HMT - Hyper Modernization of Timing

Hyper Modernization of Timing

(HMT)

Ideas and thoughts
The big seal of Any% in Paper Mario right now that hinders it from being a better speedgame is without a doubt the Prologue section of the game. It only has two tricks and they are Jr. T skip and BTS, both of these are reset worthy and Prologue is a drag  for all runners looking to do more runs but eventually fail due to having to sit through yet another auto-pilot Prologue for 20mins. Speedgames are ultimately best when the runner gets to save up time on minimal movement improvements, however since Prologue is overdone into oblivion it feels just like a big cutscene that might as well could have ben cut from the game.

My proposal is just that. Cut Prologue out of the game and move on from our old standard Real-Time Attack (RTA) rules into something I call Hyper Modernization of Timing, or HMT for short. The idea of HMT is to combat things that hold the respective speedgame back. Bringing more action, optimization and fun into speedruns.

There are more ways to time a game then just from file select and "The End" after credits. Paper Mario had already had such a change and cut out the non-action credits. But I want to build on that, and making Paper Mario an even more attractive speedgame to run. In OoT for example they end timing on the last hit on Ganon, skipping the boring text-mashing at the end. This enables the player to rightfully celebrate right as he/she beats the game. For Paper Mario right now the player has to yet sit through 5mins and 40sec of cutscenes after getting the power to grant any wish in the world (the Star Rod). All for a over glorified 20sec end-game movement that you basically never lose more then half a second time on.

There are a few questions coming up as to how exactly do we skip Prologue. Like how much coins, items and star points should the player have. Also since many routes differ from prologue we don't want to set it all to standard 0coins, 0items, 86sp. We need something of a system with add on time for everything extra we pick-up in prologue.

So where should the run start?
In my opinion the Chapter 1 title card is the perfect spot to start a run because that's where we have our prologue split. Then end time getting Star Rod so the player can celebrate immediately after beating Bowser with a solid end-time on hand. Then after the run is done we just add a few seconds from any extra coins, items or star points gained in prologue before the run started. It would cut 25mins and 40sec from the run, only a few minutes being action (battles in prologue requires minimal input and never changes).

Also in the same swipe that the add-on time I would also like to cut out the lag from the Wii VC and N64 consoles. It ruins the comparison between the consoles and since players are going to compare across consoles it would be a good idea to have a system to calculate that difference. Of course since lag is not always consistent, so we would have to do a lot of testing. But I would rather we would do that then have a full on console split. After timing has been calculated by a mod it would take down the general +1min grey area down to around 10-15sec grey area. Making a console comparison more understandable and people wouldn't feel bad for being Wii U'ed by a minute or two stealing their rightful spot on the leaderboard.

If we were to change the timing I would suggest we do it in one category as a test. Any% or Any% no PW makes most sense since they are the categories most plagued by prologue. We could do a general time rule of 60sec per 100min but I think we need to go deeper and calculate laggy rooms and get a better understanding of the game so it becomes even more fair. For this process to be reliable we would need to time each room or battle at least 3-4 times to get a general idea how much lag it takes. It would be a lot of work, but it also would improve our speedrun gaming experience.

Moving into a new future.
With no Prologue.
Fairer console comparison.
Time truly ends when you beat Bowser, and thus the game.
With no console split we could add a Duplighost tab making for some fun "best pace ever" PBs to get.

Thank you for reading and make sure to come with general feedback on discord.
- KalarMar