United StatesLooking at the original post, I did not make it clear that the kill combo can just be disabled at the title screen so it is inactive. I'll update the original post to make this more clear.
It has been nearly 2 years since the original IGT vote and implementation for JSRF. Since then, new features and capabilities of modding along with community requests have gone into creating a second version of the IGT xbe that will be called IGT2. Each individual feature of the IGT2 xbe will be voted on below. All of the features below are finalized in implementation and can be seen in a demonstration vod shown here: (Note that the numbers on the left of the video are for testing and timing verification purposes and will not be in the final version.)
These settings can be changed on the title screen before the run starts and are locked for the rest of the run. The title screen menu can be seen in the vod above. This vote will be open for one week and close on November 11th, 2020 after 11:59pm PST. If any option is approved, the new xbe will be distributed as promptly as possible and updated on Discord, this website, and the jsrfspeedruns website. The previous IGT xbe will be valid for leaderboard submissions for exactly 1 month (eg. Nov 14th -> Dec 14th). After that date, runs with the IGT version 1 xbe will be denied. This is to ensure that we have a common version for all runners and don't have old versions sitting around that we have to support.
Everyone in the JSRF community may vote - if a vote is cast by someone who does not have a verified time in any category or is not a known member of the community, we will ask for verification either on the forum and discord. Including your twitch, discord, or other name will be helpful with verification. Please be considerate to your fellow runners; we would like this poll to be as representative of the active runner community as possible. If you don't think that includes you, we would ask that you consider abstaining from this vote.
To vote, you may copy the ballot provided below, select yes or no, and add it as a reply to this thread. You may add any comments or conditions to your vote below, but I will count the exact number of Yes or No votes. You do not have to vote on every item. Thank you for participating in the discussion and voting!
[quote][Yes/No] Item 1: Cutscene Skipping [Yes/No] Item 2: Sewer Skip Patch [Yes/No] Item 3: Input Viewer [Yes/No] Item 4: Kill Combo [Yes/No] Item 5: Music Mute[/quote]
Current results: Cutscene Skipping: 18 Yes (Phospho, Nae, Wecn, 7thAce, Twinkachu, Anthony, Yayo, Crabbi, Yomsa, Acebats, Diller, Jammy, Ataru, Wolf, Zykumie, Ailis, Loomeh, Manta), 3 No (Xano, TwoWorlds, Jabro). Sewer Skip Patch: 18 Yes (Phospho, Nae, Wecn, 7thAce, Twinkachu, Anthony, Yayo, Yomsa, Acebats, Diller, Jammy, Ataru, Jabro, Wolf, Zykumie, Ailis, Loomeh, Manta), 2 No (Xano, TwoWorlds). Input Viewer: 19 Yes (Phospho, Nae, Wecn, 7thAce, Twinkachu, Anthony, Yayo, Yomsa, Acebats, Diller, Xano, Jammy, Ataru, Jabro, Wolf, Zykumie, Ailis, Loomeh, Manta), 1 No (TwoWorlds). Kill Combo: 19 Yes (Phospho, Nae, Wecn, 7thAce, Twinkachu, Anthony, Yayo, Crabbi, Yomsa, Acebats, Diller, Jammy, Ataru, Wolf, Zykumie, Ailis, Loomeh, Manta), 3 No (Xano, TwoWorlds, Jabro). Music Mute: 20 Yes (Phospho, Nae, Wecn, 7thAce, Twinkachu, Anthony, Yayo, Crabbi, Yomsa, Acebats, Diller, Xano, Jammy, Ataru, Jabro, Wolf, Zykumie, Ailis, Loomeh, Manta), 1 No (TwoWorlds).
Below are the details of the implementation for all of the proposals.
Three “New Game” modes: No skip, Auto skip, Manual skip. Mode can’t change mid-run. All cutscenes are fully timed. Their full duration counts towards the run time. All cutscenes except chapter cutscenes are unskippable always. “A man’s desires crumbled” is considered to be the chapter 9 cutscene. The total cutscene time will be displayed at the end of the run as an aid to calculating the equivalent RTA time for use in the leaderboard.
Auto skip Chapter cutscenes don’t play. Instead, the cutscene’s duration is added to the IGT and the game loads into the next screen.
