@ClydeBarrow Hello again and thank your for your reply.

Honestly, I'm a bit confused and hesitant to run this game. I really wanna speedrun Tenchu as it's been one of my favorite games of all time and it's sad it's so underrated and small, but I do still love it and I'm willing to afford some time and effort to play it again and submit speedruns.

To clear things out, this is not a rant. I don't mean any harm. I'm just sharing some thoughts and maybe suggest a thing or two while criticizing some elements. And if this seems standoffish or aggressive, then I apologize in advance.

I've been reading some posts on Tenchu series main thread concerning emulation rules and they've been kinda confusing.

So, there's this thread here https://www.speedrun.com/series/tenchu/forums/qvlx6

The mod said : but generally all emulators are acceptable.

Also on the Tenchu series main thread : https://www.speedrun.com/series/tenchu/forums/7unl9

The mod has clearly said in rule V: Allowed emulators are as listed: - For PS1 games: Mednafen, Beetle PSX, and Beetle PSX HW.

I asked about Beetle Psx and you told me only this BizHawk emulator is allowed, and that's odd, because it's not even mentioned in the submission rules.

Now truth to be told, I don't use any other Ps1 emulator except Duckstation, the majority's general consensus is that DS is the superior emulator, and that's proven. Constant support from the dev team, easy to use, straight to the point, great features to enhance games and correct flickering graphics, bugs etc. So I don't see why it's not allowed especially that there are mods saying it's okay to use other emulators and it's the dominant emulator across the majority of speedrun.com boards when it comes to Ps1 emulation.

Now don't you think it's way better and fairer for everyone to make separate boards for consoles, BC consoles and emulators? I understand that keeping stock settings is fair to console users and maybe for some, that keeps the nostalgia, but I also believe we're missing out on using the full potential of emulation that's meant to be an enhancement of the original experience.

I also believe that limiting players' choice to just one emulator is another form of gatekeeping. Again, I understand maybe it is for verification reasons to spot cheaters, but still, cheaters will cheat regardless of the emulator or even console. Your average player or dedicated speedrunner will not cheat, I still believe that honest people exist and they prioritize integrity and fair competition.

That's all I have to say. I wish you all a wonderful day and best of luck.

@B3W4R3 Fair point. There's always a risk to crash. Personally the game never crashed for me even on weaker PCs, like the one in my aforementioned comment, also on my old laptop. If the FPS drops below 59, you get some audio stuttering. That's the only notable issue I've encountered on weaker PCs, but I agree. Many people reported that they get random crashes.

As for settings that need to be adjusted, if the mods allow for a separate emulation board, I'll provide all the tools and guides necessary to run the game and I'm already working on a video guide I'll put on my channel once done. So, even those who aren't interested in speedrunning can get this game to work with less issues.

For those interested and don’t know where to get the game and stuff, I’m willing to help with uploading the version I’m currently using, the configured emulator, my own dumped game along with all DLCs, and an NG+ ready save file. I’ll make a guide on how to use the emulator and how to deal with issues if needed. It’s really easy to use. You just open the emulator and click boot the game and that’s all. Self-explanatory kind of stuff.

I also converted some Ps3 Artemis codes (similar to action replay cheat codes) to make them compatible with the emulator, anyone can use them as game patches to get infinite HP, MANA, RAGE for practice runs.

For built-in splits and the exact IGT timing that the game has, someone has to dig deeper using cheat engine to map the entire game and search for the correct memory addresses to be able to extract the value responsible for the in-game timer. Honestly, I’m not that well-versed in Hex editing, only surface-level knowledge. All I can tell you is that searching for addresses in Ps3 and X360 games is so difficult due to Big Endian format for storing multi-byte data. Add to that you’re playing an emulated version of the game, so, another layer of complexity in an already complex domain. Huge respect for those who spend countless hours datamining games using these tools. It’s insane work!

I really love this game, such a shame it’s very underrated and people don’t even hear about it. And the ones who do, often call it a GOW rip off without giving it a chance. But for me it’s its own thing. Back in the day, like 12 years ago or so, I used to play it non-stop! And after watching some of your runs, I got hyped. I’m glad I can play and learn it again.

