British Columbia, CanadaDue to my lack of interest, real life getting in the way, my inactivity in the speedrunning scene for a prolonged period of time, my lack of experience with the game itself and other reasons I wish to not disclose publicly, I have decided it is time for me to step down as a moderator for this game.
I will continue to verify runs of this game for now especially with the newly added 1 loop category for the Arcade version however I will step down no later than the end of January 2024. That is my hard deadline. If you wish to contact me about moderator privileges for the purpose of stepping up and replacing me, please DM me. I will try to check in to SRC daily to keep up with DMs. Thank you for your understanding.
Don't worry nothings changed. You can start with as many lives as you want. We just decided to add this to the additional rules for all categories so people stop asking lol.
Yes we are aware that starting with 9 lives instead of the default 3-5 requires a cheat code but we are going to allow it since we have allowed it in the past plus better accessibility for new runners to jump in.
With the recent removal of the reset rule, the PB submission video only needs to contain the actual complete PB run itself in full. Failure to show the PB run in full will result in rejection. A reset is not necessary to show anymore.
Please also refrain from submitting a VOD with multiple runs and resets attached from this moment onwards as well.
This change should hopefully make things easier for both runners and mods alike.
We've had some interest on the speedrunning front for this game and they want a leaderboard.
They tried to request for one but was denied by reason that it's up to the series moderator to add it to the game series.
I don't have the power to do this as a standard mod for the SNES version of Pocky and Rocky only so i can't do it but a series mod can.
This should've been dealt with months ago but at least we got around to it finally.
The final thing for me to figure out now is whether or not I can work ILs back into the equation while still abiding by the rules of the different versions. Not sure if I can remedy that one but I'll see what I can do
Made the final change just now.
Since I can't seem to completely put in all the necessary info in the rules for every category I'll just specify here.
All runs done on the following platforms count towards the Original version (the Sega Genesis version) of the game:
- AES
- Dreamcast
And All runs done on the following platforms count towards the Modernized version (the Steam version) of the game:
- PS4
- Xbox One
- Switch
Keep this in mind when you submit to the leaderboard.
It's important that these version fall in line accordingly as the Modern and Original versions of the game are very different. For instance, the load times are faster in the modern version but the modern version is largely regarded as more difficult than the original version of the game.
Start time remains the same but end time is when the results screen pops up now.
While all submitted runs have not had their times changed yet to coincide with this, we will get to them soon. Just want to give the heads up that all future runs submitted will need to abide by the new timing method and that all current (non-Bad Ending) runs will have their time changed accordingly.
Some changes have already been implemented and others have been in talks these past few days.
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Firstly, ILs are officially RIP. A game's IL community needs to be active enough to warrant its existence on any leaderboard and currently I do not feel it is so it has been removed until a time comes when this game's activity picks up again.
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Both Bad Ending and Boss Rush are relegated to the "Misc." tab. Bad Ending will remain as a category as we feel that not allowing the category to exist is gatekeeping potential new runners (due to the requirement for getting the Good Ending not being lenient) but we did need to clean up the leaderboard quite a bit so we've put it in the Misc. tab
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"Hard" is set the as default difficulty on this leaderboard, just like it was in Genesis version of the game.
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The "PC" categories are in a good spot with only 2 variables but the "Console" categories were a mess with 4 variables, making it a chore to find runs and imo at least two of them are not necessary. 1 of them has been removed already.
Those are the current changes. Gilman and I have also been talking about changing where time ends in the Good Ending run to the results screen signaling the end of "The HQ" stage. This is because the player still has control past the point where the current end time happens and the stage doesn't end until you perform one last roll into Dr. Herzog so we both feel the results screen is a better spot to end the timer at.
We also both agree that "Retro" and "Modern" are fundamentally different versions of XenoCrisis and must remain intact in some way as separate of each other. Currently I am of the belief that all categories with "(PC)" in it should be changed to "(Modern)" as the PC Steam version resembles the "Modern" version of XenoCrisis already and all categories with "(Console)" in it should be changed to "(Retro)" and must resemble that of the original version (Sega Genesis) of the game. This will remove the other unnecessary (imo) variable that is stuck in the console category.
Yes, I will have to make a new thread discussing the differences so everyone knows which version of the game they ran on when submitting a run but the differences are very noticeable with just a little bit of watching both of them in action.
The final thing we discussed was the addition of a "Random Seed" category. Part of the draw of XenoCrisis is it's 60K+ seeds which carry many differences in map and room layouts as well enemy waves to help keep each new playthrough fresh. This of course is one we don't intend to rush into changing so for now, we will stay put on this idea but we definitely have been in talks about it.
Yes...the mods are aware that his run no longer exists. No...we are not taking it off the leaderboard.
For those that are not aware, sumpura went under the alias of Baize and this is not the first time he has disappeared without a trace and wiped all of his runs.
He has shared his wisdom with other runners like his discovery of a new quick kill for the truck fight as well as piecing together a strat for the idea we had of a sheildless zeed kill. All of these strats are a part of the current route as it stands today and he was instrumental in all of that.
sumpura's PB was the world's first ever sub-13 minute time for this game too which is a big milestone for where this game was at at the time. It's an important piece of history and we know he streamed his attempts trying to get that time.
