Thread update 2021-07-14 I renamed this thread from "My plans for this LB" to just "Plans for this LB". Originally, this was just me sharing my own plans, but this has since evolved to everyone sharing ideas so I generalized the title. Original post below:

Here are my original plans for the LB before I discovered @Blobofdoom beat me to it:

Categories

• Any%: Complete the required objectives and get out (what Rift Jump Only is)
• 100%: Complete required and optional objectives (unless the level only has required objectives)
• 110%: Complete required and optional objectives and eliminate all Creeper from the map (unless it's Archon b/c its constantly raining Creeper on that map)

Timing

• IGT is just the in-game timer at the end of the level (or frame that last Creeper is destroyed for 110%)
• RTA starts when the ADA Log is dismissed and ends on the same frame as IGT

Boards

• Primarily ILs for Farsite Expedition, to be expanded to Span Experiments as well
• Also Full Game categories for Farsite and Span
• Main timing is IGT with RTA also listed (together, not as separate categories)
• Accept videos w/o onscreen timer, use retimer to get RTA

Mverse

• This wasn't part of my original plan since it didn't exist then, but multiplayer could be supported through sub-categories

-I love the sound of 110%, it makes the perfectionist in me smile. -I almost made a full game category too, but couldn't see anyone making use of it, but in the end it's free to do so why not. -I think an MVerse category for farsite would be really interesting, but I don't know the limits on it (e.g. can you play with more than 2 players, would we want categories for each player above 2 etc.) -It would be cool to have a category for seeded/custom missions but I don't see a way of making that work unless seeds and custom missions get submitted to mods somehow?

I just have a few questions, which might just stem from ignorance on how speed run.com works:

-I made separate categories for IGT and RTA because I think they're interesting as separate disciplines. If they're the same category do you lose the ability to have a Victor for each method of play, or can you filter for both? -A lot of games demand OST to make cheating harder, and most people will use OBS to have it on a separate screen anyway, plus they're free, so I don't see the benefit of not having an OST. Thoughts?

I love the ideas. Do you have the relevant permissions to implement changes if we agree on a way forward or do I need to elevate you?

[quote=Blobofdoom]I think an MVerse category for farsite would be really interesting, but I don't know the limits on it (e.g. can you play with more than 2 players, would we want categories for each player above 2 etc.)[/quote] MVerse is up to 4 players, we can add subcategories for 1, 2, 3, and 4 players

[quote=Blobofdoom]It would be cool to have a category for seeded/custom missions but I don't see a way of making that work unless seeds and custom missions get submitted to mods somehow?[/quote] Yeah Mark V worlds would have to just be suggestions submitted and popular ones get added (potential for CE if that gets popular)

[quote=Blobofdoom]I made separate categories for IGT and RTA because I think they're interesting as separate disciplines. If they're the same category do you lose the ability to have a Victor for each method of play, or can you filter for both?[/quote] With multiple timing options, there would be a default sort and the headers would become links to change to another sort (you can see that in action here)

[quote=Blobofdoom]A lot of games demand OST to make cheating harder, and most people will use OBS to have it on a separate screen anyway, plus they're free, so I don't see the benefit of not having an OST. Thoughts?[/quote] I can't comment on the cheating aspect, I just chose not to require it because it was unnecessary with a retime tool and that would remove an (albeit very small) barrier to entry. I don't mind either way, we could make it optional but recommended and just give more scrutiny towards those without.

[quote=Blobofdoom]I love the ideas. Do you have the relevant permissions to implement changes if we agree on a way forward or do I need to elevate you?[/quote] It looks like I have enough permissions as a normal mod to do most, if not all, things planned

Great, love the ideas and thanks for clueing me in. I'll start some updates -please feel free to implement whatever I don't get round to quickly.

I have now done some runs and have some thoughts on the timings

RTA starts when the ADA Log is dismissed and ends on the same frame as IGT

If you are fast enough there is a possibility to place something before the ADA Log pops up. The current rules state that "Time starts when the player gains control over unit placement". This is a bit ambiguous because technically you have control before the ADA log pops up.

