Cumbria, EnglandJust an extra bit of info on timing for transparency.
Timing begins at the frame you press on START. From that frame 0: -The screen goes black at f+3 -The scene text appears at f+16 -The level appears at f+175. NB: That's the first frame the game recognises a jump, if you jumped here, Jonathan's first frame is a duck at f+178 and a jump at f+182. -The game status huds: hearts, etc, appear at f+177 -Jonathan appears at f+178
Timing ends at 'Game Completed!' which appears 1 frame after 'harder skill'
I prefer you show framecounter on an emu and record at 60fps but these points make it easy to perfectly retime runs either way.
JkLoser introduced a couple of us to this game in a race this weekend, and we set a goal of 5 Missions. I think it would be helpful to have that as a subcategory of the game to encourage new runners, it can certainly get quite difficult to do a full run.
Following Mod discussion I have effected a streamlining to game category/subcat presentation. We've also made a timing change: Mayhem Mode runs now begin when you choose your first character - no more RNG fail pain. I've retimed all the old runs to reflect this.
For Mayhem Mode, we have a sub for Lab, any map, and Cycle Levels now, so former and new non-Lab times have a place. I also added a marathon mode: win at 8 maps with just 1 team and its extra character, but when a character dies you can't use them across the run anymore.
For teams I've opened up TvT and AvA, added 8s for using the unlocked characters, and made all of them non-obsoleting variables. So currently, we have all runs of the same difficulty/map in the same tab, to avoid a huge number of selection dropdowns, however, when you view the board you can filter by these subcategories as you wish. The aim is to promote more runs with less eye-time. Feel free to do TvT and AvA runs and explore other maps.
I've renamed Strategy First 5 Maps as Strat5, and the full game as 100%. Eventually when we route everything we can create a true 100% category including full rounds of the 6 game options at each difficulty.
I'm very open to feedback on how this new layout looks, particularly whether runners prefer the teams to be a dropdown. Thanks!
I think the game has scope for a new category, that forces full exploration. Perhaps all the pans/artbrushes etc each level would be a good starting point? Thoughts welcome.
as per https://www.smspower.org/Games/JamesPondII-SMS the game was released in Brazil hence why C.H.E.A.T runners use 60fps/NTSC, but so far any% has been played at 50.
What are everyone's thoughts, is anyone uncomfortable with the full game at 60 and what are the reasons if so?
I found that you can see the answers in the game rom. I played some games normally first. Apparently this version has 4,000 puzzles or more. Since I am bored, I could pull them all into a text file and upload it for everyone, but I wanted to check whether there's an etiquette preference first among runners. I know Baldnate's run has some logical guesses based on past answers for example, and I welcome discussion on we want the game to be complete deduction, or to remain memer as is now. <3
Anomaly Log Connect 4 Leaderboard 9/11/22
First off, the WR has 'changed': it was never Fire Mario's run, it remains Alfygator's of 5 years ago now tied by BeetZero.
This board has been wholly mismanaged. It's a meme and a bit of fun, but mods and runners must always practice good housekeeping. Forgive me using a bit of privilege to post this in public; I am definitely not the speedrun police. SRC is the problem, not the mods who are unsure when things are mistimed - but this butchery should be kept here as an audit cleanse.
Responsible user: Cantrick
Failed to accurately retime run https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/zn43l4vm , runner disadvantaged.
Responsible user: SickMyDuck
Misinput subseconds run https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/z1pdw5gz , runner not at fault. Failed to accurately retime runs including: https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/yv6r2pxz , runner heavily disadvantaged as this is his actual PB! https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/yok7epjz , runner not at fault. https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/y67j1e0m , runner disadvantaged. https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/yor7qk5y , runner heavily disadvantaged by a second on PB!
SickMyDuck also self-verified a super choppy vid of his own. This is not good practice except as a last resort and the quality is so poor that a manual retiming adds half a second. As this run is at the bottom I have retained the original submitted time - a mod who can be so useless as you see above is incapable of cheating a run such as this.
