Hello,

Emulator guidelines have been added to the game to clarify the settings and versions for Dolphin. This was in response to some confusion (especially since Dolphin had/has confusing versioning).

The main takeaway is: please update to Dolphin 2412 or later, verify you are using "Emulate disc speed", and when you submit please include the emulator version in your submission. Other settings required are disabling cheats and custom textures.

Please let me know of any questions or concerns.

Thanks,

AKD

Would I be able to submit a run using Nintendont on my Wii and a capture card, or do I HAVE to use dolphin if I’m going to emulate it.

Nintendont has the same settings mentioned such as disk speed and cheats disabled.

Go for it (just please disclose this and the version in the submissions). Nintendont is a bit of an unknown but this question has come up, it's assumed to be fine, there is some analysis being done but in the worst case I think we'd allow it under a split leaderboard (this may still happen even for Dolphin in the future, it isn't really a big concern right now).

The main issue is the load times varying by significant amounts making it difficult/impossible to mix times together in an ordered ranking. As far as I understand, Nintendont is just a software loader that emulates the disc drive and maybe memory cards? If there's an option to use the regular memory cards that would be preferred, but otherwise I assume it's running the game exactly like the Wii would.

In the long run solutions like this should be embraced because working discs and disc drives will only get rarer over time.

On further review, it appears like Nintendont in spite of its settings, still emulates load times wildly inaccurately, enough that it is very difficult to look the other way like we do with Dolphin. So please avoid Nintendont for runs until this issue is corrected (not that I think there is anyone working on it). Like I said, I think it would be ideal to use the Wii hardware to run the game, but ironically, Dolphin is going to be more accurate to an original hardware experience for speedrun purposes for now.

would this also mean I wouldn't be allowed to submit a run from my 360 as it's using the expanded backwards compatibility files, even if I'm playing from a disc?

There is little information about PSO on Xbox to begin with, let alone 360. Since there aren't really any submitted runs of it, it's in limbo, but it's assumed that it would probably be tracked separately from GameCube because of significantly better load times. If load times on the 360 were comparable to OG Xbox, then it could be tracked there perhaps--I don't know enough about the fixes you're talking about to make any judgment about whether it should be permitted, shooting from the hip. Any information you can provide would be helpful and this can be discussed within the community and mod group.

I personally don't want to discourage people from running, but I also want to remind people that leaderboards are imperfect (at least SRC's implementation) and to not feel like you can't run just because there's no specific leaderboard place on this site (e.g. lots of my runs in fun categories only I've done aren't here, a unique console may qualify the same way). We're just using the leaderboards as a mechanism of comparing similar enough apples to apples.

Long-term, there is some community consensus that this kind of problem could be solved with a "load time remover" solution, which would possibly open the door to a lot of things, but this requires development time that hasn't materialized yet. Load times are just a headache all around.

Generally I'd file this under "a problem to figure out once it arrives"--if you're going to dive in regardless of what anyone says, I think that's the right attitude and we can figure it out on the other side.

to be fair the most I know about the BC files I'm using are two things: they expanded general game compatibility, and the set I'm using is flagged to allow up to 128MB ram for use (instead of the 64MB normally used)

I suppose when I get around to submitting a run I should just include that it's using this in the notes? I do only see two XBOX runs total so it's not exactly popular, but I asked because BC is the 360 "emulating" its predecessor.