Hi all,

I just made a few tweaks to the board and added a few categories for likely the most common versions. If there's a version you'd like to run that isn't here yet, please feel free to ping me or post here! I know there's a million versions of this game and some that aren't even documented in the Wikipedia article yet.

There's likely some versions (I suspect DOS and Amiga for example) that may be similar enough to be grouped together, but we'll have to see. There's already some surprising differences in the versions I've been testing.

You might notice the 30k population goal is now a variable and is now named State Capital. This is because I discovered that the Playstation version actually gives you State Capital at 10k! Weird, I know! If we do eventually want to expand the board, it will be easier to add another population goal for say, the Military Base, or Arcos now.

I've also grouped "Glitchless | Defualt Map RNG" and "Glitched | Any Map". It's very inelegant (sorry!) and if anyone has any suggestions on how to shorten that up and simplify things without losing the meaning, I'm all ears. We could just make it Default Glitchless and Any% I guess. I figure these are likely the only things folks would be interested in running based on feedback but we could separate things more if wanted.

Please feel free to voice concerns or things you'd like to see here!

@camero56 @AquaBlake @ShinkenX

Hey All,

Just wanted to quickly ping all the runners here as I've just noticed something in a submitted run and a run we already have up on the board.

Camero56's two most recent accepted runs are actually using Turbo 3 in the settings, but the current rule set lists Turbo 2 as the accepted turbo setting. I've manually frame counted a few common moves from all of the runners and determined that Cam's 5:18 run, AquaBlake's latest, and ShikenX's current run do appear to be on Turbo 2.

I do apologize for not catching this sooner, but I thought it might be a good time to talk about the rules for arcade. Turbo 2 is also confirmed 20% slower by my frame count than Turbo 3 which does make it an uneven playing field. In both a tournament setting and online play, Turbo 3 is the commonly accepted Turbo speed as it has no cut or duplicated frames. There might be some merit in changing things to accept Turbo 3 for Arcade perfect, as it does play much more like a tournament setting.

So, we could either do one of two things:

1. Keep the Turbo settings on Turbo 2 for Arcade and remove Camero56's times that use Turbo 3. No leaderboard positions would be affected.

2. Change the Arcade perfect rule set to allow up to Turbo 3 and keep everything as is. Since we're the only runners of this version, now would be the time.

What does everyone think?

I'm personally in favor of #2, changing things to accept up to Turbo 3, but it doesn't matter much to me either way.

Once again, I do apologize I didn't catch the settings screen sooner Cam, entirely my fault.

So there's a lot of "hacked" versions of Castlevania on the C64. The vast majority of them are not functionally different than the main game, and in many respects are much better versions.

For anyone unfamiliar, the C64's floppy drive was essentially a computer in itself, and the default program to boot programs and disks was... Well... Not good. It was possible to override the standard bootloading program and by the time that Castlevania was put out on C64, this was luckily common practice.

This ability to modify the loading process was ALSO unfortunately used to write very complicated and unnecessary copy protection.

While Castlevania for C64's copyprotection wasn't as horrible and damaging to it's load times as other contemporaries, it did make it so the game could not fit on a single side of the floppy, and had to be "flipped" to load the opening screens and credits, restart levels, and save.

That said the loader they used leaves much to be desired, and is rather painfully slow in places. You can start the game without putting in disk side 1, and while the perfect deathless run would never need to switch disks due to this, the problem remains that newer hacked versions with different loaders will always be faster.

It's also of note that it's possible to edit the game files themselves to store them on one larger disk or a flash cartridge like solution. I was a little too young for much of this, but editing games and bootloading hacks were a huge part of the Commodore scene.

If things became competitive loads would probably be removed, but what are folks feelings on using hacked/edited disks?

Certainly makes the game less painful to play and might draw more folks in if the single disk / no copy protection hacks and edits are allowed, but I personally don't care much either way.

I recently set up a C64 emulator for other projects and decided to take the C64 version of Battle Chess for a spin. I grew up with this version (on an NTSC Commodore) long before I played the others and remembered not liking it as much, but from a speedrunning perspective it's actually pretty interesting. Got me wondering if any of the other versions are significantly different.

I figured I'd start a thread and detail some basic observations and speedruns of each version I play around with. Not really sure every version of this game merits tabs on the board, but please feel free to chime in and share observations and runs on obscure platforms! I might eventually try to run them all!

Commodore 64

1. They fixed the "Novice and Level 1 difficulties are functionally swapped" bug. Makes sense as this came out a year later than DOS/Amiga.

2. There appears to be a much reduced opening move set for the CPU compared to DOS and Amiga, which occasionally leads to very bizarre behavior in the early game. Only 6 difficulty levels as well. Makes sense considering what they had to work with.

