Speedruns on Regular Core and Gameplay Accuracy

[poyy]

Could be feasible to perform speedruns on regular core for those games that don't have issues, or these things may differ:

• Game speed (not FPS but physical movement) at different/higher speed

• Glitches and bugs reproducing more/less/different than in original console

Any information about this, somebody tried, any video?

[AngelicLiver]

This was answered in your previous thread. The core on MiSTer is not 100% accurate to the N64 hardware and runs a little faster, I do not profess to being a speedrunner or a body that invigilates speedrunners but it is probably safe to assume that speedruns produced on the N64 core are inadmissible. It may also depend on a per-game basis as many games lock logic to the performance of the game engine.

This is a situation that is unlikely to change with the limitations of the DE10-Nano.

[meauxdal]

I speedrun some N64 games.

I'd say the most likely outcome for legality of the MiSTer core in speedruns is that most game communities won't explicitly allow it, at the very least not as a competitor to original N64 hardware. This is especially true for RTA (real-time attack) speedruns, or runs where final time is the real time elapsed during a single-segment run. This does not preclude FPGA runs being allowed under "emulator" categories, though, which already include runs done on somewhat-inaccurate emulators, most commonly in that they don't perfectly reproduce the "lag" (framedrops, etc.) of an N64 console.

However, there are many games that utilize an in-game timer (Wave Race 64, Mario Kart 64, etc.). These are seemingly riper candidates for full legality, as you don't save any time due to reduced lag on the core over real hardware.

Ultimately, though, every single speedrun community is a unique entity. Decisions made in one game do not carry over to any others. This is also usually not something that happens overnight, as speedrun moderators are often loathe to allow new things without extensive testing, and the MiSTer core is still relatively new, not everyone has MiSTer hardware, etc.

Things to think about.

[whocares]

This was answered in your previous thread. The core on MiSTer is not 100% accurate to the N64 hardware and runs a little faster, I do not profess to being a speedrunner or a body that invigilates speedrunners but it is probably safe to assume that speedruns produced on the N64 core are inadmissible. It may also depend on a per-game basis as many games lock logic to the performance of the game engine.

This is a situation that is unlikely to change with the limitations of the DE10-Nano.

Robert did say that the turbo core might cause some games to run faster but in fairness to OP he's specifically asking about the regular core and I don't recall Robert mentioning anywhere that games might run slightly faster with stock clocks - but if you have a source feel free to correct me.

[AngelicLiver]

I forget where Robert posted the comment; likely in the Patreon discussion. In his latest Patreon post he details that development is ending and that tightening up the core timings is a fool's errand with the DDR3 latency issues.

And I really hope you are not sad about the end being reached without prior notice, but I would understand it. I for myself was, because I planned to work on all the timing stuff and then some remaining fixes. But with the current state it just feels like spending so many hours more is not worth it, because the major missing issues are not resolveable.

Please do not think this is in any way disparaging to the core, it's absolutely fantastic and accurate enough to enjoy 95% of the library. As I said previously, I'm not a speedrunner, I don't care about speedrunning but I can't imagine that community will embrace MiSTer runs.

[poyy]

I forget where Robert posted the comment; likely in the Patreon discussion. In his latest Patreon post he details that development is ending and that tightening up the core timings is a fool's errand with the DDR3 latency issues.

Robert is talking about games that randomly freeze because the the RAM latency is not low enough to provide the content the CPU asks in time, so the game freezes, but that's unrelated to what I'm asking.

[meauxdal]

If you're just asking "can you perform speedruns on the core", well, yes. Presuming the game works, tricks and glitches relating to the speedrun will almost certainly also work.

There are observable differences from real hardware completely aside from games that don't work or crash. In most cases, there is somewhat better performance on the MiSTer N64 core versus a real N64 (slightly higher avergage framerates).

As an example, the Banjo-Tooie attract mode needs relatively exact timing to run as intended (not too slow, not too fast), and the N64 core runs it slightly too fast (though not as fast as some software emulators).

For this reason, in many games, the N64 would save some time over real hardware due to running slightly better.