[Cream147]

One of the attractions of this website is the openness of the rules compared to other similar websites, the so-called "honour system" or what have you. Lose that and this website loses one of its USP's. However, with things the way they are, I've always felt an undercurrent of mistrust throughout the community that from time to time, gets proved right when people are caught out.

For this reason, if it can help give this site's records a bit of authenticity, and give people more peace of mind, then I would say that I'm for this move of banning emulators with TAS features, as long as there are enough emulators out there that people are still able to use them to compete in all the games they are currently commonly used to compete (Genesis, Game Gear, GBA I would think being the crucial ones) on the main OS's. Make the rules too restrictive and we risk sucking the life out of the competition on these games, but I would have thought the necessary emulators do exist (With Fusion being given as the example that works for Genesis and Game Gear).

Obviously I'm against the retrospective removal of stats using the banned emulators - that would be total chaos and would also involve the removal of pretty much all of my Sonic 1 stats, done using Gens (though if I TASed those stats I did a pretty horrible job of TASing). SonicBoom mentions another TAS rule that says "Note that if a new rule is enacted, anything already submitted in violation of that rule is void.". What this proves is that to every rule there should be an exception, and this is it.

So my opinion is, make sure that enough viable emualators exist such that we're not essentially banning emulators here, and then go for it. This is a small (and obvious) point, but I would say it would be far better to have a whitelist of legal emulators rather than a banlist if this is the way we choose to go, for practical reasons.

[TimpZ]

And can this process be replicated using, say, a .giz as the target file type (which embeds a savestate at the beginning)?

Gens rerecording saves savestates differently from Gens plus, so it's not as easy as from a reset. However, that doesn't mean it's impossible. You could easily create a level select in Gens plus, recreate those inputs in Gens rerecording 11b (#frames is all that matters from start of a level if even that), create a TAS after that and port it to Gens +.

I'll work on it for a bit and then post a proof of concept if I can make one. If I'm unable to create it I'd be fine with accepting videos for Gens given a GIZ from savestate is provided.

[Parax]

Something I brought up on IRC a while ago that might bear repeating here - if we're going to ban Gens/Bizhawk, why stop at that? Why not ban Dolphin, DeSmuME, Visual Boy Advance, and any other emulators that have TASing features for other systems? The Genesis and Gamegear aren't the only systems that you can TAS on.

[TimpZ]

There are also emulators for other consoles like Dolphin where there are no viable alternatives. I wouldn't call emulators for consoles like gamecube my area of expertise so all I'm suggesting right now regards the Sega Genesis games. However if someone else have any input regarding those then feel free to jump in with your thoughs.

The key difference here is that there are viable alternatives to Gens as opposed to Gamecube. It's not an unreasonable demand.

[Parax]

Could the actual console not be considered a viable alternative? :P It seems weird to say some emulators aren't allowed because you can TAS on them, but others are fine even though they have the same TASing features simply because there's no emulators without those features. It puts us in the same awkward position of allowing times that couldn't possibly be proven beyond any doubt either way. The recent thread with supersonic917 is a good example of this.

[Zeupar]

Could the actual console not be considered a viable alternative? :P It seems weird to say some emulators aren't allowed because you can TAS on them, but others are fine even though they have the same TASing features simply because there's no emulators without those features. It puts us in the same awkward position of allowing times that couldn't possibly be proven beyond any doubt either way. The recent thread with supersonic917 is a good example of this.

That's sensible reasoning, so I think we should be responsible and take this suggestion:

if we're going to ban Gens/Bizhawk, why stop at that? Why not ban Dolphin, DeSmuME, Visual Boy Advance, and any other emulators that have TASing features for other systems?

[Cream147]

Something I brought up on IRC a while ago that might bear repeating here - if we're going to ban Gens/Bizhawk, why stop at that? Why not ban Dolphin, DeSmuME, Visual Boy Advance, and any other emulators that have TASing features for other systems? The Genesis and Gamegear aren't the only systems that you can TAS on.

