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Messages - hfactor66

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1
Information Kiosk / Re: Subsite Charts Down?
« on: June 27, 2022, 11:48:08 pm »
I wouldn't be surprised if they took those down because of how inactive submissions were for those. I think most people come here for the Sonic games, although I wouldn't be against integrating stuff like the Mario & Sonic Olympic Games titles into the main site here. Might actually give me a reason to go pick up some of those games lol

2
Forces and Mania competition charts exist, but Colors Ultimate charts do not.

3
So, I've been looking at the SF score charts recently, (actually since April) and noticed something odd, scores that are impossible to achieve without multipliers, which are banned from competition, belonging to user swf89. How can I tell?

Well first off, they don't have videos, even the ones sitting in first, so that should be an immediate red flag, since all first place records set after New Years 2017 are required to have them, but what really sets these records apart is that unlike literally every other score on the charts in this category, they don't all end in a clean hundred value, which is impossible without the use of the 1.2 and 1.7x multipliers, since the minimum unit of score in this game is 100, and nothing in the game naturally gives any point values that would raise the tens digit. This, and all the scores that possess this oddity all cleanly divide by 1.2 or 1.7, the two lower end score multipliers.

Stage 20 Guardian Rock for instance, a score of 3,628,480 supposedly. But, when divided by 1.7, the multiplier, which is banned from competition, it comes out as 2,134,400, the actual score of the run, and the stat that should have been submitted.

Lost Valley, an incredibly optimized stage in terms of SA as far as I'm concerned, beaten by nearly 400k, with a score of 1,571,310, one that is impossible to achieve without multipliers, since completing an optimized SA while somehow going at WR speedrun pace wouldn't even get you an extra 100k in time bonus, when comparing optimized SA times to the time bonus of WR runs. Also, there's no possible way to squeeze an extra 400k out of the remaining rings & enemies while still maintaining a fast enough pace, since many of them are being collected/killed already, and the Red Rings & Number Rings are already being collected in the most optimized SA runs. But, divide this score by 1.7, and it comes out as 924,300, the actual score, which is a lot more realistic. Below, I've compiled some more of these Posted vs Actual scores when removing the 1.7x multiplier.

Prison Hall: 3,237,990 - 1,904,700
Arsenal Pyramid: 4,169,590 - 2,452,700
Luminous Forest: 2,113,780 - 1,243,400
Park Avenue: 3,182,910 - 1,872,300
Capital City: 3,218,780 - 1,893,400
Final Judgement: 1,885,130 - 1,108,900

Casino Forest is the first instance of the 1.2x multiplier, giving us 1,456,600 from the posted 1,747,920 on the leaderboard. Below are some more I've compiled.

Bomb Block 1: 1,325,640 - 1,104,700
Plasma Cannon 1: 1,309,440 - 1,091,200
Laser Cannon 1: 1,172,520 - 977,100
Reverse Block 1: 1,648,920 - 1,374,100

These are some scores I would love to see proof of, since they have the slight potential to be legitimate, but they are way above the current optimized records with no proof, some of which (mainly Vanish Panel 1) would require massive leaps in strategy that would likely set new speedrun WRs, not just score attack WRs, to achieve, when no corresponding mind boggling times exist.

Vanish Panel 1: 1,731,000
Flying Pod: 1,285,200
Imperial Tower: 2,236,200

I realize this isn't the Leaderboard Disputes thread, but this forum is pretty dead, and this does concern competition. I'm not waiting for permission to post there, and my aim is just to draw some attention to this, since these stats were all posted on the same day in April this year, and I'm tired of looking at them knowing of their illegitimate nature and saying nothing about them when nothing has been done, and no one seems to have noticed, or called it out, since they are all still standing on the charts at the time of writing.

4
News and Updates / Re: We're back, but submissions are disabled temporarily
« on: November 28, 2020, 11:02:11 pm »
https://drive.google.com/file/d/135SA6j5-LxyUM5qUPuzftLTX7oKDv3na/view?usp=sharing

Got this from a fellow competitor on Sonic Amino earlier this week, you didn't hear it from me.

5
General Sonic / Re: I finally found it!
« on: November 15, 2020, 02:47:03 am »
That literally just made my night, thank you for this gem.

