Hi everyone !
I started speedrunning it (with Xunkar) 3-4 years ago and stopped after having reached what we believed to be close-to-perfect times with the routes we used at the time. I'm really glad that people have started speedrunning this game again... Unfortunately there are a few problems with the current rules and categories.
First of all, there is absolutely no reason to use the IG timer as the game allows the players to use items that slow time which means that runs can have an incredibly slower IG time while being 2 to 3 times longer in Real Time and we can all agree that speedrunning is about going fast, not making the game THINK that you're going fast. IG time is only used with games in which it is reliable and cannot be altered (and it's only used because it eliminates differences in loading times, which is pretty much irrelevant here).
Plus, and this has been known for a while in the Alien Swarm speedrunning community, on top of making for a slower and irrelevant time, "Adrenaline Abuse" can actually gllitch the IG time to make it excessively lower than what you would get doing the EXACT same route without using the adrenaline. This thing is completely broken and this is why we should only care about Real Time.
Second of all (this is far less important but needed to be mentionned anyway), there are two obvious flaw in the way the categories are made : the first one is that it does not differentate between 2, 3 or 4 players in coop which seems pretty illogical considering the number of players changes your options and routing. More importantly : two players (or three) who do not have the option to play with more people shouldn't see their times ignored just because of that.
The other flaw, minor this one, is that it is limited to only Easy and Brutal. I see where this is coming from but in this game each difficulty setting could make the route different and interesting. In my opinin we should either add every difficulty setting or just remove them altogether and just focus on getting the quickest time (what should be our ultimate priority, not discriminate by a number of criteria that have no real basis).
Anyway that's all I had to say about all this, I hope you take it under consideration and will then love to come here again to share our runs (and a few guides we've written along the way).
There is no adrenaline bug. We've seen identical IGT times with and without usage of adrenaline on the same map with the same route. I don't know where this myth came from, maybe it was the case in the past and has since been patched, but I'm absolutely certain that it's not the case at this time.
I don't differentiate between 2, 3, and 4 players because in the majority of the levels, 2 players is optimal. Getting more players will only slow you down by putting more death cams in your run. The one or two exceptions can stay as they are.
I'm half of mind to remove Easy from the IL leaderboard anyway. Brutal is ALWAYS faster, because of the speed multiplier. There are no circumstances where easier mob spawns make an IL faster than the speed multiplier gains. Plus, ILs on anything lower than Brutal are so easy, what's the point?
As for IGT... It's more than standard for games to abide by their in-game timer as long as it's consistent. Not accurate. Consistent. And the Alien Swarm timer is very consistent. Of course, we don't use it for full-game runs, because you also have to do menuing, and make important choices whether switching a weapon is worth losing two seconds to gain it back on the next level.
Sure, speedrunning is about going fast. But how do you define fast? I'd rather define it as running through a level perfectly as proven by the ingame timer, with all the optimizations and abuses related to that, than to who lags the least.
I mean, Goldeneye still clings to IGT and it has far more reason to stop using it. It works as it works.
Oh, and welcome to the competition. TheMaster could take to lose a few records ;P
Hello! I am not familiar with you guys myself although five years ago our team had run more for fun than to be seriously competitive and didn't look much into the scene itself.
Interesting comment about adrenaline breaking the timer. I have yet to try running the exact same path with and without adrenaline, That would be a problem if there were a bug. Under what circumstances does this usually happen? I would be interested in testing it to see what kind of results the timer comes out with.
I had recently mentioned that we are going to have a bunch of tied times soon and 1 second is a pretty massive amount of time to go by, we should really start counting frames I feel. Now, counting frames with adrenaline would be difficult. I wonder if there should be some new adrenalineless category for this purpose that's more like the "main" category of the game. It would let us preserve all of the current runs but keep a more specific time that better shows differences in runs.
I am not sure I agree with co-op mostly because it seems irrelevant with the current setup. Two players are already sufficient apparently for everything but SynTek, which is the only outlier. If there were more varied strategies than there is then maybe, but all more players do for the most part is add dead weight right now.
I do also agree with the difficulty categories. Now that we've refined things quite a bit it does seem clear there is no need for really anything but Brutal to be there. It is probably worthwhile now to just condense it and not bother listing difficulty at all; Full-game runs already work this way.
The adrenaline glitch may have been patched, I'll take your word for it, but that doesn't really change the fact that the adrenaline slows the game down considerably and while I concede it's necessary to use it at specific times (to perform hacks or other things like that), I don't see how we could accept a run where the players are constantly using adrenaline to take a perfect trajectory etc. because it goes against the very idea of a speedrun in my mind.
