if i’ve missed anything/gotten anything wrong, @ me on discord and i’ll fix it!!!!

Summary: fuse has created a modified .xbe of JSRF that inserts an In Game Timer (IGT) into the bottom-left corner of the game screen, which is derived from in-game frames. This creates a level playing field for all runners, as IGT would not be affected by software or hardware differences such as load times. As of right now, this IGT is only accessible through the modified .xbe file, which requires a softmodded xbox.

It is possible to have the IGT either stop or continue during non-interactive cutscenes (i.e. DJK/Gouji cutscenes with black bars on the top and bottom of the screen; not in-level/mash-A dialogue). The debate now is to determine:

• The behaviour of the IGT in these cutscenes, either PAUSED or ACTIVE
• If the IGT is PAUSED during cutscenes: whether or not to skip cutscenes at the press of an A button, by retroactively adding the total runtime of all skipped cutscenes (according to the runner’s version of the game) to both their loadless and RTA times. These various runtimes would be calculated using the IGT to a hundredth of a second

———————————————————

Due to respective cutscene times being added after the fact, skipping cutscenes would have no effect on the meta of which language is faster as english will still always be slower due to having a longer total cutscene runtime. Therefore, skipping cutscenes would be a complete “Quality of Life Change” (wecn)

If cutscenes are skipped, the cutscenes runtimes MUST be added to the run. Not adding them results in the complete deletion of cutscenes from the speedrun, which would, among other things:

• Artificially change the fastest language to english
• Give unmodded/vanilla runners a 25? min disadvantage EDIT: this could be avoided if cutscene times are removed from all runs by default. this would result in runs with a final time of 1:2x:xx (demo)

————————————————————

Per the discussion on discord, there are now 2 main sides of the argument:

Option A: UNSKIPPABLE cutscenes and ACTIVE IGT during cutscenes

• Cutscenes are unskippable, as in vanilla JSRF
• The IGT would only pause during the blue Now Loading screens, as well as 'black' loading screens (very subtle loading screens when changing characters, going from chuo to shibuya in ch2, etc.)

Option B: SKIPPABLE cutscenes and PAUSED IGT during cutscenes

• Cutscenes are skippable by pressing the A button (can be seen in vanilla JSRF by retrying the Combo challenge or Zero Beat)
• The IGT would pause during cutscenes, the blue Now Loading screens, and 'black' loading screens
• remember, the cutscene times would still be added after the run! (see above)

A third option expressed in the discord is having UNSKIPPABLE and UNTIMED cutscenes, however this option is rather redundant since if cutscenes are untimed in the first place, skipping them has no result on the final time of the run; The fourth possible option, SKIPPABLE and TIMED, is undesirable because it introduces inconsistencies in when the player chooses to skip the cutscenes and the standardized cutscene runtimes added to the run’s final time.

This thread will be used for the community to vote for either option A or option B. A post will be made for each option, featuring various arguments and quotes (either positive or negative) I’ve assembled from the discord discussion. Votes will be cast by Liking the post you support. Since I can’t Like my own posts smh, I’ll just write in the post which one I vote for.

I’m thinking by thursday or friday we can finalize the votes if there’s a clear winner

Also, if you have an opinion/belief/quote/argument/write-up that isn’t featured or reflected in this post, please post it! This is important shit and your voice should be heard.

option A: UNSKIPPABLE and ACTIVE IGT cutscenes

• cutscenes are unskippable, as in vanilla JSRF
• the IGT would only pause during the blue Now Loading screens

quotes/arguments from the discord:

• cutscenes are a part of the game and should not be skipped
• “Keeping the running experience the same” (Jabro)
• no cutscene runtimes would have to be added, resulting in less work and easier verification for mods
• distinction between “in game time” and “playing time” (Xano)
• keeping a similar run experience between modded and vanilla (keep in mind 20 mins of run fatigue due to cutscenes is a thing, which may lead to more modded privilege)
• cutscenes are not loads - the entire point of this is to have loadless timing (Dale)

Like this post if you vote for option A

FINGERQUICK IS VOTING FOR OPTION A

FLASHY IS VOTING FOR OPTION A

option B: SKIPPABLE and PAUSED IGT cutscenes

• cutscenes are skippable by pressing the A button (can be seen in vanilla JSRF by retrying the Combo challenge or Zero Beat)
• the IGT would pause during cutscenes and the blue Now Loading screens
• remember, the cutscene times would still be added after the run! (see first post)

quotes/arguments from the discord:

