Timing used in fusion

kirbymastah

Edit history:

kirbymastah: 2014-06-02 05:50:08 pm

2014-06-02 05:49:35 pm

Quote from Secretkey:

Does anybody here have an idea if that's even possible on a technical level?

It'd be difficult because a mistake could make someone have to backtrack a room or two (in particular, 100%) and IIRC dragonfangs said at least some part of the difference between emu and console are the door transitions. Or maybe someone doesn't want to get the sector 6 missile tank in any%, and go for a different one instead that doesn't require any transition, which affects (a little bit, but it adds up) the time difference =/

If we REALLY want to compare times, the best way would be what uchiha suggested, but as he said, that would require a crapton of work, and quite frankly screw that :P

BioSpark

2014-06-02 05:54:36 pm

or hack the rom to show seconds lol

Robochu

2014-06-02 07:34:44 pm

I am fairly new to this community so by all means discount my opinion but having read through it I'd like to share mine. In terms of where ties occur between IGT I feel that you're right in saying that emulator times should go on the bottom. However I think that automatically accepting English runs as the top run in the event of a tie is wrong as other cartridges in other language are still official console versions of the game and hence should be credited in the same way as an English run regardless of the time that it saves through text speed. An alternative to this is through having individual records based on each of individual languages with a definite "world" record that was the fastest IGT and RTA on a console version or an emulator but only dependent on its IGT and hence you would have a list of records like this:

English Any%: x:xx IGT, x:xx:xx RTA (WR)
Japanese Any%: x:xx IGT, x:xx:xx RTA (Japanese WR)
Japanese emulator Any%: x:xx IGT, x:xx:xx RTA
etc.

P.S: I don't think it would be possible to time the amount of real time that the emulator saves as it is likely to be affected by individual factors such as lag that are independent to each player.

I am fairly new to this community so by all means discount my opinion but having read through it I'd like to share mine. In terms of where ties occur between IGT I feel that you're right in saying that emulator times should go on the bottom. However I think that automatically accepting English runs as the top run in the event of a tie is wrong as other cartridges in other language are still official console versions of the game and hence should be credited in the same way as an English run regardless of the time that it saves through text speed. An alternative to this is through having individual records based on each of individual languages with a definite "world" record that was the fastest IGT and RTA on a console version or an emulator but only dependent on its IGT and hence you would have a list of records like this:

English Any%: x:xx IGT, x:xx:xx RTA (WR)
Japanese Any%: x:xx IGT, x:xx:xx RTA (Japanese WR)
Japanese emulator Any%: x:xx IGT, x:xx:xx RTA
etc.

P.S: I don't think it would be possible to time the amount of real time that the emulator saves as it is likely to be affected by individual factors such as lag that are independent to each player.

ArXyn

2014-06-02 08:10:46 pm

Do it how zsr does their leaderboards.

JaggerG

2014-06-04 03:22:37 am

Shifty Leader

That M2k2 guy

Quote from kirbymastah:

literally everyone would just go play on emulator to have a "better time"

You underestimate my stubbornness. I'm the guy that lets Prime 0-00 sit in my closet as I try to learn to run 0-02, remember? :^P

I agree on Robochu's point that it's kind of unfair to place English runs higher than Japanese and Chinese runs, especially since Biospark already actually calculated the difference. I say apply a penalty, rather than just flat out tacking it onto the end of the tie. Though I still agree that emulators should be last just to encourage running on a console, even if it is found that you can reliably calculate the time difference.

That reminds me, tdk, I don't recall if you responded to my question on skype. Did you omit the dialogue that can be nullified by scrolling through it as the map screen tries to target a location? I believe there are at least a couple instances.

And Sam, just because some people have JP Fusion carts doesn't mean they're "easy" to acquire, and just because people don't have CH carts or an IQue doesn't necessarily mean it's nearly impossible to get. Even if it's the case that Chinese versions are "harder" to get than Japanese versions, they're still both non-standard versions to run in this community. I can't see them being ruled on differently.

[quote="kirbymastah"]literally everyone would just go play on emulator to have a "better time"[/quote]
You underestimate my stubbornness. I'm the guy that lets Prime 0-00 sit in my closet as I try to learn to run 0-02, remember? :^P

I agree on Robochu's point that it's kind of unfair to place English runs higher than Japanese and Chinese runs, especially since Biospark already actually calculated the difference. I say apply a penalty, rather than just flat out tacking it onto the end of the tie. Though I still agree that emulators should be last just to encourage running on a console, even if it is found that you can reliably calculate the time difference.

