Cumbria, EnglandJust some firm data about frame timings for Arcade Mode to make it more transparent. Marking the frame you press START on the splash screen as f0, the run starts from f+133. You can see Rifle's shadow appear at f+135, and on emu it disappears every other frame, so that you can always tie your start time to these points. Run ends when the final boss explosions animation stops/you lose control: marking the frame boss HP goes to 0 as f0, this is expressed as f+254.
Thanks for letting me know! I think we can keep the rules as they have always been then. I'll add the no cheats codes to the ruleset and reject my previous runs, I've managed a new pb with a proper metalbee since.
I'll be running the game for Obscurathon on 2nd April: https://oengus.io/en-GB/marathon/obsc2/schedule so hopefully we get even more new runners this year!
Hey man :) Do you have contact with our other two runners? I would like to have some idea what they think as well.
Thanks for letting me know RTA has been a priority. I wonder about switching to using IGT? As it stands, we have to wait 4-5 seconds sometimes to finish a stage 'faster' rta by barely any time, and we then end up without powerups going forward - a tricky dance. If we were to rank by IGT, we could encourage new runners to go for more aggressive strats as a means to an end, and gives them way more room to get a PB on a bad run. It prevents the idling at the end of so many stages which increases the skill ceiling. That would also give newer runners far more outs in difficult stages as they aren't fighting without shield etc. And if we used IGT as the sort, I'd definitely favour banning char-change, since it is no longer a time-cost but an aid.
Hi,
I've been working on a full calculator for WOFD SNES, you can find a link to view current progress in its forum.
The project is going so well that I wanted to ask whether other communities are interested. The structure of the calculator can be used for other game versions but it would require volunteers to extract all a game's answers from memory, either by hand, or if you can use TAS tools, that way.
Then we could transfer the calc structure to a new document template, whack them in, and destroy every version.
Hi guys,
I'm having a lot of trouble with my thumb to the point where I'm beginning to be unsure I can use it a lot for runs. I wanted to ask do mods/other runners have any thoughts on if I started to run using keyboard for my d-pad movement. In theory that would be slightly advantageous as it may sometimes prevent unintended ducking or such. Quarbit, I'd especially like to know your position, because I don't want any advantages for getting the wr back. <3
EDITED. Youtube sometimes plays shenanigans with low-res videos and encodes them at 30fps. Any submission for Any Ending category can be literally frame perfect so that this is not a space for fudging, so if a vid is ever a top time you may need to send a raw file or increase the res for YT to show a 60fps encode.
Another thing: NES rules for example currently mention half-frames: I propose to remove such nonsense from our timing standards since it is very easy for mods to use tools to establish precise start/end times, that has been done before. I propose we re-express the start/end times for NES and GEN as functions of a solid on/off rather +- x frames, rather than fades. Fades are very hard for runners to judge and a clearer demarcation can make the runs more transparent. Does anyone have any objections? The run time would be the same; just the verbage would change, and I have no intention to retime historic runs unless requested.
If you pause the game you can enter various codes that can be useful. When I started running the game, without thinking, I entered UUDDLRLRBA to change character. I later researched and found other codes including health restore, suicide, etc. And one that beginners will find VERY useful for practice!
Pause the game, press Ax5 Bx5 times Xx5 Yx5 Lx5 Rx5 <LR shoulder buttons> and unpause. Now, hold Start to pause the game and while holding, press the directional keys to move anywhere on the stage map. If you wish, press R to remove the map from the screen.
What does everyone feel about exclusively using the character change code for runs?
I think it makes the game a tad more accessible, it's still an RTA cost. My use at Metalbee costs me approx. 10 seconds RTA, and it's very clear you can't do it much without haemorrhaging time you wanted to save. By analogy we already have a very easy method to get powerups back both in natural gameplay and by return to exits: and whenever we do that, we cost ourselves 6 seconds RTA of animation.
If the game had a character select between stages, I'd be less tolerant of this idea, but I can see new runners finding it very useful due to Winbee's twitchy control: the very last notched jumps in Factory 1 for example, or mis-charges of rocketboost. Having to die just to change seems a tad unfair.
