Hi

I read through some old 2000s internet forums and stumbled over a speedrun by Wazaaa from 2011 that did something none of us had thought about. Install Metal Gear Solid in minimum mode.

What is minimum mode? Well instead of installing the full game of around 1gb size, we just install around 230mbs of the game data. The movies are gone, some demos are gone and some 1000 vox files are gone. This is part of the official Metal Gear Solid PC installer, which most of us have never seen before because we installed our game from GOG oder via the Reddit installer which both feature full size installs.

What does this mean for the speedrun? In terms of impact, this is huge. Consider the Very Easy categories of PC, so any% and All Bosses where we can alt-tab or windows-tab to skip some audio cues and some cutscenes? Well this minimum install essentially does that. The most impacted areas are Cell Fight, Ninja Fight, Mantis Fight, Gray Fox Speech between the rex phases and even the little speech before the Liquid fight is slightly faster.

I made a side by side comparison video for everyone to see here:

Here's also a table to look at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y3ITC85TAdz-N37PX_Yg_dmWeyFCLRFdIUVzXR2wni4/edit?usp=sharing

So this means: Alt-Tabbing is not necessary anymore with this install method. It works reliably, it works with existing Reddit and GOG installs and also since we don't alt-tab, we have it on every difficulty.

How do we achieve a minimum install version? You can find the OG disc ISOs on the internet archives. (Obviously not direct link here). Install minimum (for example the US version). Then delete your existing folders Demo, Vox, Video folders and replace them with the version from the minimum install.

An important thing of note: We need to add 2 more vox files for this minimum install to work, without these additional fox files, you'll softlock during mantis' Meryl Posession phase 2 intro and during Johnny's first sneeze dialogue in the cell.

The vox files you need from the full install are called: VC114003.VOX Mantis "key sound" VC144001.VOX Torture "key sound" Copy these from your full install vox folder into the minimum install vox folder.

Now you can run your existing install as usual including all the mods and BMN launcher. Nothing else needed.

I consider this legal for the following reasons: this is a data feature set from the original developers since 2000 and not a custom selection of files us users made. The only thing we do is add 2 required vox files back in to make the game playable.

Considering we also modded the music back to a more console like state, I'd put that in the same category.

Last but not least, shoutouts to Wazaaa's original run from 2011. You can find it here, with a full description of how he made the minimum install work:

Last but not least, here's the story how I found this run and some more extra data and fun facts about this minimum install, I'd appreciate your support for my channel.

And now, discuss.

Hello runners! It's been a few days now since the release of the Master Collection and especially MGS3 has seen plenty of activity and testing from runners. Now is the time to make the move and us mods need your input!

The following questions have come up in the last week, specifically how to deal with MC.

First off, the mods and I agree that it will be smart to finally split up MGS3 as a speedrun game and make new games for the PS2 versions of MGS3 (Snake Eater and Subsistence on different categories, but one MGS3PS2 game), the 3DS version and the MC version. The last point can be up to discussion, but the following reason is why making yet a 4th srdc game for MGS3 MC is useful:

• MGS3 MC is way faster in loads and performance than any iteration of the HDC
• MGS3 on PS3 specifically is still actively run here and there - so keeping HD separate from MC for competitiveness sake can be preferred (your input matters here especially)
• MGS3 PC we have seen great tools come around by @Apel which remove loadtimes from the IGT or RTA comparison and allow for a more even playing field between PC runners. So making a split category for MGS3 MC PC alone is worth it - and if we have MGS3 MC PC already split, might as well make a new game and have both Console and PC as two categories for single segment runs

So the current idea when it comes to game split is as follows:

• NEW Metal Gear Solid 3 Playstation 2
• NEW Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 3D
• NEW Metal Gear Solid 3 Master Collection Version
• Metal Gear Solid 3 turns into Metal Gear Solid 3 HD Version

how these games are going to be set up will be mostly decided by the mods for these new boards. but a current outline can look like this:

Game: Metal Gear Solid 3 PS2

Categories:

• Snake Eater
• Subsistence

Subcategories:

• Very Easy
• Easy
• Normal
• Hard
• Extreme
• European Extreme

Additional Optional Subcategory (tbd later):

• platform (PS2, PS2 HDD, BCPS3, Emulator?)

Game: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 3D

Categories:

• Beat the game (since no other catgory so far exists)

Subcategories:

• Very Easy
• Easy
• Normal
• Hard
• Extreme
• European Extreme

Additional Optional Subcategory (tbd later):

• platform (Console, Emulator?)

Game: Metal Gear Solid HD

Categories:

• Any%, Multi-Segment (Alternative, Single-Segment vs Multi-Segment, similar to how MGS4 is set up)

Subcategories:

• Very Easy
• Easy
• Normal
• Hard
• Extreme
• European Extreme

The notion is to merge the PS3 and HD Other Categories into one HD category anymore, which would be known then as Any% or Single-Segment.