That reminds me, tdk, I don't recall if you responded to my question on skype. Did you omit the dialogue that can be nullified by scrolling through it as the map screen tries to target a location? I believe there are at least a couple instances.

And Sam, just because some people have JP Fusion carts doesn't mean they're "easy" to acquire, and just because people don't have CH carts or an IQue doesn't necessarily mean it's nearly impossible to get. Even if it's the case that Chinese versions are "harder" to get than Japanese versions, they're still both non-standard versions to run in this community. I can't see them being ruled on differently.

Mobiusman

2014-06-04 04:43:25 am

I'm really not a fan of adjusting times. Besides, wouldn't the difference in jp depend on how fast you got through the text?

BioSpark

2014-06-04 04:46:43 am

we should definitely not make arbitrary penalties. sure, i timed the different version. but since i only counted the characters, i was essentially finding the time difference if each of them were tased. for example, chinese has just as many lines of text as english, but way fewer characters. human players have a much larger gap between lines than a tas would, so it's impossible to say that it saves an absolute amount of time.

JaggerG

2014-06-04 07:02:11 am

Shifty Leader

That M2k2 guy

But it saves a minimum amount of time. If you account for that, you should theoretically be able to skip the text just as fast in any version, provided you memorize the length of each line.

BioSpark

2014-06-04 11:43:10 am

if you could memorize each line perfectly, sure. some of the lines in chinese are really short though, so i'm not sure that's enough time to react.

Robochu

2014-06-04 01:32:01 pm

I think that the adjusting time thing is a bit sketchy too. As Japanese only has advantage in events of a tie through RTA text speed I don't think it is worthwhile giving the language a penalty. If a runner is competing for record times they are likely to want to acquire the Japanese or Chinese version anyway regardless of the fact that it only saves real time.

kirbymastah

2014-06-04 02:12:36 pm

Meh we should avoid adjusting times. Really, the ordering of version/emu is just arbitrary, and I mentioned before, the leaderboards post will specifically say that the ordering is arbitrary, so as long as that's clear, it doesn't really matter.

JaggerG

2014-06-04 02:43:05 pm

Shifty Leader

That M2k2 guy

Quote from Robochu:

If a runner is competing for record times they are likely to want to acquire the Japanese or Chinese version anyway regardless of the fact that it only saves real time.

Not if it's not gonna make a difference and end up requiring adaptation.

As for reacting, I'm not sure about everyone else, but I just mash A until the line ends, sometimes expecting it to end at specific times. Some lines are short in English, too. It's obviously going to be different to a single person trying to play across each version, but that doesn't necessarily mean a certain version has a real advantage for all players. I'm just enabling Japanese and Chinese people to compete, and not have all these rules essentially saying "nobody cares about you guys."

I'm also really tired, so sorry in advance if this sounds something something. In summation, my opinion is essentially to go by in-game time, then break ties by adjusted RTA. It doesn't matter if you add to the JP/CH versions, or subtract from the US, if the comparison is in fact reasonable. I don't even care that much about accuracy, as long as it says "adjusted RTA may be inaccurate" or something similar. (And as I said before, emus default last to encourage use of consoles.)

[quote="Robochu"]If a runner is competing for record times they are likely to want to acquire the Japanese or Chinese version anyway regardless of the fact that it only saves real time.[/quote]
Not if it's not gonna make a difference and end up requiring adaptation.

As for reacting, I'm not sure about everyone else, but I just mash A until the line ends, sometimes expecting it to end at specific times. Some lines are short in English, too. It's obviously going to be different to a single person trying to play across each version, but that doesn't necessarily mean a certain version has a real advantage for all players. I'm just enabling Japanese and Chinese people to compete, and not have all these rules essentially saying "nobody cares about you guys."

I'm also really tired, so sorry in advance if this sounds something something. In summation, my opinion is essentially to go by in-game time, then break ties by adjusted RTA. It doesn't matter if you add to the JP/CH versions, or subtract from the US, if the comparison is in fact reasonable. I don't even care that much about accuracy, as long as it says "adjusted RTA may be inaccurate" or something similar. (And as I said before, emus default last to encourage use of consoles.)

ArXyn

Edit history:

ArXyn: 2014-06-04 05:26:57 pm

ArXyn: 2014-06-04 05:17:21 pm

2014-06-04 05:13:28 pm

What is the deal with making English the "official" version? It doesn't matter if it is the easiest to acquire/ most popular. If you use english, accept the fact your runs are slower. If someone beats your rta time solely because they used a version that has faster text, rather than being better than you, that's too bad. Other than being content in the fact that they only beat you by a "technicality" of sorts, there is not really much you can do. They legally beat your time, get over it.

