Required rule changes for the autosplitter
4 years ago
Hungary

Because some people might not have read through the entire github readme, I'm going to also address which rules have to be changed to be able to start running legitemately with the autosplitter. First is -sload. This prevents the game from getting to the loading screen, therefore timing the loads with this option is impossible. The other one is skipping the ceremony. I have talked with Vas0sky about this and we came to the conclusion to remove ceremony skip to make the runs RTA and also to have a fair ground for both in-game and real time. Last but not least instance models. This option breaks the layout of some maps and makes some routes much easier. This should be removed to be authentic to the game and also make the game fair. If we aggree on this, we have to start retiming the runs for ceremony skip. Load times can't be timed on every recorded run because a lot of people used -sload which hides how much time it took for the game to load in.

Zaufkauf, 607, and dkkid00 like this
Utrecht, Netherlands

I am in favour of these changes! I do think it would be desirable if the auto-splitter wasn't mandatory for submitting runs, in case someone cannot or doesn't want to use it.

Hungary

The auto splitting part can be disbled, but it should be used because of load remover. You can select which functions do you want to use when you activate the autosplitter

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Hungary

Mods, please join the new discord server to talk about important things and eventually get to retime the runs. Link: https://discord.gg/QDqjk6e

Utrecht, Netherlands

Turns out it was correct that I was sceptical about this. [quote=URV]@everyone A word from the speedrunning community of Re-Volt, courtesy of @DVark09:

We now have an autosplitter, which removes all the time spent loading the game during runs. This allows every run to be treated equally, ranking everything solely by in-game time. All entries on the leaderboards have been retimed without the loading times to ensure the same level of fairness.

Please note that to be able to make use of the autosplitter, you must use RVGL [b]19.0430a[/b]. This may be subject to change in the future.[/quote]

Having to use a specific version of a game to have the fastest possible time in a speedgame is totally fine. That can happen. Having to use a specific version of a game, combined with an unofficial tool, to be able to [i]submit[/i] a run for a particular platform is not, I think (and if you don't think many people will agree about that we can create a thread about it on the public forum). Note I said [i]particular platform[/i], as of course if you're playing on Playstation, N64 or Dreamcast, you can't possibly use the autosplitter. You can't turn on instance models on PSX and N64 either, if I recall correctly. But that is maybe not a big deal right now, as there are no runners on these platformers. However, you have to keep them in mind, as maybe one of these changes will make another platformer the fastest to run on. Anyway, even if there was only a pc version, I think this is not an acceptable, or at least not desirable, approach. Especially because new versions of RVGL are still coming out, and I'm sure new improvements will be made. It is logical for people to want to play on the latest version, and while of course they will likely have a separate installation for speedrunning anyway, this just feels like too big a decision to make.

Maybe it's not so bad as I think. Maybe others don't mind. But I wanted to raise my doubts a bit more loudly than before. ;)

Hungary

I sincerely agree with 607's comment, or at least most of it. I wanted to try and go for a speedrun, but I couldn't do that, since the specific app isn't available on Linux. I even tried Wine, but the app didn't work with it. In addition, the speedrunners of the platforms such as PSX and N64 were mentioned by 607. But I'm not sure how many people still use those. So my main issue right now is related to the Linux/Mac users of the game, or in more insane circumstances, maybe even the people who have Android phones, since with a simple stopwatch their runs could be timed as well.

607 likes this
Hungary

There is only one N64 run on the leaderboards, every other run is PC. If I recall correctly I saw someone using LiveSplit on mac, but I'll contact the guy about this. I don't think there will be anyone running it on anything except PC because of quality and availability. I'll try to find a solution for mac/linux users asap. If nothing works then I'm going to time those runs by hand.

607 likes this