timing question

2009-06-28 10:11:18 am

ok guys, i have a timing question. The Conduit has an in-game timer and also has an auto-save feature at each checkpoint reached during a level. The timer is accurate, but the game rounds down fractions of a second at each checkpoint save ...

... so, if i end the first segment with a :39.8, the next time you start from that checkpoint the timer will start at exactly 39 seconds. So in actuality, you would save .8 seconds by starting the game over at that checkpoint rather than just playing through the level. For a level that has 5 checkpoints, that could be about 2 seconds of overall savings by segmenting the run at checkpoints rather than SS the level.

I'm assuming SDA would use the final in-game clock time, because it IS accurate. But i wanted to check and make sure that this is correct.

Thread title:

Smilge

2009-06-28 11:16:37 am

I believe they would, since the segment penalty would negate the fractions of seconds saved.

UCpro

Edit history:

UCpro: 2009-06-28 12:12:47 pm

2009-06-28 11:26:38 am

would there indeed be a .5 second penalty at each save though? I thought that penalty was enforced only on games where you can save/quicksave anywhere in the game and start the game again at that exact spot. I also thought that was for games with no in-game timer or an inaccurate in-game timer. This game has defined checkpoints that act as restriction points throughout the game, so i can't just save anywhere.

I guess the main issue is with the in-game timer since i have confirmed that it does start on a rounded down second at each restart of a checkpoint. But many games do this too, correct? Is there a game like this currently hosted on SDA that i could compare timing issues with?

ExplodingCabbage

2009-06-28 12:52:28 pm

Quote from UCpro:

would there indeed be a .5 second penalty at each save though? I thought that penalty was enforced only on games where you can save/quicksave anywhere in the game and start the game again at that exact spot.

You're right, the save penalty doesn't apply to autosaves/checkpoints.

As for the timing issue, I believe games with timers that drop seconds on saving have to be manually timed. Whether just dropping fractions of seconds would require manual timing or not, I don't know.

Angelmark

2009-06-28 01:12:46 pm

The Anomaly

It's an interesting case since runners would pretty much have to use the maximum number of segments in order to get the best time. I'm not against it though since I don't have a problem with runs using lots of segments.

UCpro

Edit history:

UCpro: 2009-06-28 07:55:52 pm

2009-06-28 01:34:05 pm

Quote from Angelmark:

It's an interesting case since runners would pretty much have to use the maximum number of segments in order to get the best time. I'm not against it though since I don't have a problem with runs using lots of segments.

yeah, i don't think there's a problem with segmenting at every checkpoint ... isn't that what was done for the Halo 2 run?

Anyways, here is a video i made of the first level ...

as you can see, timing starts right at the 5 second mark and ends at 2:51 which would be 2:46 in real-time. But the final time displayed at the end is 2:44. i appended 6 segments together, so the real-time might be off a little. i used 5 checkpoint saves total, and it appears i saved 2 seconds total by rounded down fraction of seconds on each segment.

So, i'm just going to assume SDA would accept this as 2:44, unless i hear otherwise

mikwuyma

2009-06-29 01:54:31 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Quote from UCpro:

So, i'm just going to assume SDA would accept this as 2:44, unless i hear otherwise

Yeah, I'd really rather not manually time the game, and there are plenty of other games we use the in-game timers for that cut off fractions of a second (smash bros, tetris attack).

UCpro

2009-06-29 02:05:53 pm

Quote from mikwuyma:

Quote from UCpro:

So, i'm just going to assume SDA would accept this as 2:44, unless i hear otherwise

Yeah, I'd really rather not manually time the game, and there are plenty of other games we use the in-game timers for that cut off fractions of a second (smash bros, tetris attack).

yeah Mike, those are good examples of other games that time similarly. OK, i guess we'll use the end in-game timer ... it makes the most sense.

dex

2009-06-29 06:51:31 pm

Invisible avatar

Quake projects floor the segment times as well.