Hello guys!
I'm currently speedrunning a PSP game called Pursuit Force which is not on speedrun.com yet, so there's no specific forum for it. It's also my first time speedrunning on this platfom.
I'm running it on UMD, which brings long loading times. There are ~60 loading screens in my run, each one lasts for tens of seconds.
If I was running the game on ISO, like if I had bought it dematerialized, the loadings would be a lot faster, right? But would it be allowed?
You can request it here: https://www.speedrun.com/requestgame
Also, there is no general rule for emulators being banned or not. That changes for each leaderboard. And to avoid the faster loads situation, I say have a rule that requires the runner to remove the load times from the run so that no one has the upper hand.
Requiring a runner to manually remove loads from their submission is asinine, don’t ever require that. Manually removing 60 load screens in this case is just not something you can ask of a runner, especially because it opens up room for significant error if someone isn’t very precise and if the loads aren’t removed the exact same way.
Only ever remove loads if there is any autospliter for your game (which 99% of the time exists for PC games only). For PSP games, check out how some other LBs are set up regarding emulator. If emulator saves a bunch of time in loading, creating sub categories for console and emulator might be a good option.
fuck yeah i wanted to run PF but because no one else did and this game is also long i gave up on the idea. maybe now i'll consider trying it
Thanks for your replies! When I said ISO I was talking about using ISO on the real PSP and not on emulator, but yes I think it's better to do separate categories for the real hardware and the emulation. I just saw other PSP boards and they all seems to be organised like that.
ct27> That's cool :D I just did my first run on PF yesterday, I did 3h 56min. That's pretty long but it was a really bad run, I completely messed up some Killer 66 missions, and I also had a mysterious shutdown from my console (thank you autosave). I'm sure we can go easily under 3h30 with a bit of pratice and even 3h20 with a good run. Unfortunately I got recording issues (there's ~25 sec of video missing) so I cannot submit it but I will try again later :)
@Jawslehoff are you considering doing Extreme Justice too?
btw if the loading times differ a lot, then i suggest creating two categories: one for umd runs and one for iso
I will try to get the usb cable for the PSP so I can put an ISO of PF and test the loading times, I think that's the best way to find the answer.
I never played Extreme Justice but why not, I will surely give it a try! But now I'm focusing on PF ;)
Ok since nobody actually answered this properly, I'll do it.
Running off a digital download of the ISO either from the PSN (or blatantly pirated, I'm not here to judge) is generally fine and allowed in most PSP gaming circles and would load a hell of a lot faster. Don't run things off the UMD unless you literally have no other option, it's loud and slow.
Now, since the game in question already has a PSN download, you can sidestep the ethical issue of using an ISO image for the game since Sony already legally sells those. You don't need to use a category for UMD/ISO, I've never seen a PSP game do that. Just use the digital download, it's fine.
Strange Ethical Quandary:
If the game you're trying does not have a PSN release and was only ever released on UMD, the question of whether or not using an ISO image to run it is fair is a bit murkier, since there's no way to create one except by using custom firmware tools or ripping one off the internet. I don't have a commonly accepted consensus answer to this because I've never seen the scenario come up, but it's something to think about it. Debate about it here, if you like!
If it was only released on UMD it makes no sense to work around this to have it run faster. That's like running a ps2 game off a hard drive instead of off the disc
Thanks for your replies! I just got my USB cable for PSP and I managed to do a copy of the ISO of the game from my own UMD disk. Now, the loading time when begining a new mission has droped from ~20 sec to ~5 sec. That's a lot faster!