@xSoapBubble recently brought up a good point - how does everyone feel about adjusting times for game crashes? I personally think this is pretty fair for the longer runs given how frequently this game implodes, but I have some times that would be affected by this drastically so I might be a bit biased.

If there were a way to fix it I might be less inclined - but there really isn't. I've tried an extensive number of things to get it running in a more stable fashion, and nothing works. You can take a look in the discord for a history of what's been tried. Might have more folks willing to run the game knowing that a crash won't affect them as much.

As for the timing we could do any of the following:

1. Deduct the time of the crash to the start of the selection of the next level.

2. Deduct the time of the crash to the start of the selection of the next level next level. If the crash happens in a level, deduct he time spent in the incomplete level from start to the restarting of the same level.

We could also switch to in game time, but I'm a little wary of that as it might lead to folks min-maxing the item system without consequence which isn't really in the RTA spirit, and it would also be incredibly rough to do for the runner and the mods on longer runs.

Let me know what you think!

This is a human theory TAS of Fireseal mode. The RNG to get this is possible for humans but very difficult. This is one of the highest damage roles possible for the Devil card in this situation and it is rare for the Valkyrie to both go first and not miss. That said, it is definitely doable for us fleshes.

There are other ways to achieve this 2 card 1 action route but this is probably more likely for humans to achieve.

With PS1 loads: 133.80 = 2:13.80 With corrected PS2 90k loads: 126.93 = 2:06.93

I'll link a copy of the TAS in resources.

No I'm not interested in doing a non-human version.

So, it would be possible for a human to do this to match the TAS exactly.

Highly unlikely, but possible. Lot's of frame perfect actions and things that would be rather difficult on a standard NES controller, but since someone got diagonals in a run recently, I figured I'd mention buffering and more efficient start presses can achieve this:

So if you're crazy enough to go for 30+ frame perfects... =P

I think it's likely that someone will get a 1:15 one day on NES 3D.

Hey All!

@OG_BOSSCAT recently brought up a good point - should we change the name of the Darkstalkers 3 board to it's now much more common Vampire Savior?

I've always preferred VSAV, but for a while Capcom seemed to use Darkstalkers 3 interchangeably in English releases, so I understand why it was labeled this way initially.

Now it seems like they're preferring the Japanese name for the English locales in new releases (since the Resurrections collection really). It might be confusing for new runners trying to find the game now.

Let me know what ya think!

Yes this exists. Yes it's as awful as it looks.

Here it is, the likely first and last speedrun of C64 SFII.

Enjoy... I certainly didn't:

Hello there!

I'm the mod on another Super FX game called Vortex and was running some specific emulation tests and attract mode tests for it. Attract Mode tests consist of running a few common emulators and methods of play and comparing them by syncing up a portion of the title screen and allowing them to run over the course of an hour.

For those that don't know, "Attract Mode" is a piece of the title that shows gameplay or impressive elements of the game to "attract" folks. Commonly it was used to entice folks to play arcade games, but most early console games and SNES games have them too.

For kicks, I decided to run the same Attract Mode tests with the rest of the Super FX games I have access to. One of them is Dirt Trax FX.

Here's the raw footage:

Basically I'm seeing how far out of sync the different options are after an hour.

Keep in mind, while the attract mode tests are a good ballpark as to what might be accurate, there's a lot of other factors too. It might give folks an idea for other emulation options to put through paces and eventually allow though.

Based on the video, it appears there's:

Significant issues with emulation on Mesen and No$sns - game crashes after 10+ minutes.

SNES 9x is 40 to 50 seconds ahead of hardware, giving it a very large statistical advantage in even the shorter runs.

Kindred seems to run a very slight bit faster, while most emulation runs slightly slower than hardware (BSNES, Bizhawk - BSNES, Mednafen).

Super NT, Hardware, and SD2SNES are so similar after an hour that the differences are statistically insignificant.

I'll hopefully be testing some other emulation methods at a later date as well.

Hello there!

I'm the mod on another Super FX game called Vortex and was running some specific emulation tests and attract mode tests for it. Attract Mode tests consist of running a few common emulators and methods of play and comparing them by syncing up a portion of the title screen and allowing them to run over the course of an hour.

For those that don't know, "Attract Mode" is a piece of the title that shows gameplay or impressive elements of the game to "attract" folks. Commonly it was used to entice folks to play arcade games. but most early console games and SNES games have them too.

For kicks, I decided to run the same Attract Mode tests with the rest of the Super FX games I have access to. One of them is Star Fox.

Here's the raw footage:

Basically I'm seeing how far out of sync the different options are after an hour.

