Proposed changes to bring us in line with L4D2
7 years ago
Virginia, USA

Damn, sub 53 almost put a tear in my eye, Oh well, one second doesn't matter. :'^( And for the 60fps thing, I was just counting the frames in Vegas; the project settings I use always default videos to 60fps, so I had to readjust the frame-to-time calculation based on that, but it looks like I was a frame off anyway. Kappa

North Carolina, USA

Hah, I know, when I saw that time I felt a little bit bad, but, time to get a WAY sub-53, right? I'll be doing runs too sometime after AGDQ.

Huh, no idea how Vegas works. That's weird it is converting it, that may be where the difference is coming in... you could grab Avidemux if you want to try that way, unless Vegas has a different way of displaying the file. Shrugsies.

I ported rules over from L4D2 and fit them in here. Pretty much everything should be there now. I didn't include banning addons because I wasn't sure if addons work as easily in this game or are as readily available? Figured I'd skip it for now until I know more. Individual Maps have some unique rules like requiring a demo.

I've downloaded almost all of the individual campaign runs so I should be able to get those times updated soon.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
England

Hey, just to say, if you want a new timing method, maybe don't remove all the runs completely from the website before even contacting people to get the demos from them.

Honestly, that's really shitty of you.

Ihsoy and SirRed64 like this
North Carolina, USA

Hello flicky, welcome back! It has been a while.

The runs are not removed completely, they still very much exist, just in a rejected state awaiting a video or demos with a message stating so. You can see one here: http://www.speedrun.com/run/0zn5xelz (anybody can view this link)

The rest can be easily accessed by clicking the hourglass at the top, runs awaiting verification, click show old, and look under Left 4 Dead. Not the most intuitive system I know, but they are there.

Let me try to explain my reasoning of why they are (temporarily) rejected. They had no original proof of the run, not a video (the line is completely blank so nothing existed), nor demos easily accessible for anybody to watch. Somebody should not be required to contact another person to acquire the submitted run so they can see what the first place time looks like. Moderators should be held to the same submission standards that any other runners are, and bypassing the video requirement (or any proof) by self-verifying doesn't seem right. Note that I am not implying there was any wrongdoing in the runs in question, I am simply attempting to hold them to the standards the other runs were held to which is fair for everybody.

Also consider that I did try to contact both of you months ago to no response. Let's be realistic, if we couldn't garner any reasonable response here to figure out how to properly submit a run in the first place, nobody will be able to get these demos on request. After conferring with some other community members, I made the decision to temporarily reject them pending these demos and they are readily available to go right back up when such a time comes. Nothing is deleted.

The boards were sitting stagnant with vague, inconsistent timing rules, and attempts to ask how submissions were supposed to be done was never met with a response, so Cyberdemon (moderator of the L4D2 boards) requested on the site forum that I have moderator status since I've been doing work on the L4D2 boards for a while now. The site granted that request, and I went to work. The L4D2 community here has evolved immensely over the past year with a lot of great people having come in, it is very active now! We've learned much about the game and how it works, and refined the rules and timing method further around that, even including an autosplitter that can remove loads based on a loading flag in the game (when it truly loads, not the scripted scoreboard). The same guy plans to port it here once he has the game.

Considering how much we've learned about how L4D2 works and have a clear, fair, easy system in place that has been working for the many L4D2 runners, and seeing that both games are extremely close to each other, I took the initiative to largely port the work here so there is consistency in the series, and with it L4D2 runners have expressed interest in submitting times here as well. The categories and rules were a big step, now anybody coming in can know what to expect by reading the rules and submit without any trouble.

Side note, the run times as they were previously submitted were all over the map in consistency, I still can't figure out what the timing method was... only a couple of runs I could match up with the time pausing based on the scoreboard trigger (when the music starts playing) which was my best assumption at the previous timing method (which isn't actually when loading occurs, it's essentially a cutscene). The majority of the other runs were varying by 3-4 seconds faster than even that method which is quite off. One run in particular was more than 30 seconds! http://www.speedrun.com/run/kz56g8ey

If you have insight as to what the old timing method was such that I can match it up with what the submitted runs were saying, it would be greatly appreciated and a big help in updating the last few runs that are left.

