Hi all,

I'm happy to share that I have been working on a load time remover and auto-splitter for MK8DX and I have made a lot of progress so far. It's at the point where people are able to start testing it out, so please give it a try if you have time.

This auto-splitter works by taking capture card output and looking for visual cues to determine when to split. In the case of this auto-splitter, it looks for the little checkered flag icon in the bottom left next to the lap counter.

Since the load timer is still in testing, it's not ready to be used for IGT submissions on the leaderboards, so please don't submit using IGT yet.

Installation instructions: https://github.com/VikeMK/MK8DX-Video-Autosplitter

Demo:

If you have any questions or issues when setting it up, please ask in the #support channel in the Discord (see the sidebar)

After the run posted by BrawlerJesse recently who had some insane loading times, much faster than any we had ever seen before, it prompted me to see just how much loading times vary between digital runs and unfortunately it varies a lot.

Below is a spreadsheet comparing the loading times of 9 of the top 200cc Mushroom Cup (No Items) times.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N3cJUu65xIRVwweUeHPfg2TXGPKgWy10eMupuLs66jY/edit#gid=0

As we can see, BrawlerJesse's time saves around 11 seconds just in loading time over the average of the other runners. Even among the other runners, we can see that if we were sorting by loadless time then the leaderboard positions would change a lot. It's pretty unfair all around and people get a serious advantage by just having a faster switch.

This problem is harder to see on individual cup runs since the best times will more likely have good loads, so I also compared some digital runs from the Retro Tracks portion of some 32 and 48 Track 150cc (No Items) runs.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LpRnO3tSwP01OfBW81d7oYCqvUtYzIwM7dejTNI60Mo/edit#gid=0

From this we can see that among 6 digital runs, the loading time varies significantly from an average of 6.967s and 7.779s, over a 48 track run this can have up to a 39 second difference. I assume that there will be people with slower or faster switches as well so the difference could be larger.

As a result, I believe we really do need load removals on the leaderboard, and I would be willing to invest time into making something that makes it easy to do this. For it to be acceptable I would say the minimum requirements are:

• We need to determine what part of a run counts as loading time while at the same time remembering that it needs to be easy for software to detect otherwise it will have too many false positives.
• It should be easy for runners to get the loadless time for their run, assuming they have a capture-card video. Stable and clear video/phone recordings may also work but we will have to test.
• It should be easy for moderators to verify that the loadless times people are submitting are accurate.
• The accuracy of the load remover should be verified against manual load removals to be sure that it is accurate.

A secondary goal:

• There should be a program that runners can install on their computer to do live load removals, but it would need to be re-checked afterwards. Perhaps making use of https://github.com/ROMaster2/LiveSplit.VideoAutoSplit

As I mentioned, I'd be willing to invest time into making something like this, but only if the community wishes to use it and adopt it as it would take some time to get right.

My questions for the moderators:

• Would you be willing to adopt something like this if it hit the above criteria?
• Are there any other requirements you would look for to make this more accurate, accessible, or verifiable?

My questions for everyone:

• Would you be willing to put your runs through a load timer tool before submitting if it was a top time?
• Do you even care about load removals? Or would you be fine accepting that you may have a faster/slower switch than another runner.
• Should it be enforced for the top 5 or so runners for each category?

I believe that by doing this and getting it right it will bring more runners into MK8DX. Especially for those who have a cartridge version of the game.

Hello, I've seen a bunch of threads on the forum and discussions in the discord about the difference in loading times between digital and cartridge and thought I'd do my own analysis.

Recently we had a new 48 Tracks 200cc (No Items) WR and so I thought it would be worthwhile comparing the Digital and Cartridge WR's for this category to see who actually won when we account for the loading time differences, as well as to get an idea of how much variance we might expect.

I have created a google sheet with all the data here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QzSEeSbNmGg9f7hOGmdj4HNbx8iR1uFtFkZyyPxdtUc/edit?usp=sharing

The main points to take away are:

• The first track load (MKS) takes much longer on both cartridge and digital with the cartridge load taking an extra 2.3 seconds
• The average track load time difference excluding MKS is about 1.1s and the total track load time difference over the 48 tracks was 52.87s
• 50% of the time, the difference will be between 0.93s and 1.2s
• 80% of the time the difference will be between 0.8s and 1.29s
• The total loading time on Digital was 6m10.8s
• The total loading time on Cartridge was 7m03.6s

To measure loading time I used avidemux to step through the video frame by frame. I started the loading time on the first frame when the "Next Race" button has completely faded away and I end the loading time the first frame that the track name of the next track appears. I'm confident that there are no differences in loading time outside of this time frame between digital and cartridge as well.

If I find some more time I may do this same analysis on a few more runs to rule out any other factors that may have made these runs have faster or slower loading times, but if anyone else has a spare hour and wants to do the same analysis that would be nice.

Now that HoPiKo is on steam, will this speedrun page be updated to support this PC version? I am interested in running this.

I haven't played the mobile version before to know how different it is, but after watching the speedruns from mobile I notice that the controls and some minor parts of the maps are different, so maybe we need to have a new category for PC.