Manual skip Chapter cutscenes begin playing normally, and can be skipped at any point with the A or Start button. At the natural or premature end of the cutscene, the IGT will have advanced the full duration of the cutscene. The IGT keeps ticking as usual during the cutscene and the remainder gets added when the cutscene is skipped.
If desired, a version has been tested where the amount of time skipped in the run is displayed on screen after gouji is defeated and the timer stops. This time could be added to the RTA splits time in order to make RTA a viable benchmark of comparison. This will be discussed if Item 1 passes.
Options: No change, Patch to skippable, Patch to no skip When skippable is selected, the game will automatically modify the sewers mission that is loaded into memory upon entering the sewers. This modified version will use the NTSC-U combo disc hitbox for the Garam trigger. This does not modify any game file nor cache file.
When no skip is selected, the game will do the exact same thing but patch it to the hitbox of a version of the game that does not allow for sewer skip.
No change will not modify the file at all, leaving the sewer skip up to your cached files. This is the recommended options for runners with a functioning SS cache currently.
Options: Center, Left, None. Option to show an input viewer at the bottom center or bottom left of the screen.
Options: LT + Back, None.
Enables the use of the LT + Back button combo to force a game over at any point during gameplay and return to the title screen without having to reset the Xbox. Identical implementation to the Quicksave mod.
This can be set to "none" at the title screen to avoid any kind of accidental input during a run.
Options: Mute, No Change Option to start the game with no BGM. It cannot be enabled from Roboy’s menu. This is a runtime level adjustment, so it will not permanently affect any save files.
Consideration: The game rules for JSRF say “all runs must have recorded proof, and all videos must have accompanying audio.” Could muting the audio conflict with that, since it’s one of our safety checks for spliced runs? Counterpoint is that spliced runs are extremely difficult and not worth their effort in JSRF, and the ingame timer display still can be checked for accuracy.
Additionally, we'd like to propose some universal controller fixes to address hardware issues that crop up with heavy use. Good Xbox controllers are rare and extending their useful lifespan through software is a step we'd like to take, but we're not finalized in the implementation of them yet. A new post will be made for those in the very near future.
@suprix For option A, why would RTA still be the primary sorting on the leaderboard? The IGT would basically be a loadless time, making it a more accurate option. The only reason I see is to preserve legacy runs for people who will likely never run with an IGT. Setting IGT as the primary sorting method will bring more people onto IGT faster to get their runs requalified.
Edit: Forgot about non-modded players (even though I'm unmodded currently lol). I'm not entirely sure what to do about that. To be fair, I think a majority of active runners are modded players so it's not a huge deal, but it is a barrier to entry.
Yayo may be testing the dual-timer on stream today. We can evaluate how it works after that. Fuse's video shows consistent results for each runner so far (with the exception of character swap cutscenes), so we'll be seeing if the same numbers appear for other xboxes (and maybe learn some other things as well).
Okay so I was talking with Yayo in stream and he's brought up the issue of not having good splits to work with a cutsceneless mod, which is a valid concern. Cutscenes in some cases were being used as "soft pauses" to the game where the runner could do other things or take just a break for a minute. With RTA splits for comparison (for personal use only, not for leaderboards), splits become difficult to use if the cutscenes skipped are not the same every time.
This is a valid issue for runners of the game. Having useful splits is important for getting info on the run and knowing if your time is being used towards a good run or not. Currently, we cannot interface JSRF with Livesplit to use the "Game Time" timer portion of its capabilities, but we may be able to in the future. For example, the Livesplit timer can be set to match the ingame timer. This would alleviate issues with cutscenes messing up splits. Alternatively, a splitting system could be implemented into JSRF as part of the "speedrunning xbe file". Both of these solutions would take a significant amount of time to research, develop, and test.
Finally, adding or subtracting cutscene time is currently not a viable solution until it is proven that cutscene time (as defined by the xbe mod) is always constant for either all runners on a version or between runs by the same person.
This all is predicated on not timing cutscenes (which I understand is the vote above). If your issue with option B is how it impacts splits, then this is my recommendation. To allow for splitting tech/code to catch up to the IGT technology that was just implemented, I would recommend not timing cutscenes but currently leave them unskippable. When the advances are made to splits, then I would recommend allowing (or voting on) skippable cutscenes.
