The real point of speedrun.com is to post... speedruns. With Absurd Appel things get a little different because the later levels are going to be more of a clear and not a speedrun. But when people cheese those levels (e.g. level 13 and 17) it's more of a speedrun rather than a clear. So having both of those in the same category doesn't work because first- the cheesed version witll usually be faster and second- it's way easier. Nobody is going to beat Radiation multiple times just to improve (@Krackerz please don't; I value your sanity) but if there was a cheese that made the level feasible to speedrun, then it would be done.

I think having a cheese category and a clear category would be a good idea. This would protect runs like Michael's Key to Success run from getting destroyed with the cheese (if you don't know, ask around) and let people compete for the "cheesed" world record. What do you all think?

Hmm that's actually a good idea! With 2 categories, my cheese run and Michael's run for L17 will both be valid.

Great idea! With how impressive it is, I'm sure @MichaelChan would much prefer his run to still be valid. Speedrunning and clearing Key to Success are basically two entirely different levels, and it's much fairer to everyone if we kept them in separate categories.

Completely understand, and not like I haven't thought about it. As a game developer and leaderboard manager, I'm just trying to beautify all levels and make them display in their best form, and the act of deliberately leaving the 'cheesable' level on the platform, even separately from what I would've wanted to show in the first place, just goes against myself. As of today, no one else did Key To Success in the way I wanted, as such unintended cheese goes along.

For Radiation, Sir_Farcelot has discovered huge shortcuts,, I'm most in awe, but it managed to get through the verification with ease. The reason is really just because those shortcuts aren't 'cheese' but 'speedrunning strategies'. Those are without a doubt unintended, but also not anything that can be accomplished to skip through sections of the intended paths. The same goes for the consecutive sidejumpings in Collapsing - It's inconsistent, it's harder to pull off, and the original pathway is not hard in any shape or form, and the reason people do that is simply that it saves time. Stuff like this allows for speedrunning, and that's honestly what I would love to discover by this leaderboard.

Cheesing is another thing. When you go through an entire level even without the key I wanted you to have, I just wanted that not to happen - ever wondered if all these could arise if this issue never arises in the first place...

At the end of the day, as a creator myself, keeping two of the same levels, one of which is just not what the difficulty scaling intended and deliberately kept just for speedrunning, and the other of which is just left theie, isolated because of the general lack of skill. That's not what I wanted to see.

As contradicting as this could be, and perhaps I should value player enjoyment over the actuality of my 'personal' intentions as a small content creator, I don't think everything I do should revolve around viewer experience because of such low status of the general speedrunning community doesn't do things like this.

Do not worry, the levels wouldn't just get harder and harder, making the speedrunning community non-expandable. Hang in there for some time, I'll make sure this podium gets the attraction it could've gotten.

I understand about @Sir_Farcelot's run; he actually put in the time to clear the level. I agree with small improvizations that are used for speedrunning (and simply clearing the level, as some make the level easier).

For Key to success, it's far different. It's the... ___ to success. I don't view it as an accomplishment- I hope you understand that. But if you aren't going to allow people to speedrun it, at least fix the problem. By leaving it open to anybody to try for themselves, you'll only arise more anger when those who "beat it" realize that their run doesn't work anymore. Right now only a few people know about it; but the longer you wait to update the project, the more likely it is that people will find the cheese.

If you're worried about the actual category for key to success getting forgotten about, I'm sure somebody will get around to beating it soon.

I can't help noticing the similarity to level 5 of Appel v1.4. Sidejumping ruined many of Griffpatches intentions for appel, but he didn't change the game. (He probably didn't really care; it's a good part of the game). But the difference is this: Anybody can beat level 5 without sidejumping easily. Key to success is not the sort of thing where you aren't forced to cheese it to be able to beat the level. Here's where I agree with you: This level shouldn't get cheesed before it's cleared.

Do you have any thoughts for level 13?

Again, cheese is diffferent from shortcut.

L5 in Appel, it doesn't make it easier to beat with sidejumping, only makes it faster.

The purpose for L17 is to challenge skilled players, if it's 'beaten' with the cheese... it makes the challenge way easier.

And yes, I will update the game very very soon in the coming week or two to fix it, along with 2.2.

For L5 and L17 the scenario is similar, the difficulty change is reversed.

I don't count reaching the endflag with the cheese as beating the level. Earlier when I mentioned @Sir_Farcelot's clear, I should've clarified that I was refering to the skip.

Just so you know I don't have my replay saved. It's the sort of thing that isn't worth anything and isn't hard.