The Current Loadless Auto Splitter is Wrong

The PC Auto Splitter used for Rayman Legends turns out isn't entirely 100% accurate. And this is mostly the fault of the game itself.

If you have a slow PC, the game still needs to load the load screen first before it starts loading the main level. The Game will not declare itself to be in a load screen until that load screen is loaded, which is how the Auto Splitter detects loads at the moment.

I've been able to extract the source LUA code from the current Cheat Engine based Auto Splitter we use, and modified it to be able to detect the Swirl Screen Whipe effect, and pause the timer on those as well.

But there is another problem that comes up with that. That Screen Whipe effect is used everywhere. Room transitions especially so. Every Queen and King Teensy room, every level with multiple rooms in the main path, and anytime you navigate through the Main Gallery, there's the Swirl Screen Whipe. It's absurd.

The best thing that can happen is for me to navigate the game's memory in RAM to find a combination of variables that will only be set to certain values when the Screen Whipe is used to load and exit levels, which is when the load screen needs to load in. If I am unable to do that, we need to decide from two other options.

Option 1) Obviously the best option would be to actually figure this out properly by finding the right combination of values in RAM to use to properly detect screen whips used before load screens.

Option 2) We could just deal with the discrepancy and keep things the way they are. A bad PC would lose probably up to about 10 seconds due to having to load the load screen, which gets included in the final time with the current Auto Splitter.

Option 3) We use this new Auto Splitting method where the timer gets paused automatically for EVERY Screen Whipe transition, but in order to do this, we would have to split the Any% Leaderboards into a PC category, and a Console category. I do not want to have to manually time out loads for consoles using this new methods. That's like 3x-4x more work to do per console run I have to manually time out loads for. So keeping them in their own category with the previous manual loadless timing method would keep things as fair as possible while not giving me multitudes more work to do unreasonably. And especially if the game gets more popular as a speed game with the SGDQ run coming up soon, I really don't feel inclined to make things harder on myself.

As a community, we should try to discuss and decide together that if Option 1 cannot be fulfilled, which of the other two options would be better. Option 2 would not be as accurate or fair, but wouldn't split the leaderboards. Option 3 would split the leaderboards and keep runs in the same category accurate to eachother relatively speaking. I might end up holding a vote here on these forums for active community members of the game to vote on one of those two final options if it comes down to it.

We do have a system that people can use to compete for the best times in the Main Levels of Rayman Legends (not the invasions). It's been up for quite a few months. You can find the Google Spreadsheet for all things Main Level ILs here, as well as submission information:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eTpetdSGwbyQUkFRrEaJ1QAbKG_qPtAcVycVh44p8ls/edit

There are a TON of issues that plague this version of the game that prevent it from being a competitively viable platform to speedrun in. Not only that, there are issues that hinder any casual player from even enjoying the game in the first place.

First, let me start off with a few positives. The route for the PC, PS3/4, and Xbox360/One works perfectly fine for this version of the game. Whatever is the fastest route for those platforms is also the fastest route for the Switch version, since the unlock sequence is unchanged... And... Uh... Let's see... I guess the Switch also has its own unique Challenges rotation...? ... Yeah that's all the positives I got.

Okay so on with the bad stuff. First thing is minor compared to the other things I'm going to mention, but it is worth noting. You all know that after World 1 Level 2 (Creepy Castle), the game forces you to "Check Out World 2 (Toad Story)"? Well, in this version it still does that, but it also does this again beforehand after World 1 Level 1. It forces you to check out the new "Murfy's Touch" painting after completing Level 1:

Now we start with the really bad stuff. While this next one technically won't effect any times that are timed without loads, it's still going to ruin the pacing of your runs in real time. Yes, the loading times in this version of this game are TERRIBLE. They average almost 20 seconds per, but sometimes they can go on for WAY longer:

Not to say that they are always this bad (I think they get worse the longer you play the game without restarting the game), but they are much longer than any other version of this game. Even the PS Vita version.

And here's the true, last, final nail in the coffin. This game has poor performance. The framerate will dip below 60fps in quite a few levels. Especially in most levels in World 3 plummet in performance:

But there are many, many other places that the performance of this game will just drop because of how poorly optimized this game is for the Nintendo Switch:

I highly, HIGHLY recommend you do not get this version of the game at this time, even if you want to play through it casually. It is not a good port for a speedrunner or a casual player. If there are any future updates that are made to this game on the Switch that fixes some, or all, of these issues, I will update this thread notifying you all about it. Good day.

This is something I've always wanted to see at some point. I want to see if it's possible to put together a route that optimizes co-op using the Wii U version, the version that SHOULD be the fastest version with Co-op due to touch screen Murfy that can drag platforms or rotate platforms practically instantly in Murfy Levels, and the fact that Murfy is able to be used in ANY level, which allows Murfy to tickle any enemy on screen for double Lums, or scrub over any yellow Lum on screen and turn them into purple Lums, turning some levels that would otherwise not be feasible as a Lucky Ticket level suddenly turn into a Lucky Ticket level. I don't know when or even if there is a chance that two decent runners of this game can come together and do runs like this, but I would at least like to see some things planned out just in case something like this turns up.

Plus there's co-op boosting, which is done by having one player stand on top of the other player, the player on top holds either left or right, punches in place, then jumps off to gain a shit ton of speed, which would obviously be useful in a large selection of places. I believe there are alternate methods of co-op boosting on levels that allow you to attack other players (which is most of them, just the invasions in the current route don't allow this), and attacking them with a back kick gives the player being kicked a ton of speed too, though I don't know if this reaches the maximum possible speed like the traditional IL co-op boost does. That's another reason I'd like to see this kind of route get AT LEAST planned out, because Co-op Rayman Legends on the Wii U has so much potential it's not even funny to be the fastest way to beat the game.