The longstanding issue of emulator submissions
7 years ago
United States

A concern I have is that while it's great to have a sitewide rule for Game Boy emulators, for other platforms you might have different emulators better or worse for different games.

Maybe just adding an emulator dropdown for emulator runs site-wide, and allowing game by game auto-rejects, would be good?

Germany

[quote=PresJPolk]If the moderators of a game you care about don't know what they're doing, contact them? I don't see the problem here.[/quote]

You're missing the point. This is not a per-game issue. It's not about "a game {I} care about", but any game on the site, be it a popular one with a big community or one of the dozens of cryptic ones with just one submission and one moderator (=the submitter) and no proof checking. And this is exactly why I'd like to see this as a fundamental site function instead of having to tackle each single false submission after the fact. The submission form is the checkpoint that every single submission has to pass through - so it's naturally the best place to implement the proposed feature. And it also the place where the submitter is forced to read information like "VBA is banned" because we simply can not expect that everyone regularly reads the forum posts, frequents speedrunning Twitch chats or is even part of the English-speaking (speedrunning) community at all. It is that one interface that we have. And it matters because we want this site to be a representative, complete and fair assembly of up-to-date leaderboards. Right? The whole platform feature might need a revision in general. Admins having to unlock certain platforms on a per-game-basis and platforms that are irrelevant to speedrunning being the sole default option(e.g. "GBC" for all Gameboy games) are remnants from the beginning of the site when that data field was probably not even intended to be used for verification, but just for quickly stating the original platform in the game info on the top left of the game's page. A revision is long overdue, imo.

[quote=kobepilgrim]Could there be a way to propose removing VBA from those types of lists, at least on the major ROM sites?[/quote]

No. This is solely related to speedrunning. Most people couldn't care less for a game running at 59.7275 fps instead of 60.3 fps. An emulator that gets rid of the lag that the original platform suffered from can be seen as an improvement of the playing experience for the casual retrogame fan. VBA is and remains a valid option for those. It's only when it comes to competitiveness and comparability that accuracy and fixed standards matter. And that is where this site and its own functions come into play.

[quote=PresJPolk]Maybe just adding an emulator dropdown for emulator runs site-wide, and allowing game by game auto-rejects, would be good?[/quote]

Exactly. Maybe I missed making myself clear in the opening post, but that is exactly what I was trying to suggest:

As soon as someone ticks the emulator checkbox there should be a mandatory textfield or dropdown menu from which the submitter has to specify the emulator he used for the run.

(P.S.: I thought sr.com supported BBCode?!)

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Gelderland, Netherlands

[quote=Oh_DeeR](P.S.: I thought sr.com supported BBCode?!)[/quote]

it should, but i think you should remove the spaces?

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Germany

Thanks, Trollbear666, but it doesn't seem to work. Source: http://pastebin.com/76vadhTw <-- Anything wrong with it that I'm overlooking?

Gelderland, Netherlands

I have no clue why it doesnt work then :p the last one is missing his [/qoute] btw

United States

Glad we agree on that, Oh_Deer. One thing I really like about speedrun.com is that it takes a very humble, decentralized approach to things. And the problem of bad homebrew emulation should be handled similarly.

Bavaria, Germany

Oh_DeeR: There's an invisible space between 'quote' and '='

Germany

Thanks Lightnator! That's what I get for copy-pasting. Now I broke my post completely. As a site admin, do you have any info on the topic(s) I brought up?

Bavaria, Germany

Apparently there were invisible spaces in the end tags as well, fixed the post.

Regarding the topic, being able/having to specify which emulator is used is something that has been on my to-do list for a long time, though it hasn't gotten to the actual planning stage as of yet due to focus elsewhere/lack of time etc etc.

Now assuming that's been added, it would be great to be able to blacklist emulators on a game-by-game basis. (Or whitelist, though I don't think that fits that well?)

In the cases where an emulator is just bad period such as here, a site-wide block should be used for simplicity and consistency, but only for those cases. Say an emulator is bad for 75%, fine for 25% of the games, that should not be blocked site-wide but game-by-game. Ideally they would be blacklisted by default but can be allowed game-by-game, but that might become too convoluted implementation-wise (especially since that shouldn't be possible for a 100% bad emulator).

As I said this assumes the emulator is already specified. Implementing requires considering some design questions.