And that's why I have a problem with IG time. Like you said, IG Time is used in game where it is consistent (meaning that it's extremely close to what a RT would give minus the loadings) but it's not in Alien Swarm. A run (single map) could be almost twice as long in real time compared to IGT which makes absolutely no sense to me. Plus, IGT is becoming more and more rare because it's rarely accurate (in this particular case we can't be more precise than a second which is huge considering Alien Swarm's runs are pretty short). Consider the GQDs events, SRL Races or even SDA : the Real Time always takes precedence in importance.
Although I can understand why IGT can be meaningful and I would propose the following compromise : couldn't it be possible to show both times on the leaderboards? That way people can decide for themselves what they prefer and put the runs in the appropriate order.
As for the difficulty setting if you say Brutal is always faster then why not remove the difficulty setting altogether like I was saying? That way runners can do as they prefer and if they're faster with a different difficulty setting they are still in the same leaderboard so other runners can adjust (after all this may vary from map to map you can never be sure).
Last thing: I understand what you're saying about the number of players but if you decide to remove the difficulty setting altogether I think it could still be a nice idea because there ARE a few maps that are faster when you're playing with 4 players and in that case that wouldn't be fair for teams of 2 or 3.
Thanks. We're a little rusty but we're getting up to speed with the new routes. ;)
@TheMaster : Sorry I didn't see your message when I wrote mine, but as you can see we agree on almost everything. ^^
I don't mean consistent as in related to real time. Almost no ingame timer is. I mean consistent as in it works the same for everyone. No hardware differences, settings differences, or platform differences will make your ingame timer slower than someone else's. That makes it a consistent and reliable method of timing.
I don't think speedrun.com has support for listing IGT, RTA, Time w/ loads, and Time w/o loads all at once. I guess we could start putting RTA times in the Time w/ loads slot.
Since everyone seems to agree, I'm removing difficulty categories from the ILs.
Yup, I've been chatting with Onin through this and we have the difficulties taken out now. It was really only there to begin with because they weren't sure if Easy could be faster, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Regardless if it ever were faster, that wouldn't matter anyway. Everybody would just run Easy.
Onin is not interested in running a new RTA category himself, but it certainly seems you are, Tenkei.
I would be interested in creating a new category in place of where Easy was listed that counts the frames for RTA times, which will of course also naturally disallow stims because slowness unless we find some new incredibly difficult strategy that we just can't do without them, in which case they seem fair game since they considerably slow things down (probably will never happen anyway).
Onin said he would consider this new category if we both plan to run it. I think we have a plan?
Sounds good to me.
EDIT: I'm not sure we should disallow stims, they will reflect badly on your time anyway but it could still be useful from time to time so no reason to ban it altogether imo (just in case we ever find a place where we absolutely have to use it, that way we don't need to alter the rules).
Yes, sorry, that is what I meant when I had said "it would naturally disallow stims". Perhaps it was poor wording. I meant that, since they would massively count against your time, they are as good as disallowed since nobody would dare to take that time loss anyway.
As mentioned, if we find some crazy hard strategy that we just can't get without them they should be able to be used with no problem.
EDIT: The only thing left now is to figure out exactly which frames we want to start and stop the count. When figuring out the full-game run times I have been ending on the frame where Timor's final objective is completed as that seems to be the moment control is lost. I will need to see if that is always the case in other levels as well. For the start, I have been counting from the first frame where the "start game" button gets blurry which is the moment the click registers. I am unsure if this is actually when the level is starting as you can move before the screen fades in and I have no idea how else to tell.
My bad, it's pretty late over here and I didn't get that's what you meant.
For counting frames I've always followed the SDA rules meaning that the timer starts when you gain control and stops when you lose it. So basically I always try to locate the very last frame before there is ANY kind of movement at the beginning and stop counting when the characters stop moving in the safe room at the end (there's always a clear moment when you can see your character stopped in its tracks).
After some experimenting I have a new proposal for the start/stop times.
Not all levels show a box being ticked for the final objective once you reach the exit. It seems only Landing Bay and Timor Station does this for some reason. I see another nice and clear indication, though. I do not want to go by your character stopping because there seems to be a slight deceleration when you lose control where you do continue moving slightly before it actually comes to a stop.
Looking at the Timor ending, the same frame where the objective ticks is the same frame where a few other things happen graphically. Your little white menu cursor reappears on your mouse position and the radar effects on the map disappear. These all happen in the single frame. This seems to clearly be when it is actually stopping control and transitioning to the mission complete menu and should be our stopping point.
Additionally, this helps to know when to start as well. There is a frame where the in-game oval cursor suddenly pops in (slightly after hitting start game), so I am assuming that, like the end when the small white menu cursor reappears when control is lost, control is probably gained when the in-game oval cursor is popping up. This actually means my full-game times have been counted with slightly more time than they should... oh well, not important there.
Anyway, short draft version for how the rules would be stated,
"Time starts on the first frame the in-game oval cursor appears. Time ends on the first frame the small white menu cursor reappears."
