[SadisticMystic]

The Cannon's Core warp glitch has been well known since the beginning of TSC, and it's the basis on which the Freestyle division was founded. The first two versions of the game are rather limited in the ways they can invoke "CC successor mode;" the classic method is to use Chao World, either by selecting it from stage select or from the Emblem Results screen, which is restricted in that you always get dumped into mission 1. Additionally, they can use the kart stages as a somewhat more flexible transition stage, in that it allows you to choose any mission number. However, this is only useful because of the Route 280 death reset in mission 2, so that CC2 FS can exist and yield an even lower time than mission 1 does in the original releases. Playing either kart stage on 3 or 5 is useless for creating FS charts because even Route 101 isn't as fast as the times that are possible by playing through Cannon's Core the "long way". So we only have freestyle charts there for missions 1 and 2.

Then along comes the HD rerelease, with its obligatory contribution of Sonic Team coding: somehow their implemention of widescreen allows the Chao Key glitch to arise, which is something exploitable with any character, in any mission, and it always invokes CC successor mode, even to the point of throwing you into the Test Level as a "null successor" if you haven't played CC recently. Notably, the timer will start from 0 regardless of what it was after the level you picked using this method, and this can be used to set FS times in missions 3 and 5 that are far better than what can be achieved on the standard charts. (Without the need to accrue any lead-in time from Chao World, this method is sufficient to beat the old FS record on mission 1 too, which is already acceptable.)

Should we bother adding these charts since the mission layouts are technically different (and in the case of 5, the inability to stop time so soon will cause that mission to end up with a slightly longer time than the others, unlike 1/2/3 which have the same theoretical minimum time but different endpoints)? Or should this quirk of the game be without a home on TSC, a la SA/DX characters in other levels, since the charts would be completely meaningless with respect to the original releases of the game, and the only releases in existence for better than a 10-year timespan? Does anyone even care about FS charts to begin with?

[ingx24]

I already have a WR for CC1 freestyle, i dont wanna get beaten by a bunch of shitty kids using a console i dont even own :(

</selfish>

[Cream147]

I already have a WR for CC1 freestyle, i dont wanna get beaten by a bunch of shitty kids using a console i dont even own :(

</selfish>

You mean just like Final Egg on SA sucks if you don't have a Dreamcast? And that's not even Freestyle!

</lolating>

[ingx24]

h8 u :(

[yoshifan]

Objectively, I don't see a particular reason to have a bias against the HD (PSN/XBLA) version.  At least from what I've seen and heard, the HD version doesn't seem like a particularly bad port, and could be compared to how the GC version was a reasonable port of the DC version.

We're allowing GC only and DC only tricks, and we practically even have GC only charts (see: kart racing and R101/R280 rings).  The merging of GC and DC stats has always been a bit of a point of contention, but that's what we've done up to now.  The thing that would be most consistent with our previous handling of this game would be to allow HD only tricks, and even charts, like Freestyle Cannon's Core 3 and 5.

Two potential issues:

(1)
Maybe the way we handle versions at TSC isn't the best way (I believe there's been a lot of discussion on this in other threads), and we shouldn't follow the example we've made up to this point.  Then again, what could we do otherwise?  Two other options are a. banning the HD version, or b. making a separate TSC game for Sonic Adventure 2 HD, neither of which seem very appealing to me.

(2)
SA2(B) competition has been just DC and GC for a very long time - for the whole 8-9 years of TSC's existence, in fact, and SA2B has been out for even longer than that.  Allowing HD only tricks could be a bit jarring for the more serious competitors who've been around for a while, particularly those who don't have (or plan to get) the HD version.

Now, Freestyle charts don't really have a history of intense competition anyway.  However, HD only tricks or shortcuts in non-Freestyle charts seem like a distinct possibility, even if we don't know of any yet (I think?).  And our policy about the HD version should be applied consistently to both Freestyle and non-Freestyle charts.

(Personally, though, I wouldn't mind HD only tricks or shortcuts.  I was already too lazy to get the Dreamcast version, even though I could get a used DC for relatively cheap on Amazon.  And the HD version would actually be easier for me to get, since I have a PS3.)


So in short... I would lean yes to adding these charts.  But I mainly wanted to lay out some issues and points to think about.

[SqwareEcks]

If it gets more people to play the game and compete, I'm all for it, even though I don't have access to the HD version myself. As far as a separate chart, I'd say just integrate it into the existing one. If one wanted to be proactive about future discoveries of HD-only tricks that could impact non-freestyle charts, maybe one could just add a restriction in the rules so that HD-only tricks are only allowed in the freestyle charts, since iirc those don't have any competition weight anyway?

[SadisticMystic]

The problem with integrating it into the existing chart is right now there is no existing chart. Over the first two versions and 11+ years of the game's release, it wasn't possible to use FS techniques in a way that allowed a better time on those missions than you could get with a regular completion, so FS charts were never put up. Only now, after the long-delayed port introduced a strange new glitch involving Chao Keys of all things, is it possible to adapt that glitch into a route that works on any mission.

[SqwareEcks]

Er, I should clarify what I meant. I meant put m3/5 freestyle alongside the m1/2 ones that are currently there, as opposed to creating a whole new HD chart.