Following the rule change made for greater emulator accuracy, a very sound point was raised about the use of scripts that kept track of the item counter and kill counter, which may or may not have been used in 10 star runs currently on the board. I'm not clear on that.

Anyway, point is that the use of such scripts is obviously banned due to it presenting a huge advantage for emulator over console, as console cannot perform any kind of memory reading techniques. The current script that read these values only works on epsxe 2.0, so the rule was made to only use epsxe 2.0.5 such that this script wouldn't present an issue.

However, it's been pointed out to me that there are still ways to view the memory values for any emulator yourself via methods like Cheat Engine or making another script yourself and that telling if someone is using such a script in an emulated 10 star run, is unknowable. I agree with this, but am not sure how to handle it going forward.

There a few options, and I'd like to talk to the community and get an opinion on what they think is the best approach here:

1.) Do nothing and continue with the current emulator rulings, no kill/item script exists for the currently accepted emulators yet, but may in future. 2.) Ban emulators outright from the category, this would entail retroactively deleting both 10 star runs from the board, which would leave the category completely empty and to be honest, kinda pointless and vestigial at that point. 3.) Create a sub-variable/category that separates Emulator/Console for just 10 star runs, since 10 star is the only category that presents this potential advantage. This is a solution, but still presents a couple of issues of basically subtly ok'ing mild cheating via the script.

These are just the options I can think of off the top of my head, maybe someone has a much more elegant solution they can post.

As for my personal opinion, I'm kinda leaning 2 at the moment but I'm very much on the fence about it. I do not want to make a decision like this hastily, so have at em, boys.

I'd like to say like, trust factor just trust people would have the common sense to not do it and to see it's banned and not do it. But as someone has already admitted too it... I'd say 3, since it's hard to afford games constantly and understandably a lot of speedrunners don't have stable incomes always to be able to buy games at will so allowing the use of emulators to at least some extent allows people to participate still without potentially punishing them for being unable to purchase a console version.

Example: PS1 version isn't the easiest to find and like 40$ I am broke right now and cannot afford that, especially with shipping on top. I do not own a PS3, I don't need to explain why I couldn't afford that if I can't afford the PS1 copy.

I am always for always having a working emulator option, even if it has to only be a misc category. Especially for like 100$ games like some of the Tales games that had emu banned a while back. Not sure if they still do.

Yeah, about "someone has already admitted to it". I want to check with everyone if I'm being seriously unkind on my reading of this here or if this is just straightforwardly admitting to cheating:

i'm having a hard time reading it as anything else and if that's true then I'd have to remove runs from the board

My take is (though I have never played the category) that if there is the possibility for an advantage over console and it is unknowable whether someone is doing it (unless like you video capture your whole desktop or something during the run), it probably should be console only.

I imagine that if the script was available, it was with the finalizade to be USED or not?

If not, what's the point of making available a script if we can not use it?

DELIBERATELY the decision provide a script that ASSIST in gameplay and simply NOT USE IT!

If you SuccinctAndPunchy do not want to accept the run's ok, no problem for me.

But this will have to be applied to the Bawkbasoup gameplay's because during his gameplay's, the script that READS the IGT and shows in REAL time was USED, and you can NOT ignore it.

Any%, Easy Good+ and UFO, in Bawkbasoup's gameplay's are there, IN SCREEN to ALL OF US to see.

The script has there, reading the IGT in REAL TIME and ANYONE can see that.

I'm just pointing out some facts that seem to be being ignored.

I used the script to get information on the counts of kill's / items in 10 stars, OK!

But I also used the script ONLY (Let me say again, ONLYYYYYYYYYY) to see the IN GAME TIME in REAL TIME while I was playing the OTHER CATEGORIES.

And therefore, the Bawkbasoup and I (we use a METHOD) showing the IGT in real time.

What if my gameplay's are to be REMOVED, what will you do about the Bawkbasoup's gameplay's... which has the same "problem" than mine, TECHNICALLY speaking.

Another thing, the script was kindly made and available and NOBODY (I repeat NOBODY) until YESTERDAY, questioned the use of it.

And it was NOT said in NOWHERE that use the script provided by Dchaps COULD NOT BE USED.

The rules here are very misinformed, and thus opening to "problems" like this.

I will remove myself for this competition because I do not like the "sudden" changes of the rules that occurred here.

Until two days ago, EVERYTHING NORMAL.

There were no questions about anything.

So a player (who is also a moderator) suddenly decided to change the rules of the competition.

I ask kindly to the other moderators in question, have a little more attention and make the rules ABSOLUTELY CLEAR IN EVERYTHING.

In order to avoid future problems like this.

"DELIBERATELY the decision provide a script that ASSIST in gameplay and simply NOT USE IT! "

For testing and experimentation and aiding with the routing. In this regard, it was a success. Are you really this dumb that you're confused about the idea of gaining an advantage over console not being ok? Really?

"But this will have to be applied to the Bawkbasoup gameplay's because during his gameplay's, the script that READS the IGT and shows in REAL time was USED, and you can NOT ignore it. "

As has been stated three times now that you're either choosing to ignore or just being an idiot, the IGT display script is F I N E. OK. Allowed for use. It's /specifically/ the script that displays item and kill counts that is not ok. Seeing your IGT doesn't provide any sort of advantage over a console player in terms of how you play. Perfect information at all times during a 10 star run removes a crucial element of skill of that run, keeping track of all your stats on the fly accurately. It's a definitive advantage to non-official emulators and is not allowed.

"What if my gameplay's are to be REMOVED, what will you do about the Bawkbasoup's gameplay's... which has the same "problem" than mine, TECHNICALLY speaking. "

It's only your 10 star run that's a candidate for rejection, no other run. And Bawkba's runs have no problem at all, you're just being dense on purpose and misunderstanding the goddamn rules.

"Another thing, the script was kindly made and available and NOBODY (I repeat NOBODY) until YESTERDAY, questioned the use of it. "

I honestly didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to use it in runs and think it would be allowed, but you find new ways to surprise me.

"The rules here are very misinformed, and thus opening to "problems" like this."

The rules were previously borderline non-existent, you're just throwing a fucking tantrum because a rule change retroactively invalidates your gameplay. Grow up.

"I will remove myself for this competition because I do not like the "sudden" changes of the rules that occurred here. "

Cool, don't come back thanks.

"Until two days ago, EVERYTHING NORMAL.

There were no questions about anything. "

Wow! Rules change in accordance with new information and concerns! What a shocking concept!

"I ask kindly to the other moderators in question, have a little more attention and make the rules ABSOLUTELY CLEAR IN EVERYTHING.

In order to avoid future problems like this."

Rules have to change at SOME point, man. They don't come pre-written and stuff especially changes over time in concordance with new information, You're basically complaining at me for not being able to see the goddamn future, and I'm having none of it.

also as a side note, all of your problems could be solved by dropping five goddamn bucks on the PSN, but if you'd prefer to bitch out of the leaderboards entirely then I'm not stopping you!

I'm an outside observer, but I don't personally believe any external modifications should be used if possible.

Legitimate arguments can, and are made against the use of emulators for speedruns WHATSOEVER due to concerns about emulation accuracy, and that's without throwing modifications into the equation. The way I see it, the more changes you allow because it "Changes nothing about how the run actually works", the more you're opening yourself up to awkward questions and arguments. Plus, if at some point further down the line it turns out that there IS reason to question stuff (As seems to be happening here) then you end up with a difficult situation on your hands where you could potentially have a lot of runs that used the previously 'ok' changes, but they're now candidates for deletion due to rule changes and extra standardisation.

If that situation only came about in the first place due to the use of modifications, then the solution seems pretty clear in my eyes; don't use them.

Well, if the new emulator rules are followed, then it works out fine because scripts don't exist for the allowed emulators anyway.

A pretty common stipulation that people ignore in SRL rules racing via emulation is that the entire emulation window must be shown. Since many things can be pulled off the window and put elsewhere, A bandaid to this would be requiring running with the whole desktop visible, though this still is an issue due to multiple monitors.

These aren't blanket solutions, but things to consider. You also need to think about how much trust is just needed in a community. People using illegal tactics will always find a way to attempt to use them. They can see the rules and guess what will be checked, mods can't. So a balance clearly needs to be found.

I will say that I agree to some degree with Samuca. Rules for any game should attempt to be as transparent and inclusive as possible. I also agree with Punchy that is is not possible to account for new information, and that should be addressed by multiple mods swiftly (say within 2 weeks or less). I do not think that any change should be done unilaterally, but that doesn't seem like the case here. I also feel that any conversation regarding rules for SRcom should be public on this site, not on an external discord where it can be buried. If someone is for a change, they can spend 20 secs making a post agreeing.

On a side note, as a viewer and novice runner of the series, this has been extremely off putting to watch this debacle turn into what feels like a shitslinging match. Some decorum please.

I agree with you Turbodog that it is unfortunate things went so bad so quickly with the matter. Especially since it would be bad to scare off newer/lower level runners (which I think both of us qualify as). I got the sense from reading these threads that there was a communication/language barrier creating difficulty.

I agree on the count of wishing people would spend the time to make an sr.c post agreeing with stuff but I also have no ability to force people to do it and Discord is often the only means I have to get opinions from relevant parties. It'd be great if people could do that in future for me, thanks.

" and that should be addressed by multiple mods swiftly"

Sure, I agree. Let me know if you find the other mods.

it's kinda looping back around to an issue where I repeatedly find it really hard to poll the SH community for any sort of collective opinion on matters like this.

Now, onto the other guy's post:

"but it is very strange to add certain rules after getting a wr"

Would you have preferred I done it beforehand? There's no timing here that people weren't going to give me shit for, nor is this a compelling argument about anything, it's just questioning my motivation, which is not only mildly insulting, it's also actually totally irrelevant. Non-argument.

"and you were not really open to discuss with the community"

This thread exists, the change was discussed with many prominent community members on the community discord to a largely positive reception and they even helped me refine the ruling to be much clearer than it's initial draft. I cannot help you if you do not make an effort to engage the community here, I'm doing literally all I can here to listen to as many people as possible and yet I'm still being told I'm not open to discuss things with the community. Nah.

"(including closed my topic without giving chance to other people manifest). "

We have threads already to discuss the matter, and frankly the argument presented in that thread was answered pretty clearly. Not much else to discuss there, so I locked the thread. I'm completely unsympathetic to the argument of "my computer sucks, so I need to change the way the game emulates but then I fail to adhere to the standard". That's not a moderation issue, that's a hardware problem.

"Rules must exist to make things fair, not to make things difficult for no purpose."

Correct, that's why the rule change exists at all. To make things fair between emulator and console, because currently old versions of emulators have a distinct advantage in a couple of respects and that's obviously not acceptable for fair competition.

"would not you simply create a category just for you."

No. The entire point of this change is to make emulators and consoles more comparable so they don't NEED to be split in the first place, because splitting emulator into a different category is an incredibly ugly, clunky change and is massively unnecessary in the face of there being plenty of emulators that are usable that present fair competition with consoles. Maybe I'm wrong but I would be sincerely surprised if that's honestly the route the SH community would prefer to go.

I could just hide emulator runs by default, that's also an option, but I don't really like that either. It's an option though if people want to go that way.

"which has always been accepted and is not any kind of cheating"

The killcount/itemcount script was never accepted and moderation was largely unaware it even existed. I had to ask people around to find out what it even was. It's hard to ban things if you don't know they exist and it's pretty severe cheating in 10 star runs. I don't see how it's even possible to argue it's not.

"A small graphic bug due to an old emulator should not be a rejection factor."

It's not "a small graphic bug", it's a global issue in how the game's lighting effects are rendered which creates an extremely noticeable difference between emulator and console versions.

I say this from the experience of having ran on these outdated emulators and then transferring to console, I had to actually re-learn entire sections of the game due no longer being able to see what I was doing as well. That flashing on/off of the light I do on the lighthouse run is a strategy I employ to combat the reduced visibility and gain my bearings in the darkness. I had to learn to do this when I changed to console where I didn't need to do it at all before because the emulation renders so bright that it's a non-issue, and flashing the light on/off has implications for attracting enemy attention etc, all of this is unnecessary on old emulator builds because you can see really well in the dark due to poor emulation where console cannot.

If you do not think old emulators don't have some sort of advantage in this regard, I posit that you seriously try it for yourself.

"it will also limit runners who need to use certain versions due to performance issues. "

This just isn't a problem moderation ought to concern itself with. We're not here to pander to people on bad computers.

"It is more than clear that you are deciding things depending on what you and your friends want"

No, I'm really not and I would kindly ask you to stop accusing me of stuff like this. It's really frustrating.

"Even if someone use the version you want, with a minimum knowledge can create another SRT and use secretly."

Anyone can code a program for any game ever that runs on an emulator, this isn't a good argument for it. Forcing to a specific emulator version to knockout use of scripts that already existed and were in circulation and also deal with the rendering issues kills two birds with one stone.

"Since you do not want to apply a simple solution, that is to divide all, you should ban emulators at once."

If the Silent Hill community really feels that way, then I can do that. But I would really be surprised if that's what people land on in the end. I'd prefer to hide emu runs by default than ban them outright if push comes to shove.

It seems to me like the new rules regarding emulators was to remove a percieved imbalance between console and emulator. There are still a variety of accepted emulators. The point of allowing emulation is to promote a more unified board. It also allows more people to participate. It is important to draw a line between accessibility and fairness, and this change seems to be an okay adjustment, especially since the boards are dictated by IGT (performance of the PC shouldn't be a major issue most of the time). I support the new rules at this time.

I don't think the differences between console and emulator are so great that they merit separate boards given what I understand about the game and that IGT is used. People will inevitably find ways to view memory on newer emulators. I do concede that limiting to newer versions is a band aid fix, but it is appropriate as a starting point.

"Succinct, since you deliberately is creating difficulties, would not you simply create a category just for you. I may be rude, but it is very strange to add certain rules after getting a wr, and you were not really open to discuss with the community "

Allex I haven't seen you do a single run, you are an outsider here and cannot talk about the community. And use yourself as an example of being ignored (when your making threads about already decided changes and using the same argument against them that has already been disproven) he has been talking in the community discord (with you know, the community you're claiming he's ignoring) and asking everyone to submit their opinions. He is making forums that asked for opinions then when someone literally threw a fit (and admitted to cheating causing more changes) we decided majority wise to push for the changes. Suddenly you come around pushing the same idea "you got WR and suddenly made changes hurr hurr" The changes do not effect WR. Correlation does not = causation. He has had WR before as well. He has also been away from the game for a while, he came back and within the weeks worked to find a work around for the emus issues and started doing runs again, he then got WR because he grinded really hard and worked hard. That should not detract from his point that the emulators are not emulating correctly and can be used to hack the game. And need to be addressed. He used a console official port that cannot be edited. This does not give him any advantage at all with these changes. Just because he gets WR doesn't suddenly call into question his ability to moderate. If he was doing this with ill intentions he would have been removed from moderation power already.) Edit: Also I don't understand how you think Succint is making difficulties? Like what difficulties? you can't just say that and then walk off like HUH. And if you say it's banning the emulators. He did not do that alone. And it's not a difficulty, it's actually less of a difficulty because with it we don't have to deal with the hack mod which has already been admitted to being used by a runner.

Also anyone talking about like the "it shouldn't just be on the discord" the discord is open to the public. You can join and talk. And he did make forum posts too, so that it WASNT regulated to just the discord.

"2.) Ban emulators outright from the category, this would entail retroactively deleting both 10 star runs from the board, which would leave the category completely empty and to be honest, kinda pointless and vestigial at that point."

After reading through this thread I would say this seems to be the most logical answer. That's my two cents.

I guess I ought to formalise my position on what has happened even though I haven't ran SH1 in two years and relinquished my mod status a long time ago.

Only allowing certain emulators, versions and configurations makes sense to me, it provides a standarisation and a modern machine will handle any emulator so the one which is "most accurate" to the gold standard of the console release should be used.

Back when I ran SH1 10 star these scripts weren't a thing. I am very dissapointed that samuca used external tools to gain an advantage while using an emulator and pretending his runs were "legit" as I explicitly asked him how he tracked his kills and he refused to give an answer. I don't care if someone wants to use tools to read memory addresses just as long as they aren't editing anything and are upfront about it because to be frank there are a million ways someone could "cheat" that would be impossible to detect so getting hung up on that is a waste. For example look at the cheatengine table BMJ made for SH2 or the routing streams I did of 2 and 3 while reading memory addresses.

I'd like to ask why punchy seems to be having to handle this on his own? I know he gives a shit about the leaderboards which as he made the google doc before this shit site existed but why Tekkie and Zorkiy aren't doing anything and staying silent after the fuss they threw when their mod status was removed a while ago I don't understand.

Edit - Sorry, turns out Zorkiy has a pretty good excuse.

Man, all the options here are lose/lose. Either an entire category gets fucked over or the mods implicitly condone cheating. "Not cheating" is probably the best way to go about this, and I think that's really only guaranteed by option 2. I think that because PCs (which are the proxy that emulators in this discussion are standing in for) have so many ways of pretty easily viewing what's going on in the underlying code, to the point that banning PCs is kind of the only way of guaranteeing that cheating via memory viewing won't happen.

You cut out the point where I said you can't claim him ignoring one person repeating stuff doesn't entail ignoring the community, You can become part of the community, But to come out of nowhere and start shit flinging at a mod is dumb and make your look like you're just here to start drama for the sake of drama.

Also allowing specific Emulators doesn't "condone cheating" as the ones allowed don't currently have the old hack. Yes someone could make a hack in the future. But one would expect and hope to eventually find and expose it. It doesn't condone cheating it is trusting people to be fucking decent and not cheat. It's trusting in the runners.

Aaaaaand, To Radge. Tekkie told me two days ago he wouldn't have internet for the weekend or so, the new Homecoming glitch was released and he was bummed about not being able to stream and do runs until he can get back. It's just bad timing that he's away but it's not his fault.

Zorkiy has been afk for months and should honestly have mod removed. Same with Tdawg. But that's for another thread.

"as the ones allowed don't currently have the old hack. Yes someone could make a hack in the future. But one would expect and hope to eventually find and expose it." From what I can tell from the other thread, it's already been made, but has yet to be distributed in the way that the hack for ePSXe 2.0 has.