New Jersey, USAThat may depend on how you would categorize "talking about speed running" or "talking about things that pertain to speed running", which would probably both fit into "speed running", even in seemingly remote instances.
Or are you talking about things in "talk" that seem more suited for "speed running"? In that case, maybe it doesn't matter. "Talk" is for anything, I would assume.
Also, some people don't read. They just post.
I was considering "character control" and "first input" to be the same thing, this whole time :P I see the difference, though. Most of the games that I play, first input actually is character control (pressing start leads directly into character control), or else within seconds of each other. That's why I'm so baffled by the idea, but it makes more sense for other games.
And I don't bother with trying to sway communities on things like this. My concern is with creating solid leaderboards and rules for games that I might request, in the future. Basically, if I made a delay part of the rules from the get-go, then I would hope that's a reasonable way to set it up.
Yeah, my assumption would also be that it could be related to TAS's.
That's all very reasonable, but I see this type of timing for games that are far from being as well-played as the Zelda series. I even see it for games that have no runs on the board at all. In these small or nonexistent communities, I also don't often see players uniformly using a delay, nor do I assume anyone has calculated the correct interval. In these cases, the rule seems gratuitous. Maybe it just comes down to, in my eyes, somewhat lazy moderation.
Here's a new question: if I am moderating a game, does anyone think that it would be too much to ask to require timing to start with a delay from the effective "new game" selection? This is assuming that I have calculated the exact time, so everyone involved with the game would know how the timing works.
Edit:
"[...] especially if it's the same for everybody."
My thought is that if it's the same for everybody, then what difference does it make if it's timed or not? It makes no difference, but I still see where you guys are coming from.
Oh, and does your opinion change for games that don't involve the player advancing anything, pre-input? Or what if the timer were to start on whatever would be considered the final "advancement", pre-input. I guess I forgot that not all games start almost immediately after pressing start.
Also, thank you for responding so far, everyone :)
"[...] and it actually makes sense most of the time."
That's a big part of my question. How and why does it make sense? It makes sense relative to SDA timing, but why is SDA timing like that in the first place?
"Delay" is actually the word I was looking for when I described "starting the timer with a negative value." :D
I figured that's a big reason for a lot of people. That's an understandable sentiment, but the player sits through those two minutes, whether a timer is going or not. It's not a bother to me. Do you start the timer at the same time as you put in your first input? Is it always accurate? Also, how can you tell when your input is? Whenever I try to eyeball it, I always find a slight inaccuracy, post run.
Why is it so common for the rules of a game to be that the timer starts upon taking control of the character? Considering that a player will inevitably go through whatever sequence comes before gaining control, why not start the timer at a point before it coincides--and possibly interferes--with gameplay? It also seems as though starting upon control would be more consistently inaccurate than starting at a point that is more easily discernible. The margin of error may be small, and it may be easy to compensate for by re-timing post run or by starting the timer with a negative value, but why not eliminate these steps entirely by starting earlier?
I ask because I've always wondered. I also just got an arcade stick, and I'm looking into running a few games that don't have boards here. If I end up requesting them and writing some rules, then I'd like to know if there is some relevance to starting when taking control of the character.
Also, am I just doing something incorrectly? Is it easier than I realize to accurately start the timer upon control? Is there a method that I'm unaware of? (I've been re-timing or starting negative.)
Thanks for any help :)
(If we want, we can keep any future tips confined to this thread.)
I haven't tried the advice given in Guru's guide, but there is one point that seems like it could be done more effectively. To quote, "Another value you should change is your GamesPlayed to 0, after 7 games you will unlock the next power-up so keep this folder open and save over it every time you unlock the razor."
That doesn't seem like much effort, but I'd like to note that the step can be avoided by pressing escape as soon as the wrong dad is hit. There is some time between the hit and the reset screen showing up where you can press escape and the data values will remain unchanged. This was the way I did it before, and I would delete the data folder, if I ever missed the opportunity enough times. The game automatically re-creates the folder. With the info that Guru has provided, the folder can be edited to a player's liking, then left alone, instead of repeatedly editing it or deleting it.
As I said, I haven't tried Guru's method, so my old method might be less efficient.
Update: it looks like each method balances each other out. For the efficiency gained with one method, there is a loss that the other method makes up for.
100 pages! Cheers! (I'm fashionably late to the party.)
Describing the game and explaining what platforms it can be played on might help to garner some interest :D
I enjoy watching people PB while they stream. Every PB is a special moment, and it's awesome when things can be said such as "WR pace!" without being ironic.
Another fun thing that happened the other day was the Clockwork Cat WR going back and forth. The runners kept lowering it by second after second, and they kept thinking that it couldn't possibly go faster. They might actually still be at it.
Oh, well never mind, if Toyota's comment is true. (Haha, Rotta...auto-correct)
This whole situation is super weird to me.
Maybe there should be a joint proposal to kirkq. There seems to have previously been a notion that the mods from MMLeaderboards should mod the games here, but that doesn't seem effective if they have no interest in keeping the boards up-to-date. Ultimately, I think it would be fair to instate SRC users as moderators for each game, maybe while keeping MML users as moderators along with new ones, so that the new ones are able to focus on the SRC boards' accuracy. I don't think that keeping the MML moderators on-board here is necessary, but it's not unfair.
As stated, I think a joint proposal may be a good thing to do, explaining that there is a community here and listing all of the users that are willing to moderate which games.
I'm not interested in running it (sorry :( ), but Brave Fencer Musashi is a great game. I never beat it as a kid, so there is the tiniest sliver of a chance that I may revisit it, someday.......
At what point does "the community" not involve those who run the game and would like their times here, as well? People keep referring to "the mega man community" as wanting separate leaderboards, but that notion seems to exclude the portion of the community that would like to post times here.
I agree about trolling, but trolling, as well as other abuses that I would consider petty, don't attribute to illegitimate times being posted (cheating occurs off-site). Can those types of things be considered within "the nature of the site"? Trolling will occur whether alternate accounts are outright banned or not, and cheating on SRC doesn't hinge on alternate accounts.
"I know, I know,"
You sound like you've been through some traumatic events, immediately defending yourself at the mere mention of a laptop :P
It doesn't seem logical to me at all. What is the harm in a user posting times to different boards with two different usernames? What advantage can be had? The nature of the site is that we track our results here. We don't create results here. Alternate accounts are banned on poker sites, for example, because there are specific ways that a user can cheat and collude with multiple accounts. On SRC, any cheating, theft, or conspiracy is done off-site, and the results are posted here. Are there ways in which a cheater can be directly aided by having multiple accounts on SRC? The only ways that I can think of have to do with presentation, but those instances seem to be caught easily--but please correct me, if I'm wrong. Even then, how a time is presented (submitted) doesn't correlate to how it was achieved.
That's unfortunate. I just realized that I've been using "window" as a default. "Game" wasn't an issue for every game, but it was unreliable enough that I made it my second option. I wonder what the difference is and why it can be so precarious.
Twitch email notifications for messages is unfortunately not a default setting, though the option does exist. Whispering is a better option, as the user will receive a notification as soon as they log-on to Twitch. To be thorough, both options can be done.
You should still try via YouTube and Twitter. Inactive users will still receive email notifications from those services.