3. The delaying tactics to improve the CPU variability work in this one like DOS and Amiga. It seems like cursor location matters much more in this one though. Overshooting your cursor before selecting often leads to way more favorable CPU moves. They likely didn't have as much to work with for RNG on C64.

4. Pressing the fire button like in the NES version to try to interrupt the CPU seemingly does nothing. There is an explicitly designed "force move" button called out in the manual that changes the CPU behavior, but that feels like straight up cheating.

5. The NES graphics are slightly more clean, detailed, and colorful versions of the C64's it looks like. Pawns are just plain weird and different though. Definitely see why they did cut scenes on NES - the battle part of the game is underwhelming.

6. I remembered the game being slightly unstable on real hardware, and that seems to hold true for modern emulation as well. Guess my C64 wasn't a dud! VICE (C64SC) is your best bet to run it with default settings and "True Drive Emulation". Using a C128 in 64 mode might reduce load times a little but it's not as stable and seems to lag more between moves. Maybe I have some bad settings though, so your mileage may vary.

The US versions of RPGMaker and Xenogears can be used to perform the save glitch as well. I used to use RPGMaker (US) to do save hacking, a process similar to what's done here, so I was already familiar with the general premise. After seeing Pingval's video, I decided to check out how similar the JP and US disks really were and was surprised to find them so structurally similar. Figured it might work, and sure enough it did.

Here's a tutorial video on how this works:

Sorry for my weaker than usual voice, not having a great voice day. >_<

Hi @Lizstar and other SimCity 2000 runners!

@beerfullofbelly and I were taking a look at some mechanics tonight and discovered/tested a few things.

I've been loading up a Scenario map to move the river location to the coast in my runs. This doesn't really save any time, it just offloads the RNG to whatever mountains and lakes would normally generate in place of the river. On average it allows for a few more good runs per map load and ensures that the River doesn't screw ya 10 times in a row and you throw your mouse at the wall.

However, editing the map ratios on the edit screen ALSO similarly affects the generation RNG. Using this, you can edit the map to be nearly flat and have almost no water. As @beerfullofbelly put it, this kinda feels dirty to do. I personally agree and kinda like the minimizing clearing time to building time pressure this puts on a run. It's pretty easy to see when this is done as the ratios are displayed on map generation, luckily, so assuming we don't want people doing this, it would be relatively easy to spot an invalid run. This might be appropriate for Glitched runs though, as it seems the intent is more "anything goes"!

Another thing of note is that most if not all of the DOS runners are using GoG.com version of SimCity 2000 DOS. This version sets the DOSBOX emulation to 20k CPU cycles fixed. Setting this game to MAX cycles makes things run much slower, but there is actually a sweet spot at around 300k cycles that doubles the game speed in certain areas. I kinda feel like this goes against the spirit of the current meta. No one likes to win simply due to load times. Luckily, again, this is very easy to spot. A normal series of months takes about 12.25 to 12.5 seconds to pass (minus any popup menus) and it's very noticeable if you time the months. Again, maybe something for the glitched category.

Another concern to this is the fact that a real machine running DOS could potentially be as fast or faster than 300k cycles DOSBOX. No idea how to handle that one. Maybe it just isn't feasible to limit things by DOSBOX cycle settings.

So I guess we're just wondering what everyone thinks on the legality of the following:

• Moving the river by loading a scenario.
• Use of Map Editor to edit water/land RNG.
• Use of CPU cycles other than the GoG.com defaults.
• Runs on actual DOS that are faster than the emulated runs.

For the record, I wouldn't mind if moving the river is banned. I'd be happy to remove my runs and redo them! Anything that gets me playing more SimCity 2000 is fine by me!

So, long story short as a kid I remembered there being a way to use Phase door shopping to target which items you want to steal from shops, the problem was, you needed to have never left town. I thought it was something to do with the spell Rune of Return, since it positions you in the same space that you left on, but I couldn't figure out how to make time pass in the shop screen.

I was poking around today on some older forums, and discovered the rest of the trick: https://37911.activeboard.com/t2411657/cheating/?page=1

The gist is:

1. Phase door in the shops as normal.
2. Go back in and cast Rune of Return.
3. Move your pack to and from your belt until you receive the message that "you've been yanked" in a direction (works with any item and slot, this action is just the most optimal). Click OK.
4. You will notice you are still on the shop tile but out of the shop screen. Without moving your character, go into the inventory screen and collect all the items! Well okay, not all, that will crash the game and corrupt your save. Leave one!

This only works if you haven't entered the Dungeon, and likely is only useful in part 2 as Rune of Return is not a spell you can learn from level ups early on.

