First, if I had to guess, hardware doesn't have anything to do with it. I believe the game simply has points where it skips things of the window isn't visible. I'll check out those other points you mentioned though.

Secondly, there are already skips that are dependant on hardware, or even things meant to be in the game, such as load times. Jumping over the barrier in heart of the machine is also not possible with low fps.

I checked the game object for the title cards, and it seems that the script that controls the title cards has a check to see if the screen is visible, and if it's not, it just skips to the end. Convenient. So it seems that playing in full screen mode is simply faster.

Yea, I tried it, and it only works in full screen mode.

I was using full-screen mode, which may make a difference, since it seems to reload the graphics or something when I do it. When I have time, I'll do some more experiments with it.

It seems that there is a way to skip the black text intro screens. All you have to do is alt-tab out of the game window, wait a few seconds, then go back in and it brings you immediately to the next level. I've had the game crash on me while doing this, but it would still be faster to just restart the game and do it again than to wait for the whole thing.

This thread is broken. But it's letting me post now, which is nice.

I got the steam version and tested German. It is 14s faster than French, and 20s faster than English. Since I have it now, I think I might just use the German version, as there aren't any audio cues really, so it's basically a free 20s. But it's still not that much. Steam has support for Italian and Spanish subtitles, but no audio.

That would make sense. I can also do it quite consistently. I tried a few times and only failed once, but I accidentally advanced one frame after the bump, and the player didn't even move much. Which means that not only is it frame perfect, each one of those frames is going to be 1/300s. However, if you get lucky, it can save a lot of time. Trying it in real time maybe 50 times or so, I got it 2-3 times.

It may also be positioning. It took a bit of trial and error to get just the right angle for it to work. I have a setup for it now too.

I'm not sure if FPS has something to do with it, but I was able to get the extra superbump on territory consistently using the freezeframe method:

I also successfully managed to use a superbump on Final Strike, but it is still inconsistent even when using 0.003s increments, so basically just for segmented/TAS runs.

Does it not work at all, or just some levels? It's still inconsistent for me. I'm going to try fixing it once I have time, and hopefully both problems would be fixed, but I can't say for sure

I've been experimenting with superbumps, and other places they could be used other than Territory.

The first thing I have found, is that the distance seems to be influenced by the game FPS. I recently got a new graphics card, and using it I get very high FPS (300-500) on low graphics settings. After getting it, I tried the superbump in territory and when I got it was propelled way beyond the droids to the wall behind them at very high speed. I'm not totally sure if this is due to the FPS, or I just got lucky, as after trying for a few minutes wasn't able to replicate it. My speculation for the mechanism behind this is that it has trouble calculating the collision when hitting something at an angle to the player's feet. The collision box actually goes into the edge for a frame, but then the game engine "realizes" it's inside and object and reverses your velocity direction and increases it's magnitude to get you out of the object. The high friction causes the player to quickly decelerate, but if you input a jump before you slow down, you can use it to get a lot of distance, but as far as I know, the height of your jump is unaffected.

Second, I couldn't find any other places it could be used, with the exception of possibly on final strike. After using the barrels in the first room to get up to the top, the slanted beams you climb up can be superbumped.

While I haven't been able to get a bump that propels 38 far enough, it does seem to be going in the right direction.

I also have had some bumps without a properly timed jump that shot me backwards very quickly, and it only seems like I have a few frames at most to input the jump. I'm not totally sure yet. It will take some more testing.

I put together a layout, split file and autosplitting script Livesplit. Use the provided split file and layout, if you want, then add the split script. I only have one computer to test it on, so if it doesn't work, let me know.

Split file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pe1wF9PWdJFm-kz7lp2NfBqwZLCLb-Jo Script: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1a4ApkimLLI-oImrbEvtFhRxxaBTxyX1V Layout: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PtIkFV-Fm6fdM-rrqCWk17vhmzmY1fzl

In regards to the skipped briefing scenes, how exactly is that done? Am I missing something from the guide? I am unable to save it at any point during the scenes.

I was wondering what the specific rules for timing are. In the current first place run, the briefing sections between the different planets are skipped. Also, I have done a run where the game crashed while loading the first Kashyyyk level, and paused the timing while reloading the game. Is that OK? So basically, I'm just wondering what the specifics are for timing of RTA runs, as I can't seem to find any specifics.

Exactly. So if someone happens to volunteer other language files, I'll check them. But if they are any faster, it's probably not worth switching versions for, so I'm not going to actively look for them.

I already have checked it. It's 6 seconds faster than English

I think you have to have the steam version of the game, then you can switch the language in your steam account and it will change the version that you get, but I'm not totally sure. I don't have the steam version, and it's probably not going to be any or much faster for the German version, so unless someone else has the steam version and wants to try getting it I'm not going to spend the money for it.

I agree. Not only is it a modification of the game that actually improves time, but it's really boring actually. I tried it out just to see if it worked, and having no dialogue makes it much less interesting in my opinion.

Thanks. I checked all of those spots out, and of them, all of them were actually waiting for dialogue, except:

Door opening after 07 is incapacitated in delta down Barricade explosion after 62 revived in Jailbreak Terminals and demo charge active in Lockdown Delay after destroying Trando dropship in Wrath of the Republic Most of the dialogue in saving the ship levels Briefing in frontline

These ones use timers instead of sound cues.

Then I extracted all of the sound files and wrote a script that compiles all of the sounds that you are waiting for. It turns out that the French version of the game is... a whole 6 seconds faster.

Which isn't huge. I wasn't expecting the difference to be huge, but I thought it would probably be at least 30 or so. But nope. It also turns out that the game has a lot of waiting around for dialogue. About 5 minutes of it. I'll have to try getting my hands on a copy of the German sound files, but I'm not very confident that the difference will be that great after this. It is interesting, as French supposedly has a slightly lower information rate than English, but I suppose there are translation differences that make it irrelevant.

But this brings up something else. Can we just delete the sound files altogether? Stopping the game from autosaving by manipulating the file system that the game is in is allowed. Is deleting the sound files going to far? It would save somewhere in the vicinity of 2-3 minutes, by my guess, from the total run.

Awesome. That should make it easier for me. I found a way of extracting all of the sound files, so it's just a matter of using Unrealed to find the file names of the sounds that are playing. The file names should be the same between different language versions, so I can just write a script that gets the right files from a list and adds up their total time. Would it be possible for me to get the geo/ras/yyy_voice.uax files from you? Then I can check to make sure the file structure is the same.

You can extract specific sound files from the uax files using unrealed. I'm working on a process that can hopefully make doing it as fast as possible. Also, if you know of any more points where you are waiting for dialog, please let me know and I'll check them out. Some briefing scenes that we can't skip might have this.