Sonic Central > Rules Revisions

E-102 Hot Shelter and dumbness [Resolved...again]

(1/14) > >>

SadisticMystic:
Ever since the beginning of the site, it's been known that the switches in E-102 Hot Shelter give +1 second, and you can hit them as many times as you want.  This was used to give several times in the 99-minute range, and everything went along smoothly.

Then Marth discovered a way to break through the walls of the boss room after time has been stopped entering that room, but before you touch down and actually trigger the boss fight.  It only worked on GameCube, though, allowing those players to get a few seconds higher.  Again, no uproar was raised about this.

On February 20 of this year, I noticed a problem with this level.  On Dreamcast, you can't stop the clock to freely build up time, but the timer isn't capped to 99 minutes either.  Minutes is a signed variable for some reason (like most of SA seems to be), so you can build the timer up to a maximum of 127:59.  That's a version difference of 28 minutes.

The big problem: Nowhere does that time get displayed in full.  I used the higher timer cap to obtain a time of 118:14.11, but the in-game screen displayed 99:59.99, the level complete screen displayed 99:14.11, and the level select screen shows 18:14.11.  There's nothing that can be used to display the full 118 minutes.  Furthermore, it would require a TSC coding change in order to enter times of 100 minutes or more.

I briefly brought up this problem, but it was ignored.  Now there's been plenty more playing around in E-102 Hot Shelter, and the discussion has come back.  Should times up to the 127-minute range be allowed, even though there would be no way to prove such a time?  Psyknux took advantage of the increased timer cap and used it to get something that does display properly, 99:58.54, but other than the final times, 99:58 and 118:14 are done in the same way.  Should that 99:58.54 be submittable?  Should the legality be determined not by the tactics used, but the way the game displays your time?  If you used the trick to get, say, 100:15, it would display on the level select screen as 00:15.  But the presence of an A emblem would make it clear that your best time couldn't possibly be just 15 seconds.  For Hot Shelter, could this be used to raise the limit for unambiguously identifiable times on Dreamcast to just under 102 minutes?

Does the whole scalping-switches-for-unlimited-time deal in Hot Shelter need to be itself examined (possibly thrown into a Freestyle division)?

Discuss your ideas here.


-----
RULING 11-14-2006 by Rolken

New rule: As Gamma, no switch may be shot more than once.

Times above 100min are only visible from the select screen and then only without the leading 1, rendering times impossible to prove and even more broken to compete in since you can't determine your time in-level.

Accordingly, all times above 90min have been suspended.

Auriman1:
That technique does seem like something which should fall under the freestyle division.

X-5:
I think it's a stupid way to time attack a level to be quite honest(anyone can hit the B button for an hour to hope to get lucky at the boss)

As magnum12 said, it takes the fun out of doing the stage properly, a freestyle divison or just banning it I think would be best off.

and I never noticed until now, but I have the best non-switch abuse time!

Groudon:
In a way, it isn't as fun as TAing without switch abuse, but if this gets a ban or freestyle, anything that doesn't seem as fun as normal TAing could get the same things. *points to 3 Shadow missions and magnum's comment on this one* If anyone can do what ParaGod said, anyone can use the trick used for the Shadow times.

* Groudon run

Crowbar:
I think it's not so much about sapping the fun out of things as just plain breaking the level.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page