This is off-topic now so, apologies. But the point was in reference to lack of pal categories making other games a pain in the ass, hence why I'm running this one mostly at the moment, bypasses all of that as it's on PC and HDMI-enabled consoles. Don't even need to hookup a capture card, just boot xsplit/obs and go.

For reference, I don't know if you've used much PAL hardware but the main issues are that PS1 and SNES games do not support 60Hz at all in Europe. So if a game does have any differences (which is any game times by RTA for sure, and quite a lot have glitches/tricks that won't work on PAL or only work on PAL) the runner's gotta import it and the correct hardware to play it if PAL isn't allowed or maintained as a separate category. On-top of that, it can sometimes be a pain in the ass for PS2, XBOX, GameCube, Dreamcast (bypassable with VGA) and Wii, depending on your specific hardware setup. When you boot the game, it'll be in 50Hz mode if it's a native PAL game, and when you switch it to 60Hz, this freaks out a lot of capture cards. Mine, will do one of 3 things when that switch happens: work perfectly (?!?!), corrupt my driver installation so that I have to uninstall and reinstall it, or bluescreen my PC. I literally have to just pray it works. It's not some unknown card either, it's an Avermedia device. So even if you can use your native PAL games, it can still come with issues, issues that can be unique to each individual setup which is even more of a pain in terms of being able to help other people out with them.

All of these problems can be solved, sure. Just takes money, mainly. But I disagree that PAL60 is the same as NTSC60, it might be once you get the game working :P but getting to that point can be a costly pain in the ass.

For example: took me 2 hours of reinstalling capture card drivers and trying the different inputs available to me to get Clock Tower 3 to record past the 60Hz switchover from my PAL version. I honestly thought the card had finally given up and fried itself.

Back on-topic again: purely personal preference but I couldn't vote for a modded version of a game being default over the un-modded version. But I wouldn't have an issue if it ended up that way because as you said, it's a quicker version which isn't a bad thing at all.

Sup guys,

I'm having a bit of trouble streaming from my PS2 at the moment, it seems really inconsistent so I thought I'd ask what your preferred setup is.

Currently, I use a Vellbox to take Component in from the PS2 and convert it to HDMI, then route it to my TV. I'd like to capture straight from that HDMI, but for whatever reason, my AverMedia LGP goes berserk, it sometimes picks up on the initial HDMI signal but when I get into a game and switch it to 60Hz NTSC (because the console is PAL, so 60Hz is on a game-by-game basis only some support it) signal it freaks out completely and I can't get a signal. Worse, after this happens sometimes capture from the device is completely borked and I have to re-install the driver. My best guess is the Vellbox can't quite handle the switch properly, and whatever it does to the signal in the meantime does something funky to the capture card.

So, instead I'm using the PS2 cable that came with the LGP and goes straight into the capture card, it's also really inconsistent (sometimes it refuses to pickup sound) and is much lower quality than through the Vellbox.

How do you guys do yours?

Thanks for the advice again, everyone. I managed to get my positioning working well enough to hit the door webs and Black Tiger at the same time.

Dodging her attacks is a different matter though lol

I don't like the idea of merging a modded and non-modded version of any game, personally. (It essentially nukes the non-modded version of the game imo)

Doorskip is a 3rd party tool which would, in my opinion, make it a tool-assisted run, doesn't matter to me that it's only to skip a fixed animation. I would say the same for item and health displays too but those are so minor I just don't care. I've literally only just returned to speedrunning a couple weeks ago, and am making good progress in this game, so I'd be really disappointed to see to see them merged or see a modded version as the default category for any game. Lack of NTSC hardware is making playing other games an issue I'm in the process of solving, so I'd be a little bit annoyed if this games default category was upended just as I'm getting into it.

By default my opinion will always be that games should always be run in their original, unmodified form, with exception for controller mapping for accessibility. Messing with config files to fix anything other than crashes should be a no-no, let alone full-on custom patches and memory-watchers. This is also why I've ordered a physical PS1 copy of Resi 2 for running, because I have an inherent distaste for the modified PC version, not to be rude just to explain my somewhat jaded viewpoint, but I simply don't view it as legitimate.

Also purely from a selfish point of view, my memory is fricking terrible and I use those animations to try and remember what's coming next :P

I'll play whatever, it's only doorskip mod after-all. But if I had to vote, it would be against merging and against making it the default category.

