So this is a thread I'm opening to dump some information out about the various ports of Sonic R that exist, I am not a runner, nor will I ever be a speedrunner for this game, I just happen to enjoy it and I'm semi-involved in an effort to bring the 2004 port up to snuff with some minor patching.
To my knowledge, there's essentially two main ports of Sonic R on PC.
First, there is the 1998 port. Let's get this out of the way. This port sucks. It doesn't run well on anything other than Windows 95/98 without serious work being done to fix it, and used Redbook (aka CDDA) audio that streamed from the CD, meaning without the CD or a CD inserted with the correct music tracks on it, the game would be musicless.
One poorly documented aspect is that has two display modes. It has DirectDraw mode, which renders quads as quads and has less detailed colors. and Direct3D mode, which renders quads as tris, and has more detailed colors. DirectDraw mode, however, appears to have more viberant lighting than Direct3D mode.
I noticed a thread on here showing two screenshots asking what the difference was, this is essentially what that difference is. DirectDraw vs Direct3D.
The 1998 port also had a network patch that was released after the game came out somehow- possibly through the primitive internet at the time. The network patch simply added an additional menu button for LAN play essentially- it's otherwise identical.
This 1998 port has had many reprints apparently and some reprints actually have no music at all as some of the prints had failed to write the CDDA audio to the disc- meaning that there are legit copies of Sonic R out there that have no music.
In addition the 1998 port of the game can actually be ran live off the CD without installation, as all the files for the game runtime are stored on the root of the CD directly.
The 1998 port I'd say is the absolute worst way to play Sonic R. I'd say is actually worse than the Saturn port somehow because of how cumbersome it is to get running in a stable, consistent environment.
However- There's a relatively unknown until recently copy of the game that released in 2004 in the UK and Australia. We call it the 2004 Version, as the game's credits were changed to include that text along with the name of the one responsible for that port.
This one came out under Valusoft packaged alone and GSP White Label packaged with Sonic 3D Blast. It's generally considered quite rare.
This port is closer to the GameCube port than you would expect, the port ditched the entire DirectDraw mode and uses Direct3D in DirectX9- and runs nearly perfectly on Modern Windows machines.
It ditches the "run directly from the CD" thing, and unlike the 1998 port, it also ditches the redbook audio streaming for music dumped on the disc in a music folder in raw signed 16-bit 44100 Stereo PCM.
It added controls for Draw Distance to the F1 and F2 keys, and F3 toggles the mini-map.
The 2004 Version also has some game launch arguments- these are irrelevant for the most part but they're documented on tcrf's page for the 2004 port. Hilariously, one of the launch arguments is "ignorecd", which disables the DRM check for the CD, allowing the game to be played without the CD, but without music obviously, since the music is stored on the CD- another relevant one is "windowed" which runs the game in a window, albeit without any borders.
As a result, with the vanilla 2004 port you need to have the disc inserted to hear music. Recently, thanks to my nagging at MainMemory, a new Mod Manager for this 2004 port has released. It's extremely similar to the SADXModManager used for the PC port of Sonic Adventure DX- and includes a couple fixes for the game to add a couple play-neutral (i.e. non-game changing) functions.
One is a patch to fix the game to run at the stable 30fps framerate all the time. The issue is related to the way the game determines how determines what the system needs to do in order to time frames properly. The result is a game that runs at ~25-26 FPS on any cpu core that isn't under constant load (either from the game or from other software running on the same logical core). It's believed this is related to the actual way the OS handles the calls to the system sleep timer. Consistent run behaviour is a necessity- so a patch to change the code used for frame timing has been added. Essentially it just amplifies the same code so that it will properly hit 30fps of it's own volition.
The other major patch is to make the game to play music without the CD, you do this by copying the music folder from the disc to the installation directory. A result of this patch is that the game now always runs with the ignorecd flag- making it always playable without needing the disc or a virtual disc inserted.
Other minor additions from the mod-loader: Custom Resolution: Custom Resolution allows you to set what resolution you want the game to run at, the default is 640x480, but all 4:3 resolutions are viable.
Bordered Windowed mode: Allows you to toggle the windowed flag and also patches the game to actually run in a proper window instead of being a borderless window glued to the top left of your computer screen. This is convenient for streaming probably.
As a result, you end up with a game that is virtually identical to the GameCube port, minus the long loading screens and changed TT games logos. For this reason, I'd say this is actually a really good port to be used for speedrunning, except for the fact that it's so bloody rare. :V
What I'm considering doing is something sort of similar to another project I work on called "BetterSADX" which will essentially be a downloadable patch for 1998 ports to update them into the much more playable and much more simple 2004 port with the Mod Manager included, but it's obviously up to the community weather this would be considered speedrun legal. This would make the 2004 port much more widely avaliable and playing the game on PC much less cumbersome in general as well.
Personally, I think that it should be pretty speedrun friendly, as long as the mod manager is only being used to run the game without the 2004 port's CD, Window the game, change resolution, and fix the framerate for non-XP windows machines. Other functions like actual mod-loading should be avoided unless a mod is approved by the community- sort of like how the SADX community is ran- of course, this is all up to you.
Regardless, I hope this clears some things up about Sonic R on PC and I hope you all have a nice day. If we do end up making that "BetterSonicR" or "Sonic R Updater" thing, I'll definitely make a post about it.
Oh right. Here's a linkdump for some things of interest.
Some vanilla 2004 port footage and maybe something of dubious legality in the comments section.
A bunch of Sonic R 2004 + Mod Manager Gameplay (from myself) Notice I left fraps running so you can see how stable the framerate is.
Sonic R Mod Manager Source Code and Releases: https://github.com/sonicretro/sonicr-mod-loader Relevant point in the Sonic R Hacking thread on Sonic Retro: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=18490&view=findpost&p=915243
