- I will (hopefully) be making a tutorial video soon which will go over everything i know. It should be a really big help to new runners and hopefully also provide some new stuff for better runners.
- I will be changing the end timer to the closing of the last dialogue box which officially ends control of the game and begins the end of the game sequence. First of all, i realized after testing that you CAN indeed land a final blow on the boss, which would effectively end the timer, while simultaneously being hit and killed. This leads to a speedrun that is technically over while leaving the player needing to beat the boss again (without dying) to actually get to the end of the game. I questioned this a while back but decided to end the timer on final blow anyway. This will not change anything nor give any kind of advantage/disadvantage to anyone. All runs from now on should end the timer at the closing of the last dialogue box. I will time how long it takes to get from final blow to the new end timer and will add that time to all previous runs for consistancy.
- I have to question the "save, quit, continue" strat that Vanni has been using. It has real merit and i think it's interesting and i honestly never considered it before. But the fact that it restores your health creates an advantage. The one place in particular i noticed was on the way to crypt 8, in which you are able to restore your health about 4 screens short of the crypt entrance. Getting to that crypt is difficult and certainly results in losing lots of life, which is completely nullified with this trick. Im not saying its cheating, nor am i saying it shouldnt be used by anyone who wishes to do so, but i AM saying that it's an advantage and therefore if it's allowed to be used we should consider creating a new sub category for it. I haven't made any decisions yet but i would appreciate any ideas/questions/etc. about this topic.
Here's my counterpoint to the whole save/quit issue: while the refill of life is undoubtedly an advantage gameplay-wise, you also need to consider the amount of time spent gaining this advantage. First of all, you don't even have the option to save/quit unless you grab the Book of Revival in the very beginning of the game, which in and of itself takes about 20 seconds (and considering that the top three times are within three seconds of each other, that's a significant amount of time). Also, the act of doing the save/quit itself consumes time too, I'm guessing somewhere in the 15-20 second range EACH TIME that you do it, and that's not even taking into account the save points that require a detour of some sort to reach, which would consume even more time. Compare this to similar games like Zelda 1 (up+A) and aLTTP (s&q) where the advantage to doing a save/quit is undeniable, albeit for different reasons. So to me, the save/quit strat in Neutopia is very much a risk/reward conundrum, and it's one that I don't think has a large enough sample size to say one way or another that it is a distinct "advantage" in regards to saving a significant amount of time. The ironic thing is, this strat was born out of necessity to inject a heavy element of marathon safety into this run, which virtually always implies being more time-consuming.
In regards to the re-timing of when the run ends, I'm perfectly fine with that. If I may make a suggestion, I would say that time should end when the screen fades to black after the last text box is cleared; that way, you have about a good second or two after you're done with inputs so you can focus on hitting that final split at a specific time.
I think your timeloss estimate is a bit off, but either way, it's true you do lose time, which i suppose makes it fair. For now it will continue to be allowed, and we will keep an open conversation about it.
Looks like 39 seconds from final hit to black screen after the final dislogue, so i will adjust the current runs by that amount.
Also, i was having trouble this morning getting obs to show neutopia. I don't know what happened. Not sure when ill get to the tutorial.
