I posted it more so mainly to educate if anything. There's always an influx of thoughts, hysteria and reactions on Twitter after something "big" happens within the retro community. I saw various moderators post claiming all "Retroarch runs would be rejected" and encouraged others to use OpenEMU using the exact same cores instead. Using OpenEMU (with FCEUX core) would be literally exactly the same as using Retroarch with the same cores. I saw two random Tweets from people within this community wondering whether or not they could continue running Batman because they happened to use Retroarch prior to that cheater cheating, among other stuff.

Amazingly, not a lot of people seemed to be aware of Retroarch before this.

As I posted in your thread, it's not like it's some over-glorified secret cheating machine. It's just a frontend like MAME and supports many different emulators. If you do want to run something on emulator, I'd ironically even encourage Retroarch over the standalones. The GUI is a bit of a jerk to figure out, but in terms of save states among other things, it has all kinds of options which are much better than the standalone clients generally offer. Hopefully this post helped educate. That's all.

Hi.

Maybe some people heard some news about Duck Tales 2 runs yesterday being removed because someone was using a frontend (emulator) known as Retroarch.

The original post can be found here:

https://www.speedrun.com/dt2/thread/fx85w/1#pjbav

The thing is, Retroarch itself does nothing as it's just a frontend people can use like MAME to have access to multiple emulators ("cores") without having to download all the standalone variants individually. It's basically a frontend where if you want to use the same program to emulate Game Boy games and then play PS1 right after, you can. As I posted in the original thread, by Garadas, who even tested himself, there's no difference timing-wise between using FCEUX (as a core, via Retroarch) and FCEUX through another emulator that offers it as a core (like Bizhawk) or just simply using FCEUX as a standalone emulator. Provided all the cores reference the same release version, timing will always be the same between all versions.

In other words, if you download Retroarch, don't touch any settings, and load the same core, you'll have the exact same experience again as downloading FCEUX as a standalone emulator (provided again the versions are the same). The problem isn't with Retroach emulation per se, but the fact what you can do with Retroarch externally as a program by itself. Retroarch AS A FRONTEND has lots of different options and settings you can mess with to eliminate/reduce things like lag in-game by adding extra sprites, changing the frame rate and such across the various cores it supports.

Banning Retroarch as some kind of universal solution is nonsensical because the only way you could "cheat" with Retroarch is if by default you change those various settings within the program to begin with. The only way someone would be able to discernibly tell a difference between someone using FCEUX as a core via Retroarch and FCEUX by itself as a standalone emulator, is literally if they start to cheat (or alter those various settings) and lag inconsistencies arise like they did in Duck Tales 2 that can't be replicated on a real console / even between other emulators. There's literally no other way to tell someone is using FCEUX via Retroarch or just FCEUX by itself.

So, from this point forward the moderators accepting emulator runs on this board will check for things like in-game lag where it's known to lag to ensure no one is messing with any frontend program that can change those settings to minimize or reduce it, instead of senselessly banning something with no knowledge behind how it actually functions as a whole. My advice to other moderators on other boards is to treat this recent revelation on a game by game basis as well.

On a personal note: I used to use Retroarch to run TMNT2 sometimes before I had an original setup. Now, I have a real brick console, RetroUSB AVS and sometimes back then used Retroarch anyway (with the same FCEUX core) to run TMNT2. My only reasoning was the brick controller sucked, I have man hands and TMNT2 bothered them until I got used to it switching over to a real setup. In TMNT2, lag frames that existed on fat brick console, which also existed on AVS, also existed on Retroarch (via FCEUX). There's no way lag frames "accidentally" disappear with Retroarch unless you're intentionally altering those settings to make them disappear to begin with.

Feel free to post any thoughts or questions.

Yeah, there's literally no difference, and should be no difference, so I'm glad you checked. Retroarch isn't some undiscovered cheating tool or anything like that. It has many, many options to reduce things like lag frames, or adding extra sprites that could be used in the wrong way, among other things, but default, out of the box, it's just basically an emulator that is like MAME that supports many different emulators ("cores") / consoles and is more convenient than downloading 20 different standalone emulators. If you download a core, and touch nothing for settings, it's exactly the same as using the standalone emulator variant.

