Pointed out by Redlof, the game is unstable, he made a point that it would take around ~55 seconds to restart the game and his suggestion is that a crash should add 1 minute to the game time submitted no matter what platform submitted on.
Thoughts from active runners and mods?
From my point of view, a crash should only affect RTA and that there is no need for time to be added to in game time, especially looking at the fact that IGT is only counted when you are directly playing the game, not when in menu or even doing a minigame.
If a crash and the time spent restarting PSP is considered time spent in menu/paused then there isnt really a need to add time.
I think i should start by explaining how exactly i calculated IGT in all any% nsg runs. (and one 100% run too) The only things that made me add something to stat-screen time always were either getting accidentally busted during the run, or getting any crash(es). (consistent one, or any different ones, doesn't matter)
If i would get busted at any point then after the run is over i would go and see what kind of time i had on livesplit after game was done performing an autosave for completing a mission before one i got busted on and then i would also look what kind of time i had on livesplit when i appeared in whatever safehouse after i reloaded a save and would end up adding that amount of time to whatever IGT i had after the credits.
Same calculation method goes to crashes too and since they're the main focus of this thread i'll clear some things up. I don't consider time i spend restarting PSP and starting the game again as a time i spend in menu. It is pretty clear to me that the time i spent doing those things i could've spent actually continuing playing the game. Why didn't that happen? Because the game is poorly coded and played on a handheld that has pretty limited resources to run any gta game. You can blame R¤ Leeds on that and try to ignore things like this, but that would be pretty silly, because crashes/softlocks and all the stuff like this IS the part of the game whether you like it or not. There're always way more stable and optimised games if you'd like to play some, but if you choose to play games by R¤ Leeds then just deal with all the inconveniences that come out of it like i had during my last two runs of VCS which case is essentially the same with CW one.
I would also like to ask agjents/derek if there are any consistent crash(es) on emulator like i have after Slaying with Fire? If not, then that might lead to a bit different discussion.
Redlof, do you take in consideration that 24 minutes IGT = 27 minutes and 20 seconds RTA ? you should look at the last seeable clock time before the crash and the one at the moment you autosaved (or when you load -6h) and figure out what was the ingame time you lost on the crash
im not exactly sure if it is consistent, but my game crashed when i loaded the save after i completed The World's a Stooge, i can't remember if that happened in a practice run i did, but it's the only time the game crashed
I guess this question was a bit weird to ask, since so far there're only two nsg runs that aren't mine, but i think you can already see that there most likely aren't gonna be any fixed crashes for emu runners (unless there're gonna be more runs from different people in the future and they'll give different results) which leads to an obvious advantage and i see three ways to actually make this fair:
- Don't count the unavoidable "fixed" crash(es) at all (but still mention and count all the other crashes like the ones on savewarping, or just during/at the end of missions, since those aren't consistent in any way)
- Add fixed amount of time towards all the runs, (~1 minute) regardless if it's on emu or legit hardware
- Ban psp emu from any% nsg and 100% ( 4Head EleGiggle 4Head EleGiggle )
If mods agree then we can do a vote on that. I think i'd personally choose a first option, (even if i still think that every single little out of place thing should be counted towards final time when runner submits a run) because other stuff like unusual crashes or/and game loads that aren't counting for savewarping strats will be included in the final time submission according to recently added rules which is fine by me.
Gael, i'd like to have a bit more detailed IGT-RTA comparison to know what exactly should i add to igt for every rta second passing by while i'll be restarting the game or vice versa, if i'm getting and busted and have to reload. (though, being busted once would mean run over for me atm, but who knows, maybe explaining this would be useful for someone else eventually)
Needs a vote, I'll go with the first choice but still think there should be like "add a minute for each crash no matter which platform" I think emu probably needs more runs to judge if a crash is consistent maybe and what about DS runs, that could be a really stable version of the game. It's hard to say without testing from each version of the game. the second option is pretty unfair and third option isn't happening.
Want more opinions on the matter however.
Redlof, unless proven otherwise, IGT increase everytime the ingame clock increase and a full ingame day (so 24 minutes IGT) takes 27min and 20s of real time
A super late vote from me, for now I will actually go with the 2nd option, no matter which platform it is, but time should be added.
Seeing how the game gets affected differently with crashes I have a suggestion, similar to LCS, to put a different category for PSP Emu to both Any% NSG and 100%, as I believe it would be more fair. I know that would make the leaderboards look even more fragmanted, but I believe there is no other choice based by the nature of this game.
What does everyone else think about this?
P.S. Derek, what version of the PPSSPP you use? As far as I remember, my game crashed after few mins of getting the white lines, but maybe the newer version of the emu have been more stable now.
