As I'm sure many are aware now, Twitch is implementing a new 100hr storage limit for Highlights and Uploads, which means a lot of older content on the site can soon be deleted. For anyone unaware of the change, the information can be found on this Twitch Support Twitter/X Post - https://x.com/TwitchSupport/status/1892277199497043994

As an indirect consequence of this, some runs on this leaderboard may have their videos removed by Twitch after April 19th. To ensure that doesn't happen, I'd like to highly recommend any runners who have used a Twitch Highlight as run evidence to export their runs to another platform (such as YouTube) and edit their runs with the new link. This may require a moderator to reverify your run which we will attempt to do as quickly as possible, but we ask all runners to be patient as we go through this process. If you have a lot of Twitch Highlights you wish to export, there are also various tools available that can help to mass download Twitch content, please refer to this video for more information

As a result of Twitch's new rule, Twitch Highlights will no longer be accepted as evidence for runs on this leaderboard. Even as a relatively small leaderboard, preserving speedrunning is extremely important and the potential for losing swathes of runs due to a hard storage limit imposed by Twitch is not a position I'm comfortable with. Whilst this change is not ideal, it's the only way to ensure years of speedrunning history isn't lost. Runs which are already verified with a Twitch Highlight will not be affected by this change.

If anyone has any queries about the above, please don't hesitate to respond to this thread :)

As I'm sure many are aware now, Twitch is implementing a new 100hr storage limit for Highlights and Uploads, which means a lot of older content on the site can soon be deleted. For anyone unaware of the change, the information can be found on this Twitch Support Twitter/X Post - https://x.com/TwitchSupport/status/1892277199497043994

As an indirect consequence of this, some runs on this leaderboard may have their videos removed by Twitch after April 19th. To ensure that doesn't happen, I'd like to highly recommend any runners who have used a Twitch Highlight as run evidence to export their runs to another platform (such as YouTube) and edit their runs with the new link. This may require a moderator to reverify your run which we will attempt to do as quickly as possible, but we ask all runners to be patient as we go through this process. If you have a lot of Twitch Highlights you wish to export, there are also various tools available that can help to mass download Twitch content, please refer to this video for more information

As a result of Twitch's new rule, Twitch Highlights will no longer be accepted as evidence for runs on this leaderboard. Even as a relatively small leaderboard, preserving speedrunning is extremely important and the potential for losing swathes of runs due to a hard storage limit imposed by Twitch is not a position I'm comfortable with. Whilst this change is not ideal, it's the only way to ensure years of speedrunning history isn't lost. Runs which are already verified with a Twitch Highlight will not be affected by this change.

If anyone has any queries about the above, please don't hesitate to respond to this thread :)

Can you please post this in the leaderboard suggestion thread and follow the format in the first post

https://www.speedrun.com/train_simulator/forums/bca4t

I would personally suggest separate categories / variables for them. That then prevent anyone gaining an unfair advantage if they don't know about the mode, whilst also giving people the chance to run both modes separately (also those who don't know about the mode can find out about it so it alleviates any unfair advantage someone may gain).

I would always be careful about banning anything in particular when it comes to speedrun categories. Ban too many things and you risk making a game boring to speedrun.

Banning anything should only be considered in cases where something either unduly gives people an unfair advantage or has very specific requirements which would be inaccessible to the majority of speedrunners.

I only just found out about new replies to this thread now so apologies for the delay in my response. There has been no current rule changes as regards to the Super Jump Glitch and no discussions have yet taken place to ban the glitch either.

As of writing this reply, the Super Jump Glitch is allowed in runs but should this change there will be an announcement about it. In any case, whilst I cannot comment on what may happen in the future following discussions, I personally find it unlikely such a glitch would be banned.

Hi there, sorry for the delay in responding.

Yes provided it doesn't make any changes to the game itself then it's allowed (From Google it looks like it's just a program to make the game fullscreen so I can't see a problem with that).

Hi all, Sorry for the delay adding the new categories. It's been quite a busy month this past month.

@BiteSizedCreations @MzlSimSmzl You categories have been added :)

Following a re-review, the Real Time has been amended to correctly reflect the RTA length of the run. The In Game Time is not affected.

In response to your note, you've actually made the Real-Time World Record for this category :) Congratulations 🎉

Have made a new category for 4 coaches SWML Class 450 as other runs in the SWML Class 450 category had 12 coaches. Have done a rule change to reflect this and have moved this run to the 4 Coaches category.

Hi there,

Sorry for the response delay. Past couple of weeks have been manic with InstaSpeedathon preparations on my end so only just had the time to respond. I'll answer the questions in order.

1. Current runs which only have In Game times will have this reflected (just need to sort that out is all). Re-timing runs will be up to the runners themselves though if they wish to do so. I believe runs can be edited after verification so the time can be added later, but if not just send one of us mods a message with the new time and we can update it for you.

