Moderator Out of Contact, With Issues
5 years ago
United States

For now, this is an academic inquiry as I'm hoping to be able to contact the mod in question. But in case that falls through, I'm wondering what the correct procedure would be for fixing the problems- would I need to request mod privileges myself to fix things? Normally I'd just drop a forum post in the game and ping on Twitter, but the mod has no linked Twitter with Twitch whispers off and a private Steam profile. Compounding the issue, it's a DOS game and I noted that the mods' runs are running 13% faster than default settings (confirmed on several machines and vs. other gameplay footage).

The game(s) are Math Rescue and Word Rescue, because I recently set up DOSbox to play them again and, naturally, ended up going for ILs in Math Rescue as it had an in-game timer. Which took me to the SRcom pages, with runs, and a poorly played time on a level with no tech 1 second faster than possible at default speed.

Assuming I can't get in contact and get mod privileges, what would be the correct etiquette? My thoughts would be to adjust the time on the runs to what the run would have been at normal speed (Word Rescue would add 8 seconds per minute, Math Rescue would add 9 seconds per minute, both timed to the frame on long, straight stretches) with a note similar to what was done for Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and its 62.5 (instead of 60) FPS runs rather than reject. Polishing up the categories and rules are a given.

tl;dr DOS game speedrunning can be a mess, sole "active" mod can't be contacted, has game running too fast (I hesitate to call it cheating as it's likely inadvertent), and only has a single category for Math Rescue due to thinking higher difficulties are impossible (they aren't), wondering about the "correct" course of action.

New South Wales, Australia

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..

United States

@Tenka forum alerts aren't guaranteed, which is why I went here with a general inquiry (which morphed into a lot more specifics to try to explain the situation...) after trying to find a way to get into direct contact. Default DOSbox settings, for me, matched other footage of both DOSbox and non-emulated, leaving only that run as an outlier.

I'll try contacting through Twitter and also compile supporting documentation to post in the game forums. Thanks for the link @Liv !

New South Wales, Australia

@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.

Edited by the author 5 years ago