I wanted to try using a dedicated solver for Traveling Salesman-type problems to search for a possible improvement to the route. In order to do this I need to identify all of the different segments of the main story + each substory as well as the map coordinates of where they begin and end. With this + a high quality PNG of the game map I think I can generate a distance matrix indicating the approximate time it takes to travel between any two points on the map. Then I need to also work out the precedence list (which events are prerequisites for other events). If I have all that then I can use the LKH-3 solver to try to find an optimal route. So I was wondering if anyone had experience with data mining this game in order to find the exact x/y coordinates, or else how I might go about installing a mod that tells me my current coordinates so I could play through the game and document it myself. Thanks

Hey, I know the answer to this.

The RNG in the game is based on the global timer, which is initialized by adding together all the memory addresses in the range 0x000-0x7FF. On emulator, these have a constant value at power-on, so the starting global timer will always be the same from a hard reset. However, on console, memory addresses are not constant, they actually vary on power-on until they are written over. As a result, the global timer will be initialized at a "random" value even from a hard reset on console.

I think this was intentional on the part of the programmers to make the RNG functionally impossible to predict.

More info: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14564

https://www.speedrun.com/Power_Rangers_Zeo_Battle_Racers Needs to be added to the Power Rangers / Super Sentai series.

Also this is a duplicate series entry with no games on it: https://www.speedrun.com/mighty_morphin_power_rangers

Thanks

I dunno I didnt notice. There's still 2 difficulty categories on Chessmaster SNES...

OK I may have originally written this in a moment of intense paranoia & frustration. I know that emulation is a massive boon to accessibility and I don't want to block it off, and it also wasn't my intention to be looking down at & punishing people just for being emu runners. But I want to call attention to this to prevent current & future emulator runners from making mistakes that will prevent their genuine efforts from going to waste. Anyone who chooses to speedrun on emulator should be aware of two things:

1. Which emulators are the most accurate, and why using an inaccurate one can provide an unfair advantage.
2. Making & playing back a TASed run is easy and, if done right, completely indistinguishable from a genuine run. If these facts become common knowledge & you take reasonable precautions in advance then the tens/hundreds of hours you spent doing a really amazing emulator run won't get trashed when someone correctly points out that there is no definitive way to prove it actually happened. Regarding the 2nd point, people have said that people who want to cheat will cheat anyway, by splicing video for instance. Maybe, but this is ignoring how monumentally trivial producing a tool-assisted run is. Multiple instances of splicing have been exposed by things like audio disparity, missing or additional frames, and impossible RNG patterns. A covert TAS completely bypasses every single one of these points of detection. I should cede on the following right away though:

• The issue of turbo does indeed depend on the game and is usually pretty easy to identify on video. It really doesn't have anything to do with my concern about secretly TASed runs. So scratch that.
• Everything I've said should really only apply to reasonably competitive runs. Top 3 at the least. I don't think there is any point in putting this level of scrutiny on every single run that comes in. Most people submitting runs to this site are completely honest and on the level & there is obviously little to no motivation or point in cheating an unremarkable run.

https://discord.gg/SMuMzqr (discussion starts at 03/01/2017)

For most leaderboards, there is still too much leniency on emulator runs despite how easy we know it is to stream & submit a TASed run. When a console run gets cheated/spliced the way it gets caught is through pretty objective measures like audio disparities. But with emulated runs you are forced to deal in really subjective junk like whether certain movements "feel" fake, or what your opinion of the runner him/herself is. I just feel like this is a tremendous waste of mods' time having to put that much time and effort into judging something as real or fake when they really have no genuine evidence either way.

The most popular leaderboards on this site already have extensive regulations on what is required of anyone who submits an emulator run, and these guidelines have roughly the same major points. They aren't identical though. There are a lot of standards that exist in some rule sets but not in others and they don't have consistent lists of allowed emulators. But there is really no reason whatsoever why these guidelines should vary so wildly between games on the same platform. If you have a standard set of rules for say, NES emulation, those basic rules to prevent dubious, unverifiable runs will apply to nearly every single game on the system.

Now we could have this gigantic list of emulator regulations and copy-paste it into every single category of every single NES game. But that takes up a ton of space and would need to be updated constantly with the release of new emulators.

So instead how about this:

• We make standardized lists of reasonable expectations of emulated runs + allowed emulators for each console, and publish it either as a dedicated page on speedrun.com or as a sticky.
• For each category on each game on that system we just include a hyperlink to the page/sticky. That way we have a standard set of rules that won't have to be manually updated by individual game mods.

I'd say that a lot of the mods on this site (including me) aren't completely educated on which emulators can be trusted. But if you had an official template signed off on by people knowledgeable on the subject they wouldn't need to worry about it.

Now of course, with the way the site is currently set up and run by different groups of mods we run into the issue of territoriality & cliques who will outright reject certain changes so I don't know if I'll ever actually be successful in making this an official thing. But at the very least it could be a semi-official posting that we could recommend to current mods or anyone adding a new game on that platform.

As an example, I looked at the most popular NES leaderboards and compiled some of the guidelines they have for emulator/flash cart usage.

