[sonicandamy]

Sonicspeedruner you posted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfQAvHdtP9U this is obviously cropped gameplay as that is not how the game would appear on a TV the ring icon is cut off on your TV and you may actually have multiple fake times cuz on the same TV you have https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3pMfbrSDUE boss fights were the ring and the "T" is less cropped out and also no audio randomly on this one lol GG cheater. (seriously look more into this guy)

Nicur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE3r4LDbghE Is correct me if im wrong also emulator and is against the rules (believe this was a genuine mistake uploading to the boards)

R3FR4G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIeODuVI-Vo SUPER OBVIOUS emulator/modded the health bar starts blinking on chaos. this is also against the rules, would love to see that strat implemented in a gamecube run though. (genuine mistake upload... probably)

[SpanielWare]

I'm not an expert on this game, but are you sure Niczur and R3FR4G aren't playing the PC version (I don't recall a rule against purely cosmetic mods for this game)? If not, then yeah it would be interesting to see footage of these runs replicated on the PC version or on console (and at least key input files for the emulator runs to verify legitimacy).

I feel like you may be jumping the gun a bit on Sonicspeedruner however; simply having the TV muted or on a different picture setting between recordings isn't much grounds to call BS lol. But again, it would be good to see some clearer videos if possible, for comparison's sake.

[sonicandamy]

My bad, I ment to put this here https://youtu.be/IT7-8WLgdgc as reference on how shitty the game is suppose to look.

I believe I remember like 15 years ago when we was talking sonic generations we all agreed that even cosmetic mods were banned too; had to be a completely clean game, this is serious buisness in a professional setting not a beauty pageant for sonic. Niczur actually looks the closest to legit and how its suppose to look, but idk what going on with everyones jacked up aspect ratios??? these arent clean.

im going back through the charts to clean this stuff up since TSC gona be poppin again like 2008 with sonic origins and sonic frontiers.

*** EDIT *** as far as speedrunner is concerned go look at that video thats muted. whats going on? look at the room. first clip its just his box... maybe a dvr box? 2nd clip theres now a stick of deodorant on the dvr box like he just started gettin sweaty from makin fake runs,  3rd clip the direction of the deodorant has changed? 4th clip the camera is zoomed in and the deodorant is gone from the view 5th clip its zoomed back out and the deodorant is clearly gone... bro wth.

its 2020 by this point, why you gota make such sus videos?!? xD

[SpanielWare]

I stand corrected; I searched the forum and saw a post from Parax stating that cosmetic mods were banned for all games, falling under the umbrella rule "The original game and all its contents must be preserved and unmodified" (imo the general competition rules should be updated to more clearly reflect this). I don't think that the "professional look" of the game is important so much as the potentiality of a mod side affecting gameplay mechanics.

I agree that ideally players should not fuck with display settings and such that obscure the default look of the game, albeit in Sonicspeedruner's case it seems rather negligible to jump at calling BS (and as for the deodorant positioning, I think we can take off the detective cap and conclude the most likely explanation is that he uses his bedroom for things other than vidya).

[stellar]

idk anything about sonicspeedruner but niczur and refrag are both using the 2004 pc disk release of sadx, as the steam release is awful and borderline unusable. since the 2004 version is a legal, first-party port, it's legal for the boards. also it can support really high resolutions natively, which is unmodified.

[SpanielWare]

Thanks very much for chiming in, yeah I suspected they may just be playing the original PC version.

That just leaves Sonicspeedruner to investigate but I'm not convinced of any foul play here. He's got a lot of other Sonic runs on his channel (also of SA2B and Heroes) going back almost a decade, all awkwardly camera-recorded on the same TV, you can see the gradual improvement and they seem legit.

[sonicandamy]

Thanks very much for chiming in, yeah I suspected they may just be playing the original PC version.

That just leaves Sonicspeedruner to investigate but I'm not convinced of any foul play here. He's got a lot of other Sonic runs on his channel (also of SA2B and Heroes) going back almost a decade, all awkwardly camera-recorded on the same TV, you can see the gradual improvement and they seem legit.

Not quite, thats not how this works. If you are to believe both of them are using the 2004 PC release then check again here: niczur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE3r4LDbghE look at his HUD closer if the randoms statement is correct than he is using a closer accurate version perfect right? ok now check refrag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIeODuVI-Vo apparently using the same version of the game as the random user said but his HUD is MUCH smaller, thats not possible (plus the health bar is still blinkin man... lol).

"at least 1" has to be bullshit in this situation. let alone speedrunner at this piont

[SpanielWare]

Okay, well Stellar, do you know if the proportional HUD size changes depending on the native resolution setting? Seems like (as evidenced by the health bar) R3FR4G is using at least a cosmetic mod though which is sus; again it would be interesting to see if this strat can be replicated on the vanilla version (the others' and your time is very close at least).

Well, Niczur last logged in 3 days ago at the time of writing (so if you're reading this dude, we'd appreciate if you could shed some light on this too and explain what config you used). R3FR4G hasn't logged in in a year and a half however, so you'll have to try contact him via YouTube or Twitch (on which he's still actively doing SADX runs).

[Zurggriff]

The video in question for Sonicspeedrunner looks like the game was displayed on a TV. The camera noticably adjusts to the brightness of the display as seen by the area outside of the display changing brightness. When the display is showing gameplay, the luminosity is high so the camera reduces the amount of light it receives to prevent the display from showing as overexposed and the wall appears dark as a consequence of this. When the display is blank, luminosity is low so the camera increases the amount of light it receives which makes the wall appear brighter. There are stretches of video where screen tearing is visible and the tear is sloped. The display has color bands that appear to bend along a curved display. There is a reflection of a light on the display, which would need to be overlayed if the gameplay was cropped. These effects show up in their other videos with various camera angles and room lighting. Using cropped gameplay would require an unreasonable amount of editing to make all of this work.

I do not have the 2004 PC release and cannot find how higher resolutions affect the HUD, but the blinking health bar in R3FR4G's requires a modification to the game which is not allowed under the Competition Rules 'The original game and all its contents must be preserved and unmodified.' I did not find any exceptions.

Niczur's run appears to be fine.

[SpanielWare]

Thanks for the detailed analysis Zurggriff. I agree Sonicspeedruner's videos look too realistically filmed to be meticulously hoaxed.

Well Niczur was last active on the site yesterday, so he's still lurking but hasn't weighed in on this. I suppose he should replace his stats (and ideally videos for them) performed on a modded version of the game with ones performed on a vanilla version?