With the exception of a couple of retry time saves, some of what you guys are retrying on might not actually be saving you time, they could be making you gain time.
Do NOT go off LiveSplit's time to time your time saves (wow, what a sentence). The timer pauses whenever there's a pause menu (this includes the loading screens), however, for some reason the IGT starts a couple of seconds early while the game is still loading, before you can press F to load the map back up. During this time, LiveSplit still sees the game is paused and keeps the timer paused, but the IGT is actually rolling. The timer also keeps rolling on the death "Retry" screen.
It's not really possible (at least right now) to just directly read the game time because of how RE7 was coded. That's why LiveSplit uses RTA just with load removal/pause screen removal. The variable the autosplitter uses to detect if the game is paused, for some reason returns true, even when the IGT starts a bit early. This is an odd way Capcom coded the game. I tried to find a work around for this, but couldn't find one that was accurate.
If you're going to time if a retry actually saves you time do it this way:
1.) Look at the stats menu and look at the game's time. 2.) Do your retry. Spam F. Because again, the timer starts early and keeps rolling even while the F button graphic prompts you to press it. 3.) As soon as you can, open your stats menu again and look at your game time. See if you're actually saving time.
You might find you are saving time on all of them. If that's the case, great. You might find some of them causes you to GAIN time retrying.
Eventually, I'd like LiveSplit to be able to hook into the game time. As it sits now, it's impossible without a much more complicated addition of a DLL. And even then there's no promise it'd actually stay accurate.
I hope this makes sense, and if I'm causing alarm for no reason; my apologies. I saw Bawk retry during the Jack fight to save time from turning around (approx. 1 second). But if the game starts the timer 3-4 seconds before you can even press F to load the map... You're actually gaining a couple of seconds.
Worth looking into :)
