Moving over here from the Discord discussions, but as the run is fairly short, the removal of ms I believe will cause more issues than resolve.
I agree that dropping milliseconds is a bad thing. In a game that's under 5 minutes and really small things matter. Runners should retime their own runs, mods could framecount the top3.
Basically the leaderboard timings changed during me sleeping, removing ms and sticking to full seconds. This change was made by a discussion of no more than 5 people RIGHT HERE, without including the voices heard from the 80 other runnes.
I am personally frustrated because I didnt even have a say in the matter before it was changed, no strawpoll voting was done and this ALL WENT DOWN in less than 9h, not properly addressing the community as a whole. I have since tried to convey my concern about it as my opinion on the matter is fairly strong for more accurate timings for such a short game where ms can make the difference between #20 or #24. Other runners in discord seems to share my concern and it seems this decision was done in such haste that most of us didnt get a chance to speak up.
Thankfully as Mr_Magnificent put it: "I agree with that, but it's not a non-reversable decision".
So lets have a proper decision made with some actual voices heard on the matter before it gets finalized. I want some democracy, without being called out by a certain mod on the matter - it is sad to hear that just because im opinionated however, that my individuality as a person is questioned and described as "bitchy".
My vote goes towards re-instating the ms towards the final timer count.
Agreed, as the top3 are recent runs anyway, they're timed with milliseconds anyways (just double checked to make sure, and yup) So even that annoyance isn't really a problem. Regarding even older runs that aren't timed with ms, I feel as they aren't even top 3, I'd argue is less important, but am open to the opposing opinion :)
I think it's fair enough to have ms in there. Since if they have the same time, That put too much work for the mod to re-time them or do a frame count to see which one of the runner has the fastest framecount (that is without the ms in) since you end split at the fading out screen ( which is when you lose control of the character or just before when it spells "Thanks") I mean that would adjust it easily to do instead of have that kind of pain to time and re-time and again, again to make sure the time matches. As someone stated back there, this game IS short with any%. If it were other category, like TG ruleset and such. That is not needed to have ms in them. UNLESS the the top 3 or 5 has their time VERY close to each other.
I wouldn't argue the mods to take off the ms and I'm fine with it for any% category as they have clearly explain the reason why, already.
I'm not going to write an essay here on my phone while at AGDQ, but I support including milliseconds for "top" runs (based on whatever arbitrary threshold is picked) provided runs are properly frame counted. As mentioned in the other thread, taking the milliseconds from a manually controlled timer is not accurate and ultimately negatively impacts leaderboard integrity.
(mostly crossposted from the any% rules thread)
I like the idea of only "top runs" having ms. It seems like a decent compromise of mod work, runner work, and of leaderboard fidelity. Well, aside from whatever work there is to edit all the current "non-top" submissions; that sounds tedious and would perhaps cause just as much uproar as the initial change.
Anyhow, I'm curious if that idea would satisfy the concerns of others here.
That said, I've never frame counted any run either as a runner or a mod. The closest I've done is examine Twitch highlights and YouTube videos to make sure the run submission time is not patently off from the time I observe.
Usually the first course of action should be to find a reference frame for the start & end that can be easily pinpointed without sound.
For example in SMB3, the first frame Mario is visible in the overworld is frame #258 (at the NES framerate). So we pinpoint the first frame of the run by substracting 258 frames from that one. The ending has a clear visual cue in the same way.
Thing is in the case of Strider, it's not really gonna be possible for mods to do that sort of work without the source video to begin with. You're not gonna be able to pinpoint a frame and see a frame counter from twitch directly. Pinpointing is possible on Youtube if the video has the correct framerate but framecounting is still gonna be annoying. The reason Super Mario Bros. 1 mods are able to framecount any run 5:02 or better is that you can know the exact amount of frames in the run based on Bowser patterns & a couple other things. But that really specific approach can't be applied to many games out there.
So to get back to Strider, once a method to find the start & end frames accurately has been found, the best course of action would probably be to ask the runners to do the framecount themselves with their local recording. Which is one more reason to stick to the runs at the very top of the LB for the framecount, because asking runners at the middle of the LB to worry about that would end up being a logistical nightmare and would deter runners too possibly. If someone cares enough and is good enough to get a top 3 time, they should be able to framecount easily given that a proper method has been found.
Yeah these sound like good solutions, though I don't have experience with frame count stuff either
Already on it. Was talking with other top runners that are back from AGDQ about the board and also with what I see in here... top 10 with ms is where we are heading and the rest will be as is. I feel this is a good compromise for both sides and will also reduce the workload on the mod staff not having to frame count every persons run.
No matter which way we go some people will still be unhappy, but unfortunately we don't always get what we want.
So the board should be changed in just a few mins.
