Michigan, USAThis is the permanent link to the discord server: https://discord.gg/dFPEzrF
The invite link can also be found on the left sidebar.
I had thought about making one a while back but there are so few runners that it didn't seem like it would be very active. Thanks for making one!
That's so cool, I haven't seen anything like that either. I'm not sure where it could be of use but I'll try to keep it in mind during future attempts.
I can only comment from a small and one-sided place: how high scores would look like on the Spyro leaderboards. There's one game in particular that high scores would make sense for - that being Spyro 3 with the skateboarding levels. Since it's such a small fraction of our series of games, it seems reasonable to incorporate it in the already present leaderboards in a similar way that Individual Levels are. I bring this up because other games maybe have similar situations in which it's a minute thing and the already existing infrastructure of speedruns.com can do the trick.
Apart from that, highscore.com seems like the perfect companion site to speedrun.com so I hope you can manage it - fundraising or otherwise.
Only posting this to get this off pastebin. This pretty much only demonstrates that the final form of Ripto is 100% RNG and no amount of death abusing can positively alter the fight. It does hint that if you get the RNG where his club gets stuck on the first hit, then you'll have a higher chance of having better RNG. Enjoy.
No Death Abuse 6:53.97 5:02.36 2:46.20 ' 3:47.04 3:56.39 7:21.22 3:43.92 4:15.32 4:21.31
1 Death 5:16.21 3:20.19 ' 4:23.05 9:48.74
2 Deaths 4:22.04 6:05.77
3 Deaths 5:01 5:28.50 6:56.50 6:42.45 5:14.34 6:48.87 6:52.04
1st Club Stick 3:46.99 (0 DA) 5:04.04 (4+? DA) 6:10.70 (7 DA) 2:40.99 ' (0 DA) 3:27.24 (0 DA)
DA=Death Abuse ' =Best time
Looks great, but do favicons actually work now? I brought it up a while ago that they weren't displaying and was under the impression that it was intentional to no longer show custom favicons anymore. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Maybe this post means that they're back but need to be reuploaded in HD. (Crossing my fingers.)
Rules for all this game's categories have been added, but please reach out if you'd like to make any additions or changes.
Spyro Series: General Submission Rules
I. Video Evidence Requirements • Any submission that is a personal best of any parameter requires video evidence, i.e. region, platform, route, etc. • Videos must be adequately complete and include the player loading into the game from the title screen. • Videos must have a permanently hosted link. • When using In-game time, the video must include showing that timer at the end of the run. • If the video is composed of multiple parts, only the first should be included in the "Video Link" submission section. The remainder should be included in the "Comment" submission section. • All individual level submissions require complete video evidence without any game pauses.
II. Timing Requirements • The initial and final splits must be consistent with the timing rules of the specific category. • Category submissions 5 minutes and over in length only require timing precise to the second. All category submissions below 5 minutes require timing precise to the millisecond. • Individual level runs are timed with the in-game timer.
III. Region and Platform Specification Requirements • Region and platform specification is mandatory.
IV. Emulator Indication Requirements • If an emulator was used, indication of that use is mandatory. • Specify which emulator was used in the "Comment" submission section. • Allowed emulators are as listed: - For PS1: Mednafen, Xebra, and ePSXe 1.9.0/1.9.25/2.0.0. - For DS: DeSmuME 0.9.8+ - For GBA: mGBA 0.6.3+
V. Grandfathered Submissions • Any submission made prior to this rule set being implemented (06 January 2019) still holds a valid place on the leaderboards, even when the submission no longer meets the requirements.
VI. Cheating and Consequences • A submission is considered cheated when the player uses the following methods in the submission: - In-game cheat codes, unless the category requires it or the cheat is purely cosmetic - Manipulating the in-game timer - Cheating devices, i.e. GameShark, Action Replay, Game Genie, etc. - Any emulator-specific functions, i.e. save states, frame limiter, overclocking, etc. - Tools to combine segments of runs or attempts - Claiming a run by another player as their own • Any submission using such methods will be rejected or removed. If a player submits additional cheated runs, all of their runs will be removed from these leaderboards and, if they have runs on leaderboards outside of the Spyro series, those leaderboard moderators will be contacted.
VII. Rejection Appeal Allowance • If you believe your run was unfairly rejected, you may appeal the rejection by messaging a leaderboard moderator privately.
A friend and I learned Mini Ninjas any% (https://www.speedrun.com/mn) for the 12HourChallenge last Friday and neither of our runs have been verified yet. I looked into both of the moderators and neither have been active for ~3 months and seem to exclusively speedrun Mini Ninjas. (https://www.speedrun.com/user/Bappel & https://www.speedrun.com/user/JamesPatrick)
The game would be easy to moderate since it's really a straightforward and unpopular speed game. I'm already a moderater of the entire Spyro series and it would be no trouble to moderate this board as well.
Thanks.
Over the course of the last month, the Spyro series leaderboard mod team have discussed rule changes and rule additions to the currently posted rule sets within the forums. The purpose of this forum post is for the community to review all of the proposed changes and additions and give criticism and feedback so we can implement a rule set that all or most will agree upon.
