This is MyLittleWalrus. I'm the head moderator of the speedrunning community for New Super Mario Bros. DS. Our current rules allow players to speedrun the game on emulator, but only DeSmuME version 0.9.11, as we have found that to be the best emulator in terms of speedrunning in various respects.
Today, a user pointed us towards DraStic as an alternative emulator to use. We hadn't heard of it before, and it sounds promising. So here I am with several questions:
- The biggest issue when it comes to emulation for our community is loading times. Are the loading times faster on DraStic than they are on a DS? I can provide footage of DS loading times, if you need that.
- More importantly than the speed of the loads: are the loads consistent on DraStic? Loading times on DeSmuME 0.9.11 are fairly consistent each time and from computer to computer. Having each player's loads be the same helps us make it fair for everyone.
- What are the movie recording and savestate capabilities of DraStic? In other words, how easy would it be for someone to record a movie of themselves doing a speedrun, make a savestate, then load the savestate and try again when they make a mistake, and pass it off as a speedrun done in real-time? Would it be easy to cheat?
- Does DraStic lag a lot? An issue we run into with DeSmuME is hitting lots of slowdown. Does this emulator run smoothly on most computers?
-MyLittleWalrus