Speedrun Mode has been out for a week, so I wanted to start a discussion on how those changes impact our runs.

Full Game Speedrun mode lets us easily run the whole game at once, from Mauao View through Underground City skipping Final Delivery. Speedrun Mode Any% & 100% feel like decent upgrades to our current default NG+ categories.

Timer The in-game timer seems to behave similarly to the normal mode timer, which means it pauses when you bring up the menu. My gut is this won't replace real-time, but I could see a case for it if we're alright with the pausing, and we don't find a way to break the timer itself.

Results Screen Removing the results screen between levels really speeds up the run, but I noticed it removes some feedback from 100%. You can miss a bonus objective and not realize it until the very end. Also, the speedrun (single) results doesn't say what level was played. I was hoping it would be possible to submit screenshots instead of full video if we decide to use the in-game timer. Edit: Also worth mentioning that the normal mode results screen is now skippable by pressing escape.

Movement It feels like the movement & physics has changed a bit, so everything is similar but slightly off. I've noticed triple-jumps sometime feel more floaty. Sprint seems to break less often just by running over different surfaces, but geometry often feels stickier. Sometimes you brush a railing and just stick to it rather than falling off it.

Wall Clips This is the big one. The physics changes have made some of our wall clips much less reliable. Wedging yourself between objects still works pretty well. But, using a Standard-lens sprint jump head on either just doesn't work, or will get you through the wall but you lose most of your forward momentum.

Framerate The PC patch shipped with a bug that had move speed & jump height tied to framerate. That seems to be resolved, but it's worth noting in case there's other game behavior that might be manipulated with framerate.

New Game Runs I was hoping that the new inventory system would let us simulate a fresh save by just removing everything from your bag. Unfortunately, removed items won't get re-unlocked even when playing through normal mode. So if anyone wants to do a new game run, you still have to clear your save data manually.

Please add your own findings to this thread! I'm curious if anyone has more thoughts on how our categories should change going forward.

No, the easy new game runs dream is dead! I might do it anyway.

Still, Speedrun Mode Any% and 100% do feel like the natural successors, I agree, I can't imagine anyone will miss Final Delivery.

If Im going to be honest, I'm hesitant to let Speedrun Mode replace regular Any% or NG+ Any% is because it pauses the menus between levels. When I was first thinking about how runs of this game could work I always looked at the menus as extra things to worry about, due to how the photo listing taking more time the more photos you took. This really rewarding precise play and limited mistakes, as the less photos you took the faster the menuing would be. Obviously though, since I've taken an indefinite break from running this game, it's up to what you all would like: It added and replacing an existing category or it being a seperate category

I actually agree about the results screen. I liked the fact that taking fewer photos rewarded you by shortening that screen. Plus, I didn't mind the breather between levels. However, the new version lets you press escape to skip to the end of the results immediately. So even in normal mode runs, the result screen will always just be how fast can you press escape and click next delivery. :(

Should I then make speedrun mode a seperate category, or should there be a rule about not skipping the results screen. Kind of don't want to negate Ves' hard work on the game/ mode but I also want to keep the amount of categories low to streamline the runs. Also did I hear right that Final Delivery was skipped in the Speedrun mode? Because if thats the case then it may need to be a seperate category, or we would have to calculate the average completion speed of Final Delivery and add it to the times of the Speedrun mode

Speedrun mode does skip Final Delivery. The "No Macro" version of speedrun mode is bugged at the moment, so I'm not sure if that one would skip it as well.

I'm not really sure the best way to keep the categories tidy overall, but at the very least we could use Speedrun Mode Any% & 100%. I think it makes sense for those to be new categories, since we didn't have a full game / all levels category yet anyway.

If we want to preserve the existing categories and people still want to run those, we could call them out as Normal mode runs for now, borrowing the game's own terminology to distinguish Normal & Speedrun modes.

Past that, I would suggest we just handle new category changes as the need arises. If people really want to run Normal mode or clean saves or ILs or whatever, then we can definitely adjust to meet those demands.

As for in-game time vs real time-- it seems like load times are relevant in this game. I just compared my run of speedrun mode vs. redmars' run, and at the end of the run there was a ~10 second discrepancy between in-game time and real time. As far as I could tell neither of us paused. I timed a couple of level loads and found that mine were 0.5-1.0 seconds faster per level.

I was wondering about load times, so it's nice to have the comparison point. Makes sense to use in-game time for speedrun mode then since we have it. The fact that the timer pauses doesn't bother me so much unless people find a weird way to break it in the future.

Also went back and checked the old Any% speedruns. There's a discrepancy there too, but less than what I saw in speedrun mode. Timing from the end of the "item unlocked" fade out until the next level's name appears on screen was 0.2-0.3 seconds faster per level for me than for redmars.

I started working on speedrun mode 100% and found a bug with the All Bonus Objectives stat at the end of the run. It will sometimes incorrectly show that you didn't complete all bonus objectives even if you did. Until that bug gets fixed, we'll probably need to show the pause menu for each level to verify bonus objectives were actually completed. :(