Comments
EnglandWinter_Doggo1 year ago

I think it's fine. These runs were already submitted anyway, so having them marked as submitted by you shouldn't make much difference in the end. It will still be considered the runner's as normal, after all.

If you're still unsure, you could message each person on the homecoming leaderboard and either ask if it's okay or ask them to resubmit it themselves.

EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Remy!!! Remy on the leaderboard! Woooo congrats

EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

EDIT: I tried to vote in the strawpoll and it didn't show. I've had issues with strawpoll not accepting votes in recent times, so while it might not be showing for me, if the vote still shows 0 votes in anything in a while we can probably assume there's a problem. (And for clarity, I tried voting for shown emulator runs on the main board)

My biggest opinion at the moment is that if we include emulator runs, they should not be hidden by default. The other 3 options are all fine by me.

The reason I say this is because hidden runs is how we used to handle emulator runs in Petz Catz/Dogz 2 and it only seemed to cause confusion - at least one person who submitted the run on emulator erroneously thought themselves to be the first one, and I seem to recall being asked if emulators were allowed once or twice (and although that may be a lack of clarity in the rules showing through, the lack of visible emulator runs hadn't helped). Emulator runs are always going to be marked as emulator runs when you look at them, and we can always change the rules later if something huge comes up.

In addition, we don't know exactly how precise emulator runs are, but for now I'll see them as valid runs with valid effort. The introduction of emulators didn't ever overshadow disc copies in DogzCatz 2 (although the situation here is slightly different than that game where JPN and US are equal, because here we know the Japanese version is fastest, meaning Americans will find it a bit less accessible with disc copies. Not to condone making like El Dorado and sailing the seven seas, no sir, not me)

Finally, while options for abuse are possible and I'd like to hope they don't happen, I think having that slight amount of accessibility might be more important right now. We could introduce a rule to show your settings/main window before the run to make sure theyre at their most accurate and the runner doesn't have any advantages (I believe Pokémon does this). I would also understand completely if people decide Emulators shouldn't be included.

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thread: Talk
EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Since most of the responses to this thread are funni hahas or saying it's bad (for understandable reasons), I'll add my slightly more positive thoughts to balance things out a little.

I've played Friday Night Funkin' - just a little bit, but I enjoyed it and I like a lot of the music. I can't comment on any of the mods, because although they're extremely popular I've never had any interest in playing them. I also understand that a lot of rhythm game fans don't like it, but I think it's still a decent enough game. Granted, I'm not into anything like osu (I think the only other rhythm game I've played is Rhythm Heaven) so my perspective will be different, but different prespectives are not worthless.

I guess people that don't like it are tired of hearing about it though.

thread: Talk
EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

I've done a handful of speedruns in the past week, including a 6 hour long 100% run. I'm taking a break for now, but I'm still chipping away at some research for one of my games!

I check the forums every so often just to see what's going on, but speedrunning is still the main thing here for me.

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EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Hello again! In the past few weeks we've discovered how to determine the exact chance of every fish in the game, as well as their potential lengths in cm. I'm putting it all together here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FfAg6qm_FDZlUl0SvoC4RgJE6RF1ko447YRXytijoT8/edit?usp=sharing

As of the time of posting, I've only done the setups for South Pawville, and only their chances of appearing - no lengths yet. However, I do intend to do at least chances for every fish in the game, so this should be an incredibly useful resource for 100% that will make the fishing RNG a less intimidating by a bit. Hopefully, this should avoid any more goatfish incidents...

EDIT: Table now has all areas and some lengths.

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thread: The Site
EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

I'd like to mention of of my personal favourite games to run, THE DOG Island: https://www.speedrun.com/the_dog_island#Any

The only non-American runner on the Wii version is the world record holder - a British person playing the Japanese version, contrasting with all the Americans playing the American version. There's an Australian on the PS2 version as well, but that's separated from Wii and has only 2 runners. (With all the posts here that don't technically fit the ruled of the thread, I suppose one more couldn't hurt? :p)

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EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Hi! So in THE DOG Island I managed to decode most of the fishing system - enough to determine what fish can appear where, their sizes, etc. Turns out Petz follows a near identical fishing system.

How it works is like this: when you enter an area, the pier will randomly choose a fish setup to use. This determines the chances of each fish appearing, if at all. I haven't looked into it much in this game yet, but in the dog island there were almost always 3 setups per pier, and south pawville has 4 setups. This means it actually IS true that sometimes, you'll be able to enter the area with certain fish completely unavailable unless you leave and come back again. (Alternatively, some fish will just be more common or rarer than usual)

I'm hoping to find out which fish are exclusive to setups. So far, I've confirmed that Goatfish is indeed not available in some of south pawville's setups, so there's a free 1.5h timesave on my 100% run right there :P Although it seems like a bit of an issue, perhaps some fish are mutually exclusive so at least you have an indicator when you're on the wrong table. This was the case in THE DOG Island for a lot of fish so hopefully it's the same here.

