I like this category idea, because the goal allows a fair bit of flexibility in routing (deciding which levels to collect a soul in), which could lead to more variety in runs. It's a new frontier!

I do not agree with the name "Bonus Ending," since (to me) it implies a different ending to the story of the game, and there is no other bonus cutscene beyond what you'd already see from Any%. Perhaps it could be called "Explorer," since it requires exploring more on over half the levels across all six worlds?

Congrats on your first submission, and welcome to the GY IL leaderboards as well! Looking forward to seeing what you tackle next in this game, and feel free to join us in the Discord if you feel so inclined! :)

Congrats on submitting your first run! It was a joy to watch you building your skills in real time here. You did a great job at assessing your surroundings to avoid the biggest timeloss, death.

I've added your deathless times to the IL leaderboards as well, I hope it and this community can be helpful resources to you! :)

Though it is true that any video could technically disappear from any platform at any time, I wouldn't want to take the risk of accepting a video with a higher-than-average risk of being deleted in the future, and Twitch's new limits create an incentive to delete old videos on their platform, making them higher-risk.

While this rule would effectively disallow most Twitch links, and it could be argued this increases the barrier to entry, I'd argue Twitch is also discouraging creating new videos in the first place with their new limits, and Twitch's "Export to Youtube" tool makes it relatively easy to move videos to a platform that (as of writing) has more longevity, and a better video player to boot.

Since Twitch is imposing a limit on highlight storage and videos could disappear at any time, I'd like to suggest disallowing Twitch Highlights as an option for video proof in the future (as well as Twitch VODs, which have always self-destructed after 7/14/60 days).

Does anyone have arguments for or against disallowing video proof from Twitch Highlights/VODs?

Editing in preparation for the great Highlight purge, originally verified by Ampo74 2024-06-08 19:11:21, this run's original Twitch video link (soon to be dead) here

Congrats on your first any% under the new board arrangement!

I have a favor to ask: could you save the run as a Twitch Highlight, or upload it to Youtube, and share that new video link? I ask because Twitch automatically deletes Past Broadcast VODs after two weeks for most users, and I want to make sure the video attached to this run doesn't disappear.

Thanks!

21 souls and 126 souls categories are now live!

@Routow I would recommend starting a new thread for a new category suggestion, so we can keep conversations compartmentalized (easier for historians to pick apart later)!

Version 1.2.1.3 is here with a "Must collect souls" option in the speedrunning menu!

For now, enabling that option means completing a level without a soul will simply reset the level (to prevent any accidental run-ending). That solves this concern:

if you clear a level and you missed the soul, your run is basically over since you cannot go back to the level you just cleared unless you play without using the speedrun mode and use the main menu to play levels

However, this creates a new question for me. Since I had forgotten when we first had this conversation that the Bonus Races also have souls to collect:

• Should the new category be "20 Souls" or "21 Souls"?
• If the new category is "20 Souls," should a "Bonus Soul" category be created ("Bonus Race with soul")?
• Should the full-game equivalent of 20 Souls be "120 Souls" or "126 Souls"?

Personally, because no one will be combining any% and Souls runs, I lean towards "21 Souls" (completionist). This also answers the 2nd question (not necessary) and the 3rd question (make it 126 Souls) for me. That also keeps the number of new categories down to 2 instead of 3.

That said, others may have differing opinions. What are your thoughts, gang?

Hi! Sorry I'm so late getting back to this! Is the lag an issue that affects the timer, or hinders gameplay, or both? Do you have a video demonstrating the lag? Would love to dig in on this. Thanks!

Context for my original comment: when I submitted this, WR was 25:57 and this run was 3rd of 3 on the board. I'm so so SO happy to see this game grow so far in so little time!

Great for an early run! It's clear you're having a good time, I'm excited to see your future growth in this game! <3

On further review, it appears that deaths and resets do not stop the clock, and the timer continues during those loads.

Considering these facts:

1. A future update may stop the clock for deaths/resets,
2. Retiming for bosses sets a precedent that we would retime for future IL timing changes as well,
3. A change of IL timing standards would require reviewing entire runs and not just frame-counting boss fights,
4. The community has been fairly active in smashing barriers by margins larger than post-boss loads,
5. The top-level of this community has been fairly consistent in reducing deaths/resets,

I believe we should not retime runs for versions predating v1.2.1.2.

