United StatesAs of July 5, 2017, all full-game speedruns will start when you select the difficulty after choosing "Dam" under level select. This skips the unnecessary tutorial mission when starting with a new game, much like 007: Nightfire any%.
The timing on already existing runs has been adjusted to remove the training mission. This make it more fair for people who ran the game before this rule change.
If you have any questions, feel free to post here and I'll be happy to answer them.
As you can see, 007: Nightfire on PC has its own leaderboard now. It used to be a miscellaneous category on the console leaderboard, but we agreed that it was worth being a separate game on speedrun.com. Hopefully this change will help grow the PC Nightfire community.
At the moment, I am the only moderator. But If this game gets a community of multiple runners, I can add more moderators as needed. The same is true for additional categories, if they're worth having.
http://www.speedrun.com/007nfpc
Up until now, PC Any% has been a miscellaneous category on the console Nightfire leaderboard. Most of the runners didn't really care about it, so it was just put to the side for a really long time. Nightfire is a completely different game on PC and really stuck out like a sore thumb on a leaderboard so focused on the console version. We (the moderators) agreed that it should have its own leaderboard because it's a totally different game. Hopefully this will help grow the PC Nightfire community.
In the near future, I will add a cool background to the PC leaderboard and make the board look better. Right now it's just the default layout. If Nightfire PC gets more popular and has its own community one day, I can add more moderators and maybe more categories if it's worth it.
I plan to do additional testing with all the bond games on PS2, once I buy them. I'm interested to see what's different. I'll make another comparison video once i have this game on PS2,
Originally, we only had Operative and 007 Classic difficulty for individual level runs, but I wanted to have time trials on here as well. Instead of adding Time Trials, I just added Agent and 007 difficulty, so you can do whatever difficulty you want and it'll have a place on the leaderboard.
As of right now, Operative and 007 Classic are the only full-game categories, due to a lack of competition at the moment. That could be different in the future, but at the moment it's not worth having for full-game runs.
May i Suggest using the cover art for the switch version? You don't have to, but I think this image would look better on the leaderboard: http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/0/3699/2920687-the+legend+of+zelda+-+breath+of+the+wild+v7.jpg
There are a few things I want to talk about when it comes to speedrunning this game. First, there is a little bit of movement tech in this game. It involves starting a sprint and then interrupting it around 15 frames (half a second) before the sprint runs out. This is what it looks like:
Optimally, this saves somewhere between 0.1 to 0.2 seconds for each successful sprint cancels (That's roughly 1 second for every 6 sprint cancels). To save time, each sprint interruption needs to be within a 5 or 6 frame window. Outside of that, you will most likely lose time or possibly break even with normal sprinting. Keep in mind that the video shown above is a TAS, so it's unlikely that anybody's movement will actually look like that.
Besides Sprint cancelling, the fastest way to move is to start a sprint as soon as you are able to. This is faster than waiting for a longer sprint because you spend more time sprinting and less time waiting when you sprint as soon as possible.
Thankfully, all versions of this game seem to run the same as far as speedrunning goes. There are no known differences between the North American NTSC version and the European/Australian PAL version that affect speedruns. Even the versions with different spoken languages such as the Japanese version are the same because the different voices are simply dubbed over the exact same cutscenes. If that's not good enough, even different consoles run this game the same way. Whether you're playing on an original Wii or a Wii U, it won't affect lag and loading times. However, keep in mind that aging hardware could possibly run slower than newer systems. But in my tests with different systems, as long as the console isn't really old or damaged, it should run the same. Possible differences with hardware will only affect full-game runs because those are timed by real time. Speedruns of individual levels are timed with the in-game timer, which ignores lag and loading times.
Controller choice is another factor in speedrunning this game. You can play this game with a GameCube controller, a Wii Classic Controller, or the Wii Remote and Nun-chuck. GameCube controller vs. Classic Controller is really up to personal preference. As far as i'm aware, there is no time difference between them. I don't know enough about the motion controls for this game so I'm not going to pretend like I do. From watching videos of people playing with the Wii Remote, it appears to be slower because you can't turn as quickly. But I don't think it's really that big of a deal. Also it's worth mentioning that you cannot use the GameCube controller if you're playing on Wii U, even if you're using the official adapter.
There are a few of us working on getting the IL table filled up with good runs, so I would recommend watching those if you're interested in optimizing your times. PurpleSunDeryl is crazy good at coming up with new strategies and optimizations, and he's been doing a lot of work on this game lately. I've been doing a lot of work on 007 Classic runs as well as TASing this game. JamesBong3333 is also a really good runner and he's been doing Operative and Time Trial runs for a really long time. If you have any questions about anything in this game, post it on the forums and one of us will respond to you.
Yes, you are allowed to unlock the FOV and FPS on the PC version.