• the speedrun should be concerned with gameplay, and cutscenes are not gameplay
• cutscenes are the same length every time (accounting for their respective language of course) and so there is no reason to time them/sit through them
• cutscenes require no input from the player and thus don’t matter in the speedrun
• “speedrunning should be about playing to finish fast, not watching less video to finish fast” (demo, re: jp having less cutscenes than english)
• “its a lot nicer if we stop the time and add it in later rather than force everyone to keep the timer going to measure what we already know” (fuse)
• (a negative point i feel is relevant) a ‘man-made’ change to the speedrun - akin to removing undesirable parts of the game to suit the desires of the players, even if those results are impossible to achieve on the vanilla game ~~~REFUTE BY DEMO: "ss is man made and is in the run" (re: sewer skip being used on PAL and JP, resulting in the original inclusion of softmodding) (EDIT: for anyone how doesnt know, JP jsrf DOES NOT WORK on non-JP xboxes. therefore, sewer skip on non-ntsc consoles is not possible without softmodding)

Like this post if you vote for option B

SUPRIX IS VOTING FOR OPTION B

DEMO IS VOTING FOR OPTION B

clips of the IGT in action:

https://www.twitch.tv/yayodelariva/clip/ObedientAffluentSageSoonerLater?filter=clips&range=7d&sort=time

a whole run: start at 4:15:00

Option C is best since RTA remains unaffected, and IGT shows (give or take) only time in which there is player control, giving a good player-to-player comparison.

I think that so long as leaving the cutscenes running doesn't lose time its fine coz I need a break at times

Okay so I was talking with Yayo in stream and he's brought up the issue of not having good splits to work with a cutsceneless mod, which is a valid concern. Cutscenes in some cases were being used as "soft pauses" to the game where the runner could do other things or take just a break for a minute. With RTA splits for comparison (for personal use only, not for leaderboards), splits become difficult to use if the cutscenes skipped are not the same every time.

This is a valid issue for runners of the game. Having useful splits is important for getting info on the run and knowing if your time is being used towards a good run or not. Currently, we cannot interface JSRF with Livesplit to use the "Game Time" timer portion of its capabilities, but we may be able to in the future. For example, the Livesplit timer can be set to match the ingame timer. This would alleviate issues with cutscenes messing up splits. Alternatively, a splitting system could be implemented into JSRF as part of the "speedrunning xbe file". Both of these solutions would take a significant amount of time to research, develop, and test.

Finally, adding or subtracting cutscene time is currently not a viable solution until it is proven that cutscene time (as defined by the xbe mod) is always constant for either all runners on a version or between runs by the same person.

This all is predicated on not timing cutscenes (which I understand is the vote above). If your issue with option B is how it impacts splits, then this is my recommendation. To allow for splitting tech/code to catch up to the IGT technology that was just implemented, I would recommend not timing cutscenes but currently leave them unskippable. When the advances are made to splits, then I would recommend allowing (or voting on) skippable cutscenes.

Your splits will only be inconsistent if your behavior skipping cutscenes is also inconsistent. If you always hit the button to skip the cutscenes as soon as it pops up, your differences in your split times shouldn't be any more significant than the time differences from where your button presses land when mashing through dialogue. Yayo was citing things such as having to get the door for someone as time the cutscenes are useful, and quite frankly I think you'd be just as screwed on vanilla if that happened; chances are it probably won't line up with a cutscene that nicely anyway, but if does, the splits being off for the rest of just that 1 run seems like more of a minor nuisance compared to what effects that situation could have caused.

EDIT: since my main reason for voting A has been resolved (see fuse's post about cutscene timer below) i have switched by vote to option B

my thoughts and why i'm voting option A:

(most important) skipping cutscenes being left up to the players: the cutscene runtimes we’d be implementing are constant amounts, which are calculated assuming that the cutscene is skipped on the first available frame. players’ mashing is obviously not frame perfect, which immediately introduces inconsistencies in a few ways: 1) if someone is a slow masher, they lose time since the cutscene runtimes do not account for less-than-frame-perfect mashing. 2) if a runner chooses to skip some cutscenes but not others, the accuracy of cutscene runtimes are completely ruined since they assume all cutscenes were skipped. i don’t think mods of this game (including myself) are willing to sift through every submission to see which cutscenes are skipped (and at which times) to add dynamic modules of time to a run, simply to save 25 mins of irl time. - this point would be invalidated if cutscenes were either unskippable, automatically skipped by the game and not the player, or, most likely, if a rule is implemented that states that if a cutscene is skipped at any point in the run, the entire cutscene runtime will be added in full - an ‘either don’t skip them or skip them all as fast as you can’ rule, essentially

further separation between modded and vanilla speedrun: if cutscenes are skippable, it furthers the separation of speedrunning experiences between modded and vanilla setups. i know this sounds stupid considering we’ve been essentially softmodding for faster loads for years now, but personally speaking when i starting running this, i felt it was pretty dumb and a bit of a turn-off to pay and softmod my xbox to run the ‘proper’ version of the game just to compete. skipping cutscenes fundamentally changes the running experience into something that is not accessible to a new runner with just an xbox and JSRF from when they were a kid. again, some people don’t care about that shit so this is just a personal note.

