Hi. I've started this thread after have noticed the latest Setyan's run approved. Now I am going to talk about that run so to cover this discussion on DuckStation rules. While I was watching that run (both live stream and VOD) I had noticed which RTA times (especially loads) were weird, even if compared with Sena's run (1:19:13). However, after have watched that stream, some days later (or less)... I see Sena's live stream while running PE2, and I noced the same thing watched in the Setyian's run. Obviously I was curios to figure out why so faster RTA times, till then after have asked that to Sena; I finally understood that was caused by changing a specific configuration which is: "Console Settings ---> Seek Speedup set to Infinite/Instantaneous".

Description:

"Reduces the simulated time for the CD-ROM sled to move to different areas of the disc. Can improve loading times, but crash games which do not expect the CD-ROM to operate faster."

So... after have discovered this detail, I talked with Sena about that afterwards Setyan's run approval. And we think that's necessary to argue and reaching a regulation (or prohibition in the worst case but it is being discussed) and if necessary to update DuckStation rules.

This is tricky, because there's no way to retroactively re-time previous runs either, but as it stands I can clearly point out very good runs that easily top 3 in execution/luck but are all the way down on the leaderboards because they were done a long time ago with older duckstation builds (e.g. unionse's)

Duckstation is actively being updated, and whatever becomes the rules now may not apply for the future versions of the emu unless we can find a way to time it using LRT. That said I know it may be a ton of work through cheat engine to find a consistent "loading state", and just like TheDementedSalad's autosplitter breaks on more recent duckstation updates, scriptable timers will also have to keep up with updates breaking the algorithm in the autosplitter. It would be a lot of work for a game without lots of runners, but I think it's safe to say that people that do run it care about the game deeply.

Conversely, ePSXe seems to be a legacy emu now, without lots of changes going on, and despite looking like crap to run at full speed, it has had consistent loading times, to a point that my run and Sigma's were done 7 years apart and the loads seemed identical (I checked them side by side).

I don't really have a solution, just throwing my 2 cents.

@Sena Well... if it's so, one of possible solutions to this is keeping to use a specific DuckStation build and then going to use autosplitter (LRT or non LRT). Another alternative is that to show infos about usage of DuckStation via built-in system console (infos would be accessible via cmd window) before or after the run. Settings for this feature: "Advanced Settings ---> Logging".

I mentioned this to Wolfdnc so I'm sure he will make the the final decision but it's definitely a tough situation. Regular PC games can have updates that improve performance over time and usually it's not made into a different category unless it's major changes and then often those old versions are rarely run.

Duckstation is actively being updated often and I'm not sure how easily an old build is to obtain. At the same time how do we determine which build to use and that could still affect those old runs placement.

Emu legacy category and console categories can retain that consistent time because nothing will change there but it may be better to look at duckstation in a more modern video game/programming sense.

I know some other boards use Duckstation so that can also be something to look at. That's my 2 cents on the subject

@Amai_Fox Technically I still have the same build compatible with DementedSalad's autosplitter. But I would like to discover if it's possible to show info via DuckStation CMD log window.

Maybe I am misunderstanding but why can't you make a rule to set Seek Speedup to None?

@Symm That's what I asked indeed at the beginning. but we must await an answer by the other active moderator or just like as @Amai_Fox suggests; going to use an old build along autosplitter.

@Symm that could be a thing but then how does that affect older runs, I assume we would need a new board because new runs wouldn't be able to compete with already established runs.

But once again gotta wait for mods to decide what's the best course of action.

I think Symm's suggestion is ideal. There are only 2 runs that bumped the seek speedup: Me and Setyan's. I don't mind removing my run at all and I'm willing to guess Setyan wouldn't either, just fyi.

We'd only need to confirm if seek speedup 1x on current versions is the same speed as the previous ones, which I'm 99% sure it is based on playing it on 1x speedup with my previous splits from God knows how long ago.

And since there are no 100% runs on duckstation yet, I would just add the humble request of allowing this option on these runs since they make them at least 1h faster, for the sake of the runners sanity :P it's much nicer to play PE2 on duckstation, but I refrained from doing nightmare hundo runs on it just because it's so much slower, but that update gave me a glimpse of hope. Not too important anyway, just figured I'd share

I like the run this way ! Its a good opportunity for people like me to do runs again !

you can make it a rule to turn on "Show Settings Overlay" in the Display options on DuckStation. This will show any changes to CD Speed, Seek Speed etc in the bottom right of the window. There's also an option in the Advanced settings to "Disable All Enhancements"

I know I'm just a wall flower but i've been reading this a little bit. The 1st post mentioned that the load speeds seemed faster and the EMU looks like it's going faster than it should.

