New South Wales, Australia
SupporterI assume this means you had no problem with my runs. I will do my best to support this board. Expect to see a few bells and whistles added over the coming days (I like to theme my boards).
Cheers :)
Hey guys I made a few IL submissions just recently and am a little concerned.
The rules didn't specify any Cycles requirements so I set DosBox to max cycles for my run. The game seemed to run reasonably fine, it felt as fast as I remembered back when I used to play it on a 486.
I managed to complete all IL's up to Misty, however doing my Red Heat and Into the Sun runs ... I got them flawless, just as @OuaisMaisNan did, but I somehow gained a rather large amount of time in comparison to his runs (around 7 seconds or so). Way more than I would have expected since there were no mistakes in either run.
After going back and watching @OuaisMaisNan 's runs I noticed his seemed to lag a little bit in places, which may explain it. It feels unfair to gain such large amount of time due to a Cycles advantage, but on the other hand .. I don't think this game should run with any lag.
I'm not sure how you wish to proceed with verification, please let me know if this is an issue. If you think it is unfair then feel free to reject, but if that is the case please specify the correct DosBox cycles to run at in the rules.
As far as I can tell though, max cycles looks like it reasonably represents real hardware..
Yea the only other option would be to make them Main Categories, but for Sonic Mania Plus .. leaderboards are already separated by Character, so you would have like 10 main categories ... very messy :( .
Took a look at his board, I think what he is referring to is that the IL page does not automatically list Subcategories on the main page until you click on a specific IL.
I actually agree here, it would be a nice feature - if a subcategory is applicable to every single IL then it would be nice to be able to toggle it on the main page and see all IL's with a specific Subcategory value (ie. in this case, be able to see ALL Encore runs at once).
Hey dude, I sent you a DM on Discord but you havent responded. I'll ask again here just incase you're not really a Discord user.
I realize it's not listed in the rules but I was wondering if there is any restriction to the amount of cycles we can set DosBox to. So far I have been running at 10000 which seems reasonable, but I think my loading screens are still slower than yours. I tried messing with the cycles a bit and it seems like cycles do affect the loading screens. 30000 cycles seems to match the kind of loading screens you are getting.
I don't think the cycles affect any other gameplay elements, so setting them to a theoretical maximum should mean there would be no need for "extra verification rules" which would be nice.
To be clear, I'm not disputing your runs in any way .. I just want to make sure I am playing on the same field .. so to speak.
The differences do seem very small, but I think we can both agree that this run has a lot to do with small incremental time-saves and fine optimizations.
Let me know what you think I should do, I am curious to what Cycles you are running at.
2 hr's 11 min in Lone Echo (VR game) on my first attempt.
Feel free to join. Anyone is welcome.
@6oliath .. well thing is the only thing the submission form says is "Additional Notes" .. not "Why should we add this game?".
So it's not exactly self explanitory. The form already asks for a link to proof of it being a legit game and your own run would be there for them to see .. I wasn't sure what to really "add" to that. Nothing anywhere said that I had to also on top of that, "sell the game" as well.
I only clued into it from reading the forums and seeing a few comments by mods talking about the notes section. That and also the realisation about how much generic flash games they get submitted daily despite the warning on the game request rules determining them as unnacceptable.
Not sure how much this helps .. may have just been luck.
I submitted a game and didnt put anything meaningful in the Notes (thought that a simple click on the wiki link would be enough). It sat for about 2 weeks with no approval...
I decided to pull it and re-submit, this time I put a fully fledged description in the Notes box explaining what the game is, when it was released and that it was a legitimately purchasable game from shelves in the 90's .. etc.
It was approved the next day.
Might not be anything special .. but maybe just having a proper description in the notes box is enough to make things easier on the moderators.
Yea, I somehow missed that in OP. Thanks for making it clearer.
If you purchase the GOG version of the game, chances are 99% of the time it will be the same DOS version of the game with a "DosBox Launcher". However you could easily take this download, put it in any folder and mount that folder in regular DosBox and run it the same way. A nice way to easily and legitimately obtain many of these older classics.
The only thing you have to be aware of for speedrunning is that whatever incarnation of DosBox you are running (either from the GOG Launcher or from your own DosBox) that it adheres to the rules of whatever game you are running. It is very possible and likely that the speedrun rules for the game will require specific Cycles/CPU emulation settings be set within DosBox to ensure that you are running the game at the same speed as everyone else. This can be done by editing the Launcher config files with the GOG launcher, or set from within DosBox itself if you are running it from a DosBox prompt.
