Been doing a few runs on Balue's tower while collecting all 150 gems. Is there a chance this could be added into a section in the level leaderboards?

Sure, one sec

Done. There might be a day where we add normal vision ILs, and when the day comes we might have to change the way the Extra vision is set up like, following the way the timed extras of EoD are managed. Switching to RTA timing for instance, but keeping the in-game time as additional board info Might also make it so you're allowed to pause again

Be sure to send something decently good there otherwise I'll come in and show you how it's done :evil_grin:

Cheers, mate!

Lets hope it's good enough to not get shut down right away, haha. Wouldn't be too bad though. Good thing this game is dope as hell.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind too much if the timing rules are different between Extra Vision and other (hypothetical) ILs. In fact, I think changing to RTA for Balue's Tower might cause some ambiguity as to what the "real" world record is, so I don't know that it's worth making a change like that just for the sake of consistency. It's unfortunate that Balue's Tower is the only example of IGT in the entire game or we wouldn't even have this problem.

I do think ILs for the other visions might be kind of neat as well. There are a lot of weird tricks that seem to be right at the edge of being RTA-viable for a full-game run, and ILs would probably give people an incentive to practice and explore those tricks. I imagine this could lead to some new strategies and setups that make them easier or more consistent, which would in turn allow them to be adopted in runs of the full game as well.

In fact, even my slightly silly attempts to beat the fastest boss times on RetroAchievements caused me to adopt a strategy for Ghadius in actual runs that I probably wouldn't have bothered with (or even tested) otherwise.

Also, Ganzofsorrow, don't feel too bad if Balneor manages to make quick work of your time. His record for the Any% version seems to be very near the threshold of what's humanly possible, and to the naked eye it's almost indistinguishable from the TAS.

Well, this is the rules for our particular board, it doesn't have to be a world encompassing measure, and people as just as justified to define stuff the way they want, or even create completely different leaderboards elsewhere. We can't be tyrants even if we wanted to So there are no fundamental reason why we can't do as we please, which here, would be to be consistent It's also not like we make our times incompatible with those outside the src community, especially so if we apply those changes I mentioned earlier

And I definitely get what you mean by the ambiguity part. But unfortunately, the situation is already very confusing as it is. What you think is the old "world record" 1:42 is actually a run that uses the clock trick exploit, which some players might feel is illegitimate (which is fair, as we're "cheating" the clock and skipping portions of the stage). Also they're playing with a controller while I did so on keyboard. To me both play differently enough that I consider both of our times simply not being compatible. And some people, again, might not find much value in runs not playing on the official means of inputs (much as emulators aren't always appreciated as their real hardware counterpart, depending on the games. As an anecdote, when I had uploaded my 1:47 on youtube, it's made its tour on the server. While it definitely was of a shock to people, a couple weren't exactly enticed with the fact it got achieved on emulator).

As you can see, the real "world record" of Balue's Tower can very well be a ton of things. Which is why the term should probably not be excessively employed anyways (also because the term lost a some of its actual worth. It's easier than ever to get one, due to the popularization of speedrunning). First place is a much simpler and safer term in general

What would you consider is the legit, pristine world record setting ? I'd personally say, original game played on original console and controller, that neither uses any clock tricks nor pauses. Following this, I think the record would still be detained by this person . NOT the 1:42 time

So yeah...

Oh, the IL idea goes without saying. You just illustrated it perfectly. It's honestly a barely explored area. I'm all for adding it, but we're gonna need to determine how to time them first before doing anything else

The time can "easily" be improved to a sub 40. Which I would've already gotten if it wasn't for a mental block on the hardest trick... Relax though, I'm not gonna allow myself to spend any amount of time near the one I have to get my any% time. Actually if I like can't beat it within 30 minutes it'll probably be the end of it to me cause I'm just so much busy

Edit : Did a short save-state attempt, it's possible to get sub 2 min (using the second clock trick, though... not entirely sure if possible without)

Phew, didn't realize my post would be able to spark such a discussion. I wouldn't jump in to give too much opinion on the in-game clock and the specifics that come with it as I've only just opened the door.

I will say though that I would surely be glad to see categories for IL, or perhaps paired visions. Being someone out of practice and slim on free time, jumping into full-game runs is a bit intimidating at the moment.

@amoser I won't assume it'll stick. I know I can personally do better than what I have currently as well and it's only fun to see someone else who's better do.. well, better. :)

If you want to participate to its conception, I would suggest to join in the Discord server and discuss it directly there. It's a bit more practical. Though when the offiial src forum post will get made, I'll recommend to summarize your stance or ideas there.