Keep in mind, while the attract mode tests are a good ballpark as to what might be accurate, there's a lot of other factors too. It might give folks an idea for other emulation options to put through paces and eventually allow though.

Based on the video, it appears there's a:

15 second difference between BSNES, the most accurate emulator in terms of timing.

Super NT and SNES classic are slower, but considering the clock difference,(HDMI is 60fps, not the SNES 60.0988fps) it makes sense.

SD2SNES/FXPAK seems rather accurate to hardware for Star Fox, or at least a bit more accurate than the Switch.

Switch appears to be a statistically insignificant bit faster than hardware.

I will be following up on some other emulation options including Ares, Higan, and MiSTER options some time in the future and will update then.

Hello there, I'm the mod on another Super FX game called Vortex and was running some specific emulation tests and attract mode tests for it.

For kicks, I decided to run the same Attract Mode tests with the rest of the Super FX games I have access to. I was particularly interested in the now Official version of Star Fox 2 as I wasn't sure how things would stack up considering there never was an official cart made, but didn't realize there was a board for the Beta.

Here's what the tests look like:

Basically I'm seeing how far out of sync the different options are after an hour.

While I have all my tools up, I could test the prototype in the same way if there's an interest.

Keep in mind, while the attract mode tests are a good ballpark as to what might be accurate, there's a lot of other factors too. It might give folks an idea for other emulation options to put through paces and eventually allow though.

Let me know!

(Oops the title of this was supposed to be Star Fox 2 attract mode tests)

I recently started doing deep dives into all versions of the games, initially focusing on differences, but my goal is to gain a complete understanding of RNG across all versions.

I'll try to update this thread with information as I confirm more. Information will also be posted here.

Currently I'm working on: Mapping initial Tarot RNG DONE - Preliminary search for time counters. DONE - Found Tarot locations in Memory for ALL versions. DONE - Find Leader Name Memory locations. NEXT - Scripting a bot to play through and find all possible card sets per version:

1. DONE - SNES Beta version here: https://github.com/Krayzar/OgreBattle-MotBQ-TarotMapper See it in action here:
2. DONE - Nintendo Power SNES
3. DONE - PS1
4. NEXT - Saturn - started

SNES USA and JPN Both versions use a 256 counter for initial card RNG. @Dragondarch 's RNG manipulations for the name "!" will work well on all original versions of SNES. The documented card sets may be off by a single digit compared to hardware perhaps due to recent accuracy improvements in emulation or issues with the BSNES core in recent bizhawk versions that make replicating accurate to hardware results impossible, but in practice it doesn't change how anything works. I'll probably need to test with save states on real hardware to figure what the discrepancy really is with the SD2SNES, assuming I can get save states working on my older model.

Time Counter stored at WRAM: 0x51

Secondary Time Counter stored at WRAM: 0x52

Tarot Cards stored at WRAM: 0xDBE - 0xDCC

Leader name stored at WRAM: 0x7A4 - 0x7AB 0x87B - 0x882

Nintendo Power Kiosk version Nintendo Power SNES ROM uses a 256 counter for initial card RNG but has a vastly different algorithm that seems very similar to the PSX version. Current Manipulations for "!" do not work. 0x52 is a secondary time counter that resets to 0 once it gets to FF (255). 256 x 256 = a 32bit counter (65,536) and this timer seems to have involvement with the cards, so it may be the exact same system used for PS1 and Saturn.

Hopefully scripting the card RNG will illuminate just how close it is - 3600 iterations and counting!

Time Counter stored at WRAM: 0x51

Secondary Time Counter stored at WRAM: 0x52

Tarot Cards stored at WRAM: 0xDBE - 0xDCC

Leader name stored at WRAM: 0x7A4 - 0x7AB 0x87B - 0x882

PS1 Seem to have RNG based on program start - there is a main counter that counts up indefinitely and initial card RNG seems entirely based on it. That appears to be a full 32bit counter and does reset to 0 once it reaches the limit. There are semi frequent areas of lag frames on PS1. This essentially means that there are small 2 to 4 frame windows where it's very likely you will get a specific set of cards, but the card sets are based solely on the timer and algorithm and the periods of lag being inconsistent can make things tricky. There is also a 0 to 64 counter I'm aware of that doesn't seem involved in card RNG, but may have a role in other types of RNG.

Tarot Cards stored at PSX MainRAM: 1C6B85 - 1C6B93

Leader name stored at PSX MainRAM: 1C6C14 - 1C6C1B

Time Counters stored at PSX MainRAM:

T1: 13C8FC

T2: 13C8FD

Other counters: 00E20C 13C910 135104 14188C

Unknow why there's so many on slightly different offsets/starting positions.

