Ps category they would have to separate for PS1 / PS2 / PS3 / PSN
Deleted
3 years ago
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

I too believe this is a pretty pointless discussion and the game shouldn't need to have dozens of categories. But I don't think the game is unpopular, I believe the lack of more runs is due to very restrictive rules about emulators. From my experience, I see people generally use EPSXE or, in the past few months, Duckstation. Bizhawk and psxjin are very unknown emus.

Also, what I don't get is why Resident Evil 3 leaderboards have much more flexible rules compared to RE1.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
California, USA

People need to remove themselves from the belief that this game and that game does it, so this game should do it too. They may have the same name with a different number behind it but they are all very different games and they are FAR from equal in terms of how they are made and function. I see plenty of why not this and just do that. What I don't see enough of is people asking questions on why our rules are the way they are. For example, if we allowed other emulators, they would all be slower. Then what? People would be whining about seperating emulators. ePSXe, Bizhawk, and any other PS emulator you want to throw at it would all have slower times. JIN doesn't need any settings to be adjusted. There are answers for every single rule we have. Start asking questions if you want to understand why we do things the way we do instead of trying to change it because you don't understand.

sevit913, deserteagle417 and 2 others like this
California, USA

No offense, but RE3's history of moderation isn't exactly a good example of how a leaderboard should be ran. It may be different now but many things have been handled poorly on that leaderboard the past few years. Everything that is in place here has been voted on by the majority of runners in the past. RE1 mods have heard enough BS about this stuff lately. If anybody has a problem with how things are in RE1, don't just ask us, ask the hundreds of runners who voted for all of this. Runners that actually understand the game and spend time with it. If you weren't around then, start asking questions and educate yourself.

deserteagle417, StevenMayte and 3 others like this
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Clix, I think you got a little stressed over the recent posts on this thread and you are seeing every single questioning as a personal attack.

I don't know what you people got through here or what people have endured in RE3 leaderboards. I am not comparing you guys to RE3 mods or users. What I am proposing is that, if other emus were allowed, people would have another option to run this game, even if they were at a natural disadvantage from the start. Because from my point of view it is worse not to be able to submit runs than playing at a disadvantage.

I know trolling is a part of many communities and you guys want to avoid that, but don't just assume the person that's talking to you doesn't like the community or the people here. We just want to be able to voice these concerns, difficulties to enter the community, that's all.

United Kingdom

ePSXe just... isn't a good emulator for speedruns. Whilst it's one of the more typically up-to-date emulators and is regularly updated, there are a lot of issues with the ways it handles certain games, particularly between versions. RE3 will have a lot of runs on older versions of ePSXe, for example, and they would all need to be removed to maintain fairness in the 'emulator' leaderboard, as newer ePSXe revisions have slowed load times down. The emulator board on RE3 for PS1, I can guarantee, is a total mess because of this.

Bizhawk is far better. Not only is it also regularly updated but it's intended for TAS work or to put it in better terms, its goal is create accurate, consistent load times, frame data, etc. The only downside to Bizhawk is it's kinda heavy duty on lower end PCs. Mednafen is an alternative to Bizhawk (same core) but extremely barebones to allow for lower-end PCs to run it easily. I don't think it's allowed under the rules here and I haven't tested it myself to compare to Bizhawk but it's, essentially, a far less resource heavy Bizhawk.

To call Bizhawk an unknown emulator is simply well... wrong though. In casual play? Probably. But the intention is speedrunning here, and in terms of speedrunning there really isn't a better current PS1 emulator than Bizhawk/Mednafen. If people are unaware of Bizhawk/Jin they can just... ask here?

PSXfin / pSX 1.13 I don't even really think is worth covering. It's immensely outdated and there are just well... better alternatives out there to it these days. 5+ years ago I'd perhaps agree with its usage, but not anymore. Most boards these days probably only still allow it to avoid having to entirely purge emulator leaderboards because you can't just disallow ePSXe/PSXfin, etc, change to Bizhawk/Mednafen and still allow those ePSXe/Fin runs on there.

Emulator really is not the cause of any downsides to this game, though. Its PC release is, by far, the biggest entry point of players this game has seen in its lifespan. Years ago before the PC release got fixed and added as a category, it was typically only a handful of diehard players running the game a lot. As soon as PC dropped, Emulator got dropped like a rock basically.

[quote]Also, what I don't get is why Resident Evil 3 leaderboards have much more flexible rules compared to RE1.[/quote]

This might be because RE1 has always stuck to this rule, since very early on basically. RE3, to my recollection, never had any PS Emulator rules... it was anything goes basically, which was a poor way of handling things because then you're placing Emulators/Runs next to each other that objectively are not fairly compared because the emulators simply do not perform the same.

The sad reality is that people cared less about Emulator on those games because PC took center stage and it was there immediately for both RE2 and RE3. With RE1, it was very different, because for the longest time the best players/most of the playerbase, based itself on Emulator, due to the PC version being immensely broken till a few years ago, so the decision to restrict to a single emulator to allow absolute fairness was very much something argued for.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Ok, but there are several psone games which allow ePSXe and, in most leaderboards, what mods do to ensure fairness is to restrict which versions of emus are allowed. Of course it would be unreasonable to ask that mods check every single ePSXe version, but it isn't wrong to simply ask for the emu itself to be accepted here, even if it is just some determined versions of the emu. Maybe having another category is a viable solution?

