If you compare the runs with 4+ minutes to the runs with 3 minutes or less, it looks like the players are running a completely different game.

That bunny-hopping technique/glitch (that gives super speed to the player) isn't explained anywhere, and I couldn't replicate it.

First, some context for my problem:

The game LinQuest is a 2D platformer webgame, with 27 short levels. The levels start easy, but become a bit more complex as you progress in the game, as you need to handle cycles of enemies and moving platforms.

The way this game is built, some cycles are not on global cycle, or don't start when the character reaches a certain location - they start as soon as the relevant object is shown on the screen. However, this mechanic can be abused by changing the game resolution. If you do fancy stuff like making the game tall and thin, or short and wide, the game will try to accommodate for this by stretching the window and fill the space with all the objects it can.

For example, level 10 on "normal" resolution looks like this:

But on short+wide resolution, the entire level is shown:

In the example of this level above, the two platforms are supposed to move when the character gets close to them, but when the entire level is shown - the platforms move as soon as the level loads. This changes the cycle completely, and allow you to save ~1.3 second over "regular" gameplay.

The problem: Now, the main problem here is that the game resolution can NOT be standardized for different runners. The main "culprit" here is a modded version of the game that adds a level timer, but also stretches the game to the browser window size. But, even if you only look at "official" releases of the game, resolutions of the game are different in several websites - for example, the game size is different in Armor Games and in Coolmathgames. On mobile the game automatically works on fullscreen, but then it stretches according to the phone/tablet resolution.

All of this makes for strats/routes that are possible on certain resolutions, but don't work on other resolutions; which means those strats/routes can work on some platforms/devices, but not work on other platforms or devices.

The solution: Right now, because a constant resolution can't be enforced, the inclined solution is to just allow all runners to play the game on whatever resolution they please, as long as the game and speedrun timer are visible well enough. It might not be fair to some runners who can't play the game on custom resolutions for some reason.

This is the first time that me and other moderators in the series encounter an issue like that, and I'm curious if other runners or moderators had that issue in other games. If so, how did the community handle it? What would you propose to do, if you were a runner or a moderator of such game?

I noticed a discrepancy in the dates shown here:

How are the dates on the left side calculated? They should show the submission time accurately.

For anyone interested, here is a custom CSS script that I have for the site, which I updated today to change/revert some issues of the new update, presented all over the feedback thread. https://pastebin.com/LFdkk7a4

The summary of my script:

• Remove uppercase from everything - game titles, user names, forum breadcrumbs, main category names
• Lowered the font size of the release year, compared to the game title
• In game leaderboards, changed the game-cover image back to normal size, of maximum 180x128 or 128x180 pixels
• In profile pages, changed the profile image back to normal size, of maximum 200x100 pixels
• For all the pages on the site, stretch the page content over the entire screen width, removing the empty spaces on the sides. (assuming you use adblock and the space is indeed empty.)
• For widget titles, I removed the new "industry" font, and set the letter spacing to 0.26 instead of 0.46. This is purely personal, as the font doesn't look good to me.

I also recommend using the site at 110% or 125% zoom in your browser, this solves most of the small font issues.

EDIT: I changed some stuff relating to the game cover images on the user profiles. They also got bigger, but only in 144x102 resolution instead of 180x128.

The time includes all speedrunning-related activities: Speedrun attempts (full game/ILs), levels practice, glitch hunting, strats/glitch practice, routing, etc. (We can count TAS-making as well.)

For example:

• The most time I spent on one game was about 200 hours on the game "CircloO 2". This is a 2d platform web-game with 24 short levels (optimal time of 10 seconds to 1 minute), but the physics of the game make it extremely hard to play optimally. Most of the 200-hours time went on ILs, and some levels took thousands of attempts (most of them were reset in the first 5-10 seconds).

• The second most time I spent was about ~160 hours on the game "Ahriman's Prophecy", an old RPG-maker game from 2004. So far I have about 15 hours of actual speedrun attempts. The rest of the time went for routing the game, doing practice attempts to test my routes, slightly improve the route after each attempt, and repeat and repeat.

It has been found that the game version on the website "engineering.com" is different than the others, with different physics. Full-game runs which are done on engineering.com, now have their own leaderboards in the relevant subcategory.

For ILs: Only runs which are done on the engineering.com version or Mobile version are allowed. Those two are the only versions which contain an in-game timer in their settings. The in-game timer must be enabled in the settings, and be visible on the screen. Time to submit is what shown on the in-game timer, when the level is completed.

Any previous runs which were done without an in-game timer (whether on Mobile or other sites) are preserved and kept on the leaderboard under Mobile. BUT, runs like that won't be accepted anymore. So, if you play on Kongregate, Armor Games or coolmathgames - you can only run full-game categories.

Another rule change - the game audio is no longer required in IL runs (but is still required in full-game runs).

Whenever I do "reset cart" in the options, it does a reset animation but all progress stays the same.

Sorry for double posting, but it's the only reliable way to communicate.

