zarc's a good Dodge Ball mod so I'll throw my hat in in support of that, and should the game continue to explode in popularity—I doubt it, honestly—I'm happy to help out with mod shenanigans as well.

And I will say that, for the most part, if I see the split timer at the end of the run reads one way but the submission is a lower time in milliseconds that I assume you all have done the frame count yourselves. I am more than happy to trust you all with your own frame counts

I appreciate the trust, and we're all homies and wouldn't try to cheat, but we're all human first and we make mistakes. I've accidentally submitted bad runs to Dodge Ball that needed to be rejected because of mistakes, and I've mistimed things before.

For example: That happened to Deadguy. He had a 4:10.920 run but accidentally submitted a 4:10.092 which was accepted. Deadguy would never try to cheat but mods should still doublecheck the numbers.

It's extremely important for mods to framecount every single submission to ensure the claimed timing is in fact accurate.

I agree, when we first started frame counting on SDB I kept messing it up and each time was like "okay now I figured it out" just for Marth or Zarc to re-time it lol. A quick double check isn't that hard, especially with the https://slashinfty.github.io/yt-frame-timer/ that MarthSR put in the SDB threads.

That's exactly why I am more than happy to allow Zarc on-board if he has a more trustworthy method of getting the absolute frame counts then that would be even more of an asset to the team.

We should also add into the rules that people should post in their comment their platform / emu used and what version (if emulator). We require that in Dodge Ball. Some of us will be testing out over the next couple days whether some emulators reduce lag more than others. So it would be helpful to know what people used. It could lead to a "preferred" emulator. We also require the reset. Below are the Dodge Ball rules adjusted for Gatsby if you want to use them as a template (or just use them. we can hash out some of the details).

Game Rules Timer starts once you get control of Nick in Stage 1, and ends on the last frame that Nick is visible and has stopped moving on Stage 4. Milliseconds are required for time below 4:15.

For emulator runs, please state the name & version of the emulator used in your submission. Smartphone emulators are banned. For MESEN users, the emulator's input display MUST be shown on screen. Save states are not allowed before, during or after the run.

Reset/power on prior to run must be shown on video. For the Nintendo Switch (non NES-online version) version, the "Reset" option must be used.

It is the runner's responsibility to ensure video footage remains available. Therefore, if a run with a missing video is brought to our attention, it will be removed.

I am in favor of this as being the updated ruling, it uses more clear language and touches on more points than what is currently listed. The game rules will be adjusted as appropriate to the categories but this will be the basis for each category.

I'm sure polsvoice will back this up but I will wait to hear his thoughts on what is presented above before I start editing.

Thanks again to the community for being a part of the ground-breaking of this games board.

@Zarc0nis I do speedruns of Super Mario Bros, and here are the allowed emulators FCEUX, Nestopia (Nestopia, Nestopia UE), Bizhawk, OpenEMU, Threecreepio's Mesen (This is MesenRTA FYI)

Versions of Mesen that haven't been updated by Threecreepio have a feature called "Run Ahead" which reduces lag, so that one would be a big no-no (MesenRTA is fine however, it disables that features and automatically has a Input Display/Frame Counter built into it)

Besides that, those 5 emulators are the best for recreating an NES, and I would make sure to check out runs that use different emulators then those to make sure lag isn't effected.

Thank you for the excellent insight CrabbyCrab101. I have been hearing about the recent goings-on with Mesen so I am glad to have all the information from someone who is up to date on everything.

From the godfather of Dodgeball:

https://www.speedrun.com/superdodgeball/thread/gcga5

Discusses most recent version of MesenRTA and how it's preferred. For Dodge Ball, Mesen went from allowed, to banned, to allowed over the course of a couple months.

Thank you Zarc, very informative. I now have the appropriate emulator and will be using that for my NES runs as much as possible.

@all this is true, was an accidental time, which j raised with the mods myself, and also left a note on the run to the same effect.

I agree trust goes so far and we are defo "homies" as Beardo said, but accidents can happen and every run needs to be frame counted x

I totally agree that language should be used in the rules. I'm for anything that make things absolutely clear and brings everyone more in line with running the same version of the game be it on hardware or emulator.

As KumaKhan already said we very much appreciate everyone jumping in to make the community around this game better by both asking questions and providing information. We're all learning as we go and having everyone throw their knowledge down is super helpful to building up a smaller game like this.

Hey all, I did like 6 or 7 clean runs of stage 1 with FCEUX 2.5.0 and best I could get was 54.52, which is around my best on Nestopia. So I think we can say FCEUX version 2.5 and above is allowed.