United StatesHopefully we can figure out what causes runs to sometimes have good splits and sometimes not despite the same performance. When comparing against other videos it seems like the game might actually be running a little faster or slower sometimes, which doesn't make a lot of sense with locked framerate...
When you view your save file it tells you your percent completion. All gold feathers and flyers are required, I believe you also have to touch the yellow Q and buy all items but I am not sure whether those count towards completion percentage.
Since Viper posted a run that was pretty close to mine, I went ahead and calculated what my time should be if the ice cream shop loading isn't counted. Comparing the difference in RTA/IGN splitters before and after ice cream shop loads, there is 17.64 seconds not counted on my timer. This would the actual time 43:39.49
I think for the sake of fairness any time save from these loads should be accounted for in runs if applicable.
During the Jack the Ripper mission this timing issue also appears however this mission ends as soon as you complete it, so the load times are irrelevant.
I ran into a bit of an issue in my run where entering a shop during the ice cream mission causes the auto-splitter to pause but the mission timer to continue ticking down, this creates a bit of a disconnect where not entering the shop would lose you time just due to the auto-splitter quirk. This would also encourage maximizing the loading time to cut as much ice cream mission time out of the run as possible, which gets into some weird situations with FPS locking.
I've discovered that loading times are tied to the framerate. When playing at 30 FPS, loads are significantly longer than when playing at 60 FPS. Furthermore if the framerate is unlocked, loads become near instant. While the game mostly runs fine at any FPS, the driving AI starts misbehaving above 30 FPS. A comment in one of the game files indicate the physics engine was designed with 30 FPS in mind.
This creates a bit of a tricky situation. 30 FPS is ideal for driving missions however unlocked saves a lot of times on runs as you don't have to wait for loading (Even though it isn't counted that's less time spent per run). This also creates a problem with the ice cream mission above as with the auto-splitter, the longer your load times are, the more time you "save" on the run timer. This all incentivizes messing with FPS limiters and toggling them during the run, which I think is a bit messy.
I haven't confirmed this but I suspect with the load times tied to framerate, as long as your loads are fast enough, your load times should be basically identical to other players locked at the same framerate. If this is the case, the above problems could be solved by changing timing method to RTA and simply requiring a framerate lock. Regardless if this is true or not, I think setting a framerate lock requirement would be good to keep the run environment as equal as possible for everyone (I would suggest 30 FPS).
Any thoughts on all this?
Just submitted a 100% run, its bad but it can be used to kick off the category.
Figured out the loading times are tied to the FPS, if I turn off FPS limiter loads are basically instant for me. Doesn't really matter since loads are cut off but perhaps finding a way to toggle a limiter would be worthwhile so it can be limited when it is needed to complete missions and unlimited to save on load times.
Edited because I accidently submitted as 55h instead of 55m lol