There is a similar issue with the end time. Because there are levels (at least Farside afaik) where you can click rift jump before the final dialogue comes up. Therefore saving some time because you can skip the final dialogue. However, even if you rift jump before the dialogue the IGT will pause but if you dismiss the dialogue after it will add another couple seconds to it because it unpauses before it registers that the map is completed.

EDIT: I realised I just pointed out some flaws without suggesting some solutions.

For the start timing, my suggestion would be start the moment the level is done loading, or after closing the ADA but having a rule that you cannot do anything before that.

For the end timing keep it as is such that both RTA and IGT are counted from the moment rift jump is clicked.

I made separate categories for IGT and RTA because I think they're interesting as separate disciplines. If they're the same category do you lose the ability to have a Victor for each method of play, or can you filter for both?

I agree with the separate categories. So far playing for IGT is completely different than for RTA because pausing becomes way more important for IGT. There was also a discussion about this in the CW4 discord last night.

Currently, the IGT categories are still ranked by RTA in the LB so that probably needs to be changed.

Lastly, I had an idea for a "full run" category and that is for a demo run. The demo for CW4 is just the first five levels (09 Leo, 266 - Ruins Repurposed). Having this as a category would both work as a middle ground for people who do not want to commit to a whole run but do want to run multiple levels, as well as allowing people who have not bought the game to participate.

For the start timing, my suggestion would be start the moment the level is done loading, or after closing the ADA but having a rule that you cannot do anything before that.

I didn't realise you could place units before closing the A.D.A window before today - I think having a rule that no units can be placed before ADA closes and time starts when ADA is closed is a good idea.

For the end timing keep it as is such that both RTA and IGT are counted from the moment rift jump is clicked.

I wonder if it's worth having the end of a run be when the post-game report is displayed? That way the IGT is final.

I have gathered thoughts from myself, Cornucanis and Hypnotic22; for context we are the main 3 TASers/Speedrunners active on the Knuckle Cracker Discord. As we usually do, I think we went a bit overboard, but figured we should just list all the things we are thinking about.

Firstly two issues in regards to clarity in the rules: The rules do not ban the use of the mission editor. What about saves? Obviously no loading saves not made during the run, but could I made a save during the run, then load that save if a trick doesn’t work first try? This becomes a very major point for in game time runs, as save loading difficult sections is one of the most powerful tools we have, but opens up the potential for save file manipulation based cheating and can make runs exceedingly long recordings as large portions of the run could be failed attempts that don’t contribute to IGT.

Also some minor cleanup on the categories: IGT runs are using the RTA time when you view all level leaderboards. For the first 3 levels, 100% and any% are the exact same. Most levels do not have easter eggs, this will be several duplicate categories. How are you planning to verify no creeper on the map for 110%? The bottom left menu will work, but for something like Archon it might be difficult to verify that there is no creeper because of the rain. I would be sure to test Archon beforehand to see if any issues arise and to get a verification method clearly defined in the rules. The game by default tracks runs not by any% or 100% completion times, but by times for each of the individual objectives. Those are potential categories, but there is some consideration for how many categories a game should have.

In regard to preventing cheating: The information in the bottom left UI is probably the most powerful tool for preventing cheating and it is not something that can be manipulated easily. The bottom right is also useful, but significantly less so. It is very easy to clone a map into the mission creator, playing that mission and using the restart mission would make it undetectable that someone is not loading the story map. The easy ways to prevent these are to require bottom left to be visible and ideally legible, but that would add a minimum spec of ‘can record at 720p’. Not insignificant, but becomes a much bigger problem due to another concern that will be mentioned later. The cloned mission can be fixed by having a requirement that recordings start or end on the mission select screen or show the play log. Lastly, consider having players upload the .rec files associated with their runs, it is a file type that we do not know how to manipulate, and faking it well is very difficult. It gives a top down pixelated view of the entire map and contains details that could be matched against a video submission.

