I suppose I will briefly weigh in on this. I do think it is very possible there are talented SotN runners outside of the US and Japan. I fully feel that it is possible someone could become extremely good at the game with only interaction with a certain community of local players. It is even possible someone with high talent could be out there without the ability to interact internationally (Keyn_Naka comes to mind).

That being said, while I do feel it is possible Tamison could be extremely good at this game, I do share some reservations about the videos listed. First try skips (even without map buffering) are possible to show in a RTA video, Rom and DB have done as much on a few of their videos. I am more at odds with the discrepancy of strategy difficulty.

Certain sections of the videos use strategies that seem poor compared to the skill needed to do others. The decisions made for strategies seem odd as well at times. They are not clearly slower or faster, just very odd when compared to the RTA community we are aware of. It is like if someone could run very fast in a 100m dash, but then decided to jump straight up mid race for some reason.

To put it more simply, it is possible Tamison could be very, very good. Without additional evidence (streaming being the best solution) or some trusted individuals coming forward in the community to vouch for their abilities, I still have my doubts about the videos. I would like to believe the talent is there, but I can not officially support it.

I wish the best of luck to Tamison for now. I hope he continues to play and interact with the global community. I also look forward to a time when he might be able to stream or find some other way to validate his statements and hard work for this leaderboard.

Thats odd, they were literally working earlier in the week.

Internal community already knows and uses the term "Co-op". No change will be made without community consent. Consistency be damned.

STCE is significantly different from GE. A new board has already been put through the submission process.

Locking thread. Resolved. Will delete thread Sometime™

Header image was removed or lost for some reason.

Yeah I had found this out a while ago. Should have updated.

From the video description - "0:00 - first quirk: you can move while doing a 180 degree turn by quickly pressing 'aim' during the turn. This makes doing 180 degree turns a little faster, and probably saves a few seconds in a speedrun too."

STCE is its own game. In the past, we have refrained from organizing runs of STCE due to problems with patching. Many different glitches were removed from subsequent patches of the game to the point that making an unbiased board didn't seem possible. Some new developments might make it possible.

In general, most of the movement tech and major glitches are possible on console versions of the game. However, the Select Door Glitch is not possible on console ports of the game. You should be able to abuse Save Point triggers, Swap Hop, Wall Hop, abuse El Infierno #3 and do other basic movement tech just fine.

I've contacted our current mods to see what their views are. Shouldn't be too difficult to implement. The hardest part is transferring over runs to the new boards.

Boards haven't been extremely active. It was probably just not a priority. Something to consider though if mods are looking into it.

A short list of things I learned about using 2D controls during casual playing on PS2.

1. Analog is very good to use for the most part using this system. It allows you to cut angles that simply are not possible using a digital input method.

2. When loading in many areas. The initial orientation of your controls is random. This means you could be holding Up during a load and initially be moving Right or Down until you adjust. This can be "fixed" by rotating your joystick at least 90 degrees during the end of a load in to an area. (Thanks to SuperGamer for this tip off to me)

3. There are 3 types of camera movement that will impact your inputs while running. A Camera Snap that will immediately change the position of a camera with no movement inbetween. A Camera Pan is when the camera moves smoothly from one angle to another such as when you move from the middle of a street to the sidewalk. The last I don't know how to name or define as it tends to pop up and I haven't found a true trigger for it. This particular camera movement complicates movement more than the first 2 methods.

4. During Camera Snaps, you can hold the direction you were holding in the previous camera angle to continue running along that line in the new orientation. You can even adjust your line during this run using the NEW orientation. (Test this to find thresholds and verify the adjustment. I think it is up to 90 degrees?)

5. During a Camera Pan, your controls change with the movement of the camera. This can greatly complicate movement, particularly on the streets of Silent Hill. You can use this to your advantage with some clever work as well though.

6. The third camera movement doesn't seem to follow the rules of the other two. I have no solid information on this form of camera.