My final thought now before we're ready to run this officially is what framerate these frames should be counted in, although this is minor to the time in the end. I don't know SDA rules but since I record at 60FPS, that could potentially give me a single frame advantage ending the run sooner than 30FPS? I am not sure if the beginning will also be offset a frame later and it won't matter. Maybe this is just complicating things... if you don't care about framerate then I'm fine with not worrying about what the recording is either considering each frame at 60FPS is worth a paltry 16ms anyway. Just trying to be thorough.
Difference in framerate could alter the times slightly but it would be incredibly improbably that two runs would be so close anyway so we probably shouldn't worry about it; we can just count the number of frames and then divide this number by our framerate (to get the time in seconds). Btw, I record at 60fps too so there won't be any discrepancy. ^^
Your rules about the start/stop times seems pretty consistent, I'm okay with that. ;)
I had a thought and checked the cursor on start again, so I have a little bit of an update to report.
I remembered that I was sometimes clicking start game so quickly after the map loads that I was already moving long before the menu actually faded out. It turns out this hides the in-game cursor and makes it impossible to tell when it actually started. Very easy fix, though... we would just have to wait an extra second or two for it to catch up before starting. I have no idea why it does that and it is hard to explain how that works. Examining the frames more I can clearly see I start moving when the oval cursor "fills in", as in has its dot in the center and all, so it's definitely a good indication, just need to wait out that weird fading bug. Let me upload two short examples since it's hard to explain.
Example of how it should be. Working as intended. You can see that, after hitting start game, the oval cursor appears. Neither the map nor movement has started yet. You can then, slightly after, see the oval cursor get filled in with a few extra bits including the dot. You can barely see through the fading out that I initiate moving just as that happens. This works well.
Unusable, impossible to tell when it started. In this one you can see that I start game quickly after reloading the map and by the time the menu finally starts fading out the cursor has filled in and I've long been moving upwards. If I had waited a second or two the fading out wouldn't take nearly this long.
It's unfortunate the game needs to make this a bit complicated but it's an easy enough workaround to just wait a little bit. Hopefully older computers don't do something weird where the fading out takes longer, but at least on my system which is all I'm able to test it is working well. I tried to find a console command to in some way disable this menu fading to make things easier but had no luck finding anything. Oh well.
That's actually why I started counting at the first frame I saw movement, but if you workaround works consistently then it should be fine. :)
I have checked the load on each level and it is indeed very consistent. I am not sure if you noticed but the two bolded sentences in my post above are links to example videos that you could pull and check the frames of personally if you wanted to get an idea of what I'm looking at. I am 100% confident that, at least on my system, this is a good way to get the exact frame. If anybody has a much slower computer (maybe also running on an HDD?) feel free to test it yourself to ensure it works on low-end systems as well. It should. I don't have the means to try it myself.
I did also just notice that the character name in the upper-right changed from, for example, "Vegas" to your own name on the same frame the game starts, so that's another way you can find the starting frame. Either that or the oval cursor filling in works fine. The name thing is only effective if your character portrait is the last element you've moused over before starting, though, but turns out it does enable you to tell when the map has started even when the fade in takes forever. Something to keep in mind.
Still not entirely sure how to work the rules since, although this is completely consistent, it's a bit weird to try and explain. Is it possible to link to an image within the rules? If I could make an image with the empty cursor and the filled in cursor side-by-side and say "here, the cursor should look like this" that would probably be best. At least for now I think we both know what to do, though, but if anybody else new comes along they will need some guidance. Do make sure you check those two links up there to make sure you know what I mean by the oval cursor getting "filled in"
I'll be getting on these new RTA runs after we get our GDQ submission in and in the meantime I might try to take a moment to take back some IGT records and especially practice the new strategies. I'm probably going to start being careful that I start the level properly so future solo runs from now on that don't use Adrenaline can be submitted to RTA as well. I'll probably have a Cargo run to submit first.
I ran a few levels today for IGT and two of them have no Adrenaline so I can also use them for RTA! After doing some actual runs I personally like using the name changing version of the start over the oval cursor. All I have to do is brush over my portrait before starting the run.
My Cargo is going to be 1:00.999 (hah...)
My Timor will be 2:26.135 (so close to 1:25!)
For now you could potentially compete with those if you'd like to start practicing. I'll have to get a hold of Onin to get the category up soon and work out the final draft of the rules.
Everything is said and done and now... we are running ASW in AGDQ 2016! I am ready to return immediately to playing this. Tenkei, if you are still around we can compete in RTA as soon as a category is put up. The practice will be useful for me as well.
RTA list added to the ILs.
I may move them to Misc categories just depending on how the leaderboard ends up looking, I don't want it to get too chaotic.
Hmm, yeah, we'll see how it looks once it gets populated. I was just about to submit the Cargo and Timor times but the dropdowns are still only hh:mm:ss, hopefully you can adjust that without needing to mess with the other categories as well.
