Not working in novice settings right?

Probably true! Just checked back and other levels do skip at random parts as well...Well, too bad that would've been something.

Edit: Resolved: He's just using a trainer that makes it available to skip stages using a hotkey.

I've never seen this before. I have no idea what's happening here. Anyone interested in helping me investigate?

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxZnekxLQx7vqlZJYX2Vhwoa_8IuFS1da2

Holy Smokes Merl_ you were right. This Strat is faster. I measured it to be 2.3 seconds faster!

Thanks Eino that is a really good point!

Also VERY interesting: This video shows "Record" and "Personal Best" at the end of each race. I wonder if there was any leaderboard back then where they took record from.

Now that there's several moderators: There are a lot of old, existing Lotus 2 runs, including longplays, that have very good individual times.

Example: This run
Storm course finishes with 9 seconds left, which in my opinion is absolutely a speedrun and a worthy achievement. The other races are also extremely strong. Even the full run could be submitted.

Moderators can submit and verify runs for other people, and it has been done in other Amiga games that I run. Opinions?

Just to state my opinion: I think video proof should proabably be mandatory. Alternatively uploading ghost files for ILs. But it's not a big issue in a small community like this.
My main reason is learning from other runs. Videos are worth so much to learn from.

This is really strange. But I'm not sure how it would help...
Also, good luck on the grind, I think 2-3 seconds of time save are possible in seal demon!

You need a recording software like OBS!

Note that above calculation is already outdated since a lot of minor improvements to individual levels have been made. Not doing the work, but I guess the theoretical limit should now be ~ mid 1:12.

Thanks for the kind words regarding Novice RTA runs The8arber
I am doing runs, but not in this game right now. Doing some runs in Midtown Madness 2 which is also a racing game where I'm spending way more time than I probably should

Might I return to this? Not sure. All I wanted is a good novice time. I'll most likely return to it should I get beaten or should new strats arise, but as of now I think I'm done. But: Always happy to watch new runs / streams! And it would make me especially happy if more people grinded Novice

With the help of TheAutomanEmpire, I can present some interesting statistics for all races:

In a perfect All races (new player) run (considering the IL World Records) we could achieve a theory time of 1:12:55, which is another 4 minutes of timesave compared to the WR right now.
My sum of best is a 1:14:58 which is still 2 minutes of timesave.

Disregarding the 6 seconds that are spent in every race transition where the camera shifts to the car
and the game goes through the countdown phase, we only spend 36 seconds in total doing something else than driving (menuing, switching to next level, etc.)

Unless we will see new findings, I doubt we will ever see a 1:12, 1:13 or 1:14, but I wouldn't count out the possibility of a 1:15 if someone manages to string together an insane run.

You can view the calculation spreadsheet here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JkVr0sdIjFmTT1NBNXxhXg5lxhhN-_lUqSR50uQwpuE/edit?usp=sharing

So since there is a loadless and a load time difference, should we remove the real time from the leaderboards anyways? It would be quite some work to maintain a loadless time, and I think for now an in game time is sufficient. However, we could add loadless time instead of real time for the top 3 runs at least.

That being said, real time as it is does not really reflect the performance of the run, so it has to go.

My final boss loses at least .3 to my best I'm sure. So 2nd bat plus that and there's your 2:26

Wow that is even more interesting! Thanks so much for the work. This probably means that we are at a point of having to gain < 0.7 seconds to get a 2:26. I still wonder why the fade times differ, but I don't think it will ultimately matter.

Any chance you have cut together a video? I'd be super interested in the x/y positions on a frame per frame basis, to do in-depth ananlyis on how to improve little by little.

Right! That is very interesting. I wonder what happens if we start a deeper investigation into this, including other runs. The real times might depend on some loading differences, but I'd bet that the game "removes" the loading times.

What could end up happening is that real time will be rendered useless?

Anyways: You use the same timing method as me, but I start one frame earlier, which makes my time a 2:34.000 flat.
@komakoma how can I get that time edited in on the leaderboards?

Edit: Or we might have to remove the loading frames in future, as we do it in Turrican 2, which is a lot of work to determine the real time. I'm too lazy to do that right now but it would be damn interesting.

Hey guys. I created this little comparison video to analyze our runs. You can see it here.

Then I noticed, that I should probably add the Real Time to my run, and I am not sure how it's properly done, which are the correct starting and ending frames.

I discussed my steps in the video description, can anybody help me get the real time put on the leaderboards?

Following the guide closely trying it with my Gothic 2 Gold installation from GOG.

When I try to install Union Primary 4gb 08.09.2020.exe it says: cant load ucore32.dll

And I cannot get past that step.

well, calling it 100% is a bit wrong since there are more than 4 orbs in the game. But max% would be an idea?