Hey all,

If a game has in game timers, but on restart checkpoint it does not add the time after the failed checkpoint, if someone legitimately failed and restarted the checkpoint and completed it, the final in game timer for that level is then incorrect.

If disabling restarting checkpoints, the harder difficulties are then very hard. And the hardest difficulty, you have to restart the level.

The community doesn't want to go rta and stick with in game time. Is it then a true speedrun if someone can repeat a level that they previously failed and the completed in game time is their final time for that level?

My thoughts are, letting the full game have at least one legit death and write off the failed time.

Allowing the restart checkpoint back and giving a penalty of say 20 seconds.

Allowing the restart of either checkpoint or restart and use the real time to add to the in-game time of both in games?

I am just unsure and need opinions please. Thank you for you time.

I would strongly recommend ditching the in-game timer entirely and going to real time, but if the community really doesn't want to do that then... that complicates things. People being able to restart as many times as they want to get the perfect attempt with nothing to lose basically makes it a segmented run, and while you can certainly have segmented runs and categories, that definitely shouldn't be a thing in single-segment categories.

[quote=xZeKo]Allowing the restart checkpoint back and giving a penalty of say 20 seconds.[/quote]

Very , very bad IMO. Arbitrary time penalties just make your bad timing method even worse.

[quote=xZeKo]Allowing the restart of either checkpoint or restart and use the real time to add to the in-game time of both in games?[/quote]

This seems somewhat reasonable, but at this point... I just don't really see the benefit of this over real-time.

Thank you for the reply.

What about restricting the amount of restarts that can happen in one full run?

But a segmented category sounds like a better idea for the hardest difficulty. Or would it be easier to retime the runs on the leaderboard in real time and bring in separate load times?

I see where they are coming from as the in game timer is there, they don't want to lose the out with loading times etc. But at the same time doest feel like a true speedrun if they have the ability to have say one restart?

Cheers

Removing the loads could be reasonable as long as the game isn’t too long because then that would be a huge amount of work every run for a runner or mod to do. This would also be a lot of work for a large game with a lot of runs being submitted.

An option would be disabling the checkpoints like suggested, but add a variable to indicate a segmented run where the checkpoints are still enabled and a runner can retry the level. That way you can use the in-game timer and runners can’t retry per checkpoint.

If the hardest difficulty is too hard for some runners, then they can run the segmented category (although that one will probably be hard to be competitive in because those runs will probably get much more optimized much quicker because of the ability to build a very good run through retries).

[quote=xZeKo]What about restricting the amount of restarts that can happen in one full run?[/quote]

This also feels very arbitrary. Either allow it unconditionally and adjust the timing method accordingly, or ban it.

The game isnt that long, 45 mins on medium difficulty.

I think the best option is having Real Time, with separate loading times and have a new category for segmented which will be for in-game timers.

Thank you for your help. Take care.