Hey all, I know there are not many runs submitted of this game but I was looking through the memory because I'm in the middle of coding an autosplitter, and I noticed that there is a particular byte in memory that tracks the level (albeit out of order) so I have a proposal for how to change timing.
Instead of timing starting on slicking the button in the menu, it would start when the "2" appears since this is when memory changes the value of the level. Just as well, the ending would be when the thank you screen appears as that is when memory changes as well. I think overall this would not actually change anything in time, but allow things to be more accurate with an autosplitter.
Thanks for taking the time to read this if you do!
I've finished a first draft of the autosplitter, as of right now all it really does is start when I mentioned and split at each level transition.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b29eqpyil3qnk7w/hookAutoSplitter.asl?dl=0
It would be great if anyone could test this just to verify I made it right (this is my first autosplitter). Once it's verified to work I'll get to work on adding options.
EDIT: I went ahead and added options for splitting each individual level.
As for retiming old times, I think the time difference would be minimal because you remove the time between hitting the first button and the 2 appearing, but you add in an almost identical amount of time between the last button press and the Thank You screen appearing.
I just did some runs on it so you can see it in action here:
Again, the autosplitter link in its current state (which is also there in the video) is in my above post so it'd be great if I can make sure that it works for other people and that this timing method is accepted before I push it.
That is possible, basically if you go into the settings of it you can change the levels you split on. For example, you can split only when entering levels 7, 18, 21, 34, and the end if you want. There will be checkboxes for every single action (and the current linked asl file is this way too). The code is far from perfect and I might improve it but for what it is right now, on the user end, you can customize the splits any way you want.
I also would bring up something that would change the way that the smaller sections (1-10, 11-20, etc.) are timed because I could make it start when entering the first level of each section, and end when entering 21 as opposed to by input, which would actually definitely make those runs at least a second longer if not more. But, I could also leave it up to the runner to manually start their timer at the right time and maybe ending it too. I would like if it were able to be completely handled by an autosplitter especially because timing with specific inputs can be somewhat ambiguous, especially in this game where starting a click and releasing a click are slightly different actions.
Yeah, starting the timer yourself seems reasonable. On that note, currently the way the timing ends is defined by the rules as the last input for a given level, so if we simply shift that to being something like entering the next level I can make a few modifications and push the autosplitter to the official list so anyone who puts the game in their timer can have easy access to it. Alternately, we could keep it as last input but that would then also require manually ending the timer, which I think has the same issue as I mentioned in the above post.
Good news, the autosplitter has been made official on Livesplit! You can activate it directly from choosing this game for your splits. Don't forget to change the settings if you have different preferences than I do.