7. You can't strafe or use the strafe buttons to quickturn while using 2D controls. Simple enough.

8. The stairs running up to the final boss cause James to stutter and walk up them often for no reason seemingly. SuperGamer has suggested switching back to 3D controls to combat this, but it might only be viable on PC. I have run into a situation where I was able to run against walls of the staircase slightly an entire section. It is slower than a straight run or strafe but needs no pausing or strafing. Unfortunately, I have been unable to consistently duplicate it with minor effort.

9. Due to Camera Pans, it might be favorable to run in the middle of the streets in Silent Hill so the camera is straight for James. This would promote straighter line running in an open environment with no obstacles. I am skeptical this is correct, but it could be something to consider given how much your movement can vary during the numerous Camera Pans on the sidewalks.

Is UFO typically run on Easy/Easy or some version of Beginner? (EDIT: Beginner is used.)

Does anyone have a firm understanding of how exactly Sexy Beam deals its damage? Enemies seem to take vastly varying amounts of shots to kill with the homing version. Do enemies just have varying health pools? I-Frames? Some combination?

Also curious as to the damage stats of the two components of the homing beam and the stats on eye beams.

Basically, any information about the mechanics surrounding Sexy Beam properties would be appreciated.

UPDATE: I did find some information on Silent Hill Heaven about possible damage and life values. Will try to test it out a bit to see if they make any sense.

Sexy Beam (Information from http://silenthillforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22311 )

Homing Attack: 200 (odd considering Heather Beam has damage per projectile on the same page.) Eye Beams: Otherworldly (?) capable of dealing 1,000 damage in about one second.

Enemies (Easy HP Totals for relevant UFO enemies. Information from http://silenthillforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22292 )

Closers: 1150-1250 Numb Body: 294-343, 420-490, 504-588 Pendulum: 200-400, 300-500 Doublehead: 570-630 Slurper (Copper): 560-640

I did some very light play on PSTV. The biggest thing I noticed was that PSTV seemed to get micro freezes every once in awhile (no more than a second) in random areas. That being said, my PSTV is not fully updated.

My advice is to just start up. Don't worry about versions until you can threaten a sub 20. Then you can gauge how you feel about the game and if you want to pursue the game and swap versions.

I am interested in doing a SH game for a 12 hour but would like to snowball that into other categories that may require multiple clears on the same file.

Am I allowed to run Any% using a clear file as long as I don't pick up NG+ content or am I required to start from a fresh save/New Game option?

Less about S+Q and more about people making a safety save for things like chest luck. The community isn't large enough to warrant splitting the game into a SS category. Allowing saves makes it more approachable. Keep in mind that ~40% of runs will survive chest luck alone on SS.

Also, pausing is a trade off. It can be very advantageous against Worms and Centipede, but it does cost time. This creates an interesting divergence of strategies imo.

As with any game rules set, where is the line drawn as well? Some if not all digital versions of the game can not enable Analog and disable it at a moments notice. PE only allows Analog or Digital inputs, not both on PSX and PS2. Does that mean that Analog should be banned since it can save over 10 seconds?

It is unfortunate that RTA is varied by the hardware used, but unless a much more substantial community is formed and more testing is done on the validity of the IGT, RTA is an easy catch-all timing method.

This is coming from a guy using a 77k PS2 for runs btw =P .

Interesting, I guess I never took out the CD after installing... whoops. Disappointing, I really prefer to keep my discs as scratch free as possible. Guess I'll just have to make do or sift through some shady places.

Only other question was if someone had a safe source for a SH4 CD crack. Very odd that SH3 lets you play windowed and without a CD and yet SH4 does neither.

I wanted to know if there was a consensus on what visual mods are allowed for PC Versions of SH2,3,4. Specifically if forcing windowed mode is fine and if using the HD mods to change the screen aspect ratio / visual quality, etc. are allowed.

Does the aspect ratio change cause any issues running the game?

Pausing stops the timer. Also, saving and reloading a game will vary your IGT compared to RTA.