Also, some runs are still up that no longer have a video available, but those are left because they were submitted to the standards at that time and were viewable then. I just need to figure out how to adjust the timing of those now, which I should be able to do if I can figure out how timing was done previously. L4D2 has runs like these as well. Unfortunately, accounts do get deleted down the road sometimes and videos are removed, but at least at some point they were watched and verified fairly.

In closing, the community is fantastic that has been built around L4D2 and they are likely coming here now as well. Some stuff is still a work in progress and I have more resources to port, but most of the important bits are done now and people can submit at any time, including myself once we're done with the AGDQ craze.

I hope you understand my actions more now and take a look around to see the changes made and check out what's been up with L4D2 as well. Maybe even start running the game again, the more runners the better! Thanks for taking the time to read this wall of text, I go pretty deep into explaining things sometimes. A gift and a curse.

Canada

[quote=flicky]Honestly, that's really shitty of you.[/quote] Hey, just want to say, that's a really professional and appropriate thing for a mod to say after the active people around here who actually care about the game have been trying to contact mods over the past several months and have been discussing changes over the past several weeks.

Honestly, I'm quite happy someone active and new is getting work done.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
North Carolina, USA

Woohoo! Finished up the last of the loadless times, everything is in order now. Two runs exist without videos,

http://www.speedrun.com/run/9yo5xxjz - he claims loading screens were timed and it is slow enough for that to be likely, so I left it alone entirely.

http://www.speedrun.com/run/kz56ggey - I added 8.5 x 2 to the original time to compensate for the scoreboards under the assumption that it used the blur timing method. It shouldn't be too far off in this case... if I learn how the old timing worked it can be made more accurate, but that will have to do for now.

I finally added the version column. For now it is marked as not required, otherwise all of the runs go poof because they don't have a value entered in it yet meaning they don't show up. I'm not sure how to determine at a glance which runs are 1.0 and which are Newest since I don't yet have experience with it, is there an easy way to tell? Once all runs have something in the version column it can be made a required value when submitting.

Besides updating that, I think the last thing I have to do is move over some relevant resources from the L4D2 boards.

Virginia, USA

jesus christ its a speedgame stop being drama queens

AndreaRovenski, Darkossz and 2 others like this
North Carolina, USA

I mean, another mod posted... I had to respond with something. Might as well make it thorough. I do that a lot.

AndreaRovenski likes this
Virginia, USA

i mean like flicky/adam/oasis/freezard were the people who set this up in the first place so i can understand why flicky doesnt take kindly to some guy just coming in and changing everything but the sass is unnecessary from both sides also

"I'm not sure how to determine at a glance which runs are 1.0 and which are Newest since I don't yet have experience with it, is there an easy way to tell?"

the main menu for 1.0 is always going to be the back alley from no mercy in the newer versions its the crash course helicopter and if the console is opened i believe it shows version info but that may just be l4d2 idk

North Carolina, USA

They may have set it up in the first place, but that was many years ago and it was still in that same state from back then. Categories needed an update to have better flow with L4D2 along with a cleaned up Level Leaderboard, the rules were very barebones, and submitted times were very inconsistent. Things have come a long way since they had established the start of these boards, since then L4D2 activity has skyrocketed and the rules cover much more and are much clearer, as well as timing having a clear method that makes sense to how the game truly loads. Add lack of response to all of that, and there is a clear need for a modernization to happen here, improving it with the experience of how the L4D2 boards have evolved over time. Many things, mind you, that already existed in L4D2 before I came in. I haven't done many major changes over there, mostly just got the loadless thing worked out (which was in progress already when I came aboard). These boards were antiquated, those boards were iterated on much more, therefore here is now much closer to that improved state.