If i had to guess, from what I know about Duckstation and using it for other runs, I would venture to say that the disc speed is set to 2x (Quad Speed) to match the load times of the ps2. I don't have any data that shows it matches it but the games I run more regularly and some others communities are under the impression as well.

If that's the case, I don't think someone running on discs could match that. The 2x setting is similar in speed to the fast disc speed of the ps2. If I recall correctly PE2 discs won't work when that setting is on. (Edit: I just saw the line in the OP about the settings)

I'm sorry if all of this was a waste of time but I just thought I'd offer up those tidbits on duckstation. Sorry if its not my place.

So if I wanted to start runs now what exactly should my settings look like? Is the WR run by @Sena using the correct settings?

Also some people mentioned what would happen to the other runs if rules changed. You can simply remove them, there doesn't need to be a category just for every setting lol.

Im gonna go out on a limb and say this... imo Duckstation never should have been added as a category...

What with constant updates (still) with duckstation after 2-3ish years there is never going to be an agreement over which 'Settings' or 'Updates' or 'Versions' of Duckstation to use to run the game.

Revisiting this as as resolution was decided for this issue. It was assumed people would not alter console emulation settings to increase speed however other Speedrun communities allow a decided speed that is acceptable to alter.

It was decided that in order to remain as fair as possible that seek/write/read speeds can not be altered and the rules have been updated accordingly.

During this time I also commissioned an autosplitter for duckstation and it has continued to work through many duckstation updates as well with no significant time differences so future updates should not suddenly decrease times.

The rules are as follows:

Timer starts after selecting "New Game" (Load Game for extra modes) and stops after killing last boss (Eve).

For 100% Kills, you must defeat all enemies so that 100% kills will appear in the Play Data screen. On New Game, this statistic is not available, so you must ensure you kill all enemies that count towards the kill percentage (guide soon).

Do not alter any Duckstation settings as they will give an unfair advantage. Example: Do not increase Seek/Write Speeds under console emulation.

In Duckstation Settings, under Display, you must have the following overlays enabled for the run to be verified. (Show OSD Messages, Show Emulation Speed, Show FPS, Show Settings Overlay)

Use common sense DON'T CHEAT using settings / .dll / external programs / apps to give yourself an advantage will make your run invalid.

Auto Door-ID Splitter can be downloaded under "RESOURCES" and it will be a must use for duckstation runs starting 08/29/2023 going forward make sure to use it for your runs to be validated.

Also I understand there are possibly still runs on the leaderboards that had this enabled and the runs approved. We are in the process of reviewing all of the runs to determine if the settings were altered.

Ok, but why?

Why do we have to use the all doors autosplitter? Since the game is RTA and frame rate is shown on screen, we technically wouldn't even need a timer. Any mod could simply subtract the eve killing time from the new game pressing time and retime a submission. Takes 15 seconds and some basic math. I literally had a run rejected because an old duckstation autosplitter started at the first cutscene and ended at the blank screen, when the easiest thing in the world would be to just retime. I've had runs that were retimed just to increase my time because mods (and by mods I mean @wolfdnc ) couldn't make up their minds about whether the time stopped at the last shot at eve or when screen went blank.

Some people don't like using all doors splitters to keep their golds more realistic. Some people don't even like using splits at all. Now these people can no longer compete? What's the point of this splitter? Have you considered all of these things? Have you asked the runners what they do or even checked literally every single run on ePSXe except for mine to realize most people don't play like that?

Why do we have to set the seek speedup to none? Did you know that over half the runs in the duckstation leaderboards have seek speedups faster than "none" because one of the duckstation updates imposed 2x speedup? Are you going to reject all of those too even though players were basically using default rules at the time? This logic of "to avoid advantage" makes absolutely no sense considering a fixed speedup, even 10x, would give the same loading time for everyone and would make 100% runs infinitely better to run. Have you guys considered that in your decision making? Have you reached out to the players? Or even taken 2 minutes to share a freaking google poll which is the easiest thing ever to do for any decent mod? Have you read the previous forum post where actual runners were discussing possibilities as soon as this speedup update rolled out? If this was a problem, why did you guys accept several runs with speedup and leave it on the board for months? How else are we supposed to interpret this besides "it is allowed"? You said you were verifying runs but literally the only one you rejected was mine, while the current 1st place on the landing page of this board has speed up, only beat my time because of speed up, but you guys haven't realized it yet because you think being at the 1:19:00 ballpark is because he didn't speed up, not because his run was bad. Because you don't understand the game or duckstation and are ill fit to make decisions.

