Wasn't sure what to title this.
As most people who speedrun PC games seriously are aware, having to deal with ever-evolving hardware is the underlying problem with trying to do so, and that it feels more fair to compare runs based on their execution (their time 'without loads') than to compare runs based on their real time (their time 'with loads').
For my personal bests, I've always tried calculating out all of the frames I observed the game spent frozen in a 'read' or 'write' state - similar to how I think SDA verifiers performed their calculations when handling my runs in the past - to the best of my ability. I've always done this manually; I've never had an automatic means of doing this. And I've always wanted these leaderboards to have a column for this "excluding loads" time I'm describing, but didn't want to implement it until there was a way to do this automatically.
I don't expect to return to F.E.A.R. much anymore, so making an automatic process that would accurately detect every instance of when the game is not in player control (due to a read/write condition) and calculate that time out of the splits is not something that I will be trying to do, nor do I have prior experience in anyway.
I do want to stress that my intention was to have every instance of the described player non-control be involved in the calculation, rather than making a crude program that only recognizes between-stage loading screens. That means checkpoint saves, quicksave saves, save loads, et cetera. A program that only calculates out SOME of the loads and produces a time from that would just feel (more) arbitrary, in my opinion.
So to anyone that comes across this, I just wanted people to be aware that it's not my intention for these leaderboards to only have a "real time" column, but didn't want to incorporate an "excluding loads" column that only excluded a portion of the loads. I did consider making what I described a reality myself, but, well, never had enough of an interest compared to other affairs to devote time to it, let alone experience making such programs.
I don't have any expectation of this being made a reality, and I can't foresee there being enough runs (at least, anytime in the near future) for this issue to even matter on a significant level, but I figured this thread would be worth making for posterity's sake if nothing else. If anyone ever shows up that actually attempts to do this, you have my gratitude.
G'day,
I have removed the "100% (Glitchless)" category because, among other reasons, I could not determine what made the run listed there "100%", nor do I myself even know what would constitute "100%" for this game. However, I do think that a "100%" category would, at the very least, involve acquiring every health and reflex booster, which the run that was listed there did not do.
Additionally, "Any%" now exists, as do individual level listings for each of the bonus stage/difficulty combinations.
Thank you for your understanding!