Download Retroarch, download FCEUX (core) and do the same test and you'll have the same result (pretty sure, promise you) as FCEUX run through Bizhawk. Retroarch does nothing as a frontend and there should be no difference using FCEUX as a core compared to FCEUX as a standalone emulator unless you adjust various settings from within Retroarch's menu itself.

Retroarch, if anything is incredibly good at reproducing stuff like lag frames, etc. I used to use it to run TMNT2 sometimes, also using the FCEUX core. Half of my submitted runs on that game are on a RetroUSB AVS, the other half on Retroarch via FCEUX core as Nestopia ironically doesn't run it (and emulator runs were marked as emulator). Anyway, everywhere the game lagged on console, also lagged on emulator via Retroarch & FCEUX. It was the only game I sometimes ran on emulator despite having a console setup because at the time the brick controller + that game in particular was uncomfortable.

Also, don't mean to make this sound bad at you or anything @Omkommersind, but this should be a truthful response.

Hey all.

I'm posting this in a more open place as a while ago both made a community Discord server for both Wild Guns: Reloaded and the SNES version. I also requested the boards for Reloaded. From the Reloaded since of things, a decent amount of people have joined, so SNES folk, know it's here in general if there's any interest to you:

https://discord.gg/sRSXQGg :)

Yo. :)

This game has seen some new runners recently and the times have been pushed down appropriately. In the time this board was created, there was multiplayer categories for 2P, 3P and 4P that have gone totally unused. I removed these categories (for now) to prevent there from being tons of categories where no one is running anything. Sadly, and very SADLY, this game lacks online co-op, so local co-op between 2P - 4P is probably going to be quite rare. I'll add probably a co-op category again and just place them under miscellaneous for now until runs are submitted.

The old category ("Any%") saw some evolutionary growth which was cool to see from the run standpoint. A few players started noticing the potential within Doris in particular, and quite frankly, Doris is a monster truck. xD What she can currently do is unparalleled compared to all the other characters, and the current record video (20:25 by ArcTheLadder) shows her potential. I wondered at the time about making this board if characters should be separated instead of grouped together, but yeah, reaffirmation was there to separate after the run that was submitted today.

I think over time as people optimize character-specific routes or strategies it'll be impossible if they're all grouped within the same category to remain competitive for the characters themselves. It's quite possible (let's pretend this Doris run was perfect, for example) at 20:XX, that Annie having an equally perfect run might clock in at 22:XX at best. So, to encourage individual character routes, individual character growth and individual character strategies, I separated the characters into their own separate categories today in hopes that it allows other character use and growth and avoids people being forced into just using Doris when running this game. Hopefully over time as people continue to use certain characters, the individual routes continue to become optimized.

As an addendum, some rule revisions were added:

• No changing characters throughout the run, obviously. You can't Doris through a run then switch to Annie at the very end and submit the run under Annie's category.
• "Beginner Mode" is banned on the Switch version. Beginner Mode grants the player infinite lives.

Community Discord for both Reloaded and the SNES versions can be found here: https://discord.gg/fJMrrQP

SNES boards: https://www.speedrun.com/Wild_Guns

(I'd encourage anyone on Reloaded to try out the SNES OG.) :)

Thanks for reading. =)

Any questions or feedback let me know.

And on a last foot note: I manually adjusted everyone's runs into the proper categories to reflect the above changes. I SHOULDN'T have broken anything, but if you notice something is wrong with your own run (filed under the wrong difficulty or something), please also let me know.

Ok bye. 👋🚪 ^

@kirkq,

Feel free to close the thread now.

The original intent of it derailed and hopefully everyone involved can learn from this and in the future better deal with how issues are handled internally.

I feel it would be absolutely pointless to post anything else beyond this here now.

Hi @ViruseReturns,

Seems you deleted your reply, but thanks for chiming in and claiming you were "V". Funny thing is the only two people who should of known that were site staff and Garadas, and technically, I didn't even tell Garadas. I just said it was probably V or R and I never gave him any names.

So... how did you know that about Garadas then? 🤔 You're not site staff.

I guess it makes more sense to go back and assume it was someone behind a new / fake / anonymous account that reported this to him, you're right. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Subjective.

