Honestly guys, universally on this site, the #1 best way to get mods for a game to consider making boards is to already have runs to put on them. Do runs, post them here in the forum, give us a reason to work. All too often what happens is you'll have a handful of people clamor for a board to exist that, once gets made, never gets used.
If you're asking for ILs, I don't see why not... but the greatest motivator when asking for a new category is to have submissions for that category. Historically, moderators on this website are often asked to create categories that when made, sit vacant... I look forward to your IL submissions to motivate creating the IL board.
There is no known glitch or exploit in God Hand that appears in the actual game on real hardware that is off limits. If it can be done in legitimate gameplay on unmodified hardware/software it is allowed.
Look, people... the game is available officially for cheap to anyone with a PS3. This is an extremely high effort game and if you don't care enough to purchase it then you won't care enough to get any good at it. I honestly don't understand why speedrunning uniquely is a realm where everyone expects everyone to be absolutely okay with and support piracy. But most importantly for the point of leaderboards even attempting to include PS2 emulators doesn't make sense. None of them are accurate and new versions and builds are happening all the time, that would force me to do extensive testing on EVERY, VERSION, RELEASED to make sure which ones are and are not acceptable. What's more is that I regularly run into footage of faked gameplay via emulators, YouTube is full of that shit. OR MAYBE I could expect someone to give a damn enough to get the game legally.
If a point ever comes where PS2 emulation is worth a damn or the game becomes otherwise to obtain, then I'll revisit this but until then the answer will stay the same - emulator runs are not acceptable for God Hand.
It has come to my attention that God Hand can still be bought on the Playstation Store via the PS3. That version is viable for runs and it's only $9.99 last I knew (I can't see the price because I already own it).
Category extensions is a rubbish idea for a game that has fewer runners than categories. If this is going to happen it is going to be in one unified leaderboard without a category split. Trouble is that some groundwork needs to be done on which versions of what emulators are acceptable... and that'll have to wait until I can get around to it. You'll just have to be patient.
The notion of adding "emulator" boards is unworkable entirely. For one thing, we're already at 18 categories... we'd be doubling that to 36. Plus the game has the extremely unfortunate habit of attracting cheats and frauds so qualifying legitimate gameplay is far more detail intense than real hardware.
HAVING SAID THAT... since the day I had to remove emulator from this game I have been trying to think of some way to balance competition between the two and make it somehow workable so that all efforts can be represented on the existing leaderboards.
The first issue is that a great amount of testing would have to be done on testing many versions of the existing emulators to see which builds are closest to emulating God Hand accurately. After that, at bare minimum, emulator runs would have to include a handcam where the hands are visible at all time as many splicers and people trying to pass TAS as real gameplay through speedrunning history have been exposed due to this. Further thought still needs to be put into this before doing anything.
Final note, I see no evidence that you've done any runs or that you intend to do any runs, and more often than not moderators field many requests that lead to absolutely nothing... so if someone wants to advocate for this further it would be preferable if they had a vested interest and something to show for it.
Okay, will likely set this up in the near future... need to find a way to make it all make sense first.
Due to DECosmic recently picking up the game and posting a time I have taken a more recent look at the game's behavioral differences between running off of a HDD vs running on disc. Due to some noticeable anomalies that would cause disparities in RTA between methods of playing the game it became necessary to implement loadless times.
Because of the nature of video editing being used to determine final times in speedruns I will be doing "Speedrun Moderation Transparency Stream" broadcasts on my Twitch channel when performing this task to show the exact process and to alleviate any concerns as to the fairness of the process.
Timing works as follows: For both RTA and Loadless the first frame of the run is on the first frame that the open book intro for the first stage appears and on the very first frame that Goldberg no longer has HP. Removals for loadless include all solid black frames (hope this would be obvious) and the entire Stage Results screens (due to inconsistent hangs when unlock notifications are displayed while playing on disc).
Finally, it is worth noting at this time that there remains a possibility that some of these disparities are not just HDD vs disc but also PS2 model differences. Should new issues arise the timing rules will be adjusted accordingly so that fair competition is guaranteed for all who are involved.
I don't recall having any major combat differences regarding that. Are you sure you're getting the dodge counter on the super? If you get a successful dodge into a special attack the damage is doubled.
I can think of a few stages that are absolutely kneecapped on the Master Mode issue, yeah. But the positive is that without a DEF stat there's no reason to put points on anything but attack power. The cutaway for spawning waves however... I have no idea.
Honestly some in depth science still needs doing on what exactly triggers the ending of certain stages. In some places I know it's a specific enemy or group of enemies. In the mines you just gotta reach the bottom then fight a boss. Or with the bombs you just gotta destroy those then fight the boss. But some of the stages I honestly just keep killing mans until it stops and I'm not really sure what causes the stage to end.
NTSC-J Master Mode is shiiiiiiiiiit, sadly.
So the three main differences in the Japanese version are all very suboptimal:
1 - When clearing waves of enemies the Japenese version cuts to a short visual cue of "Here are the waves that just spawned." The US version doesn't do this.
2 - There is no DEF stat on the Japanese version. So you're very squishy on the final stage.
and yes 3 - On the US version Master Mode at full gauge is sort of like activating the God Hand that gives you the ability to run fast, jump farther, instant kill everything you touch, rapidly attack targets, and you actively regain MP when you kill enemies or do damage to bosses while using it. On the Japanese version it is constantly draining, is typically on auto-pilot, and never regains MP while being used.
Sadly the Japanese version is only really good for routing because of the 1st thing, being able to map out what waves of enemies spawn when specific other waves were defeated etc. Grats on finding a Japanese copy though, I tried for a while and gave up (I wanted to know the difference because someone told me it was very different).
I dunno how I did it, all the games I got really into speedrunning were at most $30 when I started running them, now they're all hundreds of dollars for a legit copy.
I'd be willing to come back and set it up, but that's up to Konasumi.
Just wanted to reply with a quick update, since that last response the more recent versions of PCSX2 outpace an actual PS2 in basic gameplay speed (game's move slightly faster at all times) so emulators are now banned.
More recent versions of PCSX2 general gameplay is somewhat faster than real hardware, doesn't reflect game lag properly, and is routinely modified. Also, since there are so very many builds of PCSX2 and no real way to tell builds apart from a verification/moderator standpoint it no longer made sense to allow emulated runs.