tech/tools not being there yet: while IGT is now a universally accepted reality, the skipping of cutscenes is a much more tenuous subject that few people seem to have agreed on. there are also worries of when to split if there are no cutscenes, as well as newfound fatigue during a faster-paced run. while i don’t share the previous two worries at all (my split locations work just fine Kappa), it leads me to believe that skippable cutscenes should wait a bit while tools become more sophisticated, to make the transition process easier. i only say this because i believe skippable cutscenes, as well as IGT-sorted leaderboards and the abandonment of RTA, are the imminent future of this game - while skippable cutscenes are unavoidable, they shouldn’t be rushed or forced while opinions are still so fractured.

basically due to timing inconsistencies that we haven’t worked out yet, as well as worries of inaccessibility to new runners and the fact that the modding scene is still growing and evolving at a pace that may change everything a week after this vote goes through, i’m leaning towards option A for now, with the belief that option B will happen anyways, just a bit later on when the community and our tools are more prepared for it

In response to 7thAce questioning whether cutscenes are measured as a constant time, I made a 2 timer version, 1 with the same timer as the posted version, and a 2nd cutscene only timer. I ran from new game until the end of the intro cutscene 2 times each with ntsc-u and ntsc-j on 1 xbox, then swapped cables to another and did another round of each on that one. Results were all 3 ntsc-u timings measured the cutscene as exactly the same, and all 3 ntsc-j timings meansured the cutscene exactly the same.

vod here

RE: suprix: "(most important) skipping cutscenes being left up to the players: the cutscene runtimes we’d be implementing are constant amounts, which are calculated assuming that the cutscene is skipped on the first available frame. players’ mashing is obviously not frame perfect, which immediately introduces inconsistencies in a few ways: 1) if someone is a slow masher, they lose time since the cutscene runtimes do not account for less-than-frame-perfect mashing. 2) if a runner chooses to skip some cutscenes but not others, the accuracy of cutscene runtimes are completely ruined since they assume all cutscenes were skipped. i don’t think mods of this game (including myself) are willing to sift through every submission to see which cutscenes are skipped (and at which times) to add dynamic modules of time to a run, simply to save 25 mins of irl time."

That is not the way the current version works. the current version pauses the IGT when the cutscene is running. Therefore, regardless of whether you skipped the cutscene on the first frame, let it play out in full, or skipped the rest of it halfway through, the time on the IGT will be the same when you regain control of your character, and you simply add on the full length of the cutscenes. The only desync between the choices would be what your personal splits show in livesplit; the IGT based final time would not be affected.

I don't believe that the further separation between vanilla and modded speedruns of this game is at all relevant to which option we pick here. Regardless, loadless IGT is becoming the norm for the boards, which is unobtainable without modding your xbox (unless moderators allow for post-recording calculation of the loadless IGT, but they have shown hesitance to this before).

By the way, shouldn't there be a post to like for option C? There are only two at the moment from what I can see.

Make a leaderboard for cutsceneless any% maybe? This way the vanilla experience stays the same. Insert loadless timings again to both leaderboards and it should be fine. If that is not the case, option A would personally the best choice.

idc much tbh so long as we can still use splits

@fusecv "That is not the way the current version works. the current version pauses the IGT when the cutscene is running. Therefore, regardless of whether you skipped the cutscene on the first frame, let it play out in full, or skipped the rest of it halfway through, the time on the IGT will be the same when you regain control of your character, and you simply add on the full length of the cutscenes. The only desync between the choices would be what your personal splits show in livesplit; the IGT based final time would not be affected."

i'm talking about RTA, IGT is paused so like you say it doesn't matter when the player chooses to skip. RTA on the other hand cannot be paused, and the runtimes we'd be adding, for the entire purpose of vanilla compatibility, don't account for this. when we ditch RTA this becomes a moot point, but as of now when RTA is still the primary timing convention, this is the biggest problem for me

by request of several people in the discord, some voting standards will be implemented. the guidelines i’ve proposed are:

voters should have proof of a completed/attempted run, or documented work directly affecting the speedrun (modding, routing, etc)

this is what i proposed last night in the discord and since there were no objections that i saw i guess we’ll be using this. if anyone doesn’t agree with these standards, make a post here or bring it up in the discord and we’ll have a discuss

the purpose of this is to prevent random people who have nothing to do with this speedrun (even on a learning basis) from happening upon this thread and skewing the vote. as of now there are two people i personally don’t recognize and don’t see in the discord:

@HoeCage @swift

if you’re one of these people, make a post here or in the discord and make yourself known somehow or your vote will be discounted