I don't know how much HDD/SSD affects this game either, I haven't looked into it and tbh, I don't have enough time to devote that fractions of seconds would put me off running, but my PC is quite old now, and I won't be building a new one anytime soon. So again, even if it's tiny fractions of seconds most likely, it still would be a disadvantage for anybody without an SSD who would care about those small differences. ResiHD isn't exactly a high-end game, either, so I don't know if people around here are running it on super computers or potatoes.

edit:

Out of interest. Is the source code for Doorskip mod available? I think it should be open if people want to make it the default category. Because, if it's the default category people should be able to see precisely what it's doing.

"This topic comes up like once a week, I don’t know how anyone can explain the reasoning behind this any clearer. Right now, everything regarding quality is up to the discretion of site admins just like everything else on the site."

You can't think of any way in which these rules could be made any clearer?

That's completely absurd. It can be made leagues clearer than it is currently. Currently there's nothing in the rules that anybody can even use to hint at what is and isn't suitable. It really wouldn't be hard to add even a couple lines to those rules. Even "Right now, everything regarding quality is up to the discretion of site admins" isn't even in the submission page. The word quality literally isn't even on the submissions page. So yes, you're gonna get these threads continuously until there is clearer explanation than no explanation whatsoever at the point of submission.

Fantastic, thanks again for that specific clarification. If necessary I'll film the disc loading segment, I just didn't want to have to find an original SwapMagic lol

Thanks for taking the time to clarify I do really appreciate it. You mentioned above FreeMCBoot is classed as an emulator, is that accurate if you're only using the disc-swap functionality? That's literally the same as swapmagic just initiated a different way. Yes it can do many other things, but it's easier to get a hold of than a swapmagic disc which can be a bit of a pain to track down these days. For example right now, there aren't actually any SwapMagic discs on the UK eBay store bar one in Ireland, and it's SwapMagic CODER which actually provides a good deal of the same functionality FreeMCBoot does.

Yeah PS1 import games are very hard to play on a PS2 without a hard mod anyway, then you run into the driver issue as well, that's why I did actually get around to importing a JP PSOne, and burned games I would absolutely expect to be a no-no. Both for the reasons you mentioned and because it's straight-up piracy.

Individual games I have no problem importing, that's absolutely fine.

Oh sweet, you're right. I could've sworn it didn't support PAL60.

HD loader makes complete sense as I said above. It makes a huge difference for loading times.

But what's the official stance on SwapMagic/similar methods of using the physical disc on an out of region PS2 (without a hard mod, as I'm aware some hard mods can also make a difference but my knowledge of those is zip) and is it likely to be the same for similar games (Haunting Ground, Rule of Rose, etc) that you also moderate? It's not an issue here if pal is indeed 60Hz, but it's a pretty big issue in general with my access to NTSC PS2 games. I only have EU PS2 consoles, and JP PSOne. Obtaining a phat NTSC PS2 is a massive pain in the butt. So if SwapMagic is ok, that would be a great relief.

Sorry to be a pain, I just really do not want to settle on a game and sink my teeth into it only to find that I can't submit runs.I'm a big fan of this genre and it seems you and Carcinogen moderate almost all of them. So I figure I'll just stick to whatever your decisions are and avoid the games that means I'm unable to play on the hardware I own.

Yes, but it evolved to that point over years and years of discovery. That's not even relevant to the point being discussed, though. It was an off-the-cuff example of a run that is short in the extreme (literally 0 time), to counter-point the idea that just because a game is short it isn't worthy of anyone's time (even if actually, that example actually isn't worthy of anyone's time anymore because it's actually been mathematically solved, but it was relevant for years as it dropped down from 15 minutes to less than 2, eventually to 0).

edit: Messages are apparently not a thing here. If you get a chance could you clarify a rule over in Clock Tower 3 for me seeing as you're a mod. Would really appreciate :) Ta!

Yeah that's true. But that's only the case now because the category was pushed literally to completion. Glitched any% Pokemon is a problem that's been solved, and the community has since moved on from it.

Until that happened, it was fiercely competitive. I was just drawing the comparison that a short run doesn't necessarily correlate to an unpopular or noncompetitive game, or a low quality, 'unworthy' one. Pokemon Any% glitches was still very competitive when it was around 2-3 minutes.

