Motivated by chaos_defrost's latest 10 round run coming extremely close to being a 4:44 instead of a 4:45, I have learned how to use external tools to count the length of a run with frame-perfect precision, and as such, I think it's high time we make the timing rules more precise to make this easier. Here's what we have now:
"Must beat rounds 1 through 10 of Normal Mode. Run begins once the player exits the game select screen to the 1st round of Normal Mode and ends when the last block disappears from the screen on the 10th round."
I noticed that the blocks in the playfield disappear a fraction of a second before the next piece disappears, so whether the next piece counts as a block or not will affect the timing of runs. In chaos_defrost's latest run, the cursor disappears off of the game setup screen at 13:14:50.925, then the last block disappears from the playfield in Round 10 at 13:19:35.892, and then finally the next piece up in the upper right disappears (and, simultaneously, "ROUND CLEAR!" appears) at 13:19:35.959. Thus, it might be ambiguous whether it's a 4:44 or a 4:45.
Here's a proposed re-write: "Must beat rounds 1 through 10 of Normal Mode. Run begins once the player exits the game select screen to the 1st round of Normal Mode (that is, when the cursor disappears) and ends when "ROUND CLEAR!" appears on the 10th round."
These same rules could be applied to 30 rounds, 80 rounds, and even Puzzle Mode. A similar rule looks good for Vs. CPU runs, except the message is "1P WIN!" instead. For Max Score, the rules are pretty unambiguous as they stand.
I feel like it's best to run this idea by the other mods and the community before making any real changes, especially since it opens up the question of whether to grandfather in old runs or to retime them all to make sure they're not one second too slow or too fast.
I think I have projects on my plate that are more important than re-timing every Tetris 2 run in existence, but so far, the suggestion that the rules can be changed so long as the existing runs are re-timed in accordance with the new rules seems like the best one. I trust my fellow mods with their judgment.
