Separating Discs and VC
6 years ago
United Kingdom

It's sort of common knowledge that PSP runs CTR faster than a PS1/PS2. However, what we weren't aware of was that PSP doesn't just load quicker than PS2 FDS, but it also runs games about 4% quicker than intended.

Here's some evidence for stats nerds (I'm using Joshimuz's and Pete's runs for comparison as they're currently the only ones on PSP):

http://i.imgur.com/sOybZjL.jpg

On here, we can see that IGT runs about 14-15s faster over the three tracks that I tested. On Josh's run in particular, 60 seconds RTA is actually 61.9s IGT.

RedHot's run and my run are both done on NTSC PS2s. To compare, on my run, 60 seconds RTA is 59.4s IGT.

There's also this neat cutscene comparison made by Pull that shows the differences:

So basically, what we're going to do is separate games that run on a disc, like PS1/PS2 (and we'll keep emulators here as well as they emulate a PS1 console), and runs that use PSN such as PSP or PSVita etc.

The main reason is to keep a healthy competition between runners. It's estimated that PSP saves about 2 minutes over a PS2 Any% Warpless run due to poor emulation, and as PSP is still official hardware, we don't want to simply ban it. Currently, we could see PSP runs reaching as low as a 48 minute run.

Feel free to post your thoughts here!

Oneforseven, victorards and 6 others like this
Finland

As an added benefit, loadless could be brought back to the boards, there's enough to data to slam it in any moment, really. This makes PS1 and PS3 (needs research if disc runs faster, too, though) viable. On VC side, Vita doesn't fall behind PSP anymore either. However, again, this means emulator is kill. And creating a category for just emulator seems lame, what'll end up happening again is the previously brought up idea of having emulator runs hidden by default.

Not entirely relevant, but serves as a point that this brings more good than it does bad.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Germany

Fuck yeah I was faster than Josh at HAS.

Joshimuz likes this
Finland

Free positions 4Head I approve this Kappa

But in all seriousness it's a wise move, every game I mod I want to separate clearly faster types to give a fighting chance.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
United States

Another option that's been used for hardware running games fast (such as the Super Game Boy) is to find the difference in game speed (if it's constant) and apply a conversion at the end of the run.

CTR is big enough to handle the divide as I mentioned on the Discord, but I figured I'd mention another alternative here as well just so it's documented.

Australia

Yeah, I mentioned that my Vita actually runs the game faster a while ago, but it's good to find that it's all PSN stuff as well.

Finland

hey we did it and now we look really silly if your PS3 run was on a PSN release then go fix it 'cause I probably won't, you'll have a higher placing on the other board anyway meaning you get to look better!

loadless sometime™

victorards and hi_im_kai like this