THP8 Rank 1 FAQ

Q: What is Rank 1?
A: In THP8, the ultimate goal is to become the #1 skater on the in-game leaderboard. To get there, you need to accomplish a large majority of the game and its increasingly difficult goals to attain the top spot. Rank 1 is a speedrun to do just that. I consider it one of the most difficult categories in the community to complete.

Q: What is the World Record?
A: You can check https://speedrun.com/thp8 for an up-to-date listing of the leaderboards.

Q: Why is this around 3 hours?
A: Rank 1 requires a LOT. A lot of goals take a little bit to complete (Competitions), RNG can be bad (bail goals), and playing optimally can be difficult.

Q: What is your goal?
A: Sub-2:20. I can save a ton of time everywhere.

Q: What is the criteria to get to Rank 1?
A: From the testing I've conducted, you must complete all goals, 95% of all goals must be Sick (6 can be Pro), ~52% of all gaps are found, all secret spot tokens are collected, and all pro challenges are completed. We also skip Dance Lessons, School Banners, SKID Marks the Spot, and School Audition.

Q: Why are you opting to go for Pro on a few goals?
A: If I go for Pro, specifically, it is because the Sick version is incredibly stupid (bail goals) or a waste of time (bail goals). I can skip out on at least 5 of these goals through the game.

Q: What is the autosplitter you talk about?
A: Since I am playing on an Xbox 360, I cannot autosplit in the normal sense with PCs. Luckily, Toufool created a tool that integrates with LiveSplit that watches your run, compares preset images you made against what it is seeing, does some maths, and autosplits if it feels like it is accurate enough. Still some tinkering need to be done! You can check it out here: https://github.com/Toufool/Auto-Split

Q: What is that weird Xbox 360 dashboard?
A: That is the original "blades" dashboard that came with a stock 360 back in 2005/2006! It was eventually updated to the NXE and, eventually, the Kinect dashboards, but they require a lot more resources to run. Testing shows that, for Any%, we save around 20 seconds with the blades due to reduced lag spikes and better loading!

Q: How do you have a controller cam?
A: I use RetroSpy, a fork of the NintendoSpy project that specializes in integrating the software with an external PCB (a Beaglebone). A little pricey to setup (around $100 for an entire kit), but it adds to the experience since Tony Hawk games usually have some high actions per minute. :) (Plus, it is good for tutorials)

Q: Wait, are you using an actual GameCube controller on a 360?
A: Yup! I use a special adapter called a Cronus Max (newer versions are called the Cronus Zen) that converts a different USB controller's inputs into the host console's format. In this case, I use a Power A GCN Controller (which comes with an extra L button) that acts exactly like a 360 controller!

Q: Why are you doing X?
A: Ask! There are still a lot of issues I am still working out with this run.