California, USAPlenty of illegitimate gimmicks can and even have been used to cheat the leaderboards before, so there's going to be a degree of trust involved regardless.
The transition mod changes the resolution of the screenshot SH2 takes when it opens your inventory; it uses the screenshot in the corner with your health. The onus of testing that kind of mod, if someone wanted to use it, would be on them, not the rest of the game's players.
I cosign everything Wulfz has said. It was never an "option" in the first place so much as a placeholder. If software issues are that strong of a barrier of entry it wouldn't be difficult to upload an established sh2proxy release for anyone who wanted to use it. However, all of the hypothetical allowable mods aren't really hard to do by yourself - single core affinity in task manager, safe mode turns off if you restart. Fast transitions, the FPS limit increase, the cutscene mod, widescreen mode, the rendering resolution mod, and that random anti-aliasing(?) mod are all ban worthy.
From what I understand:
1: "New game" at menu, pick Easy. NG+ is always on Normal or Hard, so obviously no reason to load a previous save. Keep in mind if there's another save with your controls changed, it'll default to those controls, if I remember correctly, and you don't have to reload the save or anything.
2: I forget if game data checks for a save or if it keeps track in a separate place like 3, but NG+ items will always be there except for a fresh install. They're all out of the way anyways.
3: New Game is separate from Extra New Game, ezpz
4: Same as 1, except it lets you choose any difficulty iirc, so New Game is always best choice. NG+ does add costumes, but I think there was something about a cutscene or two that you could skip on NG+ that was unskippable otherwise, so until someone gives more detail I think "New Game" is the consensus.
0: New Game, loading a completed save adds all the NG+ items to inventory
Homecoming: New Game, and I believe it's generally agreed to stick to normal costume, if only because we don't know for sure how the different character model would affect clips and such. (I swear clipping is harder in Pyramid Head helmet.)
Shattered Memories: Starting from a "NG+" file only adds the UFOs around town and keeps the options you set before (tutorials off, subtitles, etc.) except for the option to play voice calls through TV instead of Wii remote. You can set all of these before starting the run on a new game file, so there's no practical reason that a "NG+" file is an issue.
Downpour: New Game/Easy. An interesting caveat about this is that if you have punched in any of the preorder bonus codes, given with the game on release depending where you bought it, Gamestop/wherever else had their own unlockable weapons (all of which aren't that great anyways). Deleting all of your saves won't undo putting that code in, the time I tried to wipe it I had to completely uninstall the entire game and all saves and system data. Basically acts the same as SH2 for our purposes anyways, it's a goofy weapon you have to go out of your way to grab. I thought it might have implications for runs where if a preorder bonus weapon was OP you wouldn't actually be able to go to a locker and have to put in the preorder code; the locker would already be open, so I guess it'd be a 10 second time save or whatever. That'd all have to be for debate, I guess.
Sorry for the essay, figured it was worth a quick writeup.
edit: Also, all of this should be listed under the rules on individual game category/run pages.
you can see the timer tick in the PC version in the menu too, definitely a weird design
hit me up on twitter or twitch message me, I'll hook you up
Slayer had a very similar setup for his gate breach back in the day, switching to shotgun mid-clip to finish getting through a wall, so I have full confidence in this.
I also had no idea the console dropdown menu was there before posting this thread tbh, but that's my fault B)
To clarify, I thought the value of using a save state with perfect RNG was to basically truly run the segmented route, bypassing all puzzle RNG and skipping the code checks. Obviously it would require its own leaderboard if anyone felt like doing that, and frankly I wouldn't be opposed (then again, I've made up plenty of BS categories lol).
Because there aren't any options that would make the leaderboards less chunky than they already are I have no problem keeping them the way they are, but also ask that mods don't delete times from slower consoles. (My console SH1 run is missing, which was a better run than my emulator PB, for instance.)
If there's anything else that needs cleaning up let me know. GOOD DISCUSSION TEAM~!
In Chapter 2 it has two PC and one Xbox time all on one board, I don't see what you mean
Have an example? I'm just more concerned about it function-wise than how it looks.
Recently hardware differences have become a hot topic with more research on Bigmanjapan's part regarding PS2 emulation and have always been a concern because of huge differences in a lot of Silent Hill games - the drastic differences between SH:0 on PS2 and PSP, the differences between SH2 on console and PC, etc.
The proposed change would be to organize the leaderboards to include separation of consoles/emu/other differences (HD collection, backwards-compatibility that uses emulators, etc.), similar to some of the Resident Evil games - http://www.speedrun.com/re2
As an example, this could include
SH1 - [Console, Emu, PSN] x [NG (Easy), NG Good+ (Easy), UFO Ending, 10 Star]
with more input from each game's community. We already have many people who run games on different hardware (I have reasonable PBs for PS1, PSN, and Emu for SH1, etc.), and I've always been of the opinion in cases like this that ignoring hardware differences negates the point of leaderboards in the first place. In addition, I think it would do more to encourage playing in different situations - console having mandatory Abstract Daddy fight, having your life ruined by Homecoming PC version, and so on.
I think we can do this pretty painlessly with a little time and it would benefit everyone in the long run. I just wanted to get the ball rolling with discussion - which versions of each game are worth having a separate list for?