To be honest, I kind of thought this was a given if we went through with this. With regards to finding alternatives, yes, you're right when you say that the actual console is an alternative, but as a random example, let's just guess that about 50% of the stats submitted for the GBA games are on VBA. If there wasn't an alternative to VBA after it had been banned, that would risk stifling competition on the GBA games quite a lot. Perhaps that's the price you pay for legitimacy, but it seems to be against the general ethos of the website.

[Don]

Okay, so here's an even weirder thing:

There are emulators on hacked consoles. You can't TAS on them; does that mean they would be a viable alternative to computer emulators? Or do we have to do experiments for that?

I mean, let's not forget: Windows is not the only system that supports emulation of another system. For Example: I could emulate Sonic Advance on my Wii because i have the necessary emulator. It's a different kind of VBA, but it's on console so it's functions are VERY, VERY limited.

Obviously that kind of alternative would require another, different console. It's an alternative none the less, if you don't have the actual game but want to compete, isn't it?

[Zeupar]

If there wasn't an alternative to VBA after it had been banned, that would risk stifling competition on the GBA games quite a lot. Perhaps that's the price you pay for legitimacy, but it seems to be against the general ethos of the website.

There are a few good alternatives.

[Brian]

Something I brought up on IRC a while ago that might bear repeating here - if we're going to ban Gens/Bizhawk, why stop at that? Why not ban Dolphin, DeSmuME, Visual Boy Advance, and any other emulators that have TASing features for other systems? The Genesis and Gamegear aren't the only systems that you can TAS on.

I'm not a Genesis speedrunner, but since Paraxade brought this point I want to say that I think it's totally fair and not harmful to ban submissions from TASable emulators, unless there's a clear way of saying if a video is a TAS or not. It works for the better, and I'm sure that people can find new ways of recording their runs, which is the only "problem" I can see here, since in theory, switching to another emulator shouldn't change the gameplay of any game.

Also, there's no way that past submissions would be erased if a ban is raised, I think that wouldn't be a good thing to do.

[TimpZ]

And can this process be replicated using, say, a .giz as the target file type (which embeds a savestate at the beginning)?

LOOK GUYS I GOT A 23 GH1!!! And 13 GH2! And then TeeNTee's TAS desynched because a badnik was in a different position since I used a savestate while he did it from hard reset causing Sonic to die. Anyway here you go, a proof of concept: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ivdgv2w7dq5927c/s1%20TAS%20test.giz (Note: Use revision 01 or it will desynch in GH2 because of a difference in lag frames when loading the level).

It puts us in the same awkward position of allowing times that couldn't possibly be proven beyond any doubt either way. The recent thread with supersonic917 is a good example of this.

So basically you're saying that just because you could TAS the same way on Gamecube or Wii (although it's a lot more complicated to get it to synch properly) that we shouldn't take precautions for other consoles where a ban on a specific type of emulators would be a big help against BS:ers like the example you just posted? What?

Do you also think that just because you can't stop murders simply by outlawing weapons, that people should be allowed to have handguns with them at all times? Oh wait, bad example, you're from the US :p.

Anyway I don't follow your logic. The only implications of such a rule would be that if you get called out for getting fantasy times, you can't point to a video made on a TAS emulator, for cases where there's no real reason to such as Genesis.

let's just guess that about 50% of the stats submitted for the GBA games are on VBA. If there wasn't an alternative to VBA after it had been banned, that would risk stifling competition on the GBA games quite a lot.

That is why I'm not suggesting that. Though it should be discussed as well just as Zeupar mentioned, it's nothing I know much about and thus I didn't bring up those emulators myself.

I could emulate Sonic Advance on my Wii because i have the necessary emulator. It's a different kind of VBA, but it's on console so it's functions are VERY, VERY limited.

