For the RTA w/ mods category:
I noticed that at the end of a level, I can't skip the level stats and the save prompt quick enough because it's waiting for a music track to be loaded from disc. Reducing the music volume to 0 didn't have any effect to stop this from happening.
Is it ok to alter the game code there to actually not load this CDDA track at the end of a level? Or to do it similar to the PC version which is .dll modded to intercept calls of playing CDDA music tracks on the disc-only release to local transcoded music files instead, which is done for saving a couple of seconds of loads there.
It'd be only fair to reduce the hate on the "slow RTA" PS1 version when people compare those platforms.
Since nobody came up with a way to disable FMVs on PS1 executables, I decided to try some hacking and found a way to mimic the behavior how FMVs are disabled on the PC version on executables that don't have a disable FMV option.
If you have a single "tr2.bin" "tr2.cue" pair disc image of the game, you can go ahead and strip the error correction data of the .bin file by running "bin2ecm tr2.bin" from the ecm-tools package from https://github.com/alucryd/ecm-tools and delete the "tr2.bin" file after. This will create a "tr2.bin.ecm" file.
Next you can replace all occurences of "FMV;" with "FMW;" in the "tr2.bin.ecm" file to rename the FMV files with the help of a hex editor.
Then you can convert back to .bin with "ecm2bin tr2.bin.ecm", adding the error correction data into a modified "tr2.bin" file. There will be a checksum error because the ecm format has an intrinsic checksum but it'll work anyway.
Burn to disc and play on a modded console, covert to an EBOOT and put it on PS3/PSP/PSVita/PSTV with a custom firmware or fire up an emulator.
Haven't tested the time save for a full run yet, but it could be up to 5-10s as they don't have to be skipped manually anymore and the FMV play functionality may fatally error out early as it doesn't find the file in the lookup table and skip a somewhat long file seek operation that would move the laser on a physical console.
Glad I could help reducing the PS1 RTA further with some modifications. Happy Speedrunning!
Hello,
I'm sorry but why was my glitchless submission rejected exactly? https://www.speedrun.com/tr2/run/zp027rnm
There are runs with a german executable and english audio on the leaderboards: https://www.speedrun.com/tr2/run/yo27wdjz
Likewise, I've seen TR1 runs with the same ruleset running with mods to play with the PS1 soundtrack that doesn't even exist on PC: https://www.speedrun.com/tr1/run/yj4lo1ny
I am not sure I understand the application of these rules exactly. Could someone give some information about it so other runners also know do's and don'ts?