Built-in within N is a highscore section, which aim is to provide a solid platform for all players to compete with each other, trying to complete the levels and episodes with the most amount of time left as possible. That means, going as fast as possible and taking all worthwhile pieces of gold. If a piece of gold takes more than 2 seconds to get, then its not worthwhile. If you have done it good enough, you'll appear on the Top20 Boards. Each level and episode has its own Top20 Board, and this in itself is already a challenge for new players, as it requeries a decent skill. If you are the fastest player to complete a level or episode, you'll appear at the top of the list. That's called a 0th, since the top position is called 0th. The reason for this is that eveything in N starts with 0 instead of 1. With the passing of time, the boards have become harder and harder, and therefore taking a 0th requires a big deal of skill.
On this section you can not only compete with the rest of players, but also check their runs in case you are stuck or don't remember the route. You can also watch all your demos via this section. Using software specially developed for this, called NHigh (check for more info), one can download all scores from the boards and make rankings, to show who has the most 0ths, the most Top20 Scores, etc.The player with the most 0ths overall is called the Grandmaster.
Highscore Rankings
The highscore rankings without filtering can become quite polluted, because of the lack of an anti-cheating system; such a system is hoped to be introduced in N 1.5[1]. A speedhack detection countermeasure has already seen great success in NReality, proving the legitimacy of many players including xaelar, Mr_Lim, lookatthis, Ben_Schultz_11, vankusss, EddyMataGallos, Kool-Aid, eru_bahagon and golfkid to name a few. This has helped a lot in order to have a clean and proper rankings, without fake scores and players. All known hackers and cheaters have been omitted from the following lists.
The Highscores Rankings as of 23 July 2012
- Includes tied 0ths
Total 0th Ranking
0 EddyMataGallos - 169 1 vankusss - 116 2 xaelar - 115 3 eru_bahagon - 35 4 Kool-aid - 34 5 Ben_Schultz_11 - 30 6 Mr_Lim - 17 7 golfkid - 16 8 swipenet - 15 9 Raif - 13 10 macrohenry - 9 11 Seifer - 8 12 Izzy - 7 13 glib_jase - 6 14 lookatthis - 4 - clux - 4 - ToeFaceKiller - 4 - Meta_Ing - 4 - Analu - 4 19 Gutland - 3
Total Top-20s Ranking
0 EddyMataGallos - 599 1 eru_bahagon - 586 2 lookatthis - 574 3 golfkid - 561 4 xaelar - 556 - Mr_Lim - 556 6 glib_jase - 454 7 Hendor - 446 8 Ben_Schultz_11 - 439 9 ToeFaceKiller - 411 10 vankusss - 408 11 Analu - 376 12 johnny_faneca - 313 13 Darkshadow1416 - 225 14 Chouse - 181 15 trib4lmaniac - 178 16 macrohenry - 173 17 Izzy - 159 18 zapkt - 151 19 swipenet - 145
Total Game Score Ranking
The total game score table for players can be found here. This
Cheating
Since the infamous appearance of naem, some highscorers began to be distrusted by the main forum body, as a number of their scores have appeared to be made illegitimately. Legit highscorers were always frustrated with this topic (see johnny_faneca for more info).
kryX-orange, who had an alter ego called ANGERFIST, admitted that he cheated all of his metanet runs by slowing the game down[2], and consequently, his scores are not counted as legitimate runs, as have a few other cheaters including crappitrash, L3X, Goo, Bonzai, pokemaniac1342 and Sp33dy. Hacking was also rife within the highscores charts, as some people hack their .sols to submit fake scores to an extent where at one point, every level contained at least one hacked score. Fortunately, on November 10th 2011, Mare, with the help of a few others in the community eradicated most of these hacked scores and any subsequent hacked runs can easily be ignored by using the 'ignore' feature on NHigh until they are vanquished yet again by Mare. NReality prevents the use of speedhacking, sol hacking and any other illegal method. There's no tolerance with any cheater or any cheated score in the community, there are strict rules. Therefore, the current Rankings done at the community are completely polished from hackers/cheaters and are now the fair system that many highscorers from the past desired, so if you're one of those and are reading this, you can gladly come back.
Removal of the hacked scores
During November 2011, a cleansing campaign spearheaded by Mare finally began with a two phased removal of the hacked scores, which filled up to about 30% of all available spots. After some additional help from a 999_Springs, Izzy and EddyMataGallos, all the hacked scores were completely removed (barring the exception of speedhacked runs by cheaters (which are ignored on the official rankings), which the majority of the community sees as a tolerable compromise for now). This sparked a notable increase in highscoring activity by jubilant highscorers. It has also been revealed that every highscore run submitted is saved on the Metanet database - not only the first 20 or 40 scores. The highscorers were finally able to see the (almost legitimate) top-20 board of episode 00 for the first time in years.