6
As an SA2B runner I've been set for that for ages now, but SRC doesn't offer half the stats and leaderboard types that TSC does. I understand that the persistent issues might be difficult to fix, and that the admins might be short on time, but if that's the case they should really look into seeking help from the abundance of people that would be willing to provide it. That's just my 2 cents, though.

That's a sentiment I can agree with, the sheer amount of different kinds of competition offered here on TSC is what drew me into the site when I signed up in 2014. I signed up to pursue ring records on Sonic Rush initially, and branched out to other games over time. It meant that even if I wasn't great at speedrunning the game, it didn't mean that I couldn't compete on it. TSC showed me there were other kinds of competition I could look into and even specialize in, which is exactly what I did. Sites like Speedrun.com just don't offer that, and sites like CyberScore that CAN offer those same charts usually don't have the same level of competition that TSC does.

Like, it's boring when you hold all the records in a category that no one ever really competed in over there, whereas here, I spent years chasing ONE time trial record on SAdv3, and when I finally did beat it, it was by 0.01 seconds. Never in my life was I so pumped to beat a record by so little.

7
Really hoping we get an update on this soon, I've been highly anticipating the return of the submission function for quite a while now.

You and me both, man. Speedrun.com is adding IL charts for more & more Sonic games cuz of how long submissions have been down.

8
Glad to see the site's back online, I've missed this place. Can't wait for submissions to go live again, hopefully I'll have grinded out WR on Sunset Hill 2 by then, cuz I'm so goddamn close, and I'm itching to update my stats.

EDIT: can't wait for submissions to go back up. I've really missed this place.

9
Wikkity! / Re: My membership on Sonic Center may be in jeopardy!!
« on: December 11, 2019, 02:51:08 am »
This whole COPPA thing with YouTube and the FTC only affects you if you make money off of YouTube via ad revenue. The reason YouTube had to pay up to the FTC is because the ads running on many content creators’ videos were collecting data on children, why that’s a problem unless the product is unsuitable for them is beyond me, (probably something to do with the GDPR in the EU or something) so basically, because YouTube fucked up and never enforced any sort of age restriction to prevent this from happening, and thus letting advertisers collect data on kids, content creators eligible to monetize their videos will now have to mark their videos as suitable or unsuitable for kids.

Frankly, the whole situation is a mess, and there’s tons of different perspectives out there on this right now, everyone from PewDiePie and Markiplier to actual lawyers talking about this, and some numbers being thrown around, like the threat of a whopping $42,000 fine, no you did not read that incorrectly, $42k per video from the FTC for marking your fucking video “incorrectly,” since you have no control over what kids these days click on. Anyway, bullshit scare tactics aside, the short and long of it is that if you don’t make any ad revenue off of YouTube, you have nothing to worry about.

10
Competition Central / Re: Dolphin emulator for Riders 1 competition
« on: October 28, 2019, 04:07:41 am »
Do you think people in charge could change their minds about DS at some point?
That's doubtful to change without an emulator that can produce accurate emulation of the system. That, and from my experience, DS emulation doesn't hold a candle to the real deal.

11
Hiya Folks / Re: Hiya, if anyone even checks here anymore.
« on: September 05, 2019, 12:57:21 am »
Yeah, the forums aren't terribly active these days, I've heard there's a discord channel for the site if you're interested. In any sense, welcome to the site bro! Best of luck with your Zero Gravity endeavors.

EDIT: discord link: https://discord.gg/VqkNCEe

12
Bumped Blaze’s theoretical max up to 610, WOO!

Sweet ass phone vid of mah DSi

Preview said the video link was invalid when I tried to embed the video itself >_> so anyway, I’m just pumped right now cuz a few weeks ago, I managed to pull off a backtracking trick with Blaze on Hidden Island 16 (y’know, the Leaf Storm 1 clone) that I’ve thought for years was 100% impossible to do, and that video showcases a 570 rings run I did tonight with that new trick, allowing Blaze to collect every stage ring and still reach all the random ring boxes, finishing with ring box values that would’ve yielded only a 550 run with the old route, making tying my 570 and setting a new WR of 590 much more reasonable to obtain… if I don’t get it first, lol.

