[Don]

Like I said: I can see the problem for Dios Mios, but not for actual Wii Games, since it's not emulation.

And no, I am not missing the point here. I am just merely bringing up that "official" emulation does not mean "reliable".

[Starlight_Glimmer]

don with all due respect, your free to make another thread complaining about how we should require proof for your concerns on official backwards compatible devices. and people be more then happy to debate and ultimately knock it down. (for reasons everone seems to get) but as sdm keeps mentioning your really do keep going off topic whether you know it are not.

[TimpZ]

Official emulation, reliable or not, is still invariant. It doesn't get updates every so often and unless it's on a PC the hardware is identical as well. If a game is different enough from the original the community can decide not to compete in it, like with Sonic Genesis on GBA. Or it can be a new category, like S1-13.

It has nothing to do with emulator XYZ v0.8.5984c using a multitude of settings to make the game less buggy on your specific machine.

While you're running Wii games on the hardware itself, you're still changing the intended way of input. What if a stage expects the loading time to be long and doesn't start the timer until a specific point, giving it an upper hand in competition? I know that's how it works in S2 with the title cards. They don't wait until everything has been loaded, it's actually on a timer since the developers were smart enough to optimise their code.

[SpinDashMaster]

We are all so off the topic it's not even funny. Not just Don.

We need to get back to the main point here and wrap this up. We've discussed everything that needs to be discussed regarding providing videos for emulators. Let's finish what we started here and put that rule back up.

We can take the Wii stuff to a separate thread. That deserves a topic of its own.

[Don]

Fin.

[Parax]

^ Was about to post something like this. As I've stated earlier, we're not making rules against loading Wii games from a hard drive unless someone can come up with definitive proof that it can have a negative effect on gameplay -in a Sonic game-. Consider that an official ruling on the subject. If you wanna debate it further, start a new thread for it, but it has absolutely nothing to do with emulators. I'll be removing any other posts in this thread on the subject.

To get back on topic, there seems to be a couple options up in the air right now, and I'd like to hear from everyone on which one would be the best one to proceed with. Aside from limiting the scope of the rule to merely top 5 stats, a few people on IRC the other were in favor of banning emulators outright, because they saw it as a more consistent and ultimately more effective ruling.

[Don]

Parax, I would personally propose a new Topic so it's not stained with all the off-topic in here.

[SpinDashMaster]

Banning emulation outright has a major implication attached: You're gonna have to either find and prune out all emulation-acquired stats (including nearly all of my work on S3, sadface.) or just totally nuke the whole place and restart the charts.

Neither one of those options looks attractive.

Regarding "Top X%": There's no way of knowing pre-recording that you are going to have the Top 5 when you're done with the run. So if that was aimed in some way at casuals, it will only hurt them the moment they fluke and get a very strong stat, only to find they can't submit it because they weren't recording.

Also who's in the Top 5 can change for many reasons, and if a stat moves from 6th to 5th (because of someone else's stat removal), it will also lack a recording to prove it to retain its position.

[Don]

I would say ban emulators (for the most part). We should bring up that certain games, such as sonic jam and sonic pocket adventure, are rather rare to come by, so we should find a special ruling for those.

As for the stats, they should probably remain untouched. I would go as far to say that we wouldn't even be able to look at them and be able to tell which of those were indeed emulator stats and which not.

Also it would be unfair to undo 10 years of work on this site, but times change. If we make this rule I am sure that we will be able to keep the site emulator free from now on.

[SpinDashMaster]

Sonic Jam's versions of the games are already banned outright.

Also I ninjaedited a couple posts ago, you might wanna go back and read the updated post.

[Parax]

Sonic Jam has charts, though, so it is a factor to some degree.

[SpinDashMaster]

Oh, my bad. I get what Don meant now.

Yeah I'd really rather not ban emulation. That's a really nice convenience to have and while it is quite a shame that we have some sneaky players and some uncompared glitches, that is no reason to take away the resources from honorable players who enjoy the games they compete in but only have access to emulators.