I could very well likely link something from even last year where the same trio were (probably) involved again in low key harassment to us. I think this situation is unique in the sense, again, it wasn't a poor "decision" or an "honest mistake" from someone holding a position of power on this website. Someone who holds the position of staff here, intentionally abused their power in listening to some very stupid and socially impaired friends of his and and chose to forward something that should have never been forwarded or acted on, and in turn, created a public mess that should of never existed in the first place.

I think public accountability is extremely important, which is something I would have inquired about further before someone deleted all my responses without any consideration or forewarning.

How they choose to deal with this situation publicly going forward sets a precedent in itself for how the public can expect to be treated when being actually mistreated by a staff member in the future (which shouldn't ever happen, but it did here) intentionally, or in this case, through the extension of problematic individuals the staff member himself associates heavily with and enjoys the company of and associates with frequently on a personal level.

I don't particularly care if this is awkward to bring up. What's awkward is being on the end of low key harassment and having the staff passthrough protected knowing he was just as involved and guilty as the people who had the idea to bother me / us again in the first place (which this isn't the first time).

There's absolutely no coincidence he was complained privately to and approached by those group of people at that. None.

To imply that the content moderator doesn't know the people involved would be like saying ice cream has never met chocolate before.

So, my only very public question to you would be: in which way will Garadas be reprimanded for his actions?

I agree that throwing people under the bus is generally undesirable, but this is not the case.

It's not the case he "made a mistake" or simply a "bad decision".

If you dig deep he personally knows these people (and knows of us), and this was intentional to displace us and cause annoyance by personally choosing to listen to them.

I hope so.

I'd like to draw particular attention to maybe restructuring how accepting complaints are dealt with in the future to avoid these situations in the future; as realistically, if Garadas didn't block me and he did have that particular setting on Twitch enabled, that's basically the nail in the coffin at this point as realistically it means the people who complained personally to him follow him directly already and this was all extremely premeditated against us to begin with.

Yeah, I agree with letting it die, but there's honestly a lot to still be desired here from the Speedrun aspect and how it was handled.

Very summarized:

• Content moderator Garadas chose to forward a "complaint" made to him in private that had zero validity and someone else above him acted on it. The problem with this situation is the people that made the complaint are very socially impaired people (probably named) R or V and Garadas is heavily involved with in terms of being friends with both of them. They complained in hopes we'd get demodded, which happened, but once people kind of figured out what happened it sort of blew up back in their faces.
• No one contacted Kat or I despite the complaint being centralized about us both.
• The other moderators that were contacted instead were given a very generic excuse justifying and explaining nothing: "This was a Speedrun.com administrative decision" and were extremely confused as to what I did or why we were even targeted, and why action even took place.
• Afterward, no one was able to explain what precisely the complaint entailed.
• My posts were deleted about this earlier today, despite there nothing being offensive or anything like that being written in them. It showed from beginning to end the process of a resolution taking place and another staff member actively listening and addressing the problem.
• Prior to that, one of the site admins reverted all moderation changes made to that board, which we're thankful for, as no changes should have ever been made to begin with.

Things left/random thoughts from a public aspect:

• In the future to prevent abuse of power like this, maybe setup a place on the website where people can submit complaints, so they can be queued randomly and dispersed to different content moderators to address. Accepting complaints privately opens up the doors to this kind of personalized abuse to happen.
• No one should remain anonymous in this situation. It wasn't an accident and Garadas should have his integrity and role on this website openly and publicly questioned. I honestly don't even really know Garadas, but sadly he chooses to involve himself with some very stupid people within NES retro who equally hold a lot of power on this website and like to act in the shadows. If I chose not to speak up or question anything, he would have gotten away with this / they would have gotten away with this.
• Hopefully in the future any complaints from the people with names V or R are heavily considered to be construed or falsified like they were in my case are heavily scrutinized and examined thoroughly before ever being acted on. It would be worth going back if there's logs both also involving complaints directly from them to Garadas to examine what happened in the past and if those actions were even justified, because I'm sure I'm not the only one they've ever targeted.
• Obviously contact the people who the complaint was directly made about. There was absolutely no reason for Garadas to ever contact the other moderators instead of us.
• Likewise in that same line of thought, give non-generic answers. "This was a Speedrun.com administrative decision" also keeps everything anonymous behind receiving the complaint anonymously and allows for power abuse in this situation (and his actions) to remain anonymous. If you do reach out: provide names, provide who decided what on which action to take, provide everything up front so we're not left scratching our heads how to address a seemingly completely anonymous problem that should have never existed in the first place.
• Also, if I wasn't blocked afterward, maybe require content moderators on Twitch either to disable the setting that apparently made me think he blocked me, or require content mods to reach out in multiple different ways - or rather even, just post publicly here. Having Twitch settings restrict communication when in all reality you should be accessible to everyone on a website accessible to everyone would avoid confusion like this: https://imgur.com/a/NmIIXRg
• Maybe lastly request deleting issues like this when it comes up instead of just deleting them without any kind of forewarning to avoid complicating anything further.

