Eino has become the first person to beat Civ I as a space race victory in a speedrun-eqse time, with a sub 30 time. I re-timed it based on when the end cinematic music began. So, let's discuss if that is fair, as that is a two second loss.

My description on the "when the cinematic begins" is a bit vague, I'll be sure to change it based on this discussion.

No worries, however you want to time this is fine by me. I timed this from clicking of out (start of fade) "risen to become..." to screen flashing orange before the start of ending cinematic. I checked exact frames from VirtualDub. I can send you the original capture if you like. I didn't bother using timer, because it's more convenient to capture directly from DOSBox, instead of using an external program and that's how I usually capture DOS videos. This time is likely improvable by several minutes, but I agree, timer would be useful if more ppl get interested in running this category.

OK, I've edited the space race victory category to be more specific. It's now the stranded click start, and ends at the beginning of the music. If anyone has an objection, this is the thread to discuss it.

Eino, that's fine, this is timed by whole seconds, and unless we get to the point were milliseconds matter, I see no need.
(Not that this is the place, but conquest is getting to that point.)

I thought about this timing on audio cue a bit more, should have done that in the first place 🙂 It's a bit unusual, never heard any speedrun timing to be based on audio cue. The category of conquest seems more regular, when you get the newspaper clip before the ending cinematic. I thought the orange flash or map and HUD disappearing before the SR ending cinematic was a clear and analogous indicator of losing control after winning the game.

This might be an issue when using a timer if a player such as me is not listening to game audio, but instead other music on the background. Lots of people seem to actually stream their background music on their runs or have game audio completely muted, so it could be an issue for a moderator also. But as I said, it doesn't really matter to me personally how this is timed, especially if there's only going to be this one run for the category.

Though it would be interesting to see people optimizing this further 🙂 I kind of recorded this video more for personal curiosity and as a guide instead of grinded run, in case anyone is interested, but having though time to get started.

When looking at your runs, how would you get the cue on when the game exactly starts?

For my own reference, I ended up starting my runs on appearance of "you're stranded..." as hitting enter makes it slowly fade out.

So after playing 80+ runs so far, I'd propose to use first appearance of this screen as starting position: https:/​/​imgur.​com/​a/​FzhmXbi

And end for the end this frame that appears just before the end cinematic: https:/​/​imgur.​com/​2WCPMPN

Reason why not to wait for the sound to start - if you manage to get a glitched ending state, this frame can appear for longer than usual, also on the beginning of the space cinematic I've had it glitched that you would start seeing the spaceship 'dot' & sound starting after a long pause.