FinlandSomebody has asked me the same question about using C64 mini. Using VICE would be preferrable to make 100% sure the run times are comparable. That said, if the game runs exactly the same it probably shouldn't be an issue. Would have to check the output carefully to compare. The run should probably be marked as emulated.
@happycamper_ Thanks for sharing. I had some discussions about this with Tenka. Shouldn't be a problem, because one shouldn't expect to get a new PB on first attempt anyways. I was also wondering if just quitting was sufficient so it wouldn't take long to start actual attempts, but apparently not. I'd assume this would also mean that losing all lives doesn't work either? Should be sufficient to post just end of the last run in the submission, instead of the whole run.
@Habble happycamper_ probably knows better, but I'd assume so if there's a seed for the dragonstone and it's not caused by a separate glitch. Not sure how to find that seed though, without actually testing hundreds of seeds.
Restarting is not a problem for validation if you keep recording your run in one session. Feel free to submit your run.
I believe the problem you're having has to do with DOSBox cycles. You probably have "auto" cycles enabled? Go to DOSBox installation folder and open dosbox.conf -file with notepad or similar. Find the line with "cycles" and set it to "cycles=15000". Try how the game runs. You can increase cycles to 17000 and so on, if it seems too slow. Game speed is capped so you can't increase it beyond certain point by increasing cycles (not sure about the exact number). Only map scroll speed will be affected.
Hope you'll keep running and improving! :)
Right, I was thinking about Media Player Classic. With MPC you just right click on the video time and select "high precision". You would need to download a plugin to get it to work in VLC.
That explains it. Videos are downgraded to 30fps after uploading. YT does the same thing for videos under 720p. Avidemux should open most codecs and it's an easy way to check accurate time of your original video. VLC works for this also, but you need to enable "show milliseconds".
Speedrun times are generally rounded down to last full second, not to closest second. Your time would be 10m 34s. I fixed this for you.
I'm also curious why your capture would be 30fps? It should be 60fps if you're playing NTSC version and 50fps for PAL. This is video frames, not actual in-game frames.
It's fine to post the complete run as video link, no reason to do extra editing work. It doesn't affect verification. Just add start and end time of the level in descriptions for easy reference.
It's up to full-game runners if they want to submit IL times from their full-game run to IL board. Krzysiek has done this with his DOS runs.
Also, you would be at a disadvantage, because it's harder to play optimally when the game runs faster. Sometimes the speed difference was taken into account by developers, when a game was released in both PAL and NTSC regions. AFAIK, this game was never released in the US, but the version you are playing is the PAL release running on an NTSC machine. Some PAL games wont even run on NTSC machine, but have been "crack" fixed by the community to be playable.
I got two PAL C64 models, but my joysticks are mostly broken. I actually destroyed the other machines game port, by plugging in a broken controller few years ago :( I'm using an emulator for convenience, because I don't want to go hunting for new sticks and figuring out a good capturing setup :P
Yeah, but that's how it usually goes with old computer games. This one is almost 40 years old now :O In fact, this board has been relatively active compered to most other C64 games. Many have only 1-2 runs altogether for several years. If DrMooCowz wants to have his run on the same board with PAL runs, we can move it there with the converted time.
btw. I actually substracted 2s from his run instead of 1,5s for early timer start. so it would not be closer to 9m7s. Just woke up before checking the run ;)
It's possible to do this. I figured the same conversion factor, but I'm not great at math. I'd have to first convert minutes to seconds, multiply by 1,2, divide back to minutes and then count the remaining seconds and milliseconds. Time I got for the NTSC run would be 9m 6,6s if I counted it correctly. Anyways, there might not be huge number of NTSC runs so it probably wouldn't be a major inconvenience. Usually NTSC and PAL runs are separated on different boards.
Difference between running a game on emulated consoles vs emulated PC OS is that consoles were usually standardized to identical hardware (except for PAL / NTSC difference). When running an MS-DOS game in emulator, runners often agree to certain speed settings to have a fair category to compete in. However, Dune 2 is cycle-limited, meaning you can't increase game speed beyond certain point, that's why it hasn't been necessary to specify cycle rules. As I already mentioned, changing settings to non-accurate emulation would give an unfair advantage over people running the game on original hardware. Same applies over people who have already done runs without changing settings.
Thanks for the heads up. In a way Mom is a separate universe compared to Orion, even though it shares naming and genre similarities. "Master of Orion" as a series does sound a bit more self explanatory. Either way is fine with me. I can take some mod responsibilities in MOO or MOO2 if necessary. I also gave you mod status for this game, it's good to have at least 2 active mods / game if possible.
It's also possible to add Caster of Magic boards here and promote active runners to mod status if it gets popular.
I've noticed this version, but never tried it myself. I added PS as a platform on this page if you'd like to add your run. Now the site thinks it's a default category, little bit annoying, this cannot be changed? I don't think it's necessary to make a separate category for PS at least atm, when there are no other runs. Good job figuring out those squiggle menus ;)
You can play the game on WinUAE or FS-UAE. There are lots of tutorials for Amiga emulation for example in Youtube. What you need is a system ROM, at least for A1200 model + game files and the emulator. Place the ROM-file into designated ROM folder for the emulator or specify custom folder for the ROM-file. Then use auto-config to launch the emulator with A1200 settings and the game files.
Also, check out current rules for timing in the levels category. Amiga timing is different to DOS timing. You can get exact time for your video with a video editing program such as Avidemux.
