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Quote:
Not really, for most save anywhere games, if segmented properly there will be zero frames dropped


All games using any kind of Quake engine (and that's a substantial chunk of FPSes) drop frames when you save and load and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. I don't know whether using demo recording (when available, which it sometimes isn't) and then stitching together the demos lets you get around this or not.
Bioshock also has unavoidable frame dropping.
I don't know about any other save-anywhere games, but even if you're right that the problem only affects a minority there's still the difficult issue of how to deal with that minority.

Quote:
The .5s penalty isn't to adjust the time to make it closer to the actual time.  It might say that on the site but that is wrong and it has always been wrong.


People said in the rules thread that the penalty was introduced due to the frame dropping problem. This may be true, it may not, I have no idea to be honest, but unless the thread where the penalty was first introduced is still around I doubt there's any way of knowing, and at any rate it doesn't really matter.

Quote:
If there's actually frames dropped in between segments, rare, they are calculated and added to the actual run time, like was done for the portal run.


This simply isn't true. I wish it was, and if you were arguing for this (i.e. making the impact of the penalty the same for all games) instead of simply showing another number on the game page, then I would support you. However, the extra frames being added on is only done when more than 0.5s of frames are dropped or possibly when the frames are dropped on an autosave or other non-penalised save (not sure about the last one).

Quote:
if you ask most people who have DLed my HL run from here they'll say it is exactly 31 minutes long, even though I give the run's actual time (with frames dropped from segmentation) at the start of the video which is 29:41 (or 30:06 depending on when you think the run is over).


And why do you care which of those numbers people see? Nobody watching a speedrun cares what the actual final time is (unless they're comparing it to other runs, and even then it doesn't matter that much), they care how effectively the runner has optimised that time. And besides, I'd include the tram ride and the G-Man's speech in timing (you have character control from the start of the tram ride to the moment you enter the final portal, and entering the portal is actually significant character control so I don't really even know why that wasn't included) so I make your run almost 35 minutes pre-penalisation anyway. Tongue
Don't think!  feeeeeal
Only if they're more than .5s frames are calculated and added?  How sure are you about this?  So you're saying the portal run was calculated to have about 4 seconds of droped frames beyond .5s between the segments?  If this is the case I could just segment my runs like a jackass and include .5s of dropped frames between in each segment and make runs 90s faster.

And you are completely misleading about the quake engine games having droped frames, entirely moot point, demos are completely perfect as you speculated,  I know you've seen a properly made HL run, so I'm surprised you'd even bring this up and speculate whether demos are perfect or not.  And I don't think you'd be the one to just throw out a moot point for some alternative motive, I'm confused why you even said this.

I don't believe there was ever was a thread about frames dropped or .5s penalty before it was made.

I was always under the impression that extra dropped frames where all calculated added like they were for the portal run, and that this was one the only runs to need extra time added because it actually had dropped frames.

My point is for basically any save anyway if you don't segment like a jackass and smart enough to make segments without cheating and dropping frames there should be no dropped frames.  If you failed at this, as in the case of the portal run, this can be calculated and added to get the ACTUAL REAL TIME of the run, this isn't that hard and if you're smart enough at making a video it won't happen.

I don't think many people understand what I mean by ACTUAL REAL TIME OF THE RUN.  I don't think it's that hard to understand but apparently it is, maybe someone else can explain it better.

The point of the .5s penalty should have nothing to do with dropped frames in case it's trying to do that.  If the video maker fucked up and make illegitimate video then they dropped frames need to be calculated as best as possible and added to the time.

I made lengthy and convincing arguments as to why you need a penalty on saving in the rules discussion thread.  It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH DROPPED FRAMES and everything to do with preventing unrestricted amounts of saving such as multiple times a second, and degenerating speedrunning.  .5s rule serves as a guide to runners on how much they should segment and keeps simple linear balance which ends up being an amount of segments which most viewers are fond of in a segmented run.

The .5s rule as everything to do with being able to compare runs with different amount of segments.  It serves as providing a COMPARABLE QUOTIENT which can be used objectively decide which run is better/faster (it's like a combination of the two).  This is why I argued it shouldn't even be called .5s but .5 units.
My feelings on The Demon Rush
Okay, I've been slacking off on this a bit. I should have put up the rules and faq on the kb earlier, but I've been working on Castle Crashers audio commentary because it's way overdue (yes, it's going to be done tonight :o). Someone else can post the rules and faq up on the wiki as long as if they wiki format the links. Otherwise, I should have time this weekend.

DRybes and ninetigerr: I agree we need to change the rules and faq. Some things that are posted in the faq should be in the rules (and possibly vice versa).