How do you plan on dealing with different versions or builds? There is no way that I know of to go back to previous builds, so if a record is set on one build, but an update makes it impossible to match that record, then what? There are 2 campaign levels that have legitimate completion times that have been shown to be impossible to match in the current build. In fact, there is currently a bug that makes one of the campaign levels a lot easier and faster to beat; though no times have yet been submitted that beat the record set without the bug. Minor aside to the above; demo and full game are different builds, I do not know the differences in detail though.

Probably the biggest issues that came up was how to keep the competition fair. One was in regard to IGT runs, the other was in regards to RTA runs. For IGT runs, is there a way to prevent copying runs? From the recordings you can easily copy every input made by a player. The deterministic nature of the game means that if the same inputs are made, the same time will be achieved excluding some RNG elements. These RNG elements are rarely significant though and I believe the campaign levels have been set to give the same RNG seed to everyone. So, with an hour or so free (depending on the length of the run), there is nothing stopping someone from going in and copying the 1st place run and matching their time. This might not be something that can be solved while maintaining high standards of verification, but if anyone has a solution that would be awesome.

For RTA runs, if a level gets well optimised, the leaderboads can easily become competitions based on hardware. Obviously different levels will lag to different degrees, but the game lags even on simpler levels if the speed is set to 4x and your hardware is not up to par. On more complex levels, even strong computers can lag, reducing speed significantly; this lag is made even worse if you are recording using software instead of a capture card. For an example of this already on the boards, you can notice in Cornucanis’ Farsite run that the game was just running slower. Farsite is not a map that lags heavily as well, because of this there are a lot of levels that could become impossible for even medium hardware to compete. And this is before we even mention MVerse; to run 4 player MVerse at 4x speed without slowdown requires good connections of 5MB up/down with 60 ping max between players on top of the hardware limitations. One idea that we did think about was the idea of a No Time Warp category, where speed cannot be changed from 1x. While this won’t completely remove the factor of lag, it will make it so that it affects only the lowest end hardware.

Sorry for the mountain of text, if you have any questions or want to discuss stuff, the 3 of us are active on Discord and I will be paying attention to this forum thread.

I don't know why src doesn't support Markdown-style quotes (using the >) when it supports other MD formatting, but it doesn't. You have to use the BBCode-style instead, which is [ quote]Blah blah blah[/quote] or [ quote=author]Blah blah blah[/quote] (just without the extra spaces)

I have the exact same response at Blob, I didn't know it was possible until now and I think the best solution is to simply outlaw it

I also agree with Blob on this one, I think unifying RTA and IGT on the ADA Analysis would be better. Afaik Farsite is the only level with a prompt that activates upon reaching the goal like that.

I like that idea. We could make it a subcategory with Farsite and Mark V. I think having a low barrier to entry is important.

Those are both an easy 'no' from me. The rules will have to be fleshed out a bit and probably split into headings like this (but maybe a little shorter)

It looks like there's only the option to change the sort for the entire game, I don't see any control for individual categories. Unless I'm not seeing it, this means separate IGT/RTA categories aren't possible. But, as I mentioned earlier, you can still view a different sort by clicking on the header, as seen here

As I mentioned in the original post, I would drop 100% when it matches Any%/RJO. Likewise, I would not have 110% on Archon and any other map where incoming Creeper cannot be stopped

We could have both sets of categories for traditional completion (Any/100/etc) and in-game objectives (Activate/Reclaim/etc), if one of the sets are in the Misc section. I would keep the tradition set as the main categories since the objectives have their own in-game boards and some, like most Collect objectives, will be the equivalent of Minecraft Classic: Break Dirt.

All corners are helpful to verification: the top-left gives the creeper/ac graph and the top-right has IGT. Requiring none of the UI to be obscured, at least 720p (or maybe even 480p with the concerns about performance), and showing level entrance/exit makes sense to me.

​I don't think the .rec files should be submitted for all runs. Just requiring it for the X places or percentile (once we get some more runs) would be better imo. That would lower the barrier to entry while still keeping top runs verified. A note that all runners shouldn't delete the files until their run is verified would let us request them for slower suspicious runs.

​I think the way Minecraft: Java does it where you list the version as a variable and have subcategories for versions with major changes works best. I haven't tried it but there is a way to pull old versions from Steam using the console and SteamDB. This is done in Gravitas. I don't know if GOG has an equivalent or if the KC site has archives, but we could also share old versions as Recourses.

