This will be the main thread for holding discussions about adding rules, categories... This is a presentation post that might be updated as time goes on with extra information. Actual discussions will occur below.

[This post was heavily tweaked from the third reply of this Lunatea's Veil forum thread : https://www.speedrun.com/klonoa2/thread/27f68]

I know this board hasn't been very active recently. 4 runs in a year. (Even audit log wise. There are only about a couple logs per couple months, and there have been times with 4 month draughts such as in the end of 2021).

Still, I would like to discuss about a small leaderboard udpate.

Recently, the Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series board has been established. It' s the first game in the series that use Time-Attack (TA) as the main timing method (as opposed to Real Time-Attack, RTA), using the in-game timer (IGT) as time of the run.

A big focus we had about the design of that leaderboard, was on the act of pausing in relation of the in-game timer. Indeed, the in-game-timer stops when you pause the game. Therefore, the run as well. This could potentially be abused in a lot of ways, such as mitigating nerves, helping with tricks, deal with difficult situations... all by pausing the run and waiting on the pause screen for however long you feel like, without any repercussions. In RTA, pausing is counted in the time, so you have a reason to use it as little as possible. With TA it's different, as even if it doesn't seem intentional, you have a valid reason to use it. Even if nobod does.

Technically speaking, speedrunning is about reaching an objective as fast as you can. And, sure enough, pausing can help with that. But it significantly changes the nature of the run. In traditional speedrunning, you're always running and moving, you cannot afford to stand still a single second. And you have to play live to everything, no matter how good or bad things may be. Here, a run wouldn't be as much about running, since you can take as much time as you want. It would be about methodically planning one's way through sections, patiently, to decrease chances of making mistakes and react to situations better than you normally would in real-time.

It's definitely an interesting way to play, and there are games in which it's very relevant (Minecraft). But it's definitely the less popular playstyle. And although in KPRS, the game has other tricks involving IGT abuse that makes it more special and worthy of allowing these techniques, in most Klonoa games, pausing serves little purpose. It's not flashy, it's not used in crazy strategies. It's just there to be abused for very small gains, at the cost of the run feeling and taking longer to complete.

So, it might be better that we don't waste our time with them, as they are currently not relevant and they sort of harm the spirit of speedruns. I'm saying all of this because recently, I realized the Ils sections of the Lunatea's Veil and Klonoa Wii boards were lacking in that extent. They use the in-game timer, and you can pause the game to freeze it. We probably don't want that.

I first went and made a thread discussing it for L'sV. Admittedly I didn't get any responses, but it was most likely going to affect nobody given not many people even ran Ils for that game. I expect the same to happen with this game, but I will still go through with this discussion.

Of course, under special occasions, pausing may be allowed, like if it's accidental (trying to skip the Polonte mid cutscene), or if it's clear that it doesn't impact the flow of the run. I have checked every single L’sV Ils, and none of them pause, so no time should be affected if we push through.

Obviously, if things were to change, like a new groundbreaking use gets found to pausing, we may return to this topic again and decide the fate of timer abuse again. But before then...

Still on this topic, if people want main game stage ILs, we may add them. Though I feel a bit sad that most of the time we add them to certain games, they quickly end up becoming inactive and empty. Maybe it should be a general leaderboard making principle that for special categories, people should play around them a lot before we may seriously consider them.

Tell me what you think.

[9 days later, didn't hear anything, so I changed it that way, just like with L'sV]

Added a information variable about whether or not you had an enemy when running the secrets. Additionally, if a given player plays both ways, then the board will display the two runs instead of hiding the slower one/showing only one. Updated the ILs rules for this.

It's set up that way because it's currently too unpopulated and minor to be worth sub-categories. But we may change it to that, in the future, without pain.

The stages that are relevant with this are 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2, 5-1 and 6-1. Beware that for some, you need to use glitches or clever movement to access their secrets with an enemy.

It's actually not guaranteed that carrying an enemy for all of the possible stage would prove useful. It's hard to see why it wouldn't, but if it is proven to clearly not be useful in the slightest, then we may argue for removing the variable for the given stage.

Likewise, if a previously impossible stage becomes possible, we would simply add it to the lot.

Updated and tweaked the system to now allow for checkpoint respawn based run starts.

