Hello everyone, Spore speed running is really taking off and I want to take this opportunity to do some house keeping and some refreshing to the leader board to keep the board clean and more inclusive. There also seems there is some confusion about timing and category rules. Going forward I will try to make all rules more clear to new and existing runners by providing more video examples in the rules and giving more detail and in depth explanations here in the forums if necessary. As followers of this page may know, I am a big fan of "less is more" when it comes to categories on SRC. I also favor using the Full Game leader board to hold all the times instead of the individual level board available on the site. However, category confusion and a want from new runners for more fun run categories is present and I do not want to ignore requests! I am opening up a miscellaneous category tab where fun and meme runs can be easily added without needing to clutter up the standard tabs. For example NG++ will be moved to miscellaneous and where Grox% runs can be added! Suggestions for new categories are encouraged! Either here on the forums or the discord is great. I will state that I would prefer at least two runners have time submissions ready in order to open a category. More updates coming! Feel free to ask questions about categories, timing, or anything to this forum!
The rules for each category have been rewritten to hopefully be more clear and concise! A lot of the NG++ rules have been removed since this has been moved to the miscellaneous category. Each category's rules now clearly state what is allowed or not in five bullet points or less. The new wording looks cleaner with less italicized and underlined words. Rules have been added that have been known but never properly expressed, for example, 'Tribal creatures may start with Tribal Equipment' has been added, removing the vague "Intra-Stage influence" nonsense that was never explicit. Timing rules are more clear stating gaining and losing control means 'When HUD appears and disappears.' Using the HUD as timing markers makes runs very visually easy to manually time later. Video examples for all stages are still coming!
Savage_Brick is being added an a mod to the Spore page! Savage_Brick has great community involvement and is a great speed runner for Spore and I believe he has earned the trust of the community.
If we forget to end the splits at the end of a run, do we submit the split time, or can we retime it off-screen and submit that time instead?
The run time does not have to reflect the on screen time. I always retime my runs in an editor to find the exact time. Since using splits on screen is done manually they are not always 100% accurate. Feel free to submit a time that accurately reflects the run time even if it is different than the time on screen :) Most people seem to post the time on screen without timing it accurately. I will accept the time submitted even if it is over becuase maybe the runner wants the time to match their on screen splits. I would only change/correct a time if the posted time is less than the actual run time.
Hello everyone, I need some community help! :) There has been discussion about removing the load times for the speed run. There is clear evidence that the loads in Spore are inconsistent between computers and even between runs. This matters mostly for full games but involves a couple ILs too. To keep all runs on an even playing field, proposal:
- Remove the between level loads. These loads have fluctuated between a total of 50 seconds to over 1 minute and 10 seconds in a full game run.
- Remove the "pause loads" during Civilization Stage when selecting a different vehicle mid stage. These loads only occur once per launch of the game. These loads last around a second and can be avoided but should not be included when they occur.
- Remove the loads when entering or exiting planets in Space Stage. These loads occur every time and are inconsistent. These loads can be 20/30 frames or up to a full second each.
I developed a load remover for LiveSplit that will automatically remove all these loads and this script works in Galactic Adventures as well. However, I need the Spore community's help testing the script. We can manually add the load remover to LiveSplit but if it is confirmed to work, then we can upload the script to LiveSplit's servers and anyone can use it much easier with no manual download! Spore MUST be on the NEWEST version. Spore: (1.3.0.22) or Galactic Adventures: (3.1.0.22). Steam or other digital distributors will have the newest version. It is impossible to get this version using only the disc itself. Find the script in the resources tab on this site here: https://www.speedrun.com/Spore/resources I will include a tutorial of how to add the script in LiveSplit here: Be sure to change your comparison to "Game Time" in LiveSplit or it will not pause.
Here is a video of all the instances the Load Remover will pause the timer:
Thank you to everyone who tested this out. Please leave a response on this forum if it worked, did not work, or have any questions getting it work! :) If anyone has a different version of Spore, if this works I should be able to make additional load removers for different versions!
This is amazing! I am currently only running cell stage, but I plan to get into full game running soon and this will be a huge help
This may seem a bit extreme, is a way that we could make cell-creature, or other categories?
I always try to limit adding categories, especially when there are few players. A bad stigma that goes along with many SRC sites are that there are so many categories and so few players that all the categories become so noncompetitive that everyone hangs on to their own WR. Maybe if there is a cool trick or something that is too hard to perform or incorporate in a full game that is worth just running a few levels to accomplish something, it could be done. But I wouldn't want to find every combination of levels. I'd recommend running the entire game or just one segment of it at a time. :) We should be adding in some fun MISC categories soon. Maybe some ally the grox% or all badge points in Space? Should be fun!
I heard that Space Stage may be a deterrent to playing a full game. So we are trying out a Cell to Civilization Stage category in the miscellaneous category. We are giving this a trial to see if there are runners who would like to try this out. I still try to limit adding these kind of categories but if there is demand it can stay and possibly be expanded. This Cell through Civ is for Easy difficulty and can be run on NG+. Timing starts and stops following the ILs. Starts after the blue start button on cell and ends at blue arrows during Civ.
I recently got a new computer and I am having trouble with livesplit. Does anyone know of a quick tutorial for setup I can use?