One of the limitations are inaccurate emulation. That shit lags like hell and wouldn't be allowed in the first place.

Console or not console doesn't matter. It's the functionality of the emulators that are being discussed and I believe some of those functions don't have any place to be judged upon on a serious site focused on speedrunning. It'd be like me using Mupen64 to do runs of OoT and then just upload videos on YT. You think anyone in the zelda community would believe me if I got a record :p? Yes, I know we're not the zelda community but the point still stands.


Brian, no past records wouldn't get erased in theory. All I'm suggesting is that you can't use such a video as verification. Otherwise I could just as well get all the records using the method demonstrated at the start of this post.

[Parax]

It puts us in the same awkward position of allowing times that couldn't possibly be proven beyond any doubt either way. The recent thread with supersonic917 is a good example of this.

So basically you're saying that just because you could TAS the same way on Gamecube or Wii (although it's a lot more complicated to get it to synch properly) that we shouldn't take precautions for other consoles where a ban on a specific type of emulators would be a big help against BS:ers like the example you just posted? What?

Do you also think that just because you can't stop murders simply by outlawing weapons, that people should be allowed to have handguns with them at all times? Oh wait, bad example, you're from the US :p.

Anyway I don't follow your logic. The only implications of such a rule would be that if you get called out for getting fantasy times, that you can't point to a video made on a TAS emulator, for cases where there's no real reason to such as Genesis.

That's what we call a straw man. I never said that we shouldn't take precautions, and hell, I didn't even mean it as a reason why we shouldn't ban Gens and Bizhawk. I said that if we ban Gens and Bizhawk then we should also ban other emulators on other systems that have TASing features. Good job responding to arguments I never made and making assumptions about my position on completely unrelated issues.

I'm confused what you're arguing for, though. Do you want us to ban those emulators from submissions or do you just want us to not consider runs done on them to be acceptable proof in the event someone gets called out? Because the former makes sense, but I don't understand the point of the latter because there's no hard rules for what qualifies as acceptable proof anyway. We already determine that on a case by case basis. Plus if we allow those stats on the site in the first place, then if someone gets accused there's really nothing they can do to clear their name, and we like to give the accused a fair chance to prove themselves, so that won't work.

[TimpZ]

Call a straw? The analogy might've been in poor taste and I apologise if you took offence in some way. But it still stands true to how I interpreted your post, which is pretty much the polar opposite of what you wrote just now. Either way, banning TASing emulators for other consoles (or not) should have no effect on banning them for Genesis since the pool of emulators and accuracy of emulation differs so much.

When I originally wrote the topic, I did it with the mindset that I thought that Gens shouldn't be used in competition at all. However I realised that wouldn't work since most submissions are without proof. Hell, I barely even submit comments for my stuff a lot of the time. There's no way to tell what emulator was used if there's no recording of it so it's a void argument in the same way there's no way to tell if debug was used to obtain a time or score.

However, in the case where a user gets called out for a stat and provides a link to a youtube video or similar, I would not say a run done on Gens for example should be sufficient. If allowed, it will only lead to arguments like the supersonic917 one. Remove the variable of possible TASing and there's no problem.

The key here is the value of proof. Yes, it's judged on case by case basis, but I would argue a video with hand-cam with accompanying video of the original console weighs more as proof than an encoded Gens video. Making it clear that the latter won't be accepted should erase a lot of doubt in the process of verification.

[Parax]

Then you interpreted my post wrong. What you replied to is not what I said or meant at all.

Yeah, I don't get this. So you're saying we should allow the emulators in competition, but not allow videos made with said emulators as proof?

So say someone gets a good time using Gens, and records their run. This is perfectly allowed. Then someone has doubts about it, and the person gets called out. They've got a recording of the perfectly TSC-legal run they did, but apparently this isn't sufficient proof? What else are they supposed to do then? We won't take the emulator video. Nothing they can do on Gens proves they didn't TAS. They can rerecord it on console or a different emulator, but this wouldn't be considered acceptable proof either because it was done after the BS call was made. There's nothing they can do to prove they got their stat fairly, which by your rules would mean an automatic ban - all this despite the fact that the user didn't actually break a single rule.