Of course you guys don't know these things, because you don't give two shits about this board or what people are doing, except when you wake up and decide to do so. The way wolf manages this board is: He wakes up one day, pulls a bunch of rules out of his ass, dumps at us and then disappears. Dude doesn't even run the game any more, much less keeps track of duckstation updates or, by his own words, doesn't have time to verify runs. Why even be a mod anyways? All mods are essentially MIA and the one mod who is active in managing the rules is terrible at it and pretends players don't exist.

The way this board bas been manage is an exemplary case on how to make the wrong decision at every turn. Duckstation was decided to be the main category without anyone's consent. No consideration was given about the nuances of software updates, people were left to do whatever and retroactively punished because "common sense" dictates speed up is cheating?! How is it cheating if the category is literally called "emulator" and everyone has access to the same settings? No one is modifying the game, no one is increasing the game speed, no one is starting with 5000 exp and 10000bp to buy better weapons. None of this is common sense

This is personally frustrating and infuriating to me because I've been running this game for almost 5 years now, literally started out on twitch trying to do nightmare 100% and owe the vast majority of my viewership to PE2. Until a week ago I was literally the only active runner on NG any%, and all my efforts to draw attention to these ongoing changes to duckstation fell into deaf years. This mismanagement has bled out any motivation I had to grind and route this game, and it's been consistently bad at this point. I have the utmost respect for people who take the time to verify runs because I know it's unpaid work that people do out of the love for the game, but there's no love here. If you don't like or know what you're doing, there are several players who would be happy to take on the responsibility.

tl;dr I' done with this. Thanks @IfAndWhile @SirRetro91 @xGrenadier @ToxicTT @Marlindafish and all the homies from whom I've learned so much, but this is unbearable. @wolfdnc is a terrible mod and should step down.

Ok here we goooo I can't believe I gotta say this again like I had for RE3 Modding but NOONE here mods or verifiers here are getting compensation of any form for modding this game or any other game like how dare I not check every forum for every game I mod like everyday huh? How dare I have a life and a family and work and such a terrible mod xD. Amai informed me about this months ago we discussed it and it was an easy answer from me "just don't cheat" isn't it common sense not to accelerate your game to give yourself an advantage towards other people? The whole "Oh I cheated because he took my word record by cheating" is immensely silly , this whole issue started because a world record got taken on a 25 year old game that has literally 2-3 active runners , it is a GAME people it supposed to be for fun I don't think noone here is getting money for been #1 on this speedrun site, I do agree that this rules had to be put under "show rules" way before it got to this but yea, also if there is a discrepancy in times and you see someone cheating that run should of automatically been rejected it is something that we should of done and we didn't because the only person doing current verifications and taking time out of his life to do so is @Amai_Fox I did verify some runs here and there of people I trusted and was just glad that times were getting faster and looked like people were having fun , but it seems it wasn't the case. I agree duckstation is a shitshow they stopped updating it then they started updating it again times started changing and all that BUT the whole reason why I brought duckstation in to Parasite eve 2 was because it was the new thing at that time , games looked better, and felt better which it could incentivize new people to come in? That was the whole thought behind it and hey it worked we got more runs on duckstation than we did on epsxe, secondly if you want those fast times JUST RUN EPSXE and get those sub 1h15ms again, that board is there it never left.

NOW solving the issue at hand:

1. We start accepting all runs with that acceleration x10 so runs are faster and feel faster so that all runs that have been put on hold (not rejected yet) that had that setting on get re verified and we go on from there.

2. All settings should be set and preset to default (like it always should have been COMMON SENSE) previous runs that had that x10 acceleration setting on will be rejected.

This speedrun community is literally composed of 12 runners (in which only 3 are active) so it shouldn't take long to come to a decision and again this is a GAME and it is for fun don't go crazy over who has the "glory" of WR does it really matter ?!

p.s. I personally checked time discrepancies at the start and by itself the only people that seem to be using this whole speedup is SENA and SETYAN, screen dims in around 13 seconds for EVERYONE even on new duckstation or old duckstation but Sena starts at 11seconds and Setyan starts at 12 seconds, Sena hits a insane 34 seconds and Setyan hits a 36 seconds (-2 from picture because his menu sucks when switching standard and run on settings) while EVERYONE else has common sense and seems to be using default settings up to 2 years ago on duckstation you could hit a consistent 43 seconds and after duckstation updates it seems people started hitting high 40 seconds (up to 1 year ago) this was time at the start because there is literally no RNG nothing to do but run and open 2 doors which speed ups will make it standout as it makes you load faster than everyone else, even the 2 brand new runners Pambe (3 months ago) and Sourshock (6days ago) are hitting low 41s on current duckstation version which are times consistent with times been hit 1 year ago, so THIS WHOLE ISSUE is literally between Sena and Setyan, 2 people only using speed ups to get ahead of the board for the "glory" of WR while everyone else is using standard preset values on settings. I even checked TODAY and with todays patch I hit a 40.70seconds which is the same times everyone has been hitting for a whole year through all the patches. My vote is towards #2 which 90% of runners are currently doing and default settings.