Responsible user: yp General failure to maintain the board as the super.
Failed to accurately retime runs including: https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/mk3q273z , which is NOT the WR. https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/m3d2kggz , runner heavily advantaged, runner not at fault. https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/mk30pe1z , again affecting a runner's displayed PB as above, runner not at fault.
Misinput subseconds run https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/yv65vd4z , runner not at fault.
1 run had some choppy video but has a frame counter clearly displayed throughout, which made verification possible!
3 runs started from a savestate to the splash screen. It's impossible for them to have gained an advantage. No penalty.
1 run's video is no longer available. No penalty.
As a counterpoint to that, a special thankyou to JoePulito and DBcade - the only two runners on the entire board who showed a reset and the difficulty setting they played at. New runners can check their runs for excellent examples of clear videos, well done gents! Doughnuts are on me if we're ever in the same place.
Melwing's run with the start chopped off has been re-rejected as it was originally self-deleted. efhiii's run is kept as I have no reason to disbelieve the submitted time.
Runners should always be sure to submit valid videos.
Addressing points raised in another thread about specific runs:
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"Second thing, frame counter and timer, that guy on 5th place have, skipped like 100 frames at the end of his run, for some magical reason. And his actual time is 11 or 12 seconds." MortimerNova's run has a video quality issue that makes a vid-frame based verification impossible, but the run shows the mGBA frame counter. Mortimer submitted a correct time of 10.76 and the run was mistakenly marked as 10.076 - any run marked without subseconds to 3 places bugs and the site marks it with leading 0's in the wrong places. His run frame counted to 10.748 and he was innocent.
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"And finally, 6th and 1st places started their timers when "Player 1 is on blacks" appeared." This is true but moderators are always responsible for retimes. Both runs have the start point in vid so they have been correctly timed.
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"(also, 2nd place used save state, so he could eliminate RNG and always start with black, but I guess it's not that important)" Agreed as a principle. Runner gained no advantage except sanity but a rules edit has been added to prevent this in future as good practice.
I have now confirmed all retimes. Again, big apologies for the shift. Now we have a pretty and accurate board, so please feel free to start new runs. If anyone wants to know more about the run times, please ask. The board can be transparent because I don't want anyone doing shintysixthousand resets for this.
Runs START on the black frame after 1P start is selected, before 'black red first' screen. Runs END when Connect 4! appears. Any run from now that uses a savestate, or doesn't show a save and quit from the game, or doesn't show a start from the game choice screen, will be rejected.
Any top time ~10.1s or lower MUST have a 60fps recording and a frame counter, or be rejected. That's going to prevent this clusterfuckery recurring. You can send raw 60fps files to my Discord if YT won't encode that for you. Please don't use YT Shorts as I can't use the YT frame timer with it.
Because this game is being timed down to the frame, I have taken the run times and re-expressed them as multiples of the frame rate.
Thanks!
I have now gone through the whole Perfection! board and retimed runs accurately. Connect 4 will follow over the next few days. There are new start and end points that I wish to specifically point out for this run. More importantly I must explain some of this retiming and clarify a few things, so let's do that first while I have your attention.
Looking through the game Audit Log and past verifications showed former mods had in some cases completely failed to retime runs. Most shockingly, this: https://www.speedrun.com/c4pt/run/yjpjnl3y which was marked as 31 seconds by SickMyDuck but comes out at 45. This is why he was removed as a mod, and as a long-serving mod of SRC I'm deeply sorry this was going on in your board for so long.
NB! User DBcade has done nothing wrong here, and the former board rules were very unclear. I'm especially sorry to you that the run was marked so wrongly. On that point I have noticed similar potential anomalies at C4 and will update this post about that when retimed.
In the same vein I have used mod privilege to edit-reject an old obsoleted run which started from a savestate. This is cosmetic as RNG is frame based, but is the fairest solution given the rules update.