Theoretically, 610 is possible, if you want to try and beat the 0.16% odds of four 50s happening…

Again, I doubt anyone really cares, but as a man who lives for this shit, I wanted to share this somewhere besides just YouTube, so here I am. Also, I’m lowkey thinking about picking up a 3DS and the Sonic Boom games to give those a shot.

13
As far as rings are concerned, some stats can only be done on certain versions.

- Green Hill act 1 had a glitch in version 1.00 where you could access to Knuckles' section as Sonic and Tails to get more rings + a giant ring too.
- Rings for Studiopolis act 2 are done better on 1.03 and before due to the need to enter a blue spheres level to cancel the super form. In next versions the blue shperes are replaced by the pinball bonus stage once you get all the golden medals.
- Rings for Hydrocity act 2 are done by starting with a lighting shield which can only be obtained in the new bonus stage that came with 1.04 and encore mode as there's no lighting shield in act 1.
- Lava Reef act 1 has a new transition in 1.04 that gives 6 rings if you start from Oil Ocean act 2 that cannot be done on previous versions.
- Titanic Monarch act 2 has a patch of rings with twice the value it should have (in 1.03, like the rings in Metropolis zone 2 in Sonic 2) that has been fixed in the next versions.

Any score done involving those rings is affected as well.

I use both 1.03 and Plus when submitting my stats but I don't have a console with 1.00

Interestingly enough, there was also a ring removed from the standard GHZ 1 in 1.04, cuz I was only able to get 592 with Mighty and Ray when I revisited these levels again with them instead of 593.

14
I’d be open to a discussion about getting that added as well as revamping the overall Mania competition, because Time Attack is no longer viable to compete in the Score Attack category due to the changes made to it. Not only does it not count down your score like it normally does, but it only shows your time and ranking on the results screen. This has a major effect on the SA category for this game, because before, bosses could be skipped by playing in Time Attack, and that played a major role in all of my current top ranked score attacks, utilizing that extra time not spent on the boss to point press off of more badniks. With the current state of the game, it’s no longer possible to do this anymore, at least if your game is up to date, which mine is.

15
Wikkity! / God I love the official Sonic Twitter.
« on: April 14, 2019, 01:18:58 am »
Tweet Tweet

God, how have I not seen this before today? So the official Sonic Twitter posted a vid of an 0:11 on Marble Act 2 with some comical changes made to it four days ago. Just thought I’d share, cuz I bet some of you guys would get a kick out of the official Sonic Twitter poking fun at this old WR. I wonder whose clip they used, cuz I doubt whoever runs that account could do it themselves. XD

16
News and Updates / Re: Sonic Forces Competition Now Live
« on: March 07, 2019, 10:49:23 pm »
In every level with a slot machine ever hosted on TSC, both scores and ring charts were completely disabled. What makes casino forest a special exception?
Except for Casino Night in Sonic 2 2013.

17
News and Updates / Re: Sonic Forces Competition Now Live
« on: March 06, 2019, 09:24:08 pm »
I'd say that this would be one where recording is definitely needed.
Also, I wouldn't necessarily say to ban the machines altogether, but at least I would keep it to "you can only use a each slot machine once."
*Shudders at the thought of adding RNG to RA in Stage 13*

No, don’t even suggest making this stage another Sonic Rush style grind. I’ve broken thousands of random ring boxes in my career. THOUSANDS.

18
News and Updates / Re: Sonic Forces Competition Now Live
« on: March 06, 2019, 08:58:21 pm »
I just realized that I left out a rule that was intended to be in place for ring and score charts:

Stage 13 Casino Forest will have charts with use of the slot machines prohibited.

Currently there are 2 ring stats that may have used slots and 0 score stats that used slots. Do we not want this rule to go in place? No one objected to this rule in the Sonic Forces rankings forum topic.
I’d be happy to redo this stage as a traditional RA sometime if you’d like to add this to the rules, no time soon though cuz god I hate how Classic controls in this game. I flat out said in my Stage 13 RA comment “do you really want to see me hit slots for 20 minutes?”