Here's a vod demonstrating it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150319055336/http://speeddemosarchive.com/MasterOfMagic.html

Okay, so this is a weird one, so here's a FAQ:

#Why these specific Emulation settings for DOS?

This game runs terribly on x86 computers from this era (1994), so the compromise I made was emulating it at speeds from later generation PCs (1997-1999) that would allow it to run similar to the Amgia CD32 version, which is probably the most well known version.

This at least makes it not an entirely awful experience to speedrun, and seems to be more inline with the developer's intent. There's never been an official release of this game on any modern store like Steam or GoG to look to, so the best I can do is assign an arbitrary CPU setting for runs.

I watched game play from the Amiga CD32 version and attempted to replicate the speed of that game in DOSBOX, which seems to be around 20,000 Cycles.

However, I know even authentic Amiga hardware had many revisions, much like x86 machines of the era, and many supported this game albeit at lower speeds. Likewise, running this on real era accurate x86 (DOS) hardware would also be at lower speeds than what you'd see with the accepted DOSBOX settings.

I'm not terribly sure how to handle this, all things considered. If we do ever have folks doing attempts on real hardware, I suppose we could break things down a bit to machine types, but I'm inclined to leave things simple. If someone manages to get this running on real hardware, it's an achievement in itself, but I suppose we could at least separate higher end x86 and the CD32 from the lower end Amiga and x86 hardware just to make it interesting.

Another thing I haven't done enough reading on is Amiga and CD32 emulation. Getting the most accurate experience isn't terribly high on the priorities list, but making sure that it's at least functional and not too different is something I want to do.

#Why are runs done on HARD? Simply put, it's the only difficulty setting with any challenge to it. If we have more folks interested in running on EASY, or there ends up being something interesting about the settings on different versions, things could be broken out.

#Are the streets in this game really that dangerous? No, no they are not.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions!

So believe it or not, I actually own consoles made in the past 15 years, but I've only owned a schmancy flat screen since 2016. I don't have a whole lot of experience with the HDMI standard.

I'd like to get an HDMI capture card eventually, but I'm a little daunted by this stupid HDCP stuff. The main console I'm interested in is the PS3, which seems to be the worst when it comes to this particular ill advised antipiracy measure.

So basically, I'm asking folks how they handle it. Do most folks bypass it by using component video? Splitters? Some other option my googling hasn't discovered?

I'd love to have a single solution for all of my HDMI consoles, but my reading makes this sound less than promising.

I recently picked up a copy of the Japanese only Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection, and found a way in the menu to make it arcade perfect.

Holding R1 over game options and pressing select allows access to a secret ROM version menu that contains the major Japanese releases, and a custom "star based" toggle that should allow access to literally all versions of the game you'd want. In my testing, it looks and feels perfectly arcade accurate when set to these modes.

There's reasons why you might not want to play on the PS2 version still though. There is a bit of input lag, maybe a few frames worth, compared to Fightcade and the PS3 with filters turned off, but it's manageable.

I'd like to see it allowed for the arcade category with the caveat that you have to show the game version settings being selected. I'm probably not going to use it because of the drawbacks, but it might get more folks playing the arcade modes, as it's the most widely available release by far, aside from Resurrection. We'd really only be talking about real hardware though. PS2 emulation is still woefully inaccurate as usual.

Here's some video of what I mean:

What do folks think?

As the title says, this is what makes them so easy. I discovered this during some testing on the program menu.

As such, the difficulty is inconsistent with the rest of the games. Should this be raised in the rules?

Not sure what the right call is, on the one hand, the game is kind of a joke at 2, but having to change settings might be difficult for some due to menu lanuage.

Since I'm the only one that has runs up now that @YoJoeGaming is banned, I'm fine with raising this to the level that the rest of the games are on (4) and redoing my runs. I'd volunteer to make a tutorial since I just figured it out anyways.

Like the title says, it might be be interesting.

Gold Lightan and PTX-40A are likely the only characters really capable of sub 10 times, so it might allow for some more varied strategies.

Hey @AquaBlake, currently the rules would seem to allow for some pretty extensive settings changes in D:NW.

For example, with rounds set to 1 and Damage set to Max, you avoid the 2nd round AI algorithm upgrade and can easily take advantage of the extra damage to:

1. Abuse attack priority and trick the AI into either killing itself on your attacks;
2. Or getting locked into a corner and not changing its algorithm in time to escape or defend.

While it makes for some interesting strategy and is certainly a lot shorter than a probably average run of 15-20 minutes (in my estimation), it might not be particularly fun to watch. Then again, comparatively, D:NW, isn't particularly flashy or fun to watch to begin with.

