Elmastats is currently the most statistically up-to-date website to use for comparison between players, but also for general improvement, even if you're uninterested in how many people you have beaten. You can access this site on the URL stats.sshoyer.net . The site should look something like this if you loaded it in correctly (save for the coloured rectangles):



After taking your time admiring the beautiful times other people have gotten, it's time for you to register to join them in their glory! I've highlighted the log in/register section with a red rectangle just in case some people would miss it. When pressing register , it should land you on this page:



The contents are already explained in detail by the site's creator, but I'll expand on his words by a bit:

State.dat name - This is basically asking you what nickname you are using ingame, to help distinguish your own times from other players' times on your same computer/in your Steam Cloud. If you want all players' statistics to be considered, you may leave this row blank.

Team - A team in the community is an alliance of people who play together (mostly virtually), share records and times with each other and have sort of a friendly rivalry going on between themselves (at least in terms of internals - some teams are created for other purposes too). So, if you have relatives or friends who you are playing with together and is also interested in competition, you are free to create a team by simply just inventing a team name (usually an abbreviation, but you're not forced into any regulations) and all of you including it in the registration details. Beware, however, that existing teams don't really like uninvited guests, so you should maybe check the list of already existing teams (marked with a yellow rectangle on the first picture) before brainstorming a name. You can always ask people to join their team though, and you're free to change your team in the settings once you're registered, but we'll get to that later. You are not required to be in a team in order to register.

Email address - It is not required to fill in this space, although I advise you to do so incase you forget your password by chance, or maybe after a few years of not logging in.

After successfully completing all required fields and pressing Register at the bottom, this green text should appear below:


You have successfully registered to the site. Good job!

NOTE FOR OLD-TIMERS: If pressing Register throws you back with the error "username already taken", it's possible that you have been artificially registered onto the site based on your times from various websites, such as moposite, elmaonline, elmaclub, etc. Try logging in using the password "password" or "PASSWORD".

Contrary to its original purpose for some reason, clicking "here" will simply redirect you to the front page, but that's just an extra step towards your goals.

After getting redirected, the user menu section (where you originally found the log in and register functions) should now look somewhat like this:




Now click upload stats and you'll be presented with this text:


Press the Choose File button and a basic file opening window should appear: What you are looking for is a file called state.dat , which by default should be located in the following folder:

[Whatever drive/folder you have steam installed in]\steamapps\common\elma\player

After selecting your file, press Upload and if done correctly, another green text should appear. Clicking "here" once again will redirect you to your own userpage, which should look somewhat like this:


Fancy, huh? Anyways, we will get back to this table a bit later.


Another thing you might wanna do is upload your best time replays. Replays are a great way to show off your skills, much better than some numbers in a table, and to prove your legitimacy (besides playing on the online patch in the workshop, which is highly reccomended!!!!! check it out here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2094059600)

You can save replays of your rides (kinda like DOOM demos) on this screen in-game:


After you have some replays on your hand (check the Replays section in the main menu to make sure), go back to Elmastats and press upload recs (just below upload stats, from earlier). You should be able to find your replays in the following folder:

[Whatever drive/folder you have steam installed in]\steamapps\common\elma\player\rec

You are looking files with a .rec format. You can upload one of them individually, or compress several into a .zip and send in that file instead. For self-verification, the time of the replay(s) you uploaded should be displayed below, like this:


After doing all this, congratulations! All of your internal level data should now be accessible by anyone looking at the site, and you're now one of the 1000+ people that an user can compare themselves to! How to do that, you ask? Let’s see...

Let's start by comparing yourself to other people. By clicking your username above "upload stats" from earlier, you can access your userpage again. We'll go into the itty-bitty details there later, as promised, but you can already look at the simpler info there, if you wanted to. For example, your Ranking just about above the time-table. Don't worry, those numbers will decrease real fast as soon as you start improving...anyway, to the point. Below your table, after scrolling down a bit, you should bump into this section:


Here you can see the nicks of all the other people registered, in alphabetical order. After clicking on a nick of your choice, you will be brought to a page like this:


Your and the other person's times are now side-by side in a new table. Incase you beat them in an internal, the time of that internal will appear in your column as green. Incase they did the same to you, the time in their column will be green instead. Incase a tie happens, none of the times will be green. At the bottom, you can see how many victories you have over each other (a tied internal doesn't count for either of you). You can also see which one of you has a better TT (community slang for total time - basically, all of your internal records added up together, plus 10 minutes for each unfinished level). Nifty, right? But that's not all! By dropping down the empty boxes at the top, you can select more nicks to compare times with. You can replace both yourself and the person you originally wanted to compare to as well. You can compare a maximum of 6 people this way. This is what a "maxed-out" comparison table looks like:


If you prefer comparing other players rather than yourself right on, you can always skip the first few steps of the process by selecting compare on the front page (first picture, orange box).


Team comparisons are none the harder. If you have a team, you can check it out by clicking its name next to your nick on the front page, or below it on your userpage. If you don't have a team, you can check out anyone else's team by going to their userpage from the frontpage's players section (first picture, green box), or just straight out hop into the teams section mentioned earlier. Cilcking on a team brings you to a comparison section similar to the individual one. You can check out any member's userpage from there as well.