EDIT: edited to reflect the results of jabro's strawpoll. IGT will now be the primary timing convention

it’s also been requested that clear outcomes be presented should either option win:

option A: UNSKIPPABLE and ACTIVE IGT cutscenes

• both english and japanese IGT .xbe’s, wherein the cutscenes are unskippable and IGT is active during them, would be added to the Resources section of speedrun.com/jsrf
• a new “In Game Time” column would be added to the src leaderboards as the new primary timing, with RTA as secondary (see jabro's strawpoll in the discord)
• due to how the IGT stops after Gouji is defeated, the official endpoint of the run for both RTA and IGT would be changed back from ‘the execution of the final spray’ to ‘the black screen right after the final spray’.
• players with access to installed versions of the game would be strongly encouraged to download and run off the IGT .xbe, especially if the runner is near the top level where IGT distinction becomes more important
• runners, upon submission of a run, would submit an RTA time using a conventional timer like normal, and also, if running on the IGT .xbe, would submit an IGT time as it is shown after Gouji is defeated.
• during verification, moderators would check the beginning and end of the run, for both RTA and IGT (if applicable) timers, to make sure everything is good and accurate
• leaderboards are sorted by IGT time, with RTA as an unsorted side-column

option B: SKIPPABLE and INACTIVE IGT cutscenes

• both english and japanese IGT .xbe’s, wherein the cutscenes are skippable and IGT is inactive during them, would be added to the Resources section of speedrun.com/jsrf
• a new “In Game Time” column would be added to the src leaderboards as the new primary timing, with RTA as secondary (see jabro's strawpoll in the discord)
• due to how the IGT stops after Gouji is defeated, the official endpoint of the run for both RTA and IGT would be changed back from ‘the execution of the final spray’ to ‘the black screen right after the final spray’.
• players with access to installed versions of the game would be strongly encouraged to download and run off the IGT .xbe, especially if the runner is near the top level where IGT distinction becomes more important
• runners, upon submission of a run, would submit an RTA time using a conventional timer like normal, and also, if running on the IGT .xbe, would submit an IGT time as it is shown after Gouji is defeated.
• during verification, moderators would a) check the beginning and end of the run, for both RTA and IGT (if applicable) timers, to make sure everything is good and accurate; (the following two steps are only for runs using the IGT .xbe - non-IGT and vanilla runs can ignore this) b ) calculate final IGT time: add the total cutscene runtime of the language the run is in to the run's IGT. this sum will be the final IGT time that's shown on the leaderboards c) calculate final RTA time: check the 'amount of cutscenes watched' timer - subtract it from the total cutscene runtime of the language the run is in, and then add that result to the run's RTA time. this sum will be the final RTA time that's shown on the leaderboards
• leaderboards are sorted by IGT time, with RTA as an unsorted side-column

i typed this out quickly during class so i didn’t really have a chance to run this by other mods or runners, but like everything else in this debate, it’s completely open to discussion by anyone in the community, so i’m posting it here for people to think about. i originally said that voting would last till friday but as things are still evolving i think voting should continue until things become settled, whenever that is

I could make it track the played cutscene time as well. I've actually already been doing that in some multi-timer versions used for consistency checking, not that anyone wants the screen overly cluttered, but the played cutscene time could be shown at the end, or during cutscenes and the end, or something like that.

@fusecv that would be absolutely sick. an ongoing runtime of cutscenes as the run progresses, that calculated the amount of cutscene time watched, could be subtracted from the total cutscene runtime for that language, equalling the amount you would add to a run that has skipped cutscenes.

unless my math is wrong: time of run + (total cutscene runtime of proper language - amount of cutscenes watched) = leaderboard time add this final value to both IGT and RTA to equate for vanilla runs

this would solve the problems of inconsistencies with cutscene skipping, as well as giving players a break should they choose (instead of forcing them to skip all cutscenes or no cutscenes)

i'd love to see footage of it in action first but this would likely change my vote from option A to B

@suprix For option A, why would RTA still be the primary sorting on the leaderboard? The IGT would basically be a loadless time, making it a more accurate option. The only reason I see is to preserve legacy runs for people who will likely never run with an IGT. Setting IGT as the primary sorting method will bring more people onto IGT faster to get their runs requalified.

Edit: Forgot about non-modded players (even though I'm unmodded currently lol). I'm not entirely sure what to do about that. To be fair, I think a majority of active runners are modded players so it's not a huge deal, but it is a barrier to entry.

Yayo may be testing the dual-timer on stream today. We can evaluate how it works after that. Fuse's video shows consistent results for each runner so far (with the exception of character swap cutscenes), so we'll be seeing if the same numbers appear for other xboxes (and maybe learn some other things as well).