19
News and Updates / Re: Sonic Forces Competition Now Live
« on: March 05, 2019, 11:58:44 am »
Seeing new charts being added to the site, I wonder if it is possible to add more charts for Sonic Mania's DLC. Things to add should be entries for Mighty and Ray and also Encore mode.
I already did some Ring Attacks for Encore mode and I suppose people already made speedruns for individual levels too.
This should be the next thing added to the site, I've done quite a handful of IL speedruns with Mighty and Ray as well as plenty of Encore level speedruns with a variety of characters.

20
News and Updates / Re: Sonic Forces Competition Now Live
« on: March 05, 2019, 12:38:46 am »
Oh yes, it is time to unleash my ring attack archive baby…

21
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: February 17, 2019, 02:04:48 am »
The Drill strat in this video appears to be 3 seconds faster than the Hover + Cube strat you used https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzQpQ9Cw1S8
Please go easy on me.
Verdamnt! I must be missing something then, back to the drawing board with Final Judgement I guess… *sigh* I’m used to this sort of thing. Also I agree, I think leaving Rentals alone would be best, gives players the leisure to choose whether or not they should use a Rental. It’s much more beneficial for SA and RA, and as you’ve pointed out, doesn’t mean much for speedrunning in most cases, since Drill is fucking god at it, literally built to go fast.

Here's a thought:

Use divisions for the wispons, and rank all 9(?) separately.

* SpinDashMaster shot

Lulz. tbh I thought about that too. I don’t know if it would be worth the effort honestly, cuz I’m not sure how many people would be interested in the idea of having individual charts for every Wispon on the Avatar stages. Even though I hate the fact that Drill is king in just about every Avatar stage, there’s plenty of Wispons that would pretty much just be deadweight in a speedrun. On the other hand, though, Cube is most definitely king when it comes to Ring Attack and Score Attack, (I mean come on, tons of bonus rings, tons of bonus points, AND double points as long as you have 100+ rings? You can’t beat that for RA and SA unless the level barely has any enemies) so it’d be interesting to see some other kinds of competition with different Wispons in these categories. I remember having to put Burst and Void together with a Rental for SA on Stage 20 to beat my Cube score, that is until I found a better strategy with Cube which crushed my Rental combo’s score. XD

22
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: February 16, 2019, 02:33:42 am »
Looking through the levels, I see very few opportunities for rentals to make a difference in time attack. The fastest times I could find for avatar stages did not make use of the rental in any stage.

Really? Because I can think of three stages off the top of my head from my own experience where having a Rental makes a huge impact on your time, and those are Stage 19 against Metal Sonic, Stage 27 against Infinite, and Stage 29, Final Judgement. Since Stage 19 and 27 are both “endless” runner style boss fights, having two Wispons makes a huge impact, because having certain Wispons at certain times drastically speeds up the fight. Void and Drill, as I’ve mentioned before, works wonders as a Rental combo on Stage 27, because you can speed up two of Infinite’s attacks this way. You can drill him when he charges towards you, and Void the badniks he summons immediately after that, not to mention you can use those same tactics against Metal Sonic.

Stage 29 I’ve found to have a drastic difference in time with using a Rental, and that’s because of the three tube things you have to destroy after the boring on-rails section. The best combo I’ve found to use to destroy them as quickly as possible is Hover and Cube. (The only useful application I’ve ever found for Hover, lol) Knocking at least two badniks into one of the tubes with Hover will instantly destroy it, and a row of six spawn right next to two of the three tubes immediately at the checkpoint, so that leaves you with just one left, and I’ve found that Cube dispatches that last one the fastest, because you’re able to take it out in one move with a jump attack, something I can’t say for any other Wispon, even the almighty Drill, the speedrunner’s most common choice in this game.

So help me god, if there’s a way for Drill to somehow be faster on Stage 29, I’m gonna flip a table, cuz I’m sick of Drill being the king of speedrunning in this game…

23
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: February 15, 2019, 01:12:11 am »
I do not mean to tease the idea of ring stats that exceed 999 but the score does go up by 100 each time a ring is collected. This could be very difficult to identify during scenes with a lot of action but the possibility is there. As it is, score attacks still benefit from collecting rings beyond the 999th ring. Too bad they did not do something like SA(DX) where the result screen shows ring totals above 999.