Here are the current rule sets on the forums here, if you wish to compare: 1st: https://www.speedrun.com/spyro/thread/j13wg 2nd: https://www.speedrun.com/spyro1/thread/k1g0f
And here’s the new leaderboard rules Doc: https://goo.gl/5vNBBi
Now I’ll do my best to cover everything new and explain why it’s being proposed.
In section “I.” “Visual” evidence has been changed to “Splits” evidence because of the somewhat new splits.io embed feature. It has been acceptable to submit that as sole evidence (if the run doesn’t require video evidence) for a while but the rules didn’t reflect that, so that change has been made in the entirely of section “I.”
“I.B.” previously included that we would accept screenshots of the player’s in-game timer in individual level runs, but for a long time now we haven’t accepted that as evidence because of a manipulation that cuts your time down when the game is paused. Now all individual levels require complete video evidence as suggested in “II. E.”
In “I. C.” it might have seemed like commonsense: if a player uses splits.io embeds/screenshot that in order to be verified, a moderator would have to be able to recognize what the splits correspond to. So if a player submitted Spyro 2 Any%, for example, they’d need more than just one split titled “Ripto”. Instead that player would need “Summer Forest, Autumn Plains, Winter Tundra” or more commonly “Crush, Gulp, Ripto”. If the moderator can tell it’s a homeworld split, it’ll fly. This rule isn’t to say that in longer length runs, that the player ¤must¤ use homeworld splits, just that it serves as a minimum when there’s a low split count and that’s all the evidence that’s being provided.
The biggest change is “II. B.” which proposes an entirely new system for video evidence when submitting to the main categories of the boards. An example: everyone would be suspicious if a new player came out with sub 1:30:00 splits for Spyro 120% without video evidence, but following the current rule set, the moderators would have to verify it. Most moderators feel like they wouldn’t want to verify it without more evidence, so it makes sense to set these times for main categories. Any category ¤not¤ listed in “II. B.” would follow the guidelines in “II. A.” The mod team set low ball times for each category so in the future if the category times improve drastically, the time could be shortened and no grandfathering would have to occur.
Nothing new till “IV.” which has been modified to make sense of the fact that Spyro ETD any% uses milliseconds in a main category. Also that any run that is as short as ETD any% could become as contested, so using milliseconds for runs shorter than 5 minutes (notably Spyro 2 bone dance) would be worthwhile to prevent multiple place/rank ties. In “VII”, pause allowances were comically misunderstood, so the rule has been changed to make sense of what it actually means to have a pause allowance, and now includes that allowance for all runs regardless of length. Never have we ever had a section explaining what grandfathering means, so here it is folks, section “VIII.” Enjoy. :)
Very recently, section “IX.” became pretty mandatory to have, as the mod team encountered it and took action as described in “IX. B.” So might as well make it clear to everyone what a cheated run is and what the consequence will be if it’s submitted.
That’s it! Let us know below what you think and any changes you think should be made.
In the past with the change to banning emulator, I had argued for grandfathering the couple of runs that were done on emulator. The rule had changed, much like we redefined evidence rules for future runs and left old runs that didn't meet the requirements.
Hints Off being NG+ is something I personally can't ignore, nor argue for grandfathering of old runs. It's annoying to turn off Hints and it certainly wastes time, but I don't think there's a valid reason why runs didn't include that in the past. It should also be noted that most, if not all 100%/NER runs will also have turned Hints Off prior to starting a new game.
Congrats for finding the loophole that could nuke the majority of this leaderboard. However, maybe we should consider redefining every category on the board to NG+? I feel most people who've done a run of this game would vote to keep the NG+ feature, and if it's fastest RTA... that's the entire point of a speedrun.
I would just keep playing the flight levels over and over. Do them the intended route if you can't do them with the fastest route. They're the easiest levels to practice, so I would give that a shot before trying to come up with a really ineffective route without the flights. That will take more time and effort than just learning them, especially if you want to incorporate the flights eventually.
I would request demo 4% for Spyro 1, but I honestly don't want to see it there till someone else attempts a run of it.
It's definitely not the most consistent method of entry.
I didn't notice this till now, but I've already gone into great detail about this run with the other leaderboard mods. About a week ago I noticed that Touval's 1:29:17 had changed on the boards to match the highlight time of 1:29:39, which had drastically changed his rank on the leaderboard. The time of 1:29:17 has been recorded as Touval's time since before I joined the community, over 2 1/2 years ago. It was accepted long before the rule change for evidence and is grandfathered in. There is no other leaderboard entry on Spyro 1 grandfathered in such a way. I could see the issue if multiple top-ranking times didn't have complete proof because we'd have an insubstantial leaderboard. In order to clear some confusion, last week I added a screenshot of Touval's splits and moved the VOD out of the video link and into the description.
I agree with you Jumpy. I think the leaderboards for this game are now completely irrelevant and pointless. There's no general place for you to look at top times for this game anymore. In the past all of those runs were accepted as legit but people are changing their minds; they won't even accept the concept of grandfathering. I think a better solution is to unrank now-illegitimate runs, explain grandfathering in the rules, and keep the times displayed. It seems like a win-win for everyone that way?
I'm interested in having Level leaderboards for this game. I'm aware those already exist on Cyberscore, but you don't need image or video proof to submit there and that seems unfortunately lax. I think there's a lot of potential to have something more valid and complete here. Lemme know what you think.