I’ll keep practicing to do proper and better runs in the future, because this run is only a test to show you that this game is fully playable on emulator. Plus, I saved the game many times, died a lot and I don’t know if that’s against the rules, so I don’t think I’m gonna submit this run as I can barely call it a speedrun.

With that said, and this is strictly for the mods, @Cisco64 and @AKheon; if you think that the emulated DI on RPCS3 is playable and fair, it would be great if you make room for another separate board for emulators.

Thank you for your time. I wish you all a wonderful day.

Hello everyone,

Tl;dr : As the title suggests, this is a test run of Dante’s Inferno Ps3 version played on RPCS3 emulator from start to finish.

Now for those who want to read and of course the moderators:

It took some time, I apologize for that, been quite busy, but as I promised, this is the first full test run of Dante’s Inferno on RPCS3. The game doesn’t crash, from start to finish. The game runs smoothly and there are no issues when it comes to gameplay. It constantly runs at 60FPS, cutscenes are locked at 30 FPS.

My config is

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-13700KF

GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

RAM : 32 GB DDR5 5200mhz

I tested the game on older PC as well; Intel core i5-6500, with 4 cores and 4 threads, integrated graphics and 8 GBs of ram, it works just fine.

A reminder that RPCS3 relies on your CPU. The higher your frequency, cores and threads, the better performance you get. But usually, any mid-range PC nowadays can run it without issues.

There’s a minor nuisance though, there’s a known graphical glitch in certain cutscenes where Beatrice and Lucifer are together. The emulator doesn’t render them correctly. If you wanna see that, go to timestamp “00:02:47” in the video, you’ll see what I’m talking about. This includes all cutscenes that have these two together. The moment they go away, all other cutscenes render just fine. I think it’s a matter of time till RPCS3 team fixes this. They’ve really made huge progress. Especially with heavy games like GOW 3 and other PS3 exclusives.

For save states for practice purposes, last time I explained how they work, there’s some news. There’s some progress concerning that. Now you can savestate the game upon pressing “Control+S” without closing the emulator, you’ll have to wait for 20 to 30 secs, depending on your hardware, the emulator will save your state, and reload the game where you saved. It’s good news and all, but there’s a problem, if you SS many times, the emulator is bound to crash at some point. I found a workaround for this, always make true saves from the game before SS, then go to the place or skip you wanna practice at, and then SS there. So, even if that save state got corrupted, you’d still be able to load the game normally and make another clean save state. I believe save states will be fully functional very soon. It’s only a matter of time at this point.

I'll put the rest of my thread in the comment section below. It's telling me " body is too long" .

Yes, exactly that.

Hello everyone. I hope you're doing great.

For those who still don't know, emulators are now allowed.

Please state what emulator version is being used when submitting your run.

Accepted Emulator:

• PCSX2

We recommend using the most recent Nightly Release of PCSX2 as the settings listed below are harder to access on the "stable release" (1.6.0).

PCSX2 (Nightly) v1.7.X or above.

PCSX2 Dedicated Rules:

These settings can be displayed by enabling quick menu (Default: Escape Key).

You must show settings of the core before/after the run, you must match these settings.

Settings -> Bios

• Please match Bios to Region of the title

• Disable: Fast Boot

Settings -> Emulation

• Disable: Enable Multithreaded VU1 (MTVU)

• Disable: Enable Instant VU1

Quality of Life Settings:

Settings -> Interface

• Disable: Pause On Focus Loss

• Enable: Render to Separate Window

• Enable: Disable Window Resizing

• Disable: Pause on Menu [Within the NoGUI Menu]

Settings -> Graphics

• Use whatever renderer you prefer (Recommended: Vulkan or OpenGL)

• Enable: No-Interlacing Patches [NTSC-U only]

• Enable: Disable Interlace Offset

• Enable: Anti-Blur

If you're running a PAL/NTSC-J title set Deinterlacing to what you prefer, recommended is Blend (Top Field First).

Additional rules:

-Turbo mode and frame skipping are banned

-Save state / Load state during the run are banned.