Apply a CSS extension to the site, and add the following rules:

form[name='newpost'] > span { display: block; }

form[name='editguideform'] > span { display: block; }

This will make the posts and the guides look like you are editing them, and will let you see the full text (but in mark-down format, without any rendering). Me and @SioN wrote this solution in the other thread, but I wanted to summarize it.

And no, you cannot edit posts of other people.

This is a very interesting text.

Following the thread by Ero about not being able to create guides for games: There should be a notice for big site updates that change functionality in any way. I'm not talking about plans for future updates, but changes you already uploaded to the site - things like this guides permission update, the older update that limited forum posts at 1000 characters, and so on.

We - the runners, game moderators, and general users - need to know about the existence of those updates; not discover them by accident, and then thinking there are new bugs on the site.

I found the game on a site for retro-games, and I can play it with DOS-BOX emulation. However, for some reason the game is very laggy for me. I'm not sure if the problem is in the game, the emulator, or something else.

I just tried the game myself. Other than the fact that the controls are pretty bad for a platforming game like that, the game design itself is pretty solid.

So, are there any glitches you know about, seeing that you cared to separate the leaderboards into "any%" and "glitchless"? In case you don't know about any glitches, why did you separate the categories?

Related to that, you should really update the game/category rules. Stating that third-party programs and splices are banned, is pretty much given by the site rules, so it's redundant.

What are the actual rules for the speedruns? Is sound/music required? What is or isn't allowed in glitchless runs?

You should also write that all speedruns should use "arcade mode" in the options menu, this will enable the in-game timer and a death counter. Very hard to splice with those on the screen.

A standard category where you just need to finish the game as fast as you can, regardless of how many items or heart containers you collect along the way.

The being said, it is very probable that the wall jump or double jump upgrades can't be skipped. But you can certainly finish without collecting all the other items. (I finished my first game with 4/8 heart upgrades and without the triple shot upgrade).

I don't know why I made this

https://rob1221.itch.io/jumphase

Similar to my autosplitters in the other Eddynardo games, I made a custom version of Sleepy Knight that allows you to speedrun the game with additional timers and information:

https://or321.github.io/sleepy-knight-autosplitter/speedrun

This version is intended for full-game speedruns, and it was approved by @Sandstorm187.

The features of this patch:

• You can only play the game in speedrun mode. The "Continue" button in the main menu is disabled.
• Press Escape key to return to the main menu. No need to refresh the browser in case you want to reset the run anymore!
• Each level contains a level timer and a "WR time" information for that level.
• There is a new speedrun timer that tracks your total time across all the levels. This timer is reset when you start a new speedrun, or reset level 1.
• Load timer that starts ticking when you finish a level, until the next level starts. Each load time between two levels should be exactly 3 seconds, but sometimes it can be slightly longer.

Speedrun stats:

• After finishing a full speedrun, you can see the final times of the speedrun: speedrun time which is the total time elapsed from the start to end, and loadless time which removes the long load times (as if each load time was exactly 3 seconds). You can submit this time when submitting your runs.
• After finishing a full speedrun, you can also see extra information about it by clicking on the relevant button. You can see total time spent on all 15 levels, as well as total deaths, jumps and sword swings.
• Those stats always relate to your last complete speedrun, so starting a new speedrun and then quitting will not erase them.

Also:

• An FPS counter is added at the bottom for extra information.
• The tiles of the game are colored in the original green. The blue/purple tiles are only for the practice version.
• The game canvas is automatically resized in relation to the window, so you can resize the window as you like to be comfortable. You can also enter full-screen mode with F11.

Similar to my autosplitters in the other Eddynardo games, I made a custom version of Sleepy Knight that allows you to cycle between levels for practice:

https://or321.github.io/sleepy-knight-autosplitter/practice

This version is intended for practicing the levels of the game, or doing IL runs. You can manually move between levels by pressing "+" or "-".

Remarks:

• Full-game runs can't be done on this version.
• Each level contains a timer and a "WR time" information for that level. The WR time is manually written by me, so new WRs will take some time to be updated.
• I added an FPS counter at the bottom for extra information.
• I recolored some of the game tiles from green to blue/purple, to visually separate the practice version from other versions.
• Besides from the visual change, nothing else was changed in the gameplay itself
• The game canvas is automatically resized in relation to the window, so you can resize the window as you like to be comfortable. You can also enter full-screen mode with F11.
• Escape key will quit to the main menu (even though it's quite useless in this case)

How much the new profile picture is intimidating? Honest answers please

I watched the top 2 runs but didn't manage to do anything fast enough like that.

Right now I'm still struggling to complete the game in easy mode. But as I see it for now:

• Normal mode have more bombs/enemies, and it forces you to be slow at some points or be extra cautious. Makes sense to separate that from easy mode.
• One life mode is just a more annoying version of the normal mode. If you are good at normal mode, you won't die anyway while speedrunning it.
• Leave no evidence mode - seems like an unforgiving variant of the normal mode that requires you to be perfect in your star throws
• One life + no evidence - No... Just no... the nightmares...