Exactly what Fricassee says. A part of the speedrunning as such is to make decisions that matter to your game fast, especially strategic choices. I think it should start right in the moment when the islands appear, not when someone chooses an island.
That's why I like the start button. It's the last menu input before the game (a common start technique), allows for a better countdown to start, and happens before any tactical information is available.
If we're going to go RTA, let's at least make it easy to start the timer.
Well I mean no one bat an eye when I removed 3-island. The question is : what do we want to run, and why? 2-island easy cause it's the fastest. 4-island hard cause it's the hardest. And then what? 2-island hard, 4-island easy? something like that? this feels just... clunky. Why do people run 4-island easy? why do people run 2-island hard? 2-island hard at least makes some sense : it's the fastest way to beat the game on hard mode.
4-island easy is just... the slowest way of beating the game in easy? Peculiar for a speedrun...
2 island is effectively any%, and 4 island is effectively 100%. 3 Island is neither, which is why no one cared about it.
Any% and 100% easy and hard.
There seems to already be a consensus, but another reason real-time shouldn't start at first island is that picking an island isn't actually the first thing you can do. You can pull pilots out(which is done in the suicide run), or assign reactor power(if you start with the zoltan). You could make time start at the first action, but at that point you might as well just start at start.
not sure what's the problem with the in-game timer, my record run on the latest patch () keeps the same IGT and RT for the entire run? (note that the run starts at ~0:16)
ajmer: In-game timer pauses with the pause menu and resets with turn resets. This allows for longer think times and making mistakes unpunished. Also, some runs go out of sync for currently unknown reasons (potentially due to framerate). Turn resets may be useful despite the real-time cost, so it's preferable not to ban resets. Judging by real-time solves all these issues for basically no cost.
As the only person to submit a 3-island run, I'm totally cool with it being not on the board. It's an awkward catagory and doesn't feel as good as 2 or 4 island runs for competition. Also, if we're thinking of switching to RTA or something, I think I'll just record with a timer from now on for comparison maybe. I always thought the IGT kept going through turn resets, so it feels kinda... not right to me to do IGT if it resets with turn resets. (now that full game is a catagory, I gotta run that, it looks like fun)
We're totally switching to RTA, IGT is only going to be there for informative purposes. And if you don't record with a timer, that's fine, I can do maths and substract your starting time from your end time, its just gonna drive me crazy after 50 runs is all. So, yeah. Good luck with that, and since it's the consensus, time starts when you hit start, not when you pick first island. Kinda sad but eh. :(
Sounds like this game just got a lot more interesting. Time to work on a timer UI...
