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Topics - TimpZ

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1
Rules Revisions / Validity of proof and clarification
« on: May 27, 2015, 08:54:50 am »
Before I start, no this is not the new "emulators should be banned" thread.

Today I finished a run of Sonic 2 using savestates and uploaded to Youtube. If I was a douchebag who wanted to cheat I could reference that video when submitting stats and no one could BS call me because nothing in the video indicates cheating.

Except it's completely ridiculous.

No one in their right mind who had played Sonic 2 for more than 10 minutes would think this run was made at least without using some form of cheat. The entire speedrun community would be unanimous in thinking that the run isn't legit.

TSC operates on an honour system and if someone comes under suspicion of cheating they are required to provide proof. This proof is then analyzed by moderators and whomever they might ask for help. I have in the past helped out a number of times in trying to help ban people who are under suspicion. This includes audio, video and gameplay analysis. After I have determined the most likely emulator the game is being played on (if not console) by using telltale signs, I re-watch the video a few times, sometimes slowed down, to try to detect frame skips to look for a splice, unlikely frame perfect inputs (like counting the number of frames some suspicious spindashes take) and a number of other things that might differ depending on the emulator. This is all made harder by YT compressed, 30fps, low quality recordings I might add. If everything checks out and there's several stats submitted, you can look at other videos the person has submitted and do the same thing. All this work can take hours if not a whole day put together.

If that checks out, the only thing left to do is to analyse what the person is actually doing during the run and weigh it all together to see if it's reasonable. For IL's this is very hard almost to the point of pointless but sometimes someone uploads a supposed single segment full game run and submits the times in that run to TSC or other sites.

This is an example of when this was successful in detecting someone cheating who later got caught from another video and admitted it. He denied that the full game run he used for submission was cheated but his credibility was already lost. The community of different games have also used this form of analysing gameplay to determine whether a run is in fact "too good to be true", most notably on SDA.

I've been told that an SDA reject for cheating can be valid proof for a BS call, but this does not apply to emulators. It could also probably be extended to other sites like speedrun.com, but what happens if the player only submits to TSC?

A few months ago I sent this to an admin who requested my help who then forwarded to a second admin. I admit that it's quite passive aggressive to the point of not being an objective analysis anymore and while I don't want to put full blame on frustration I think it's important to note that I've tried to help a growing number of times fruitlessly and this BS call in particular took an unusual amount of time. After a month of silence I requested response but still I have received none whatsoever. The video in question has since been taken down after being made private shortly after it caught knowledgeable peoples attention but I have a download of it saved on my computer. The few other prominent runners I have asked all agree it looks mighty suspicious with just a quick glance. The stats are still up.


So my question is: How rigid does proof need to be in order to be considered valid for a BS call? Would my video really make the cut? At what point can we trust the knowledge of top runners without obvious proof? What can we do to prevent this loop hole to continue to happen? Hell, this guy is not banned but admitted to cheating just months prior using exactly the same setup I did in my video. This is a big issue to me with this site and I think a clear line has to be drawn somewhere.

2
Rules Revisions / Sonic Colours Egg Shuttle IL times
« on: March 17, 2014, 01:51:43 pm »
I'd like to argue for the blanket rule to be reconsidered regarding IL times extracted from Egg Shuttle. If you start without boost, there's literally no difference. Especially the first stage, Tropical Resort 1, suffers zero difference. Therefore, I'd like to argue that if you have a recording of your stat, to prove you didn't start with boost, that it should be submittable.

3
There have been a larger number of people that try to pass off various tool-assisted runs as legit on both TSC, SDA and Youtube. Distinguishing between the legit runs and the fakes can be easy or hard depending on the skill the person in question possess and also as speedrunning in general becomes larger, an increasing number of ways to cheat the system starts to emerge.

For genesis games, there are a lot of alternatives for emulators to use; Gens with variants, Fusion, Regen, BizHawk etc. These are all different in functions and goals. BizHawk is an emulator tailored for TASing complete with all the functionality you could ever want. Gens is open source and there's a large amount of variants including ones tailored for debugging, extracting ROM data or editing RAM, making TASes and much more.

On the contrary, emulators like Fusion are closed source and with very little built-in tools useful for cheating in any way.

What I'm saying is, if you're gonna use an emulator for competition, why allow the use of one that allows for TASing, memory watch/editing and LUA-scripting as basic functions when very much viable alternatives exist? It is usually not too hard to notice the difference between emulators either, especially when there's an accompanying video (no I'm not going to tell you how) so in order to remove variables from the dispute process I propose that a rule is instated that ban these kinds of emulators.

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.

5
Competition Central / Sonic Lost World 3DS Charts (Spoilers)
« on: October 29, 2013, 01:24:00 pm »
The 3DS version is quite different fom the Wii U one so I was recommended to create a new topic for it.

Anyway, Sonic Lost World 3DS have 4 modes of playing the game:

"Play game"
Basically story mode. Saves your best time, score, red rings and rank. Lets you use items and RC stuff. This mode lets you use super sonic I'm pretty sure (haven't unlocked him personally).

"VS mode"
Lets you play through stages and special stages. Doesn't save scores other than ranking. Also has a battle mode where you collect rings.

"Time attack"
Only saves your time, doesn't allow items/RC. I think colours are unlocked based on your progress in the main game.

"Hard"
Available in main game and time attack, has separate charts but I don't think there's any major changes other than you only having 1 ring throughout the stage.


