Hi!

Hope it's ok to ask a question from a different community here, but I'm a mod for another 3DS game (super mario maker) and load time differences are killing us. I'm looking for a better way to account for them and found that this community is using a set value added based on system, which is something we've been talking about doing as well. Problem is, from what we've found it's not just old/new 3DS that matters, it's also whether the game was physical/digital, and what SD card is used in the 3DS system. If you don't mind me asking:

1. Do these same differences show up for this game?
2. If so, any ideas on how to account for them?
3. How did you get your set values to add? (averaging a set number of runs? something else?)

I'm hoping we can do the same thing you're doing here with real time / load time leaderboard categories, but I'm worried with SMM that we have a matrix of times to add based on combinations of the above. Any ideas you have and would be willing to share would be much appreciated!

(for reference, here's everything I've found about load times in SMMf3DS: https://www.speedrun.com/smm3ds/thread/pon5h)

As it stands, loads across DS, 3DS, DSi, etc. are all identical. There is no different hardware between any of them that changes loading times. This won't really be too helpful for you but I'll answer your questions anyways:

1. Yes, playing this game off an SD card does change loading times (makes them faster) which is why R4 cards and playing the game via Homebrew is banned. With the way loading times are handled here it's way too much of a hassle to retime every run played with those methods. Unlike 3DS games you can't install a DS game to your 3DS officially (exceptions are DSiWare and WarioWare Touched), so banning unofficial methods was a pretty simple move.
2. The ways I see to account for it is to either retime each run's loads (similar to NSMBW for example) and subtract the loading times from the RTA time or to just completely ban the use of digital. Neither of which are great solutions, but maybe other people have different methods for dealing with it. Those are just two quick solutions I can think of.
3. The values are usually just averages for the most part. Luckily for us Wii U VC loading times are relatively consistent (from what I've seen they range from like 47.3-47.7 seconds compared to using DS) which is why we just add artificial loading times to VC runs. It's simple, easy to understand, and makes it so we don't have to go through the effort of retiming each run. Emulator on the other hand is always inconsistent because as far as I know loading times are based off PC specs. I believe the "add 40 seconds" was just an average when it was introduced at the time and we just stuck with it, Walrus probably knows more though.

Sorry that this wasn't much help, other mods here or from different games might be able to help out better or give more information. Hope you guys get everything sorted. :)

This is super useful information - thanks for sharing :) Appreciate your help here!

Load times across platform/sd card/other?

char_bunny

New Super Mario Bros.

Nintendo DS

Nintendo 3DS

Wii U Virtual Console

Juju00

Koopaoto

Samuele4s

ProPiece

SMMidi

USA / NTSC

EUR / PAL

Official Releases

Emulator

Release

Hi everyone, please read below for information regarding some important changes to video proof and emulator timing.

As of September 12th 2022, runs for all categories will require video proof to be verified on the leaderboard. Previously video proof was only required for Any% runs, however we are