I'm basically saying, whatever rules the people in charge want are fine. But they need to spell them out, clearly. The whole "It's at the mods discretion" thing is at best going to be a pain in their own ass because they'll have to keep clarifying it every time somebody is confused about why a game was rejected.

Even if the submission page said "We might reject your submission, for no reason whatsoever, all decisions are final. Deal with it." that would be clearer than what's there now :P

HDLoader does indeed speed up load times. Which would be an issue with an RTA timed game. So it makes sense to ban that. It's not an emulator though, that's absurd.

A softmod playing off a real disc however, to my knowledge, wouldn't. I don't use SwapMagic specifically, but I'd use FreeMCBoot to achieve the same result.

Who gets to decide what is and isn't a good game?

Surely, if mans wants to speedrun a shitty flash game, das, coo'. Right? I mean, the community is dedicated to playing games fast, not exclusively playing nebulously defined 'good' games fast.

'Quality Standards' and 'Good game' are so ridiculously nebulous, and literally undefined. If there was some definition for it that the site had decided upon, no matter how arbitrary, at least then the guy could've looked at them and figured out whether or not his game met those standards.

I mean, I don't think Super Mario 64 is a fun game, I think the controls feel like dogshit and controls are probably the most important thing I personally judge a game on. But I wouldn't stop somebody from posting runs of it. It's not up to me if somebody (thousands of people, in fact) think it is a game worth devoting their time to.

This seems like it should either be a flat, globally applied decision (no flash games, at all, no exceptions) or whatever constitutes 'quality standards' needs to be published so that people can have some idea of what is and isn't likely to be accepted.

Currently the game request rules don't even mention quality standards. The word quality literally doesn't appear.

edit: My bad, there is a vague reference to what won't be added.

"At this time, we are not adding the following: Visual novels, short/trivial flash games, non-video game activities."

This works, but is still pretty nebulous. Again, what somebody considers trivial is a pretty wide variety of opinions. Pokemon could be considered trivial given that its glitched run is literally 0 seconds. What defines a non-trivial flash game?

To clarify, I'm not arguing it should be added. Just that I don't blame the guy for thinking it might be added, and being confused when it wasn't.

They are hidden by default under filters.

Oh thank god, a game that actually maintains an EU category! Props to you guys, and amazing job on the runs this games been pushed a lot further than I'd have thought it could be. Really entertaining to watch.

It is naturally slower, yeah, to my knowledge the PAL version isn't 60hz compatible. I just wanted to check it wasn't banned completely because of any potential in-game timer discrepancy but it appears it doesn't have one.

What do you reckon to playing an import copy on softmodded hardware? Importing games is pretty easy but hardware (especially stuff that requires power conversion such as a phat ps2 would) is a real pain in the butt and usually very expensive to ship even if the hardware itself is cheap.

Sup guys.

I noticed Emulator is banned for this which is cool, but I wanted to ask if anybody knows if there's differences between PAL and NTSC which would be an issue for running. I know it's an issue in some games, but not all due to frame-dependent in-game timing in a lot of older games.

Basically trying to get an idea of which oldschool survival horror games I can/can't run based on the hardware I have access to.

Figured I'd ask beforehand. Cheers guys.

First top time I looked at is just somebody filming their high scores screen. Is that really ok? I mean, it's not remotely verifiable surely?

edit: In fact, it seems to be all tracks one of the top 3 is that video. From 17 years ago.

I think it's mostly because once people get on a good run they stop chatting because it's distracting and they concentrate. You see a lot of runs that start out casual and chatty but once they get past a certain trouble spot they go silent.

Personally I just gibber to myself constantly all the time anyway. I don't think it's an issue, there's plenty of top runs with runners talking, swearing, singing, etc.

Tips for the Lisa Trevor fight. It's not a difficult one to figure out but new players might find this helpful particularly the pretty reliable alternate strategy.

I actually didn't even know you could pump cancel the grenade launcher that's an awesome tip, I haven't practiced it yet because I still barely know the route.

Thanks for the tips man, I'll work on distinguishing which pattern she's using and what I need to do in each situation. Seems a bit like the hunter stairs issue where you need to know a few different cues and how to act for each one.