any time. So, in a full playthrough, you can except the IGT to increase in non-gameplay circumstances, by roughly between 0.15 and 0.3 of a second.

The following is additional information about IGT behavior.

Small study about the IGT kicking in at the start of every main game stages, aided by the autosplitter :

• The IGT at the beginning of these stages seem to not be active for roughly 30 frames (60 fps). [Sea of Tears / La-Lakoosha / Joilant Fun Park / Ishras Ark / Noxious La-Lakoosha / Dark Sea of Tears]
• The IGT seems to update after 1, 3 or more frames have passed (60 fps). [Jungle Slider / Mts. Of Mira-Mira / Maze of Memories / Empty Sea of Tears / Ark revisited / Kingdom of Sorrow / Forgotten Path]
• The IGT instantly resumes as the player gains control. Though the stage first begin with the player being frozen and the IGT being visible and inactive for several seconds. [Volk City / Underground Factory / Volkan Inferno]

We can also distinguish the gameplay start beginning procedures of each stages in two ways : (Edit2 : DISREGARD THIS SPECIFIC POINT, the info is confusing)

• Instant view : Always seem to be stages that begin with a cutscene right before gameplay (as in, there are no stage loading in-between them, like there is for Ishras Ark) The exception to this rule is Sea of Tears. Even if there is a stage cutscene before the gameplay starts, it will invariably start with a fade in from black.
• Fade in from black : Includes all the stages whose IGT doesn’t immediately kick in. Includes Volk City, Underground Factory, and Volkan Inferno, because you start the stage on a fade in from black and Klonoa is falling down without you being able to control it. Includes Sea of Tears, as explained above.

And about bosses now. Leptio and King of Sorrow use a fade in from black. Folgaran, Biskarsh, Polonte, Cursed Leorina are instant views. BUT. Folgaran, Biskarsh, Polonte and Cursed Leorina seem to always start the IGT 3 frames after the boss arena is into view (60 fps). For Leptio… much like Sea of Tears, you can move freely before IGT begins for 30 frames in 60 fps. And King of Sorrow, first phase’s IGT seems to start at about a second after the boss arena starts showing up (there is a fade-in frame where the boss is super close, before it teleports further away. About one second after that screen). And you can move before that happens.

Retrying or quitting a stage does not affect the IGT. Phew.

Okay, so what can we make of this. First of all, this doesn’t concern full-game runs since we do only care about the beginning and ending points which are very easily obtainable.

But this sheds some light about how to better manage ILs of the game.

Our method for the beginning point of a IL, is to have the player restart the IL from a stage reset, and have that moment included in the run, so we can clearly see what the IGT count was before the attempt. This is to mitigate potential frame losses for 30 fps recordings which only displays half of the game frames. With these discoveries, it would still seem fair to force 30 fps footage players to go through this step with stages with the ≥1 frame IGT activation. But for other stages, and 60 fps recordings, this wouldn’t need to be anymore.

Now for the end point, which is trickier. We have the player beat the level, and then record themselves loading up Sea of Tears to be able to identify the time. Because that stage would have the IGT freeze for half a second.

First of all, the first simplification would be that this “post IL completion IGT check” doesn’t have to just be Sea of Tears anymore, but all the stages like it. And, also, the Volk stages. [Edit1 : as well as the King of Sorrow boss fight intro arena] Though, most people would probably still use the former as it’s the one unlocked by default. (For information, no one has completed an IL run of L’sV that also respect these recent new rules)

But this is where we are met by a fundamental problem : do we deem this small IGT time increase as part of the IL measurement ?

• If we say yes, then nothing would need to change, and if anything, our extra step in having the runner play another stage for IGT end point verification would be even more justified. But it would feel really irritating. Why the hell would we include this IGT increase in the actual IL time ? And even more annoyingly so because the time that gets added appears random.

• If we say no, then we would get rid of this extra obnoxious timing procedure, as well as make ILs feel more integral. But, alas, this would bring its own set of problems. Some stages end with the player losing control, and the IGT being frozen, clearly visible before the stage loads out. Other stages do not have this luxury, and make the timer instantly stop counting and disappear. Such as the Tat chase in Jungle Slider. (). This would re-introduce the 30 fps footage problem. And to add even more salt to the injury, not even 60 fps runs, which are supposed to display all the frames, would be safe from this approach. As sometimes, the IGT can increase a frame after the timer has disappeared at the end of the stage. Compare these two stage endings and look over the autosplitter. In the first one, the IGT stops increasing right as the HUD disappears. For the second one however, for… reasons, the IGT calculates one frame after it disappears. () () Granted, this was the only instance that I could find in two whole runs. But whether it’s the game counting one frame after the timer disappears, or some recording lag, it only shows that it’s not reliable in the long term.

