Shifty Leader
That M2k2 guy
I made this topic because I said so. Mainly because of the Total Metroid Time board.
So I recorded a recording of the game, resetting after every save station to check my time, letting all cutscenes play out, so I can go back into the archive and investigate the timer mechanics. My findings are confusing.
-Unlike I previously thought, the loading summary does NOT count for in-game time.
-Timer starts as soon as the game loads in from either the initial loading screen (at the very start), or upon hitting 2 or (-) at the game summary.
-I suspect length of the pre-rendered cutscenes are added to the time as soon as they start playing, rather than having the timer actually run. Thus the first 3 cutscenes, 4 cutscenes before the first boss room, even if skipped, are still added.
-Certain game-graphics styled cutscenes are NOT included, and the timer stops throughout them. For example, during the first boss, there are several cutscenes of Adam telling you to attack the frozen spot and or telling you not to move or shoot unless he says so. At the end of the fight, there's about a 6:55 session of cutscenes, but apparently it's actually a 3:23 long cutscene in the middle of 2 non-timed cutscenes.
-Anything pause-menu related is not counted, such as authorizing abilities, updating the map, and simply pausing.
-The game is saved as soon as you can actually read the "SAVING" message in the bottom-right. If you reset as it's still garbled, it didn't save yet.
The first boss is as far as I have so far. It took for-freaking-ever to figure out, because of all the mini cutscenes, partial cutscenes, poor understanding of the start/stop times, mis-estimations, etc. PrimeHunter believes there's about an hour of cutscenes that are counted, out of the nearly 2-hours of cutscenes I added up in Theater mode.
Update:
-Lag also lags the timer
-Loading messages pause the timer
-Addition and Subtraction is hard
So I recorded a recording of the game, resetting after every save station to check my time, letting all cutscenes play out, so I can go back into the archive and investigate the timer mechanics. My findings are confusing.
-Unlike I previously thought, the loading summary does NOT count for in-game time.
-Timer starts as soon as the game loads in from either the initial loading screen (at the very start), or upon hitting 2 or (-) at the game summary.
-I suspect length of the pre-rendered cutscenes are added to the time as soon as they start playing, rather than having the timer actually run. Thus the first 3 cutscenes, 4 cutscenes before the first boss room, even if skipped, are still added.
-Certain game-graphics styled cutscenes are NOT included, and the timer stops throughout them. For example, during the first boss, there are several cutscenes of Adam telling you to attack the frozen spot and or telling you not to move or shoot unless he says so. At the end of the fight, there's about a 6:55 session of cutscenes, but apparently it's actually a 3:23 long cutscene in the middle of 2 non-timed cutscenes.
-Anything pause-menu related is not counted, such as authorizing abilities, updating the map, and simply pausing.
-The game is saved as soon as you can actually read the "SAVING" message in the bottom-right. If you reset as it's still garbled, it didn't save yet.
The first boss is as far as I have so far. It took for-freaking-ever to figure out, because of all the mini cutscenes, partial cutscenes, poor understanding of the start/stop times, mis-estimations, etc. PrimeHunter believes there's about an hour of cutscenes that are counted, out of the nearly 2-hours of cutscenes I added up in Theater mode.
Update:
-Lag also lags the timer
-Loading messages pause the timer
-Addition and Subtraction is hard
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