~ Announcement ~
Starting from today, the ranking in the Q3 leaderboard will be decided based on times without loads. The times with loads will remain in their own column. Loads include the 'awaiting gamestate/connection' screens and the loading of the map assets, bots etc before the spawn. Note that the menuing required to go to the next map is not included in the loads and is still part of the final time.
~ What's the idea? ~
Recently, we started to notice that the loads' duration differ massively from one player to another. After some investigation, it turns out that beyond the CPU specs of the players, the OS actually has a massive impact. For whatever reason, Windows 7 has a ~25s advantage over Windows 10, due to the fact that Win 10 gets stuck on 'awaiting gamestate' screens. Windows 8 is somewhere in between.
On top of some computers being able to load the maps much faster, we all agreed (on Discord) that such an unfair factor mostly out of our control should be removed when comparing runs. After careful consideration, it was decided that an autosplitter with load removal (courtesy of liveth/pekafacer) will be used.
~ Autosplitter ~
If you want your runs to have a time without loads, please use the livesplit autosplitter script that you can find in the Resources section. So the competition and ranking are as fair as possible, we'd like for everyone to use that same tool to get their no load time. https://www.speedrun.com/tools/Q3A_ASLR_644it.rar
liveth explains in the following post how to set it up if you're unsure: https://www.speedrun.com/post/eenu7
~ What about old runs? ~
So that all the past top runs without a 'no load' time don't become obsolete/overshadowed, Ewil and I are going to retime them to some extent when we have a chance, and manually determine 'no load' times. We can't promise to retime the entire leaderboard obviously, and priority will be given to runs near the top.
~ Can I just submit times with loads? ~
Yes, using the autosplitter is not mandatory to be in the LB. Note that if you don't use it and don't have a time without loads, it will impact your ranking though as any run that used the AS will be marked as faster than yours. If you don't care, feel free to submit with loads if you prefer.
That being said, if you're going for a top time or consider going for one, please use it so we can compete on equal grounds and accurately have your run at the top if it should be there!
~ Bonus information/tech for loads ~
funny_ha_ha found out that the gamestate screen can be made much shorter, even on Windows 10, by kicking the bots at the end of the map before the pedestal.
This can be done by binding "kick allbots" to a key and using it after the last frag. Make sure to not use it before reaching the fraglimit though or you will be unable to complete the map.
Note that as the gamestate screen is already removed from times without loads, this tech has no impact whatsoever on those, and on the ranking. But if you're interested in also pushing your time with loads, give it a try!
Very good decision. I was wondering why this was not a thing back in the day when I ran this. I have a 35min time non uploaded somewhere on my harddrive but I remember I did runs both on my M.2 SSD and my regular, slower hard drive at some point and the loading times were noticably more different.
Either way, very well written, informative forum post here as well. Good job guys.
I put the task on myself to retime every single run. Leaderboards should be good now.
Runs that have deleted VODs or Videos over the years that I was not able to retime manually will have the time with loads as time without loads, since they still represent a value when things gets sorted around.
