DS Pokémon speedruns - emulation: yay or nay?

Before reading this document, please consider reading this other, highly relevant paste: http://pastebin.com/BAMadVRg

TLDR: DeSmuME has major speed advantages over console runs, and the speedup affects both real time and game time.



What is the problem?

Through experimentation, we've confirmed that DeSmuME observes a major time advantage over console runs of the same games, because loading times appear to be significantly reduced in DeSmuME. Because many DS games appear to base their in-game timing on real time, the reduced real time also results in reduced game time. As a result, emulator runs are inherently substantially faster than console runs, with no clear way to compare the two.



Why not just use in-game time?

I just said that it's affected by the emulator speedup.



Why is this a problem?

Because access to recording equipment for DS console runs is expensive and inconvenient for many. There are already only a few runners for gen 4 and 5 Pokémon games, and most of those use emulator. Unfortunately, a few individuals do own DS Capture or 3DS Capture devices, and their runs now cannot be compared against those of emulator runners.



Why not just make everyone play on emulator?

This possibility was suggested, but I believe this sets a very bad precedent. Assuming that the developers of DeSmuME were trying to be as faithful as possible to the console, they probably implemented a loading system that works at least similarly to the way DS consoles work. But what's to stop them from optimizing it? On a PC, load times could be effectively eliminated with something like RAM-caching. If an emulator did that, would it still be legitimate to run on that emulator?



Why not just make everyone play on console?

Because it's fucking expensive. Few enough people run gen 4 and 5 already. We don't want to kill our own community. (That said, this was always going to be a problem for Pokémon X and Y anyway.)

This option also sucks, imo, because it suggests that emulator players are cheating in some way. They're not. Until literally this week, no one realized that DS emulation was this much faster. No one was taking advantage of the speedup, because they didn't know it existed.



What do we do?

First we solicit community input. #pokemon on SRL IRC is a great place to have these discussions. Twitter is fine too. We just have to start talking about this.

My position is that all runs should continue to be allowed on leaderboards. However, each run should be marked as to whether it is an emulator or console run. (Preferably, the leaderboards will be split into console and emulator leaderboards, separate from one another.) I hate this red letter approach, but I feel that this is the correct way to approach it.

I'm not aware of DS races being particularly popular, but if they do occur, I believe that emulation should be the default for races. This is purely a practical consideration. Since most racers are not likely to have DS Capture, a majority will be forced to run on emulator. It's preferable to err on the side of allowing racers to stream, so we should make emulation the default to set everyone on an even footing.

I hope that everyone who reads this will share their own opinion with the community so we can reach a consensus that takes all runners' interests and opinions into consideration.



WHAT ABOUT WORLD RECORDS?!?!!?

Sigh. Well, I know a lot of people care about these, so let's talk about them. If we split the leaderboards, then there will be an emulator WR and a console WR. Hopefully, for games that have no current console runners, most runners will have more shame than to do a shitty console run just to claim a WR.

For the most part, splitting the times doesn't affect any current WRs. The exception is with Heart Gold, where Werster plays on console and Eekcast plays on emulator. Effectively, these two would end up sharing the WRs for that game.



Aren't you just harping on this because you play on console and you don't want emulator players to challenge your Pokémon Black WR?

Yep.



Thanks for reading. Please share your opinions in #pokemon on SRL IRC, or tweet me @Vulajin, or anywhere else you think it may be useful to share it.

Vulajin