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thread: Speedrunning
EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

My first run? Uh, let me check... oh boy

https://www.speedrun.com/hommiii/run/m3gr9d4z This is "Cheater%", the idea being that you beat the game with the use of cheat codes. The issue is that there's a cheat code that automatically wins the map for you, so instead of buffing yourself to the moon and back and finding the fastest way to obliterate everything, it's just typing the winner code over and over again until you're done, so I don't really like to consider this my first run.

Rather, a few days later, I did a "speedrun" of Heroes of Might and Magic 1: https://www.speedrun.com/hommi/run/ylvq68xm Don't be fooled by the fact that this is 1st place. That's just because I'm the only one in the category. The run is incredibly flawed and I didn't practice nearly enough - that time of over 6 hours could easily be sliced in half by someone that's good at the game. Although I am probably something of an embarrassment to a small community, I still feel a sense of achievement with the run - despite disaster striking over and over again, I still completed it, and that's always one of the first steps to doing something well.

(So I never did a run of that game again and just got good at other games :p)

Edit: thinking about it, I have also done speedruns before I joined SRC- the game "Fairune Collection" has global leaderboards for the fastest times in each game, so I ran two of those for a while and got top 20 for both (obviously not top 20 anymore). I won't go too in detail on those since I've probably already talked enough

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EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Oh that's a good point on the crafting accessories- almost forgot about those. I'd be fine with those being part of 100%. After all, it is unlockable stuff you can complete. I wouldn't feel the same way about enemy accessories, though - the only difference between those and other accessories is the method of obtaining. Crafted accessories do at least have a list to whittle down, but enemy accessories are just... you scare the enemy and get lucky, you get the accessory. You don't unlock it in shops after that or anything, so I feel like I'd only include those if we're including every accessory in the game. (Slightly related, previously I mentioned that I thought you had to charge up your howl fully to get the accessory- I have since discovered this to not be true, and have recently got an enemy accessory from a half-charged bark, although I'm not sure if this affects the chances of getting the item.)

I get your point on if these rules would make things too unfun. On the other hand, if we ever were to make true 100%, I don't think we should skip out on something that people agree counts as part of completion ...And I do just really like giving to the collectors to be honest, although that isn't really a good reason hah

EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Since I'm currently working on 100% scents and it's been a while, I thought I'd provide updated thoughts on this.

First, a correction: you don't actually have limited box space, at least to an extent that it would be a problem here. This was a misconception I had bevause I'd never actually used the box for more than a few items - but in one of Remo's older videos she has more than a dozen box pages full of stuff, so space is probably never going to be an issue.

In terms of a true 100%, I think the conditions should be something like this:

  • Complete every quest/diary entry
  • Learn every scent
  • Complete the collector's books

I still believe that accessories should not count towards a true 100%, because to me they don't feel like a "completable" thing, just a fun dress-up extra. By these rules, the main distinguishing factor would be the collectors - you need to not only get the items, but safely deliver them back to Pupsville. This makes most death warps a very big risk and not nearly as useful. Personally, I've always seen the collectors as part of completing the game, and I was surprised at first to see them not involved in 100% in any way (although that'd be because that category was what became 100% scents).

Speaking of diary entries, I would be interested in seeing an All Diary Entries category where you have to complete every quest. Someone mentioned this in the discord a while back and I actually really liked the idea - I do believe it to be possible, and I also think it could be an interesting category. It'd be a bit like 100% scents, but without having to worry nearly as much about RNG (which is most of the battle there).

Although obviously, there's not any kind of rush on a decision :p I've got no shortage of stuff to work on in this game atm

EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Yeah, I think I understood the first time - it's not unexpected that the game knows a first roll is faster than a second roll, but I did wonder if there was a chance that the game would see a "faster" 2nd roll and decide that was better anyway because the number is lower. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case.

And that's fine! I figured that by asking about this, I'd probably be verified slower while you guys figured things out, but on the other hand I'd feel a lot worse if any of my runs ever became overly difficult to beat (or even impossible) just because of this kind of bug/oversight. In my opinion the wait was worth it ^^

EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

When doing a run today on my JP copy, I discovered two differences between it and the international versions that would afffect speedruns. Although I've just reported this to the Discord, I figured it would be important to get it down in our forum too.

  • When naming your dog at the start of the game, pressing + does not bring you to the confirm prompt, instead just changing your keyboard to Kana. You have to manually scroll there with a left and an up press.
  • The Petasi's Goodbye cutscene at the very end of the game, previously thought to be unskippable, can be skipped in the Japanese version, saving time.

With this, the Japanese version appears to save an entire cutscene over the American version. As I only have the Wii version of the game, I can't test this on PS2, but Auaora has said she might be able to help so hopefully we'll have an answer on that front as well.

Edit: Auaora has confirmed that it works the same way on PS2. Edit (27/9/21): another edit just to get in this thread that JP also has faster load times than US, enough to save several minutes. We've known this for a while but. yknow

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EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

I'd like to return to this topic since I'm doing IL runs again. The PAL timer recognises a high 1st roll as better than a low 2nd roll. I just completed a Beach run with an IGT of 47.60 - immediately after, I did a run with a displayed time of 47.70. However, the game updated my best time to the 47.70. Inspecting both runs shows that the 47.60 was on the 2nd roll and the 47.70 was on the 1st roll, so the 47.70 really was faster instead of 10 centiseconds slower.