I wish they would have too, it would make levels that have well over 999 rings more fun to reasonably compete on. Stage 7 has so many rings that you can get 999 in less than 90 seconds. I’ve done it multiple times, lol.

24
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: February 13, 2019, 12:57:17 am »
Hey I've done an RA in S3 that took 40 minutes before and I dont see anyone complaining about it...

Y'all whippersnappers should learn the value of patience.

XD SDM chiming in at the best time as always. Never change, dude.

I may have only been a competitor since 2014, but…

I did two one hour long SAs on Stage 17 two nights ago cuz the first one wasn’t that good, and the close to 9.4 million point run I uploaded still has so much room for improvement. Put that on top of the other half hour to 40 in game minute long RAs I’ve done on this game, I’d say I know a thing or two about patience. I mean if that’s not enough, the ultimate proof is my Rush/Rush Adventure RA stats. Several years of my life went into that. Too many resets cuz of that damn RNG…

I also spent a month on Rush grinding the AL boss cuz I fucked up a breakthrough attack pattern the first time I got it.

25
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: February 11, 2019, 01:10:49 am »
"A half hour RA... Plz don't allow this TSC if there's RA on the bosses."
Why? Why did I have to find a video with this description?

I’ll bet anything it’s one of my videos XD probably put that there as a joke. I actually didn’t know there was a time over at one hour. I’ll admit, I’ve done many long grinds for 999s on bosses, but none of them took more than 40 minutes, the longest one was the second encounter with Infinite, which took around 38 minutes.

EDIT: Yep, it’s my Zavok 999 video. The first one that I did. With that in mind, you just gave me an idea for score attack on Infinite second encounter, now I know what I’m doing tonight…

EDIT 2: Something just occurred to me with the ban on Rentals, that would also limit speedruns that utilize this system to drastically speed up levels and bosses, such as Stage 27, the third encounter with Infinite. The combo of Drill and Void works wonders for this level, because you can drill into him when he charges at you, then swap to Void and use it to get rid of all the badniks he summons around him quicker. Rentals really are a delicate issue tbh, because on one hand, I’m fine with limiting them for the sake of people who don’t play online and aren’t able to take advantage of this system to make competition more pure, but at the same time, I’ve experienced firsthand how the Rental system can improve your stats and allow for some really creative and clever strategies in every category, and to some, it would be a tragedy to prevent them from competing.

26
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: February 10, 2019, 11:28:17 am »
So I did a bunch of boss 999s for nothing! D: well I got to post them on CyberScore I guess. That’s what I figured anyway with the bosses, I mean who in their right mind is gonna have the patience for 30+ minute RAs of most bosses? What I can tell you though, is that I know of 2 boss fights in this game that do have a finite end, (because I actually reached it in testing) and those are Metal Sonic and the third encounter with Infinite. I documented both of these, but I haven’t uploaded the video I have of the one for Metal Sonic. I would be happy to if you’d like evidence of this.

I’d say the decision on rentals is absolutely reasonable, since not everyone (like you yourself said) plays with an internet connection, so why force them online? It is a bit limiting for RA, but it just means you don’t have to monkey around with soft resetting to get an Avatar that has what you’re looking for, which I’d be glad to not have to worry about upon returning to this game. The SOS mission is even less reliable for this, since you really have no control over it, and you only get one chance with it if you do happen to get what you’re looking for.

27
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: January 30, 2019, 03:22:50 am »
Man, I hop on TSC to post a Mania time and I see this. So much time has passed since the last post in this thread, I honestly thought this idea ultimately ended up going nowhere. It makes me glad to see that all the analysis I did on this game last summer didn’t go to waste. After reading over everything laid out in Zurg’s post, I’d say it all seems pretty sensible competition wise. Can’t wait to hit the charts with this one, gonna have to dig up my old Avatar RAs where I only used one Avatar though, since both SOS and Rentals will apparently be disallowed. Maybe I’ll finally have a reason to RA the Classic levels…

shudders at the thought

There is one oddity I want to address though, and I’m surprised I didn’t bring this up last summer, and that’s RA on Stage 13, Casino Forest. Like many casino themed zones, it has those slot machines you can play over & over again until you cap out on rings. I felt like this was worth mentioning since Casino Night in Sonic 2 was all but left out of RA competition for this very reason, and years later in Sonic 2 2013 was allowed for competition under the rule that you weren’t allowed to play the slots. I’m wondering if something similar should be done here, considering this also flew under the radar in Studiopolis when Mania was added.

