Some people have started running the game emulated on their PS3. The emulator loads everything much faster which allows people to reach otherwise impossible times. You can see a comparison video here, emulated run on the left and original console run on the right.
Here are links to the two runs in their entirety if you want to compare specific sections of the game.
I rejected this emulator run but the runner in question claims I am abusing mod powers and not communicating with the community, I would like to see and hear this community he is talking about before doing anything further. Feel free to show yourself in the thread here and voice your opinion on this situation. The run is back up and PS3 emulation is allowed for now. I'll contact any runners I know and ask them to post their opinion. Let's have a public discussion here on what we should be doing with these runs.
Personally I would prefer banning the runs. It is a blatant unfair advantage over runners who play the game on the original console. If you want to play the game competitively don't move the goalposts around and expect every other runner to go and buy a first edition backwards compatible PS3. Everybody who runs this game already owns the console the game was designed for, and nobody else has randomly started running the game on something different until last week. Getting the fastest time should be decided by how fast you are at playing the game, not by playing on different hardware that plays the load screens 5 minutes faster than everyone else. This is my opinion.
Looking at the most popular PS2 game on the site here the standard seems to be not allowing PS3/emulator runs at all. http://www.speedrun.com/kh2
Sorry it has been a bit of a messy process but we haven't had people drop in and post impossible times on the leaderboard before. Let's take our time so we end up with the best solution for the Klonoa 2 speedrun scene going forward.
It certainly makes a difference (1-2 seconds on each load?), though the gameplay is great and shouldn't be ignored either. I think it could be included under a different category, to indicate that the PS3 and PS2 times can't be fairly compared to each other.
What is the big deal I'm not going to go out of my way to buy a slower console if I already own a PS3 that can play PS2 games legitimately.
Just to further emphasize, why are you speedrunning with limitations? If you know a console is faster and it's legitimate, there's no reason to ban it.
To put into perspective what you are saying Nub_hat, why don't we just ban PS2 from Klonoa 1? The game was designed for the PS1 and loading is faster on PS2. Are you not even understanding what you are saying?
Making a new category? There's filters on the site, if you want to show best PS2 time, just select PS2. Don't make a new category for PS3 users just so you can feel better about yourselves.
The runs definitely shouldn't be banned.
Gameplay should be king, though. If one run's 10 seconds ahead of another, it ought to be because that person played ~10 seconds better--not because their console loads text characters faster or something. Someone with worse gameplay shouldn't have a listed time over a minute ahead of someone who played better; it hasn't happened yet, but with this kind of variance, that situation is inevitable.
Ideally we'd just ignore load times entirely. The only reason we're not doing that is how inconvenient it'd be to calculate, right?
Every single playstation 1 game is being ran on a playstation 2, so why don't we also take this to the klonoa leaderboard and have them ban the use of PS2 as well.
Just because I have an "impossible time" doesn't mean you can't compete. Filters let you chose who you compare against. If you want to compare against PS2, enable "PS2 only" or something. At the end of the day, I beat this game using HARDWARE BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY, not emulation.
In addition different model PS2's also have different loading, is it fair to say that that's unfair to people who don't own the 90K model PS2? I don't even own a PS2, so what gives you the right to tell me as well to buy a console when I don't own it?
Speedrunning is all about achieving a time playing a game fast. If someone beats your time, you got beat. Don't pull bullshit like "oh, he only beat me cause he got better rng" or "he beat me cause his loading is faster" because YOU can match the loading and YOU can match the rng, it's whether you choose to sit around and bitch about it, or actually get up and do it.
Note that as long as it's official hardware, official releases by companies, anyone else can get the means to match others hardware. Emulation through PC is always an issue and is not an acceptable way to matching someone's loads.
I'm not telling you to buy a different console, or calling for PS3 runs to be banned.
There shouldn't be a pay-to-win aspect to speedrunning (e.g. "Drop $300 to reduce your time by a minute"). If we ignored load times entirely, we'd have genuine measure unbiased by hardware. There was an SDA thread discussing simply cutting load times out of Tropical Freeze because "getting a better time" wasn't consistently tied to "having better gameplay," and the responders were all fine with the idea.