Similarly, emulators provide a major convenience, -especially for the genesis era games-, where pre-level savestates are the norm. More explicitly, these savestates are usually for level select screens (With all chaos emeralds up and 1 super) and for starting a level with some item boxes dug up and/or glitches activated from the previous act. Removing emulation greatly increases time between attempts due to a heavily increased setup time.

[flying fox]

Yeah I'd really rather not ban emulation. That's a really nice convenience to have and while it is quite a shame that we have some sneaky players and some uncompared glitches, that is no reason to take away the resources from honorable players who enjoy the games they compete in but only have access to emulators.

Similarly, emulators provide a major convenience, -especially for the genesis era games-, where pre-level savestates are the norm. More explicitly, these savestates are usually for level select screens (With all chaos emeralds up and 1 super) and for starting a level with some item boxes dug up and/or glitches activated from the previous act. Removing emulation greatly increases time between attempts due to a heavily increased setup time.

[Don]

~Any~ arguments for convenience of emulators should be void. IF you want to use that you could use sonic mega collection (+), which has a savestate feature, and cost me like 3 euros.

[SpinDashMaster]

Unless I can load that state more than once it's not useful.

Unless I can store more than one state it's not useful.

[Don]

you can store multiple saves.

you can load one save at a time, and it will stay saved.


Now could you please stop making me sound like i'm trying to sell SMC+!

[SpinDashMaster]

You kind of just did. :P

That does make me feel partially at ease, but what about other games which might rely on this also but be outside the scope of SMC+?

[TimpZ]

I think the originally proposed idea was just fine. The only thing I wanted to extend on it was on other things that border between console and emulator or potential console mods since I know this is a problem in other games, such as Metroid Prime 2. A good definition of the proof that is required other than "movie" is still due though

In general I approve of an increase of proof and media on this site as not only does it strengthen the validity of it, but also provides a nice bank of videos that will be readily available to beginners trying to improve. For me this is a step in the right direction.

[SpinDashMaster]

Absolutely. Just have the rule written as it was. Don't add the Top X crap for reasons I stated earlier, and for god's sake don't ban all emulation.

[Starlight_Glimmer]

I say no on an emulator ban unless it comes with a site nuke and we call this tsc 4.

yes to the rule, and yes to top 5.. I ment to adress is earlier about 6th being pushed into 5th, I believe they should be grandfather'd. if you were 6th and now 5th ur more then likely still beatable. the only senerio where this fails is 1 - 6 use emulator and top 5 get nuked... which I believe is highly unlikely

on the flip side we could go back to the roots and require all emulator runs to provide proof, honestly though we will have people posting their 87th place with emulator with this, but for the record im for top 5

yes to exempting tied ring records

[Don]

SDM, your convenience will not be troubled if you have sonic gems collection, as it covers all non-SMC+ games with official savestate options.

[SpinDashMaster]

No to exempting tied ring records. You better believe those S3 RA's take a shitton of effort. I recorded every single one of mine, and if you want to match what I achieved, you better be able to show your credentials for having done so too.

I can understand an EH1 RA but I better see a vid if you dare to say you matched my 829 LB2K.

</angry defensive stance>

@Don now I gotta buy 2 games? Honestly I'd rather have my emulator. The saves are at the press of a key for me, whereas I'd have to navigate a menu to shuffle over to the save I want in SMC+/Gems.

[Don]

I don't know SDM, you clearly provide that your ~convenience~ is something you would want to keep.
With that i would go to my initial statement that the rule is void, because there are even more people that are not going to get top stats, are casual competitors, and probably wouldnt want to have to deal with submitting proof for every single green or blue stat they're getting.

Also flimsy, no matter WHAT we do: This is going to be a BIG change for TSC. If we take the rule, we will still grandfather those stats. If we ban emulators, we will still grandfather those stats, since we have no way to prove or not prove most of these stats as emulated or not. You can't really break a law that hasn't existed, so...