The xbox version actually has more lag than the gamecube version. I'm not sure exactly how much faster it is but i believe it's about a minute faster RTA. Most people play on gamecube because optimal movement is much easier on that version
edit: http://www.speedrun.com/007nf/guide/fjb92 I wrote a guide about version differences. At the moment the leaderboard goes by Time Without Loads so Gamecube is the best version to run on. In real time, Xbox is faster by a little over a minute. The loading times are faster than that but there are tricks that don't work on that version.
edit 2: We no longer go by Time Without Loads so xbox is most likely 1:30 faster than gamecube (as far as i know)
From using the walk through walls cheat code, it looks like clipping through doors would save about 20 minutes. That's pretty insane! Maybe someone will find something like that someday. I've been able to walk partially through corners but nothing more than that.
Also, thanks for the tips. I learned about some of these before doing my 39:24 but you listed some things that I didn't know about. I'll be sure to implement that in future runs.
This game, like Goldeneye, has an in-game timer that is visible on the screen after each level is completed. From my testing, It's also very accurate. It keeps track of your full real time over the entire level (lag, cutscenes, and fadeouts are included in the in-game time). Basically, the in-game timer keeps track of everything that happens outside of the menus. The unfortunate problem is that it also includes the loading screens after completing each level, which means that in-game time could vary between runners playing on different consoles.
At the moment, nobody else runs this game. Deciding if this game should go by Real Time or In-Game Time was tough, but I think the best decision would be to just go by real time. You'll get the fastest loading times by playing on a PS2 with fast disc speed. However, this game isn't that competitive so I would recommend just playing on whatever Playstation console you currently own.
[spoiler]During my twitch stream today, I found out that strafing was significantly faster on the Xbox version, which is what I intended to speedrun this game on. But after testing out the same thing on the Gamecube version, it seemed like strafing was much slower than moving straight forward. This video aims to compare the movement in the Gamecube and Xbox versions of the game.
Basically, Holding forward on the control stick is the fastest way to move on the Gamecube version. Strafing is much slower on Gamecube. The exact opposite is true for the Xbox version, where moving forward is really slow and strafing is the fastest form of movement.
The biggest problem with strafing is that the camera will always be moving while you move. This means that optimal movement on Xbox would be to hold the left stick forward + left/right and hold the right stick slightly left or right depending on which direction you're moving. Holding the right stick will prevent the camera from moving and messing up your angle. This is obviously much harder to do perfectly than holding forward on the Gamecube version.
Another thing worth mentioning is that on Xbox, you don't have to be moving at a 45 degree angle to get optimal movement. As long as you're not holding the left stick exactly forward, you will still move quickly.
I believe the Xbox version will still be faster for full-game runs because of the insanely fast loading times, but Gamecube is almost certainly faster for IL's because movement is so much easier.[/spoiler]
EDIT: This information is not accurate. Please read my post below for information
Yeah this is a tricky situation. I think it would be better for the game to have a true any% category but switching every run to real-time might be really tough. The Pokemon community did something very similar recently.
does saving and quitting make in-game time inaccurate? It's very possible that you could just go by in-game time anyway if it's accurate enough
I won't comment about this any more since I'm really not part of this community. But I don't believe that S&Q should be a separate category. Either allow it in NG and NG+ runs, or change NG to any%.
As for S&Q, frame rate, and version, just allow anything if it speeds up the game. Don't ban S&Q in any%.
I can't say anything about this game, but for 007: Nightfire, we don't have different categories for all the difficulties since they don't change the game at all except for damage taken and damage dealt. I saw a post earlier in this thread that said the difficulties in this game actually change stuff. so if you all agree that the difficulties are different enough and won't fragment the competition, then add separate categories for different difficulties.
For Nightfire, we don't have the medium difficulty as a category since it's the same as the easiest difficulty but you deal less damage and have less health. It doesn't change the speedrun at all so we don't waste our time with it. In that case, having a separate category for medium would take away competition from the main any%. But from what I understand, RE4 is not like that. If I understand correctly, all the difficulties in this game changes the speedrun in some way, so I would support having any% for each difficulty, then NG+ for each difficulty.
I believe there should be any% for all the difficulties that change the game enough, and NG+ for the same thing. Everything else such as version, frame rate, and S&Q should all be variables or not listed at all.
Guys, let's be civil in this thread. No need to bring up other stuff. I'm not too familiar with the speedrun for this game so I won't say too much, but I agree that there should be some any% category with no restrictions. Start a game and reach the end as fast as possible by any means necessary. Someone earlier said any% easy and any% professional. I don't know if there's a difference between difficulties other than damage, but if the people in this community agree that easy and professional are different enough, then any% easy and Any% professional would be good. Like I said, I don't know the game too well so I won't say too much about it.
