Shovel Knight Relay Plan

Shovel Knight 4 Character Relay Rough Plan

When: Earliest SGDQ 2019, more realistically AGDQ 2020 and beyond.

Ideally:
-4 teams with 4 players each
-Top 4 runners of each character

Optional:
-Some backup runners in case some people can not attend or face travel complications

Commentary:
-Would be hosted by a constant shoutcaster type person (think CovertMuffin orJHobz)
-Host would be joined by a runner or two until the runners are needed for their characters. People swap out. This gets new voices heard and keeps things fresh.

Other things to consider and discuss:
-Yes King is not released and we need time for runners of that to appear
-16 players is a lot. 3 way race with 12 people may be more realistic
-The earlier we start planning the better chance we have of making this happen. We can plan fundraising things to help people get to the event.
-Ideally all runners of the same character have close PBs.

I have posed the idea to Vulajin, Sent, darkman, and other people in the community and they all think a relay like this has a good chance of getting in when we have it ready. This does not guarantee it of course, but I wanted to mention it to let everyone know that the public wants to see this thing happen.

FAQ:
Q: All 4 characters is too long isn't it?
A: For our purposes, let's set estimates for each character as follows: Shovel at 47 minutes, Plague and Specter at 43 minutes (worst case scenario for runners of this skill level). Let's set King at 50 minutes, as that seems to be a reasonable amount of time for all campaigns thus far. That all adds up to a little over 3 hours of speedruns. The Mario Bros. relay estimate was 3 hours 40 minutes, so we are well within acceptable ranges for time.

Q: How will we handle runner swaps?
A: Took this idea from Vulajin. The Mario Bros. relay had a minute of time in between each game to setup the console and runner. It ended up being more than enough. If you set up in ten seconds you had to wait for the whole minute to go down. I think something like this is fine, as it would give people time to set up their controls.

Q: What platform will we use?
A: We will have to use PC for one major reason: Controls. PC allows for the most customization and suits our needs perfectly. That said, this means we will need to bring laptops that run the game correctly. We have had nothing but trouble with Shovel Knight on GDQ PCs. That is not the fault of GDQ staff, I wish to make that clear. It's the fault of Windows. Regardless, this is something that can be overcome. I can work directly with Shane to get PCs that will work.

Q: Team names?
A: Up for debate. I am fond of naming teams after enemies. Each team gets a shirt color and enemy of that color. Tadvolt is green team, Duck Knight is Yellow team, etc. (Yes it's team Duck Knight, not Gold Armor.)