What timing methods should be used?
• Real time starts at clicking the campaign difficulty and ends upon seeing the 'Mission Complete' screen on the final mission. I think that's fine, though it does end up including load times. • Game time is the sum of times displayed at the end of each mission. It uses whole minutes so close records can become disputed. That, and like the rest of the series, save & load, or even restarting, can skew mission times. S&L can be banned for individual levels, but how do we treat it for full-game runs? • Real time (no loads) could be used to compromise between the two, though three time columns aren't much fun to deal with. S&L/Restarts are accounted for and load times are stripped.
Right now I have it set to sort by game time. Any thoughts?
For now, I've made 'real time without loads' the primary time. Until I or someone else makes an auto-splitter they'll have to be manually timed. 'Time with loads' and 'In-game time' are available as entries, but they're not required to be filled out.
• Real time without loads is the sum of times for each level, starting when the HUD appears and ending when the mission locks at the end or the last frame the HUD is visible. Time wasted on reloading or restarting are not subtracted, but this can be changed if the runners want to. It's required for submissions, but the runs can be timed by moderators if necessary. • Time with loads starts on clicking the campaign difficulty and ends when "Mission Complete" appears on screen after the final mission. Not required for submissions and ignored for individual levels. • In-game time is the sum of the times displayed at the end of each mission. If there were any reloads or restarts, this entry can't be filled out. This too can be changed. Not required for submissions.
Anyone looking to run the game shouldn't be too concerned about getting the right time. So long as a timer is visible I can check the times manually.
I'll probably apply this method to the other games in the series when I have the time to re-time runs.
I'm not sure that real-time without loads is necessary. From what I've seen, the loading times are usually just a couple seconds and it's an old game anyway, so it's not like there will be any huge differences between PCs like with Fallout 4 for example.
If you look at the current times on Any% leaderboards, all of them are roughly within 5 minutes.
Just my 2 cents ;)
I agree. It's mostly for the sake of individual levels, since game time isn't accurate enough for them, and calling the primary time 'time with loads' wouldn't be very accurate, since it would differ from full-game runs. Unless the series gets really popular I'm able to manually time things myself.
Since 'real time without loads' is the primary time, recording 'time with loads' and 'in-game time' is fairly arbitrary. If there was an option to hide those columns by default, I would.
They will be hidden if you leave them empty.
ILs should be timed manually without loads and cutscenes should be included, if the game doesn't have IGT or it's broken.
[quote=Ewil]ILs should be timed manually without loads and cutscenes should be included, if the game doesn't have IGT or it's broken.[/quote]
It does have IGT, but it's only accurate to the minute, which isn't very reliable. I am currently timing ILs to include cutscenes since 1) They're all fixed durations so they don't make and difference between runs and 2) They could theoretically be skipped.
And by hidden, I mean I'd like for viewers to be able to toggle their visibility.
