Super Mario Sunshine IL Leaderboard Changes

With the recent addition of subcategories on Speedrun.com, it is now possible to make the Individual Level/World (ILs and IWs) leaderboards a lot more functional. These changes will make it possible to add all the Delfino Plaza Shines to the leaderboards, as well improving the IL leaderboards in general.

Unfortunately, this would require all current ILs and IWs to be deleted. So we would like to take this opportunity to address the timing method for ILs. The current timing method (start on Shine select, end on Shine grab) has multiple flaws, and for the sake of making ILs easier to do and to mitigate version differences, we propose the following changes:

- Time now starts on the fade in after the level introductory cutscene, right before you gain control of Mario.
- Time now ends when Mario Touches the Shine.

These changes make the timing method the same as the one used by the Japanese community. The advantages are as follows:

- Less load times within the timing, which are bad because loads are not always the same.
- No more ambiguity over when timing ends, as different people regard different portions of the Shine Get animation as the actual "grab".
- As Shine select is no longer included, practice codes can now be used to do ILs, provided there are no load zones within the level.
- No more double timing necessary for Japanese players.

So what does this mean for you if you have submitted ILs before, and/or want to in the future? You will need to retime and resubmit all ILs that you have currently submitted, if you want them to remain on the leaderboards. Before leaderboard changes are made, we will release a tutorial video on the SMSCommunity Youtube channel that will show you exactly how to time your ILs from then onwards. All future ILs you submit will need to be timed with this method.

Provided there are no changes to our plans, you can expect these changes to happen in early February 2016. We will keep you up to date on the progress on the SMSCommunity Twitter account.