​Every level has a single best way of doing it and pausing means that given enough patience, anyone can achieve that. I don't think we can do anything against that besides general discouragement. That's where RTA comes into play. RTA acts as a tiebreaker for IGT (and vice-versa) and getting a 12 minute IGT is much more impressive with a 15 minute RTA than a 2 hour RTA.

Does the game running slow/lagging impact IGT? I don't have time to check right now but if the timer is tied to performance, that would be an easy solution. No matter the answer to that, I still like the idea of a No Time Warp subcategory for more casual running and it lowers the barrier to entry since specs aren't as important.

I'm active on Discord in general but not the KC server, though I am in it. Looks like you're just discussing in the CW4 channel right now, do you think there are any chances for a dedicated speedrunning channel/category? If this gets popular, I think this having its own dedicated section would be good. A separate server is always an option, too. My tag is WeirdAlex03#5049 if you need it (also on my profile here).

[quote=Fireswamp]Sorry for the mountain of text[/quote] You have nothing to worry about on that front. I haven't hit "Post" yet but I'm sure this is much longer, especially with the headings. Honestly, I don't think we have to go this in-depth with only 4 runners on the board right now, but it's better to deal with this stuff sooner rather than later.

Does the game running slow/lagging impact IGT? I don't have time to check right now but if the timer is tied to performance, that would be an easy solution.

Game physics and IGT should completely separate to lag, but there have been lag based bugs before. To my best understanding the mechanic is that for each frame, the game calculates the next frame and increments the IGT by 1/30 of a second. If this calculation takes less than 1/30,1/60, or 1/120 of a second depending on the speed set by the player, the game will wait until that time has passed. What this means is that if your computer takes 1/75 of a second to process each frame, the game will run at full speed if set to 1x or 2x, but will run at 2.5x speed if you set the game to 4x speed. You need the game to process all frames in less than 1/120 of a second to run at 4x speed. The bottom left menu will show your UPS (Updates Per Second) count in tiny text.

do you think there are any chances for a dedicated speedrunning channel/category?

We used to use the competition channel for any lengthy speedrun/tas discussion, but with the amount of stuff we want to discuss it is easier to jump into voice chats than write massive posts for us. The competition chat is still there and is something we should be able to use for speedrunning chatter.

Also for the .rec files, they are automatically generated for all completed levels, hit Recordings in the main menu to link you to the file location. Giving it more thought they probably won't be that good at catching cheating though, so probably still not worth it.

Lots of good points being made here! I'm on mobile right now but will respond next time I get to the computer.

I've been playing with variables and applied some rule changes. It looks like a lot of the things we're taking about here can be solved with rules and variables.

The one thing I'll say here before a lengthier response is that I'd like to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible while deterring cheaters as much as possible. We'll have to strike a balance.

First, use [ quote]blah blah blah[/quote] (w/o the space in [ quote]) to make a quote, not >.

[quote=Fireswamp]the game calculates the next frame and increments the IGT by 1/30 of a second ... What this means is that if your computer takes 1/75 of a second to process each frame, the game will run at full speed if set to 1x or 2x, but will run at 2.5x speed if you set the game to 4x speed[/quote] So if I'm understanding this correctly, that means physics and IGT are tied, right? In this case, when set to 4x speed, the physics engine is only running at 2.5x speed and the IGT would also only be 2.5x speed?

I'll wait for @Blobofdoom to get his response out before I reply further

[quote]The rules do not ban the use of the mission editor.[/quote] I've fixed this in the main rules, but need to do a cleanup of the additional rules to point to the main ones

On saves: I can't think of a good way to implement saves to be honest. Everything I think of has too many holes for cheating: -Just record the last segment from load->end of game (So easy to manipulate) -Record the whole thing including every save and load (Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge files) -Stitch together a run with your best save/loads (tons of work to verify)

Easter eggs: I've added a variable (sub-category) to the first level for easter egg mode, which we can roll out to other relevant levels. The Easter Egg category is gone now

Category bloat: I think the main categories are covered and sub-catagories will solve most other problems (like new builds), but consolidating some of the categories and having sub-cats is viable too (e.g. merge RTA categories with Rift-jump only/100%/110% sub-cats). I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

Cheating: I like the 720p idea for additional verification, I'll add a main rule. Do .rec files hang around on a local PC after reset? If they do I'd consider not having to upload them but asking people to keep them available at mods request (keeps the barrier to entry low. Runs can be invalidated if they're fishy and .rec files cannot be produced).