This is pretty exhaustive and I doubt most leaderboards would be willing to adopt it in its current length but even a hugely abridged version of it would make a huge difference.

(The first two are not restricted to emulator runs but still good general guidelines) Please ensure game audio is audible. Turbo/Autofire and left+right/up+down are banned. Multiple inputs remapping (like down+a on a single key) is not allowed.

Due to the relative ease of submitting a TASed run, emulated runs are held under higher scrutiny. To minimize the chances of your run being rejected, we recommend the following: -State the name & version of the emulator used in your submission comments. -Capture the entire emulator window, including the border. -Enable frame counter and input display. -If the emulator has a movie option you should show the "no movie" message. -Your run should begin from (and include) system reset or power cycle. -It is highly recommended that you stream all of your attempts and provide split files.

If you used a flash cart (like Powerpak or Everdrive) or some other way to play the game not on original hardware, please add that in the comments as well.

Recommended emulators: BizHawk (NESHawk core), FCEUX, Nestopia (Alternatively I found this list compiled on the Castlevania forum: https://www.speedrun.com/cv1/thread/gxkie)

Other possible lines -State whether you used a keyboard or gamepad. -Enable handcam if possible. -At the end of your run, show your key bindings (to prevent multiple input mapping).

Also, with emulators and flash carts there does exist the possibility that someone could do runs on a bad ROM dump or even on a surreptitiously hacked ROM. This could be prevented by requiring a specific ROM checksum.

Hi, I read all of the Discord discussion on this and ultimately came to the same conclusion. Any runs done on emulator need to held to a higher standard due to the potential for TASed runs being submitted with no definitive way to discern them from genuine ones. This really frustrates me though because none of us mods actually know the true answer to this and never will. all I can suggest going forward is do what other competitive boards have done and give strict guidelines for emulator usage to prevent any chance of faked runs either that or go the nuclear option and ban them entirely

OK, I went ahead and changed it. Thanks for letting me know what software to use. I will work on this as well. Just leave a dated comment afterwards to note that you retimed it, I guess.

I would but the existing runs would have to be retimed. Should I just change the rules now and then work retroactively on retiming the old runs? I'll go set up the video software I need now in preparation.

Agreed. Visual cues should be prioritized.

Hi, Sorry for my absence. I know I haven't been a very useful moderator on the site.

I COMPLETELY agree that there needs to be universal templates for speedrunning leaderboards, including emulator usage. There has just been too much leniency all around. On my part especially. Unchecked emulator is just going to lead to:

1. TASed runs that are indistinguishable from real runs (extremely easy to do without strict guidelines)
2. people submitting runs with unfair advantages (hardware advantages, inaccurate emulation, etc), either intentionally or out of ignorance.

I mean, at the VERY bare minimum, any emulator runs submitted to this should be required to state the name and version of the emulator, but most don't (again guilty of this myself)

So, what actually needs to happen is, the most active & knowledgeable NES mods need to discuss this together and come up with a general Rule set concerning acceptable hardware, so that it can be applied universally to all NES boards.

It's probably going to upset a lot of people if it results in their runs being taken off or the leaderboards they moderate being radically changed but it but it needs to be put in motion. Personally, I have very little knowledge of emulation so I'm not qualified to make the call on which should or shouldn't be allowed. I actually wish I didn't have mod on so many games because of this. But I know that even some very old runs of mine ought to be rejected for being done on emulator without taking the right steps to ensure they were accurate.

At the very least, I now agree that the phone run is just too incomparable to real hardware and that it was a poor decision to approve it so easily. For now I've rejected it and added a disclaimer to all categories.

Some game series that should be created for existing entries:

Genghis Khan (aka Aoki Ōkami to Shiroki Mejika) (2 games on site) Hammerin' Harry / Daiku no Gen-san (4 games on site) Parodius (2 games on site) Samurai Shodown (3 games on site) Spy Hunter (2 games on site)

just sayin

https://www.speedrun.com/pt sent 4 runs in, mod has not responded in over a month

https://www.speedrun.com/bamse https://www.speedrun.com/agrosoar https://www.speedrun.com/babytrex https://www.speedrun.com/were_back_gb

I think these should probably be merged, since they are all just regional reskins of the same game.

https://www.speedrun.com/Sesame_Street_Fighter 5 weeks no response lol

https://www.speedrun.com/Factory_Balls https://www.speedrun.com/Factory_Balls_2

These should be added to the Bart Bonte series.

Hi, The current rules state that for these categories, you have to get the highest possible ranking for the given difficulty. However I've found it's still possible on Simple to get a B+ if you max out everything on the scorecard except for a 5/6 Power Meter. Is it sufficient simply to get a B+ or does everything on the scorecard have to be maxed out too?

Since it looks like the site admins are looking to put up some general guidelines for adding games I thought I would suggest a list of questionable categories I've found on the site so far They are on this list either because

1. the game is unofficial and not notable enough for inclusion
2. the category is some thing totally arbitrary yet listed as a "full-game run"
3. the category is a high score table rather than a speedrun table (I know this isn't outright banned at the moment but I thought I would keep a list just in case)

https://pastebin.com/J32uqbfR