PC specs do matter
8 years ago
Italy

Here’s a retarded find I made today. Know why my speedruns don’t use 3 small skips? My PC literally doesn’t allow for them. I play in 800 × 600 resolution (any higher and my PC shits itself), which makes it impossible to do the Limewater Cave glitched jump up to the Capla Water and the Geis death cutscene skip. I found this out when by mistake, while trying for the umpteeth time to do the LWC glitched jump, I double clicked the game window which made it go into full screen. I then proceeded to get the jump 15 times in a row. If I play in full screen, with no other external programs going (I tested– can’t be streaming while doing it, can’t be recoding a video), I’m able to get the jump every time, easy.

I’ve been wondering for the longest of times whether my potato PC was giving me longer load times than other people (this happens to me in another speedrun I have WR in– Youyou Kengeki Musou), but finding out that resolution affects glitched game behaviours was a first. I presume this is also why Ghostking is able to easily get the skips in Ys Origin, while most other people have had troubles with them.

I was kind of thinking to switch into full screen for those few skips in my next runs, but like I said before, after testing while streaming, even at full screen the skips don’t work (not to mention the stream cuts off as soon as I go full screen, and it would only record a black screen for its duration anyway). I’m not sure why. The game does tend to slow down / start lagging for me if I’m streaming full screen, so I guess that might be why. I don’t know whether the strongest, best PC will always have the advantage or if there is some sort of in-between sweet spot where a certain PC can give you the best outcome. Just felt like sharing this.

TL;DR: PC speedrunning sucks. Especially if you have a potato like me.

Edit: If you read down you’ll find that this game’s behaviour depends on the fps, if nothing else’s working you can use DxTory (frame limiter program) to force 61fps (read below) to make the game work as intended. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1820131

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Italy

Hmm… in windowed I apparently get “480” fps and it doesn’t work, in full screen I get 61 fps and it works. I tried putting “Refresh Rate 60hz” in the options but I still get 480 fps in windowed, so I’m not sure how to test it.

Edit: Different resolutions at full screen give me a different cursor position requirement, but they still all run at 60 or 61fps and they always work once you find the position. So it could be fps I don’t know, why does this game run with such retardedly high fps in windowed?

Edit2: I removed V-Sync and full screen is running at 660 fps now. The glitch doesn’t work. So I guess fps determines whether it’s possible or not, and resolution determines the setup. Would be nice to find a way to make the game run at 60 fps when windowed.

Also yeah, I can confirm the beach glitch is stupidly easy at 61 fps. I got it 5 times in a row and stopped trying, lol. This really makes me feel shitty about my speedruns. Actually I think the super high fps explains why my IGT is always so stupidly slow (like 4 hours for WR) other than being saved in the wrong slot.

Italy

I’ve always had V-Sync on but it doesn’t help in windowed for me. I’m on Win XP with 1280×1024. These are my settings: http://i.imgur.com/HRo7mEx.jpg

Italy

Tried your same settings (plus V-Sync) and it only reduced it to around 160 fps… which isn’t good enough for any skip I’m not already doing. I don’t understand how the “Refresh Rate” option doesn’t do anything, I’d think that was supposed to be it.

Italy

Thanks a lot for your help man! Had no idea frame limiters existed, I downloaded DxTory and the game is running at 60fps in windowed, and I can do all the skips! Time to test it out during a speedrun. :)

In case anyone else is interested: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1820131

Edit: It doesn’t even require to have V-Sync enabled, so I disabled it. I’ve read V-Sync causes a bit of input delay.

Edit2: Hmm… locking the fps to 60 seems to make the game run slower than normal. The intro cutscene usually takes slightly less than 2′15″, but with forced 60fps it took almost 2′15″50. Edit: 61fps seems to be the correct framerate for this game. I’ve tried forcing 100fps and the intro cutscene still took as much time as with 61fps, so it’s good that it doesn’t seem possible to cheat with this method. If you wanted to be safe you could force 62fps or slightly more, but then the IGT will probably become incorrect. I think I’ll test out doing speedruns with 61fps and see how it goes.

Italy

Could someone time their intro while only holding down Jump without mashing? I noticed Kiniamaro’s game runs at 60fps and his intro with mashing was pretty slow, but it still could’ve been just slow mashing so I need a comparison with just holding down Jump.

Edit: Calculated a 61fps 1:20′00″ run to convert to 1:21′20″ in 60fps so I would only be saving 1′20″ which is actually less than I thought. This doesn’t really prove anything one way or the other… so I still need somebody else to time their intro.

Québec

@ALAKTORN

My mashing is VERY slow :^)

I'll time you my intro

PS: at what point do you stop your time for the intro?

Italy

^Just make a video of it with the timer please I’ll compare them myself. Run the timer until you can move around.

Italy

Huh, surprising. Your 60fps timing is more in line with my forced 61fps timing than the forced 60fps timing it seems. You got a sub 2′15″, ≈ 2′14″80 I’d say which is on the slow side but not on the forced 60fps slow side. I think I only really tested 60fps once and it gave me ≈ 2′15″50 (I get 2′14″20–70 with 61fps) and also by calculating it, 2′14″60 61fps would convert to 2′16″843… 60fps which seems extremely slow so maybe for whatever reason forcing 61fps is giving me normal 60fps speed.

Edit: So anyway my conclusion is that I’ll keep playing at forced 61fps. I may test more intro timings at forced 60fps but since it’s kind of a bother to do I don’t know if I will.

Edit: Wow in this old WR it actually took me 2′15″ and that was with uncapped fps so it should’ve been going at like 400fps:

Québec

I think the time difference is more in the time it takes for the opening video to realize it shouldn't load. you know where you usually get the anime intro?

that's my theorie, Could just be the I/O time it takes to load the next part of the game.

Italy

Maybe that’s where some of the variance is coming from but there’s definitely difference to forcing 60fps rather than 61fps, I’ve never gotten anywhere near 2′15″50 with 61fps.

Italy

I changed my monitor and thought that maybe it’d let me run the game at 60fps without DxTory, but it didn’t change anything. I guess the problem is the graphics card or whatever rather than the monitor.