To see the comparison of an entire nation's players, you can either click on a player's flag on their userpage/next to their nick anywhere else, or go to the national stats section from the front page (first section, purple box). If done correctly, this is the page you should arrive to:


The players here appear ordered by their TT, and next to it the date of their last update, much like the main totaltime list (which I refused to mention so far due to it possibly appearing too lengthy and unimportant for newcomers since it contains every single registered player, but you can reach it from the left - first picture, light blue box). Below, you can see each internal level with their national top10 listed, and even more below the national records. Having a national record is already a prestigious feat by community standards (especially if you're not the only representant of your nationality).

After all the fuss about other people's status, it's time to focus on yourself and what you registered on this site for: easy improvement.


You might have noticed that above your table you can see three labels: Times, Full top10 table and Improvements. By clicking these, you'll be transported to different sections. Times is the one you see by default, and it contains the following columns:

• Best time: Naturally, the best time you've achieved for yourself in the internal in question. Also present in the top-left corner of your screen in-game while in said level and having the timer enabled. The last row contains the TT of these times.
  
• Average: The arithmetic average of your top10 best times (which you can check in-game in the "play again" menu and clicking Local Times). The last row contains the TT of these averages.
  
• Diff. average: The difference between your best time and your top10 average. The last row contains the difference between the two TTs.
  
• The other two we'll get to in a minute.

The full top10 table simply contains all of your top10 times and the average next to them, nothing special.

The improvement section displays your graph in case you have updated your improved state.dat file multiple times, and it shows the rate your total time is getting better over time. The graph of a user since 2018 looks somewhat like this:


The day numbers on the bottom are already but a garbled mess - you can only imagine what it looks like about 5 years in...

Above your table you can see the text download stats.txt (it appears on every userpage, in fact). stats.txt is a file you can find in your player folder as well, which contains the top10 times and the totaltimes of players in it.


You have probably noticed by now how people's times are differently coloured. Why is that? Well, it's an indicator of the target one has reached with the time in question. Below the table on a userpage, you can see how many of each individual target the user has reached:


Here's a quick, somewhat subjective rundown of what each target means, from lowest to highest. All TT values are close estimates.

• Finished time: ...You literally finished the level. That's it. No target reached. The TT of 54 finished times is above 1 hour and 4 minutes.
  
• Beginner time: You might need to re-ride an internal a few times to reach this, especially the first ones. The TT of 54 beginner times is below 1 hour and 4 minutes.
  
• OK time: This target level already requires a bit of grinding, more than the average player inputs into the game. You might already need help from other players at this point. The TT of 54 OK times is below 49 minutes and 30 seconds.
  
• Good time: You'll probably not drive this neither alone, nor by brute force, and requires quite the dedication as a newcomer. The TT of 54 good times is below 43 minutes 15 seconds.
  
• Pro time: The first one of these will probably have you play the same level for about 1 week, with about a year of experience already behind you (average player). The total time of 54 pro times is below 39 minutes and 50 seconds.
  
• World class time: Considered the highest tier below WR at the time targets got invented (early 2000s), this might need either multiple years of playing the game, or genuine talent. The total time of 54 world class times is below 38 minutes.
  
• Legendary time: For such a target, you'll probably need world-record tier styles to reach it. Grants you somewhere around a top20 placement on the level leaderboards. The total time of 54 legendary times is below 36 minutes and 30 seconds.
  
• Godlike time: An ultimate medal of patience, dedication and excellency. Might as well try and beat the WR if you get one of these. The total time of 54 godlike times is below 35 minutes and 10 seconds.
  
• World Record (WR): Literally the best in the world. Out of the tens of thousands of people that came and went over the years, less than 200 people have had WRs per the time of writing. Similarly, the total time of world records is currently around 34 minutes and 30 seconds. Check out the official WR-table with monthly updates here: https://moposite.com/records_elma_wrs.php

The easiest way to keep up with targets besides getting live advice from people playing in the aforementioned online patch, is getting replays. The best way to find replays fitting for you is taking a look at your userpage, and the Next target column. This contains the target exactly one tier above what you already reached (moreover, the Diff. next column displays the gap between your current time and the target, putting things even more into perspective). Clicking on this target downloads you a .rec file, which shows a relatively easy style you can aim for to reach the target.

Put the .rec file in your aforementioned replay folder. After watching the replay in-game or through other means, try to understand exactly what is happening in it, then try to replicate the moves presented (don't worry, there is always a room for error, no perfection is needed until reaching WR levels of precision). It's way easier to strive for improvement than just trying to invent tech by yourself, now isn't it?

Remember uploading your replays to the site earlier? Well, you can use this for learning purposes as well! You can either check out someone's userpage, and look for a highlightable record in their Best time column - you'll get a rec if you click it -, or you can check out the individual internals by clicking on their number in the front page section on the left (first picture, brown box), which shows you the times in descending order of all people who finished the level so far, and go searching for highlights to download recs (albeit this is much more tedious, it is still somewhat effective if you don't know what people upload recs but you want more than just target demonstrations).

This concludes all the basics I've felt necessary to teach a newcomer who wants to become involved with the most competitive aspect of the game - internal playing - by compiling them into a guide. I hope you can find great joy in improving your times and emerging victorious over those you've looked up to.

I hope you enjoyed this guide as well! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here or in the game's Discord server, where there are tons of helpful people around: https://discord.me/elma

Good luck, have fun!