Point of order: to all mods. It is NOT a permitted standard on SRC to use a timer on-screen either as a basis for timing, or to use the absence of one, as a reason to reject runs. Yes, that has happened! This seems to be a very common misconception on the site. If anyone ever wants pointers in timing runs I'd be glad to help and advise.
To enable a uniform standard of timing, runs now start at the first black frame after A is pressed, which is 2 frames afterward. This also makes sense as the splash screen only accepts input every other frame, so any runner timing via pressing 'A' on input display was hitherto disadvantaged.
A run ends on the first frame that your final piece changes texture/opacity, as this is 1 frame after final input. Picture: https://imgur.com/a/3xKjDUF
By using an n+2/n+1 timing, it will be easier to have a harmonious board - runs timed at 30fps will be more accurate, and the reference points are very clear for all.
The final Perfection! retimed board is now up. Happy to field questions/comments.
Thankyou for reading!
- Follow User Following games is great, what about users too? It can at times be a stretch to have to use many other social media accounts to keep up with buddies or those whose runs you enjoy. This would be a nice way to centralise such activity.
- Community tab /splash page for profiles It'd be great to have a little area to, for example, display/promote your blurb as a runner: that may include the ability to sticky your tutorials, a small blog space or link to such beneath featured run, or other such material. Speaking personally I run many very small-community games, and if runners who were looking at my profile for ideas etc could see easy-access links or mini posts, here, about game guides/resources or FAQs, that might make it a good experience.
Haven't fleshed out yet but curious if anyone else would be interested in some dumb categories - all wood/iron shots, Major% aka 4 rounds etc may be fun. Also @NESAtlas what strategy observations have you made? We seem to be good at diff holes. Wondering what scope for 19:xx is there. Especially curious whether we can manip to prevent long shots redrawing the screen many times on landing/rolling, that'd be a big timesave.
I have been appointed as mod for this game, and I think the timing rules need to be clearer. I'd welcome thoughts from runners on this as well as any other stuff related. I have direct messaged a couple of runners whose runs were never verified to include them on this, but for now I have verified their runs as-is. In the next few days once we discuss this I think it would be in order to retime existing runs for consistency. Thanks!
https://imgur.com/a/RCdC7wG You can abuse the checkpoint safely and let the moving platform rest, then jump near straight down on a cycle of 5:58/9 every 4 seconds, and that cycle timing holds for deathless as well as 6:04 restarts from the previous area. If you want a timing you can wait approx 3 music beats when platform has stopped then jump.
Would love to do runs of the credits warp cat, can anyone make a vid to briefly explain what to do?
The game is maximally optimised now, I think we should have ms available for top times as it won't be long before WRs are not improvable by more than a second a time.
GP Rider Game Gear has a turbo button mapped to UP. You may remap this to a face button on a 3 button Genesis controller.
As in Super Hang-On, the game timer is bugged. What that means is whenever you finish a sector, the subseconds counter is not zeroed. Because of that, you'll need to subtract the fractions of seconds that show up after each checkpoint in Arcade Mode, to find your final time. So Africa, you just take the goal time and remove the five fractions that showed up, as these are double counted. Existing times have been edited to reflect that. I will always double check your final time but get into the habit of working that out yourself with a calc: the effect is that your 'lowest' finishing time may not actually be your lowest time, so scan over all your completed runs.
As for emulators, Fusion is banned. Please use Bizhawk or RetroArch.
I looked at previous runs and determined that the board has times based on framecount/60, so if you want your run accurately timed just submit at 60fps. Where a run has no framecounter visible I will retime based on VODs and find the correct time based on a whole-frame divisor.
We can also just call it Camsliding.
Edited to replace vid with one that has a consistent setup and visible RAM.
When you move the camera left for just 5 frames and then stop pressing, it still scrolls but you don't move backwards. Wait until you see the enclave shadow at the top of the platform then move right again, and you trick the game into slowing down the cycle so you can pass.
