The Rules for Marble Blast Speedrunning

We the moderation team have been working on a set of rules for speedrunning the Marble Blast games and after recent developments we feel that it is finally time to release them to the community. These rules are now official, and are in full effect. Runs that break them are going to be removed from our leaderboards. They are not set in stone and are subject to change based on well reasoned community input or the moderator team's discretion. Without further ado, here they are.

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The home of Marble Blast Speedrunning is its leaderboards. All the official world records and legitimate times are collected here and are viewable by anyone. Runs are automatically saved to the leaderboards when playing Online within PlatinumQuest but runs performed offline are eligible for submission to the leaderboards.
These rules outline what is and is not permitted for runs to be considered “legitimate” for the purposes of submission to the leaderboards. If your run uses some heretofore unknown glitch it may be retroactively deemed illegitimate if the moderation team decides the glitch to be prohibited. If your run is verified and submitted to the leaderboards but later determined to have broken one or more of these rules then all of your runs will be removed and you will be banned for cheating. The moderation team reserves the right to reject any run at any time for reasons not listed here.

There are some rules that apply to both games, PlatinumQuest and Marble Blast Gold (runs performed in Marble Blast Platinum are no longer eligible for submission) and there are some game specific rules in addition to these. The global rules are as follows:

1. You must provide an in-game generated recording file of your run–either a .rec or .rrec file from MBG or PQ respectively–a screen recording or a live stream will not be accepted. To learn how to record one of these demo files see here . Send your recording file to a moderator via Discord or the Forums to have them verify your run.
2. You are not allowed to lag or modify your game so that your Frames Per Second (FPS) drops below 30 at any point during your run. Doing so, even accidentally, will invalidate your run. (e.g. Screenshot Glitch, lagging computer, etc.)
3. Using external software to alter how the game is played is prohibited with one exception. Your FPS can be altered–so long as it remains above the minimum acceptable limit of 30–however, this alteration must occur before any run begins, and persist through the entire run. Your FPS may not be altered in the middle of your run. Any run that shows an intentional manipulation of your FPS mid-run will not be accepted.

The game specific rules are:
PlatinumQuest:

1. Runs must be performed in an unmodded, official version of PlatinumQuest.
2. Using the in-game console to alter gameplay is prohibited. No exceptions.

Marble Blast Gold:

1. Runs must be performed in an unmodified vanilla version of Marble Blast Gold. With one exception, that being the MBExtender mod to unlock FPS beyond the cap of 64 or 167 (Windows and Mac limits respectively).
2. Using the in-game console to alter gameplay is prohibited with some exceptions:
   • Using the console to start recording a demo file.
   • Using the console to alter the game resolution.
   • Using the console to unlock/lock your FPS, either via the vsync (vertical sync) command or via the MBExtender mod.
   • Using the console to verify the 3rd decimal place (as the game records the thousandths place but only displays to the hundredths place).
   • Using the console to verify other run statistics such as bonus time.

If your run does not break these rules then it will be verified by a moderator and submitted to the Leaderboards. Have fun and good luck with your speedruns!

Thank you for outlining these rules unambiguously. It feels like it's been kind of vague for a while.

I do have one question though, about the list of exceptions for using the console in MBG.

Using the console to unlock/lock your FPS (via the MBExtender mod).

The command for this is or true to re-enable it. So I'm assuming that's fine. My question, then, is are we allowed to use the command to lock the frame rate of the game to V-sync? (As long as it's above 30 FPS, of course—and vice versa, false to unlock it.) If so, that should also be on the list of console exceptions for MBG.

The allowed commands in MBG is the area of the rules least fully fleshed out and is the most open to change. You are correct in that that command can and should be allowed as it does what third party FPS locking would do anyways, so long as, as you pointed out, it stays above 30fps. I will add this to the permissible commands.

The vagueness of the rules was one of the main catalysts for creating an official ruleset in the first place. I'm glad to hear that these are appreciated.

