Submission Guidelines

Tool-Assisted Hacks Guidelines

Tool-assisted hacks are hacks designed to be played with the assistance of emulator tools like savestates, slowdown, frame advance or lua scripting. These hacks usually cater to players with above-average knowledge of the game engine's mechanics and glitches. While the hacks in this category are difficult enough to require tool-assistance, creativity is still more important than difficulty!

Categorization Guidelineslink

When submitting a tool-assisted hack, make sure it is submitted to the appropriate subcategory. Please read the following descriptions of the two tool-assisted subcategories and try to choose the appropriate one.

Tool-Assisted Categories
Tool-Assisted: Kaizo	These hacks use emulator tools to shift the focus of the game from manual execution of tricks towards a more thinking-based level design. They are not primarily designed with difficulty in mind. Instead, these hacks focus on showcasing interesting game mechanics without worrying about whether the end result is clearable in one attempt. Since savestates are encouraged when playing hacks in this category, the player will have arbitrarily many successive attempts at any given obstacle. This allows the player to reliably execute frame-perfect tricks and clear obstacles that are inherently inconsistent. Hacks in this subcategory should not force the player to simply string together difficult tricks - instead, they should force the player to think before they approach any given obstacle. While hacks in this subcategory are designed to be played with emulator tools, they usually do not require extensive use of high levels of slowdown and rarely require use of frame advance. They are, on average, easier to complete than Pit hacks.
Tool-Assisted: Pit	These hacks usually consist of a single, very difficult level. Their main audience are Super Mario World TASers (Tool-Assisted Speedrunners) and viewers of TASes. Pit hacks are designed to be watched just as much as they are designed to be played. As a consequence, they usually have little downtime, showcase counter-intuitive gameplay behavior and often have a claustrophobic look. They also tend to go all-out on difficulty. The tricks and glitches used in Pit hacks are usually very precise and require massive use of emulator tools to execute. It is not uncommon that a Pit hack is entirely played frame-by-frame and even with all emulator tools, some obstacles can take an hour or more to clear. Pit hacks require and reinforce a precise low-level understanding of the core game mechanics, both on the side of the creator and the player. The player of a Pit hack is expected to have thorough knowledge of the game's glitches and is expected to use all the emulator tools available in order to complete the hack. When submitting a Pit hack, it is recommended to submit a clear video or a movie file completing the hack in order to aid with moderation.

If you suspect something is miscategorized, or could be recategorized for whatever reason reach out to the moderation team.


Additional Guidelineslink

• Levels in tool-assisted hacks should not contain excessive breaks  §
  Unforeseen solutions that render a significant portion of a level meaningless in an unintended way may result in rejection. This is mainly applicable if a break is both easier to discover and easier to execute than the intended solution. Note that some older hacks on the site may have excessive breaks as breaks sometimes only get discovered years after the initial release.


• Tool-assisted hacks should know and avoid common level-breaking techniques  §
  To prevent unintended solutions to your obstacles, be aware of design-breaking glitches such as block duplication, item swaps, key jumps or Reznor spawns. As it is not uncommon that these tricks are required in hacks of this category, the player will generally assume that any solution using them is fair game. For Tool-assisted: Kaizo hacks, if a trick requires massive emulator tools (e.g. corner clips or repeated wall jumps), a break involving them will usually be acceptable. In Pit hacks however, no such restrictions apply and the creator should be aware of any tricks and glitches that can potentially break their level.


• Tool-assisted hacks should be original  §
  Avoid building a hack that exclusively relies on overused tricks like precise muncher gaps, p-switch jumps, shell jumps or key jumps without adding any variety or anything new. Basically, try to make sure that the player thinks "This is an interesting setup!" at least once during their playthrough.


• Tool-assisted hacks should run on a console-accurate emulator  §
  To ensure consistent behaviour when dealing with obscure game mechanics, Tool-Assisted hacks have stricter requirements for emulator accuracy. Your hack should be beatable as-intended on a modern version of BizHawk (with the BSNES or BSNESv115+ core selected—the preferred core can be changed in: Config > Preferred Cores > SNES options) or lsnes. We do not recommend using Snes9x for testing or building your hack as it emulates less accurately.

Remember to review the Guidelines for all hacks in addition to these before submitting your hack.