After polling the top runners, I have decided to go back on the decision to include time spent on the map in the real time without loads (LRT) timing method. As of now, LRT no longer includes time spent on the map screen. I have already gone and retimed all (non-rejected) runs that used LRT so that they no longer include time spent on the map, so this change is effective immediately.

At the time that LRT was first conceived I polled the top runners and we agreed that having map time was necessary to punish people for stalling on the map for excessive periods of time. With retrospect, having map time included in LRT when practically all other out-of-gameplay menus are not included is not only inconsistent, but also it adds on unnecessary variance to the time and can lead to the unfortunate "Halfbrick Special" (as coined by @Tezca) where entering a level too quickly softlocks the game on the map. For the most part, keeping map time in LRT was more of a holdoff from the old RTA timing method rather than it being actually a good idea.

Despite this, there is one notable upside to including map time that now needs to be addressed. Whenever you reach a checkpoint, the game is saved and when you pause and quit or close the game you will be able to continue from the checkpoint at your leisure. A small quirk of this is that when you respawn from the checkpoint you respawn to the right of the checkpoint, so you can skip over 2-3 tiles just by forcibly closing the game the moment you touch a checkpoint. This is obviously a very small effect, to the point where the time you spend on the map after reopening the game completely nullifies all the advantage that this strategy could have, so with the old system this was kept in check. With map time removed from LRT, this is now completely free time save (assuming the route doesn't require you to asm across the checkpoint or anything like that), and while it's unrealistic that someone would actually go for it right now, the fact that this is optimal means that it's possible that someone would try to go for this to shave off a few frames in super optimized categories (Prologue comes to mind). If this were to ever actually become a real strategy, it would inevitably cause headaches for both the people trying to attempt it and for moderators trying to retime runs, and just generally wouldn't make for a fun gameplay experience (or viewing experience for that matter). For this reason, I am going to futureproof against this by adding the following rule to the global game rules:

Closing the game during gameplay is not allowed: the game may not be closed while in a level, at an in-level shop, at a vortex shop, on the pause menu, on the screenshot screen, on the revival potion screen, on the hospital screen, or on a loading screen.

As far as I am aware, the only collateral damage this has is that a particular token grinding method in survival is now illegal, which is obviously completely irrelevant to all of our categories. This also opens the door for using the time played statistic as a timing method, which theoretically could only be circumvented by closing the game during gameplay, but it is still a flawed timing method since it fails to track milliseconds, which is a problem since you can again pause and quit at every checkpoint to save between 0 and 0.983 seconds every time from the in game time truncating the milliseconds. Because of this, we will not be switching to this as a timing method for our current categories unless this issue is fixed somehow.

Now that map time is removed, the list of things that count to the final time with this method is as follows:

• Time spent with the HUD visible (ie you are playing the game) except after the cutscene in 8-4-2 (you are not playing the game in this particular instance) and after the Arena complete! message appears in arena levels (to prevent the slow motion effect from causing massive time losses for no reason)
• Time spent entering, browsing and exiting an in-level shop
• Time spent during the revival potion animation and death animation (up until the first frame of fade-out)
• Time spent on the pause menu (and settings submenu in the pause menu)
• Time spent on the screenshot menu
• Time spent on the Save Point popup screen when reaching the first checkpoint on a new save

A non-exhaustive list of things that do not count to the final time is:

• Time spent watching a cutscene
• Time spent on a loading screen / black screen / fade-in or fade-out
• Time spent on menus other than the pause menu, screenshot screen or in-level shops (this includes the map screen, character selection menu, costume selection menu, main menu, vortex shop, and all others)
• Time spent on the "No internet connection detected" screen (unless you are still able to move while this screen is up)
• Time spent waiting for an ad to load, watching an ad, or watching the cassette cutscene at a checkpoint
• Time spent on the "Revive?" screen (from first frame of player showing the damage animation to first frame after the vendor disappears from the bottom left corner)
• Time spent on the level end screen and level intro screen
• On runs that were done on low end devices on v1.6.20 and below only, time spent frozen before a checkpoint/other freeze times if it is particularly noticeable (in 1.7.0 and above, the game will do multiple frames' worth of calculations if it detects that it's missed frames, meaning there are technically no pauses in gameplay)
• Time spent on the hospital screen (normally only visible in v1.4.44 and below after dying, but sometimes appears after dying in 8-4-2;1 in later versions)

LRT still functions under the rationale that anything that every runner has to experience during gameplay in a run must count to the final time. Other than map time which has just been addressed, I don't see any reason to change whether the rest of these categories are included/excluded from LRT since these are pretty logical.

Happy running everyone!