Should we change our timing method from Real time to In Game Time? I'd say it will provide a fairer competition on the leaderboards. Although I do know it might decrease the penalty from making mistakes and Save/Loading to get back on track.
What do you guys think??
I'd say RTA for not only for the reason you mentioned, but because saving/loading is and integral part of both Unreal and RTNP speedruns, and although some of that loading time is hardware related, the rest of it is actual execution time you'd be excluding from the run (i.e chaining save/load/jump together).
Besides, there can be instances where you possibly could spend a lot longer just save hovering and get a slower time from that with igt, where with RTA it wouldn't save time (still haven't tested this, but I can think of that happening with climbing the cliff on the first map of RTNP, where it is about 5-10 seconds slower in RTA).
Ive been wanting load removal from unreal for a while. other unreal engine games have it and it levels the playing field of load times. if you play well youll still save time regardless if you use RTA or not
posting again for additional thoughts. One game that uses igt on unreal engine is wheel of time which also has save hovers. i can see the issue for not penalizing mistakes, but if someone makes a mistake regardless if theres less time lost, they are still guna make a mistake and lose time to it so the better player is still going to get the better time. along with this since in both na pali and unreal save hovering does play a critical role in the route, if two players with about equal execution do the run but one has an ssd and one has a relatively slow hard drive, unfortunately the hardware is going to be what gives the record in that scenario. Its why i am always for load removers on pc where variable load times are applicable. Also the in game timer is nice as it will always start the timer exactly after the last load screen ends in the beginning
oh and before i also forget load removal also takes away any arbitrary load time between maps and cutscenes. which i am for because i dont want to lose time on a run because of something not related to gameplay if my load times arent ideal
The problem here is that longer load times affect the method for save/hovering (timing between save/load/jump). Technically, slower loading times would be faster with igt because you'd have more time to react. Besides, the loading time difference isn't a game breaker on modern hard-drives, seeing as the current WR for both Unreal and RTNP doesn't use an SSD.
My main issue is as I said before, there are sections which might be faster with save hovering abuse when you remove all those loading times, but in real that same section just gets longer. That inverted proportionality between igt and rta makes me uneasy, might as well count the time in rendered frames at that point and not execution time
save hovering isnt even a difficult technique so i seriously doubt slower loads would make a difference on execution. also the wr is not on ssd your right, their time comes from just being good at like every part of the game (not to mention especially with original unreal, there is not really a large pool of competition) i get your points but i feel as far as competition goes, the negatives you mention are small and very limited compared to the positives of course im still waiting to see what other people are going to say