Here's a test video of what I mean:

There is one other novel property about the game as well that's built into the Arcade versions and PS1 port. Like Street Fighter II, you can have a second player interrupt an arcade match any time after you select a character, and if the player is defeated with a character you haven't yet faced, that character is eliminated from the list you have to face to get to Hutzil/Phobos and Pyron. This allows for a likely 8 to 10 minute run or lower, but it's pretty boring to watch.

Here's the video of what I'm talking about:

What are your feelings on these?

I personally think both of these are a bit cheap and uninteresting for a run, and shouldn't be allowed. You could make the case for the damage settings actually causing time loss in the later fights by making it easier for the bosses and some characters with very good AI (like Morrigan and Lord Raptor) to combo you into oblivion before you can get a move in edgewise.

That said, the AI in this one cheats rather extensively. Even on level 4, it uses frame perfect priority counters and executes specials without inputs for them (this actually leads to some moves being done under normally impossible circumstances on occasion).

Personally I think the difficulty should stay where it is though. While 4 is much more challenging than any other difficulty setting in the series, it makes for a very exciting watch and forces defensive play against a few of the characters, something not seen in any of the other games in the series.

One of my favorite items in Castle of the Winds is the distillation of water, a useless potion. You can drink them though, just like any other potion. It's just so absurd. I used to collect them in a chest as I played, just for fun.

I toyed around with suggesting just finding one and drinking it for a misc category, but that's too quick. They're pretty common, especially in Part 1, and it might be a bit more interesting to watch if there was more to it than getting lucky on the first level of the mines.

My idea would be finding 5 Distillations, then drinking them all, in either part 1 or part 2. The one rule is, they have to be identified BEFORE you drink, as it adds the need to identify somehow, and prevents people from just grabbing every potion they find and chugging them. That would be harder to verify, and probably a little less fun to watch.

Part 1 has more of a chance to drop them, but part 2 has the identify spell and the detect items spell available from the beginning both of which you can utilize to find them. Heck because map level scrolls reveal all items, refreshing levels that way might be the easiest way to find them in part 2.

I'm going to try a demo of it some time this week and I'll post it here, but let me know if it sounds interesting! With all the weirdness in this game, I bet there's at least another misc category that could be thought up...

Darkstalkers Resurrection is listed as supported format, but it only contains Night Warriors: Darkstalkers Revenge (the second game) and Vampire Savior (the third game).

I realized this after finding my PS1 copy and noticing Hsien-Ko wasn't an available character, and then looking it up.

I had a run up for this that I'm removing, but I just wanted to let you know @AquaBlake.

I submitted a run of Savior 2 and decided to check out the other run in this Category and noticed it was on Hunter. I know mechanically the game is the same, but I'm not sure about the AI since there's a very different set of characters. One might be on average faster to run than the other.

It might be interesting to test, so I'll try out a few more runs of both and post back if I find anything.

Can anyone point me to an example of it?

I think it's impossible due to the Fleet level. There isn't a way for humans to switch positions fast enough in the middle of the level at this speed. Thought maybe the invincibility twiddle would help, but it seems to follow the same rules as the rest of the game at this speed.

Once beyond fleet, it's all very doable, though Brainiac is very close to being impossible. Took me about 10 minutes and a lot of luck.

I'd love to be proven wrong though, maybe theres way I haven't tried.

The MoO2 version that's most widely used now from GoG.com/Steam is actually a fan made bug fix patched version, but some of the bugs it fixes are rather useful to speedrunners, and there are pretty significant rule changes in version 1.3 and above.

If you still have the game CD (and the ability to run it), you can get the official patches for the base 1.1 version from Archive.org:

MoO2 v1.2 patch https://archive.org/details/moo2v12

MoO2 v1.3 patch https://archive.org/details/MOO2V13

MoO2 v1.31 patch https://archive.org/details/MOO2V131

Put the installer in the same folder as the game install and double click. Press "y" to run it.

Version 1.2 is probably the most useful. It's more stable on modern OSes than 1.1, and you have access to the 6 point Creative race pick and pre-nerf Gyro Destabilizers, which are useful for fast Guardian kills and Antarian kills. The Guardian and Antarians are both much weaker in this version generally. This version also seem to improve the function of the Auto Battle Hotkey "z". It's faster and doesn't cause as many graphical glitches.

Version 1.3 contains some interesting AI changes. They're much more aggressive than in the fan patch, but they're also a lot stupider. I'd always wondered if it was possible to just get lucky and be elected Emperor in the first few turns, and I'd guess it might be possible on this version. This is also the first version with all modern Hotkeys available.

Version 1.31 is probably not terribly interesting to speedrunners. It does fix the AI bugs from 1.3 however.

...and I don't think it should be.

I think perhaps there needs to be a no multiplayer provision in the rules.