I'm thinking about trying to beat my old record but...there's a catch. The latest patch, that removed Denuvo, also caused intermittent stuttering. I assume it's down to specific hardware configurations as I've not been able to work out exactly what causes it but I've seen others post about them before in various places. It's rendered completely unplayable, they're not small stutters, the whole game can lock up for upwards of half a second. So far the only solution I can find is to revert to the older executable from before Denuvo was removed. I'm wondering if doing so would affect my eligibility to submit new times? I know my old pre-patch times are still there and I'm not even sure anyone would even be able to tell but I'd rather be safe than sorry before I pour hours into trying to improve my time.

RIP run. Without it there's simply no way for the mods to verify you're not running uncapped.

It's not tied to the framerate.

Could be an intermittent / semi-random issue. If it can be replicated, even only for select individuals, it might be worth bringing to Sony's attention.

Well...the only thing I can think of that costumes will realistically affect is framerate. Specifically the '98 costumes because they're of a significantly lower polycount than the others.

Okay...that was pretty funny!

I've only run Hunk but I've not seen any difference in stair skating between the different weapons. If there is one it's absolutely miniscule.

You're obviously not going to do the work to prove they do either so you're correct; the discussion is absolutely pointless.

Because

1. You have yet to provide any evidence that the current mods for RE2 are doing anything wrong or cause any issues.
2. RaW had issues not because it was a mod but because it used a dirty hack that never should've been used.
3. The methods used to modify RE2 aren't remotely similar.

Well, as already cited, the Roses & Wine music mod for FF8 totally screwed up that speedrun, and that's just supposed to be a music swap.

Except it isn't a proper swap and the reason it breaks the run is well known and has nothing to do with replacing music in itself and everything to do with HOW it replaces the music.

It is now allowed to use the ps1 quality audiofiles under Resources. The reason why those files are allowed, while RaW is not, is the way RaW works: RaW mod does NOT replace the audiofiles, but it disables them, resulting in audio related triggers happening early (as can be seen in Laguna Dream #1). Replacing the files directly with the suggested audio package will make every trigger work properly.

Settings and framerate should be locked once the run has started (with the possible exception of 120 boss fights to keep it accessible as possible). It just becomes a mess otherwise. As for having a low FPS category...why? Who is going to subject themselves to the torture of doing a full run at 10FPS? Seems less like a test of skill and more like a test of will to not throw up.

Except it was 100% allowed and within the terms of use of the game at the time. So you'd ... any thought. If it's supported in the game, by default, is it cheating? No, it's not.

Again, macros and cheats are NOT mods. DO NOT conflate them. They are NOT the same thing and painting them as such is disingenuous and leads me to believe that you are not arguing in good faith. And yes...cheating is cheating. We don't call cheats for singleplayer games "mods" just because they're allowed there, do we? No, we call them cheats, because they are cheats.

Prove that character swaps and whatnot don't negatively impact the game as a speedrun

...and how would you have me go about do that? What exactly would be the standard of evidence that you would hold such a claim to? Furthermore, how are you supposed to prove a negative? You're the ones making the claim here; that purely visual mods would negatively impact speedrunning, which goes against all conventional wisdom on the matter, which states that if they are purely visual then (within reason) they confer no advantage. Seems to me that the burden of proof, if there is one, falls upon you guys to prove that they do negatively impact speedrunning, a claim which, if true, would be infinitely easier to prove since you would only need to find a single way in which it negatively impacts speedrunning. Conversely someone attempting to prove the opposite would need to scour literally every bit of memory in order to gain evidence of absence instead of an absence of evidence.

Now imagine going to a competitive gaming event and you make it to the final round...only you're told not only that you need to provide your own PC and copy of the game but also that you'll be trusted that you haven't made any modifications, let alone nefarious ones, something which the referees cannot realistically verify with absolute certainty because, despite being in a venue, they don't have physical access to your machine.

I respect the rule. Ultimately it's the mod's perogatives...I just don't agree that it's necessary when there's already a rule against cheating. The two things are totally different kettles of fish. One is certainly an issue, the other I disagree poses an issue.

Meanwhile, I've been playing WoW for a decade and a half and distinctly remember entire gameplay systems being redesigned because ingame macros and mods were trivializing gameplay and putting unnecessary stress on the servers. I also distinctly remember crashing Morrowind and Oblivion with mods, and those games support them.

