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Didn't know where to post this, hope this is ok.

Im currently doing a segmented rage run and there are some stuff about the timing I need to know before i procced, i might even have to start over the whole run depending on your answer.



So the first thing is the in-game timer. All the time you spend in the menu doesen't count towards the in-game timer, even though you build/craft stuff in there. Will the in-game timer be the "unconditional" true time (apart from the added 0.5 sec every manual save) when the run is done or will the in-menu time be added?

The second thing is the autosave system that doesen't work very well with a segmented run in some situations. When you enter some areas the "save instance" is located outside that area, meaning that i would have to enter the area again every time I retry a segment. I make a manual save instead just as I spawn inside the area, will this be considered a manual save in the final run with the added time penalty or will it be considered an autosave?

Let me know if anything is unclear.
Thread title:  
Now Reap The Whirlwind!
Since the in game timer doesn't count your menu time, its not reliable and you would use real time to see how long your segments are.
Also, because you are doing manual saves, that is what they will count as in the timing.
Hopefully that answers your questions.
Quote from Stormknight:
Since the in game timer doesn't count your menu time, its not reliable and you would use real time to see how long your segments are.
Also, because you are doing manual saves, that is what they will count as in the timing.
Hopefully that answers your questions.

Well, that sucks. Is it the same thing with like pop-up windows that appear a lot of times in the beginning of the game as tutorials? The game completely freezes and the timer stops until you push "accept" and the game starts its normal timescale.

Also, are you sure? I can't imagine that loading screens and the "Esc menu" (where you load, save etc.) is considered being a part of the game, guess it's arguable if the in-game menu is an actual part of the game as well.
Now Reap The Whirlwind!
Yes they are part of the game. And you have to use real time for your segments since the in game timer doesnt keep track of menu time. Who knows what else it doesn't keep track of? For the most reliable time, time it yourself.
Edit history:
Kitin: 2013-06-16 12:45:16 pm
Quote from Stormknight:
Yes they are part of the game. And you have to use real time for your segments since the in game timer doesnt keep track of menu time. Who knows what else it doesn't keep track of? For the most reliable time, time it yourself.

Ok, can I time the segments post recording? As in taking the timing from the video files after the recording? Don't know any other way to time it with good accuracy.

Edit:
Quote from Stormknight:
Who knows what else it doesn't keep track of? For the most reliable time, time it yourself.

It's not hard to figure out which parts the timer includes, to me the in-game timer is best because it only keep tracks of actual gameplay and leave out parts where the timescale is absolutely 0.
Edit history:
Patrick: 2013-06-16 01:06:56 pm
Patrick: 2013-06-16 01:04:56 pm
Patrick: 2013-06-16 01:03:17 pm
Don't worry about the timing, IsraeliRD will do that for you.


For your personal inofficial timing: IsraeliRD uses software like VirtualDub, it has an exact timer, more exact than media players. An alternative is Avidemux, they are both video editors, so both have exact timers.
Quote from freakypaddy:
Don't worry about the timing, IsraeliRD will do that for you.


For your personal inofficial timing: IsraeliRD uses software like VirtualDub, it has an exact timer, more exact than media players. An alternative is Avidemux, they are both video editors, so both have exact timers.

Yeah i use vegas or after effects for that, 1/60 or 1/30 sec accuracy depending on framerate. Just thought that a video might not be fully accurate due to occational framedrops/artifacts or something like that, but now i know.
Not a walrus
I would wait for another admin response since I'm not really the final say on timing, but other games that have in-game timers don't necessarily fall back to realtime just because you do stuff in the menu (see Super Metroid or Mega Man 9). You might still get rejected if your menu work is complete shit, but it doesn't immediately make it manual timing.
Quote from UraniumAnchor:
I would wait for another admin response since I'm not really the final say on timing, but other games that have in-game timers don't necessarily fall back to realtime just because you do stuff in the menu (see Super Metroid or Mega Man 9). You might still get rejected if your menu work is complete shit, but it doesn't immediately make it manual timing.

I'll wait then. I need to know before i restart the run since the answer will impact the planning.
Now Reap The Whirlwind!
Something that I thought you could do in regards to timing is play through the game and see what the in game timer says at the end, then time your segments manually to see if there is a difference. that could help sort out the issue.
Edit history:
Kitin: 2013-06-17 07:41:17 pm
Kitin: 2013-06-17 06:27:55 pm
Kitin: 2013-06-17 06:26:36 pm
Kitin: 2013-06-17 06:07:33 pm
Quote from Stormknight:
Something that I thought you could do in regards to timing is play through the game and see what the in game timer says at the end, then time your segments manually to see if there is a difference. that could help sort out the issue.

It's not that sort of an issue. It's not hard to determine which parts the in-game timer includes and which parts it doesen't, the timer isn't flawed and it's accurate at what it does. The parts that doesen't get included is the parts where the game engines timescale is 0: menus, pop-up windows, pre-rendered cutscenes and such.

Another question, there is one small load skip in the beginning of the game:



It saves about 30 seconds on the in-game timer. Which parts of this will be included? Other than this there is no load skips in the game, not that i know of at least.

Edit: It's an autosave btw.

