The biggest reason I see to not allow deathwarps is simply that it's a slower version of Up+A. I also don't feel that the argument about not needing a 2nd controller holds any real weight. I'd think most speedrunners who run NES games would have a 2nd controller, if only as a backup for the one they primarily use. Runners on emulator can easily bind it to whatever 2 keys works for them.

As it stands, Up+A has always been a real category, even since back in the early-mid SDA days. If Up+A did something more than just imitate a death, then I'd see more reason to go with deathwarps (and likely it would already be a category).

It probably does a partial install then. Maybe a most install. I'd wager that most of the playable game is installed, but cutscenes would still need to be read from the disc. In theory it should reduce load times even farther if you install it. Kinda weird that the XBox itself can read discs that much faster than a PS2.

I found a list of XBox games that will run on 360, and Curse of Darkness was not on there. I'll still give it a shot when I get home, but I'm expecting much.

Also, I removed the blurb about installing on 360 from all the category rules, since that's clearly not an issue here.

Huh, I honestly thought you WERE playing on a 360 with the game installed. The quick load times I figured could only come from that (though I can't say I know much about original XBoxes. I have one that was given to me, but I've never used it personally). Are you able to install games on an original XBox or did that only start with 360?

As for the RNG, they could have changed drop rates and such. Without looking at the code itself for both games I doubt we'll ever know. I think we'd need more people playing around with XBox version to get any idea at all if they did mess with things.

Huh, I never knew about that Memorial Ticket being there. Thanks for the heads up =)

That's also a nice trick to getting the IDs maxed out even without 0 EXP enemies. That puts both consoles on even footing then, just with more work for XBox players.

I'll have to time Trevor mode, but I'm pretty sure it would be at least half of what Hector mode gives, which is significant enough. I'll look into doing that after I get back from RPG Limit Break.

Crazy mode may not need separating. I'll delete the extra category for now, since it's not like it's active. Can revisit later.

If you know of any other differences between the 2 versions, let me know. I did buy a copy of the XBox version so I could play around with it, but any extra info would be helpful.

(It would be nice if Curse of Darkness worked like Lament of Innocence where the IGT pauses during any loading sequences...then we wouldn't have to separate the consoles...¤grumbles¤)

Wow, good job me not seeing this.

Honestly, the small EXP change I don't think affects the time more than a few seconds at most, if that. However, that EXP change does affect Boss Rush runs since it's impossible to optimize your ID stats on XBox. Oddly enough, Boss Rush doesn't factor load times into the IGT, even though the rest of the game does. So PS2 should have the fastest Boss Rush for Hector.

There's also a Memorial Ticket after Skeleton Diver that isn't there on PS2. Again, I don't think this saves more than a couple seconds at most. If it weren't for the load times, I wouldn't bother separating the consoles.

Going into the menu looked more or less identical to me on both versions. If there is any difference, it's under a second per pause.

As a side note, when I timed out how much faster XBox is (I used your 2:10 run vs. Joester's 2:22), I had it at 12:51 faster just from loads. This was timed by hand, so there's some margin for error, and I didn't time any loads that only one of you did. Also, your run had some loads that were fast enough that I couldn't hit LiveSplit fast enough. I was just marking those down as 0.2 seconds.

Unfortunately, that time gain isn't absolute - PS2 load times vary by a fair amount. The initial load for the first room can take anywhere from 5 to 13 seconds, and most loads have this same issue. I wish it was as simple as XBox is X amount faster due to loads so we could compare all runs without separating by console.

I went and separated out Trevor and Crazy modes. Not gonna worry about adding 100% stuff until we actually have a run for it. Not sure if I should separate categories for Boss Rush or not. For now I'm gonna leave them as is.

Done.

So I tried messing around with it, and ran in to the same problem Sambss is having. It doesn't seem possible to have it rank some categories by in game time and others by RTA. However, what I did do is just have it sort by IGT by default for all categories. For Soma runs there shouldn't be any issues so long as the IGT field is left blank for all submissions. If IGT is submitted, it should be easily editable by a mod to remove it. The only drawback here is that k0zzx dropped to 4th for Julius all bosses because he didn't submit his IGT (and it's not in the video), and neither entry for Julius Any% had it in either.

