Attempt Counter Issues

[AdamD2]

I am now running version 1.5.4, and I have two issues with the attempt counter:

• There are two independent attempt counters shown. One is an attempt counter starting from zero and increasing on each run on the left side of the attempt counter line. The other is my old attempt counter which has both a run counter and a completed run counter on the right side of the attempt counter line. The old one also increments and behaves as before. When creating new split files, the attempt counter is the same on both sides, except the right side still saves the number of completed attempts while the left does not.

Example

• The attempt counter (as with the previous version) increments before the delayed start timer has finished, meaning that it counts many non-attempts which don't make it to the start of timing.

Here are my current graphics component settings:

[gered]

The counter on the left side is a "per-session" attempt counter. That is, each time you load a different (either new or existing) splits file, it gets reset to zero. The value is intentionally not being saved to your splits file. In other words, it's a measure of "how many run attempts have I done in this play session for this game" while the counters on the right are "how many run attempts have I done for this game for all time."

Hope that makes sense!

(Looking at it again now, I guess I should probably split up the options so you can turn on/off the left/right counters independently...)

[AdamD2]

Thanks for the reply, somehow I didn't draw the dots between the counter and its mention in the release notes. Individual options to turn off the counters would be very helpful, as well as an option to turn off the completed runs count. There are runs for which it would be great to have a single attempt counter, single session counter or all counters, and perhaps be able to change their position on the screen, if that is not too difficult to implement.

As for the attempt counter being incremented before the delayed start finishes, is that something which may be changed or is it an intentional decision?

[gered]

No worries, I suppose it can be confusing also because there's no documentation or manual or anything of the sort outside or within the application. Probably another thing that could be added (at the very least, inline help, even if it's just tooltips perhaps).

So, incrementing the attempt counter before the delayed start finishes has always made the most logical sense to me because I've always thought of it as "increment the attempt counter when you start an attempt"... that is, once the timer starts counting, that means you've started the attempt.

However, I can definitely see value in what you're saying now that I'm giving it a second thought. Kind of a nice extra buffer for accidental starts or other stuff like that so your attempt counter doesn't get unintentionally inflated.

I'll see about making these changes over the next week or so as my free time permits.

[CryZe]

Now what would a good heuristic for that be though? Ended the run in less than 10 seconds? Well, that's bad, because House of Caravan Any% Runs only take 12 seconds, so you are very likely to reset in less than 10 seconds. So possibly a mixture of less than 25% of the run, less than 15 seconds and being on the first split could work out.

[gered]

I think you may be overcomplicating it. Perhaps I misunderstood @AdamD2, but I assumed all he was asking for was to not increase the attempt counter until the delayed start time (aka. the "negative timer") reaches 0.0. I think this is simple enough and is the only change regarding it that I was going to do. I don't see any need at the current time to get into some fancy heuristics for trying to determine "false starts." That would certainly be a cool feature, but one I personally think is overkill (it's an attempt counter... it doesn't influence my PB's or anything, if it's inflated a bit because of false starts, so what? :P ).

Obviously this change doesn't help anyone not using the delayed start feature.

[CryZe]

Oh, maybe I should've read the full thread then xD
I think I will experiment with the heuristics for LiveSplit though.

[gered]

Haha, no worries. :)