2. Reskins are allowed provided the consist is the same as the rules allow.

3. Same as answer 2, as long as the consist is the same as what's mentioned in the rules.

4. You can disable them as long as disabling them doesn't require editing game files to give players an advantage (So Ctrl+D to disable them is fine).

Hope these help :)

So I've just found a setting in speedrun.com which provides a submissions field for Real Time and In Game Time, so we might be able to utilise both timing methods (and it'll also help us find a discrepancy).

It could be something for us to use for the leaderboard, then providing a choice to players whether they want to use an external timer or not. Just a thought really (I'll have a chat with the other mods).

It definitely looks FPS dependent. We could have both timing methods in all fairness if there is a major disparity between IGT and LiveSplit (I'm pretty sure there is an option to add a time with loads and time without). That way players can time with both and submit both times in their runs.

It might also be beneficial to not limit the framerate in the game if IGT is used as it seems that's where most of the discrepancy comes from, it's certainly concerning to see a 1 minute gap between the times on 30fps.

Personally I don't think multiple runs and averaging the result is such a good idea as runs can vary in length for any reason, and some variances can be huge and others minor, so it's really not the best idea in my opinion.

Also, no need to apologise for making a suggestion :) we all welcome suggestions and we try to keep things similar. In all honesty, I don't think we've had any major issues with IGT before and probably never realised there was such a discrepancy, so it's really good that you have brought it to our attention. It's certainly something to look at and whether we change the rules or incorporate External Timers in some way, this will all be incredibly helpful for us :)

The main reason I initially decided on In Game Timer when I made the leaderboard is because it seemed the more accurate metric to use as it starts and stops at the exact same time (you aren't accounting for reaction times to start and stop, and even if using an auto-splitter you aren't relying on third-party code and RAM allocation, which is undoubtedly fast enough to not really be noticed but a delay will still be there regardless).

If everyone uses In-game time for their runs, then the difference really becomes negligible and the time lost really isn't all that significant. When you compare between the real-world timer and the in-game timer, there will be discrepancies as potentially it very largely depends on how smooth the game is running (from Laura's reply, we may receive more clarification on this).

As Laura mentioned above, it's unclear whether the in-game timer runs any faster or slower based on the game or if it's just the clock (I do notice the clock sometimes going a bit faster and slower now and again when I play the game casually as well, but whether it's because there's frame drops or if the clock just has an actual issue is unclear).

As of right now, timing continues to be IGT as it gives a clear indication of the start and end of the run. However, if following Laura's investigation we find there is a real case to move to a real world timer then we will provide an update on that as soon as we have one.

Hi there,

The timer starts when the map loads in and ends when the red loading bar appears after stopping at the destination station.

The run time is the difference between 12:00:00 and the moment the red bar appears (so if the red bar appears at 12:30:00, the run time is 30 minutes).

You can have an external timer on your run if you want, but this isn't necessary as we use the in-game clock to time the run, and for verification purposes we look for the exact moment the red loading bar appears. If there is a discrepancy in the submission, then we do re-time runs to accommodate this so that all runs on the leaderboard use the same metric.

Hope this helps :) please do let me know if you need any more clarification on anything.

If you'd like to suggest a new level leaderboard for this game, create a new post in this thread following the format below. All suggestions must be accompanied with a valid run.

Format:

• Route: <Name of route as appears in Train Simulator>
• Consist: <Class of unit and number of coaches>
• Start: <Starting station for the scenario>
• Destination: <Destination station for the scenario>
• Video of Run: <Your own video performing the run>

Submissions for InstaSpeedathon 2020 are now closed. Cuts to the schedule will be made by the 19th of January. On behalf of the InstaSpeedathon team, I would like to wish all runners the best of luck :)

We also have a survey for the dates of InstaSpeedathon 2020. If you have submitted, it is highly recommended you fill out this survey. You can find this here

@Treya That's fine :) don't worry. We'll try to cater as much as possible to runner's availability. I'll be posting in the Discord server after the submissions close with a poll to ask which dates people would prefer the marathon to run on and will then try to work around it as much as possible :) hope this is ok

Only 2 weeks left before the submission deadline for InstaSpeedathon 2020. If you'd like to submit, be sure to do so before the 29th of December 2019.

Click the "Submit run" link on the left pane to submit a run, and don't forget to fill the signup sheet by following this guide.

Good luck to everyone who submits to InstaSpeedathon 2020 :)

A quick follow up post about the hosting of InstaSpeedathon 2020.

It has now been decided that InstaSpeedathon 2020 will be hosted Online Only. Due to busy schedules, we have not been able to find or secure a suitable venue to host InstaSpeedathon 2020, therefore the event itself will now be hosted online.

We would like to apologise to anyone who expressed interest in taking part in a real venue. We will, however, look into physical hosting for future InstaSpeedathon events.