28
Competition Central / Re: Longest Standing Untied Records
« on: November 01, 2018, 03:45:48 am »
Interesting post, I like this kind of stuff, because some records really do stand the test of time. It’s neat seeing whose records have stood atop the charts the longest, who has the most untouchable record in the history of the site.

Tbh my vote is for MickX’s 861 in rings on Leaf Storm 2 with Blaze, that legit requires SIX god damn 50s, a one in over 15,000 chance, and those are odds I am not willing to beat without the internet to stream and capture equipment for my DSi so I can just broadcast each of the thousands of attempts it would no doubt take to replicate such a feat.

29
Competition Central / Re: Sonic Forces rankings
« on: July 11, 2018, 11:59:02 am »
I don't think we should allow score multipliers, as it'll take too much time to set the 3x up and you can see your pre-multiplier score even during the bonus is active. It also only lasts 30 minutes per day, so you can't really compete much.
SOS should be imo banned for RNG reasons, but couldn't you just rent an avatar so you could use two and make SOS useless? In that case 2 avatars could be allowed.
Most recent version should also be used, but not the infinite rings/score glitch. I have the most recent PS4 version and did the water-walk glitch last month, I guess it's the 1.01.
Wispons could be used, don't see why not. Banning some would just make things harder. Of course we could have a rule to only use basic versions, which is okay for me too (makes score/etc. more pure).

Hyped to see the charts :) Thanks hfactor and Zeupar ^_^
Yeah, in order to compete with the 3x Score Multiplier, you pretty much have to know your route in advance, which is what I did, practiced before the 3x multiplier came into play, then gunned for it all throughout the multiplier. If you want a full hour of 3x, you have to wait until 11:30 PM and have the next day's 3x daily complete. I'm fine with not allowing this for Score Attack competition to keep it more balanced.

Rental Avatar? Ohhh... yeah I totally forgot about this mechanic, I didn't realize that this functioned exactly the same as the green SOS mission, so I suppose the Rental Avatar function would make two Avatar competition much easier to setup and reasonable to allow for competition. I've never used it, I just assumed it would overwrite the Avatar character you were using when I played, so it never occurred to me that it could be useful.

Ah, so it is possible to walk on water in 1.01, nice to finally know that. It'd be kinda boring to see the charts for stage 14 be a bunch of maxed out stats cuz of the walk on water glitch.

Your Avatar HAS to use a Wispon of some kind, and I thought about allowing only the basic Wispons for competition, but I still stand by the notion that getting the right Wispon is child's play. S-ranking all the levels and meeting all the challenge times, with few exceptions, *COUGHSTAGE27* is pretty simple to do.

I'm equally as hyped :3 Zeupar moved my original post here. If he meant this post, he didn't clarify that cuz he said to start this discussion in a thread I started, and I didn't start this thread.

EDIT: After spending many hours yesterday messing around with the Rental Avatar system, and loading it up again today, the Rental Avatar system seems to keep giving me the same options repeatedly, and I don't just mean similar characters, I mean the EXACT SAME CHARACTERS over and over again. Now I'm not sure how the system decides what other players' Avatars to give you, and it's making me reconsider the Rental Avatar option as far as allowing it.

30
I received a PM from Zeupar this morning about Sonic Forces. In this topic, all players interested in seeing charts for Sonic Forces added to the site can show their support and discuss the game's competition rules if it were to be added to the site.

I never really intended to be the lead guy on this, but here I am.

Now, to quote Zeupar's PM to me, he states that "To add Sonic Forces, we would need a sensible set of rules and at least two people willing to submit to all the charts."

I'd be more than willing to step up and be that first person, as I've done a reasonable amount of competition on all three of the main categories of competition in this game, those being Time Attack, Ring Attack, and Score Attack, so I'd have some stats to submit for all of these categories of competition, (especially RA) but this is where other interested players need to step up and show their support, otherwise this will go nowhere.