Just make sure to double check the rules for the game, if in doubt ask one of the games moderators.
Consider creating Categories for each platform in my opinion. A good example is how the Mortal Kombat leaderboards are set up: https://www.speedrun.com/mk1 . Each difficulty can be set up as a variable marked as Sub-category. And each platform can have its own specific rules, so you could say Genesis: No Cutscene Skips, but MS-DOS: Cinematics Off is allowed.
If you need help setting it up this way I can do it for you, provided you are willing to make me a moderator. That's up to you, no pressure. Feel free to take a look at any of the boards I moderate, (Virtua Fighter Series, OMF 2097,Rise 2, Mk1). I have put a fair bit of effort into them.
The differences in each platform are just too great with this game. I watched a full playthrough of the MS-DOS version and it looks like you actually have to beat everyone twice before facing the supervisor. Which means that a playthrough of any of the Dos versions is going to take way longer than all other versions.
I really want to have a run up of the DOS version specifically since that's what I played (and was dissapointed by) years ago as a kid, so its the one I have the most connection to. I think for the MS-DOS version it should be allowed to turn Cinematics Off in the options so that there will be no difference between the Floppy/CD Version.
But if it must be forced on, then I also have to ask what counts as a "cinematic skip". Because on PC, the animations of the robot plays, and then a "text log readout" happens which is skippable the moment a "system ready" message appears. Would I be allowed to press the attack button at this time to skip the rest of the readout? or Does that count as part of the cinematic and I should not press anything during that time?
In any case, at this point in time I am still practicing beating the AI and dont really have all my strats ready .. so there is plenty of time to get this sorted before I attempt a run.
Also PS, I sent you a friend request in Discord if you want to talk about it in private..
Hi, I am thinking of running this game (no idea why lol).
But I have to bring up a concern about the no cutscene skips rule.
Firstly, I find it somewhat un-orthodox .. most speedruns both allow and encourage finding ways to skip cinematics as fast as possible.
Secondly, and more importantly, I plan to run the MS-DOS version. There is both a Floppy Disk version and CD version of the MS-DOS game. The Floppy Disk version actually has "some" cutscenes removed, most notably for a speedrun is the "death animations" which would play upon defeating each bot. Which would mean that only the floppy disk version would be optimal for a speedrun, which is wierd.
I don't know how this effects Genesis/Snes runs, but you may have to consider making separate categories for the MS-DOS versions as they appear to play fairly differently and the cinematics are wildly different.
On a completely separate note, I don't know if you are interested or not, but I got the leaderboard up for the sequel "Rise 2: Resurrection" which I am also speedrunning.
@Ihavenoname248 A fair point given the recent alerts debacle a couple months ago, though I believe the alerts have been fixed now (at least for me).
I see I somewhat misunderstood what you meant.. sorry about that. I thought you meant all of their runs were faster, and real hardware was slower. In any case, hope you get in contact with them to sort it out.
This is something you should talk directly to the moderator of those games about. You should post on the Forum's section of those specific games. Zen_Aku95, the moderator of those games does appear to be active (having made a post not only 9 hours ago). If you posted in those forum's he would receive an alert notifying him.. and surely you could plead your case.
I can't speak for their reasoning for running that way. It is unfortunate that they don't seemed to have considered DosBox accuracy when running, however it is up to each respective community to decide on their own standards and rules. They may have simply decided to run on default DosBox settings simply because it would be the most "Accessible" and easy to get into. Sure, it's not accurate .. but as long as everyone is on the same playing field maybe they didn't consider it an issue..
I'm not a fan of amending times based on hypothetical adjustments, I doubt that it would be a favorable solution. If they do want to adjust the rules to support real hardware accuracy, then all of the current standing runs would probably have to be invalidated and they start again from scratch (it is a pretty small community though .. so maybe they might not mind). Alternatively, DosBox/Real Hardware runs could be separated into separate categories .. I dont know.
Overall you really just need to communicate this to them directly on their forums and see what they want to do..
+1 .. both Vive and Rift platform options should be added.
You could probably submit it as is and pick PS4. Just put a note in the comments part of your submission asking for Rift/Vive platform support. They should be able to add it and edit the submission for you.
Hi guys,
I don't know how we missed you for 2 months, but I feel the need to let you know about our VR Speedrunning Discord.
You can find it here: https://discord.gg/xMgdhnM
The game was released just a few days ago on PC so if you wouldn't mind adding Vive/Rift platforms to the leaderboard it would be pretty nice. ;)
+1 for this feature. It has been a little frustrating to create the same single variable over and over again for each specific level where it applies.
