So GBL got a run a few months ago, but 31CC is still empty (what?!). I'd like to have some defined rules and categories for this game, since I've done some runs for it and would like to be able to formalize one. Here is what I propose:

Categories: Jade Falcon, Wolf

Rules (for both):

Using a new pilot, complete all missions in the clan's campaign.

Timing starts at "Accept" on the register screen. Timing ends at fade to black at the end of the final trial.

Use medium difficulty, heat tracking on, and altered reality settings off. Do not use cheat codes.

I now submitted a run to Any% since it was the only category, but it should really be in a Jade Falcon category.

Quick fanboy moment: I'm mind-blown someone else wants to run this game, I was looking into running this literally 2 weeks ago. Crazy. Now I have someone to bounce ideas off of!

What (if anything) is different between the difficulty modes? Would running on easy be more "viable" for running? Also, I can't recall what heat tracking does for the gameplay.

Your rules follow the default install settings (Medium, heat tracking on), so no complaints if it still makes the most sense!

Awesome. I'm glad to hear someone else is interested in running this.

I'm not exactly sure what's different between the difficulty modes, but I'd guess that the different modes just fiddle with damage multipliers—and they visibly act as multipliers for Honor at debriefing, with Medium being a ×1.0 multiplier. Disabling heat tracking means that you can fire as many lasers (etc.) as you want without generating any heat (and you earn no Honor for the mission).

And yeah, I just went with the default settings. Different speedgames have different conventions; some assume that you will use a certain difficulty (there's no Easy category for Metroid: Zero Mission), some have difficulty as a submission field (Half-Life does this), and some have different categories for different difficulty settings (Super Smash Bros. does this where applicable). Somewhat unusually, the other two MechWarrior series runs so far (one for 4: Mercenaries and one for 2: GBL) use the easiest difficulty setting and do not mention difficulty in the rules.

So! I personally like the default settings and would prefer a level playing field, but if you want to run the game on Easy then don't let that stop you. And if you do, then maybe we can work with Mewyabby to at least have difficulty as a submission field.

Ah, okay, I concur with all of the above. No heat tracking is basically a cheat, and a damage modifier in our favor probably wouldn't do much for the run.

In the process of getting OBS happy with DOSBox and teaching myself LiveSplit. Can't figure out a few of your time-saving tricks (quick close, timing shutdowns, etc.), but that's kinda off topic (not sure how else to reach you!).

I'll just make a new thread for that…

Edit: I made a guide instead.

Another potential category should be just pure mission runs from either campaign. I understand that the timer is limited though in-game. Not sure my missions runs would count though since I set the difficulty on hard lol

Yeah, IL categories by IGT would be nice. IMO we should change the rules from "Difficulty: MEDIUM" to "Difficulty: MEDIUM or HARD" since I see no reason to exclude existing hard-difficulty runs.

the thing with hard mode is that trials will take longer due to how many hits mechs can tank. That's literally the only difference between medium and hard mode

Good comms PROX and jangler. I'll be adding Mission IGT IL's ASAP (this evening?).

I also plan on spending some time trying to implement an autosplitter for our Full Game runs. I was successful in making one for GoldenEye emulator runs, let's see if my confidence results in success.

As far as Medium VS Hard: None of our current runs verify difficulty, perhaps in the spirit of fairness we do so at the end of runs? (It's kinda wild we were discussing this around 3 years ago haha)

I've noticed a difference in medium and hard with trials only, and maybe sable flame for wolf? Aside from that, there's basically nothing different lol

The debrief screen after each mission says what the difficulty is, so there's no need to do anything else to verify difficulty.