Hey all. You may be aware of a newer exploit/glitch discovered in which one can take an egg with a payload in it into a new game (simplified). This obviously has implications to speed running, so the mod team had a discussion about it, and we want to share our conclusions, and open a public discussion about it as well. Our conclusions are as follows:

1. For all currently existing categories, the proposed new rule will be that time starts when you begin the first run that directly affects the submitted run. To be explicit, this means if you start a long run to prepare an egg, time begins when that first long run starts, not when the final run you use the egg starts. This essentially means that such egg strats are useless in current categories, but there may be future exploits discovered that take less time to set up. This is in keeping with precedent with other games, such as Donkey Kong 64's main menu mode glitch.

2. That being said, this is an exciting and interesting exploit, with much possibility for creativity and optimization. One could imagine an All bosses run where multiple eggs are carried through, and one teleports the player around the map, and another instantly kills all the bosses. We don't want to disincentivize that creativity. Thus, we propose adding new variables for runs (similar to seeded/random, or glitches/glitchless) that not only allow this tech, but have time begin on the start of the final run. Possible names include Setup vs Setupless, or Egg vs Eggless.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and thanks for taking the time to read.