Whoa, let's not construe my DuckStation request is a cheating accusation out of thin air. Is funny to the point of almost looking suspicious. I didn't notice you had runs. I watch Twisted Metal 2 Tournament and Tournament Co-Op. You aren't against higher proof standards when you replied on Twisted Metal Minute that you show DuckStation inputs and latency settings.

I said I wasn't qualified to define completive times. I don't believe listing top times by platform is applicable to emulator rules. Denying the lowest barriers to cheating is a best practice irrespective of how fast or slow emulators are.

Disregarding best practices from other competitive games from a different genre is beside the point. Crash Bandicoot still seems comparable to me. Real PS2 holds the top 20 slots in both categories but mods still ban ePSXe on top of lengthy DuckStation and BizHawk rules. I asked for 2.

You proved "literally with stats" that cheating on PS1 or PS1emu cannot be a problem because they're the slowest platforms and the only DuckStation runners are you and 3 others, one being a fellow mod. Here's my proof:

• As a mod, you can go to Settings -> Manage -> Runs and filter by Rejected. Can see 4 runs rejected 9 months ago on DuckStation for "Runner admitted in dm's illegal cheats were used". All WRs by your cheating mod friend @Xencryptous. Which cheats? @NoraMaclean, did anyone else see those DMs? I take it showing Enabled Cheats is unchecked will fly. DuckStation inputs not enough.
• Real PS1 run rejected for using the buffed machine gun cheat. No audio doesn't help. Would have been a Silver on Tournament: Medium at the time and #8 today. Still ahead of 8 other runs, 6 using a dominant platform.

Good of you to verify Xencryptous didn't cheat in his 6th place and 12th place runs last week. If you hadn't been so militant against doing anything or made it personal, I wouldn't have figured out how to use SRC's API to search for rejected runs to see if anyone got caught cheating.

This is one of my favorite games. Best in the series. I don't have the skill to be competitive. I'm in awe of the runners at the top. You can understand that I don't want to see cheaters or blatantly inaccurate emulators.

• ePSXe is blatantly inaccurate and you can see in the emulator rules of other competitive games that it's not allowed. You shouldn't allow it either. Has nostalgia when I used it 20 years ago to play this game at full speed on my laptop - and that is all. I like the Tekken explanation. Not updated in years and devs edited the test suite wiki to change failed tests to passing. I noticed.
• DuckStation is great and all and you smartly require Seek Speedup: None. I think you should add a requirement to show Emulator settings. This stops easy mode cheating of playing at 50% and speeding back up in post.
• BizHawk is great and all but using is a red flag on a WR run given its TAS ability. You'll see some games require proof that an input file is not being played back. Just have to press the Toggle read-only hotkey defined in the Movie Hotkey section. Default key is Q.
• mednafen, OpenEmu and XEBRA (Real BIOS): So long as you're spelling out official emulators, you should add those.

If you agree the barrier to cheating should be raised, the clever counter argument is showing Emulator settings and "No movie active" reduces accessibly. A runner might forget, or claim to. Standard compromise is to require proof for competitive times only.

I'm not the Mayor McCheese or an elite athlete to define "competitive times". Could be discussed on a Discord. I think the lazy river explanation is: Within 1 minute of a WR. Show at beginning or end.

Thanks for responding. I didn't think to check back. ePSXe ran Twisted Metal 2 at full speed when I tried 20 years ago. I downloaded it again, changed not a single setting, used Scph1001.bin and it ran Twisted Metal 2 at full speed. I have Windows 10, older i5 CPU, 16 GB RAM and $110 graphics card. Strange someone says it's barely playable.

All other popular games ban ePSXe but you list first as an approved emulator.

DuckStation with no Seek Speedup loads slower than PS2 Fast Disc Speed so that's good. I like how Tekken and Crash Bandicoot require showing Emulation Speed is at 100% to rule out playing at, say, 50% and speeding up in post.

That's cool seeing Twisted Metal news. I grew up with 1 and 2, dodged the non-Jaffe III, 4 and Small Brawl like the plague and jumped back on Black. Bad and non-canonical games are still worth speedrunning but I am surprised to see III discussed in the same breath as 2.

Also cool there's a fan game but that's an easy way to get sued when you use the IP and music. Doesn't matter that it's free. At least they admit to using AI art.

I noticed on Twisted Metal 4 that ESPXE is allowed. You really should ban it on the whole series. I like the Tekken 1 explanation in the rules:

For the quick answer on "why did we drop ePSXe?"