Spider-Waffle: The difficulty suggestion is a really good idea. I don't think a number needs to be listed for games with only one difficulty, but otherwise I 100% agree

Save penalty: This is not a topic that is up for discussion. I don't care if anyone thinks I'm close-minded. the reason why I'm not changing the save penalty is because no one can agree how to change it. I don't know Radix's original reasoning for putting up the save penalty, but he thinks it prevents runs from having excessive segments.
Don't think!  feeeeeal
Well I'm pretty sure we've established already that .5s rule is here to stay for many good reasons.  I'm just saying the way it is explained and the way times are manipulated by it and treated as the "ACTUAL REAL TIME OF THE RUN" is greatly misleading and seems to have confused a lot of people.  I'm confused now more than ever.
welcome to the machine
This came up on IRC and, although I don't know if this is the best place to put it, it seems to be a good solution: call the save penalty 'time adjustment', and on the game's page, list the run time like so:

Best time with scripts, hard mode: 0:31:00 <a href=the rules>adjusted</a> (0:29:whatever unadjusted) by Blake 'Spider-Waffle' Piepho on 2006-07-01.

Food for thought.
Quote from VorpalEdge:
This came up on IRC and, although I don't know if this is the best place to put it, it seems to be a good solution: call the save penalty 'time adjustment', and on the game's page, list the run time like so:

Best time with scripts, hard mode: 0:31:00 <a href=the rules>adjusted</a> (0:29:whatever unadjusted) by Blake 'Spider-Waffle' Piepho on 2006-07-01.

Food for thought.


"Time adjustment" is ambiguous and sounds like a euphemism. The rule nor its name should be changed.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
I just want to know how the numerical difficulty indicator is going to pass for games where difficulty levels vary.

A straightforward example would be Metal Gear Solid 2. There are six difficulty levels, but only five of them are accessible on the North American version of the game and certain runs require a lower setting (for example, Dog Tag runs can only be done on levels below the top one). There are several workarounds - for example, play on the rereleased game and group dog tag runs separately.

Now, a less straightforward example. Resident Evil 4 has four difficulty levels, only two of which are available on the American version, and apparently the ones all versions have vary in difficulty between regions.
sda loyalist
Some games vary difficulty as you do well or do badly, too. For those, you just don't give them a number I guess.
Quote from Spider-Waffle:
Only if they're more than .5s frames are calculated and added?  How sure are you about this?


Pretty sure. And even though I disagree with the rule as (I think) it stands, I'm going to be really pissed off if I'm wrong because I took it to be true at the word of other forum members before starting my Bioshock run, which I put several weeks of work into before it went on hold, and if it turns out that in fact the effective save penalty is longer than I thought it'll make all my segmentation decisions wrong and I'll probably have to start the run again. :/

I'd like to request that Mike clarifies this.

Quote:
So you're saying the portal run was calculated to have about 4 seconds of droped frames beyond .5s between the segments?

Quote:
If you failed at this, as in the case of the portal run, this can be calculated and added to get the ACTUAL REAL TIME of the run

Quote:
I was always under the impression that extra dropped frames where all calculated added like they were for the portal run, and that this was one the only runs to need extra time added because it actually had dropped frames.


Hang on - I thought it was Groobo's run that had the time added for dropped frames? And looking at the Portal page, Groobo's run is SS. I really don't know, but I'm guessing that it was that run and that the dropped frames were in level transitions and the result of Groobo FRAPSing while playing instead of FRAPSing a demo, and that since it was a SS and hence there was obviously no save penalty they got added back in.

Quote:
If this is the case I could just segment my runs like a jackass and include .5s of dropped frames between in each segment and make runs 90s faster.


I'm pretty sure that's how it works, yes. Though I'm not sure how you'd manipulate the game into dropping a full .5s of frames (editing frames out of the video is cheating, naturally). And of course, if someone beat your run purely by dropping frames, the verifiers would reject it. But if someone dropped frames and therefore effectively had a lower segmentation penalty for the purpose of deciding how often to segment, and was therefore able to use more segments than you (what a thought!) and optimise better and further improve on your time? I don't know what would happen then. Personally I'd reject any Half Life 1 run that dropped frames as having too much of an unfair advantage over yours, unless it had a major new trick that saved significant time.

Of course, I do feel it's important to point out here that in most games the number of frames dropped is either fixed or basically random, and can't be manipulated as you're suggesting here.

Quote:
And you are completely misleading about the quake engine games having droped frames, entirely moot point, demos are completely perfect as you speculated,  I know you've seen a properly made HL run, so I'm surprised you'd even bring this up and speculate whether demos are perfect or not. And I don't think you'd be the one to just throw out a moot point for some alternative motive, I'm confused why you even said this.


I said it out of simple confusion, I don't really know how demo recording/splicing works or what demo editing/video editing/voodoo and ritual sacrifice was necessary to make the segment transitions seamless. Okay, I'll concede that there isn't an issue for Quake engine games with demo recording. But I'm pretty sure that some (most? I don't know) Quake engine games have demo recording disabled, and of course there's the Unreal engine too which I've just tested and suffers from the same problem (no idea how demo recording works there). And I know with absolute, 100% certainty that there is at the very least one game out there (Bioshock) which has no demo recording and completely unavoidably drops frames. I doubt that this is the only game ever made where the problem can't be avoided. So at any rate, the issue definitely exists, and the question of which games it applies to isn't really that important at this point.