We can only add such big things to our board by making public announcements, which includes the server as it's where most people are (don't read most active) and things happen nowadays

Assuming we add ILs first, I'm not sure if full visions clears can be implemented at the same time, due to src's limited leaderboard setting up system that basically forces one IL setup else it will look super messy

I think I might still be leaning toward using the IGT for Balue's Tower as the "official" time, for two main reasons. The first is that, as far as I can tell, the IGT is deliberately designed to exclude sources of random variation, such as loading times, lag, etc. It only seems to count things that are directly under the player's control, and I think it would be a bit harder to do this with RTA timing. Basically, the IGT doesn't seem to be broken, so there's no need to fix it. The second reason is just that it's a lot more convenient, since with IGT it would never be necessary to do a bunch of frame hunting to re-time runs and things like that.

I decided to do some tests to see how a (potential) RTA timing method would compare to the IGT. I was particularly curious to see whether it seemed likely that there would be disagreement between the two methods on which run would be faster. I looked at six runs in total, two from Elsiz on the original version, two from Harutomo on the original version, and one from each of Elsiz and Harutomo on NamCollection. All six of the runs used the death warp (which does not save time in RTA, so would definitely lead to a discrepancy if some used it and some did not) and all were done on PS2, although not necessarily the same model. The RTA timing method I used was as follows: time starts on the first frame that the IGT changes from zero, and it ends on the first frame that the IGT displays the final time.

The results were actually not at all what I expected. The good news is that the variation from one run to the next by the same runner on the same setup seems to be extremely small. There doesn't seem to be a difference with NamCollection or the original version, either (which is actually a bit concerning, since going through doors has been shown to be faster on NamCollection in other situations, so why the difference would be missing here warrants some additional scrutiny).

The less good news is that the RTA minus IGT is actually larger on Elsiz' runs than Harutomo's. It's a pretty small difference, definitely less than a tenth of a second and probably not more than 60 ms, but it is still a statistically significant difference with well over 95% confidence. I can't explain where the difference is coming from at all (I'd have to say it's hardware differences of some kind, only because most other factors seem to be eliminated), but it does suggest that if runs for two different players were very close in IGT, using an RTA timing method could consistently favor one player over the other for reasons I can't currently explain, which seems not great?

This probably isn't a huge deal for now, since so far we've never had two different players post times within 100 ms of each other, but if anyone ever actually goes for a new record, it seems like this could start to become a problem.

Here's the raw data I used in case anyone wants to do their own analysis or notices that I've made a mistake of some kind.

(Elsiz, PS2, original) RTA 162.18 - 33.08 = 129.10 IGT 110.85 RTA-IGT = 18.25

(Elsiz, PS2, original) RTA 139.08 - 12.09 = 126.99 IGT 108.75 RTA-IGT = 18.24

(Elsiz, PS2, NamCollection) RTA 141.65 - 15.73 = 125.92 IGT 107.66 RTA-IGT = 18.26

(Harutomo, PS2, original) RTA 142.87 - 9.21 = 133.66 IGT 115.48 RTA-IGT = 18.18

(Harutomo, PS2, original) 140.00 - 7.01 = 132.99 IGT = 114.78 RTA-IGT = 18.21

(Harutomo, PS2, NamCollection) 135.06 - 5.29 = 129.77 IGT 111.58 RTA-IGT = 18.19

I mean, I would never disagree with you, IGT is the superior way to play this stage. Game versions, console setups don't matter as everyone would be on the same page.

The problem I believe we're discussing is the complicated case of adding Balue's Tower as an IL amidst the not-yet-created-nor-defined ILs of this game. Cause there clearly are two ways to go on about implementing it, the IGT or RTA way.

The former stays true to the stage's legacy and roots. Just record the run and it's done. Basically what it currently is. Timing it the other way would break its soul completely, on top of the added run time consisting of loading-times, cutscene skips and door entering. Wow fun material to play with.

The only upside is that it would be handy for 100%NG+runners (or non-existent categories like all visions, for the any% part) because they could then directly compare their full-game performance to it. And ideally, the way it is played in a full run would be compatible with its ILs variant. Which was my idea behind consistency argument.

But Balue's Tower challenges that. You can't satisfy both timing methods in one ruleset due to its timer component. And we can't just deny the stage's IGT either.

I think we could satisfy everyone by having a Balue's Tower entry, that is divided in two branches, IGT and RTA respectively. I've just learnt how to make that work, which will definitely be handy. It sure feels a bit redundant, and honestly kind of useless, I doubt many people would submit runs for it cause it's just almost completely similar to the IL. But there'll be that area of emptiness if we leave it out, so...

I would be for satisfying both sides, but if there had to be only one, it goes without saying it'll be the IGT one. It would be headachingly wrong to not have that in our board anyways.

EoD's timed extras have the same problem actually, I'll fix that soon enough