That emulator for PC has not been updated in 4 years and despite being the "most accurate emulator"^ it relies on plugins compared to the other four options.

^Due to being closed source, it was able to get away with faking the scores on the PS1 Test Suite. Games that are tested to what ePSXe states it "passed" has outright failed.

It further has settings requirements to prevent DuckStation being faster than real console or other emulators. In competitive games, emulator advantage should be considered.

Bots invaded the last 2 posts on the speedrun challenge after it ended and posed as site admins: https://www.speedrun.com/news/k789z451-src-series-avp2-speedrun-challenge

Part 2

TAROT CARD REDRAW MECHANIC

Then there's site I call Fireseal63 (RIP) Krayzar linked on page 1 that was the only place for original mechanics knowledge. The info wasn't always copied / plagiarized correctly in GameFAQs guides and not verified in general, never mind all releases:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190316232151/http://space.geocities.jp/fireseal63/ogrebattle.html

There are at least 2 differences on PSX but what's relevant here is the redraw mechanic that is kind of hard to interpret. Through testing I realized "redraw" means if the game pulls one of those cards, it has a chance to not keep the card and cycle through the RNG again and keep whatever comes up on the 2nd cycle. DeepL translation:

Tarot Draw

The tarot card drawn will not be the same as the previously drawn tarot card both when liberating cities and churches and when using the “Joker's Fuda”.

The tarot card drawn at the time of liberation is not completely random, but may be redrawn only once, depending on the tarot card drawn and the LUK of the leader of the liberated unit.

It will be redrawn when LUK is 51 or higher

Hangman Death Temperance Devil Tower

It will be redrawn when LUK is 49 or lower

Magician Priestess Empress Emperor Hierophant Lovers Chariot Strength Hermit Justice Star Judgement World

It will be redrawn Probability = (absolute value of LUK-50) / 50

Tarot cards drawn when using “Joker's Tag” are not originally intended to be redrawn, but due to a bug, the redraw decision is made and the available tarot cards are biased.

--------

In theory, redraw is 0% at 50 LUK and 100% at 0 or 100 LUK.

With Liberation and Joker pulls confirmed equivalent by my testing, I recorded 128 Joker pulls with 0, 50 and 100 LUK on the Opinion Leader on English SNES and all pulls were identical.

I extended from 128 on 50 LUK and record 300 pulls. Sadly no looping back through the order at #257, meaning at least 9 bits of entropy are used. With 300 pulls, we'd expect ~13.6 drawn of each card. With perfect RNG for the sake of argument, standard deviation with Normal approximation is sqrt[(300)(1/22)(1 - 1/22)] = 3.6 and 3.7 with Poisson. I don't think we need to form a confidence when you look at the results:

1. Magician: 18
2. Priestess: 19
3. Empress: 21
4. Emperor: 17
5. Hierophant: 14
6. Lovers: 21
7. Chariot: 17
8. Strength: 18
9. Hermit: 18
10. Fortune: 19
11. Justice: 13
12. Hanged Man: 6
13. Death: 4
14. Temperance: 5
15. Devil: 3
16. Tower: 5
17. Star: 12
18. Moon: 11
19. Sun: 12
20. Judgment: 17
21. Fool: 19
22. World: 10

It would seem the redraw mechanic is bugged at a minimum in English SNES. My interpretation: You always draw as if you had 87 (87.5) LUK. The 5 "bad" cards are 3.5x less likely to be drawn than normal. Given chance of pulling on the redraw, keeping the bad card is 0.25 + 0.75 x (1/21) = 2/7 (~28.5%), equivalent to 3.5x less when we invert. 1 in X trials of a probability is (1 / probability).

Someone really did look at decompiled assembly code and discover the "good" and "bad" cards lists but maybe didn't step through the entire subroutine in debug mode to confirm the | LUK - 50 | / 50 step happens. Division in Ogre Battle is also inexact.

I always perceived the WR full game runs to have very good Tarot luck and while that's basically a necessity, I think I'm showing such luck isn't quite rare as it seems. If you want Devil for Debonair or Mizal, you should start with it.

What we really need are Lua scripts to draw a few thousand cards for every release and narrow down the period of the RNG for SNES/SFC and Saturn.

One thing I remembered, the Finnshore website (RIP) had a ROM hacking map that listed address 0x32958 for "drawn tarot events". Too bad 2 skillful hackers didn't go all the way and give the RNG algorithm for cards and buried treasures. I know enough SNES assembly to attempt it but results not guaranteed.

