If you're running the Steam version, you can just scroll down in your library and uncheck the 'DLC bundle' box and give the game a couple seconds to update and that'll take care of that issue.

I personally really don't wanna flood the leaderboards with categories and subcategories (seeing as so few people run any of them anyway), but what's looking more and more like the best solution would be to make 5 stars a subcategory, meaning all main and misc categories would have the option for 'normal/no skips' as well as 'any rating/5 stars'. I'm very conflicted on this.

Playing it windowed mode should take care of that for you.

In case you don't know how to set it: in the game's launcher you can click options and at the very bottom there will be a little text box for commands. Just type "-windowed" in there and you're good to go. I would also suggest adding "-ignorefocus", it keeps your game from pausing every time you alt+tab or in other ways click outside the game window.

Hope that helps

The no loads timer only works for the Steam version of the game and for console there is no real solution to this, so just time it RTA and we'll manually time out loads. It's not gonna be perfect, but it'll be much less of a hassle than pausing and unpausing the timer.

For a full game run on 360 I'm gonna estimate you'll have about 40 min of loads compared to the ~14 on PC with an SSD.

So far all the runs on the leaderboards are single segment so we would have to find a good way to implement segmented runs, but we'll figure it out so just go for it ;)

Making my way from Norway and can try to bring some if you have any brews in mind. Or if you prefer a certain style I can bring a couple of the more unique ones we got.

Load remover does only work with the Steam version - I have no clue why. Not sure about the DLC concern unfortunately. The game is 65% off (going for about 4 bucks) on Steam until 5 July though, so if that's not a big issue I would suggest just getting it there to make everything very simple.

As far as the tutorial goes you should be able to skip it once you've completed the entirety of patrol desk and move on to The Driver's Seat. Worst case I guess you'll have to finish the game, but you really shouldn't have to.

Hope everything works out and we see you do runs soon.

One of my runs, L.A. Noire, is listed as 'setup game' so I was just wondering what exactly what this entails so I know what to expect. I also noticed the estimate for said run is set to include my submitted donation incentive. Does this mean you want me to do the incentive regardless, or are you just leaving room for it?

Battleblock Theater - Challenge Levels Co-op: Haos and I have tightened the run up quite a bit and we've gotten it down to a 12:45. There's still room for improvement but the nature of certain levels can make things somewhat unpredictable, making shooting for the top times kind of difficult. That said the potential time loss is not all that significant and we have consistently been finishing runs well wihtin our estimate for ESA.

Vessel - Any%: I have found some new optimizations as well as eliminated a couple major elements of randomness that were previously really frustrating to deal with. PB is down to a 1:12:20 and the run is at this point very consistent.

L.A. Noire - Traffic Desk: The run is incredibly consistent and has been for the past year or so. I've primarily spent time practicing the donation incentive (No Skips) just in case, and I am confident I can do that well. Estimate might seem a bit excessive, but loads in this game fluctuate a lot and I'm assuming I won't be on an SSD which really adds up. RTA PB is 34:10 for the regular run and 45:49 for No Skips.

Like Joel says, watching a run with the notes open and trying to make sense of them (or writing your own) is a good way to start. I have a somewhat cleaner version of the notes that I might toss in the guides section, I just have to look over some things first.

Really happy to hear that there's interest in the run, we're happy to help in any way.

EDIT: The guides section now has a full any% playlist as well as my .docx notes. Hopefully this helps

"The other runners will be required to confirm that they are willing to run the game through speedrun.com. This should be easy to do through the form."

What does this even mean? How do people confirm that they're willing to do the run? Is just putting a name in the 'additional runners' box enough? Because this makes it seem like there's more to it and I don't know what

Yeah that's the thing. I've said many times that if 5 stars just came down to following a walkthrough and doing everything it wouldn't be bad, but there's so much stuff you can skip out on because of how the game seems to calculate your rating.

For the first case of traffic, The Driver's Seat, the route for 5 stars is surprisingly similar to any%. This got me pretty excited, but I've done enough routing in this game. Don't think I'll ever actively work on 5 stars, but like I said I'd love to see a run.

Oh I didn't see this until now, pretty much never expected anyone to ever post anything here :P

This sounds really interesting and I'm gonna mess around with it for sure. I'm really glad to see someone work on this game. Are you working on routing out the whole game? Because I'd love to see a run of that, but I cannot bring myself to routing all of it for 100%.

People already use pretty much the optimal and crazy strats for chapter runs, they're only like 8-10 min runs so why wouldn't you. I don't think shortening things down to individual levels would actually achieve anything

If you click on Level Leaderboard on the left there's a dropdown menu with all the chapters

A basic guide on how to limit your framerate using a third party program is literally the only thing in the guides section, and framerate requirements and limitations are actually rather common in PC speedruns. Enabling V-sync was listed in the rules but because of higher refresh rate monitors this was changed to a 60 fps limit to be more specific.

Been thinking about doing a basic tutorial video for a while and I do like the idea of a quick start thread, but for now there are plenty of people here more than willing to answer any question a newcomer might have.

EDIT: Replaced the old Dxtory text guide with a video explaining the situation and how to make sure everything is running as it should. It's not perfect but it should be plenty.

The game selection process was way too long and the cuts were not done in a good way. The first round of cuts was absolutely pointless, hardly reducing the list of games at all beyond trolls and late submissions. Might as well have waited an extra week or two and just gone with the second round where something actually happened and people got a better idea of what to practice. Speaking of second round, it was easy enough to tell that about a third of the stuff on there would have to be cut to fit the schedule, yet for some reason there was a comment along the lines of "we'll primarily be cutting games from the same series" giving people false hope. Not a huge deal but there was no reason for that comment to exist. The "reasons" for cutting games in the 3rd round were also a joke. It felt like half the comments were actual legit reasons while the rest were just memes and attempts at being funny and at that point you might as well not bother as you're just wasting your own and the runner's time. Keeping things lighthearted is fine, but feeling like you're not being taken seriously is uncool.