Besides, times change, new technologies come and people have new ways to access older games. These days, it is very common and easy to play a game like Resident Evil on a phone for example. You can also stream it directly from a smartphone and make a run of the game with it. I believe it is very restrictive not to accept other ways to play. I'm not asking for dozens of categories, but I think the boards are very closed to new runners the way they are right now.

And this thought that someone wants a free WR is not true, some people just want to participate, to get into the leaderboards, but can't because it doesn't give enough options to the player.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
United States

Echoing what Liv just said, we restrict to these emulators for consistency. One HUGE difference between RE1 and RE2/3 is that the PC version was not viable for RE1 for a long time, and as such the emulator board was the main board and thus regulated quite heavily. Back in those days psxjin/psxfin was the best emulator, and again as Liv said, while Bizhawk is the much more accurate emulator and should the only choice, that's just not feasible without either newer runs never being able to realistically compete or nuking the board. That second option is just not okay because we're not going to nuke the history of this board.

Since Bizhawk can be quite resource intensive (I couldn't run it on my old laptop), I will bring up with the mods allowing Mednafen (I honestly didn't know this existed). But, the reality is, if you want to run emulator, psxjin/fin is the recommended option for the reasons stated above.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Desert, just to try explaining myself a bit better, I'm not asking to compete in different conditions with other runners. All I'm saying is that people could have an ePSXe category with the versions allowed being clearly stated in the rules.

You can't guarantee that ePSXe will have fair loads in the future, but you can restrict which versions of it have more accurate load times and won't create unfair advantages.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
United Kingdom

Echoing what Clix said originally though; just because another leaderboard chooses to allow ePSXe does not mean this board has to.

[quote]Ok, but there are several psone games which allow ePSXe and, in most leaderboards, what mods do to ensure fairness is to restrict which versions of emus are allowed.[/quote]

The demand for ePSXe currently just isn't there (though I would still argue you're simply allowing an inferior speedrunning emulator onto a leaderboard by allowing it), and there really is no point arguing on theoretics like "more people would run it if ePSXe was allowed", because that's a fallacy.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
deserteagle417 likes this
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

That's why the game won't get popular, because there's no alternative. Creating new categories is wrong and allowing other emus too.

United Kingdom

Getting a game popular isn't the goal of a leaderboard, however, and there's also no evidence adding ePSXe would even do that, because there's not really any demand to do so.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
sevit913 and deserteagle417 like this
California, USA

Specifically JIN is allowed, not FIN. JIN works on almost any machine. There have been a few reports of people not getting it to work but that's any emulator for you. PC version also has some cases of this for all 3 classic games. JIN may not be a very well known emulator but we provide a link to the download in the resources and setup guide so that shouldn't be an issue. New systems and technology will always give more ways to play old games but you have to draw the line somewhere. Eventually, there will be so many things to check just to verify runs for the sake of emulation. JIN is basically unzip and go and that's exactly what you want for accessibility, especially for people with language barriers. If problems running JIN was more common, then we'd probably have opened up for another emulator but almost everyone can run it fine.

deserteagle417 likes this
United States

We already have approved emulators and adding more approved ones just complicates the Emu board at best. Adding a whole other category just for ePSXe is not going to happen. I understand that other games may choose to do this, and that's fine for them, but you'll also find many games that restrict to one particular emulator, usually Bizhawk, and for good reason. The more emulators that you allow, especially with a system as messy as the PS1, the boards just become more meaningless. I understand that ePSXe is the emulator of choice for you and others, and it is very nice for casual gaming, but one of the key things in a speedrunning board is controlling variables so runs can be accurately compared and so we will be sticking with the options that are there now.

As for the free WR stuff, you're basing that on a conversation with a person who deleted all of their messages from this thread, so key context is missing.

clix_gaming likes this
California, USA

PC is just as free as emulation. Expanding emulation will definitely not popularize this game. PC is doing that just fine and this game has grown tremendously in the last year or so.

deserteagle417 likes this
United States

Oh, my bad on saying FIN. I have such a habit of grouping those together lol

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Ok, I'm not here to fight with anyone, really. It's been made clear to me that allowing other forms of playing is something that is perceived negatively here, even if it's in another category. My whole point was to allow more players to have access to ways to submit runs, not to try convincing the mods to allow unfair advantages.

Anyway, I wish the best to you all.

United States

[quote=WanderAgro] "My whole point was to allow more players to have access to ways to submit runs, not to try convincing the mods to allow unfair advantages." [/quote]

And our point isn't to restrict anyone from submitting, we're just asking you to download this other emulator and use that for runs here. This is not a big ask.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
California, USA

Thank you for the wishes. I also wish the best for you. Sorry we couldn't come to an agreement. RE1, and most leaderboards of relatively large communities are not easy to moderate and make all the best decisions for. Now that these leaderboards have aged, we have a pretty long history of changes at this point. They aren't always clear and obvious to understand and can be complicated at first but they have all been made with careful thought, discussion, and community feedback.

deserteagle417 likes this
United Kingdom

Allowing more ways of playing is not seen as a negative, but diluting the leaderboard down to "what emulator you choose to play on decides your category" is just a poor idea. No leaderboard does this, outside of boards I would argue are being handled very poorly.

Frankly, RE1 already has far more choice than the average leaderboard on the website. Many don't even allow emulators at all, or hide emulators from visible competition. If there's anything you can't really say RE1 (or really, any classic RE game) is lacking, it's choice of platform.

This is how virtually any board on SRC, besides the odd exception, would respond if you asked them to add ePSXe as a separate category when they had already set an established standard in which emulator they used. And as said, just adding ePSXe to the current emulator board does not work.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Mercynm and deserteagle417 like this
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