I appreciate the likes. Was motivational to make more progress. Prepare yourself for bathroom reading.

The ancient tasvideos thread continues today. I linked the 100% World TAS on SFC I found on YouTube, investigated the 2x Tarot card in a row glitch that Dragondarch was the first to notice, added some frame data and spelled out an improved Deneb recruitment process to only revisit Diaspola once and save ~16 seconds. That Discord idea still sounds good.

ADDRESSES FOR TAROT DRAWS AND NO DUPLICATE INTERPRETATION

I wanted to research Tarot card draws from Liberation and Joker-ing on English SNES. Turns out the draw mechanic is interchangeable. Whichever card you draw last from Liberation or Joker can't be drawn next by either process. The bonus card you pull on a new game does not count as a draw. As in, you can liberate Lans' city and draw it.

The card you will draw from Liberation-Joker is stored at 0x7E03A8, which was realized in ancient times given the Game Genie codes. Setting to 0x00 is Magician, 0x0C is Death and 0x15 is World. Can draw as many you want in a row.

What I realized is the last card you draw is stored at 0x7E1783. If you set that to 0x00, you will never draw Magician. However, if you enable 7E03A8=00, the restriction is overridden and you will draw only Magicians.

My interpretation is on Liberation-Joker, the game RNG cycles, comes with a new card and checks the last card. If they do not match then the new card is drawn and updated at both addresses. If they do match then the RNG cycles again and maybe uses a different number of bits.

I compared lists of Joker pulls with and without 0x7E1783=16 to allow all cards to be duplicated and got 2x Hermit and 2x Justice in a row across the first 128 pulls. The duplicate Justice changed the next few cards but got back on track with the "control sample" of 128 draws with no cheat code that generated no duplicates.

Speedrun Forum popup said my post was too long so cutting off here.

I'm getting back into RTS with my leet 100 APM. I have a PS2. Is this game compatible on Xbox 360? Does one console have an advantage in loading times or game speed or other reasons? Not interested in emulators.

I see @Meches94 submitted with PS2 but has on GameCube as well.

I would count it as original hardware and treat the same as using the CD drive. Where I would treat an ODE as an emulator would be when the reduction in loading time makes a difference. Of course here loading time is not part of the runs and there is no evidence Saturn custom firmware affects anything else.

It's clear SEGARALLY responded and I was able to find this thread on archive.org with the 3 responses. I think the first response was good and understandable until "trust me, bro". They continued to self-validate all subsequent runs. Saying to complain to site admins is a dick move since the site admins don't remove mods for following their own rules.

I'm a spectator since I'm not skilled at racing games. Fun to watch skilled racers. My opinion should count for less. That said, I have a Sega Saturn run from Ogre Battle with real console + disc and not showing my CRT or including audible button presses aren't sketch things. The game isn't very competitive either. I beat the WR 6 times in 5 days.

You could require additional proof standards for certain time barriers as seen in the most competitive games. If 2 out of 2 runners want to delete the runs and re-verify, I think that's a safe majority.

You can see in the link that Lonne was also a moderator in 2021. I think he needs to weigh in. Obviously only a mod can reject validated runs or submit runs from another player for re-validation. As the super mod, only he can create new mods.

Thank you @starsmiley, hero of the people. A bot struck back by evolving with a seemingly plausible answer to my question - if you never played the game. Then linking to a gaming website. I don't know if 2 factor authentication to create an account is the answer but creating an account to make a single spam post suggests the bar needs to move up.

17 days is it normal ?

No and at 21 days you can submit a ticket to become a moderator and approve your own run. Link to the pending run. You need at least 2 social media links in your profile to be approve and that's not a bad thing. You could reach out to the mods first by DM or through one of their links. Forum post is not effective.

If they're too busy or exceeding slow, the game needs another mod. I respect the consistency and professionalism of mods overseeing 30+ games but there's a tradeoff. If I got more than 10 push notifications a day, I wouldn't keep up with the forums either.

Exactly, moderators will retime. It's their job and most want to be helpful and encouraging to new players. You don't need a timer in the video for all but the most competitive games. Can eyeball start and end to the nearest second and submit that.

I learned basic video editing where I add a timer in post processing without having to play the video but it's not necessary. I like being primitive and pacing myself with a phone stopwatch and auto-lock set to never.

2 bots invaded: https://www.speedrun.com/Unicorn_Overlord/forums/kd8wy

Can we get a thread or individual comment report button like everywhere else? Most people aren't going to know this thread exists. I didn't until last year. The resistance of manually reporting in a reply is also high.