Edit2: You can use saves to skip pop-up windows though, if you run through the pop-up trigger just after the game is loaded (during the time the game fades in from black) it won't trigger. Never used it though since i thought that pop-up windows wouldn't be included in the timing.
Dragon Power Supreme
I'll give you a proper answer in the next few days. I need to check another PC game as a possible precedent to this.
Not a walrus
Braid doesn't time the puzzle assembly sections if you want some precedent.
Dragon Power Supreme
I couldn't find the PC game but doesn't matter, as SDA indeed has quite a number of games published where we use in-game timer even though it doesn't do anything in the menu. As long as the timer displays at the end of the game it will be good.
Edit history:
Kitin: 2013-06-18 07:05:37 pm
Quote from IsraeliRD:
I couldn't find the PC game but doesn't matter, as SDA indeed has quite a number of games published where we use in-game timer even though it doesn't do anything in the menu. As long as the timer displays at the end of the game it will be good.

A quicksave just when you push the final button could be used, you can then watch the save in the menu and see at which time it was made, BWoods used it for his run here at about 2:14:25:



It doesen't really matter which way you choose to time the run since i need to restart the run anyway, but if it's decided to be the game timer I'll go for the fastest possible in-game time then.
Dragon Power Supreme
If it's done before you press the button (doesn't allow you after that) then we'd have to manually time the part after the quicksave which is fine (I've done that with Legend of Grimrock).
Edit history:
Kitin: 2013-07-05 10:12:45 am
I'm sorry, but i was wrong about the in game timer. To test it i recorded a clip (of the character standing in a corner doing nothing) that was 1:59:50 in real time but the in game timer showed that 1:55:01 had passed during that time. Great programming there id. 

Manual timings has to be done in Rage in other words, and I therefore need to know what will be included in the timing.
Here's a single segment speedrun I did. What will be included in the SDA timing based on this?


Edit: Might be easier to list the things that will be excluded.
The dilemma being whether or not crafting ammo/items in menu will be included or not (0:35:00 and 1:18:30), this might change the planning totally.
Not a walrus
If you don't want to use the game timer then the only things not included would be loading screens.
Quote from UraniumAnchor:
If you don't want to use the game timer then the only things not included would be loading screens.

Since the game timer is about *0.96 slower than real-time I assumed the game timer couldn't be used.
Not a walrus
Metroid Fusion's timer has a similar issue, I think it runs 15/16 of normal speed, so it's not unprecedented. I'm not the one who makes that decision though. Mike and/or IsraeliRD can probably tell you more, I'll try to poke them this way.
Dragon Power Supreme
If the game timer is consistent when you do tests of the same thing (just standing around, letting the timer run) then it's acceptable as-is. We have plenty of games where their in-game timer clock is slower than real-time, so it's not a bad thing and you can quietly use it.
Quote from IsraeliRD:
If the game timer is consistent when you do tests of the same thing (just standing around, letting the timer run) then it's acceptable as-is. We have plenty of games where their in-game timer clock is slower than real-time, so it's not a bad thing and you can quietly use it.

Okey, did a shorter test and calculated the difference in my single segment just now and ended up with the same factor 0.96 in both so I'm pretty sure it's consistent.
Edit history:
Kitin: 2013-07-07 02:31:26 pm
Kitin: 2013-07-07 02:29:01 pm
Kitin: 2013-07-07 02:25:43 pm
Sorry for uping this thread all the time but I need some more clarification which I usually never get in the Rage thread.

The first thing is regarding some console commands that I would like to use to make the segmented run more clear and smooth.

If enabled, pm_noBob will remove the character bobbing (swaying). I used this in my single segment run.
If enabled, g_noFadeIn will remove the fade in effect when a save is loaded.
If disabled , view_damageBlur and view_doubleVision will remove the annoying blurry resample looking effect when you take damage.

Here's a video where i try to show it:


These commands only affect the visuals. Would these commands be allowed in a SDA speedrun?

The pm_noBob command can be used in the newest version of the game, but all the others can only be accessed in the first version of the game. I therefore plan to use the first version when recording the speedrun. According to the changelogs of the patches and my own experience, nothing is changed in the different versions except the performance and the access to commands. Will the game version affect the category of the run despite the lack of change in the different versions?

Lastly, there is a potential oob skip in the game that requires pretty rapid and very consistent jumping in order to make it. I've tried to bind jump to the mwheel up and then draged the mouse upside down across my desk to keep myself levitated, but I run out of space to drag the mouse pretty quickly and i can't control the character with the mouse while doing it.



The game is too limited to let you bind two keys (mwheelup+mwheeldown for example) on the mouse to execute the same thing. This might be possible via the console or a script though, a frictionless mousewheel might work as well but I don't own one. Is any of this allowed for a legit SDA run or is there any other way that is allowed? I'm sure similar rapid clicking questions has been precedented here a lot.
Exoray
When it comes to console commands, we generally don't allow them because there's just so many commands that you could theoretically have tweaked that it becomes impossible to verify and compare runs against each other. In this case one could easily argue that getting blurry vision while being hit is part of the game much the same as actually taking damage while being hit is part of the game. Removing the taking damage part with a console command would be a cheat right? I would say removing any other disadvantages that comes with getting hit would be a cheat as well.

Just use whatever graphics settings you are allowed to change from the menu and have the rest at default.

When it comes to game versions we usually suggest the runners to just use the fastest version that is available.

We don't allow the use of scripts so when it comes to rebinding your keys you should stick to what you are actually able to do from within the menus in the game. If the game is limited in that sense, then the same limitation would apply to every runner which ensures a fair playing field.