GermanyThe time pointer you described resembles something i ran into when doing the AC7 Autosplitter, i believe its some sort of rendering timer by virtue of it not stopping in menus. Nevertheless i'm glad i could help you a bit with figuring this out :)
I am mostly a quiet observer thats just curious whats going on in the PW space so take anything i say with a grain of salt.
I may be a bit biased as the developer of the autosplitter for AC7 but i think there should be a way to figure out precise timing by looking at how the game actually times stuff (by reading out the game's memory). It is a tedious task and its only possible on PC regardless but it may help you guys on establishing a proper guidance for the issue of correct/uniform timing.
Moderator notes: (as a comment since the run comment got too long otherwise)
Difficulty: Casual
Gamestate: New Game+
Restrictions: none
Rule checks:
- FPS counter visible and showing 60 FPS?
Yes
- Indication of reduced collision damage?
Casual -> No factor
- Any evidence for modified game files/installed mods?
No
RTA Start (difficulty select): 00:00:05
RTA End (fade to black): 04:01:57
---------------------------------------
RTA: 04:01:52
Time Result screen ok?
M01: 03:57:14 x
M02: 03:59:76 x
M03: 07:13:11 x
M04: 09:40:55 x
M05: 05:23:55 x
M06: 15:00:00 x
M07: 05:56:67 x
M08: 07:44:18 x
M09 R1: 00:07:97
M09: 06:23:80 x
M10: 10:45:22 x
M11: 15:00:00 x
M12: 14:33:03 x
M13: 04:59:88 x
M14: 06:55:00 x
M15: 21:37:73 x
M16: 15:57:05 x
M17: 09:52:39 x
M18: 07:55:67 x
M19: 14:49:55 x
M20: 07:53:68 x
-------------------
ITG: 03:15:45:93
Additional notes: -
In my opinion it is pretty much impossible to verify the existence (or rather absence) of external modifications, hence it is an unenforceable rule, and therefore we have to rely on trust in this case. Sure, we could require some sort of face cam to show the controllers, but that a) might not be possible for everyone and b) still does not eliminate the possibility of a second unshown controller to be used.
So TLDR: I am personally not really worried about that and even if I were, it's nothing we can easily enforce.
Also regarding your question about a discord server: https://discord.gg/eUZH8cxh Also linked above in the game summary (the discord icon :) )
There aren't categories that you are missing, but at the same time i would be opposed to adding them since we already have too many categories for the active base of runners.
I think it would be easiest to join the speedrun discord server (if you didnt already) ( https://discord.gg/bKJ2sYCu ) and either ask in the #ace-combat-7 channel or message sanic in a private message.
Depending on your internet connection you could theoretically live stream from your ps4 to twitch. That would firstly result in a better video quality and secondly give you a recording (past broadcast archive). If several clips or bad quality recording would be accepted is a question for the moderators (superSANIC).
I think segmented runs are not valid but you can start doing individual level runs. (See here: https://www.speedrun.com/acecombat7/levels )
Just putting my thoughts out there - depending if you want to really differentiate the leaderboard on difficulty or not you might aswell "just" do a dropdown for the difficulties and only have the normal New Game and New Game + categories. That would leave the difficulty at the runners digression. I.e. Minecraft Java Edition did a similar thing for their random seed category where the difficulty doesnt really matter for the category so its just a dropdown on the run submission.