-Achievements must be set to off during the run.

-Show On Screen Display (OSD) messages must be set to ON during the whole run.

-Input display are required for top 4 full game categories. Use this website https://gamepadviewer.com . You can also show your hands while playing .

Verifying runs played on emulator may take a bit longer. It depends on the category. So we count on your patience.

Any run that does not respect the rules will be rejected. Starting today " Thursday, April 19th , 2024. So please read the rules before submitting anything.

If you have suggestions or thoughts about anything, you can always join the Tekken Speedrunning discord server and discuss any matter with the mods.

https://discord.gg/0ouTan8roCnl1XCI

Thank you.

Wish you best of luck on your upcoming runs. Peace.

Updated on Thursday, April 19th , 2024

Hello there @BOSSCAT. That post is old lol. I wrote that before becoming a mod on this forum. And as you can see, it's a ghost town.

Well, yeah sure you can submit your run using an emulator. This thread is already a run of a speedrunner who used Pcsx2 and got accepted. So, I don't see why you can't. I've changed that rule. Pcsx-2 runs 99% of the games perfectly, even better than the original console. Though, I'd recommend using PCSX 2 nightly build since it's the most accurate version of Ps2 emulation. But if you can run the game smoothly at 60 fps without problems using RetroArch core, then sure thing, you can also use that. Just a recommendation. Good luck .

Hello everyone ,

I've been reading some of the threads here concerning emulation and I wanted to share a few things maybe some of you find helpful.

In my experience, Dante's Inferno is 100% playable on RPCS3, the PS3 emulator, from start to finish (I played the whole game and it's flawless). It's one of the fully playable games without any game-breaking bugs, provided, of course, the required hardware is there. But usually, any mid-range PC these days (even laptops) can run it smoothly without problems.

On xenia/xenia-canary, the Xbox 360 emulator, the game is also playable, but I've read on many occasions that there's a fatal error when you get to the 'Descent into Violence' level, some people reported that you cannot advance from that point. So I'm planning to see if that's true. I'll give updates when I get to that.

Now, for save-states for practice purposes, RPCS3 indeed offers a save-state feature, but it's nowhere near to what we know in PS1/PS2 emulators. It's not your typical quicksave/quickload whenever and wherever you want. Once you press the hotkey to save your state, the emulator closes itself. Then, when you re-launch the game, that's when you'll be able to quick-load.

With that said, I'll work on making two runs for Dante's Inferno on 2 different emulators when I get some time to afford. Obviously, Rpcs3 is the winner in this case, but I also want to make sure that this xenia-emulator fatal error truly exists. Therefore, the only option left for emulating this beloved game would be Rpcs3.

Update : I confirm that the xenia-canary bug exists. When you get to the minotaur statue in the 'Descent into violence' level, and after destroying the glowing pile of rocks, you won't be able to activate the switch, so you just end up stuck there. There's a workaround to fix this ( importing the save file from xenia-canary build to xenia-master build can solve this issue, from there you load, get to the next save point, then import back the new save to canary) but that beats the purpose of speedrunning in the first place. For now the only viable emulators to speedrun the game without problems are RPCS3 and PPSSPP.

Ohh this is great news !! Thanks for this update. Now we can finally play Tekken 4 true HD and it will be a lot easier to record footage when using emulator, no need for double screen and all that stuff lol.

Yeah I saw that and it is confusing because when you submit a run, you can read that emulators are banned. However, If they accepted his runs on emulator, I don't see why they wouldn't accept your future runs on emulator as well. Actually they should allow emulation on PCSX 2 . Nowadays it runs Tekken perfectly. But again, I see your point. It's a bit weird to make exceptions without changing the rules or even updating some of them, especially when it's clear that they're not allowing emulators in the first place .

I think you should send a message to the mods on discord, informing them about your submitted run. They're quite active in there, unlike this board.

Hello

As the title suggests. Is there gonna be a segmented run category like in the original RE 4 leaderboard ?

Hello everyone,

So, I want to know if it's possible to speedrun the game on Ps3. Now for my second question, are Duckstation and RetroArch Beetle Psx allowed ?

Thank you