Loading times and timing methods

This is kind of a strange post, so please, bear with me. I'm a big fan of speedrunning. I don't know whether you guys are aware of it, but several of Nifflas' games have received attention from the speedrunning community, and there are some really impressive runs of WADF, Knytt 1 and NightSky out there. Now, Knytt Underground is a fantastic game for speedrunning - it's fast-paced, it requires skillful execution, and above all, it's open, with countless potential routes to take. A number of people, myself included, have worked on this game already - figuring out the best route, and finding time-saving tricks. There's some friendly competition and even a cash prize on SpeedDemosArchive for the game (in case you were wondering, the best time from start to finish so far is 30:02 by FearfulFerret). So, thank you, Nifflas, for making a game that can be appreciated at such a variety of levels of depth.

There is a small problem, though: loading times. While the differences are tiny, Knytt Underground spends a varying amount of time on each room transition depending on the power of your computer. Even if each individual load creates much less then a second's discrepancy, across the entire game this might add up to at least half a minute or more. I think this is a fairly common issue with speedrunning PC games and is certainly not limited to KU.

However, I remember that an early version of WADF came with a timer for this very purpose. An in-game timer is, of course, much easier to compare consistently. So, while this might seem like something of a selfish request, I figured with the new update around the corner I might ask if it would be possible to add such a feature to KU (either for each individual chapter or one that would just run the entire time, whichever seems more logical).

Thanks for reading.

I would very much like a timer in Knytt Underground as well as some kind of counter or percentage of completion for secret areas and stuff.

or percentage of completion for secret areas and stuff.

I think it will be really really let me stress that.... Really hard to add.

For once, some secrets could be defined as not a secret by others, and there are so many secrets, it would probably take Nifflas 3 months or more to keep track of every secret to add to a counter.

Actually, there might be a nice way for this. The savegame ini file always shows you the number of frames that has passed since the chapter was initially started. This counter pauses whenever the game is loading something, and it pauses during dialogs as well. 60 frames should be a second if the game runs at full speed.

Right now the game autosaves at the end of chapter 1, chapter 2 (before Mi's dream) and chapter 3 (before Dora's dream), so that's the time you can read. However, it's not hard to modify it to give you the value at the very end of chapter 2 and 3 instead. Would that solution be okay?

That's really interesting Nifflas, thanks so much. I'll post this over on SpeedDemosArchive and see what they think.

I certainly would like a visual "time" at the end of the chapter. In a speedrun video, this time displayed is much better proof than reading it in an ini file and have debates later.

Yeah, you're right. It's not that hard to implement, especially since I'm measuring the number of frames already. I can't promise anything yet, but try to look into it this weekend or next week.

Hey, just bumping this thread. Any news on this? Can it be expected in an upcoming update?

Sorry, I'd really like to add this, but lately I've been working too hard on several things at the same time