Good ideas all around. You do have to manually edit runs to move them from one category to another. Adding a new variable such as Car or Transmission populates it as blank in every run and then they need to be edited to choose the value. I have no life but if you wanted me to do this, remove me as mod after. I'm more a fan and don't have deep knowledge.

Verifying, I start with a presumption of innocence and weigh against the number of red flags. Person comes out of nowhere to WR a competitive game, no history of progression, new account, extreme consistency almost to TAS level, level of luck, loading from save state, etc.

I loaded a known spliced Super Mario 64 video in Audacity to look for the audio discontinuity as a test. I have an electronics background so not hard. The runner who got falsely accused in the Abyssoft video was done by someone with no electronics knowledge using cringe level of ChatGPT.

The only cheated run I found was a fighting game where the runner used a faster speed setting by mistake. Shown at the start in plain sight. Mods removed after I DMed. I mistimed my own run with an editing mistake that made the time longer. I uploaded with the fixed timer, edited the submission with the new link, time and explanation and got re-verified.

I have a JPN Saturn I want to play real discs on while that's still possible so it's #2 for me.

I did some human reacting time reading a while ago. A respectable reaction time for a visual cue is 200 milliseconds and 100 milliseconds is crushing the world record. We respond to audio cues about 50 milliseconds faster, which seems logical if you think about the less brain processing required. Stimulants such as caffeine help visual cues a small amount. Men have slightly faster visual reaction time than women on average and equal audio times.

Using 200 ms as a baseline, that's 12 frames in 60 Hz NTSC and 10 frames in 50 Hz PAL. You miss less of the action in 50 Hz, making it easier. People get higher scores playing PAL shoot 'em ups versus the NTSC versions for this reason. All world records in SNES Mario Kart are set on the PAL version since in-game time is used. That game has frame perfect tricks and turns out a frame being 20 ms versus 16.7 ms is an advantage.

Of course, if you anticipate what to do, you aren't reacting. With enough attempts, I got 80 ms on an online reaction test by guessing when the change would appear and clicking without seeing it. If you do need to react, use an audio cue if possible.

Thanks, I didn't know this. As a spectator, I get a small amount of anxiety every time I see the white triangle hoping there's no pre-roll ads. A moderator with many videos to review told me they hate seeing Twitch links. 😆

My advice is each of you create a ticket to be a moderator for SRC and show you have runs pending for over the 3 week limit. To be a mod for any game, you need to add at least 2 social media links to your profile. Do that first. Can see I have 3 and Lonne has 5.

Removing an inactive mod, I recommend not suggesting that in the same ticket. You'll face more resistance. Become a mod first and reach out to Lonne on one of the social media links. No response, submit a ticket to remove and request to be the new super moderator.

Only a super moderator and site admins can add and remove moderators to a game but you can change the rules and approve/deny runs as a normal moderator.

I have the Switch release and I haven't updated. Is there a significant reason not update to v1.05 for any category? What stood out to me:

• v1.01: A new game difficulty level “NORMAL” has been added, and each difficulty level has been adjusted to make it easier to play. Improvements made to some stages. Adjustments made to some item skills.

• v1.03: Reddit comment says Dew of Illusion added to Coliseum for 200 CC.

• v1.04: Added the ability to select entire units on the Unit Overview screen. Made improvements to sorting and filtering functionality across the UI. Boosted the stat increases from equipping multiple weapons, shields, etc.

• v1.05: Game now shows you how many stat boosters you've used on each character. Reddit comment says true final boss ultimate attack was made un-coverable here or in v1.04.

For 100%, I say this as a spectator and not a potential runner. Could "All Towns fully rebuilt" be removed as a requirement to cut down on the time and prep needed? Has low to no entrainment value imo. I realize there is the Fevrith, Restored PSN trophy for it but rules are clear that trophies aren't necessary.

I'm sorry if both questions were addressed on the Discord. I prefer not to use that platform and I like rules discussion to be easily accessible.

Definitely depends on the game. Every game on Neo Geo Pocket Color, I spent 2 days practicing, 2 hours recording and got the WR. Maybe 90% of games across all platforms get 0 to 2 runs submitted per year. They aren't very competitive but sometimes that one run is difficult to beat. Other comment has good point that most games don't have many unique runners to begin with.

There's no average that can apply to 100 runners in the most competitive and popular games. At the elite tier, 1000+ hours is common. Years of practice unless you're a prodigy. At a relatively low 10 hours per week, you're looking at 4 years to hit 1000.