California, USAOasis: Enter Imad's shop. Let Imad say one word, leave shop, re-enter shop, let Imad say one word. The book will now spawn without having to listen to his full dialogue. Rainbow Forest: Omar and Halima's initial dialogue can be skipped after one word is spoken. Their items will be spawned and collectable. Beach: No skips Ice Palace: Sultan Kardal's initial dialogue can be skipped after one word. Going to the Evil Genie will still grant the player the red gem. City in the Clouds: No skips
For posterity's sake, I will mention here that upon viewing my testing in , we have decided to un-ban Xemu from 11/28/21 onwards, as long as load times are not calculated in the run's final time.
Mod here - the auto splitter doesn't really work tbh, so this was the right way to do it. Thank you for the extra proof, and congrats on the run!
Hey Bregermann, I've updated the title of this thread to say "recommended" and I can also comment further on how this aims to make the playing field more fair in general. Currently, the autosplitter is only set up to do automatic load removal for this particular emulator. However, load removal is totally possible through frame timing in post on console, and if you're using direct capture (with an Elgato or similar) of your console to your PC, you can also make the automatic load remover work! I plan to make a tutorial on this at some point soon, but kkrider and I wanted to get the load remover out with a setup tutorial for emulator because it works. If you'd like to talk about it more, I'm happy to talk about it in the Barbie Speedrunning Discord (linked in the video's description on youtube)
Hi there, sorry for the confusion. We're intending to remove loads for all runs done from this point forwards, however, there is a manual way to do load removal without playing on emulator. If you time all the loads in your run by counting frames either on youtube or a video editing software, you can subtract that time from the total and that's your "time without loads". I would be happy to do this for your best time on the leaderboard so it's fair!
Hello everyone! This is a tutorial on setting up our automatic splitting and load removal tool for runs performed on Cxbx-reloaded (the fastest permitted Xbox emulator).
If you are playing on another platform, the autosplitter files included in the above tutorial's description may not support your setup. Reach out to us in the Barbie Speedrunning Discord for help!
If you are unable to use the autosplitter (or don't want to, no judgement), you can follow this tutorial for timing without loads using a video editing software:
That's a fair decision, makes sense to me. I found a program that uses screenshots of the game to function as an autosplitter, and it has a "pause" function so we could use it remove loads. It might need to be calibrated per-person for use with real console capture, however, with emulators it should be consistent since the image is the same every time. I'm testing it with cxbx-r and it works great! I'm gonna try to creat a full set of images that can make it work as a load remover/autosplitter and then do a test run.
That's fair, I see the accessibility angle there for sure. I'll look into load removers and if we can't get something working then I don't know how you'd want to handle Xemu runs already on the leaderboards. I'm fine with my all foals run on Xemu being taken down, but ultimately Cxbx would still be the fastest platform out of any console or emulator with Xemu removed if we still count loads.
Video description, copied:
"This is a comparison of the time with and without loads between Xemu and Cxbx-r playing Barbie Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue up to the gate opening cutscene in Forest Trail 1.
The runs compared are my (Soulcloset) fastest runs of Any% No Foals (played on Cxbx-r here: https://www.speedrun.com/barbie_horse_adventure_wild_horse_rescue/run/mk59vqvm) and Any% Collect Foals (played on Xemu here: https://www.speedrun.com/barbie_horse_adventure_wild_horse_rescue/run/mk53lj5m). I cut these videos starting at the frame the game responded to the A button press on the main menu (when the buttons start to fade), and ending on the first dark frame post-cutscene where barbie becomes visible.
For removing loads, I removed all frames where a loading screen was visible, without removing any frames before or after that may have been frozen due to lag. This could be changed, however, it would be difficult (in my experience) to tell exactly which frames are lag and which are just the game's framerate not matching with the recording framerate, or the player not doing an action frame-perfectly.
I propose that all BHA:WHR runs be timed/retimed with loads removed in the above detailed way, to keep competition mostly fair between emulators, and between emulator and console for the same platform. Due to its lag and the untested effects of Fast Disc Speed, PS2 is currently slower across the board than Xbox, emulator or not. However, many games have a fastest platform, and in my opinion, evening out the field between emulator and console creates a fair environment on par with other speedgames."
I think doing subcategories for console vs emulator would be a good idea, although Sneezeball and I were talking about timing without loads as well. That's kind of the ideal option, but at the least I think we should split hardware vs emulator. That's just me though, I don't necessarily speak for everyone haha
I couldn't get Xemu set up, and unfortunately since it's illegal to distribute/host working files we can't easily ensure that everyone will be able to get it working. However, if Xemu, Cxbx, original Xbox, and 360 are all different speeds and have different quirks, it may be worthwhile to segment runs at least between emulator vs console, to maintain fairness for those playing on real hardware. I don't have an Xbox and my 360 has a broken disc drive, however, i'd be happy to run emulator still even if it was segmented off. We could also investigate timing without loads, however as a previous moderator of other games, I'd like to suggest that the job of calculating the time without loads be the responsibility of the runner, rather than the mod(s).
Hello everyone!
I and Sneezeball (current 1st and 2nd place No foals) use Cxbx-reloaded to play this game, and it runs well but has visual and sound glitches. I tried to get xemu working, but it's quite complicated and wouldn't boot the game.
Has anyone used another emulator (or different Cxbx-R settings) to avoid these visual-audio glitches?
If so, feel free to reply here or message in the WHR channel on the Barbie Speedrunning Discord: https://discord.com/invite/9gsUEyKcup
I'm leaving speedruns behind for the most part, and I'd like to pass this game off to someone who's on here often. Lmk on twitter if that's you.
Saw a run submission played on a real PS2 saying that load times are faster on emulators, and it seems like they are. Even though I play on emulator, I do think that we should split up the leaderboards to make it fair for everyone. Thoughts?
Hey y'all, series mod here.
Seeing a lot of runs of this and the original game recently, which is hella cool! But one thing I see a lot is people submitting their times with incorrect millisecond amounts.
When the game says, "20.35" that does NOT equate to "0m 20s 035ms". This is because of how decimal points work - XX.35 == XX.350 == XX.35000000. But XX.35 will never equal XX.035 or XX.00035, etc.
So basically, when the game says your time is XX.yy, submit it as 0m, XXs, yy0ms. Thank you!
The level ones are just there because it's what we thought of when designing this page with the SH discord back in the day. I'm no longer in that Discord, but generally these boards haven't changed in a long time. Katana being on the normal boards is because it's a challenge built into the game, not an arbitrary one made by the community.
I use Firefox on Windows 10 & Firefox Nightly for Android. I understand it happening in the nightly build on my phone, but it's the same on my computer.
My account is enabled for TFA because I'm a moderator of several games and one series. That's fine with me, and while I wouldn't have enabled it on my own, I understand the choice to make it required. However, on my only desktop computer, I only check the site once every week or so. Every time I come back, I'm no longer logged in. The site had never automatically logged me out before the TFA change, and since it's been a while now, I know it's a consistent problem. Is this intended behavior? I'm less inclined to use the site if I have to manually log in every time I come on.
Here's a link: https://discord.gg/xYBGrUR
Come talk about strats, times, and other stuff! ❤️
