BTA Collab

BTA Collab is a new initiative by the organizers of the Better Than Average (BTA) Celeste Tournament.

Intentions & Motivation

We want to create a collab that celebrates speedrunning and show off levels that are made with speedrunning in mind. Levels that are difficult to optimize, test mechanic knowledge and game knowledge, and keep runners at the edge of their seat, which should make them MOST IMPORTANTLY... fun to speedrun. Our hope is that the BTA Collab will be a true test of player's speedrunning chops.

It's our hope BTA Collab will also be used for the finals of the coming year of BTA competitions, and because competitors will have a limited amount of time with the levels before they need to use them in a competition, we aim to test strat formulation in a way we haven't been able to before.

Completion looks like:

• 24 maps + a Heartside map, to parallel vanilla Celeste
• A lobby to house all 25 maps

Sound Interesting?

Timeline

Most of our timeline is pretty flexible and still in the works, but here's what we're thinking at the moment:

June 22nd, 2024

Mapper Interest Form Closes

October 20th, 2024

1st Draft of Maps

May 30th, 2025

Projected Collab Release

August 30th/31st, 2025

BTA Open / Celebration - A BTA Tournament using this collab

September 7th/8th, 2025

BTA Championship - The culmination of the 2024-2025 BTA Season, also played on this collab

Mapping Guidelines

The goal is to bring together levels that embody the spirit of vanilla speedrunning, but with new levels and a little chocolate.

Try to stay within these guidelines:

• Don't make it too difficult to finish! We don't have a hard limit to difficulty but please keep it beginner, intermediate, or mayyybe low advanced.
• Maps may not require tech outside of what's taught in the beginner and intermediate gyms in Strawberry Jam. If you do make a room that requires anything harder or more obscure, you should also create an alternative route of about the same length that doesn't require it.
• Avoid engineering shortcuts. Let the process of creative strat choice take place for runners.
• No RNG (or similarly unpredictable mechanics)
• Custom mechanics/entities are allowed and encouraged, but try to avoid using anything too chocolatey or obscure. We want to encourage strat discovery, not to knowledge-check the players!
• Aim for over 2 minutes Speedrun time of maps; the longer the better (within reason). This does mean all maps should be a bit on the long side.