I'm up for it, as always :D This year I should have dead shift friendly schedule (assuming my roommate doesn't mind grinding cpu fans at wild hours)

editterino: Oh shit, I didn't notice that marathon's date coincides with event I'm helping at. Unfortunately, I will only be available on Sunday (and maaaaaybe Wednesday)

Welp, sorry for being dead, I have to admit, I wasn't logging on to speedrun.com for quite a while. Apparently site admins prevented this leaderboard from completely dying by making you a mod and I'm really glad they did that. Anyways, if you ever need something (like help in verification or opinion on something), twitter (@pitperino) is the best way to reach me. You'll get my answer much faster than in a month. (unless I'm busy, swipe the notification for some reason and forget about it)

It's great to see MM6 speedrunning is alive :D

April

Signing up as a restreamer, maybe will be able to help with other stuff too

Once again, you can't really verify if someone's using any external tools to help himself with the run unless you stand behind his back, so even if you ban it, it's pointless. But ye, sure, using autosplitter/memory monitoring to get a perfect timing in new any% setup isn't legit and if you do it you should feel very bad about it. It's actually extremely easy to write a script that makes a step backwards, waits x amount of time (autohotkey can easily use miliseconds) and then makes a step forwards. All we can do is believe that no one actually does that. Just keep in mind that someday someone will try to do that and you'll probably have to use argument about grind to reject that specific run.

B kill the dead category, replace it with even deaderer one ffzSmoothMove

This Ultima Underworld 2 segmented run has any info you might need, I'm using slightly altered route, but glitches and bugs are still the same.

Short Driver commentary [partially based on zoton's commentary from GTAMarathon race ;)], this game is in most places self-explanatory http://pastebin.com/ktfVY002

I'll update this post someday this week with notes for Thief run, if you REALLY need any info asap, I SHOULD be practicing commentary soon, so just look around my vods. Just keep in mind that even I am not sure how or why some of the tricks work. Their description is burried so deep in the forums that it's close to impossible to find them nowadays. Oh yeah, for now I can leave you with this: http://dominikvogt.gmxhome.de/guides/keyholing.txt Keyholing is the reason why my run is first on the leaderboards even though it's horrible.

Edit: http://pastebin.com/iNMK6geg Thief notes targetted to potential onsite commentators, but can be used by restreamers too, I guess.

Alright, works flawlessly. Now i'm looking forward to racing this epic meme.

Thank you very much for making this thing real.

Clean international, you must have missed some files. Install clean game and see what's missing.

Same here, looks like something with player model is broken, because game throws the same error when you try to enter player skin setup.

No need to make a F3 replay, you are using taxi after all. Just set it up using F1 replay with something that's close to boatyard (rockets, grenades). In hundo you'd pass the rampage anyway, so the time of doing rampage should be subtracted. CC takes slightly less than 2 minutes. If you can route it properly, this might actually save some seconds.

I'm pretty sure phonecall would also work for failing the remaining instance. Doesn't look like it's saving a lot of time since CC conveniently leaves you near Film Studio, but it would definitely be useful for any% 7 assets :P

Btw

ffzFeelsSmug

I got PBs in both Thief and Driver (that one in a race). Driver is Driver, there is lots of RNG involved so I guess the only real way to judge runner's skill level is looking at his gold splits. In my case they are pretty decent compared to Omega's (you should add 1 minute to my sum of best because of lightspeed emulation though).

I like to divide Thief runs into two parts when I'm talking about them, pre Mage Towers and bullshit part. First part of the run doesn't contain any hard to execute or RNG-dependent tricks and I'm satisfied with my performance here. However, the second part is a real mess. It mixes hard levels with lots of RNG (Mage Towers keyholing, Lost City jumps, Song of the Caverns guards, Maw of Chaos jumps). I can easily save lots of time over my PB by doing mission "Undercover" intended way instead of wasting time on the least consistent trick in the game. Second part of this run is definitely something I'm going to practice after I'm done with my exams. Can easily optimise that run to 50 minutes flat if I stop playing safe and get consistent with some harder tricks in the bullshit part.