Does this mean that using a thousandths place timer gui mod is now disallowed? What about time travel timer gui mods? Neither of these will appear in rec replays fwiw so enforcement is honor system at best...

Yo. I know many players (including me) play with some tweaks to add quality of life features to MBG, mostly to add parity with PlatinumQuest where it makes sense and isn't hard to add. These tweaks are now blanket banned by the new ruleset, which I don't believe was completely the intention of the mod team, since I thought the more significant addition to the ruleset was banning mid run fps changes. However I totally understand that you don't want people randomly tinkering with their mbg in ways that could get them an advantage. So if need be, I'd be happy to work with the mod team to come up with an "allowed" set of scripts that could be used or something, if that's something they want to do. I might be getting ahead of myself though, here are some things that I think are acceptable to use in runs and I ask the moderators to consider explicitly allowing:

• AFAIK technically this new ruleset bans custom marble skins, which I don't think anyone has a problem with and everyone uses them anyway. Might be good to state that that's ok, along with other non-invasive asset changes like htx's boing-y super bounce voice
• HiGuy has a one-line change to the PlayGUI script which allows for higher FOVs, which is very nice when playing on large monitors (or just like, in 2023). marbleblast.com/index.php/forum/mb-suppo...lt-fov/145983#145983
• Dom has a modified version of the formatTime function which shows thousandths, which means the console isn't needed to check for the final score as it will be shown with thousandths on the end screen. To clarify, this is not the same as adding the third decimal to the PlayGUI so it can be seen during runs.
• I don't even think this counts as non-vanilla since you just need to change the input config file, but being able to press R to restart is a genuine life saver and I don't think I'd play in vanilla MBG if that's not allowed lol

Those things above are things I really think should be allowed, since they don't give any advantage and just make the game closer to PQ. The next few things I think are still totally fine (they're also just PQ features), and I'd love to be able to play using them, but I understand they'd probably require more discussion than the above points.

• Showing thousandths while playing. This doesn't matter in most cases, but for catch levels, this does give a sort of "IRL time" advantage since in case a run ties to the hundredth, you can see if have a better catch or not by looking at the thousandth, and decide to reset if you don't have the time you want. IMO that's a good thing, it eliminates some guessing and allows players to achieve times without needing to waste IRL time hoping that a catch is better than their PB/goal. It's up to you guys if that guessing game should be a required part of grinding mbg catch levels.
• A time travel timer. This one doesn't give really any advantage I think, I just made it cuz I thought it'd be cool to have in MBG lol. It does make it cooler seeing how much bonus time was left when finishing levels.

I've previously done a some runs with most of the above changes, and for full transparency, the script files I've been using can be found here: git.thearst3rd.com/thearst3rd/marble-blast-gold-tweaks

I know that some runners use more scripts Dom made, like one that says how many frames after go the marble hit the ground (checked after the run). I don't know what's in there but that stuff sounds very useful as well.

Anyways, I figured I'd put my thoughts out there about tweaked MBG installations. I totally get why the new rule is in place, but I think it goes a bit too far and I'd love to see some of these things explicitly allowed, especially since as HiGuy mentioned some of these things are just going to have to be honor system. I'd be happy to work with you guys to make "official" scripts based on what you think should be allowed.

Thanks for reading my novel lol

You both make fair points.

I am personally against altering the game for speedrunning purposes as this does grant the user of the mod/script an unfair advantage, if the script didn't give you an advantage you wouldn't use it. However, if the community wants these changes to be allowed then we should allow them. Because in the end it's about keeping the game fun and making the competition fair. And if we're all allowed to use the same scripts then the competition is fair. If we don't allow scripts we cannot check for in a .rec, then we sort of encourage cheating to some extent, which we obviously want to avoid. Though I will also say that scripts and mods can introduce new bugs into the game and allow for times that are not possible in a vanilla game. And as far as I know none of the WR runners use these kinds of scripts.

We will have to keep looking at this over the coming weeks and gauge the general sentiment. If the community wants it then I think it's most reasonable to allow it, and an official list of permissible scripts would have to be made so it's a fair competition.