When you enter a secret area, Klonoa can't move until the timer starts, which is about ~1.8 seconds. But when you respawn from the clock, you can start moving only ~0.8 seconds later. Additionally, the secret timer counts it as a valid attempt even when you start it by respawning from its checkpoint (after dying somewhere in the stage).

Now, the drawback to a checkpoint respawn is that you're teleported further to the left of the starting grounds, than you would entering the secret normally. And in most secrets, this is an obvious timeloss.

But some stages have enemy cycles in them. And you guessed it, some stages like 5-2 and 6-1 allow for faster cycles if you begin them from the checkpoint.

This said, it's still a bit unclear what approach is faster or if they balance out. But without knowing, this run type needs to be acknowledged. Thus, updating the system.

The other stages with enemy cycles are :

• 2-1, but it's very hard to tell if you can be faster with a clock respawn

• Same story with 4-1

• 5-1 is a bit different, when you enter the room by the portal, a Plown spawns in at the bottom. I'm not sure it still does if you further left after respawning from the checkpoint. If that's true, it means it will have a different position and trajectory compared to a normal entrance. But it's hard to see how this Plown could be useful, and the entire rest of the secret is frozen, so it might be an useless approach here.

Much like the enemy carry approach, we will enable this type of play with the remaining stages if proven relevant.

Hey guys. Because people are showing interest to it, I think it might finally be time to start discussing about a 100% category(ies).

Although the main reason we’ve been waiting on adding it for so long was simply due to lack of player activity, it also proved to be a challenge to define this game’s 100% category, because of the existence of this reverse mode and its tokens. And for a long time, it was thought that two categories would be needed to cover this game’s 100% aspect.

But after some investigation, it turns out we only really need one category. And the breakthough was that the game actually keeps your dreamstone score regardless of the version of the stage you play. You don’t need to go for 150 dreamstones twice for each stage.

You do still need to beat them and acquire their tokens, which isn’t a short task given you have to rebeat the bosses as well. But it’s a lot more bearable than having to do two whole hundos.

It’s still a long category, so in the future, I wouldn’t be surprised if we still were to create a “main game only 100%” category, mimicking the runs that can be done with a lot of the other Klonoa games.

But, at long last, let’s get into creating this category. As usual, I’ll be providing a baseline for us to potentially tweak based on your opinion, or new relevant game information. Just so we’re on the same page.

Here we go :

You must beat the game both in normal and reverse mode. You must also complete the extra stage, get at least 150 dreamstones per stage (only once per stage, in either mode), and finally get all tokens. The stage order for reverse mode is yours to choose.

The run would be timed RTA. It would begin on a new save-file, sharing the same beginning point as any% :

“Timing starts on the first frame that the player selects "yes", after creating their save-file. When this happens, the "no" button appears as if it was selected, before falling down.”

Now the end point of the run is interesting. One of the requirement for unlocking extra stage and reverse mode is beating Nahatomb. So, you can only go for reverse mode related objectives after first properly beating the game. But this would imply that the run would just end after beating the last stage containing the last token (doesn’t have to be 6-2).

And, it would be fair to end the run on that. After all, all of the stages are already unlocked in reverse mode by default, such that they don’t have to be beaten. And the only concrete incentive to enter those stages is to get their tokens, nothing more.

But what would arguably be just as fair, is to require the player to beat Nahatomb in reverse mode after gathering the tokens.

It would give closure to the run, but not only that, think about it : by this point, we’ll have already beaten every single boss reversed, except this one. And even though reverse mode by itself doesn’t have much value or reason to be played other than those brutal tokens... the game still sort of implies there is a challenge here : beating the stages in reverse. I’m personally leaning towards this run plan.

And last but not least, it makes timing the end of the run super easy :

“Timing ends when the last health bar of the reversed version of the final boss turns red. If you can, record up to the following cutscene.”

A couple extra points of note :

• Reverse mode doesn’t include the extra stage. It’s simply not accessible in that mode. Go ask the developers why.

• Just like any%, we would maintain a split between console, and emulator/USB runs.

I believe that’s everything, please correct me if I'm wrong.

If there’s too little feedback or replies, I’ll have the category be added in a week from now.

sounds good to me. I can do a test run of this category on emu.

Category added... two days late because I didn't bother setting up an alarm for it. Not that we were in a hurry.

Now it's your turn. Run producing time.