We have seen his run prior to the video being lost and we remember the 2 seconds he lost because of a bad ninja pattern just 2 rooms before the final boss. Keep in mind this was before before the discovery of the Stage 8 clip. The run existed and we saw that run ourselves plenty of times to study off of it.
We do not know why he chose to erase his existence once again but one thing is for sure, we don't believe he was trying to erase evidence of possible cheating. If that was the case, we would've heard something from mods of other communities and games Baize/sumpura has also done runs for. If something like that did happen then we are not aware of it and should be informed accordingly.
Until then, sumpura's run will remain and we will continue to hope he comes back with a new PB utilizing the stage 8 clip.
You're welcome. This fight took awhile for me to crack but I can't see myself getting a better result than this.
The cut off point to save time with a "Perfect" seems to be around 13 seconds remaining. Do better than that and you should save time theoretically speaking.
I want to test out the potential time save but I want to keep up the lab work and see what I can find in Australia's bonus stage first.
The reason this rule exists is to ensure no one is resetting through the use of "load state".
Resetting that way can potentially affect RNG among other things which is why many leaderboards (particularly NES games) enforce this rule. By not showing the hard reset at all, mods are left to guess if the game was properly reset prior to the attempt.
Now recently we've had a couple of runs rejected due to this rule and some confusion was had by both runners and mods alike so I decided to make this thread to kind of get a discussion going here.
Ultimately we can just re-verify the rejected runs but keep the rule as is and give a hard deadline day to beginning enforcing this rule for all runners moving forward or we can change it to be more lenient for accessibility.
Either is fine with me for different reasons. Now as far as I understood with the game, RNG is not set upon a reset but rather based on your actions in-game so being more lenient with the rule would be fine but there might be something I don't know about with the game that others might know which leaves the idea of keeping the rule as is a reasonable choice as well
Obviously not really something you need to do until you start reaching below the 12:20 threshold where ties can start happening but the option should be there if you wish to use it.
https://tcrf.net/Rocket_Knight_Adventures
After a thorough investigation of the difficulty differences across the 3 versions (US, JP, PAL) here's how they operate and will be reflected as such on the leaderboard from now on:
- JP (Normal) and PAL (Easy) = US (Children)
- JP (Hard) and PAL (Hard) = US (Easy)
- JP (Very Hard) and PAL (Very Hard) = US (Normal)
- JP (Crazy Hard) and PAL (Crazy Hard) = US (Hard)
Since all 4 difficulties are readily available from the get-go on the US version, we are aligning the difficulties from JP/PAL to be more in line with its US counterpart as shown above to prevent any further confusion.
This decision was made because some PAL runs were being passed off as Easy mode runs when its true difficulty is the equivalent to US Children difficulty. This more or less happened due to confusion and a lack of information on the difficulty differences but Children difficulty vs Easy difficulty with the US version carries huge differences like...
- No final escape sequence in Children difficulty (I thought this was version specific, this is incorrect)
- Health values are noticeably lower in Children difficulty
For these 2 reasons above, US (Children), PAL (Easy) and JP (Normal) MUST be treated as a seperate category from the currently established "Easy" category.
Please keep this in mind when submitting runs in the future for this game. If you wish for a "Children" or "Normal" category to be made, feel free to request one in the forums here.
As for the Hard mode category, JP/PAL runners must set the difficulty to "Crazy Hard".
Subcategories
First things first, I've split up console from emulators and all other versions including Steam, Virtual console, and the very recent Sega Classics Collection. Emulators have been found to have a few notable advantages over console including...
- Faster loading times during black screen transition
- Significantly reduced lag
- Inherently faster performance throughout the run (at least 60 frames saved on emu over console)
Given the point where the game is at right now, these differences do matter and thus the splitting into subcategories became a warranted decision.
Sadly banning certain emulators like Kega Fusion wouldn't work as further tests with Bizhawk turned up with even more jarring differences than Kega so we decided on splitting them was the way to go.
As for Virtual Console, Steam and the Sega Classics collection, they all play their retro games off an emulator so lobbing them together in the same subcategory made alot of sense.
Their are other versions including Xbox 360 and the PS3 version (both of which are gotten through buying from their online stores). We are undecided whether they too fall in the same subcategory so we will hold off a decision on them until I do my own research on that.
The Switch to SDA Timing
I made a tweet on this subject so I'll simply link that here on why we felt this change was necessary.
https://twitter.com/d4gr0n85/status/1048280469614125056
If you have any further questions feel free to reach out to us.
Lobbed in discussion of this game with the Shinobi 3 crew. If you're interested in joining the shinobi discord it can be found here:
Just informing you guys, there is a discord for most of the series. It can be found here:
Yes you guys too. This discord is for the whole series aside from PS2 Shinobi and Nightshade since they have their discord already.
Speedrunning discord for the whole series aside from PS2 Shinobi and Nightshade since they have their own discord
Speedrunning discord for the whole series aside from PS2 Shinobi and Nightshade since they have one already.