Quote:
The point of the .5s penalty should have nothing to do with dropped frames in case it's trying to do that.  If the video maker fucked up and make illegitimate video then they dropped frames need to be calculated as best as possible and added to the time.


I share this view (although as I've already pointed out, dropped frames don't necessarily equal illegitimacy or a fuck up, sometimes they can't be avoided.) However, if I remember correctly some people protested that even this change would be an unnecessary complication back in the rules thread and since Mike doesn't want to make any change to the save penalty without completely unanimous support I think arguing for this may be a lost cause.
gamelogs.org
Quote from lag:
Some games vary difficulty as you do well or do badly, too. For those, you just don't give them a number I guess.


some games have both automatic difficulty adjustments and base difficulty levels (re4 comes to mind). for those it still seems appropriate to use the number system.

as for games like metal gear solid 2, i think it would be fine to show several numbers. something like:

JP: 6  NA: 5  Re-release: 6
This run uses NA 4/5.
guffaw
Quote from Arkarian:
JP: 6  NA: 5  Re-release: 6
This run uses NA 4/5.


This is utterly incomprehensible. Personally I think that arbitrarily numbering difficulty levels makes things far less clear than the status quo.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
I'd agree. As long as the run mentions the difficulty level and, if necessary, the version, that's fine. Simples (squeaks).
gamelogs.org
you might want to look up the definition of 'arbitrary', for you seem to have forgotten it. Tongue

i'm not a huge proponent of the numbering system per se, but i do think it's a good idea to somehow list how many difficulty levels there are, rather than just stating the level. the numbering system seems like it would do this reasonably well:

"Best time, Nightmare mode" doesn't really tell you much if you're not very familiar with the game.
"Best time, Nightmare mode (3/4)" tells you far more.
I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.
I agree with arkarin regarding the difficulty classifications, except I'd word it differently:

Doom: 5/6 Difficulty (Ultra-Violence)
Edit history:
Kabuto: 2009-08-27 12:38:48 pm
As Mike suggested I've copied & pasted Rules and FAQ to the Wiki, edited to both use wiki syntax and retain original format as much as possible. I didn't link them on the KB frontpage since they're drafts.
guffaw
Quote from Arkarian:
you might want to look up the definition of 'arbitrary', for you seem to have forgotten it. Tongue


You might want to find someone else to patronise, because I don't take kindly to it.
gamelogs.org
but that's what snotty teens like me do!


Quote from Siyko:
I agree with arkarin regarding the difficulty classifications, except I'd word it differently:

Doom: 5/6 Difficulty (Ultra-Violence)


yeah, that looks good. using both words and numbers makes it very clear. i don't really see a problem with putting a longer explanation for games with multiple versions, either. "the japanese version has 5 difficulties, while all other versions have 4." "best time, japanese version (difficulty: 4/5)".
i'm all for minimalism in most cases, but putting lots of useful information on the game pages makes sense to me.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Apart from the fact the information might not be available to hand, what's the point? As long as we communicate which difficulty level it is, any information on how it compares to other difficulty levels can be part of the comments. It's not necessary.

Which of these is simpler?

Quote:
Best time, PAL version, E-Extreme difficulty: xx.xx.xx.


All the vital stats in something you can read in two seconds.

Quote:
(Note: The original North American release has five difficulty levels. All other versions of the original and all versions of the re-release have six.)

Best time, PAL version, E-Extreme difficulty (6/6): xx.xx.xx.
gamelogs.org
the first is of course simpler but not best.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Why not? Why do we need to confuse the majority to satiate the minority who'd want to know immediately (ie. can't be arsed reading comments) where a difficulty level stands in relation to others of the game? How long would it be before someone posted as 'like wat do these numbers next to the run mean?' Realistically, it would only benefit those familiar with the complicated info.
gamelogs.org
why not just put

Quote:
Best time, PAL version, E-Extreme difficulty: xx.xx.xx.


then after that and the other runs are listed, put the difficulty explanations? they don't need to be the first thing you see. that way, people who care will be able to read about them, and people who don't can just ignore them.

also, i don't think most comments would mention the number of difficulty levels, so you certainly can't say "oh just read the comments".
guffaw
you could just make the categories mouseoverable so they pop up extra information in a tooltip.

oh wait, sda2p already does this.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Quote from Arkarian:
also, i don't think most comments would mention the number of difficulty levels, so you certainly can't say "oh just read the comments".


And why do you think that is? Because they're either not relevant or relevant enough to include in comments.
gamelogs.org
Quote from DJGrenola:
you could just make the categories mouseoverable so they pop up extra information in a tooltip.


that sounds like the best solution to me. glad to hear it's already been implemented.
I've edited the Rules/FAQ/Submit drafts in the wiki to reflect desired changes. Go ahead and take a look (or edit) yourself, my english skills aren't at 100% and some proposed changes were just briefly explained so I had to guess a bit.

Also, I'm not sure whether some FAQ entries are actually rules or vice versa.