I do think this'll need returning to because I have a run on lake that, using the displayed time, is more than half a second faster than current WR instead of the around 10 centiseconds it really is (if we're going by your calculations). Your maths does, at least, seem to be more accurate, and if we find out it's wrong then we can always update things again.

thread: The Site
EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

I remember there being a bot reporting thread somewhere around here for every time we found a bot. I can't seem to see it now, so I guess it just filled up?

I also heard talk of there also being a discord server instead. Or maybe they've added reporting a bot to the site itself since. Could someone fill me in on how this works now?

EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Coming back to this again - I don't have anything definitively useful, but I wanted to get all the extra info I have into this thread.

  • Clipping into things: I've had another report of this in a discord server I'm in, this time at Lappy Lake. They apparently hit the corner of the slope that goes into water on the main island and was able to swim through land. (Version: Wii, Dogz, PAL)

  • Wrong Warp: found this video a while back. The part that's interesting is at 3:15. The player is sent to "Jade Fields" from the Jade Fields entrance, but they appear into the void and the Sky Heights music plays. Unfortunately the uploader couldn't provide much more info - they reset straight after discovering it. There's no way of telling if this is useful unless we can replicate it, and it could even have just been a hardware issue from the uploader, but in my opinion it's worth sharing. I wonder what the minimap might've shown if it were turned on? (Version: Wii, Dogz, NTSC-U)

  • Evading quest system: Something I might actually be able to look into. The guy who discovered early Lonesome Park has recently figured out how to switch around maps, so if I replaced - say - Jade Fields with the map and NPC info of the Dimensional Rift, we can find out if entering the area is the trigger. ...That said, given what we've learned about the game, something tells me that the conversation with Theophilus is the trigger, not being in the area.

thread: Speedrunning
EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Much like a lot of other people, the handful of WRs I have are pretty cool to me. What I should probably be most proud of is the WR I worked hardest against other runners for - but to be honest, the ones I think of fondly are the categories that I was the first to complete. The fact that I was the person to kick things off, giving a starting point/a place to aim for with anyone interested in trying it, makes me pretty happy.

I guess Petz Dogz 2 100% would be the crown of this. I'm still the only one who's done it, and to be fair, 8 hours mostly consisting of RNG fishing probably doesn't sound too appealing. That said, it's still something I did, and I left behind a (hopefully) useful guide as well ^^

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EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

Oh this is interesting! I've always wondered a bit about if the minecart could be mapped out (and doing that would certainly give a lot of practice for the boss fight in the process), but I never actually got around to doing it. If at some point we could figure out an optimal path that would be pretty neat.

I might maybe look into this sometime

EnglandWinter_Doggo2 years ago

If I'm understanding right, the next wave comes up when the current wave is damaged around 35-50%. How come a lot of runners sacrifice lawnmowers early in a level then? Wouldn't you want to damage the first few zombies faster in order to get to the next waves? Is it so you can build up sunflowers/defend other lanes more comfortably?

I just want to try and understand better before I try running this c:

EnglandWinter_Doggo3 years ago

Hey, I have officially completed a run of this. Took 8:26:07, and while my play was bad it was still a lot faster than I thought it would be. Would be neat if the category could be created for me to submit to!

I attempted to follow the route and rules I previously mentioned (which themselves fit into the ones you suggested last time) and I also quickly scrolled through the magic encyclopedia at the end to show everything obtained (it was a rule in the dog island's 100% + it's convenient for someone verifying + can never be too safe)

A few interesting things I noticed from this run:

  • The popups for item clothing rewards are extremely long and will interrupt basically anything other than movement, but if anything with a dialog prompt is nearby (eg. a Zoo animal or Saul) then you can approach them to skip it. I didn't know this before.
  • Near the beginning of the run, I spend a significant amount of time fishing for Goatfish (in the end, I gave up and saved it for later, only to fish it up first try when returning to that pier late in the run). There's a chance I was just extremely unlucky, but I also noticed I never once caught a Hairtail in that time, which I previously thought to be not a rare fish, just a fairly large one - there may be a chance that certain fish (or certain sizes?) are limited to later in the game. This is something I thought about several years ago, but I recently decided that perhaps I was mistaken (other than the tutorial with Victor, which almost certainly has different rates). This makes me think that maybe I was right before. Also, in the files, the game does seem to follow a chapter system, so maybe it's connected. Not sure how to prove this without someone more familiar with code to look at it.

If this is true, then there's a free 1.5 hour timesave right there for someone (or, uh, probably myself) in the future - provided the rest of the fishing RNG is nice to them lol. I did get a bit of nice RNG in other parts of the game, but the Goatfish was terrible and threw me off for a bit :P

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About Winter_Doggo
THE DOG Island for Nintendo Wii and Playstation 2
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