Saturn Seems to have RNG based on program start - there is a main counter that counts up indefinitely and initial card RNG seems entirely based on it. That appears to be a full 32bit counter and could take over a year to figure out if there's any interesting effects if it maxes out. Tarot cards are stored odd/even in the address range - only version that does this.

Time Counter stored at SAT work ram high: 0F9670

Secondary Time Counter stored at SAT work ram high: 0F9671

Another time counter (Realtime) stored at SAT work ram high: 0C63F8

Tarot Cards stored at SAT work ram high: 0CD46C - 0CD479

Slot 01 = 0CD46D Slot 02 = 0CD46C Slot 03 = 0CD46F Slot 04 = 0CD46E Slot 05 = 0CD471 Slot 06 = 0CD470 Slot 07 = 0CD473 Slot 08 = 0CD472 Slot 09 = 0CD475 Slot 10 = 0CD474 Slot 11 = 0CD477 Slot 12 = 0CD476 Slot 13 = 0CD479 Slot 14 = 0CD478

No idea why Saturn does this. Cards are reordered shortly after final pick too.

Leader Name stored at SAT work ram high: 0F9674 - 0F967B

Same odd/even storage pattern.

These games are incredibly different under the hood though - that much is clear.

So after hearing about some arbitrary code execution possibilities in Castlevania Chronicles via the Tonyhax research, I took a look at some possibilities! (if you're wondering what Tonyhax is, look here: https://orca.pet/tonyhax/)

Chronicles allows you to name your save and it turns out that the game doesn't actually have any checks for that field. You could potentially write whatever you'd want there and have it call code to warp you Dracula.

Unfortunately, there's no way to go beyond the character limit in the save name that I can find from within the game, and thus there's no way to do anything cool beyond manually writing save exploits with external tools. That's just plain hacking, and if we're going to do that, we might as well take a look at how the save system is structured and try to exploit it instead.

Turns out, the save system is extremely basic. There's no checksums like in other PS1 games, and absolutely no sanity checks, so you can use some hardware quirks and other games to doctor a glitched save that warps you to Dracula, all from within a PS1 or PS2, like so:

Make no mistake - this is a parlor trick or meme run at best, and a poor consolation prize to the fact that this game could have easily had arbitrary code execution zaniness with a bit longer of a name option!

I don't think it needs a category or anything as I doubt anyone would ever be seriously interested in running the game this way - but it is possible.

Hi Runners and potential runners!

If anyone has any category ideas, feel free to suggest here. Everything is a bit barebones at the moment, and I haven't been terribly active due to some work related craziness.

I apologize @SpaceColonizer - I know my initial run wasn't much competition but I was worried a run with Wormhole tech would get the game rejected for being too short. There's obviously much longer ideas for runs available within the confines of this game's engine. Work limited my ability to route them though and I have this crazy rule, I'm only allowed to speedrun 4x games during the month of February.

Also, personally, I like the idea of being able to choose the specific seed for runs, but if any one would prefer a true RNG based run, we could add a sub category option that limits the advanced settings options and forces a random seed, though honestly with the ability to always see the seed, I don't see much of a point. There's already a decent amount of RNG even with choosing your seed!

Hey All,

Just want to get everyone's feelings on putting in for a Master of Orion series. My request for Master of Orion (2016) was recently accepted, and we now have enough (3) Master of Orion games for one.

Additionally, I asked the Mod and community of Master of Magic if they'd like to be a part of this as well. The idea would be to make it a more general "Master of" series if they want to join, since the early games are designed by the same folks and have a similar older 4x style and are arguably part of the same series.

Either way, my understanding is that nothing would change for the individual boards and the mods of the current boards would now also have series mods permissions, and be able to create new game boards in the series. There's also the added bonus of being able to see the whole series in an organized fashion on the site I should add. That's the nice feature I really like.

What does everyone think?

Hi All,

I recently got the Master of Orion (2016) remake approved on SRC, and we now have enough Master of Orion games to make a game series. But...

I wanted to see if the community here would like to be involved in that though, since MoM, while unique in it's own right, is fundamentally by the same designers and is a 4x "Master of" game. So instead of just a Master of Orion series, we could make it a more general "Master of" series and include MoM.

My understanding is that nothing will change for individual boards that become a part of a series, it's just that the current game board mods would also be promoted to series mods and be able to create game boards in the series.

Figured since the Caster of Magic Mod is being actively developed and there are rumblings of the new IP owner possibly looking to rebuild or remake the game from scratch, it might be useful for the community to have series control.

