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Official Green Box Discussion

Zike · 24 · 7586

Zike

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Head admin Gorge004 wants a community decision on the green box skip being allowed. I have already conducted a poll of people with Top Tens on jump_housebeta with an overwhelming majority thinking it should be allowed. Poll results here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11dNVynPs6uaG9tbgEATsAPKbMLJ4iCPhfaLmufxg0B8/edit#gid=0

Additionally, based on the comments of the jump_housebeta Course Collection there is some broader community support. That video is here:


Despite all this, Gorge disagrees that this is not enough people because everyone knows the wider jump community has a vested interest in jump_housebeta. Here is the current official admin reasoning for why the green box skip should not potentially be allowed:


I will leave you with one more comment from Gorge before leaving you to discuss.

« Last Edit: April 25, 2021, 08:02:40 PM by Zike »


Gorge004

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The discord reply in that img link sums up my thoughts about this.

If we discover an out of bound bug in a map that allows you to skip 5 jumps, we would fix it. If a mapper fucks up on a teleport trigger wich leads 2 jumps further then it should, we would fix it. We fix a bunch of bugs on plenty of maps weekly.

Why should it be different here is my question.

I don't say no, I ask why.

And if we allow greenbox skip, why not remove the jump altogether.



Waldo

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The precedent for map changes has always leaned towards allowing existing map cheats to persist (see: annex/aigis/rnc headbugs, missing teles/solid props in countless old maps). The only differences here are when the bug was found and how much time it saves relative to the rest of the run.

From a policy standpoint, the first point shouldn't matter at all; only new maps are held to that level of scrutiny. When reero/Zike found and used the jump_competitive L2 headbug, there wasn't any talk of strippering it out, despite the fact that it's substantially easier than legit, potentially faster, and based on a map bug. Same goes for the jump_pure strats; I don't think weeeee?.? intended for that level to start with jb and end with a headbug. It's obviously fair game and not something that should be removed by tempus. There are countless more examples of recently discovered strats on old maps that rely on oversights by the mapper and nobody even considers editing the map to remove them.

Similarly, saving a lot of time with a strat isn't reason to ban it either, especially in this case. Plenty of maps have very important strats that entirely decide the run (e.g. jump_bear sync ss strat, all the wallfox texturebugs).

The green box skip is necessary for a good time, nobody's arguing it. However, from a subjective standpoint, it's not skipping a large amount of the map (1 level), and the level it skips was arguably the reason why the map received so little competition in the first place. The only people who would be mad about this are the people with relevant tts/wrs, and Zike has already done the work of polling them.

Tempus fixes many bugs regularly, yes, but most OOB issues are either useless for speedruns (it just leads to people getting stuck) or it's the result of bad zoning (e.g. deserted, jasmine, beefmas). Relatively few are errors by the mapper, useful, and not already caught by checkpoints (e.g. 4starters tele to a later course).

If you want to talk about skipping the level entirely, we can have that discussion. I don't think it's a good idea since the casual playthrough of the map shouldn't be changed if the bug only impacts speedruns, and there's no precedent at all for tempus cutting out intended portions of the map entirely. Just because you can do the muffin headbug doesn't mean tempus should automate the process, no matter how inconsistent people find it.


Gorge004

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fair points, Tempus has allowed cheats to persist.

But, we never had to deal with a cheat that skipped over 50% of a course, time wise, because those bugs like you said are usually dealt with checkpoints.

To an extreme, the hanami bug that let you teleport to every jump from the cap room to skip everything was the biggest time save bug ever found, i dont think anyone is sad that was fixed.

This bug may only skip 1 lvl, but it skips 30s out of a 53s course wr, and a 1:19 map wr. I don't think it's fair to compare what Tempus has done in the past for bugs that skip a fraction of the time of a map run, to this wich almost cut the map wr in half.

This is I think a completely new scenario, somewhere inbetween an extreme case like Hanami that skips everything, and a headbug that skips 1/2 jumps saving a few seconds of maps that are minutes long.

Should we deal with it like we deal with small bugs or like extreme cases? Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no precedent for this type of situation, and it should be treated as such.

Let's say hypothetically checkpoints didn't matter, should the headbug on glow that skip from course 1 to course 2 be kept or remove as an integrety change to keep the run "good".


Waldo

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My point was mostly that there isn't a real precedent for removing "map bugs" as a whole, even if they have large implications for runs.

If we ignore precedent (since it is very contradictory and subjective), I think it makes sense to argue this from basics, and I think these are some good precepts:

1. Tempus should only intervene in gameplay if it's mandatory to make speedruns or basic gameplay work (e.g. patch out level select cheats, massive sequence breaks like 4starters, adding regen, removing softlocks).
2. For new maps, Tempus should hold maps (and mappers) to contemporary standards
3. For existing maps, Tempus should do as little as possible to preserve the integrity of existing times.

This skip is constrained to one level and doesn't involve leaving the bounds of the level as defined by the intended route. It also doesn't require a second player or garbage like resetting the map so this doesn't violate the first rule.

The map is ancient, so it shouldn't be held to the same standards as new maps being considered for adding.

It's disingenuous to pretend that this discovery is different from a Tempus change in any way other than origin given it's implications, so this violates the third rule. However, the party which is "wronged" by this is only those people who have invested time into speedrunning since it's a T3. A substantial majority of runners are in favor, so I think this can be an exception.