Given that we're interested in site-wide blocks, there's very little choice but to maintain a site-wide list of emulators. This will probably get a bit messy when having to split certain emulators up by version and potentially in keeping the list up-to-date. Does anyone have any estimates on how long that list would be and how often in would need to be updated (=how often are there significant new releases for emulators that are actually used)?

Since having to think about spelling, acronyms and typos when using a text field to specify the emulator would be a nightmare, a drop down list seems like the best way to present it. You run into the requirement of needing a comprehensive list again but blacklisting based on a text field would either be a mess or miss most of the time. As you mentioned, we'd want this to be mandatory. However, it shouldn't be impossible to submit runs of which the emulator (and/or its version if relevant) is not known (e.g. when submitting an run that's a few years old, or mod submitting runs by other players (when setting a leaderboard)). Additionally, none of the existing runs will have the emulator set so we certainly need to support an 'Unknown' option. That said, while supported it should not be encouraged. Most new submissions should know it so they should specify it. As such it should not be the default option but a conscious choice (not saying no-one will pick it when they shouldn't, but I expect most people will just specify the right thing).

In the OP you mention adding a notes - obviously there would be an indication of banned emulators but I don't like the idea of otherwise having hardcoded messages - they'd inevitably end up being either too limited or too generalized in scope as well as be messy in the code. Being able to add recommended emulators sounds like an interesting idea on paper but I'd imagine that in practice it would end up over-complicating things both backend and frontend.

I realize I went kinda heavy on the implementation side of it since that's most relevant for me but I feel it should still be relevant for the discussion as a whole.

@furrywulfz

I am doing it already for the games i am moderating (like here for example: http://www.speedrun.com/ngs/resources). I don't think bgb or gambatte have any characteristics that would make it easier to spot them. I know that the Pokemon community has a rule which requires you to capture the whole emulator with its borders but I am not quite sure if that's the best solution http://i.imgur.com/H7Wa1SJ.png

kobepilgrim and Oh_DeeR like this
Colorado, USA

I'm so glad this is being discussed. Out of all of the games I have ran, I have avoided emulator ENTIRELY over the course of these 3+ years speedrunning. Inaccuracies (slow/fast / good/bad) in any way, or gaining a certain advantage over what somebody on console would have has never felt right to me. This being said, it has bothered me over the years to see emulators used, and positions being altered in a way where it really shouldn't have (being higher up and farther down alike). Having a system to guarantee accurate leaderboards would be fantastic for everybody.

Oh_DeeR, pld, and zewing like this
New Jersey, USA

The border rule is a good one! I'm going to start submitting emulator runs with a border, just for personal transparency.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
TheGreatToddman, Oh_DeeR, and pld like this
Richmond, VA, USA

The border rule seems like a simple fix while the drag down menu is being explored more.

On the other end of the spectrum, it might be easier to compile a list of "accepted" emulators per console rather than identify every emulator that isn't acceptable. (ie. BGB and Gambette are the only acceptable emu's for future GB/C runs) I'm not particularly fond of that idea, but it should at least be thrown out.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
United States

Focus on creating the tools for games to regulate it, then sensible decisions can be made, rather than trying to go and make all the decisions right away.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Germany

I like the emulator full-window capture approach a lot. While it's still a workaround that requires proper moderation, it makes it a lot easier to sort out certain submissions. (And maybe it pushes one or another runner over the line to get a console setup for aesthetic reasons. :-p) (Again: proper moderation is not a given for many games so this approach alone would not change the status quo.)

@Lightnat0r

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Let me repeat my suggestion to merge this topic with a revision of the platform database. Whitelisting particular emulators seems like the more efficient way than keeping track and blacklisting all the negatives and their derivatives and revisions. For GB/C games the decision about accepted emulators is basically already set in stone. Exceptions could always be made on a per game/category level (just like platforms are handled on a per game basis atm). Other platforms have established accurate and widely accepted emulators, too.

I feel like with some more brainstorming - as is happening right here - good and viable solutions can emerge from this.

Germany

For now I've settled for this approach: http://www.speedrun.com/The_Site/thread/i8v46 It would be really nice if display options would be added to extra variables to make them more useful, though. This whole issue should not be forgotten since it concerns every game where emulator and console runs stand side by side.

Germany

How do you capture the window borders? The only way for that I can see in OBS Studio is to make a full screen capture and crop it or else the borders aren't captured lol

New Jersey, USA

In window capture properties, select "entire window".

Window capture isn't working for me with mGBA, though :/

I didn't realize that I've been using game capture, which doesn't seem to have the option.

Edited by the author 7 years ago