I also managed to derust Underworld 2 and got a run surprisingly close to my PB, actually it would have been a new PB if I hadn't got confused near the end. My "average time" for this game is 28:38 with 27 finished runs making it probably the safest run I can offer at the moment.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to go back to MM6. There are old new strats that probably make this run as optimised as it can be. I'm going to go for a sub 30 run after I'm done with my exams (May 16th). I won't cry if this run gets cut, because rules are rules and I barely touched this game in the past month.

Omega loves comparing my live runs to his VODs and I have no reason not to trust him. Everyone who watches me and runs this game agrees that framerate is too high. Here are some excerpts from today's playthrough on XEBRA.

[16:24:37] @UltimaOmega07: the bridge seemed ok [16:24:49] @UltimaOmega07: but after the final turn my framerate chugs piss [16:25:07] @UltimaOmega07: which i didn't really see here [16:27:18] @UltimaOmega07: the first long straight didn't lag nearly as much as for me [16:28:28] @UltimaOmega07: even with lag reduction after the first bridge hump i can't get more than like 10fps [16:28:54] @UltimaOmega07: and it doesn't really get better until i'm like halfway across the park

[16:43:25] @UltimaOmega07: chinatown framerate niceCheats [16:45:29] @UltimaOmega07: nice slowdown near that turn [16:45:32] @UltimaOmega07: oh wait there wasn't any [16:45:35] @UltimaOmega07: 4head [16:47:57] @UltimaOmega07: wow [16:48:06] @UltimaOmega07: no slowdown after that turn [16:48:29] @UltimaOmega07: mine dips down to like 15

[16:56:20] @UltimaOmega07: i had my pb video running ahead of you [16:56:31] @UltimaOmega07: on the first long straight so i could compare [16:56:47] @UltimaOmega07: and you actually went ahead by half way through second long straight

[17:13:04] @UltimaOmega07: the part of town after beverly hills runs like piss [17:13:09] @UltimaOmega07: even with lag reduction [17:14:12] @UltimaOmega07: i also like how you beat me to the marker even though i had a better igt

Tested latest XEBRA build, random softlocks are still present (managed to lock the game after first new york cutscene), emulation speed isn't much different from mednafen. In fact, I think they're performing exactly the same, which means game runs faster on emus than on PS2 and if you look at overcooler's run (done one real PS1), it also seems to be running faster than that.

In summary, the most accurate PS1 emulators are running faster than real hardware, we may try to experiment with other emulators/plugin settings or just accept the fact that emu runs are going to be about minute faster than other runs. Or just completely ban emulator usage :^

Mednafen apparently behaves in different ways on NTSC and PAL versions. PAL seems to be emulating accurately, but on NTSC you can notice strange performance boosts (especially on day missions in Miami), after 3 attempts I managed to reach and even beat Omega's golds on some missions. I must admit that I was actually playing pretty well, but it still seems to be somewhat wrong. There is one more accurate emulator that might be good for speedrunning. Unfortunately, latest versions of XEBRA, the emulator I'm talking about, used to randomly softlock the game before cutscenes (this bug was introduced by Dr.Hell making some changes in rendering methods). I haven't tested build from February 26th yet, but if he managed to fix it (or this bug doesn't appear on NTSC version for some reason), XEBRA would probably be the only way to go. Nothing else can emulate this game properly.

Btw. I remember Omega having some issues with PS3 too, which only proves how difficult this game is to emulate. You'd have to ask him for feedback on that though, my memory isn't working very well.

In 100% run you'll probably want to stay at the airport and do the stunts since you already have the PCJ with you. And if you add time saved from rerouting airport section, this instapass easily saves more time than 1,5 mins ;) (especially in my route)

Here are all 2 SCMs I have, Japanese one is from zoton's converter, international from my Polish retail (which is exactly the same as other international releases) https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8EKoTr4vQlpOUF0LUNJbEVsS1U/view?usp=sharing

It's only useful for 100%. You replace StB instance with RC Raider Pickup, which obviously kills StB instance, so you can't finish the mission. You have to start and do it all over again.

For SA I really need timestamps or anything that could help me find it.