So no, IL timing wouldn’t be safe without post IL verification. There is no other way about it, than include this hidden IGT time in ILs. To add bandaid to the wound, here are some positive ways to see it :

• Timing main stage ILs has always been stupid. Remember that there is no such thing as simple reset. To get an optimal start, you need to pause right after there is a second digit change in the IGT, and reset thereupon. Because we do a mathematics subtraction for the IGT time, you ideally want the IGT to increment the fewest times. But this ultimately ILs frame optimisation very stupid. It’s been said that to enjoy main stage ILing, you need to not focus on frames of time-save, because that is where the game gets blurry and unreliable.
• No current main stage IL times are in the worry of being rejected, because they didn’t finish around the dot. There aren’t a lot of L’sV main stage ILs to begin with.
• There already was 30 fps footage issues related to the beginning point of IL runs, so having something to mitigate it for the end point won’t do much more
• Some stages are more lenient than others. Empty Sea of Tears isn’t concerned with this problem since you can clearly see the timer increment at the Fordon bit. And Forgotten Path isn’t subject to it either for obvious reasons.
• At first, like everyone else, I saw it as an annoying procedure. But now, I see it as a KPRS speedrun leaderboard cultural trait. There is so much complexity and jank that it has conquered my heart into being a meme at this point.

So in conclusion of this investigation, and as far as I can see from my eyes, this hidden IGT increase does not compromise IL timing, but it may definitely be worth a definition reworking.

[RTA rules have since been updated, see reply of the 11th of june 2024]

Hello. I would like to ask for a change in the way we time RTA for boss time-attack, for both games. Specifically the beginning point.

As it is, we have RTA begin when the IGT of the boss starts counting.

While there are no immediate problems with this, there are concerns.

As it is, it’s very irregular compared to how RTA is timed for anything else in the game. Full-game runs, main stage ILs and extra ILs have RTA begin as the stage loads into view (including the cutscenes). So already, it isn’t convenient to remember.

Is this for a good reason at least ? That's the concerning part. L’sV boss time-attack replays cutscenes. Other times, Klonoa might be able to move before the boss fight properly begins with the IGT counting up. Bosses like Leptio do that, but most notably, King of Sorrow first phase. However, the assumption was that, anything happening before the IGT starts running is of no value, and thus isn’t included in the RTA. And you know how wrong this is now. What’s more, it would feel wrong that players immediately cut the IL video starting with the boss, skipping cutscenes, and other integral moments of the ILs attempts.

So, I would like to ask that RTA beginning timing is changed to when the stage loads, including cutscenes, as opposed to when the IGT is effective. That way, we account for future discoveries, and have things be more regular.

As for the current submissions, for most, this change wouldn’t cause additional updates, thanks to the three seconds of inaccuracy we allow RTA to have. DtP would be left mostly undisturbed. It’s L’sV that would be affected, and even then, it wouldn’t be by much more than a second for most runs.

And for all the submissions that do not show the beginning of the stage loading, (for instance Kumohachi’s ILs), rendering RTA technically incalculable, I think we should make an exception for them, and all runs prior to the date of this present RTA change. So to not disturb things, as there probably is nothing to worry about these runs.

[RTA rules have since been updated, see reply of the 11th of june 2024]

Change made, runs retimed, RTA definition updated and is slightly less longer now.

...Well, almost. Because there’s new info now. It turns out that not all Lunatea’s Veil bosses behave the same in the boss initialization department.

Most time-attack bosses start with a cutscene, and once it ends, immediately start the fight one or two frames later. This is the case for Folgaran, Biskarsh, Polonte and Cursed Leorina.