May want to add that IGT is NOT to be submitted for Soma runs in the rules for those categories, just so people know ahead of time.

(Also, to give an idea of how inaccurate SasquatchBill's emulator is, he's 24 seconds ahead of me RTA, but only 10 IGT)

Yeah, I'll update the categories when I get a chance

I've been meaning to bring this up for a little bit, since I did some digging into GBA emulation. As of right now, there's no emulator that is 100% accurate for GBA. The closest I've found is VBA-Next, which is the core BizHawk uses. However, this still isn't 100% accurate, and runs a bit faster than console does. From what I can tell, it appears that it's load times which are the issue (that brief period when the screen is black during room transitions). Until we can get a bit more accuracy for GBA emulators, I propose that we go by IGT (for Julius only). During my tests, I found that the IGT stops during the period when the screen goes black between rooms. It actually made it pretty easy to figure out just how far off each emulator was. Basically, going by IGT would be accurate across both console and all emulators.

I don't propose this for Soma since the IGT also stops during menus, and suspends would then not count either. In Julius' case there's no menus or any suspend shenanigans to screw with things.

Cut/Paste from my YouTube comments:

"There's a very specific sequence to it. After getting stuck in the door, quickmorph 8 times, then shoot the left block. After that, quickmorph twice more and shoot the next block. Quickmorph once more after that, pop out of the wall slightly, and shoot straight up to get rid of the blocks above you. Then quickmorph 3 more times. On the 3rd one, pop out of the wall. You'll be off the top of the screen, but the game will think you're actually up there, and will scroll the screen down with you falling. Once you land, do a full height jump. This will scroll the screen down the rest of the way. Run as far right as possible, then full height jump, shooting as you ascend (not too soon though, you don't want to break blocks too close to the ground). Hold right during this jump. If done correctly, you'll land in the spot where you just shot the blocks out. From there do a low height jump up to the platform where the door is. If you over jump it, it will put you in the door back up where you started. You need the screen to be scrolled down enough so that it spits you out the lower door."

Also, I generally recommend using Down + A rather than Down + Up, since that leaves much less room to accidentally hit left or right while quickmorphing. The exception to this is for the Kraid screen wrap (which I don't know if that's even gonna be a factor in 100% Up+A, needs testing), I still use Down + Up for that one since for some reason using Down + A is way more prone to getting stuck in the wall, or getting a very awkward screen wrap to the left that takes extra time to fix.

Yeah, current ruling is that you do need to get Wave Beam. Note that Wave Beam does actually save time for the sections it's used in. How much exactly is hard to pin down since there's a random factor of missile drops from bugs in Ridley's Lair, but overall there are time savings from grabbing it.

@Pelador: I do all of my runs Suitless. There's a simple password that changes the appearance of Samus without having to complete the game. Suitless should not have it's own category IMO. NewGame+ is a completely different matter.

@corey042: Death Warps are the exact same thing as Up+A. As far as the game is concerned, you died, and it restarts you at the appropriate elevator (or the very start, in the case of Brinstar). Energy is reset to 30, Missile count remains the same, and any other items collected remain. If you're using deaths to warp back to the start of each area, then that effectively makes it an Up+A run using a slower method than simply using Up+A.

As for 6/8 Energy Tanks, I don't see any real reason to have separate categories for that either. 100% has always grabbed all 8, and the item disappears once collected. I've always considered anything that makes the Item Collect Jingle to be required for 100%.

Other Categories: Personally, I don't think anything that doesn't complete the game should be on the leaderboard. Here's what I think should have categories:

(All have Up+A and No Up+A variants) Any% 2 Boss (Must kill both Kraid and Ridley) 100% Low% (ie, 2 items - Good luck with this =P) NewGame+ (Maybe)

As for a more off the wall category, I've also toyed around with 0 Boss (Can't kill either Kraid or Ridley). Requires balancing how many Missile Tanks to pick up with how much you wanna rely on luck getting missiles in Tourian. Also gets kind complicated when factoring in just WHICH Missile Tanks to get.