This would not be the first time a new update changes standards in a way that could affect times (most notably W4-Boss in Early Access versions of the game where the slingshots did not spin), so there's precedent for this decision. Additionally, we have already noted versions as a variable which can be sorted by users, and we can make a note in the resources that explains changes between versions that can affect timing.

Any thoughts/objections?

This run set a new WR for W5 Boss! Going to add that later :)

Also, quick sidenote - when I uploaded the blank Any% splits, I forgot to take my custom icon out of the header - feel free to replace that with whatever you wish ':)

Congrats on a fabulous run, on sub-31, and on 3rd place! I'll have these times added to the IL spreadsheet and resubmitted to the Levels boards shortly. You're right that there's definitely room to grow, but that goes for all of us - no one has had a deathless run yet... ;) Great progress and good job again!

While reviewing a run, I noticed a new change in v1.2.1.2 that could affect timing! The timers in boss levels used to continue running until fade-to-black, they now stop at the moment of death (final lever pull, slam into wall, final chip collection, popped out of computer).

This will make IL record-keeping much easier, as the fade-to-black used to be over a moving number instead of a frozen one. This will affect some records, but thankfully, the database has few enough entries (and they are all notated with version number!) so I can go in and manually edit them to the new standards once I have hard numbers (this includes ILs on the spreadsheet and on SRcom).

This will also impact existing any% runs, since the pausing of the boss timer also pauses the overall timer - by my brief estimation, this could save approx 11sec over the course of the run! Since no existing any% runs hold their position on the leaderboard by that margin, I'm inclined to not retime by new standards just yet, but I'm open to input and opposing arguments.

(I'll doublecheck these numbers more scientifically later, unless a dev can provide some insight, but for those curious, it looks like the difference is approx 4.2sec on boss 1, 0.75sec on boss 2, 1.5sec on boss 3, 1.6sec on boss 4, 0.9sec on boss 5, and 2sec on boss 6.)

I think we can straight up delete the 100% category for now

I'm not opposed to archiving it for the time being, and reimplementing if there's interest in the future. The biggest issues (aside from being long) is the save deletion requirement and the RTA timekeeping which throw off the cleanliness of other category rules. I'll get that taken care of now before the USC Marathon showcase tomorrow.

if you clear a level and you missed the soul, your run is basically over since you cannot go back to the level you just cleared

The "accidentally clear a level without a soul" issue would be present in 20 Souls as well in theory, it just wouldn't be at quite the same scale. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in practice, I don't believe the souls are anywhere near the doors in such a way where an accident could happen like that.

Maybe we would need some sort of toggle in game in the speedrun screen to restart the current level if the soul has not been collected.

Now that's a fascinating idea! My concern has been making more work from the devs, who have been so gracious with their time and implementing other quality-of-life fixes - but if you think it's feasible (perhaps the Soul unlocks the door?) then I'd be down for it.

I may do a few 20 Souls runs in W1 next week just to try it out, y'all are welcome to test as well, could be good for gathering feedback. They can still be submitted to ILs, and if we create a category, we can submit them to SRcom later too!

Hey there! I've added the times from this run to our new IL spreadsheet as part of our recent category cleanup, and wanted to ask if I can also submit this run to the new Level categories on your behalf to help fill those new boards up?

Thanks! (And great run - showed me a lot of cool new stuff!)

Collecting Souls quickly could be a very fun skill to develop, but there was no good showcase for it, since only two categories required Souls:

• Individual Levels, which used to be unwieldy and are now less prominent
• 100%, which is intimidating, a big commitment and a long run, requires save deletion, and runs on RTA (which breaks convention with every other category on the board)

With the recent category cleanup complete and the IL spreadsheet created, I was thinking about ways to bring Souls back to the SRcom boards in a cleaner way than before and had two ideas.

1. A Levels category called "20 Souls" - just like "Base Levels (01-20)" but with the requirement that a soul must be collected in all 20 levels.
2. A Full game category called "120 Souls" - 100%'s little cousin; the Speedrun mode with "Whole game" selected, "Include bosses" off, "Include races" off, "Include apocalypse" off, and the runner must collect all 120 souls during the run.

Both of these categories would feed nicely into the new IL spreadsheet so we can get some Soul IL data, overlap/compliment each other without overlapping other existing categories, and do so in a way that maintains the cleanliness of the leaderboards. I could see 120 Souls being a bit overwhelming and seeing zero submissions, but if that's the case, then we could reevaluate 100%'s presence on the board for the same reason.

Are either/both of these categories something y'all would be interested in running? Do y'all have other ideas/suggestions?