But for Leptio and the King of Sorrow (as far as we’re concerned, the first phase), there actually are loading-screens occurring after the cutscenes. For Leptio, it occurs right after the intro cutscene is over : King of Sorrow has two. One right after the intro cutscene leading to the first phase environment, and one right as Klonoa gets sent to the actual boss arena of the first phase. It’s so short in fact, that it failed in appearing in multiple videos on 60 fps. This one shows both :

This means that for these two bosses, it’s irrelevant to count the moments before the one loading-screen that leads us to the boss. Since they will never contribute to speeding up the fight itself. Yes, even if you joke around like this in the intro room (), it won’t affect the run. At least, until the day we somehow figure out how to affect boss fights or rooms through loading-screens. It’ll be interesting… and a doomsday for the whole leaderboard.

But for now, this means that for these two bosses, there would be no technical requirement to have the submission run display the true beginning of the time-attack segment, with the intro cutscenes and everything. Specifically, it could begin at the loading-screen leading to the fight (and if invisible, slightly before). I may have to tweak the RTA rules again to clarify this. These would be the only exceptions, and the remaining other bosses are like everything else in KPRS.

You may ask yourself why at this point we’d rather just not time these two bosses the same way as everything else, for absolute timing consistency sake. And that would be a very fair point. But see, RTA for KPRS is not just a time metric meant to provide a real-time characteristic to runs. Its goal is also to accurately track the amount of real-time it takes to complete the speedrun. We start RTA as soon as the player is able to impact the speedrun (its IGT), and end RTA when the IGT ends. And if the very first game moments where you can impact the run is through cutscenes, then by all means, the RTA must start there. For these two boss fights, the arena loading after the loading-screen represent the earliest moment where you could potentially impact their outcome. And even though these would be god awful points to time RTA to the frame with, we have the luxury of never having to care about frames.

I realize that back when the leaderboard was being developed, I proposed RTA with its sole goal being providing additional information to speedruns. I guess that since then, it has evolved into a trying logical time metric. One that always makes sense. There are other and completely possible approaches to RTA, more arbitrary ones, that would resolve this (arguably extremely small) timing method irregularity. And I completely get how this irregularity could itch people, but I don’t know if that alone justifies ditching this certainly meaninful RTA system.

But I know how silly this timing definition talk sounds like considering we’re talking about KPRS. The game that silently increases your IGT by 0.02 seconds on basically every stage. At that point, you’re left to wonder if we should ever bother. But we have since overcomed plenty of obstacles, and came up with the leaderboard and timing rules we have today that allow things for All Visions and ILs. Always been a messy game, and this two boss timing irregularity won’t sway that.

Finally, a tangent. I’ve noticed upon making this post that there are two types of cutscenes in the game. Probably not surprising to you, but it’s good to point to these things out loud. Because...

• The ones where you can see Klonoa’s silhouette, as well as the tutorial panels.
• And the ones where you only see Klonoa's silhouette

There is no concern, only questions. I do not understand the system in which the game chooses either one or the other. Simple room to room loading-zones seem to use the second. Going/leaving stages, as well as resetting stages use the first one. But then you have the Leptio / KoS duality. Leptio shows the first one, but KoS only ever use the second one, two times. Even though the game happenstances are virtually the same. Now you will have these questions as well.

[Three days with no further discussion (some of it was on Discord), so I went ahead and banned the aforementioned exploit] This is a simple forum post bringing light to new discoveries of the past couple weeks.

The first one is a previously unnoticed quirk about how the IGT works. And it only concerns L’sV. It pertains to IGT abuse gameplay. You see, pause warping is one of the techniques allowed in that difficulty category. As it stands, there are no evaluation of its IGT time-save advantages over every single checkpoints, compared to not warping at all and walking straight. Neither on the DtP remaster. So we have no data on how much time it saves overall. But it was thought that this technique could only be used on a very finite amount of checkpoints. That is because, pause warping on most checkpoints wouldn’t seem to save time, as you are put back further away than you previously were when you struck them (with a wind bullet) and pause warped.

But, as it turns out, the IGT system of L’sV behaves in such a way that this assumption may be abandoned. Indeed, it was found out that when you respawn/warp to a checkpoint, the IGT is stopped for a brief moment. You are, in fact, able to move for a little while, while the IGT doesn’t count time. The exact duration of this IGT timer pause, is very similar to that of the IGT freezing behavior, also discovered recently, at the start of most of the main stages (as discussed in the post of 6th February). It amounts to a dead time of roughly 0.4 seconds. Yes. Even the extra stages and their individual timers do this as well. It seems Kumohachi realized this and use it in order to save frames in his recent extra IGT abuse runs : https://www.speedrun.com/klonoaprs/run/z5e6x9ez

To make it obvious, this quirk allows to save time - albeit a very finite amount - with checkpoints that were previously thought to be slower with pause warping, on L’sV only. That’s pretty notable to me.