Small stuff:
Checkpoints don't reset your time. Timer goes down instead of up in story mode or whatever. You can't submit your time from story mode to the leaderboards which also means the WH tutorial stage can't be submitted. Lava mountain is basically "Boss rush zone" so I don't think anything other than times would be meaningful to track


Trackable stats:
Time attack
Standard time attack done from the time attack mode. Would restrict using RC's, super etc. Also excludes the tutorial stage

Score
Tracked in the main game only. Would allow RC's, items and possibly super if you go by the score that's saved.

Rings
Normal ring attack, could be done without restrictions I guess. Have to be decided upon.

Super
I personally dislike this as you basically just go faster. We'll have to see if the IL's become different enough. Decreases rings etc so I think it would only be useful for time attacks.

Hard
Dumb... But it is tracked on the official leaderboards.


Stages:
with added suggested stats
Windy Hill:
Act 1: Times, Rings, Score
Act 2: Times, Rings, Score
Act 3: Times, Rings, Score
Boss: Times

Desert Ruins:
Act 1: Times, Rings, Score
Act 2: Times, Rings, Score
Act 3: Times, Rings, Score
Boss: Times

Tropical Coast:
Act 1: Times, Rings, Score
Act 2: Times, Rings, Score
Act 3: Times, Rings, Score
Boss: Times

Frozen Factory:
Act 1: Times, Rings, Score
Act 2: Times, Rings, Score
Act 3: Times, Rings, Score
Boss: Times

Silent Forest:
Act 1: Times, Rings, Score
Act 2: Times, Rings, Score
Act 3: Times, Rings, Score
Boss: Times

Sky Road:
Act 1: Times, Rings, Score
Act 2: Times, Rings, Score
Act 3: Times, Rings, Score
Boss: Times

Lava Mountain:
Act 1: Times
Act 2: Times
Act 3: Times
Boss: Times

Special Stages:
Special Stage 1: Times
Special Stage 2: Times
Special Stage 3: Times
Special Stage 4: Times
Special Stage 5: Times
Special Stage 6: Times
Special Stage 7: Times
(I'm assuming there are 7 special stages)


Example IL's:

Windy Hill 1 by p800xu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt5STPhQ2zY

Windy Hill 1 as Super Sonic by p800xu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Ar0elgRy8

6
General Sonic / Sonic Generations 3DS strats
« on: March 18, 2013, 05:06:44 am »
So I've gotten into this game and I find it hard to get the best strats for all the levels.

I PM'd some of the top players here but only Groudon answered. I also made a playlist on youtube with all the videos of this game I could find that weren't let's play's. I then made a more detailed post on SDA, but interest is low and progress is slow.

So anyone feel like helping out? Here's the playlist I was talking about, and any tips regarding faster strats or combination of in the runs here would be helpful.

7
Information Kiosk / Search function
« on: February 21, 2013, 10:24:05 am »
I can't search for "Sonic 2" on the forums because it doesn't allow for single-character "words". This means that I can't effectively search for "Using Tails in Sonic 2 time trials" or similar. Which is a shame because I kind of wanted to know if using him is okay since it isn't stated in the rules.

Perhaps an exception to that rule could be made for numbers 0-9?

8
TSC Race Night / January "week off" races
« on: January 04, 2013, 01:33:09 pm »
January 5th and 12th is the week off for race night, but that doesn't mean we can't get something to race anyways!

So I made this topic where you can post whether you want to do an unofficial race night and what to play, kind of like how Hyper and some other did with Sonic 2 a while ago.

So I'm available at the usual time. PM or post here if you're up for:
Sonic 2
Sonic 3 (& Knuckles)
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Adventure 2

Also, since it's unofficial, we could do something that probably wouldn't be raced otherwise, like Sonic 3 alone or All Sonic/Shadow stages in SA2B for example.

Cheers

9
Competition Central / Knuckles in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and start positions
« on: October 13, 2012, 03:08:43 pm »
Alright so I'm starting this for the sake of having a discussion about it.

First of all, Knuckles is playable in both Death Egg 1 and 2. He can't complete DE1 but he can complete DE2. How would people feel about adding that to the leaderboards?

Second of all, there's this glitch where you can play as blue knuckles. I'm not saying we should add a blue knuckles board but since you start at sonic position it could potentially produce some interesting strats for a couple of levels like LR1 or MH1. Most notable though is LB2 where you can do the same glitch sonic does and do the level wrap to the end. Would this be considered a legit strat for the knuckles board?

That said, I haven't had the pleasure to try the blue knuckles glitch on a genesis so I'm not sure if it would fall under the category of version differences.

Third of all. What about going the sonic route like in IC1 and start from sonic position there or the opposite where you go to knuckles route as sonic. What's considered about those strats?


EDIT: The rules say this "You may start any zone's Act 2 from the end of Act 1 or from selecting Act 2 in stage select, but from nowhere else." but it doesn't define what is the end of the act, such as the case with Ice cap nor mentions anything about what starting position is chosen from the level select.

10
Hiya Folks / Hello
« on: August 12, 2012, 10:10:00 pm »
Hi there, I'm TimpZ (aka primat91) and I mainly play S3&K at the moment.

I can't say I'm terribly amused by competing with ILs but it's great practise and a good way to find and exchange strats so after some convincing I decided to come here and join for real.

I am however saddened about the fact that there's no SS or whole-game categories as I think that's both more fun to run and requires more skill to get a good time.

Other than that, there's not much to say really. I'll lurk the forum a bit and update my times as they get better together with video links in my channel twitch.tv/primat91 where you could go if you want to verify anything. If you PM and I don't respond within a week, be patient as I might not be the most active member :p. We'll see how this membership goes.

Finally, I like to race on SRL so feel free to come and challenge me. I got into speedrunning from OoT a few years back and right now I'm thinking of maybe branching off into more games... Dunno which though.

EDIT: I like to edit my posts a lot :p.

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