Hi! I'm going to be submitting ILs to the leaderboards, so naturally I was looking into how the runs should be timed. There don't seem to be any rules posted atm, so I figured I would just check how others have timed their runs and follow suit. Unfortunately, this did not go as planned.

I counted 5 individuals that currently have at least 1 IL run posted, and for whatever reason they all seem to use a different timing method! In fact, some of them are a little skewed. For instance, wilderjoe's Normal runs seem to use the YT video length regardless of when the run starts or ends (which makes the Mission 1 time quite inaccurate compared to the others). Even further off the rails is Sinochek's Hard runs which are posted with the official SDA times, and apparently these do not include the time lost to autosave.

I don't think there's any urgency to retime these runs immediately, but I thought I'd mention it just in case it causes any confusion in the future. I'd also like to explain the timing method I've settled on and why I feel it makes sense:

Start: When the screen goes black after clicking the Start button End: When the UI disppears and fade out begins

There's a slight problem with starting time any later than immediately on Start. Basically, the player gains control at different times depending on if they skipped the cutscene or let it play out (see Cyberdemon531's All Cutscenes run for demonstration of this). While deciding when to skip the cutscene could be considered a subtle added element of strategy, it's probably far simpler to oblige the runner to skip the cutscene asap. Also, as a result, all runs started in this manner will begin in the same state, thus making runs more fair and comparable.

As for the time ending when the final fade out begins, this is simply when loss of control occurs. It should be noted that the fade out can be skipped by pressing Esc, but there's no real reason to allow the runner to gain a second by doing so as it has very little to do with actual gameplay. It may also be slightly easier on the runner at the end of a mission to not have to be concerned with this action.

So, I just thought I'd throw this out there so everyone can be on the same page. If anyone has any additional thoughts, feel free to share them. I'm fine with timing my runs any which way so long as everyone agrees. Cheers!

Never really became a proplem since people dont really run this game, the hard runs where done years ago on speed demos archive and just transferred over as a baseline.

The time scheme i went for Time starts on pressing the mission start button on the load screen and ends at the mission success screen, i just posted video length cause i was new and bad with all the software (DoW was my 2nd run) but i agree they should be re timed and a more consistent ruling applied.

The mods for most 40k games are quite dormant (took around a month to get approved and with help of a site mod) , in a little under a week it will be 2 weeks waiting for a word from the current series Mod and if nothing happens ill be applying for series Mod which has a decent chance as i have many backers of runners from other 40k games , if this happens i will attempt to contact the game mods and work something out or failing that if their unresponsive retime everything with this setup:

Time starts when pressing Mission Start in the before mission load screen.

Time ends when Mission success screen is shown.

Must be played on * Difficulty

(* = place holder for normal/hard/insane)

That sounds alright, but I'm curious what you consider the end marker to be. Is it when the "Mission Success" message just begins to fade in or when it's completely faded in? Or maybe it should be completely black screen before the message appears? I don't mean to be too nitpicky here, but this could be important when retiming existing runs as well as verifying new runs.

Also, why I like the start and end markers to be completely obvious is so there's no confusion caused by poor video encoding or cutting. I feel this is more important to you if you're going to be the mod responsible for timing these runs, so whatever you're comfortable with is fine by me. As a runner, I just need to know where it starts and where it ends.

that is fair concerns , i understand and respect the wish for clear concise rules

to answer your question i would say the defined end point as the frame you see the words Mission Success (still lightly faded) so about 5.30 of my mission 1 video.

i hope this helps, if the Game mods would like to jump in then i would like to see their thoughts too, if you want to continue talking with me in depth about this then you can join me on the Series Discord https://discord.gg/SwWnxXu