Hello! I have a doubt. how do you get the loading screen be start quickly? I'm playing on EPSXE. Can you explain some tricks about the run?

Hello! You can cut the loading times just in muting the game sound. Nothing specific to say about the run, just train and try. I put the maps, routing and ost in resources.

Hello. I just begin now to run Casper on duckstation emu. How is the mute setting? Game and music has to be muting for make load screens faster? Any recommendation for other settings on duckstation?

Hi! Don't know Duckstation, i run on Epsxe. If i remember correctly, you just need to mute the sound by the game menu to reduce the screens loading. Personaly, i used a youtube music compil of the game to record the video. GLHF for the runs ;)

So, i have to mute sound and music, both. Thanks

i just checked my run, just mute the music i think, the fx are ok, make some test if you need

Dear fellow Casper-Speedrunners,

I would like to bring this one up again, as i was just made aware of the 'load time' topic in private messages. To be fair, i've not paid attention to my DuckStation Emulator settings in any of my Casper runs and therefore was probably using some kind of defaults or settings from other speedruns I did. All I did prior sending in my runs, was comparing the initial load time (meaning the time until you can move Casper) of the WR at that time (i.e. stunt's runs) and making sure my initial load times are somewhat the same. But following theses messages I also did some 'research' over the last couple of hours.

Here are the the findings:

• In the 7year old run by MC, Casper's first move occurs around sec 18.5 of the run.

• stunt's initial loads in any% and 100% appear to be consistent at around 15.1 secs

• my own initial load times are also consistant comparing any% and 100% at around 15.6 secs

The initial loading sequence consists of 2 loading screens, so just looking at above figures, there appears to be quite some margin if accumlated over a full run and all its loading screens.

While obviously I am a friend of doing this game as fast as possbile, I am questioning where we wanna go in terms of Emulator settings and wether we need some rule addition limiting emulator settings. Just by tweaking Read and Seek Speedups (both on Maximum) in DuckStation I was able to get the inital loading sequence down to ca 12 secs, which is already an approx 3.5sec save just on TWO load screens (please be aware those times have all been taken manually, so there might be a small tolerance while the overall picture should be alright). For coming up with these times and screenshots below, I've started a new game, hit the timer as usually, held the X of my controller and stopped the timer on the very first picture with movable Casper.

To be fair, my knowledge about emulators is not very deep (so maybe there is someone who is more into that). But using some kind of 'maximum' settings (as done in the 12sec load below) somewhat feels wrong as this appears to be not a comparable value based on individual hardware in use. Moreover, all i've checked so far is the initial loading time - i've got no idea yet wether or not the game would crash during the course of a run with any of these settings. Timingwise I did not notice a meaningful positive impact above Seek Speedup 10x / Read Speedup 6x-7x (which is approx the initial loading times of my runs). While i was able to kind of come up with MC's initial loading time, I was unable to do so for stunt's (maybe you can help us in terms of your settings?).

Happy to get your opinion & knowledge on that topic and/or discuss wether or not we should add some kind of Game Rule with regard to Emulator settings (e.g. No Overclocking / 100% Clock Speed; max Seek Speedup 10x; max Read Speedup 10x; all others default; all together limiting initial load times to not be below [15]secs which was my proxy for comparing emulator settings, while at the same time not disallowing any of the runs that already have been provided/approved). Only downside when officially allowing for these settings is that runs might only be competitive on emulators and following these settings.

All the best

inSightT

#edit: above testing has been done within the EU version. It appears, using the US version you can subtract ca 1 second from the screenshots shown above (i.e. max settings comes out at ca 11.0 seconds, 10/10 R/S at about 14.75 / the 15 sec threshold occurs at like R 5x S 10x).

So again - is there a need to amend game rules with regard to emulator settings? Do we even care, as the total of submitted runs is comparably low? In my opinion, i'd at least rule out 'overclocking' as the game can become unnaturally fast (and we so far take time in RTA) - and moreover it has not been used in any of the runs yet. Secondly, i'd propose to limit speed settings to the maximum numeric settings (ie 10x/10x as shown above - only ruleing out the non-numeric setting 'maximum' as i) i would not call this a marginal gap and ii) i just do not have a good gut feeling about this 'maximum' where noone exactly knows what's going on).

#edit2: with rusty fingers (as i didnt do any Casper runs since that big 100% improvement) i just smacked the any%WR down to a 37:15 (meanning more then 1:30 improvement) on a Read Speedup 10x / Seek Speedup 10x; we really need to talk.. ;)

#edit3: I was also able to even get even below 37 (36.59) with a kinda not optimal run (3rd attempt grave) on Read and Seek Max. Overall, it feels these settings are indeed shorten load times (which does not feel like a bad thing during the runs imo). I will play around a bit more and let you know..

#edit4: and finally a cleaner one on MAX settings in 36.32.