Hello everyone. After talking a lot with @AlphaTemp we came out with the following ruleset for Normal Mode:
(Every line after a "-" is how the ruleset will look like, and every line in brackets "[ ]" are comments about why we want that ruleset)
Timing method
-
Timer starts at the first frame the player gets control over Mario.
-
The Status Line has to be active at the start of Level 1.
[This is the same frame where the Status Line shows on the screen, see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18R5YDpUNOjHZRj0Z_8QkmLendraDthBg/view?usp=sharing] [Because of this, every run has to have the Status Line active and visible at least at the start of Level 1 to be valid] [Even while the autosplitter can do all this for you, we as moderators need a consistent way to retime runs in case someone is not using the autosplitter (and for old runs)] [If you don't have the Status Line active, you can activate it from the options menu or press the "S" Key while playing]
- Timer ends at the first frame the player loses control over Mario.
[This happens one frame before you see Mario a couple pixels inside the final pipe of Level 6, see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rHhCjIUmTlcNuSGUanzuiQsT_vus8wAe/view?usp=sharing]
Emulator Rules
- All runs have to be done on DosBox 0.74.
[This is because this is the most consistent emulator so far. Also, the autosplitter only works with this version of DosBox]
- Use 15.000 cycles in DosBox configuration.
[This is a reasonable value that keeps the game at good speed]