Let me know what you think either way! I'm fine with just seeing if folks want to do a MoO series, I just didn't want to exclude folks.

This exists, but it's only in Japanese:

I decided to do a speedrun of it last weekend for fun. It's Japanese name is Civizard - Majutsu no Keifu. Pretty faithful with improved graphics in some places. Very, very slow to play. Doesn't appear to have mouse support in my tests. The menus are 1 to 1 with the PC version, making it pretty easy to mess around with. Only light use of google translate was needed!

There's surprisingly little footage of it on the internet, and even less of it being beaten.

There's a PC-98 version as well, but I haven't been able to find a copy of it, legit or otherwise. Seems pretty close to the DOS version.

Hi All,

Just a heads up, I'm taking over moderation for Berserk:BoTH. If anyone has any questions or changes they'd like to see, feel free to ask here!

@Roxy_Rose if you'd ever like to come back and mod, please feel free to let me know and I'll add you!

Just in case anyone was wondering about why only Higan, BSNES, and the SD2SNES are allowed for emulation:

The gist is, after 40 minutes, SNES9x is over a minute ahead of all the others, and after only a few seconds is very visibly out of sync with some specific early timings.

Other FPGA solutions need to be tested, but I can confirm that no other well known PC SNES emulator is accurate enough. Most other Super FX game boards either ban unofficial emulators or require highly accurate emulation as well.

While most of the software you need to speedrun Excel 95 is freely available at WinWorld (<- Link here) and is fairly easy to get running, the full trilogy can be tricky. There is a bit of a legal grey area with some parts of the specific emulation I use and with Office 2000.

I'm not necessarily concerned with the emulation software - the BIOSes it uses are murkily licensed, but unlikely to cause any real trouble, and there are enough free and clearly legal alternatives.

Office 2000 is another story...

A few sites like WinWorld are allowed by Microsoft to distribute all but Excel/Office 2000 for archival and educational purposes, and what we're doing would fall under this. While you can certainly get Office 2000 products from sources like Archive.org, I feel uncomfortable linking to Office 2000 in this way. On a side note, I really don't know why that is. Much of the rest of the software from that era is hosted, it's literally just Office 2000.

Even more mysteriously, by several sources - Office 2000 is similarly allowed for educational and archival purposes, it's just that Microsoft doesn't allow it to be freely available on these sites. I'm inclined to respect that wish and not directly link anything to do with it here.

That said, if you are interested in a preconfigured emulator to run either Hall of Tortured Souls or the Full Trilogy, please feel free to reach out to me on discord or twitter. I can at least help there.

I personally use PCem (an early PC emulator) and mostly resources from WinWorld, though I do have access to original disks. PCem tends to be more accurate and capable for the later Direct X based "magic" than alternatives like DOSBox because it attempts to accurately emulate specific processors and graphics adaptors. You can get it all working in DOSBox, sure but it's more work than it's worth.

Link for PCem: https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ Link for Winworld: https://winworldpc.com/home

Obviously for Ogre Battle this is more useful for seeing how saves are structured and doesn't work for editing things due to the 2 block save system and sanity checks:

You can use more advanced tools like Dex drives and emulation based hacking tools to compare in more detail, but that takes a lot of time.

Hi @peck324

The first place run is not using correct settings. The damage level is set to the highest which makes the game trivial and goes against the specified settings. I messaged you on twitter about this a bunch of months ago and was reminded about it by @Carvalho 's current "2nd" place run.

Hi all,

I just made a few tweaks to the board and added a few categories for likely the most common versions. If there's a version you'd like to run that isn't here yet, please feel free to ping me or post here! I know there's a million versions of this game and some that aren't even documented in the Wikipedia article yet.

There's likely some versions (I suspect DOS and Amiga for example) that may be similar enough to be grouped together, but we'll have to see. There's already some surprising differences in the versions I've been testing.

You might notice the 30k population goal is now a variable and is now named State Capital. This is because I discovered that the Playstation version actually gives you State Capital at 10k! Weird, I know! If we do eventually want to expand the board, it will be easier to add another population goal for say, the Military Base, or Arcos now.

I've also grouped "Glitchless | Defualt Map RNG" and "Glitched | Any Map". It's very inelegant (sorry!) and if anyone has any suggestions on how to shorten that up and simplify things without losing the meaning, I'm all ears. We could just make it Default Glitchless and Any% I guess. I figure these are likely the only things folks would be interested in running based on feedback but we could separate things more if wanted.

Please feel free to voice concerns or things you'd like to see here!