New York City, NY, USAPoking holes in my own proposal...There are also cinematics like in I Hope This Works & Good Advice that you should be rewarded for skipping. So removing cinematic time definitely seems wrong.
Looking at aoe3 rules, they require players to limit to 60 fps through the "Enable VSync" setting, which is another simpler idea, assuming that actually works the same on ee vs titans vs vanilla (I think I've heard before it's kinda bugged on EE but I forget the details so I'll do some testing)
I'm definitely thinking about this more than I need to, but there are a few edge cases that should ideally be covered by an autosplitter here to keep things consistent.
The Lost Relic is one interesting case. For the IL run, you want to watch the cinematic. Whether or not you watch the cinematic, you start at the same IGT. The laborers dig during the cinematic, and therefore reduce your finishing IGT for free. But in a full campaign run, even if you did IGT + RTA in between, players should skip the cinematic since the laborers don't start digging at the very start of the cinematic (as far as I know?). Having different optimal strategies for full game vs IL runs isn't a bad thing by itself, but it feels a bit wrong when it stems from the timing method rather than any gameplay element.
Another case I'm thinking about is the fact that the IGT stops when you pause the game, open the age up dialog, or open the menu (e.g. to restart the scenario on a failed attempt). Right now IL's IGT doesn't account for this at all, but I don't think that's a problem as no one is abusing this (who needs a break in a <10 min run?). But for a full campaign run, (a) there is more motivation to abuse this, and (b) restarting a level should probably include the penalty of the time it takes for you to hit the restart button. I think the autosplitter could probably just count the RTA during these screens though.
My proposal would be:
- IGT + LRT
- The load remover would remove the time of the loading screen and the time of the cinematics
- Real time would be used in the mission select menu, and any time you open a menu in game that would pause the IGT (age ups, restarting the level, pausing the game, tech trees, unit descriptions, etc.)
Such an autosplitter is probably still a tall order for a community of this size, but I do have a proof of concept that currently can replicate IGT but needs some work on victory detection & mission # awareness. If I ever find enough down time to improve it, and we have a good idea of what we want, maybe it'll happen one day :)
I can't explain it, but I swear you were right about oracle. I tried downpatching to 2.3 (see https://www.speedrun.com/aom/guides/55vkk for a guide) to see if you could get oracle there. Turns out you couldn't research it there either. Then I went back to the most recent patch and now I can research Oracle. I swear I checked this on 2.8 before though. Very odd.
In any case, if you wanted another possible idea: with only signal fires, you can get an underworld near Troy's town center. So you can get the sequence break that way, but your units do have to walk longer to get to the 3rd fortress, so it might still be an uphill battle
That time is the “real time” but that can vary widely due to frame rates/PC hardware, where your camera is pointing, etc. so the in-game timer is what matters for these runs.
You might also notice that the in game timer isn’t 2:21 either. But that’s because it doesn’t start at 0, so we get 2:21 by subtracting the end time from the start time.
https://www.speedrun.com/aom/forums/323wf has some more details too
I hoping to develop an auto splitter to simplify this a bit for everyone, but it’s far from perfect right now :(
Is real time used over IGT for these runs only because of the practicality of moderating & manually adding up all the IL IGT times?
I wonder if developing/using an autosplitter in LiveSplit could help with that. If I make it to the point of attempting the full campaign runs, I'm gonna look deeper in this.
Full campaign runs aren't very active in an already inactive game, so maybe a moot point but figured I'd throw the thought out there anyway
Steam makes it pretty easy to downgrade EE version to 2.6 to exploit the glitch. I was able to do so for my attempts so far (otherwise I don't see how to compete with the poseidon lure bug on 2.7+). So since it is still replicable and we're already allowing multiple versions in vanilla/titans/ee runs, it seems fine to allow to me.
Not sure if this could theoretically unleash some crazy runs in some completely broken patch version? I'm not familiar enough with the patch notes to say
JK! You can downpatch if you go to EE in your steam library -> properties -> Betas -> select the patch from the dropdown
I'm not sure that there's a way to compete with this anymore, since the lure bug was patched out of EE in path 2.7 :(
Is there a way to downgrade? Or Should there be a new category for no lure bug?
Is the sequence break just that the kraken comes to fight near the rocks on the close shore instead of the inner shores near the docks? Or is there something more to it?
A wonder rush could be a similar but better category