Do you see why this is problematic? We can't just say "it's fine to submit stats with Gens, but Gens videos aren't sufficient proof".

[Zeupar]

First of all, please moderate your tone, TimpZ. One should be clever enough to realize that, sometimes, irony, sarcasm, caps, etc., make it harder to take them (and their ideas) seriously.

When I originally wrote the topic, I did it with the mindset that I thought that Gens shouldn't be used in competition at all.

I want to make it clear that I like the suggestion you made in your first post in this topic and still support it. However, the idea that we should allow emulators for competition but not to prove the result of said competition is ridiculous.

However I realised that wouldn't work since most submissions are without proof. There's no way to tell what emulator was used if there's no recording of it so it's a void argument in the same way there's no way to tell if debug was used to obtain a time or score.

You yourself unwittingly pointed to the flaw in your own reasoning by bringing up the use of debug mode, which we have forbid for a decade now.

[TimpZ]

I can't moderate my tone if I don't see where I have been aggressive or profane other than possibly one bad joke in poor taste (which I excused for) so you need to point out specifics if you think it's something that should be considered a problem in my argumentation throughout.

I personally don't see a problem a big problem with not allowing proving your stats while still allowing the use of the emulator other than consistency.

Let's say you're playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and get a 17 Emerald Hill 1. There are several ways to achieve this (very few non-cheating), the easiest being enabling level select and use the "increase frame" function some seconds before the goal.

Now let's say you want to submit this time. If you simply post a photo then that wouldn't be considered sufficient proof because there's too many easy ways to cheat and the time is unreasonably hard to get. I want Gens to fall under this same type of low-level proof if it is to have any credibility at all.

If it states in the rules that Gens cannot be used for verification should you get called out but due to the honour system in place using it for submissions is fine since we assume all stats are correct to begin with, then I don't see any problems at all. Using Gens would be equal to playing on a real console without recording. If someone would BS it doesn't matter if they're on emulator or console, if they have no acceptable proof they get banned. Therefore we should make clear that recordings from such emulators won't be accepted.

However, the idea that we should allow emulators for competition but not to prove the result of said competition is ridiculous.

I see your logic and I agree to a large extent. However like someone pointed out this would void any previous stats done on Gens which I think is valid complaint but not a reason not to implement it in the future. When a law is passed, you don't get punished in retrospect and if the same thing would apply here I would change my stance back to my original one.


EDIT: Parax brings a valid point about automatic bans even if you follow the rules. He is right about this being a problem and I don't have an argument against at this point.

[SpinDashMaster]

Using Gens would be equal to playing on a real console without recording. If someone would BS it doesn't matter if they're on emulator or console, if they have no acceptable proof they get banned. Therefore we should make clear that recordings from such emulators won't be accepted.

However, the idea that we should allow emulators for competition but not to prove the result of said competition is ridiculous.

I see your logic and I agree to a large extent.

Huh?

Let me just make clear why we accept these videos from emulators even if they can be TAS'd. Zeupar already excellently made this point clear, but I just want to add a little more detail. It is a simple expansion of the honor system. If you trust a player to submit a stat without recording, and you trust that player to submit a stat without recording, it follows that a video submission from the same actions should also be assumed trusted, regardless of if you can bring even Jesus in to intervene for you to help you TAS the game.

No doubt, there's ways to go about the system and find ways to cheat, and make it look spotless on a recording. No matter how many rules and edicts we put in place, it's always going to happen. While I understand your intent, this rule would simply implement far more hindrance on players and reduce several convenience factors on fair players, while not really doing much to the general state of affairs.

