Yea angel island start thing should be allowed since it changes nothing at this point. And yea, ban all the emulators that have a tas function lol.

I currently play on emulator (Kega Fusion) using keyboard. I haven't done any S3&K runs yet, but to enter in-game times in Sonic 2 I currently use my mouse to swap window focus from the emulator to the LiveSplit entry form to type in and enter the time during the level countdown, and then back to Fusion in time to start the next level.

If anyone can recommend a keyboard input viewer that will detect and display the inputs to the emulator, but won't get confused when I shift the focus to the LiveSplit time entry form, I'd be happy to add it to my OBS video layout.

@VariousVarieties you could always use the autosplitter for Sonic 2 (just press the Activate Button in the Livesplit splits editor,and you should be good to go).

I believe https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/a_new_keyboardmouse_visualizer_create_your_own_layouts.html is what a number of people use to display keyboard inputs on OBS.

Pancakes recently recorded a video of Console and Fusion running the demo of Sonic 1 side by side. This illustrates pretty well how much at least loading times on emu can affect a run:

While RTA vs IGT is a discussion worth having for Sonic 1 and 2 still, it's already a fact for S3K and the new list of emulators must account the fact that loading levels among other things could add up to several seconds of advantage over the course of a full game run.

S1 Demo playlist on many platforms: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZxm5GLYbrJfntOEN-FP2NX7O1CE5Zrh8

It gets really complicated, however from casual viewing:
- Model 2 appears to be the same as Model 1
- Fusion is quite a bit faster than console.
- Retroarch is somewhere in between the two.
- Higan is fastest and Exodus are somewhere between Fusion and Retroarch
- Bizhawk is slightly faster than Retroarch (which is odd a they both use the same core).
- BlastEm! appears to be on par with the Genesis, even with the console gaining a slight advantage over it as well.

I've started creating a spreadsheet of the timings from the S1 demos, which has the key bits filled in currently (Console, Fusion and Retroarch).

Based on these readings - but need to do demos from S2 & S3K as well to get a proper gauge, I would suggest multiplying the time in Fusion by 1.00441, and in RetroArch by 1.0027

I don't know if the special stage in S1 uses a different video mode, but all emulators appear to be quicker than console (except for BlastEm!). If we take the Special Stage demo out of the equation and those multiplications into account, we get very similar times to console. Again ,need the other data to make sure. We also need to take note that the refresh the console uses does not translate 100% into 60 fps video - hence why there are two different times for SY.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vuKFn9RqW8Hi8Bn71Q-c2Q-cNyfgmyregZVGNk74pKg/edit?usp=sharing

The calculation isn't meant to be perfect but hopefully bring the times more in line with console. 🙂

S2 RTA minus everything except the IGT flooring

You can read the description for general comments but to summarise:
- Both the timer and animals have an influence, but both are relatively marginal.
- Animals have a lower influence than the IGT. I would estimate about half.
- Pauses have a huge impact depending on how much it's done.

With these results I would normally say switching to RTA is not worth it with the issues for emu that we've found. But considering it needs to be solved for S3K regardless, I would say RTA is worth it for tracking the pauses which are significant.

Bit of a bump, but it is a sticky. Two things:

1. My only complaint about input viewers is that Gamepad Viewer (the only real input viewer) is a browser program and can't be downloaded. Browser programs always give me trouble, even something as simple as a window for Twitch chat. Seems I'm not the only one there though.

2. IGT versus RT (not "RTA"). The problem here isn't using real time so much as the developers not putting in milliseconds in a game where you're supposed to go fast. I still don't understand why CD did this but 3 did not. For individual levels, real time should clearly be used. Having a list of 0:24 ties on GHZ1 is a pretty bad state. Ideally, you'd use real time for a full game run too, and just cut out the score keeping parts (this is the bit people will likely debate on). Autosplitters make this significantly easier, too!

Yes, there are idiots who say "real time is always better!" without really understanding what that means. Those people should be ignored, but better solutions to the very real problems that in game time can cause should be researched. Seriously, Sonic Team really screwed up by not putting milliseconds in 1, 2, and 3.