I agree with letting stuff die as no one wants to drag stuff on for days, as I certainly don't, but suddenly deleting everything just protects Garadas' integrity which should be now more than ever questioned now both publicly and internally.

Likewise, it just makes me seem like a liar and essentially makes everything that happened a victimless crime.

2FA is a good idea (forced specifically on anyone that moderates a board) because the problem with the userbase is it'll always have fluctuating interest. There are people I know that haven't used this site in the last year or only check it when they want to post runs themselves, which sometimes includes moderators. People grow out of speedrunning as a hobby, but what they contributed here or the powers they had remain. Obviously if an old password becomes compromised and people don't even login to this website anymore, they're just asking to be used as cannon fodder if someone decides to abuse everything. This would basically immediately solve problems, and I agree with whoever posted make it an email thing. Everyone has an email and that's relatively hassle free. Phone numbers are more annoying for 2FA EVERY time.

April fools: please, read only the site or get rid of moderators who abuse their powers thinking they're funny stuff on that specific day to change a bunch of stuff around. There's a billion different and more funnier ways to have fun on that day. In the entire time I've existed on this website there was never anything "funny" that was changed and back that was actually... funny.

It's just annoying especially on quasi live-feeds (like @NESruns) on Twitter which mirror time changes here.

Whenever I submit for a board on Speedrun, I always try to setup a community Discord server to make it easy to talk about resources. I made one today: https://discord.gg/NY4WjMb

I actually expect probably no one to join as this game is extremely obscure, though I'm glad a few people have added it as an interest/followed game. I REALLY enjoy this run. I hope more people who randomly stumble upon the run pick it up and try it out. :)

Welcome in advance to anyone. =)

Cool. :) Good luck!

Feel free to reach out to be on Twitter on Twitch as I'm a little more instant to respond there than here (though I still check here daily.)

Yeah, anywhere it's needed for actual progress.

How about we make it simplified?

Record a run as-is where the skip is used only where needed to progress and we can make the rules reflective around it in either the main category or a new one if some of these scenes are impossible. Sounds like you routed this much better than me.

Sure, so what would the category entail?

Use of the skip in just those stages?

Hmm, I just checked that out and missed that originally, and that's a really good question/observation.

Part of me feels although it's a lame part of the run waiting for the UFOs, they should be waited for because the debug mode is kind of built into the prototype and shouldn't be allowed at all (which would mirror most speedrun pages and their rules, as obviously often debug features or level select codes and such are banned from actual speedruns for obvious reasons).

Part of me hates how long the UFOs take and never noticed this quirk, and wouldn't mind setting up a category that allows for this.

What do you think?

Awesome. :) Thanks for the answers, Hulk.

My girlfriend and I recently started running this, and really enjoy the co-op run. It's spawned a few questions though.

• Max's skip, she goes for it and does it every time, but what's the technical reason this works (and how does it work) only with Max and not Goofy?

• Is fruit entirely RNG or tied to the RNG seed itself?

• Are the RNG seeds known before entering Pete? Seems like in the practice ROM shooting the cannon changes the RNG seed/Pete's pattern before entering.

Or, maybe better worded, is there known good RNG seeds? Or is RNG like totally volatile that he has endless patterns?

And last, that platform thing with arrows.

HOW?

Can it be controlled or manipulated somehow? xD

Thanks.