The second game quirk is small and also pertaining mostly to IGT abuse runs.

If you throw an enemy (unsure if it works with a bullet) at a checkpoint, but pause right before the collision occurs (might be frame-perfect), and proceed to pause warp after that, something strange happens. You will be sent back to the previous checkpoint/start of level… but the checkpoint you seem to not have struck… has disappeared now ? What’s more, if you pause warp after finding out the checkpoint has disappeared, you’re yet again sent back. A very strange bug that I’m not surprised we didn’t find on the original game. This isn’t fast at all obviously. You would want to avoid this and make absolutely sure the checkpoint was hit before pause warping. Else, you might as well reset the speedrun.

Last one concerns L’sV again, and must be the most important of all. It’s about key binding and the big spring jump tech. As such, PC, and consoles with customizable input system like the Switch are concerned.

You need to press both jump buttons at around the same time to perform a big bounce on springs. But it’s been found out that if you bind both buttons on a single key, big spring jumps will be flawlessly consistent. This is easily the most controversial feature PC players have access to that we’ve found (even if they’re not the only one to have access to it).

Before that point, the most useful thing PC runners could do, was bind a key for the support jump, on the same keyboard they use to play the run on, in order to avoid juggling two controllers at once (as a reminder, og PS2 runners do this). But it can be argued that this is acceptable. The support jump key binding for PC play of KPRS is reportedly a huge mess, so much so that they have no choice but to play that way. Secondly, the difference might be negligible in the end. Someone experienced won’t have issues pressing the support button on the second controller.

However, this is different, it is a straight up massive advantage over the platforms that can’t do this. If they all officially could, then we would gladly use this binding technique, but as far as we know...

And the problem is, we might not be able to fight against it. Even if we were to enforce keyboard/means of input overlays onto PC (etc) runs, someone ill-minded could very convincingly press both buttons and have them register as inputs on the overlay, while only one key could do the trick. There is no easy way to detect it. Although input displays are very handy, enforcing them on runners would do nothing but weight them even more.

So, until further update, all we can realistically do is not support this trick. As such, we may ban it from use indefinitely.

Before that is done though, I will leave things to rest for a couple days. Time for people to reply if felt needed.

Hello.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a more serious discussion about something.

So, uh, here’s one.

What if I told you that we could potentially nullify the FPS regulations for PC runs of the Lunatea’s Veil remaster ? You heard that fully well. But in order to actually do so, the leaderboard will need your help. And as to why, we have to go through a couple things first...

The history of FPS regulations for PC speedruns is simple.

It was found relatively early on in the game’s life, that the physics in the DtP remaster were tied to FPS. Basically, Klonoa’s jumping height was increased with higher FPS, and bosses are affected in various ways. Check these two posts for more details. https://www.speedrun.com/klonoaprs/thread/72lfq/3#xs6k5 https://www.speedrun.com/klonoaprs/thread/72lfq/5#nyimd

As you know, PC is the only platform that can run games with different framerates. Therefore, to ensure the integrity of the game and runs for PC, it was decided that we would limit the FPS of the game to 60 for that platform. To be exact, this is the upper threshold. The lower threshold, 45, came in some time later, thanks to @MonikaMarieX and her DtP runs. More info here : https://www.speedrun.com/klonoaprs/thread/72lfq/5#nyimd

Rule wise, we required PC runners to display a FPS counter in their video. This is done so the framerate of the run can be known, and to prove the integrity of the run, if it is acceptable of course. And thing’s been like this since forever.

But if as an outsider you’re taking a look at all of this information, these links, conversations. Then you’ll quickly make out one notable observation. Where is the proof that L’sV is affected by FPS ? That it can affect speedruns in the IGT sense ?

And here’s the answer : there’s none… as of now.

When it cames to FPS regulations, at the time, both remasters were put in the same basket with no consideration for the latter. Personally, I completely overlooked that. I don’t think it necessarily was a huge leaderboard design mistake, per se. Even if let’s say, we forced pointless FPS regulations to L’sV. Then it still wouldn’t have done much harm. All runs up to this point have complied with it without issues. We’ve had to reject a couple of runs from people who didn’t learn of its existence until it was too late, and that’s it. If anything, it could have been a good move done by accident. Perhaps, L’sV gameplay and IGT truly is affected by FPS. And so, these accidental measures would have actually helped us without us realizing.