BioSpark

2014-06-04 10:35:06 pm

that only matters if we go for rta though. if we stick with in-game, then we can use any version.

samthedigital

2014-06-05 02:44:50 am

Jagger, the Japanese versions of the game barely cost any more than the English ones if you find one at a proper price, and there are a lot of them available. The community mainly runs the English version of the game, but there aren't any important differences that I am aware of other than the faster text in the Japanese version. I don't buy any arguments for using the English version versus the Japanese one for real time assuming both are equally accessible. I do think that accessibility is an important issue too. There isn't anyone selling the ique version, and if there aren't a sufficient amount of copies of the game to go around it both discourages actual competition and gives an unfair advantage with people who are lucky enough to purchase a rare version of the game.

ArXyn

Edit history:

ArXyn: 2014-06-05 07:50:14 am

2014-06-05 07:48:46 am

I don't think the rarity matters. If someone ran the rare version and got good times, that's just how it is. They didn't do anything wrong. Is it unfair, possibly. But there is no way to make it fair. You can't discourage/ban a version because it is hard to find.

kirbymastah

2014-06-05 09:26:13 am

Quote from ArXyn:

I don't think the rarity matters. If someone ran the rare version and got good times, that's just how it is. They didn't do anything wrong. Is it unfair, possibly. But there is no way to make it fair. You can't discourage/ban a version because it is hard to find.

The entire point is to have a general tiebreaker/comparison for tied in-game runs on the same version because we want the leaderboards to most accurately represent the BEST time (not fastest necessarily); this is one of the top reasons to go by in-game time because the time doesn't vary based off of version difference. The only feasible way to do this is again, comparing runs that are run on the same version; ultimately the "order of versions" under a certain time will be arbitrary and the leaderboards will make it clear that it's arbitrary.

Robochu

2014-06-05 09:29:20 am

Would it not be preferable in cases of ties to have a record for each version? i.e. a English record as well as a Japanese record if they both tie IGT.

JaggerG

2014-06-05 11:04:01 am

Shifty Leader

That M2k2 guy

Maybe if more people ran JP (or CH). As it stands, NOBODY has a PB on a non-English version, so it doesn't matter. If one person did, they're probably not going to get a leaderboard to themselves. Especially since consensus is currently "Use in-game time primarily." It's essentially gonna be "US record - :46, EU record - :46, JP record - :46."

samthedigital

Edit history:

samthedigital: 2014-06-05 12:38:15 pm

2014-06-05 12:37:45 pm

Quote from ArXyn:

You can't discourage/ban a version because it is hard to find.

A community most definitely could most most definitely do that. Even assuming it wasn't a logical course of action a community could disregard a certain version of a game, and arguments like "that's just how it is" just aren't very convincing. It's not even really an argument or a point actually >_>;.

ArXyn

2014-06-05 12:52:59 pm

Banning an official version is idiotic.

samthedigital

2014-06-05 01:00:55 pm

Why?

ArXyn

2014-06-06 08:05:45 am

What if Chinese or Japanese people started running the game? Are we going to tell tell them "Import our slower version"? That doesn't make sense. The solution should be that everyone gets the faster one, instead of everyone being dragged down to the slower one. This is all hypothetical, depending on if someone from either of those regions starts running, but those are the versions they have easy access to. Saying "your faster runs don't count" is absurd, and would put people off from picking fusion up.

Mobiusman

2014-06-06 06:18:30 pm

I think it's completely meaningless to discuss banning chinese carts when currently no-one has access to one. If we find a source for them, great. If we don't, whatever. The only case this would be a problem is if an individual had one and no-one else could get any.

samthedigital

2014-06-06 06:37:18 pm

Quote from ArXyn:

What if Chinese or Japanese people started running the game? Are we going to tell tell them "Import our slower version"? That doesn't make sense. The solution should be that everyone gets the faster one, instead of everyone being dragged down to the slower one. This is all hypothetical, depending on if someone from either of those regions starts running, but those are the versions they have easy access to. Saying "your faster runs don't count" is absurd, and would put people off from picking fusion up.

"I do think that accessibility is an important issue too. There isn't anyone selling the ique version, and if there aren't a sufficient amount of copies of the game to go around it both discourages actual competition and gives an unfair advantage with people who are lucky enough to purchase a rare version of the game."