With that out of the way, let's move onto the next part;

Creating a "sensible set of rules"

Now I've thought about this before, and can toss up a general set of rules, but there are some things that need to be discussed for all the categories on this game before a set of rules can be agreed upon. General rules for the game should be pretty simple, the first major rule that should seem pretty fair is this;

Use of Super Sonic in all Classic/Modern stages is banned.

For those unaware, Super Sonic in Sonic Forces is a free downloadable DLC that allows you to select Super Sonic before you enter a stage, and when you obtain 50 rings, you automatically transform into Super Sonic, giving you infinite boost and the ability to magnetize rings. It doesn't even record your time anyway, so it would have to be taken from the end of the run right before the results screen. Maybe we can have a Freestyle category where Super Sonic is allowed if anyone is interested in using Super Sonic.

It should be noted that if you have the Shadow DLC, you can play as Shadow in all of Modern Sonic's stages as well, (except boss fights) but since Shadow does not play any differently than Modern Sonic does, I don't see playing as Shadow as an issue for competition in any way. And speaking of the Episode Shadow DLC, this contains three additional levels aside from the main game, and it's possible in the future that more DLC levels could be added to the game, so it should be discussed whether or not to add charts for any DLCs. I would love to see charts for any future DLC stages, but it's understandable if the DLC stages get left out from the charts, since there's over 40 levels to compete on as it stands already.

Anyway, getting back on track, the next logical rule is this;

For all charts, the game's difficulty setting must be set to Hard.

The difficulty menu lied to you. Normal mode is easy, and Hard more is normal. In normal mode, the rings are capped at 100, and you don't lose all of your rings upon getting hit, only 20. In hard mode, it works how you'd expect; one hit costs you all of your rings, and rings are capped at 999. I'm not sure if Normal mode alters the bosses in any way to make them easier, but I think the not losing all your rings part should be reason enough to include this rule. It's just common sense.

So with that, now we get to the toss up stuff that needs to be discussed, the first one being

The Score Multipliers

In Sonic Forces, you receive simple daily missions that, once completed, trigger a score multiplier of up to 3x depending on how many of them you complete in a row that lasts for a half hour of real time to boost your score. This has allowed me to hit over 10 million points on two different stages in the game. The question is though, how should this be handled? Should using score multipliers from daily missions be allowed, or banned? I personally think this should be fair game for the Score Attack category, as it can easily be obtained, and is readily available for 30 minutes every consecutive day you log in to Sonic Forces. The major drawback to this is that it takes five straight days of logins to regain this 3x multiplier if you lose it, and it would limit competition to only those patient enough to keep this daily streak going, so it might be healthier for competition to ban this, or have players submit the score shown on the results screen BEFORE the multiplier is applied, since it would level the playing field and keep things fair for all players looking to do Score Attack but don't have the patience to wait five days.

The next thing that needs to be discussed is

The SOS Missions

In Sonic Forces, you will sometimes see a blue, green or red SOS symbol on a random level, and you have one chance to complete it. Before we get into how this affects competition, let's talk about what each one does first, since each of these SOS missions features a different gimmick.

The blue one spawns an animal capsule somewhere in the level that needs to be opened before you complete the level. If you complete the level without opening it, it will still count as a fail, and your stats won't be displayed.

The red one gives you a randomly generated Avatar character to play as to finish the stage. You fail the mission if you die, pretty straightforward.

The green one also gives you a randomly generated Avatar character to play as to finish the stage, but the major difference is that you can swap to your current selected Avatar character, effectively allowing you to play as two Avatar characters at once. You fail the mission if you die, also pretty straightforward.

So now that you're familiar with how these SOS missions work, let's get into how they affect competition. The only one that affects competition in a noticeable way is the green one. Being able to play as two Avatar characters gives you the chance to do things that would otherwise be impossible, like collecting otherwise out of reach rings, or performing otherwise impossible tricks on bosses. See these examples below if you want to get an idea of what I mean.

Stage 16 Capital City SOS Mission RA - 779 Rings by yours truly compared to Stage 16 Capital City RA - 703 Rings also by yours truly.