Is the only reason we're not doing that because it's too much of a hassle to measure? It's more work, but it gives everyone who owns a copy of the game an equal shake.
Too impractical to implement a removal of load times. Human error is a major factor. In addition, both you and Nub_hat were inactive from this leaderboard for months at a time. If, for instance, by some possibility removal of loading happens, every single run must manually be re-timed. This would mean if a run ever drops frames through load zones, run must be rejected.
Also, because of this reasoning, what happens when these rules put up and you both just up and leave again? Fenrijay would be forced to do work no one even can do accurately.
Also PS3's only cost about 150 total, which is less than a 90K model JP ps2 that some people go out and buy. 90K english / PAl is obviously cheaper but price should never be a reason as to why something is allowed / disallowed / complained about
Also the issue with Tropical Freeze is Solid State Drives, where runners download the game to it via external USB cable to produce faster loads. That's on the dumb end of going fast, completely out of context to what is going on here.
The "equivalent" would be running on a 90K model PS2 instead of a 39000 model PS2, but for some reason the 90K model Ps2 is "too hard" for me to search on ebay and buy
All of this crazy drama x_x... Here this is what the software CECHE01 PS3 is like for Klonoa 2 I'm sorry all I have atm is a 6 yr old webcam but I wanted to show what the emulation was like vs a "mostly" normal ps2 this one has some compatibility issues with a few games.
If anything the faster load speeds are probably comming from the bluray drive.
For the sake of at least starting some forward progress, are there people who can test the loading times across the entire run of people who use a 39000 PS2, 70000 PS2 (or 77000 PS2 it's the same just special edition afaik), and 90K model PS2 to get a baseline for how a PS2 varies amongst loads? After that compare it to what my run has on the PS3. Ideally, runs on PS2 would get a time reduction per see since they have longer loads.
For either instance, these runs loading need to be consistent across same console over multiple runs. If this can be true then simple conversions can be used as long as runners state what console model they ran with.
If this is not true, then I think we should vote / comment on possibility of loading removal from runs via manual retiming. That way we can have 2 timing methods: Standard RTA (for reference), and Time W/o Loads (Leaderboard main timing method).
ps3 shouldn't be banned nor sould it be in a different category its the point of a speedrun to find the fastest way to run a game but i do understand that ppl who dont own a ps3 will feel left out but ppl who dont own a ps2 will feel even more left out because they cant even publish they're runs besides there's alot of games that are faster on ntsc including klonoa 1 but no one bans ntsc its just about knowing wich version is faster and on wich console is it faster.
on a side note i whould like comment on the inactivity of the mods on klonoa 1 i've posted something on the game talking about the lack of a psp and psv version and i got no answer of any mod so i whould like to request if any of the mods could mod anyone who actually runs the game or at least aswer my post
That's pretty nice to see inactive mods TheGAmeiro feels bad trying to get stuff done but I'll try and talk to them since I'm a nice guy
PS3 should be allowed and left next to ps2 times. Speedrunning is a fun hobby and you can speedrun on anything you'd like. However, if you want to be competitive then sometimes that means you need to invest in the most optimal method of running the game.
If you don't want to go to the lengths of getting a ps3 then you shouldn't take the game on a serious level, just have fun with it.
I've timed load times in this category on a SCPH-30004 R ps2 to 19:28.796. I use a video editing program that can scroll frame by frame and chose benchmarks that are easy to replicate. https://mega.nz/#!bNQ0AI5B I'll try out a SCPH-50004 ps2 in a few days if that's supposed to be any different. post videos of runs if you have some other console I will time them.
Each console needs tested multiple times for loads, doing it once isn't enough. It's also recommended to keep a list of load times per loading screen for every attempt so we can see how long each loading zone / screen takes.
That time seems high. I got ~7:25 in what I assume are load times (all solid-black frames that occur between levels). I ignored room-to-room transitions. Maybe that's where some of the discrepancy comes from?
Couldn't tell you the model of PS2.
