I had a video going over this a while back when I was still running. Video was taken down and I believe the thread mentioning it was removed also.

Different models of the PS2 have different load times. Same goes for emulators. As you can see from the Individual Level leaderboards, the difference between first and last place on most levels are less than a second. Given that Stock Car is a just a run of all the races - and assuming runners are capable of hitting similar numbers as the top Time Trial runners - then Stock Car comes entirely down clean racing and load times.

The current top 3 runners of Stock Car are all 1-2 seconds apart, but loading screens can add multiple seconds depending on hardware revision/emu. It's possible the entire top 5 is completely inaccurate if we had an alternate way of counting time that stripped out loading completely.

I'm aware that other communities have had to face these kind of issues before, but the question is whether or not anyone here thinks it's worth the time to explore those options given the relatively small number of runners. If there's going to be separate categories for emu, then I think one specific version should be picked so everyone is on the same playing field. For hardware, you still have the revision differences to deal with, but that's just a reality of the category IMO.

If someone wants to go back and look, I'm fairly certain this glitch can be seen in a couple of my submitted runs. I believe I've seen it happen in all divisions. More interesting is that I've had it happen without touching any cars at all (or maybe one or two - regardless, not enough to earn the amount of points that it gives you.)

If you want to hunt for a really obscure glitch, I've managed to get 999 points before from single hits in Chalk Canyon. This has only happened on hardware (PS2), so I've always figured it was just an emulation issue.

I don't really have time for speedrunning anymore, but getting footage of the 999 points glitch is my "white whale."

I like the messy handling of the Pro car for WW. For Stock Car, the amateur car handles sharper turns better and makes the run a bit more tolerable since Pro feels like driving on ice at times.

What emulator are you using, btw?

Congrats on the WR!

Sub 20 is totally possible - I had a 20:XX run right before we realized how crazy load times were between emus.

I believe a truly "perfect" run would be around the 16:30-17 minute mark - that accounts for insane RNG, fast loads, and a glitch at the start of Black Sail that nets you around 200-300 points in the first turn with minimal contact (seen in a couple of my runs in later divisions.)

I figured it was a 90k! When I feel like dropping $100 I'll pick one up on eBay :)

Beetle PSX has a disc speed option that defaults to 2x - it's likely 4x would be close to the 90k, but I didn't have time to test it. Beetle is just an updated port of Mednafen, I believe.

I agree that hardware should be the target for these runs. What's the go-to capture method? I'm outputting component video, not composite.

Completely non-scientific test. I have no editing software atm so I'm not able to line these runs up perfectly. I'm convinced there are some performance differences between PS2 models but won't say that's a factor in these runs until I'm able to get a PS2 that loads as fast as the one referenced to do my own tests on.

It's worth noting that FDS benefits vary across PS2 models, and although I haven't been able to find any good documentation on the best models, I do believe there's some late-model "slims" that outperform earlier systems by a wide margin. Regardless, my "fat" console with FDS enabled loads slower than what I see in the run, but it's not that big of a deal - my bigger question was how faithful the PS2 is with handling more CPU/GPU-heavy moments, e.g., large crashes, etc.

Watched part of thebpg13's run today. I'm assuming it's being ran on the PS2? Either way, the load times are 2x as fast compared to emu and native PS1, which alone is a significant time-saver. There's also less variation in the framerate when lots of collisions are happening (see: the start of BSV in later divisions.)

My PB on emu is 54-something. Tomorrow I'll do a few runs on real hardware and see where the times come out at in comparison.

I'm having trouble recreating this. On my version, the black-white flag appears instantly upon crossing the finish line. Any chance you can link to a part of josef733's run where this happens?

The manual says that the max amount of points possible is 100 (spinning the first place car 360 degrees.) It might also be possible to get 150pts for spinning the first place car 360 and destroying it. I don't have footage of it going higher than that, but I've experienced single-hit 999pt spins on real hardware more than once.

I realized when I was running this game that I had very little idea of how points were handled. For example, a really strong hit that sends a car spinning can sometimes only award 10 points, or a very small hit will award 50. Sometimes the points come after a long delay, other times instantly. If we understood it better, maybe we could exploit it.

I'll start running again and see what I can come up with.

I did some glitch hunting back when I was running this, and the only major flaw I could find was a way to launch cars if they were pushed "into" a steep corner. I think it's a product of the physics engine trying to displace objects inside of solid objects, like when you try to hit those angular "spikes" that split some of the tracks and the car is very suddenly shifted left/right to avoid them. The same happens when a car gets pushed into a steep corner; the game displaces it upwards at a high rate of speed. If you hit them right, they will spin a great deal and rack up tons of points. It's possible to completely max out the point counter with one hit if you're lucky. The downside is that this sometimes results in instant destruction of your own car.

The ideal run would then be successful "launches" on one race in each of the divisions, which is what I was trying to do in my attempts, but couldn't reliably pull off. There are probably track-specific setups that would yield better results, but I'm not that motivated to wrestle with them.