Game: Metal Gear Solid 3 Master Collection

Categories:

• Console, PC

Subcategories:

• Very Easy
• Easy
• Normal
• Hard
• Extreme
• European Extreme

All older releases will use IGT still as timing method (unless challenged?) to make it easier to transition the runs from this board to the new board. For the Master Collection version timings, your vote matters now. Do you prefer for the PC version of 3 MC the IGT loadless or RTA loadless timing method? Should 3 MC console also use RTA instead of the IGT from the score screen?

You may also wonder why I don't mention HD Emulator. There's a notion to remove the Xenia runs altogether from the HD board, as the intention was back at the start of the year, to make MGS3 in general more accessible. This decision was done before anyone knew that the Master Collection will come out, especially as it wasn't clear that also these games will come out to PC (Steam). Are there objections to this? Do you want to keep the HD Emulator category?

Emulation for the PS2 and 3DS games are also open to be discussed later, once the split has happened. At least for MGS3 on PS2, Apel has a working autosplitter and we know that TheDementedSalad has been working on a more improved robust version of the PS2 autosplitter.

So in conclusion, these are the ideas that are currently flying around, let's discuss and sit down to make a plan forward. Then once we made a decision, the mods can start working on modifying the board and get to add all the new MC runs that have been made since release.

In summary:

• Do you agree with the Game Split for SRDC?
• Do you agree or disagree with the HD Emulator board removal?
• Do you have suggestions towards the new category setups?
• Which timing method do you prefer specifically for MGS3 MC PC - Loadless IGT or RTA?

All other details like which mods should or shouldn't be allowed for MGS3 MC can be discussed later.

Thanks for your patience and attention!

Hau5

Hello everyone! As you might have seen, there's a newly found method of beating the ninja by iLL_Pazzo and Tromboncino. It consists of two parts basicaly, first we skip the 2nd cutscene leading into phase 2. Then we extend the phase endlessly until the ninja's health is fully depleted to end the fight. Effectively we can now beat the Ninja without needing to wait for any cutscene or dialog. This works on both the PC (2000) version and the console/emulator versions.

here's the IL example by Pazzo: https://www.speedrun.com/mgs1/runs/zpwj3lvy

here's the initial tutorial: Now with that being said, it begs the question: is this method allowed for glitchless or not? Discuss and we'll gather your opinions wether this method should be allowed for the glitchless category or not.

Thank you

Hi, it’s me with a quick thread to sort out an open question we as mods of MGS1 failed to clarify in the rules. In another - no deleted thread - we talked already about the timesave iLL_Pazzo found for the hind fight.

See here:

How to perform it:

• Take the Stinger ammo box before the Hind ladder
• Take the ladder and start the Hind fight
• Kill the Hind WITHOUT (very important) using GME
• When the Hind reached 0 health, just suicide
• Take the ladder again and leave the roof
• Go down the stairs and go to Wolf2 using GME2
• Congratulation, you just saved 25 to 30 seconds (depending on how fast you suicide) on every category without even using GME or area reload

As far I as I understood, this was fine for runs to be done, hence why I added the video and how to the wiki for the all bosses route. Today we had new discussions regarding this topic that this strategy should be not allowed.

So, hopefully for a final time - let’s decide if it should be explicitly banned in the rules of the all bosses category (and glitchless of course as well).

My understanding was, this trick meets the rules as they stand today, deplete the bosses health bar. Even if the game thinks we didn’t finish the boss fight.

At the end we should have it cleared up and added to the rules then for a yes or no decision.

hey folks, for the PC version of MGRR the autosplitter was lacking some useful features. I updated the splitter and added the following things:

new start conditions:

• now every R-01 through R-07 chapter can start the splitter
• now every boss fight can start the splitter (for Boss IL and Boss Rush)

new splits points:

• each begin of a Boss Fight from the chapter selection is also an individual split points
• each QTE of a boss fight as defined by the Boss IL rules is a new split point

With this you can now easily correctly time your Any% no R-00 runs, your Bossrush runs and your Boss ILs.

known issue:

• Jetstream Sam split condition is currently not 100% accurate. Mods will retime this run in all cases until a better solution has been found.

Download: https://github.com/hau5test/livesplit_asl_mgrr/releases/tag/v1.1-beta

Finally: I made a bunch of split files for your convenience. Standar splits applied, either select all main game splits or all boss rush splits. SAM DLC splits are not yet included (because this wasn't updated in this update)

Feel free to leave me feedback in this thread and happy testing. I hope that this update will be useful and once successfully tested can be provided as official new version.

Happy running!