Hi all,

As you probably know a new update has gone live and I've had a chance to play the new content as well as check some of the older content to see what might have changed. I will compile my thoughts below. I didn't test Surprise Party but did do a 100% playthrough and do the new DLC.

General Thoughts:

• The new DLC content is phenomenal as a casual playthrough. As speedrun content it is far too punishing for me at least but I welcome the creation of a category for crazy people :P
• The Jump now does feel a bit more consistent. I used to sometimes land just on the tip of a platform and not have the time to get another jump off causing me to fall. This doesn't really happen anymore
• The Jetpack controls are a lot nicer and in particular make the final section a lot easier
• It seems much less likely that when sliding against walls you'll lose your momentum suddenly. I had it happen once in a 2 hour play session
• If you die whilst holding jump then you will respawn and immediately jump

Changes that affect the speedrun:

• Reset Abuse no longer works
• Certain tricks that relied on the Movement Precision bug such as Ice Skip in the Shadow Realm now no longer work
• This link shows some of the areas where Movement Precision changes have had an effect: https://imgur.com/a/moQUjFf
• The Jetpack's improved controls have slowed it down meaning that both sections that make use of it will see time losses
• Game time pauses when in the post-crackers cutscene before finding out your score

My thoughts on categories:

• We need a new variable for this patch as some of the changes will affect the times
• Reset Abuse should still be a separate variable and the rules description should make it clear that it is not possible on latest patch. Alternatively it could be its own category as well to stop submissions into the current patch table.
• Surprise Party will need its variables renamed from Legacy and Current to something like Update 1 (version 1.4), Update 2 (version 2.0), and Update 3 (version 3.0) I reckon.
• We should probably add the DLC as a category even though it's insanely difficult. Again this would need versioned to match releases. I believe it was added in version 2.0

Another small thing is that the save files have been converted to plain text so I should be able to use them to develop an autosplitter for the game. I have been experimenting with an early copy of a save file Alex gave me and got the majority of what I wanted working. I will keep the community posted on how I get on.

So let the discussion begin :)

I think basing it on version numbers akin to some of the Minecraft categories is a good idea, Reicha.

I'm sad about the movement changes as it makes some of the gimmes less so. I forsee the Any% and 100% record times being a little higher than pre-patch.

DLC category sounds good.

Extra points:

• Would it be possible to rename "Suprise Party" to "Surprise Party" as well? That's always bugged me.
• For reset abuse 100% make sure it's included in the rules that you have to collect all the keys as well as the stars, because you can obviously skip Ludo's key on that version of the game.

Yeah that's a fair point about 100% Reset Abuse.

Another questions is whether this is an opportunity to evaluate whether we want to keep the timing the same.

As IGT now pauses the moment you kill Float and stays paused during the ending cutscene do we want to switch to using IGT as the primary timing method?

K there's a lot to unpack here: -First off i have talked with Alex and he is working to make Reset Abuse work again so i'm still tentative about making changes to anything involving that. -I will definitely add a patch variable but won't separate the boards because i feel the main game is still similar enough from patch to patch. -Definitely considering adding a category for the DLC but i think it makes sense to not care about version numbers because the older versions will probably never be run. I want to keep the rule of a lot of other speedgames where if there isn't a run of it there is no need to have a board for it. -I will absolutely fix that typo -I will also add that to the 100% rules. -IGT should be discussed in a different thread but always open to changing to it as long as runners want it.

• Interesting. Not sure how I personally feel about a dev re-adding something that was objectively broken to their game to please the speedrunning community but that's the game dev in me speaking I reckon
• Oh yeah I didn't mean to suggest we split the boards up just for patches. It was more to handle the reset abuse situation where it is only available on certain patches so for example we'd need to block attempts to submit to Any% - Ver. 3 - Reset Abuse as that category doesn't exist but the limitations of variables on src would display it
• yeah sorry. I only brought it up because if we need to shift around boards and get rules established for different versions etc. it felt like a time to mention it

Btw made a DLC category :) Will make a version variable as soon as i find out what versions exist.

Sounds good.

The big 3 I saw from looking at the update history were:

• 1.4 where surprise party was added
• 2.0 where the surprise party boss was added along with the first DLC section
• 3.0 where the new DLC stuff as well as all the qol stuff was added

K finished the version number stuff. Had some technical hiccups at first so sorry for all of the notifications that might have gotten sent because of it.

Am I missing something? I'm not seeing the version number as a selectable variable?

Oh wait I see, it's not a variable but an additional column.

I also just made the mistake of accidentally resubmitting my Any% run when I went in to set the version number on it not realising it counted as a new submission...