How to time runs

If you're submitting a run, you can use your time from the high score table. If your run has aborts or game overs, add up the times from each high score listing.

Note that these times do not include fractional seconds, and they may be added upon verification.

I wanted to say that up front, so that potential runners aren't scared away by having to do a lot of arithmetic. Now that that's out of the way, here are the real rules.

Your time is the total in-game time from each level attempt, regardless of how it ends (level completed, game over, abort, or suspend). This includes fractional seconds. Based on experimentation, I have found that the game keeps track of time in this way, even though the final result is truncated to the nearest second. If you suspend during a level, the game will include that time. This creates a number of options for tracking your time, which are easier than adding up at least 40 individual times each with fractional seconds.

Option 1: Approximate.
This is the method I put at the top of the post, because it's easiest, and I don't want to discourage anyone from running this game because of some complicated timing rules. Since the game truncates times, and the individual times have a precision of 0.1 seconds, the actual time can be up to 0.99 seconds higher than reported in the high score table. In most cases this won't matter. However, we have a relatively easy way to add those back in (see option 2).

Option 2: Re-add fractional seconds.
Because the high score values are truncated, we only have to keep track of fractional seconds to figure out the actual time based on the high score table. Simply keep a running total of the final 2 digits from the in-game timer on each level. Take the last 2 digits of that number, divide by 100, and add it to the time in the high score table. Do this for each high score entry that is used.

Option 3: LiveSplit with Manual Game Time
LiveSplit has a plugin that allows a time to be entered manually for each segment. Confusingly, this needs to be added to your layout, even though it doesn't display anything. Ideally, you should create a segment for every level. Once you start the timer, LiveSplit will create a dialog box where you can enter your time formatted as "mm:ss.xx". Entering a time will automatically move to the next split. (If you do not have a segment for each level, or you need to include multiple values in one segment, you may enter one in-game time, undo the split, and then enter another time. LiveSplit will add them up and include them in a single segment.)

I would prefer to have this in the rules, but it's a bit too involved, and I don't want to scare anyone away by having really complicated rules.