Alas, this question is exactly why we’re here today. We don’t know, and without answering it once and for all, we cannot proceed with any simplification changes. And without your help, collective help, it won’t change.

That’s not to say we absolutely need to do it. If we do nothing, then the FPS regulation will remain in place, and people will still have to put a FPS counter on their runs, like they’re used to. Everything would remain fully operational. If we do something, it will only be to simplify submission procedures for L’sV. Unlike other things we’ve had to do in the past, this matter will take the time that it needs to take, and may never happen. But at least, it’s properly made public now, so anyone can come and read about the problematic.

Now to discuss how to proceed with this research.

The first piece of information to consider is this video by @AustinSV : Following the timestamp, it looks like he explains that the Lunatea’s Veil doesn’t seem to be affected by FPS. He only mentions “speed of menus and transitions”. While these would definitely have impact over RTA, IGT is the metric we care about here, so this isn’t important.

Actually, one thing he didn’t mention is that FPS also affect the speed of the actions such as cutscene skipping and x5 fast forwarding. And so, cutscene manipulation. (For recall, this is the act of intentionally waiting during cutscenes (where IGT is inactive), so that entities loaded in the stage are allowed to move. This can be used to get more favorable enemy or platform cycles.) But, I would argue that it doesn’t matter. For one, cutscenes don’t increase the IGT. And since that’s where the technique is employed at, it doesn’t technically impact the run. Second, you cannot gain any advantages. Being able to skip faster means nothing, as the stage internal timer is also sped up just as fast. It would, again, only save some RTA. So we have to accept this one as well.

More recently, @OTP_Artikodin made two comparison videos of a couple places in the game with 60, 144 and 50 FPS respectively: & .

In the clip of the first video, he shows examples of menus loading faster or differently. Things discussed earlier in AustinSV’s video. He also recorded and compared two instances of the Leorina Crimzon Iris section in Ark Revisited, with different FPS. This section specifically, because it is known to slow down dramatically on certain consoles, so it seemed like a good spot to test for FPS gameplay differences if anything.

As you can see… no clear difference for PC. It's a low performance issue that the consoles are experiencing.

If we want to find answers, we may need to play the game on different FPS, and try and feel differences. Or maybe, we can watch gameplay videos with custom framerates. Like this one, which is laggy. (full-game run, laggy and slow fps) (full-game run, 144 fps) (Ark Revisited, 50 fps) I would really want to take a look at it myself, but I do have my hands busy.

So yea. Important topic. Game knowledge. Less restrictions. Hurray.

If you want to discuss this further and help with research, but don’t feel like replying here, there is a discord thread in the #PR2 channel.

Hello.

A small post continuing the PC FPS regulation to L’sV revision discussion.

@Takuto has since made a comprehensive comparison of L'sV gameplay with a wide degree of fps ranges (8 iterations from 20 to 500+), and that over various game instances. I am presenting it on his behalf :

Most tests were inconclusive, and the game didn’t look to be all that different, at least with a quick glance.

But the two last tests yield curious results. Both the the big spring jump and the carry-a-moo technique seems impossible at 30 fps and below.

It’s hard to say whether this is an alteration of the physics, or rather the mere impossibility of landing frame-perfect tricks because of the fps lacking such precision. Someone in the know may fill us out about this.

This discovery alone, assuming it proves the game is tied to FPS, would probably still justify removing the FPS regulations of that game.

But we don't know that. For now, the investigation must continue.

I am planning a post unrelated to this one soon enough.

Hello.

A small post about recent developments of the IGT Abuse category. Overdue post.

Kumohachi has recently done an all visions support run on this “difficulty”. https://www.speedrun.com/klonoaprs/run/ylng36kz And from it, a lot of insight can be had about this category.

For one, there was this worrying and yet-unanswered question, about whether or not pause warping would actually save time on most checkpoints. We’re talking hitting a clock that’s on your way as early as you can, teleporting to the checkpoint respawn point, and hoping it would save time in the run by cutting some of the distance we would normally travel by foot.

By this point, most runners (of both games alike) were pause warping on checkpoints where it was abundantly clear it was saving time. But no one had attempted to learn and find out if it was worth it with the others. Until Kumohachi’s run.

