As a much discussed topic over recent months, the idea of encouraging runners to use emulators is reaching a point where some changes to the boards may need to be made.

Before anyone jumps on my back, the proposed changes are not going to affect the console boards and PS2 will still be optimal.

Anyway, the ideas I'd like to propose are: Separate boards for Emulator runs Strict rules on banned Emulators to only allow BizHawk/Mednafen IGT tracking as discussed in a previous thread to aid comparison between emulators and consoles

This may mean a lot of current emulator runs will need to be reviewed and though there's never a "right" way to handle this I'd love to hear what others have to say, we can cross that bridge later.

Hopefully a dedicated space for Emulator and a standardised approach will encourage people who don't have consoles, or prefer Emulator over their current setup, to run the game and feel more competitive.

i think that also retroarch can be allowed with this rules:

RetroArch Dedicated Rules: You must show settings of the core settings before/after the run. Your settings must match this: • CPU Dynarec: Disabled (Beetle Interpreter) [Default] • Cycles: 128 (Default) • GTE Overclock: Disabled • GPU Overclock: 1x (native) • Skip Bios: Disabled. • Access Method: Synchronous • Loading Speed: 2x (native) • PAL (European) Video Timing Override: OFF Recommended: Keep PGXP Disabled Custom settings are allowed for anything that isn't mentioned such as resolution.

I'm completely supporting this because with encouraging emulators we are able to make competition more fair and less hardware dependent.

This is a good idea and definitely support it! I've already heard about people who previously have not submitted a time wanting to participate because of this change.

I think splitting boards and having igt for both is an excellent idea, let the pc gang rise up yeeehaw

There's no way I can object to the proposal as it is - so I'm fully backing it! :D

Having a more competitive emulator environment will encourage new players to try out their hand in the game and it's competition, not to forget that it's a good long-term solution. Especially as at some point hardware will start to die out - in which case I suppose the PS2 boards might get frozen and we'll all have to play with emulators :P

Either way, splitting the boards - good! Strict rules for allowed emulators - excellent! IGT time comparisons - awesome!

Great idea! Is it gonna be a subcategory like Disc/VC? That'd make the most sense to me. SM64 LB does that for years now (for different reasons though) and paved the way in that regard imo.

Yes I think making it a subcategory is the best idea and it's great to see how much interest there is!

On the topic of RetroArch, I think it's fine to allow it as long as it's as accurate as BizHawk/Mednafen, if there's a good comparison/reliable test done then that's all good. If we use these as a standard and then freely disallow anything that's inaccurate such as epsxe, PSXfin etc. Remember the point is fair competition and a standard approach.

@AQLGamers if you're going to use the rules I set out you better unban BizHawk for the reasons I already gave you cause having the "cause it's a TAS emulator" excuse is pretty bullshit when I already debunked the reason for it. (Aka, stop preaching my stuff if you're going to ignore my stuff.)

Anyways. I ain't going to argue not doing the emulation/console split mainly due to y'all having that set out already in your style, but I'll give the explanation to emulation rules update, since it's practically my stuff being referenced.

To keep simple: The emulation update is admittedly to hit it on the knees and to make it slower than real world console loads, some of the emulators chosen, does have the lag advantage, and heck mednafen actually "fakes" lag in some cases, best example is compare a simple straightforward walk in Resident Evil Survivor. It's to incentivize runners in getting the console to participate in the game after learning it through.

So for this thread there's no need to discuss allowed Emulators as that's already planned for the Crash series soon and we'll just follow the new rules. It was mentioned to me after I made the thread so very convenient timing!

Also with the plan to grandfather current emu runs, the emu boards should be quite straightforward to set up if a mod has chance to do that? Think it's safe to say it has been agreed that the community would like emu boards for Warpless at the very least.

I seems to be easy task to implement so why not split every main category. There already is disc/vc split on warpless and 101. I wouldn't like the idea of getting a third PS2 if/when current one breaks since I cannot run this game with my ps1...

from my own personal perspective, pokemon gen 4 and 5 has been making similar moves for separate emu boards, so ye why not.

Requested the above messages removed from this thread for being off topic & inappropriate, I would appreciate if both Spikestuff and AQLGamers move this discussion elsewhere thankyou.

To answer Ahvena, I would think Emulator split would be possible for 101%, Any%, All Cups and (God Forbid) Max%. I assume it's easy enough to implement even if there aren't very often any runs. I think Warpless and All Cups is absolutely priority though.