Hey, I'm currently the only mod for the game Coraline (https://www.speedrun.com/coraline). The former admin who created the category made me a mod and then ditched, so I'm stuck as the only mod on this game with no admins. Thing is, regular mods don't get full edit powers over categories/etc., which makes it difficult when I want to update some of the leaderboards. If someone could help me fix this I'd appreciate it - I want to get back into running the game, but there are several changes to the leaderboards that need to be made and which I can't make. :/

I don't think my 100% will be any time soon, unfortunately. You don't have to wait. :/

Yeah, I'm still active. Haven't had time to do a run in forever, but when I do my next project will probably be routing 100% AG. I've upgraded my PC since I last did anything with the game, and I'm probably going to do some testing on emulator to figure out where the hell all the minigames are until I can set up my console again. (I can't seem to find 1-2 on each day/night usually.)

Feel free to submit your run if/when you do one! Just remember, though - emulators are banned and potential WRs require video proof.

That's not what I mean. I'm talking about when to start the timer.

Say for the sake of argument that we enter them after the beginning of the second chapter. Unless we pause the timer, the time entering the cheats during the middle of the run is counted on the clock. This is because the timing starts when selecting New Game and ends when defeating the Beldam, and the beginning of the second chapter is obviously between those points.

However, if we enter them ¤after¤ naming the file but ¤before¤ selecting New Game, it's ambiguous as to whether they're on the time or not. According to the rules, time starts when selecting New Game - but if we go enter the cheat codes ¤before¤ we do this, the time taken to enter them isn't counted.

¤That's¤ what I'm wondering about. It's not whether we can use the cheats, because they're obviously two separate categories . It's whether the time taken to enter the cheats should be counted as time during the run.

All of that sounds good, but you haven't quite answered my question regarding AG.

Namely, should the codes be entered before or after starting the timer? It's most practical to enter them at the beginning before you even select New Game, but the current rules say time starts when doing so - even though you'd technically be unlocking items beforehand.

I'm fine with whatever (though I'd personally suggest they'd be off the clock, just for fairness - this isn't a typing game), but we really should have a standard in place before people start running the category.

So I'm considering routing/running 100% because I just got the Any% WR and I can't think of anything better to do with my life. Before I do that, though, I want to get something clarified. There are some codes you can enter to unlock the stuff in the Cheats section - here's the full list, just for reference:

Unlimited Level Skip: beldam Unlimited Health: beets Unlimited Fireflies: garden Free Hall Passes: well Button Eye Coraline: cheese

So here's the thing: The rules for 100% say that all cheats, extras, etc. have to be ¤unlocked¤, but not necessarily ¤bought¤. In order to buy all of these in-game, it comes whopping total of 5300 buttons. To buy ¤everything¤, which is obviously required for 100%, you need a grand total of 9850 buttons. That means buying the cheats is 53.807% of the total buttons you'll need.

And sure, this doesn't sound all that bad, but even by waiting an extra ten minutes for the end of the credits, you only get 1000 buttons. Assuming the route would involve collecting those, that means you'd have to earn 8850 buttons yourself - 59.887% of which is the 5300 buttons required for buying the cheats.

So here's the dilemma: are the cheat codes allowed, or not? Because if we ¤can¤ use the cheat codes, the required number of buttons drops down to 4550, which is much more reasonable - considering how 100% needs to do every activity anyway, there's almost ¤certainly¤ enough buttons such that we'd only have to grind minigames for a few extra minutes at most.

Meanwhile, let's only consider the 5300 for a moment. The fastest way to earn buttons in the game, assuming you're good at it, is to play the painting-guessing minigame in the Other World over and over. Once you get good at instinctively recognizing which pieces correspond to which paintings, you can earn 30 buttons a pop, and each play takes about 5-10 seconds (game time plus loading in and out). Assuming 5 seconds a play, it'd take ¤15 minutes¤ to earn that 5300 buttons - and chances are good that we'd have to earn even ¤more¤ buttons, since we only play each minigame once (besides stopping to grind this one).

So the way I see it, there are three different 100% categories that could exist, which I have suggested names for:

1. Unrestricted / Anything Goes (AG): You can use the codes, and can enter them whenever you wish
2. No Codes (NC): You can't use the codes, but you still have to buy the cheats
3. 99%: You can't use the codes, but you don't have to buy the cheats

Of all of these, I personally think that AG would be the most interesting run by far, as it opens up a lot of possibilities for skips (as Free Hall Passes could potentially allow you to skip ¤all¤ of the required minigames - which would make it an astronomically different category from Any%). 99% isn't nearly as interesting as AG, but it'd still be a thousand times more practical than NC - as I for one don't want to spend a thousand years playing the painting game over and over, regardless of the fact that I'm good at it.

Assuming we decide to go with AG, the question arises as for when to start the timer. As it stands, it's most practical to enter the cheats right at the very beginning of the game, immediately after naming the file. However, the current 100% rules say that timing starts when selecting New Game. The question becomes whether or not entering the cheat codes should be counted on the clock. I personally don't think so, just because it doesn't sound like a good idea, but I'm open to anything.

So yeah, I've been writing this post for over an hour now. This is mostly directed at Marshy to see what their opinion is on all of this and to get things figured out. However, this might potentially serve as a good reference if anyone else is interested in running 100% (though I'll probably make a guide with a route at some point, assuming we decide on a good rule-set - because I sure as hell am not running NC).

I did my first run on Dolphin because I don't have a capture card and didn't want to deal with trying to do video recordings. I've got an above-average PC - Alienware 13, 16GB RAM, Intel i7-5500U (2.4GHz), Nvidia 960M GPU. While it certainly isn't top-of-the-line, it's still decent by today's standards. When I was doing my first run (which was more of a test than anything - I definitely did ¤not¤ expect to get within 11 seconds of WR), it handled itself okay, after I tweaked a bunch of the settings (I was also using Ishiiruka Dolphin, which trades some emulation accuracy for much better performance).

For the most part, everything was fine - I was able to get a stable 60fps in almost every area, such as the house, the main outside area, the back road with the well, Bobinsky's flat, Spink and Forcible's flat, and all of the equivalent Other World locations (though I got slightly lower fps outside in the Other World - stablized around 55fps instead of 60).

But in a few specific areas - namely, the three dream sequences and the two barn levels - my FPS absolutely ¤tanked¤, and frequently fluctuated between 35-45fps (and even ¤less¤ on standard Dolphin when I was originally doing testing). I have no idea why it's these specific areas, and ¤only¤ these specific areas - but if I had to guess, it's probably a combination of higher-than-average particle effects (in the dream sequences), and a higher-than-average object density in the small spaces (in the barn levels, which makes the Wii's standard culling much less effective - and thus slows down the emulator even more).

TL;DR: unless you have an ultra-beefy PC, even Dolphin can't handle the game all that well, and console's the only way to go. The only reason I got so close to WR is probably because (1) the PS2 version is super slow, and (2) the game's still incredibly unoptimized, what with only two runs in total (including mine). I'm probably gonna do a second attempt on console eventually and see if I can push my time down/beat WR, but that's not on my priorities list at the moment.