If anything in my post came off as sassy than I am sorry and assure you that wasn't my intention, I was trying to explain everything leading up to this moment as thoroughly and factually as I could.

Hmm, interesting note about the menus, thanks... that will be handy if any runs go by the menu, although the first few I've checked haven't, unfortunately. I might need to skim them for 1.0 specific tricks like the Dead Air 2 drop. I'll have to work on that a bit later.

AndreaRovenski likes this
Virginia, USA

im not saying youre wrong or that theyre wrong im saying i can understand both sides to put it bluntly, its not you thats being sassy but i didnt want to say that because i figured it would be taken the wrong way as if i have beef with any names i mention which i dont but enough about pointless drama there's no other real way to tell other than checking to see which skips are done and that might not even work because someone new to the game might not know how to do the skips but still run on 1.0 or something im not entirely convinced the version column is even necessary or worth the effort in figuring out for each run

Edited by the author 7 years ago
AndreaRovenski likes this
North Carolina, USA

I see what you mean. Understood. Just wanted to make sure I knew what was up and I don't think things are taken any wrong way like you'd think. I'm cool with working through stuff, if I weren't I wouldn't be here... opposing opinions are always going to exist, all that can be done is to try and figure out what's best for the boards which is always what I'll try to do at my human best. I can't really speak for others there, but, at least I can try to think about things and work out what I can while working with others here.

I think it'll all be worth it in the end, especially when more submissions start coming in and we get some good stuff being posted for the first time in a long time. Also, L4D1 run at AGDQ 2017 went great, woo! I may not have been there running it without the community that's grown, so I'm always appreciative of that on the inside no matter what, and hopefully anybody else that posts about stuff knows that it's always about trying to make the best environment for us to run this series. I should probably stop my post here or five more, long paragraphs will follow, but, anyway, I think we've said a lot already and are hopefully good right now.

Hmm... respectfully, I will have to disagree on the version column being unnecessary. Many games do make this distinction, and with some of the major skips available in the old version it can be pretty valuable to know that is what was used. This may apply most to new players, actually, so that they don't see a run and try a skip on Newest unaware that they are actually comparing to the old version. It changes enough to be an important distinction. As for not being able to tell if some runs are 1.0 or not, well... I suppose if they don't use any 1.0 skips, they are essentially the same as running Newest? In that case it can just be marked Newest so it's close enough and we have the choice so future runs can choose now to keep it accurate. I'll be waiting longer before taking that step to make sure there isn't any way I can mark some runs accurately after investigating it.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
United States

Everyone should just run 1.0 unless you're doing the DLC stuff tbh

Washington, USA

Co-op on 1.0 is difficult. You basically have to virtual network with the other players and then host a server on that virtual network.

Virginia, USA

surely someone could just host a hamachi server and then everyone can connect via the hamachi IP which takes like 5 minutes to set up and isn't difficult in the slightest also when are we going to allow bhop scripts so i can clutter up the leaderboards with pointless shitty runs like i did with l4d2 surely we all want l4d1 to stay in line with l4d2 right : )

EDIT: okay maybe not, the 1.0 version requires steam to set up a lobby even if its just a local server and the 1.0 version i use is a nosteam version which is the only version i can find so youd need a dedicated server running 1.0 to connect to and that might not even work

Edited by the author 7 years ago
AndreaRovenski likes this
Washington, USA

Here are a couple of options for setting it up.

And a guide here. http://blog.theevilpc.com/2009/01/left-4-dead-server-setup-guide-no-steam.html

There are probably more out there.

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Minor rule changes/clarifications

Hey everyone, some minor changes to the rules - solely to clarify things/change wording, no rules actually "changed" (at least not in any way that will be relevant to 99.9% of people):

  • The linked guide for demo recording is now in a new location on the internet ( 👀 ) and was reworked to hope
1 month ago