And the verdict for L’sV is clear, it’s quite bountiful. A lot of clocks can be abused like this, as quite a fair bit of them actually teleport you forward as opposed to backward, relative to the checkpoint itself. Also don’t forget that whenever you “respawn”, the IGT freeze for 0.4 seconds. Even during the extras. So yea, a meaningful difference that definitely couldn’t have been predicted.

It’s interesting to note that there was only one pause warping used in a board stage, and it was the very last clock of Forgotten Path. I have to assume that based on this benchmark of a run, put into piece by Kumohachi thanks to his extensive research, pause warping in the board stages just aren’t worth it.

Also equally as interesting, in L’sV, the pause warping menuing is actually considerably faster than DtP. It takes like 7 seconds for the latter as opposed to 3 here. It makes pause warping a relatively dynamic action that doesn’t distract the player away from the gameplay and run (besides resetting the music. Poor Kingdom of Sorrow). Another point of ease for the viabiity and fun aspect of IGT abuse speedruns.

In this run, you can also see many instances of pause warping right after picking up a Mommet doll piece. This is because, unlike gems, a doll piece / phantomilian is permanently collected once you shoot them, even if you die or pause warp (only exception is quitting the stage). And this technique saves a lot of time. One good example, the way he handled the Maze of Memories section with the branching paths and three doll pieces to collect.

Now, this message was supposed to already be sent. It didn’t, and it happens that by that time, Kumohachi actually produced this invaluable IGT abuse video : With this, we now have a great idea of how much time pause warping amounts to for this game.

And the time-saves pool might be much bigger. All it takes is someone to find out if engine skips are possible via pause warping. Something @Benja apparently did once, but that no one was able to reproduce, including Kumohachi himself. This would allow for brand new Ishras Ark skips.

Honestly, the category is interesting enough now that I could see it becoming more popular in the future.

DtP is waiting to receive the same treatment. Who knows what will it yield.

Unrelated small information that I wanted to fit in the thread. It turns out we’ve been skipping IGT moments of the game this whole time ! Everytime you have to press the button to fire the bullet at each kingdom bells, the IGT is running. Of course, it bears no incidence on runs. I though it was interesting to mention.

And, here’s another small, but important piece of information I recently learnt about. For the longest time, I thought the 5x cutscene button only made the text go fast and nothing else. As it would on the original, with the fast text button. You’d have to press another button to actually move to the next dialogue panel. Well, apparently - and quite confusingly so – it acts as a cutscene dialogue forwarder. It’s the reason why, in the recent Tat quick grab trick recently found by the household name (), we mustn’t fast forward. As it would otherwise skip the cutscene before Tat gets close. This only matters for L’sV since you can’t wait through cutscenes in DtP anyways. And this would be good to know for anyone learning cutscene manipulation strategies.

At last.

I watched the entirety of this 144 fps run of a (rejected) KPRS L‘sV full-game speedrun : I didn't look between the lines. But at a glance I couldn’t seem to find anything odd.

Hello.

Recently, people have expressed the desire of opening up new categories for the game. We can mention the PS2 L’sV equivalent to 0 dreamstones. Or, the act of running both games at once, commonly seen in other game series out there, referred by « duology » or more.

These are completely legitimate category ideas that we would have no problems adding (after we discuss how to proceed with them). However, doing so right now, might be impractical for reasons we need to discuss. Some level change might be required first.

Some technical explanation about the leaderboard. Whenever a new category gets added, it will be attributed the sub-categories you know, about run objectives, difficulties, and play modes. These sub-categories appear thanks to leaderboard variables that moderators set up at the back of the board.

It all works fine when the category in question has no issues being attributed all those sub-categories. It’s the case with stuff like all visions. However, that is not the case of 0 dreamstones, as it requires specific game settings to be beatable. You can only do it with support mode, and a difficulty setting other than hard. It doesn’t really fit as a sub-category. If we give them to it anyways, it would create a lot of empty spaces, and of course that would look really ugly and confusing. So our other option would be to place it as a standalone category, next to the main DtP and L’sV tabs. But as you understand, 0 dreamstones will still be subject to displaying all the sub-categories. Out of the 24 different play modes, only 3 will be playable, and the rest will forever go unused, hence looking quite ugly and unoptimised.

