Potentually buggy/inconsistent ingame timer?
9 months ago
Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Hi,

So, am i correct that runs so far use the ingame timer to rank/set times for the leaderboards?

I planned to submit some runs myself* , however i noticed that my ingame times and the respective timestamps in the video dont match up.

For example here:

The run starts at second 0:22 and ends at 3:51 making it a time of 3:29. But the ingame timer shows a 2:43.2.

A similar behaviour can be seen an the video of the current wr by Nightbarrel:

Here the run starts at second 0:11 and ends at 3:22 making it a 3:11 (ingame: 2:59.5).

So while my ingame time is better, my video time is worse. So is it safe to assume that the ingame timer is inconsistent?

Is there a posibility that i setup my game wrong (difficulty setting etc.) ?

The video unfortunately doesnt show it but here's a photo:

So far i guess that the timer might inconsistent between different hardware plattforms. I might need to investigate further?

I've got the game on: psn(ps3, psvita), PC(german disk, download from this discord server: https://discord.com/invite/WfE3Dvd)

Has anyone else an idea what could be the cause of this?

kind regards,

keksilu

  • I already did submit a time for ice crusher. @Nightbarrel Feel free to deny that time or change the time based on the video.
GreatBlakes and RaGeNyC like this
New York City, NY, USA

I've seen differences between in-game and real time on other games, too. No big deal. Whatever the in-game time is, that's what you go with...Everyone is equal. If someone's real time was competing with another person's in-game time, then there'd be a problem.

Keksilu likes this
Baden-Württemberg, Germany

So i asked around further since making this post. And it seems there are time differences between PAL and American versions of the game.

@RaGeNyC My problem isn't neccessarily that real and ingame timers are different. My problem is that the ingame timers of different versions of the game are inconsistent/different to each other.

For example my time on Ice Crusher would not be the top 1 if i would have played on the american version of the game.

Since it seems possible to just download the game (Pal version i think) it may be viable to keep things as they are. (but to me using the real time might be more fair. But i also understand that this would mean work to retime runs and might not be worth it given how 'not active' the category is)

It might also be possible that the gameplay/physics of the game are different between versions. But i would need to investigate further.

The guys in the discord server i linked also have their own website with timed records

ps. thx RaGeNyC for actively moderating

RaGeNyC likes this
New York City, NY, USA

@Keksilu now that's something I'm concerned with, since I'm all about having an even playfield. It seems weird that a PAL version of a game would be better, since it runs at 50hz, but there it is! Nightbarrel's 11 second difference seems typical (in-game clocks never match up) , but your 46 second difference is pretty crazy.

For someone that's using console, switching to the PAL rom isn't an option (I have a PS1 emulator and roms, but I prefer using console). I'm sure others will come along in the future using console too, so it needs to be fair for console users. RT for platformers, yea, but I'm not into it for racing games, where milliseconds could make the difference with IGT--Pressing buttons quicker than someone else to move on to the next screen for RT could easily take away the "millisecond factor" , so I'd like to stick with IGT.

Maybe the only way to go, is to keep PAL and NTSC split on the scoreboard.

New York City, NY, USA

Hmm, hertz differences probably aren't even a thing on PS Vita. Your time difference reminds me of the difference between 'Jet Moto 2' and 'Jet Moto 2 Championship Edition'....They have the 2 games separate, since JM2 runs at 30fps and JM2CE runs at 60 fps. The frame difference make CE run much faster. Could you be using a version of JM that's running at 60fps?

Edited by the author 6 months ago
New York City, NY, USA

I checked out the other players submissions. Everyone else is under 15 seconds difference between RT and IGT. Since this occured on both your PC and Vita, it has to be a region difference (as mentioned, most likely a FPS difference). I'm going to move your Ice Breaker score to the duplicate track for PAL.

Edited by the author 6 months ago
Baden-Württemberg, Germany

So i've checked fps of my PC-version using nvidias overlay counter. It shows 30 pfs ingame (and about a 1000 in menus but that should not matter)

New York City, NY, USA

Hmm. There's definitely something going on between regions though.

Virginia, USA

Hey there. I'm the leaderboard mod for JM2CE and I just stumbled across this thread since I was looking at stuff about JM1. The accuracy of the IGT is something I was a bit concerned about and wanted to look into since I've started running vanilla JM2 on the PS5 release and was wondering whether or not that version running much smoother with way less lag could affect the IGT somehow (I know that's something that happens with the Time Trial timer in Crash Bandicoot 3, for example; older PS1's have the advantage in TT's because they lag more and cause the timer to slow down). I haven't looked into it yet, but one of my viewers did mention the possibility of PAL being faster because of the slower IGT, and it looks like this thread confirms that.

Thankfully, 2CE only has a North American release (to my knowledge) so that's not a worry, but I think the NTSC/PAL split was a good idea here (and might be a good idea for the other games in the series that aren't 2CE).

Regarding IGT vs. RTA, I've always preferred the latter, but IGT has always been the norm for this series and I didn't feel the need to change it when I became the mod of the 2CE board. If the IGT appears to be more or less consistent across all of the NTSC runs then I guess there's no need to change it; my concern would be inaccuracy and unfairness, but switching to RTA opens up the can of worms that is Fast Disc Speed giving PS2's an advantage on loads, and there's no gameplay outside of races besides menuing, so I think IGT is fine as long as it's accurate and unaffected by lag (which it appears to be). I'll probably take a look at vanilla JM2's IGT on PS1 vs. PS5 but I'd assume it's probably the same on each.

Also, quick note on the difference between JM2 and JM2CE. They both cap at 30 FPS, iirc, it's just that JM2 never consistently hits it because the PS1 can't handle that many things on screen at once. The PS5 release of JM2 notably runs way smoother and at a consistent 30 since the PS5 can handle it.

JM2CE consistently runs at 30 FPS because they dropped the racer count from 10 to 4, but the reason it's so much faster than JM2 is because they cranked the shit out of the top speed for every racer lol. You can see it in my PB where the odometer shows my speed constantly above 100, which isn't the case in vanilla JM2.

Just wanted to clear that up, since I saw mention that JM2 runs at 30 and JM2CE at 60, which isn't true.

RaGeNyC likes this
New York City, NY, USA

Yea, NTSC and PAL differences are scattered around on SRC, some split, some not. It sucks having to split them, but, like you, I like an even playfield.

I had heard it was 60fps and believed it, since those bikes can really move. So, 30fps with cranked up speed...nice. That extra speed actually makes some of the twisty tracks harder for me. It's like, wayyyy too much speed lol. I guess the more you play it, the more you get used to the speed. I'm used to JM2. Just started messing around with CE maybe a year ago.

Thanks for the heads up on the fps.

Riko likes this
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