Ok here we goooo I can't believe I gotta say this again like I had for RE3 Modding but NOONE here mods or verifiers here are getting compensation of any form for modding this game or any other game

I know. that's literally what I said if you read above : "I have the utmost respect for people who take the time to verify runs because I know it's unpaid work that people do out of the love for the game".

like how dare I not check every forum for every game I mod like everyday huh? How dare I have a life and a family and work and such a terrible mod xD

No one's asking you to check the forums every day, we all understand it takes time to verify runs and make these decisions. But yeah taking 7 months to address the issue, when, like you said, there are only a few active players, all of whom also "have a life and a family and work" (and none of whom use this tired, offensive excuse) but are somehow able to take a few minutes to discuss this, yeah, that's terrible modding.

Amai informed me about this months ago we discussed it and it was an easy answer from me "just don't cheat"

Then, again, you guys (Amai specifically) shouldn't have accepted the runs, or at the very least explicitly stated it in the rules. As described above and will again be described below, this isn't as "common sense" as you're making it out to be, and if it is, don't accept runs and give players the wrong message.

The whole "Oh I cheated because he took my word record by cheating" is immensely silly , this whole issue started because a world record got taken on a 25 year old game that has literally 2-3 active runners , it is a GAME people it supposed to be for fun

I agree, but if we're competing, even for fun, there have to be ground rules. Playing a match without the arbiter to call foul kills the fun out of it, that's the problem.

I don't think noone here is getting money for been #1 on this speedrun site,

You're definitely disconsidering my above point that a lot of people gain followers and, in the long run, subs and donations through src. You're above this in your streaming career, basically all of us aren't, and yes that includes a 25 yo video game that lots of people check because they liked the game back then and want to check on the speedrun status. Trust me, I literally see this every day on my stream when people ask when I'm playing PE2 again.

secondly if you want those fast times JUST RUN EPSXE and get those sub 1h15ms again, that board is there it never left.

Or, like you said, we could use a great emulator and get the best of both worlds: Easy to configure, good graphics, and on top of that we can make it faster than ePSXe. How is this a bad thing if it's the same loading times for everyone? (34s to the door). You're tripling down on this being cheating. Is it cheating to play on PS2 instead of PS1 because load times are faster? No. What we do is we split categories. But this is somehow different just because you select something on a checkbox, no external tools or anything? And this is already available to everyone from the get go?

so THIS WHOLE ISSUE is literally between Sena and Setyan,

This whole issue is because you guys didn't address the problem when we brought it up- to us, not amongst yourselves -, and created this problem to begin with when accepting Setyan's run (You'd think at least the run claiming to be 1st place would be verified somewhat thoroughly). Then @Amai_Fox told me on discord, with no uncertain terms, that this should be treated the same way as "a PC game receiving new updates", and then you come in 7 months later and says the exact opposite, then rejects my run and my run only (yes I know Setyan's is rejected now but too little too late).

2 people only using speed ups to get ahead of the board for the "glory" of WR while everyone else is using standard preset values on settings.

I'm not even gonna comment on how offensive that is not just to me but literally everyone whose board you mod. The only person using the word "glory" here (ironically obviously) is you. That speaks volumes about what you think of us, but I will again point out that people either stream for a living or are trying to grow their stream, and you're making a mockery out of that.

My vote is towards #2 which 90% of runners are currently doing and default settings.

I vote 1. For anyone else who's willing to chime in, consider that

1. This basically makes the load times slightly faster than ePSXe

2. This makes 100% a much more welcoming category to newcommers (reduces about 30mins of game time), since right now we have 0 submissions

3. This adds up A LOT in the long run. If you need to reset early (e.g. No 9 gas bomb) you get there much earlier.

4. In ePSXe you have to do a plethora of configurations to run. This is a one time checkbox change that then is done forever, much like, say, in RE3, where you have to disable the CGI cutscenes prior to playing

5. This is the future-proof solution. If you keep regular seek speeds, new updates can roll out and still tamper with this, giving a disadvantage to all previous runs as it was the case 1 year ago. The loads here are essentially instant at 10x, and you can't really be much faster than 0s :)

1 question which I want to ask is and I've been wanting to ask this for months... when Sena did his original 1:13 run, why was it not questioned at the time and verified as a 'legit' run... considering there was a 6 minute jump between Setyans 1:19 and Senas 1:13... why has it taken all this time for it to now be an issue? And as a pre cursor, many of us in the community think and agree with Sena that the moderation of this game sucks and it has done for a long time... and there is only 1 mod so don't give us the BS that there are other discussions with 'Mods'