ok I see your point, would be good to hear opinions from other runners who plays this game on emulator. For instance @ZendoiKaban who also plays on retroarch, @Gutosur @Radar70 who plays on fusion, @just_tako who plays on Regen @Xanders08 who plays on Bizhaw
Personally I think it's better to choose an emulator which more accuracy
yes it was all tested with the same version (US).
Not sure what did you mean by "huge improvement", but the problem with retroarch it's faster than other emulators and that's a disadvantage for runners who plays on bizhawk or fusion.
For a full run, Retroarch would be 3 to 5 seconds faster than other emulator! Not sure if retroarch should be banned, but at least it should be discouraged, especially for top runs
@ReddyLion and I work on comparing emulators and we have some interesting result to share. It's already known that emulator are faster than the console, but from the 2 tests we did, we found out the new BizHawk 2.10-rc1 with Genplus-gx is same speed or very close to the console
Test 1 - Intro & Demo
Start the game and let the intro and demo to roll out for 3 cycle:
- Frame 0 is the last frame the sword shot is in static position.
- Frame 1 is the first frame the screen starts scrolling.
- Last Frame when the 6th bag becomes a card in the clouds level, after after Mickey and Donald get hit by a tornado
Results
- Genesis 1 (model 1601): 19304 frames (5m 21s 733ms)
- Bizhawk 2.10-rc1 (Genplus-gx): 19301 frames (5m 21s 683ms) -> -0.050s
- Bizhawk 2.8 (Genplus-gx): 19288 frames (5m 21s 467ms) -0.266s
- Fusion 3.64: 19258 frames (5m 20s 967ms) -> -0.766s
- Retroarch (Genesis Plus GX): 19204 frames (5m 20s 067ms) -> -1.666s
Last boss with Donald without doing anything
- Frame 0: where all the columns are still aligned at the bottom, right before start moving.
- Frame 1: first frame you see far left column start rising.
- Last frame: after 4 minutes of fight, the first frame where Pete starts opening his right hand, the 2 ghosts are in the places pointed by the red arrows, and the columns are in the formation show in the image below.
Results
- Genesis 1 (model 1601): 14524 frames (4m 02s 067ms)
- Bizhawk 2.10-rc1 (Genplus-gx): 14524 frames (4m 02s 067ms) -> -0.000s
- Fusion 3.64: 14506 frames (4m 01s 767ms) -> -0.300s
- Retroarch (Genesis Plus GX): 14460 frames (4m 01s 000ms) -> -1.067s
- Bizhawk 2.10-rc1 (Genplus-gx) is the closest speed to the console.
- Retroarch (Genesis Plus GX) is the less accurate emulator, maybe something wasn't setup right?
I've tested with Bizhawk 2.10-rc1 and I've selected "Tool Assisted Speedrun" profile for maximum accuracy and I got a time of 44.850. Then I've tested again with 2.9.1 and this time I've also selected "Tool Assisted Speedrun" profile and I got a time of 44.800, which is same as the SMS!
Correcting what I said: Bizhawk should be allowed but with the TAS profile on!
let's do a 'Any% Death Glitch' category? whenever I do a run, I will do that, it's shorter to learn ahah
I think it's time to update the rule now we found this ladder glitch. Also I think it should be a good time to improve them.
This is what I'm proposing:
General
- The run video must have sound and must include a reset.
- Playing on emulator is allowed, share the name and version when submitting.
- Using save state is not allow.
- Pressing Left + Right at the same time is not allow.
Timer
- Starts when selecting "Game Start" on the main screen, first frame when the screen starts to fade
- Stops when the character is thrown out of the chariot in the colosseum, first frame when asterix/obelix jump out
Is there anything we should add or change, let discuss here before asking a mod to update the rule
I cannot find anywhere else where this glitch can be used, I think 2-3 is the only level with a ladder?
I wasn't able to reproduce the glitch you describe for 4-3 and 3-3 with the moving platform
I was able to reproduce it in a TAS, looks like it's 2 frames window
Alright, sounds like we don't want to allow that glitch for now.
is using a keyboard generally frowned apon for speedruns?
My run was done on emulator with a keyboard, so yes so far it's allowed. At some one we should add more details in the rules to make sure when a run is done on emulator we can see the inputs, the rom is valid and it's not a TAS (no movie).
ok I found, it's the "Sega Master System Plug & Play" from Tectoy and it has embedded games. Looks like Asterix is not in the list so that would be NOT valid to allow this category?
https://shinobiman.proboards.com/thread/10907/sega-master-system-plug-tectoy
oh that's good! but pressing left+right is not allow in general.
But ... it was allow for Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, There is a separate category for that. If I remember properly, Left+Right is kind "ok to allow" with SMS because there was one controller (tectoy?) that was bad and allow that if you press hard enough.
If it's a glitch we can take advantage from in other parts of the game, I might be down to allow a separate category
that would shave about 1.2 seconds off the run
yep good point, then let's do
- Start - first frame when the screen turns completly black after pressing start
- Stop - last frame when president walk down, the first frame when the player stop moving
This is what I would propose, something easy for frame counting:
- Start - first frame when the player sprite appears on screen after pressing start
- Stop - last frame when president walk down, the first frame when the player stop moving
I kind of prefer screen transitions, for example when the screen turns black. But I think we should stay as close as the original timing
I've tried with a fresh install of BizHawk 2.9.1 with all default config, with SMSHawk core. I used sms_us_1.3.sms for the firmware
sha256:477617917A12A30F9F43844909DC2DE6E6A617430F5C9A36306C86414A670D50
All you need to do is get this rom hack to go straight to the level 5 and go to the elevator
Update (Nov 11, 2024)
Bizhawk was set with the profile "Casual Gaming", that's why it was faster. "Tool Assisted Speedrun" must be selected for max accuracy (see VIDEO))
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
TL;DR - Bizhawk emulator run faster when the games has lags. Even it's a trustable emulator we should consider banning it.
Chatting with some other sega folks, we discussed about "some emulator doesn't have lags". So I've decided to test the most laggy part of the game: last level wth the laggy elevator when there are dinos around.
I compare 2 consoles and 2 emulators, I was very surprised Bizhawk was the one with less lags and be almost 3s faster.
- SMS - 44.767
- Genesis - 44.833
- Fusion - 44.783
- Bizhawk - 42.067
If I do the exact same 4 loop with the dino asleep (less lags) then I got similar times for all of them, and Bizhawk has the slowest time
- SMS - 29.900
- Genesis - 29.950
- Fusion - 30.00
- Bizhawk - 29.866
I forgot to add in the run description:
I frame count 3:01.883
- start first frame screen start to disappear
- stop first frame when the dummy with money and text full appear
I've tested with Genesis 1 --> 20.600, which is pretty much the same speed as SMS console, maybe a frame faster
also, we should put millisec in the runs, WR will be tight, same as california games 1
it's not a valid run, it doesn't make sense to resubmit with a different time.
I would say, redo the run with latest bizhawk (with default settings) and the right rom -> Jogos de Verao II (B) [!].sms
it's not like the run was many months of grind so IMO it's fine to redo it. Also there are zero RNG, it's just smashing, so it's not like "oh I got the best luck for this run"