[Cream147]

No doubt, there's ways to go about the system and find ways to cheat, and make it look spotless on a recording. No matter how many rules and edicts we put in place, it's always going to happen.

Just because we will never be able to stop cheating does not mean that we shouldn't make rules that make it harder to cheat. Perhaps this is a fair argument to not ban Gens+ because it would seem to be fairly difficult (or at least require a fair amount of technical knowledge) to cheat using it. However, cheating using the TAS features on Gens right now seems to be downright easy to me. Certainly easy enough for myself to do it, and easy enough that people have been caught cheating this way from time to time.

Also, yes, TSC does operate using the honour system. However, when video proof is requested, it seems to me that the honour system has stopped there because the person's integrity has been questioned (if only in a small way). When you have suspicions of someone, and then the proof given is a video that could very easily have been TASed, I can see why it might be hard to shake those suspicions off.

[Brian]

Just keep it simple, ban the TASable emulators and everything will be fine. It's plain troublesome to allow submissions from those emulators but not accept videos from them as proof, it's really stupid IMHO, so I think that idea should be totally discarded.

And it really doesn't matter too much if there'll be ways of TASing a run and submit it as non-TAS if it'll be a much harder process. These people most likely are too lazy to be able to do that, because that's partially the reason behind their actions, at least as I see it. So banning these emulators won't necessarily make legit people stop submitting, but will get rid of trouble with this kind of scrub that likes to cheat in order to look good on the charts.

[Inuyasha]

Everyone here is being idiotic.

Banning TASable emulators involves banning all open-source emulators.  Banning open-source emulators is the opposite of what you should be doing if you want people to use good, accurate emulators; most of the people I've seen nowadays encourage making emulators open-source so that the community can get involved and assist with fixing emulation issues and adding to the emulator's feature set.

[Ben]

Dunno about anyone else but knowing most people use emulators in the older games really put me off ever bothering to compete in them on TSC. If someone puts that much time and effort into a game, surely they can just buy the relevant game/console and play it legitimately?

As for newer hardware like the DS and Gamecube, there is really no excuse for resorting to emulation. Those consoles are readily available and there are loads of options for recording your runs.

One of the reasons TSC came up in the first place was an intent to distinguish a competitive community apart from Cyberscore, where players often would get banned or have stats removed without being given a chance to prove oneself.

Really? First time I've heard of that.

[Groudon]

As for newer hardware like the DS and Gamecube, there is really no excuse for resorting to emulation. Those consoles are readily available and there are loads of options for recording your runs.

I can only think of 2 for DS games, which doesn't sound like "loads of options" to me.

[Cream147]

Dunno about anyone else but knowing most people use emulators in the older games really put me off ever bothering to compete in them on TSC.

Why? That's simply absurd. I have a Mega Drive and all the Sonics on it, but for reasons of convenience I would usually choose to compete via an emulator. I don't get the issue - you can still get all the same times on a console. Some of my times were in fact set on console. It's unimportant.

[SB737]

Whilst I find using an emulator like gens more convenient, I realise that TSC will probably benfit more from banning emulators with TASing functionality readily available, at the end of the day, and I'm sure everyone feels this way, I'd rather be competing on a site knowing that all the competiton is legit (or at least more likely to be), rather than competing against lots of iffy stats, with the only benefit being a little convenience, and at the end of the day, fusion does a decent enough job at emulating.

So yer my outlook on the matter has changed a little. I'm more neutral on the matter, but if it's for the best for TSC, then maybe it's the way to go.

[Werey]

^ but you still have no indication everythings legit even if that rule was banned, so...

[InferSaime]

I geuss I could say my opinion on this. I'm neutral about this at one side banning the emulators is a good thing but by doing that you have all those that are done on those emulators already so it seems kinda pointless to me. And some people might not want to compete anymore if they can't compete on a specific emulator or no emulator at all.
Also if you're going to be ban some emulators wouldn't it be better to ban every emulator? It just seems a bit stupid to only ban some specific ones where the TAS features are easily available.

