Hello everyone.
So far the runs start on the press of the "new game" button. the interest of this is that it's pretty accurate, but the downside is that the loading time right after the press will not be equal for everyone.
We need to find a way to time it equally for everyone. Please propose and discuss your ideas here.
Ideas so far :
- Start the run after the loading screen : It's gonna be pretty hard to be precise as there is no clear cut between loaded and not loaded state. From what i can see (Microsoft MVR + SteamVR) it's a fade-out, so i'm sure we can find something better.
- Autosplitter : I have no idea how to make one, but if you know please tell. I guess we could ask MasterIndie too.
- In Game timer : It would become the new standard for timing. Seems like an overall good solution but we would have to wait until the dev wants to implement it.
- Screw it and we keep using "New Game" timing
Until an official implementation is made by Master Indie (which there are no known plans for one so far), the best suggestion I can make is start game at frame one of the hatch beginning to drop - it's easily doable for perfect timing by looking at the playback video. For now, we'll have to start and stop timers on our own. Afterwards, with each boss - the end timer occurs when the crystal turns black - there is an initial white flash - that first frame of the white flash with a confirmed black crystal could be the timer for the end of each boss with the exception of the worm.
While defeating wormy occurs at the black crystal moment, I feel that escaping him should be important to the run as well. Nothing bad happens without it, but I don't feel it complete until you do escape him. I'm not sure what could be called the exact end of him in that regard. He does start to explode and it could be considered that the first explosion is his death, and if you're still inside of him, you haven't succeeded, but again - how do we define "inside" of him. Perhaps for now, the actual runs end at the exact frame that the final spherical crystal is turned black (i.e. the white flash before the black).
With SUPERHOT the game would change the save file during the game so people were able to make an auto-splitter that would detect when the level changed. Looking into the registry keys, there is FinalBossBeat, MiniBossBeat for each boss, and UpgradeBot for each drone, so it is definitely possible to do something similar. That would also let us all be able to end the run at the same point so our only issue would be starting. We could just time on our own and then re-time the start point after the run so it is when the hatch door opens as Ian said.
I'll look into how we could use those registry keys and see if I can whip up something.
Okay, after having watched several runs and verified a couple - start of all runs should start at the transition between the loading screen and inside the ship. While we could start it on the opening of the exit of the ship, it's harder to see in youtube frame by frame analysis.
Ending should always be the moment at which the white flash of the bullet hits the crystal sphere of Wormy's mouth for the last time. That frame is easy to spot on youtube frame by frame analysis.
Each boss timer ends at the same point as well.
I agree on escaping the worm. For that, I think we could end the run when the first section of the worm explodes; that being the tail.
On my last autosplit run, I can detect game start (when player has finished loading), Tutorial boss defeated, Boss gauntlet entered (for tripod, this is just the tunnel), boss's entrance area opening up, boss killed, boss exit wall dropping (currently labeled Boss Despawned), and the code behind final boss defeated isn't working right. That trigger appears to be final miniboss defeated.
Two runs ago (that ended with wormy death), the triggers all worked correctly. I posted into #speedrunning of the Discord that file set with instructions on how to get it working. My last run the "Wormy Knows Final Boss Died" didn't trigger, making the Wormy death split hit the second to last split instead.
I've removed the split from my local (deleted the split entry in LiveSplit and set ModPrefs -> FinalMiniBossDefeated=0