Regarding runs for specific days
3 years ago
Israel
  1. Can we have a timing rules for individual days runs? When does the timer starts and ends, exactly? Also, is the moon part of day 4?

  2. I think the days shouldn't be defined as misc categories - they serve more like ILs, and maybe can be moves to IL leaderboard

  3. Can we have a variable or subcategory for specific scenarios for each day? You can't compare runs on different scenarios in the same day, like the Gas run of EZPiig and the locusts run of StevedaGiraffe. Some scenarios are inherently slower than the others.

Gaming_64, EZPiig, and plank like this
South Korea

I've been wanting to get to moving the individual day categories to ILs, I just haven't had the time to do much at all regarding speedrunning in general. I will do that tonight. I can definitely add subcategories for the days and move the existing runs accordingly as well. Regarding timing rules, it would be nice to have assistance in creating them, as unfortunately I don't have any experience with this game. I'll watch over the runs and see if I can formulate anything.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Israel

Update on individual levels:

  • Instead of variables or subcategories, each scenario of the game is now set as its own individual level. (So we have "Day 1 - Locust", "Day 1 - Spiders" and so on). The moon base, which happens at the end of day 4, is also set as an individual level (which is separated from day 4 scenarios).

  • There are two new IL categories, "Any%" and "Perfect". For any% you just need to survive the scenario and live to see the next day. For "Perfect", you must get a perfect survival score for the day. In day 1/2/3, that means getting the +5kg inventory bonus at the end of the day. In day 4, that means lowering the missing air/fuel to 0%, and all party members surviving the flight.

  • General rules for the runs - right now we don't have them yet. Basically what I'm thinking - you can do whatever you want in each relevant day, to meet the goal of the category. You can do any actions you want in previous days, to prepare for an IL run in a later day. There are 10 save slots, plus 5 auto-save slots, so there shouldn't be any problem in setting save files for different runs.

  • Timing rules - we don't have them yet either. Right now, based on the runs that we already have, we can infer that day 1 starts immediately after starting a new custom game, and ends on clicking the final message in the day summary:

https://i.imgur.com/3ISy24a.png

Likewise, day 2 starts on clicking that message too, and ends on the final similar message in the day 2 summary.

What I'm thinking instead, is to start/end the days at the transition between the summary of the day, and the "nightmare" dream that starts the next day. That will be the first frame on the transition where everything is black. I think that will help the runners split at the correct time, because each day summary is passed with crazy button mashing on the mouse, and it will give some time to react to the split. This transition is also usually the mark that a day has ended. Day 1 will still start by starting a new custom game, and moon base will end by clicking the final confirmation message in the sleeper-pods room.

The only exception is the transition between day 1 and 2 - we have a short scene where the helicopter crashes into the house. While technically belonging to day 2, splitting by levels transition will make that helicopter scene belong with day 1 runs.

When starting runs in later days, we can set livesplit to start with a specific negative time that will match the time that passes between the last click and the first black frame of the level transition.

What do you guys think?

Gaming_64 and EZPiig like this
Israel

Also, I'm thinking about allowing to submit individual days runs from a segment of a full-game run. If runners got a good time there, no reason to not allow them to submit it.

(I transferred the current runs into the IL board. We're keeping the old misc categories around, until we are sure everything is fine.)

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Gaming_64 and EZPiig like this
United States

I think that as far as individual day timing goes I think that splitting as soon as the screen fades after the night is over should be the time you split at because in literal terms that is the end of the first day, and the sun is rising as the second day begins.

I get your point on it being difficult to split during that since you basically have to be spam clicking with one or both hands and then quickly switch to being able to hit your split key as soon as your done with that and then go back to spam clicking again.

I was planning on doing each of the fastest IL runs before I do an Any% run so I can have some practice with each of them individually and I'd like to have the rules set in place before I practice the rest of the run.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Israel

I added rules for all the new ILs. The current times for level 1 runs are still not updated, they should also count the time of the helicopter crash scene.

Regarding the moon base level: For Any%, it makes sense to just finish that section as fast as possible. What should be the goal of the level in the "Perfect" category?

In the other levels, a "perfect day" goal is clear - must get the +5kg bonus, or have all party members survive the ride to the moon in day 4. I'm thinking about defining a "perfect moon base" to be a section where you land safely on the moon with Cate, Barry and Cody, along with the 2 diskettes from the secret rooms in the office. The goal is to enter both diskettes to the computer, and also get everyone else to sleep in the pods. Basically, this will be a section that will end a potential "True ending" speedrun of the full game.

Alternatively, we can also choose to not allow to submit any runs to "Moon base - Perfect" combination, as it requires preparing a full game just for that level alone.

What do you guys think?

Gaming_64 and EZPiig like this
United States

I feel like a perfect moon base run would be the true ending version of the moon base. As long as people are already setting up practice sections and runs of single levels for perfect, I don't see why they wouldn't be able to set up a save for this run as well.

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