As a followup, what do runners prefer the board to be tracked by primarily: IGT, or RTA? We may get a scenario one day where a significant run has a discrepancy between the two.
Ah, the character change yeah? That never occurred to me, if it came to it I'd still wind up quicker dying to change than having the struggles. I'll create a forum thread for it, idk how we may contact the Japanese runners.
Ripped off the idea from the 100% TAS:
Just an extra bit of info on timing for transparency.
Timing begins at the frame you press on START. From that frame 0: -The screen goes black at f+3 -The scene text appears at f+16 -The level appears at f+175. NB: That's the first frame the game recognises a jump, if you jumped here, Jonathan's first frame is a duck at f+178 and a jump at f+182. -The game status huds: hearts, etc, appear at f+177 -Jonathan appears at f+178
Timing ends at 'Game Completed!' which appears 1 frame after 'harder skill'
I prefer you show framecounter on an emu and record at 60fps but these points make it easy to perfectly retime runs either way.
JkLoser introduced a couple of us to this game in a race this weekend, and we set a goal of 5 Missions. I think it would be helpful to have that as a subcategory of the game to encourage new runners, it can certainly get quite difficult to do a full run.
So as a brief example, from pre-screen, you get a crisp fade at f+93 GEN but a very hard to see fade at f+171 SNES, and in both cases you get control a tad before the level fades in, which seems to broadly mirror most other versions, whereas SMS you can't move until the trapdoor. A thought: what about just using the first frame the trapdoor opens as a start point? Since control is a vague meta before you can apply the changes to lems anyway, the trapdoor is a fair and clear visual constant that can't hinder runners or make mod work harder. Yes, most versions allow menu control before that, but it's also loading time: before Lems exist, there is no game. If you did want super specific time you can frame time the diff from pre-screen button press, to trap door, and just add it as a platform-specific constant to each run.
I understand. I have recently retimed a board that was using a very shaky fadein, I find anything that's a discrete frame off/on is a better metric. I mean that I started time only at the moment I press 2 on the pre-screen, since that's the gain of control. Because we can't expect hardware users to show input I always use a definitive change. I'll take a look at a few different versions and see what I find.
Hey :) I can understand your desire for precision but I suspect you're overthinking the situation. As you say, port differences are apples and oranges. All the runs are timed to second precision, no frames in sight. And no runs are within 1 second of each other. For SMS for example, you have a clear moment of gain-control from L1 splash screen, and a clear moment of end-control when OUT hits 0. When I do IL perfect demos I frame-time, but for a 30 level run, n seconds is sufficiently clear. 16 bit level exit fades are fine too. What worries you about the current timing?
Following Mod discussion I have effected a streamlining to game category/subcat presentation. We've also made a timing change: Mayhem Mode runs now begin when you choose your first character - no more RNG fail pain. I've retimed all the old runs to reflect this.
For Mayhem Mode, we have a sub for Lab, any map, and Cycle Levels now, so former and new non-Lab times have a place. I also added a marathon mode: win at 8 maps with just 1 team and its extra character, but when a character dies you can't use them across the run anymore.
For teams I've opened up TvT and AvA, added 8s for using the unlocked characters, and made all of them non-obsoleting variables. So currently, we have all runs of the same difficulty/map in the same tab, to avoid a huge number of selection dropdowns, however, when you view the board you can filter by these subcategories as you wish. The aim is to promote more runs with less eye-time. Feel free to do TvT and AvA runs and explore other maps.
I've renamed Strategy First 5 Maps as Strat5, and the full game as 100%. Eventually when we route everything we can create a true 100% category including full rounds of the 6 game options at each difficulty.
I'm very open to feedback on how this new layout looks, particularly whether runners prefer the teams to be a dropdown. Thanks!
Great run! You can hold cross at the end to speed up the Victory screen, and use Random Select with triangle to save a couple of seconds.
Great job! I've updated the ruleset for Mayhem Mode: please show the teams/difficulty select for future runs.