On copying runs: Copying every input seems like it would be ridiculously hard - has anyone tried this? I'll look at some other deterministic games (e.g. trackmania) to see how they handled it.

On hardware wars: I don't know how to tackle this other than a no-time warp mode as default which was already suggested. Variables are easy to add and would solve this one too.

[quote=Blobofdoom]On saves: I can't think of a good way to implement saves to be honest. Everything I think of has too many holes for cheating: -Just record the last segment from load->end of game (So easy to manipulate) -Record the whole thing including every save and load (Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge files) -Stitch together a run with your best save/loads (tons of work to verify)[/quote]

I'm not sure there's a good solution regarding saves. As you mentioned, any options which allow for loading saves will come with drawbacks, whether that be in regard to video processing, cheat detection, etc. As much as I hate to say it due to the fact that our current speedrun methodology revolves heavily around saves, it may be best to just disallow loading saves for this leaderboard so people are required to perform the run in one sitting. Really, allowing pause and frame advance (when IGT is the main metric) already brings the playstyle much closer to TASing, bringing save/load into the mix would only exacerbate this.

[quote=Blobofdoom]Cheating: I like the 720p idea for additional verification, I'll add a main rule. Do .rec files hang around on a local PC after reset? If they do I'd consider not having to upload them but asking people to keep them available at mods request (keeps the barrier to entry low. Runs can be invalidated if they're fishy and .rec files cannot be produced).[/quote]

Yeah, the .rec files are kept permanently in the game's directory unless you manually delete them. You can use the "Recorder" button in the main menu to access the recorder, which lets you make a video out of them for easy sharing.

[quote=Blobofdoom]On copying runs: Copying every input seems like it would be ridiculously hard - has anyone tried this? I'll look at some other deterministic games (e.g. trackmania) to see how they handled it.[/quote]

For games like trackmania which are very input sensitive and fast paced, it is indeed very difficult to properly copy someone else's strategy. The A-1 map is so notorious because everyone knows exactly what needs to be done, but executing is not nearly as simple as knowing the correct buttons to press. CW4 is a bit different, however, especially if the IGT is the primary method of timing. It's much easier to copy someone's sequence of moves in an RTS. The fact that you can pause and perfectly control time flow as well as being able to much more easily distinguish all the inputs from a video are the two main factors in my eyes.

All that said, unfortunately I don't have a good solution to this issue either.

Saves In that case, since I agree there's no good way to do it, I deleted that variable.

Easter Eggs I think incorporating that requirement into 110% would be better, but I'm fine with this, too. We should be careful not to add too many subcategories, though.

Bloat If there's no way for us to set the default timing of both the IGT categories and RTA categories correctly, we should only have one set of categories. In that case, I think having IGT be the default option would be best. The option to sort a board by RTA would still be present when you view it. I'm in favor of not having too many cats/sub-cats, too. More could be added later when the board is more popular, but too many would remain empty at this stage.

Cheating I have recordings going back to February 9th, which I believe includes all my playthroughs in the game. Notably, though, it does not have recordings from when I played in the demo. That may be an issue. But otherwise, they are easy. The largest file is 45MB but by far most are <5MB, so there's no reason to delete them unless they had something that needs to be deleted.

