Relevant links:
Open Broadcaster Software, a top notch recording and streaming program.
LiveSplit, a timer program designed for speedrunning.
Spiral Knights on splits.io, where you can save your times from LiveSplit with others. Note that LiveSplit can download runs from Splits.io so that you don't have to set up floor names yourself and whatnot. To do so, open LiveSplit --> right click --> Open Splits --> From Splits.io... --> search Spiral Knights --> download the run you want to do.
Spiral Knights on Speedrun.com, where the leaderboards are hosted! If you would like to participate, go here!
================================
I've been a speedrunning enthusiast for years. Surely you all know what a speedrun is. If not, check out this Ocarina of Time speedrun and maybe you'll get a better idea. Speedrunning translates quite well to Spiral Knights, although people don't really play through the entire game. Rather, people play through specific missions to maximise their income to time ratio. An example of this is people aiming to do Firestorm Citadel in as short time as possible, which gives a ton of Crowns while being up to twice as fast as regular runs with randoms.
Speedrunning as a competition in Spiral Knights is something less common, though. While there have been competitions through the years, there's been nothing really consistent. I'd like to change that, but I'm wondering how much interest there is. How many people are truly interested in competitive speedrunning in SK? Should there be enough interest, I'll be happy to set up leaderboards for us.
Now, let's talk rules. My idea of a standardised ruleset:
- The runner must show when they start the mission so that the difficulty isn't lied about. Although cheating can be done anyway through video editing, this will at least make it harder with livestreams. If cheating happens anyway, it can be pointed out by looking at how much health enemies have.
- Timing starts when loading the first level (not the depth 0 lobby) has reached about 90%, as one can move before loading is 100% done.
- Timing ends when the token of a boss run spawns for boss missions, when enemies disappear and the exit opens in the Seerus fight for O:CH, or when the final elevator is reached for other missions.
- To clarify in the above reasoning, I think loot areas and floors should not be timed since speedrunning them is trivial (merely running past the loot is not a challenge) and loot is largely the reason people speedrun in this game when not doing so competitively.
- While cutting out mid-run loading screens could be a good idea, I feel like in the end, it would be problematic due to inevitable disagreements about exactly when a loading screen ends as well the effort required by a third party to verify how much to actually cut away from a run.
Agree? Disagree? Want to add anything?
================================
Current ruleset: http://www.speedrun.com/sk/guide/ztn27
Feel free to propose changes!
I feel like speedrunning in this game leads to somewhat degenerate behavior. You lose time off your first death while you wait for your auto-revive, but all other deaths increase your damage done and therefore your speed, so to optimize speed means slamming sparks. The difference between waiting for traps and blowing past them and rezzing later is pretty large as well.
I guess if you divided into sub-categories like no-death and no-damage (my preferred ruleset TBH, I did Mr. Perfect in MM9 and it just feels so intense at the end of a run) you'd have competition that I think would be more interesting, but then you start getting into all sorts of shenanigans like what is considered the definitive ruleset etc.