I'm new to speed running and got all set up for this game with the auto splitter and everything was running fine... for a bit. Now for some reason the auto splitter will randomly just... stop. Partway through 4-3, it just stops. I've lost three potential PBs to this and it's frankly starting to piss me off.
I don't have any buttons on my controller mapped to stop the timer, so I know it's not an accidental input on my end. I have start/stop mapped to the space bar on my keyboard. I'm using an 8bitdo SNES controller, if that matters.
I'm running Gambatte r614 and version 1.0 of the game itself.
Is anybody else having this issue? It's driving me nuts!
I don't have any advice on the technical aspect, BUT here's a general one: please don't let the timer distract you from the run! The timer is NOT relevant for your speedrun! It's a convenience tool that provides additional information to you and/or your audience, nothing more. No serious game moderator will ever rely on the timer for determining the length of an RTA run, autosplitter or not. I understand that it's a little annoying if there are timer issues during a run, but if it happens, just ignore it and re-time the run afterwards!
Alright... I just tried starting a fresh split file, no history on it at all. I did one run just to get times down on it. On my second run literally the MOMENT 4-3 started, the auto splitter stopped the timer.
Why is this happening??? The only way I've been able to get the splitter to run all the way through to the end of the game -- MOST of the time -- is to delete the times on the last split before starting a new run. This is ridiculous.
Your reply didn't show up until I posted an update, sorry!
I'm not recording my runs yet to have them officiated, I'm just practicing and seeing how much I'm improving thus far. I'm having issues with recording because OBS is slowing down the emulator and making it really jaggy, which screws me up while I'm playing. I know it's probably because I need to find a tutorial to properly set up OBS for recording gameplay (I have it set up to stream when I'm working on artwork on my cintiq which is just a general whole-display capture).
That's good to know that mods will independently time a run regardless of timer malfunction if I submit one, though, so thank you. I assume re-timing a run for myself would just involve manually starting and stopping the timer at the beginning and the end of the video playback -- once I get that issue sorted to where I CAN record my runs, that is.
I'm sorry if any of my questions are obvious or a little stupid. I'm new to running, as I said, even though I've watched other runners for a few years now. I'm ready to learn, though!
The easiest way to re-time a run is loading up the video file in a video editor (personally, I use Avidemux) and check the start and end frames. You can either cut the video at the start frame and read the length directly from the program when you go to the end frame or don't cut anything and just do some math. We use character control for this game, so the easiest way for an accurate timing is to select the very frame that first shows 399 on the timer in 1-1 and later add 0.686 seconds (=40 video frames at 60fps), since the actual control starts at the very end of the level transition already and can potentially be obscured by how the video is encoded, so just using the 399 timer frame is a sure-fire way to pinpoint the actual start. The last frame of the run is when you lose control over Mario after defeating Tatanga, which is the very frame when the latter explodes and which also causes all of Mario's projectiles on screen to disappear. You can also just leave all the retiming to me, but if you're curious yourself, those are the relevant frames.
As for questions about your OBS setup, feel free to contact me on Discord so I can try to help you out with that.
Ahhh I had posted asking for a video rec for setting up OBS but I figured it out and got my first run recorded AND submitted of 14:36. Thanks so much for your help! It definitely made me feel welcome. :)
