Voultar is one of the best console modders there is and has videos of his work on youtube so you know what you are having done to your console. Here is his site and you can specify to him what you would like done specifically with your console. https://voultar.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=60_61

I also have Pcsx2 savestates at the points of interest I am discussing here. The first is once you first get the protowing and the next is after doing Pandemonium early and still having the unupgraded protowing. If someone would like to also help look for this glitch.

So I am a runner of this game and have recently been trying to figure out how this glitch works so that it can reliably be done in the Any% route of this run. So some background, there is a well known glitch in this game which happens on the World Map when you pick up an item from it, a tile of the world map becomes a void area. This void area you are not able to walk through but are able to sail your ship through, and fly through with the protowing (this games airship).

So the reason this glitch can be useful is at the point in the game you acquire the protowing, two dungeons open up. One of these dungeons is to get an item needed to upgrade your airship so that you can then go to the second one. The only thing stopping you from going to the second dungeon is a ring of tall mountains which block your airship from entering it. Now when this glitch is figured out, you can actually pick up a world map item close to this area and cause a section of the mountains to become a void area which allows you to do this dungeon early. By doing this dungeon early it actually skips a trigger which is active after completing the first which allows you to go straight to the end of it, saving approx. 30 minutes. Also there is another area which if you can get to early will skip the first dungeon talked about earlier which will save an extra 20 minutes.

You can see why this glitch would be huge for this run. I have been trying to find the memory addresses which involve the world map tiles but have not had much success. I have determined though that this glitch is not effected by your inventory after messing around with the memory addresses there. So if anyone has some insight on how to find this data or someone that could help me with this please tell me. This is important enough to warrant me making a bounty for someone who can find and reliably replicate it for me so that it can be routed in. Thanks

Hello folks. Soul here and I am a RPG speedrunner. I got into speedrunning after watching for many years and finally after being inspired through some great runners streams (Mainly Stivitybobo and Calebhart42) I decided months ago to route and run a game that is part of one of my favorite series, Wild Arms. I routed WA Alter Code: F and performed my first run live awhile back and got the game created here at Speedrun.com. Since then I have been working on improving my route and reaching out to the Japanese RTA community to see how far I can push this game. I have also planned and am currently picking up other games in the series and am trying to do what I can so more and more people can appreciate this underrated series. Anyways glad to be here and hope to become more and more engaged with this community.

I can also calculate the data for the Floor transitions. I did not see a difference between them for PSN and DVD-ROM PS2 but I can always go back and calculate them.

Did not do that much testing with the PSN version since I didn't have the equipment. It does not save too much time though especially compared to JP with HDD unit. With SSD you may see and extra 30 second time save per transition compared to PS4 with a spindle drive. Also PSN refers to NA PS4 original since the PSN version is only on NA PS stores. I also was using an original PS4 and not PS4 pro but in this instance it really should not make much difference.

Okay I now have the frame data for World Map and City loads for both JP DVD-ROM and JP HDD here they are.

DVD-ROM JP World Map: 259 frames City: 202 frames

HDD JP World Map: 163 frames City: 111 frames

Note: This frame data was taken from as soon as the screen starts to fade (lose of character control) to when you are able to move your character (start of character control). Since this game runs at 480i NTSC, it runs at 29.97 FPS so the frame counts here are rounded when calculated.

@BSharpMajorGeneral Check the other forum post I made here about the time comparisons.

So I decided on stream to do the comparisons between the 3 different versions of WA3. (PS2 DVD-ROM, PS2 HDD, PSN). I'll paste here the info I have collected. (Note: "PS2 HDD" refers to the official HDD support the game provides. In the title screen you are given the option to install data to your official Sony HDD to load off of. Once this is installed the feature is automatically enabled in settings of any game file and can be toggled on or off there.)

Wild Arms 3 Loading

DVD-ROM JP ~8 seconds World Map ~7 seconds City ~1.5 second Floor Transitions

HDD JP ~5 seconds World map ~3.5 seconds City ~1 second Floor Transitions

PSN ~7.5 seconds World Map ~6 seconds City

The PS4 version is only slightly faster. It uses emulation instead of a port so that is why. The JP HDD support is faster than the PS4 and I also believe the JP is slightly as well due to text. Adding another category I feel wouldn't be necessary but to instead add another console to the section ("PSN") since the time difference isn't that significant and there are no PSN exclusive glitches.

Yes JP PS2 is the only version with HDD support. It is faster than the PS4 version of WA3 which as far as I know is English only in load times alone. Then once you consider JP has faster text then boom, its the fastest version. I'll try to get some official comparisons of this captured, but testing through running the prologue, HDD JP saves 1 and a half minutes over DVD-ROM JP.

@Habreno Well at least will be the case for the Wild Arms Alter Code: F, only official HDD support requiring the official Sony HDD is viable and not using the support through the game is not allowed. Now there is the possibility of a ATAD patching modchip coming into play but from what I have heard Wild Arms still will not work without an official Sony HDD.

Actually upon viewing the layout of the RaC UYA page (https://www.speedrun.com/rac3#NG%2B), I think I'll add another column like they have to show DVD-ROM or HDD. I want it to still show up under PS2 and not in another leaderboard like its another Category. Thanks for the insight.

So wondering if a seperate category should be added for PS2 games which take advantage of decreased loading times through HDD support (in my case Wild Arms 3 and Alter Code: F). There doesn't seem to be a specific category for other addon systems (Nintendo 64DD) but I may be wrong since I haven't looked into that console specifically. What do the moderators think is the best way for the leaderboard to show that a specific run is using PS2(HDD) instead of just the standard loading from the DVD-ROM. Possibly a subsection within the PS2 category?

I know this a late reply but if I had seen it sooner I would have commented. The PS4 version used to be unstable and had problems but it does have faster loading times than the NA PS2 version. However there was an update awhile back which has made the game alot more stable but I have not tested the updated version and do not know whether or not crashes can still happen. As far as if it is faster than JP, no since JP has HDD support and its a more efficient method for decreasing load times than the PS4's brute force efficiency. Also I am not sure but I do not believe there is a PSN version of the Advanced 3rd which is the Japanese version. If there is then I would be interested in seeing how that tests out.

I'd like to request that Wild Arms Alter Code: F (https://www.speedrun.com/Wild_Arms_Alter_Code_F) be added to the Wild ARMs series tag (https://www.speedrun.com/wild_arms). Thanks