Basically a dedicated Record Attack-like experience for speedrunning the game as a continuous chunk rather than ILs. Has several quality of life features.
Benefits include:
* An unambiguous real-time bar across the bottom of the screen, always displaying the current time, ticking up until you reach the ending.
* Disable the console (pausing is still allowed, but the timer will still increment).
* Automatically skip intermissions as if you're holding down the spin button.
* Show centiseconds on HUD automatically, like record attack.
* "Live Event Backups" - a category of run fit for major events like GDQ, where recovery from crashes or chokes makes for better entertainment. Essentially a modified SP savefile, down to using the same basic functions, but has its own filename and tweaked internal layout.
* "spmarathon_start" MainCfg block parameter and "marathonnext" mapheader parameter, allowing for a customised flow (makes this fit for purpose for an eventual SUGOI port).
* Disabling inter-level custom cutscenes by default with a menu option to toggle this (won't show up if the mod doesn't *have* any custom cutscenes), although either way ending cutscenes (vanilla or custom) remain intact since is time is called before them.
* Won't show up if you have a mod that consists of only one level (determined by spmarathon_start's nextlevel; this won't trip if you manually set its marathonnext).
* Unconditional gratitude on the evaluation screen, instead of a negging "Try again..." if you didn't get all the emeralds (which you may not have been aiming for).
* Gorgeous new menu (no new assets required, unless you wanna give it a header later).
Changes which were required for the above but affect other areas of the game include:
* "useBlackRock" MainCFG block parameter, which can be used to disable the presence of the Black Rock or Egg Rock in both the Evaluation screen and the Marathon Run menu (for total conversions with different stories).
* Disabling Continues in NiGHTS mode, to match the most common singleplayer experience post 2.2.4's release (is reverted if useContinues is set to true).
* Hiding the exitmove "powerup" outside of multiplayer. (Okay, this isn't really related, I just saw this bug in action a lot while doing test runs and got annoyed enough to fix it here.)
* The ability to use V_DrawPromptBack (in hardcode only at the moment, but) to draw in terms of pixels rather than rows of text, by providing negative instead of positive inputs).
* A refactoring of redundant game saves smattered across the ending, credits, and evaluation - in addition to saving the game slightly earlier.
* Minor m_menu.c touchups and refactorings here and there.
Built using feedback from the official server's #speedruns channel, among other places.
Also:
* SPR2_XTRA - instead of defining lumpnames in S_SKIN, those kinds of assets can just be bundled into the spriteset. Required for ending cutscene stuff, I guess, but also done for HUD life icon and character select image (aside from Sonic&Tails, still SOC'd in).
* Minor oversights in SPR2 support corrected.
* Better evaluation, featuring ending assets.
* Intro has warping-in blackrock, reusing ending assets.
* Cutscene text now supports lowercase (intro and custom).
* Disable the asset-fucking "gamma correction" I put in over two years ago when implementing colour cube. (This is the only thing I could move into another branch if you MUST, but it's basically invisble in the diff so w/e.)
* Don't blank the screen if the top left pixel of a screen-covering patch is transparent. (Checked via nonzero topdelta for first column)
Bugs:
* OPENGL ONLY: The first ~20 frames of both endings are fucked. A little help here? Might be HWR_DrawFadeFill's fault, which I just created. OR it could be in f_finale, but I doubt it, since it doesn't appear in Software.
* Bomb sphere! Paraloopable hazard. Replaces MT_SPECIALSPIKEBALL.
* Blueberry bushes, both normal and Xmas, from patch.dta.
* BSZ tulips, also from patch.dta!
* Frozen Hillside badniks - Penguinator and Pophat.
* Frozen Hillside ice decoration!
* Fixed some big bugs with the DSZ light beams.
* Made multi-mare special stages work, in a troll way - the Chaos Emerald disappears in a puff of smoke, and the Spinbobert laughter sound plays... >:3c
* Reverted the mobjtype number changes from the source SOC/Lua, which we can do later when doing a final pass of the levels.
* State optimisation.
* Serious cruft-removal of the NiGHTS drone thinker.
* Fix the issues where the player wouldn't curl into jump in waterslides or dropping off rope-hangs.
* Tweak NiGHTS player flashing.
* Add text colour support to the titlecard font.
* Use that to make the PRESS SPIN\nMID-JUMP thing when you get all Chaos Emeralds use the titlecard font for readability.
* Fix the GOT ALL EMERALDS page not lasting the correct, extended amount of time.
* Fix that thing where flying mid-spin didn't enact autobrake.
* Modify graymap a little on Sryder's suggestion.
* [COMPLETELY UNRELATED] fix that thing where the addons menu will fail on files/paths with spaces in [/COMPLETELY UNRELATED]