Copying Runs Copying the mouse and keyboard inputs and camera controls perfectly is practically impossible. Copying unit placement, however, is very easy. Remember, pausing is part of the game here. In other games like Trackmania, you have to copy movements in real-time, but here, you can pause the game as often as you want to copy and replicate movements. Having a grid like this means units can easily be placed exactly as someone else. [quote=Fireswamp]The deterministic nature of the game means that if the same inputs are made, the same time will be achieved excluding some RNG elements. These RNG elements are rarely significant though and I believe the campaign levels have been set to give the same RNG seed to everyone.[/quote]

Hardware If my understanding in my last message is correct, then hardware differences would not impact IGT, only how fast IGT goes relative to RTA, making the issue less significant. I still like the idea of No Time Warp, though. I don't think there's a way to use variables to solve this.

RJO vs Any% Where do we stand on naming the "you have to complete the required objectives" category? Personally, I think Any% would be a better name than Rift Jump Only, especially alongside 100% and 110%.

[quote]Copying every input seems like it would be ridiculously hard - has anyone tried this?[/quote] I have done this with my own runs before, the categories that are easy to recreate the top any% runs that I know of are Ruins Repurposed and Wallis, with 09 Leo, Farsite, Sequence and Serious not being too difficult. A proper recreation for most other levels I would expect to be relatively difficult and take a few hours for the shorter levels (ex. Not My Mars, 100% Ruins). Longer levels (ex. Founders, Tower of Darkness) I would classify as extremely difficult and time consuming to do. With how small this community is I think only Wallis any% and Ruins Repurposed any% would be something that we should consider.

edit: I should probably be more clear about difficulty to recreate; these are my opinions on time to recreate. If you know what you are doing you can recreate Wallis or Ruins any% in about 5 minutes given a video. I would say 09Leo < Farsite < Serious < Sequence < 1 hour of time. Most other runs would take over an hour to recreate, but I think even 100% Founders could be fully recreated in a day by someone dedicated and knowledgeable at the game. I have not tested fully recreating a run that long and extensive though.

[quote]Do .rec files hang around on a local PC after reset?[/quote] They do, they are just saved as files on computer; but there are some things I am not sure about in regards to the file being generated. To my best knowledge, it generates the file for any level where you Rift Jump but there is an option (disabled by default) to limit the number of recordings to a certain number; I suspect this deletes old recordings, but I do not know.

The main problem is that this file won't find splicing using saves or replaying runs back faster to improve RTA times. So it probably won't be as effective against main cheating methods, only against map/game modification, which I suspect won't be very common. Thinking about it I am not sure I still think the rec files would be effective enough to justify having people need to worry about them.

[quote]So if I'm understanding this correctly, that means physics and IGT are tied, right? In this case, when set to 4x speed, the physics engine is only running at 2.5x speed and the IGT would also only be 2.5x speed?[/quote] Yes, you are understanding correctly.

Hey! I decided to sign up to give some of my personal thoughts on the current categories. As I'm new to this site, I cannot be sure what makes the most sense, so I will focus on just my initial thoughts and you guys can do with them what you will.

First of all, I believe there may be too many categories already, and I've noticed some posts mentioning expanding it further. This is a very small community and 5 categories across 20 maps already dilutes the competition a significant amount, I feel that the focus should be on reducing and not expanding, to avoid a situation where most records are largely uncontested.

As someone who watches speedrunning occasionally, my impression has always been that categories should make sense within what constitutes as completion in the game itself, e.g. "reaching the game over screen", or "getting a 100% value in a statistics page". As such I don't believe the 110% category makes sense as the game does not glorify it in any capacity, and it will not look like going for it matters in any way to an observer.

Secondly, the in-game time categories are in my opinion redundant and could also be removed. The game already tracks these times and we have been using a special group tag (see pinned messages in #competition on Discord to know more) to keep track of our scores in a controlled environment, and share replays. It is my understanding that users have to provide full recorded videos as proof of their records, and doing this for in-game time runs will make it possible for other users to fully replicate used strategies. I also feel that in-game time scores are not actually speedrunning at heart, as runs that end up taking 5 minutes in-game time can take hours real-time, and I feel that is not why most people watch and enjoy the art of speedrunning.

Lastly, the realtime categories should not allow changing game speed, for a simple reason - a lot of computers are not going to be powerful enough to keep consistent 120 UPS, and any slowdowns on a weaker PC will potentially make it impossible to reach a time that is achieved by a stronger PC. In my opinion the realtime categories should only allow 1x speed and consistent 30 UPS. An argument can also be made to disallow the use of the Pause button because some of us have been finding that interesting lately on Discord but I haven't thought of all the nuances there, and the nature of realtime likely discourages excessive pausing to begin with.

