Hello everyone!

So, after a bit of talk about the possibility of adding "Game Time" to this game's runs, I ended up making a Load Remover for this glorious meme of a game, which you can find here in the Resources section.

For those unfamiliar with Load Removers, it's basically a tool that'll allow your LiveSplit to automatically start & stop the timer whenever the game starts or ends loading levels, allowing us to exclude load times from the final time of the run. Load times include:

• Whenever the Pepsi logo appears at the bottom right corner of the screen (usually at the end of the scoring screen at the end of each level).
• Whenever Pepsiman is running in the dark at the beginning of the first level of each stage (it's basically the loading screen for the level).

Now, the only caveat this sort of tool has is that it only works for the few emulator versions it was originally programmed for. What this means is that, should we start to use this tool, we'd need to define which emulator versions and which BIOS we want to support for runs.

For the time being, I already made it compatible with both ePSXe v1.7.0 and v1.9.0, while using BIOS SCPH-101. With the current build, if you're using any other bios, emulator or any other ePSXe version, the load remover will not work properly. This is by no means an extensive list of what everyone's currently using, so if you guys want this tool to work with other emulator/BIOS versions, you need to tell me so we can work on making them compatible as well.

With all of this in mind, I leave this thread open for discussion. What emulators and which specific versions should we use? Is there any bios version in particular we'd like to favor?

PS: Personally, I have absolutely no problem with trying to make the load remover compatible with as many versions as you guys want to suggest, provided I get some help from the interested party.

Alright guys, v0.6.3 is up! You can find it in the Resources section here.

Changelog:

• Rebranded the Load Remover as an Auto-Splitter. This means that, appart from removing load times, the timer will now start, split, stop and reset automatically for you (you can choose which of these functions you'd like to use when you add the script to your LiveSplit layout).
• Added support for PSXFin v1.13 (also known as pSX 1.13)!
• After some testing on my own, I found out using a different BIOS doesn't seem to affect the script at all, so that restriction is effectively lifted.

As before, this is still an experimental build: so far, this has only worked on my own PC. If you use ePSXe 1.7.0/1.9.0 or PSXFin 1.13 and you'd like to test this version, I'd deeply appreciate it. :)

Good luck with your runs!

Changelog for v0.6.5:

• Fixed some issues with the pointers used for PSXFin/pSX v1.13 that wouldn't let the auto-splitter work with it. Now it should truly be supported!

Changelog for v0.7.0:

• Added support for BizHawk! The auto-splitter should now work with both BizHawk v2.4.2 and BizHawk v2.6.1.

Changelog for v0.7.1:

• Added support for BizHawk v2.5.2.

Changelog for v0.8.0:

• Added support for XEBRA! Currently only supports XEBRA 2020-04-05 and I don't currently plan on expanding to other versions. If you're using another version of XEBRA and would like to see support for it, please let me know. :)

Changelog for v0.9.0:

• Added support for mednafen! Currently supporting mednafen v1.26.1 (both in win32 and win64 format).

Changelog for v0.9.1:

• Added advanced custom settings! Now you can customize exactly when to auto-start and auto-split the timer.
• You can now choose between auto-splitting as soon as you lose control of Pepsiman or auto-splitting as soon as the ScoreBoard disappears.
• You can now choose between auto-starting the timer as soon as you select "Game Start" at the Main Menu or auto-starting the timer as soon as Pepsiman starts moving, outside of cutscenes and load screens (so, mid-game).

Changelog for v0.9.2:

• Fixed some issues that would make the auto-splitter not work correctly after a "Game Over" if auto-resets were turned off. Now you can lose as many lives as you'd like and still use the auto-splitter without having to auto-reset runs :)
• As a result, I optimized the code a bit, so it should actually run faster than before.

Changelog for v0.9.3: • Added advanced custom settings for auto-resets! Now you can choose if you want to auto-reset when you get a Game Over and/or to auto-reset when you close the emulator. In this particular case you can choose both options and they'll work perfectly fine together (unlike the previous settings, which forced you to pick one or the other). • The Auto-Splitter is now finally embedded into LiveSplit itself, so you no longer need to download it from the leaderboard page! This means that you'll no longer need to download new versions of the auto-splitter, given that they'll update automatically, appart from already being integrated into your splits. Instructions on to how to setup this new version here: https://github.com/MrMonsh/Auto-Splitters/blob/main/Pepsiman/readme.md

Changelog for v0.9.4:

• Added support for ePSXe v1.9.25, v2.0.0 and v2.0.5.

PS: I'd suggest leaving the "Timer Start" settings untouched, given that I already configured it to go with the first option by default (so, on "Game Start" selection), which is how the current leaderboard ruleset operates. This group of settings were added merely for future-proofing and/or for use in races if the runner so desires.

Changelog for v1.0.0:

• Added support for RetroArch! Supports the following cores: Beetle PSX, Beetle PSX HW, PCSX ReArmed and DuckStation (this last one being a bit finnicky for the time being).

Changelog for v1.1.0: • Added support for DuckStation! Supports both the NoGUI version and the QT Front-End version.

Changelog for v1.1.1: • Fixed an issue that wouldn't let the Auto-Splitter run for anything other than RetroArch or DuckStation.

Changelog for v1.1.2: • Load Remover module now takes into account most (if not all) pure black screens as part of load times.

Changelog for v1.1.3: • Fixed RetroArch compatibility, now it works identically to DuckStation's compatibility (and should work regardless of new changes in future versions of the emulator).