I do know of a solution to this problem, and if I personally could have gone back in time, when the leaderboard was being created, we could have avoided this issue. But now, the leaderboard is fully built, and there are over 400 submissions. By the nature of the required changes that I see, I am not confident in my abilities to carry this process through, without accidentally breaking something in the leaderboard, turning entire rus invisible, losing myself in this mess.

So how would we go about adding this category if we can’t change things ? In truth, there is another solution. But allow me to talk about the other suggested category first.

Duology would be about running both DtP and L’sV (and I’ll leave the details for when we design it). It would definitely need to be its own category.

The question is, how would we play it ? I don’t have much knowledge about how to handle these kinds of speedruns, so I will need your input. Apparently though, people like it to be simple. That the focus is put on beating multiple games quickly, not so much so in specific ways. Of course, it’s difficult to execute that idea with KPRS, as from the get go you need to choose a difficulty (which can be switched whenever in the run). You can also decide to play with support mode, yielding a completely different speedrun. Nearly everything in KPRS has this big aspect to consider, we can hardly turn away from it. So for this duology speedrun, we have the choice of either enabling a finite ways to play it, all of them at once, or only one. It’s a tough question really. Do people really want 24 categories to run that ? And depending on what we choose, we may still end up with the problem 0 dreamstones meets, where only one or two out of the sub categories will be used and the rest will forever act as a disturbance.

...But what if we could simply avoid this hurdle altogether ? What if we open up a brand new leaderboard ? It’s usually called an extended category leaderboard, although I wouldn’t call it as such. A mere continuation of the main leaderboard, as it should have been if everything went right and if src's leaderboard building system was more flexible. Of course however, it may also be the place for more miscellaneous categories. It is disconnected to the first leaderboard, and has its own system, structure design, variables… making it suddenly very easy to maintain smaller sized categories in clean fashion.

If we go this route, it might take a bit of a time to go through the formalities. I assume all moderators of the first board will also go to the second one. And the leaderboard discussion place will still happen in the first one.

What do you should be done ? What are your ideas on how to handle duology speedruns ? Is there a crucial step I’ve missed ?

I would like to state that adding a category extension board would be a great idea. I believe worrying about the difficulty aspect of category extension runs [outside of duology] would be simple enough with a new board addition separate from this one.

The argument about having empty sections in a leaderboard is totally valid. I believe with category extensions we can probably toss out the idea of having difficulty as an attribute to segregate by given that they are extensions. That's my opinion.

Duology is a special case since obviously if a run is being completed in one difficulty, then it should be expected that the difficulty remain the same between both games. This is the case with whether or not the run is standard or support as well [although this would be a good distinction for any category we introduce].

On one hand, it would make sense for the KPRS duology to be played with all the same configuration possibilities that we apply to the separate games. So long as both games are played with the same settings, of course.

What I mean, in practice, is that you'd be able to pick between all three difficulties and also between Standard/Support mode, and you'd need to apply your choice to both PRS1 and PRS2 for the run to be valid.

Caveat: it might be wise to restrict the duology to only Any%, unless there is a push for more. Seeing as it will be a side category, with less participation than the main ones, I see value in streamlining it in that sense. Keeps the competition more focused, and the runners closer.

Now, on the other hand, taking into account the subject of lower activity and streamlining: all this flexibility might simply still be too much. Too many categories, diluted, that no one will run.

An alternative would then be to make the duology a single well-defined category, like a specific challenge that we pose to the community. Locking it in step with what a duology run of the original games would look like, the KPRS duology could be limited to Normal difficulty, Standard mode, Any%. Beat both games as fast as possible in the way they were "intended" to be played. Right now, my personal opinion would be in favor of something closer to this option.

Regardless of which direction is chosen, it feels like timing should simply be the IGT sum of both games. While that is simple and direct, an addendum must be made that this has to be done in one sitting, otherwise you could add any two runs together.

As for the SRC leaderboard, given the restrictions Balneor described, it does seem like making a separate extended category board would be the better solution for handling not only this, but other smaller categories. There's PRS2 No Dreamstones, for example, and Neil also joked about making a Granny% category for PRS1 where timing ends when you hit Granny with a Moo in the Gelg Bolm fight. Oh, there could also be a Boss Rush category for each game, where you use time attack mode to fight all the bosses in a row and add the IGT times.

[Edit] Except you'd need to consider what to do with all the difficulties/modes for the Boss Rush, huh? Whoops.