Cool. Thanks for the feedback. It's certainly easier to add a timer option than a whole separate speedrun mode. I appreciate the perspective. It's not quite what I expected, but that's why I asked. :)

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I'm not catering the game specifically to speedrunners. That's way too niche, as some of you suggested. I just thought it would be nice to make a game with speedrunning in mind as kind of a secondary thing.

I was planning to have the speedrun mode with timers and such be a thing that's unlocked after playing through the story casually, so no urgency to run through the levels as fast as possible until you've completed the game at least once. Also planning to make the game casual-friendly, but with shortcut paths and mechanics to make speed runs fun and interesting that regular players may never even know existed (and the available mechanics and geo will probably provide shortcuts that even I don't exist. :))

Interesting points on the RNG. I think the RNG that really drives speedrunners crazy is stuff like Larry in Super Meat Boy, where being unlucky can add a LOT of time to your run. I don't currently have any particular designs that are calling for RNG right now, but I'll look to prioritize fun if the time arises. :)

ShikenNuggets: Curious what you don't like about the idea of a speedrun mode. I was thinking it would be good idea to have it be a separate thing instead of a timer setting because: a) I don't want people to feel the need to rush through the first playthrough if they happen to go into the settings and enable the timer. b) Might introduce some people to the concept of speedrunning if they weren't previously familiar with it. Could help grow the speedrun community. It would pretty much just be the difference between "Start new game" and "Start new speedrun", or something like that. Are there any specific games that you're thinking of that implement this poorly?

I'd like to make the game I'm working on friendly and appealing to speedrunners, but since I'm not really a speedrunner myself, I figured I'd ask the speedrun community how best to do this.

From a technical standpoint, I figure I should at least have:

• A game timer for the whole run of the game.
• A timer for each level.

Is there a way to connect these timers to speedrun software (or at least expose a way to make it easier for the speedrun software to identify when the game starts, levels change, etc?)

I imagine the game timer should only count actual gameplay ticks, not loading time (to make it fair and consistent for different systems), right? What about pausing the game?

From an appeal standpoint, this is what I'm working on that I hope speedrunners will find attractive:

• Momentum based movement, where you can gain and maintain speed.
• Mechanics like adding velocity on jumps so you can jump on ramps or ledges while moving up to gain extra height to find shortcuts and such.
• Crouch sliding to build speed on downward slopes
• Speedrun mode (enables timer display and skips non-gameplay portions of the game, like cutscenes)
• Attacks that can be used for mobility as well as combat, like a punch that gives a small burst of speed forward, but can also be used to punch off walls for an even larger impulse.
• More advanced movement abilities that unlock as the game progresses, like acceleration based grapple swinging.
• No RNG.

• 100hz physics update rate for super fluid movement on high refresh rate monitors.

Do these sound appealing? What types of things would make you interested in speedrunning a game? Fist of the Forgotten is the name of the game I'm working on, by the way.