IMO the categories could be reduced to realtime only with 1 category for just completing the mission, and another category for completing all of the objectives (so, the way it is set up now). Other categories in my opinion are too much, relative to both the popularity of the game and the technical issues that come with having to release a full video showing an in-game time run, as well as interest in viewers watching such long technical videos.

I hope these thoughts make sense. Personally I might be interested in playing for the realtime category, but as it stands my computer - especially with recording software running at the same time - simply isn't strong enough to keep a consistent 120 UPS and this is an insurmountable barrier to entry. I probably won't be able to compete in every map even at 30 UPS with recording software running, but nevertheless it is a much lower barrier for most maps, and the best compromise in my eyes.

Welcome to SRC, @Grabz

The RTA/IGT variants of categories will not be staying. There isn't an option to have separate timings per category. I always strived to eliminate all the creeper on the map on my initial casual playthrough, hence the idea for a 110% category. It's not part of the game as RJO/Any and 100 are, but still measurable with data in-game. It's really a Misc category in nature.

The debate over whether IGT or RTA should be the category default will ultimately decide the prevailing strategy (either can be viewed per-board but only the default will show on the all-IL page). Whichever option is chosen, it will be a compromise. IGT is the in-game timing method and removes the hardware barrier to entry. RTA is closer to the "true nature" of speedrunning where pausing can't be abused and movements can't be copied 1-to-1.

If RTA is chosen, a no time warp sub-category could be added for weak hardware. If IGT is chosen, a no pausing sub-category could be added to keep things moving. Both of these would further separate the playerbase, though. The big difficulty is balancing a low barrier to entry with high level speedrunning without making separate, enclosed communities.

The video requirement goes into that too. Requiring a full video of the run is standard on src, though minimum requirements vary. Some boards require 720p directly captured video, others allow just pointing a phone at the screen.

[quote]If RTA is chosen, a no time warp sub-category could be added for weak hardware. [/quote]

As an up-front disclaimer, I have some bias on this subject due to my own inadequate hardware. That said, I feel that it if we do go with RTA as the standard, it would make more sense for no time-warp to be the default with time warp being a subcategory if anything. This first reason is because as-is, allowing time warp pretty much just means the optimal strategy always involves pressing 4x as soon as the map loads and trying to finish the map in a frenzy. It's an interesting way to play, but doesn't feel to me like it should be the default.

The other reason I think relegating no time warp to a subcategory would be detrimental to the community is because it would pretty much take people like myself out of the competition entirely. With the size of the community we have, I sincerely doubt there will be any notable competition in whichever option is chosen to be a side category. If there's no competition in the category that levels the playing field for everyone, then it will be strongly discouraging to a lot of people who may otherwise be interested in running the game. Just my (admittedly rather biased) 2 cents on the situation.

Yeah, no time warp would be the default option of that subcategory if we went for it. My laptop is far from the best, but it isn't bad either (i7-8750H and 1050 TI to be exact) and it tends to hover in the 80-100 UPS range with OBS pushing out a 1080p live stream. (Then again, I also have the graphics quality pretty high...)

And your (biased or not) 2 cents are good to share because we need to do what is best for the community, and who best to know that but the community? And I don't just mean that because there is very little community atm and losing even one potentially committed person would be significant (though that is the prevailing reason), but also because the site moderator rules literally require it [quote]The users moderating a game should represent the consensus of the players of the game. If it is evident that moderators are not representing consensus among runners, site staff may change moderation.[/quote] (And on a side note, reading through that, there are a few rule changes to make regarding the timer and video quality cc: @Blobofdoom )

I'm getting a bit lost in all of these messages to be honest, is this summary accurate?

-We want IGT to be the main category, with no time warp -Video quality 720p or above (done already I think?)

Thanks for making some edits weirdalex, feel free to update based on community feedback as previously mentioned if I don't get to it. Busy busy busy.