But if I would have to choice between banning or not banning them. I would vote for banning them.

Oh also why aren't Dolphin and other gamecube and DS emulators banned in the first place?

[Parax]

Also if you're going to be ban some emulators wouldn't it be better to ban every emulator? It just seems a bit stupid to only ban some specific ones where the TAS features are easily available.

Banning all emulators is what makes the most sense to me, and if we were starting from scratch that's what I'd vote for, but it seems kinda pointless at this point. Plus there'd be so much backlash.

Even aside from TAS, they introduce tons of legitimacy issues, like whether the emulator is accurate or running at full speed.

[Brian]

C'mon guys see the point please, this discussion is to determine if it's good or not to ban TASable emulators just because in the case of a video being asked as proof, the person won't have such an easy time faking a TAS. So even if you'll have no real insurance that the stat is legit, if someone gets called, the guy won't have an "easy way out".

And no InferSaime, it's not pointless to ban these but leave the old stats on the charts because this will do no harm to the competition that has been going on until now, but will get rid of some possible BS on the future, which is better than a complete wipeout, what should be out of question for me, or just leaving the matter the way it is now, at least for me, even though I don't compete on any genesis game.

[RigidatoMS]

This is going too far. My true opinion is that this topic is nothing more than a lose for TSC. TimpZ,  if I was an admin, I should close this topic, because there's no rule for banning specific emulators. And why are there emulators? Because some people don't have the console, so they install emulators to play. If they are TASable, that will not affect nothing if they can load a game in full speed. If a proof is needed, there's a simple way to avoid fake videos: not letting them to record with the emulator or screen recorders. To show the proof recorded, use a camera or a cellular phone and play in windowed mode. And how many emulators exist for playing Wii on PC? One, and TASable. The probable banning of emulators will affect negatively the competition of this site. The players can choose freely the games and where they will play it, in console or in emulator, to compete. And this rule: if a new rule is enacted, anything already submitted in violation of that rule is void.
I believe a lot of guys in TSC played in TASable and non-TASable emulators, so that's a problem. That's all for now, because I don't have a excellent english

[Parax]

To be honest I'm still not entirely convinced things aren't fine enough the way they are now. I know it's not a perfect solution, particularly because it doesn't inspire confidence from the outside looking in, but we've been able to do a pretty good job identifying TASers by picking out little clues from their videos before. I dunno, allowing people to actually present something as proof and then actually looking at it and evaluating how likely it is to be legitimate instead of just immediately writing it off as inadmissable seems more sensible and fair to me.

Inuyasha also brought up a valid point that no one's responded to about emulators with TAS features also tending to be the most accurate ones because they're open-source. I'm no emulator expert here but if anyone wants to list some highly accurate, closed-source emulators without TAS features, be my guest. Inaccurate emulators are just as bad as emulators that facilitate cheating.

If a proof is needed, there's a simple way to avoid fake videos: not letting them to record with the emulator or screen recorders. To show the proof recorded, use a camera or a cellular phone and play in windowed mode.

Um, you do realize it's trivial to record a video and then play it back and record the recording on a camera, right? That does absolutely nothing.

By the way guys, just for the record - if a rule change does happen as a result of this thread, anything submitted before the date of this particular rule would be grandfathered in. I'm not interested in scouring the site to find every single stat that was run on an illegal emulator over the last decade, and so far I haven't heard any volunteers. :P Yeah, it's a general rule that new rules render old stats in violation of the new rule void - we can make an exception. Not a big deal.

EDIT: Something similar to what Infersaime brought up on IRC a while ago - maybe what would make more sense is adding tighter restrictions to emulator stats. Like for example, say that all stats done on an emulator are required to have a video/emulator movie file attached. That would still allow people to run on emulators while also making it a bit easier to catch out cheaters.