All in all, I'm just seeing "I would rather keep emulators for MY convenience sake, because i'm not going to be bothered by the rule." rather than "We want a fair playing field between consoles and emulators." Maybe I really am too biased, but still.

If we're gonna make convenience a thing I'm not gonna shut up about it.

Banning emulators is the only step that makes sense and everybody suffers from it the same. And you gain the fact that inaccurate emulation will never be a thing.

[TimpZ]

Banning emulators doesn't make sense to me firstly because of the tradition of this site and secondly because unofficial emulators can be more accurate than the official ones. Or maybe you're suggesting we should ban official emulators as well, which doesn't make sense either.

[Starlight_Glimmer]

I thought when we were talking about ring exemptions we were talking about sonic 3d blast type of crap. if your the only record holder and someone claims to tie you with an emulator, yes of course, we need video.

it wont be that big of a change, just a severly small group has to provide proof now. nobody in mhc wants to talk about this cuz they dont care, "with the it wont affect me" thing.

[SpinDashMaster]

@Don You speak as if I'm the only one affected by such a stance. FF, who has also been through several of my hellish RA's, immediately vouched for me when I said how majorly an emulation ban would affect that field in particular.

That said, convenience is just one reason not to ban emulation. It's not the only reason.

It seems to me like you're upset because you feel like I'm not being affected by the rule for some reason. Well, EXCUSE ME for actually upholding higher standards of integrity before they have become expected of us!

Whether that is the case or not, for the same reason you can't be pissed off about a ruling not forcing everyone to adjust their seating a bit or be less comfortable.

That's like saying "Oh adding a ban on pork isn't fair because people who don't eat pork aren't going to be affected. They should be punished somehow too. HEY I KNOW! Let's make them not eat chicken!"

[Don]

You know spindashmaster, you're kind of right.

Except this isnt a choice of food, this is competition. This is a serious issue for me that people want to keep emulators for selfish, convenience reasons, and that's all that matters in our little conversation. I can understand that people want to make this site more serious for competition, but god forbid you have to use actual consoles or ports of the games you want to play, because the one-press-button-reset isnt a thing!

P.S.: Everytime I RA Sonic Advance I have to reset and wait around 20 seconds until i can start again, because it takes that long to reset the game in console. I make that decision actively, because it would be unfair to say that emulator usage would bring the advantage of savestates to begin with.

[SpinDashMaster]

That's a personal decision you make. Just because you don't want to save time between attempts, doesn't mean WE don't.

If anything that's being capricious and trying to make everyone else suffer because you feel like you suffer somehow.

Call me when you try to RA IC2T without the aid of pre-level saves. You will see how precious that time is.

To drive the point home, pre-level saves are not a competitive advantage of any sort. They are a time-saver outside of the domain of competition. One way or another, I'm gonna start the level I want to start with the setup I need. It either takes me 40 minutes to do that or 0.5 seconds to do that. Neither method has any impact on the outcome of my performance once the run begins, so why would I choose the 40-minute option?

Honestly, who's going to enjoy competition when they can't freely enjoy the benefit of harmless timesavers such as this, instead having to spend more time setting up than actually competing?

[Starlight_Glimmer]

Ok, even between just us im still pretty confused on what we all agree and disagree about. Plus a lack of variety on people putting in their two cents (which I believe is making everyone a bit nervous in acting either way). I think the lack of a big variety of opinion though, is because the lack of people this will actually affect.

Can I suggest we just go ahead with the rule now. (if its not already going.) with NO changes, no exceptions, nothing, but what parax said in post #1?

Then wait for other threads of complaints to pop up when/if they do with "ACTUAL" people this rule is effecting and adjust the rule accordingly?

Can we agree on that?

[RigidatoMS]

@ Android question: I think we need to do some research on emulation done on android to verify its accuracy. I would be fine with emulated stats from a phone not having a video stat given the emulation is accurate (Heaven forbid one could TAS through a phone.).

My Android runs Mega Drive and Mega CD(Sega CD in Japan) games perfectly when I'm with few apps open.