United Stateshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galactic_Battlegrounds
A possible game to add either in this series (because it's a reskin of AoE2) or the Star Wars one. It has several campaigns that can be ran. No runners at the moment, but may be interesting for AoE runners.
Grats on your run!
I originally thought the game didn't have in-game time because I didn't see it in the Scrin campaign video. I'll add it to the leaderboards as another field.
The Precursor campaign could be added as a Misc category. It is official after all. Though it is something that can be ignored until someone does a run of it, to prevent cluttering the leaderboards; same goes with Insurrection, Enslavers, and Retribution.
I was thinking about that. It would be a good idea to have a variable for the patch versions for both Campaigns and Individual Levels. Not to be strictly enforced but strongly encouraged.
Suggestion: An option to hide milliseconds from being displayed except for times that are equal to the second. Something like this:
3:38.308 3:38.570 3:40 3:41 3:44.030 3:44.700 3:59 4:21
That would allow milliseconds to always be an available option to enter. Oh, and align time the time column to the right instead of center.
Thanks mate. There are a few SDA threads for C&C but honestly I didn't think posting there was worth it; the site has become archaic and stuck in 2003, while here is much better.
I'm just upset I can't do any runs for the time being while I'm at this job I'm at.
+1
Seems obvious enough...though there doesn't appear to be anything written regarding how game time is recorded.
I would have thought there'd be separate categories for each race. They are canonically after one another so having an 'All Campaigns' makes sense, but they are also seen as separate from each other since you go through the campaign menu to continue to the next.
That, and ILs could probably be added. The videos on SDA should qualify for them.
Edit: I guess I'll start really caring once I get a run in.
Hard to search with vague words so I'm not sure if this has already been reported.
If a game has a romhack/mod sub-forum and someone posts in it, the parent game has a permanent 'NEW' tag next to its forum, as such:
It can (probably) be reproduced this way:
- Make a romhack/mod leaderboard for a game that's in a series
- Make a thread in said romhack/mod's forum
- Check the series's forum
Even if you open all the threads in the romhack/mod and parent game, it still says 'NEW'.
Since the game's engine currently does not support game time, nor does it support loading missions consecutively for campaign (AFAIK), timing becomes complicated for campaign. I've thought of a solution, but if a future update fixes one of the problems, it may render all runs up to that point invalid. We'll see as time goes on.
The solution goes like this: Timing begins on the first mission as soon as the battlefield is visible; in most cases it's after pressing "Resume Mission". You then simultaneously split and pause once either "You Are Victorious" appears or the battlefield is unloaded (I personally prefer the latter). You then resume once the battlefield is loaded for the next mission. Repeat until the final mission, which always end when "You Are Victorious" appears. This removes the time between loading missions which can vary greatly from computer to computer.
This is driving me crazy. What should they be called here?
"The Allies, otherwise known as the Allied Forces or the Allied Nations..."
Allied has been used casually throughout the games as well, though. When hovering over their campaign icon in RA2 is says "Play the Allied Story Campaign."
Anyone looking for any means to save their game can use VMware's snapshop feature. It would require you to play the game inside of it, but it's fairly seemless once you do. It's great for practice or even for casual playthroughs.
I don't think it should be allowed in speedruns, however, as it's the equivalent of save states.
...
Well, now that I think about it, as long as it's used in the same fashion as the regular saves are, I don't see it being a problem. It's not optimal to use them and they consume a LOT more time than regular saves do; so it's not giving anyone an advantage. The only problem that arises is game time, which still needs to be discussed for the series as a whole.
They'd still be banned for ILs.
I just did a massive overhaul of the leaderboard. Since they've added subcategories I difficulties for all the games that have them, as well as added individual levels for most games. There are also a few people who do ILs for Mental Omega so I added that as well as a Yuri's Revenge mod.
Difficulties can now be added without cluttering the leaderboard (as bad). The admins added subcategories: http://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/lac6h . We could have two subcategories, one for any difficulty and another for the hardest. The best example of a game with different categories for difficulties is the Halo series: They have two for Easy and Legendary. Legendary makes you maneuver around to avoid instant death where as Easy you can walk right past them.
Personally, I'd have the speed be clamped to faster and timed in real time. Loading times are now almost non-existent in older games.
As for posting your videos you'll have to wait for CornfordCaster to add individual levels for TD and RA, which then you can post your YouTube links. The main leaderboards are for single segment campaign attempts.
Most people seem to end their timer at the last You Are Victorious screen, so that would be a good position to end at. Tiberian Sun runs allow for alt-tabbing as it has a glitch that can save a lot of time. Compared to it, this is much simplier. I see no problem with skipping cutscenes this way.
Unlike the older games in the series, Generals onward are true 3D, so increasing the resolution doesn't give you a larger field of view. Camera height is questionable and maybe in the future there could be a max limit that can be agreed on, but altering it so 16:9 is playable should be fine.
While real time vs game time is game to game due to timing differences, I feel it's important to have consistent rules regarding difficulty and speed, and possibly resolution/ini editing.
¤ Difficulty
The is probably the most important one. Nearly everyone on the leaderboards here use the easiest difficulty, while the majority of runners on YouTube use the hardest. It sort of feels like they're being written off which isn't right, yet having separate categories for the hardest difficulty would serve to clutter the leaderboards in what is already not a popular series to speedrun. The last thing I want to see is a divided community over this. Still, in my opinion I see the categories as Any%, using whatever means to beat the campaigns or missions the fastest, and in most cases the easiest category allows for that.
¤ Speed
This pertains to the first three games in the series as the rest have fixed speeds AFAIK. In Tiberian Dawn and Tiberian Sun, the fastest speed is an unlocked framerate which is unnecessarily difficult and makes the run dependent on the CPU speed of the runner. Tiberian Sun already caps to higher and Tiberian Dawn will likely do the same. However, Red Alert 1's fastest speed is not uncapped and is even possible to control. Would it still make sense to clamp it to higher to be consistent with the other two games?
¤ Resolution/INI editing
Through INI editing, you can give yourself any resolution in Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2, and Generals. Fan patches let you do the same with Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert 1. Having a larger resolution lets you see more of the battlefield, giving better control. As mentioned in my RA2 thread, for multiplayer the developers put in a option to clamp the resolution to the options giving in the game, giving credence to that they didn't want anyone having an unfair advantage through a bigger resolution. Limiting the resolutions to what is given in the game itself would let each run be more consistent with each other.
I've tried out Virtual Magnifying Glass and it seems to work well; all it does is zoom in on the selected area. If we decide to ban the patch it could be used as a substitute for some.
In hindsight it may be a little clutterful to add all that off the get go. Once someone has a run in one of those categories it'd be more practical then.
