Hello everyone! I am here to inform you about some PRTS news. First a little story time but TLDR at the end.

LE-6

During the Lingering Echoes rerun, we stumbled onto a problem of the game. Dylan, who was trying to get the PRTS record on LE-6, wasn't able to achieve this goal by a very large margin despite near perfect execution. We looked into it and Dragichav’s run was perfectly legit: no sound glitch, no editing on the recording. Everything was in order. After some time, I decided to look at the problem again and found out the first enemies would be on the map sooner which was concluded as a “hardware difference” as that was the only run where it was problematic.

SL-8 Contest

Now we come to the Arknights Speedrun Anniversary on So Long, Adele's SL-8 stage. I tried to run a PRTS for the first time and ended up having to run it on my phone due to stability issues. I ended up with a variable FPS recording which I converted into a stable framerate video for YouTube. I ended up having the same advantageous lag, but I also had the raw recording which ends up giving me a fairer time.

The Problem

Due to that issue for a competition with prizes, we started to look for a solution to ensure that everyone has a fair chance without some hardware or software RNG. We first find that things aren’t just spawning earlier, the DP count also goes up faster as well. We start to look into counting pixels on the DP bar, but we end up with another issue which is actually the problem: the lag makes the game display the starting frame we use to time runs randomly between what we use when it’s not lagging and when the game starts to run normally. You can end up having between 1ms to 500ms of advantage compared to a smooth run.

The Solution

The best solution we found to make this contest and the whole ladder more fair, competitive, consistent, and easy to participate in is pretty simple: 2 DP are generated every second, so instead of starting to count on the frame we used before, we will start after 2 DP have been generated and then go back exactly 1 second for our new timer starting frame. In the event that 2 DP cannot be used, then we will go to the point where 4 DP is generated and then go back 2 seconds; and so on. This is likely to be used on rare, abnormal recordings.

When your run lags, it can end up doing weird things like having a starting point where the stage name is still on the screen but it’s just a visual glitch as the DP will always follow the exact number as otherwise the game would break apart at every loss of FPS.

We won’t recount everything as most maps and recordings don’t have this issue, but we will recount some records where the game is known to lag. Don’t hesitate to ask for any run to be retimed using this method if you think this happened. Some non-laggy runs might lose a frame but as it’s easier to time compared to trying to identify a glow on the DP bar, this method is much better for a fairer leaderboard.

TLDR

The lag at the beginning of some stages makes the starting frame random. We will review all new PRTS runs and some old ones using this new method to find the beginning of the stage. From now on, we use the first moment the first 2 DP have been generated and add 1 sec.

Changes in the rules

Old

• Timer Start: First frame when DP bar BEGINS to fill.

New

• Timer Start: First frame exactly 1 second before 2 DP has been generated.
  • After 2 DP generated:
  • Go back 1 second for starting frame: