Attention Moderators: Concerning PS2 consoles and PSDriver Version 1.11
4 years ago
United States

Concerning the particular rule, I believe that it was made with incorrect/outdated information. I want to explain the particular chain of events and why this information came up, and future developments showed that the 1.11 driver being the cause of abnormal loads is incorrect, as a second game's leaderboard has also propagated this information.

About two years ago, I ran Resident Evil 2 on PS2. There was a Claire A run by a runner named Trevor Seguin which was grandfathered into that leaderboard, having been a relic prior to Twitch.tv. Nobody could get within several minutes of that run because his loads were so fast.

I bought multiple PS2s to test loads on after seeing a video for another game, Xenogears, which showed that a specific version of PSDriver rendered text faster. My goal was to determine why that was.

I had bought a modchipped PS2 SCPH-70012 with PSDriver 1.11 which I ran RE2 on and got loads similar to Trevor's run. I was able to get within 1 minute of his record on a run full of mistakes, compared the loads in his video to mine, and also found a similar result from other players who also had 1.11 on PS2s.

At that time, I had assumed and made the conclusion that it was 1.11 which loaded things faster, knowing nothing about the functions of modchips nor having another modchipped console to create another testgroup in my personal setup. A separate leaderboard was made for "PSDriver any" and "PSDriver 1.11".

Fast-forward to around a year and a half ago, I did the run again on an SCPH-90001 US model which I had gotten modchipped for the sake of convenience (I had the work done on this console after I had used my own run on my modded SCPH-70012 and everyone else's consoles as a testgroup). I hadn't disabled the modchip prior to this, and got exactly the same load times on this PS2 (which was running Driver 2.00 btw).

I believe other people (I don't remember who specifically, I think Darazanjoll was one of them) also concluded that modchips, depending on whether the modchip was enabled or disabled (Matrix Infinity modchips, for instance, deactivate when you hold the Start button on bootup), would have changed the version of PSDriver.

Every run on the 1.11 Driver leaderboard for RE2 was modchipped (mine, Trevor Seguin's, and AndehX's consoles to name a few), and had said modchip enabled to play one region's games on a foreign console, all with abnormal load times.

In other words, the enabled modchip had been interrupting specific checks in the disk loads, causing them to load faster.

Unfortunately, there is no way to tell from the outset whether a console is modded or not without comparing load times (checking the Top 3 times seems to be the only reasonable way to verify this, yes) but 1.11 is NOT what caused those abnormally fast loads in other games.

It is also inconclusive if 1.11 or modchips actually change any load times in RE1 or RE Survivor (which has recently implemented this rule). I had only confirmed this on RE2. Please use this information to alter the rules and do your own research accordingly, because the present state of requiring people to show their PS Bios screen for verification doesn't present a proper solution to the real problem (if it actually does exist for RE1 at all).

If this rule was implemented with other information that I am not aware of, I do apologize in advance but would be interested in knowing said information.

Tamster likes this
United States

An addendum:

For clarification, I don't disagree with having players show their BIOS screen for the sake of data collection (there is still a lot that is not known information about the way PS consoles load games), but I do disagree with it being a present reason for rejecting runs based on PSdriver 1.11, since it is unknown how an unmodified console with PS Driver 1.11 would behave in RE1. It is untested, and RE1 and RE2 are executed differently with no parallels between either game on any hardware version/driver version to call for a blanket ruling.

Most people running PS1 games would probably just run an SCPH-90000 (or SCPH-90001) with 2.00 anyway since it's the newest hardware with the latest driver and seems like the safest policy for equivocally balancing ruling across all games.

California, USA

This is why PS console speedrunning, or any disk fed system for that matter is a bit of a mess to moderate. So many combinations of models, driver versions, mod chips... <--- which to my knowledge is universally taboo in speedrunning with no possible way to detect if one is being used. Testing all combinations and doing this kind of research is very expensive and time consuming, all to try and understand the best way to moderate a platform almost nobody runs, or ever will run again. I understand some people are purists and prefer to run on official hardware. In 2020, most of us don't care about that anymore. Seems to me that all of our problems and stress, also occasional drama, comes from console runs. It's almost completely phased out now and is way less of a balanced playing field for most players. It's come to the point that moderating console on these boards is not even worth it to us anymore. We'll be discussing how we want to deal with this mess and get back to the community when we've made a decision.

lexitor, Subsonix, and WitchRain like this
California, USA

And correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't use of a mod chip cheating? If it is, and WRs and top 3 runs are using them, doesn't that completely destroy the integrity of these leaderboards in the first place?

California, USA

Raichu, if you bothered reading the part where Carci explained that his mod chip skipped instructions while loading rooms, leading to faster than usual loading times, it's literally the definition of cheating. Did you even read that? If you're here to shit post, get lost.

California, USA

It's funny how the hardcore "Official hardware" crew turns a blind eye to modding a system with an unofficial piece of hardware. When and where will the hair splitting end? lol. Please... Also, a mod chip can do a lot more than region lock.

United States

@Raichu Of course I have no idea how different modchips work on different consoles/games but it’s easily identified whether someone uses one or not by the bios screen having an incongruous region/model code.

Here is what I propose, Clix. I actually went out and bought all of these PS2s to do the research. I’m not done doing that research yet.

You nor anyone else on the mod team have a console PB or have actually sunk time/money/research into doing the testing. Not a jab.

I put money into the control group that you would need in order to properly verify console runs. I discovered the modchip issue on the RE2 board because I was looking for the culprit under the hypothesis of different official firmware.

The fact I accidentally found out the culprit was a modchip (thereby realizing the chip forces the console to skip certain instructions) means I’m not done finding out that data, and you nor anyone else are interested in doing so.

I have no interest in verifying PC or Emu runs. Clearly. But I do have an interest in collecting data for different PS1 games on different hardware/PSdriver versions.

The volume of PlayStation console runs is low but there is a very clear “splitting hairs” issue that you don’t want to deal with.

I have the means and interest to take over this responsibility, and a toolset nobody else on the moderation team has.

Give me moderator and I will handle runs for original hardware. Not your problem anymore, tell people to take it up with me, and you don’t even have to talk to me.

I would be interested in gathering data specifically to find what console people run on, especially in grandfathered runs before your December 2018 ruling.

Obviously ban modchips, absolutely, but a blanket ruling based on obsolete information you also didn’t know the full story of isn’t the solution either. As soon as I learned about the modchip issue, that 1.11 leaderboard was changed to say “modchip” which completely invalidates the 1.11 theory.

I made mistakes, you made mistakes, there’s things you care about less, there’s things I care about less. I know things you don’t and can find things you and other moderators can’t and very much don’t want to. And the best part of all is, I’m interested.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
deserteagle417, WitchRain and 2 others like this
United Kingdom

What kind of instructions is the PS skipping cause of the modchip?

Because if that's a thing some modchips can just do, or all, that's a pretty big issue for the entire PS speedrunning community, as I'm guessing a lot do use modchips.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Florida, USA

At the end of the day we all got something in common here whether it's this port or that port. Doesn't matter.. It's the love we have for this game. Am I right or am I right? I mean this is why discussions like this can get so deep. Carci does have a lot of knowledge in the Hardware/Console department and does take the time to test these things out, as do I. It's good to have some sort of team for a game this busy that can cover all ground. This way we can make it legit as possible when it comes to fair leaderboards.

drops mic and then picks it back up because I just realized it was really expensive and I immediately regretted that

NuZ, deserteagle417 and 2 others like this
Mongolia

In conclusion, console runs, bit of a joke eh?

Florida, USA

Joke as in how much of a mess it can be? "yes" I never consider Hardware a joke. Especially for Retro games. :)

Edited by the author 4 years ago
CarcinogenSDA likes this
California, USA

What is this, the RE3 forums? lol. Behave children.

Symm likes this
Florida, USA

You know what? Clix Gaming? Your profile picture is a lie. You can fool the whole worlddddd into thinking you can do a Hadoken but I'm a expert in windows paint and by my knowledge you're living a lie. How do ya like that?

Edited by the author 4 years ago
United States

@Liv I don’t actually know. That’s just a theory, but it’s no coincidence that I had two consoles, two models, two completely different firmwares, and both of them loaded abnormally fast with the modchip enabled compared to not. I only know how this has affected RE2, not any other games. These days Japanese PS2s are easy to get, so there should be no reason to use a chipped console, but there’s also the issue of ODEs like PSIO to contend with as well.

@Orchlon then go run PC ya fuckin zoomer and leave this debate to the grownups!

NuZ likes this
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