Stage 27 VS Infinite SOS Speedrun in 1:45.79 by E-121 DSF compared to Stage 27 VS Infinite Speedrun in 1:49.97 by Supersonic1014.

Just by looking at the stats, you can see that there is a HUGE advantage to having two Avatar characters at your disposal. The problem is how much of a MASSIVE PAIN it is to set up due to the random nature of the SOS missions. You have to wait until you get the right SOS mission on the right level, and it has to be an Avatar that will work with what you are trying to do, and if that's not enough, as discussed earlier, you only get ONE SHOT at trying the level this way, so if you make a mistake, you have to set this up all over again, which could take hours.

With all that said, the question remains; should SOS missions be allowed or banned? I personally am leaning towards banning them, due to the insane amount of RNG that goes into these setups that would otherwise deter A LOT of potential players and make competition less accessible, but some might not consider it fair to ban them from competition because of this, so that's why this needs to be discussed. I think allowing them would only stifle competition, but maybe you can change my mind.

Finally, the last thing we need to discuss is

The Wispons

The Wispons are the key to competitive success in all Avatar missions, since there's some Wispons that have beneficial perks, like earning extra rings from defeating enemies, giving a boost of speed upon stomping, letting you stop on a dime regardless of speed, a short invincibility every 100 rings, and in my opinion the most broken perk of all, DOUBLE POINTS AFTER 100 RINGS, the list goes on. These perks have benefits that affect all categories of competition, so it should be decided whether to allow them or not. I personally think these are similar to collecting all the Chaos and Super Emeralds in S3&K and Mania, in that if you want to compete, something as simple as collecting the right Wispon for the job would be child's play.

As for the Avatar itself, the species you play as should be geared towards whatever is most beneficial to whatever you're doing, so the Avatar species should be free game, since setting up separate charts for every species in the game would just be redundant.

And on that note, there should be four divisions for the charts, those being Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic, Avatar, and Tag Team, since these are the four types of levels in the game. You could lump the Tag Team stages with the Avatar stages though, so that would make things simpler. The only level that would be difficult to categorize is the final boss, since this boss fight features three of these four types of gameplay, those being Classic, Avatar, and Tag Team. You could lump it together with Classic Sonic, since he's the one you initially play as in Phase 1, but I'll leave that up to the one who makes the charts to decide that. Heck, the boss levels are clearly designated throughout the game, (Except Metal Sonic) so it wouldn't be a problem to make a separate category for the bosses.

The last thing I want to discuss is version differences

One major difference I can think of right away deals with a glitch discovered by our very own sitewide champion, DarkspinesSonic. In this video he published back in mid November of 2017, he showcased one of two methods that can be used in stage 14 to walk on the first waterslide and infinitely kill respawning enemies to maximize both score and rings, which are 99,999,999 for score and 999 for rings respectively. The thing is, it's not clarified whether or not this is possible to do on the current version of the game, 1.01, and since some games require the latest version of the game to be used due to difficulty with downgrading to a previous version, it should be discussed whether or not stats should be done on the latest version of the game. If it can be done on the 1.01 version of the game, then the discussion should shift to whether or not to allow this.

There was also a time-stop bug found on stage 24, which is used to freeze the in-game timer throughout the entire level, so it should be discussed whether or not to allow that. This one is CONFIRMED to only work on the 1.0 release of the game and was patched in the 1.01 update. Here's the video in case you want to see it for yourself.

There were other things adjusted and fixed in the 1.01 update, like certain boss fights, certain Wispon abilities, and the player character's reaction when taking damage, so this means that some levels of the game will play differently depending on what version of the game you are playing, making the discussion about this all the more critical. I personally think the 1.01 version should be the one played, and make it so the current version of the game is to be used for competition in the future.

Okay, I'm about done with this mega post, and I've discussed about everything I can think of at this point. This took me all morning to write, and quite a bit of research, so if you think I missed something, let me know, and more importantly, tell me your thoughts for Forces competition down below. I'm excited to be the one to bring news of potential charts for Sonic Forces to TSC, I just hope I'm not the only one who feels this way. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read all of this, and I'll see you all on the charts!

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