First day of the event was quite the trainwreck and nothing seemed to be in order. Watching the runs live was not an option as you could neither see nor hear a thing. A group of us were hanging around the stream area waiting for the show to start. Then we get told to go away because we didn't look interested in the run: a run we did not know was going on... Yes, the stream had started and Riku was 7 minutes into his run and nobody noticed. There was no intro, no hype, no nothing. We ended up sitting down at some tables with the stream playing on a tablet and my god the layouts this year were terrible. The ratio of cam and other stuff to game was just awful and none of the elements seemed to fit in their designated boxes. It looked like someone just threw something together without any idea of what elements would be on the screen and how they would fit. Add to this the lazy cropping of quite a few games, and the whole thing looked unprofessional and just incredibly sloppy.

At the end of the first day some decently sized monitors finally arrived and two were set up by the streaming area so at last you could actually watch the runs, sound was also finally (somewhat) fixed. What confuses me though is that 10 or so boxes of monitors were brought in and yet I only ever saw 3 of them in use. Where did the remaining 7 go? Also why was there not one set up behind tech so the current runner and couch could see how things were looking; when they're on camera, how the time is looking, stuff like that. Being on couch for PC runs was pointless since you couldn't see anything and the camera most of the time had you cut off anyway so you might as well not have been there. I assume there's a reason for a projector not being used like last year, but if I could change just one thing it would be to have that back. The couches were comfy and I don't mind having them around at all, however that was pretty much it for seating. There was an serious lack of chairs.

The venue itself was fine for the most part, although rather far from center of town. As expected air got pretty bad pretty quick, but we lived. The little kiosk by the entrance was good - not amazing, but good. One thing I really disliked about the venue and the setup though is how barren it looked. Both as an attendee and on stream, having this huge room with all its empty seats was honestly a depressing sight. Didn't nearly have the charm of the venue in Skövde last year. The way the tables were set up also made the whole thing feel more like a mediocre LAN than anything.

Scandic was alright, quad rooms were awful. The mall was fantastic and actually open reasonably late as opposed to Skövde which could be a bit of a struggle. Sadly with an event that is running day and night, reasonably late still isn't late enough and if you had something going on in the middle of the night you're kinda screwed. Offering something at the venue other than the rather unappealing hot dogs would be great.

Hosting was a pretty big turnoff for me. A lot of the time you had little to no idea when you were on stream and not, when you would be cut off by an incredibly loud ad, when tech was actually ready or just lighting the "tech ready" sign for fun (if used at all). The camera was most of the time angled horribly, showing the couch when it was empty and not showing it when there was someone there. There was so little communication going on between hosts and tech and it made for a very awkward and uncomfortable experience. The schedule changes naturally also completely screwed up the hosting and doing my two shifts from 7am to about noon was overall not very enjoyable. With how cringe some of the hosting turned out, especially for longer delays due to technical issues, I'd personally prefer just the overhead cam with some music rather than actual hosts. It'd be wonderful for segments where people actually have something to contribute, but a lot of the interviews and the stuff between runs just ended up being solidly meh.

On the subject of tech I have no doubt they did their very best and I don't wish the trouble they had to deal with on anyone, but it can't be ignored that the whole thing was a bit of a mess. There seemed to be only a handful of people who actually knew how to work the friggin jungle of a setup and when these people weren't around, panic ensued. People also overcomplicated things way too much, the way certain situations were handled and the comments made by the tech crew were laughable.

I would say there weren't enough practice PCs, but with how bad they were it wouldn't have made much of a difference. For the PCs for the actual runs the story was sadly not much better. By the time I started setting up on the MSI laptop, the night before my run, the poor thing was just a complete mess. I ended up launching the game with the integrated graphics card because it was the only way to not have the game just be a white box.

As far as donations go, tossing G2A and Gaming for Good together for handling your money is just asking for the perfect storm of shit. Seeing two sites with rather shady reputations (whether relevant or not) isn't really the most attractive thing for someone wanting to donate, and I know for a fact that people avoided donating because of this. I understand why it was done, but I don't necessarily think it was the best solution.

Overall ESA felt considerably less comfy than last year and I didn't really see many positive changes to compensate. I saw someone describe it as growing pains and I think that's accurate. You're always gonna go to an event like this for the people more than the event itself, but this year the people were pretty much all you had. It's a real shame, but this year's ESA did not at all live up to a lot of people's expectations.

I hope this was a learning experience and that next year turns out better as an event. See you all then, because I sure as hell ain't going anywhere <3

I'm in. RandomPinkBunny is interested as well

Something like classic% would, in my opinion, be too big of a difference to just have as a regular variable, yet I'm not a huge fan of stuffing the leaderboards with even more categories that people may or may not run.

Gonna temporarily add Classic% as a subcategory so you can see how it works. Have a look and tell me how you feel about it.

EDIT: I can already tell that it doesn't work quite as well as I had hoped, but tell me what you think.

Have you made sure you have changed the comparison from real time to game time?

For quite a while now Joel and I have been wanting to move away from RTA to make things more fair between runners (at least on PC), as loads are a huge part of the run and they are highly inconsistent.

SuicideMachine has put together a noloads script and this is now available in the splits editor for LiveSplit. Just click Activate and change your comparison from Real Time to Game Time and you are good to go:

EDIT: So for whatever reason the load remover only works for the Steam version of the game.