Macros are not mods. Cheats are not mods. People who are "trivializing gameplay" are not playing with mods, they are cheating. There is a colossal difference. And crashing isn't an "unknown side effect" either, nor should it impact whether or not someone's run should be accepted. That is the kind of troubleshooting you sign up for when you install mods. This is nothing new and has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not benign visual mods should be permitted.

As for the argument in favor of bucking the status quo, I'm against that. The assumption that everyone is running an unmodified game hasn't steered the community wrong yet, and I don't see any valid reason to start allowing mods just because one person wants them.

Oh please. Lets not act like it's just me. I might be the only one here fighting my corner right now but it's not like the topic has never come up before.

so I'm not sure why you think that this is at all related to the advancement of humanity.

I don't, the point was that "Its how it has always been" is damn awful argument that has been made many times and it gets shot down every time for the simple reason that it's an awful argument.

Modding is not just about streaming. What if I want to run a mod that makes the classic Claire costume closer to the original. That isn't something I'd install "for a stream"...or "for fun" That'd be a permanent install and a necessary mod in my eyes. Not allowing copyrighted music I can totally understand for reasons I already stated.

In all my years creating, installing and playing with mods I have never seen one cause "unknown side effects". When there are issues they're not unknown and usually fairly self explanitory. Regardless the mods here are not responsible. That is down to the user to report the issue to the creator of the mod...not you. You shouldn't need to be hunting for anything at all. Either you don't see any issues with the run and you verify it or you do see issues and you reject it. Whether or not those issues are caused by somesuch mod is not something you need to worry about. Again, that's down to the user and creator to work out.

"It's how it has always been and everyone has always been fine with it therefore it shall always be" isn't really a great argument. We wouldn't progress very far as a species if we subscribed to that school of thought...and again...I really don't see how replacing Leon with Chris does anything whatsoever to compromise "a fair and enjoyable environment" and thusfar nobody has actually come forward with a logical explaination of how it would do that. If it doesn't compromise that then I see no good reason to maintain the ban on such mods. It's really as simple as that.

That's not what I said. If I submit an actual Tofu run done in Tofu with Leon's model replaced you wouldn't know I had broken the rule, even though I technically had. Like I said, unless you find some kind of way of doing file verification you can't enforce it properly. You can enforce a rule about not replacing models in that specific category but that's about it...and why bother? It's not hard to have a "common sense / verifiers discretion" rule. Like you said it'd be obvious if it weren't actually done in Tofu Survivor. Besides which, what advantage would swapping models / installing modded ones actually give you? About the only thing I can think of is making the enemies glow in the dark...but that'd be kind of obvious...

You can't realistically enforce the policy. For example I could replace Leon, Claire, Ada etc with Tofu's model. I could then submit a Tofu run and you would never know I had broken the rule. The only way for you to verify it is to see it in the video and in that scenario it would not be apparent. You effectively have an arbitrary rule that you cannot enforce properly. You could say "well someone will replace them with low poly models in order to gain a framerate advantage"...and yeah...they probably would...so should we be banning people from using the '98 costumes? On PC we currently have a mixed 60/120 leaderboard filled with people with varying system specs. Some people are playing on 16:9 monitors, some people are playing on 21:9 monitors. I bet someone, somewhere, is playing on a 4:3 monitor. Some people are playing at 1080p, some are playing at 1440p. On the console side with have a mixed leaderboard with the enhanced consoles that can mostly hold 60FPS...and the base consoles that really can't. The "exactly the same conditions" ship sailed a little while ago. Not to mention that I fail to see how swapping out a character model would impact those conditions in any meaningful way; thus why we allow the costume swaps and don't force everyone to run the same costume.

Even if the policy is relaxed I highly doubt "X Gon' Give It To Ya" is ever going to be permitted. Unlike a model using copyrighted music is liable to get the VoD audio muted and / or taken down entirely. It becomes rather difficult to verify that the run was legit, or even happened at all, at a later date if the video doesn't exist anymore. I completely understand why that specifically is called out and would not be allowed.

Well...sure...but you're already trusting people not to cheat and I just don't see how denying people the ability to replace a character model helps you in any way verify that they're not cheating in their runs. It's not like you can enforce file verification to ensure people are running vanilla files and aren't tampering with them in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

I personally think there should be a "use common sense" approach rather than a hardline stance against all mods. Obviously anything that confers an advantage, makes it difficult to confirm the run is legitimate or is likely to get the run video stricken from the platform it's hosted on shouldn't be allowed but I'm not sure I understand the problem with someone swapping Leon's model with Chris's.

I think they should be split, however I think that 60FPS should be the main, simply because of the effect framerate has on the knife.