If Tempus admins believe that something is sufficiently broken to warrant debate (new skips, strats, etc), I think it's perfectly fine to preemptively stripper it and then poll interested parties (could be all completions if it makes a hard map easy, e.g. One Quick Trick To Beat Rickoconnel) before rendering a final decision. But if the argument against changes is that it invalidates previous runs, and the holders of previous runs are fine with it, it's overreach for admins to modify the map to prevent new strats.

More generally, I think this can be applied to "fixing" existing older maps as well. For example, many maps have "rng" telehops which require getting good tick-based spacing in order to avoid bonking the tele door and maintain momentum. As someone who has spent a good amount of time running such maps (e.g. bouncerific and arc), I'd be perfectly happy with Tempus strippering the tele out and back in much larger to make this consistent (or smaller to make it impossible!), despite the fact that this may make my times easier to beat. If a supermajority of relevant players desire such a change, I don't see why it shouldn't be done.

It's true that skipping "1 level" means half the map by time here. However, you can't ignore that the jump being skipped is pogoing in place for 30 seconds. Arguments for angle bhops on soldier usually focus on how they skip long downpogos; I think the same logic applies here. Likewise, the existence of the speedrun strat doesn't fully replace the "casual" strat.

Specifically regarding glow, I think that map's a great example. If glow were added now, it would get rejected for a multitude of reasons, so we'll pretend that the course skip was just found. If we follow the argument I outlined, the admins would stripper it to make the cheat impossible, leaving whatever newly "cheated" times were attained, and then poll top 10 time holders (both classes, using discretion if there are any other interested parties e.g. gato's offline -10 wr run). After some deliberation or even public discussion, either the stripper code would be removed, or the "cheated" times wiped.

I guess my question is: What group is hurt by allowing the green box skip? The only Tempus-motivated parties are tt/wr holders, who are largely in agreement. I don't think anybody has ever run the map offline, and it's not like this makes it easier. From a public image standpoint (if anybody cares...), the Tempus Records video looks a hell of a lot better with an instant tele than sitting in Green Box for 30 seconds.


riot

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This bug may only skip 1 lvl, but it skips 30s out of a 53s course wr, and a 1:19 map wr. I don't think it's fair to compare what Tempus has done in the past for bugs that skip a fraction of the time of a map run, to this wich almost cut the map wr in half.

I'm sure there are dozens of any% speedruns out there that skip around half of the game with one or two precise inputs.

Quote
Should we deal with it like we deal with small bugs or like extreme cases? Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no precedent for this type of situation, and it should be treated as such.

Personally I wouldn't call things like headbugs and texture bugs 'small' bugs. The former as seen on glow, and the latter having almost if not as big an impact as jumpbugs and not to mention random bhops and edgebugs for that matter. You can save minutes on wallpogo by doing one of these four, but the only way to prevent them is to build it into new maps with higher teleport triggers or obnoxious clipping. Many maps they apply to are extremely old maps without the foresight to prevent such bugs, but nobody decided they're an extreme case so it never got reviewed.

IMO if a strat saves time man the fuck up and beat that time.



Suprema Jero ϡ

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I think a good argument to consider is that it seems to be cheating the Tempus timer system more than anything.
In some sense you're going into the map, clearing part of the map (the green box) and then discounting that time by just resetting the timer.

If this was any other game you'd have to reset the map on every speedrun attempt.
It would be very weird in an fps speedrun to be able to first kill all the enemies, walk back to the start and then only time you walking trough the map. This green box business feels very similar to that and I think it therefor is unfair to compare it to tech you use in the run (e.g. headbugs).


Syphilis

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While I think the skip should be allowed, I think it should be considered that the green box jump legit is very funny


Dr. Heinz

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This bug seems very similair to texture bugs, or angled bhops. An angled bhop can basically skip an entrire jump with precise setup and timing. Same for the green box., which also requires a setup and precise timing.

Furthermore it seems 80+ percent of the community would like this to be viable. That seems too much of a percentage to ignore in my opinion


riot

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In some sense you're going into the map, clearing part of the map (the green box) and then discounting that time by just resetting the timer.

You also NEED to do this on jump_klanana to save time on WR as both soldier and demo but nobody seems to care


ondkaja

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The argument that is makes old runs obsolete is not a good argument since finding new strats is part of speedrunning and occasionally strats are found that save a lot of time over old runs. The answer isn't to disallow new strats, the answer is to re-run using the new strats.


Shunix

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In some sense you're going into the map, clearing part of the map (the green box) and then discounting that time by just resetting the timer.

You also NEED to do this on jump_klanana to save time on WR as both soldier and demo but nobody seems to care

actually i refused to run klanana because of this, shit was obnoxoious as fuck, id vote for that being fixed if it was an option


Klowwd

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I'm not into getting tts/wrs so I don't have a meaningful opinion but i think green box skip should be allowed. If this were old tempus we would've accepted the strat as the new meta. Jump doesn't really pride itself off perfect maps without bugs or exploits. Some other skips (that are not fixed to my knowledge) include:
  • The first jump on blossom can be skipped entirely
  • Psionic has a headbug skip that was allowed in Begininngs
  • Even though its old, tissue has a headbug
  • littleman
  • rnc
  • annex has a headbug strat on jump 2
  • aigis

Also the server crash exploit on egyptian has never been fixed. Seeing as we have new admins who are actually active that can possibly be fixed.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2021, 01:34:01 PM by Klowwd »


John

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it's a mapper's duty to fix their own bugs in their own maps, if it's left in the map, treat it as a part of the map tbh. old maps are effectively abandonded but they should still be treated as any other map