Hello everyone, I'm making this post to discuss a potential big change to the leaderboard. Substantially, there is a possible difference in loading time between real consoles and emulators. Considering that all the runs currently submitted to this leaderboard are done in emulators, this was a thing that I've considered in the past, but considering the number of runs there were I've never made anything much. Now that this game is getting some more run and potential new players, there is a risk that runs done on console would always be slower in RTA and this wouldn't be fair to console players. For this reason, my proposal is to divide all the full-game categories between console run and emulator runs for a fair competion (in a way similar to how the Super Mario 64 leaderboard did it, to make an example). These rules changes would not affect any current run in the leaderboard and would only separate future console runs, avoiding the retiming of each emulator run and the loading times. Nothing would change for the current level leaderboard as in game time is used. Considering this would still be a big change, if someone would like to say its opinion or what other changes could be done, this thread was made for this discussion. Unless nothing else emerges from this thread, I would add this changes the next week or the one after that, depending when I will have some times to do it. Newly submitted run until that point will still go on the leaderboard, I will eventually relocate them to the new appropriated category when the changes go live.

I'm definitely not an expert on this topic, but I figure I might as well throw in my two cents. I would personally shy away from splitting the leaderboard at least for now. From my (limited) experience speedrunning PS1 games, load times on emulators (especially ePSXe) are really well approximated and fairly accurate. If anything, some console revisions, such as the slim PS2 with the fast disc speed option, can outperform emulator load times in certain cases.

This is all to say that there are a lot of variables, however I don't think the load times will differ so much that it will make a significant difference in run times. If there were really a lot of competition, I would say the most fair thing to do would be to switch to IGT timing, however the calculations would be tricky and may deter newer players that find RTA more convenient.

From my understanding console should have the potential to have faster loads, play on PS2 with FDS (Fast disc speed) and it should be faster than allowed emulators (typically epsxe). I’m yet to come across a PS1 game to loads faster on EPSXE as opposed to PS2 with FDS so to save splitting the leaderboard / separating the competition I would propose to make EPSXE the only allowed emulator to prevent faster loads from occurring through emulator.

Edit: if you want an example of this; the Spyro series does this or at least the popular speedrunning ones like the original trilogy. Please let me know what we think about this proposal.

Oh and I’m currently waiting for my NTSC copy of the game to shipped being from Australia it takes half a century.

For the sake of fair competition im fine splitting the leaderboards between emulator and console for the RTA aspect. Being a smaller community here however, i personally dont see anything wrong with emulation as long as the advantages are not significant enough to make console runs obsolete. We could all decide on what emulators are acceptable for runs to limit the amount of variation, although im unaware of any innacurate ps1 emulators that are commonly used.

If possible i think we should time the loads for each platform (Emulator, Ps1, Ps2) so we have more information for RTA.

So I've read all current posts, splitting the leaderboard could be a possible option if more console run are done in the future, but for now leave thing as they are I agree it's probably better. A second possible thing I was considering is to put the option to hide emulator or console runs from the main leaderboard more as a visual thing, but I think this could potentially leads to more confusion. Eventually it should be usefull a real research on this matter to see about differences in loading times, but I currently don't have the time to do it, if someone else could research the matter a bit it would be really appreciated. About current emulators rules, again I'm not completely expert in the matter, I've always used epsxe personally and it always seemed similar to console, but again didn't time it. Considering that there are some runs not done on epsxe right now, I would leave the rules as they are, only adding that the preferred emulators going forward are Mednafen end epsxe, as they are also the most used for other psx games and seems the more reliable. For PS2 fast load, again until we can't really see if there is a big difference, I'm not sure how it would impact the leaderboard.

So, tl;dr version, as of now substantial changes will not be made, maybe only the hide emulator/console runs, but I'm not sure it would be a good idea and I would personally avoid it. As of specific emulators rules, I would prefer to not enforce specific emulators as of now and only specify in the current rules that EPSXE and mednafen are the preferred ones. Eventually this discussion could be redone once more information about loading times are discovered and/or more console runs are on the leaderboard.

Hello, on ps2 there are lower loading times (about 2-3 seconds per load), to avoid the problem of loading times there are 2 ways:

1. add a Game Time column
2. separate leaderboards for ps1/emu and ps2 runs

For the emulator, i think we can use also RetroRach (Beetle PSX core) with this rules to avoid overclocked settings:

You must show settings of the core settings before/after the run. Your settings must match this: • CPU Dynarec: Disabled (Beetle Interpreter) [Default] • Cycles: 128 (Default) • GTE Overclock: Disabled • GPU Overclock: 1x (native) • Access Method: Synchronous • Loading Speed: 2x (native) • PAL (European) Video Timing Override: OFF Recommended: Keep PGXP Disabled Custom settings are allowed for anything that isn't mentioned such as resolution.