|
Upthorn posted:However, even within the subset of games which doesn't do any of these, there are only a few which are really anything like stable and compatible at the moment.  I would love to see a TAS of Iji. I've never done a proper speedrun of it, but I have done Ultimortal, no-kill, and no-damage runs, and would love to see it completely destroyed.Ultimortal, Turbo Mode, Maximum Charge Tor anyone?
|
| # ¿ Nov 6, 2011 05:44 |
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 24, 2013 13:56 |
|
|
Samopsa posted:Well, it would have to be a challenge run I guess. The normal Iji speedrun is already pretty much perfect, and done by the creator himself I'm pretty sure that Turbo Ultimortal counts as a challenge run, yes. (No-one has ever beaten the game on that mode, largely due to the Turbo Asha.)
|
| # ¿ Nov 6, 2011 15:06 |
|
|
Are there any good sites out there for speedruns of DOS games? SDA's selection is really small, probably because their rules about emulation (official emulators only) interact badly with DOS games (the only official DOS emulator out there can't actually run most programs). I ask partly because I'm half-seriously planning a System Shock speedrun, but mainly because I was wondering if there were any speedruns of classic Apogee platformers out there.
|
| # ¿ Jan 2, 2012 16:16 |
|
|
furry drum circle posted:maybe like 10 hours? Really have no idea. It gets easier after Zelse since I'll have a ton of hp/defense by then and my water will heal for quite a bit. And this is a world record attempt  I think after a while it stops being speedrunning and starts being masochism.
|
| # ¿ Jan 17, 2012 06:09 |
|
|
Reading the notes, it's weird reading the bits talking about how such and such an occurrence was lucky. I go into TASes these days with the assumption that the RNG is completely and entirely the runners' bitch.
|
| # ¿ Jan 19, 2012 23:08 |
|
|
OneEightHundred posted:That's kind of why I have to completely disagree with the "TAS don't take skill" thing, it often takes a lot of engineering skill to find and manipulate the subtler behavior that can save huge amounts of time, or do this superoptimization that lets you find exotic tricks that being even one frame off would have ruined. Yeah; it just doesn't take the same kind of skill that an unassisted run does. Anyone saying that TASing does not require skill full stop has been spending too much time with the 
|
| # ¿ Jan 20, 2012 00:16 |
|
|
Dr. Stab posted:It does, but you're right that it's not obsolete until someone makes a better one. How? Can it be used to warp places other than the end credits faster than existing techniques? Or is it just a matter of finishing all of the trials and then using the warp to skip the central tower/Ganon fights/escape sequence?
|
| # ¿ Feb 27, 2012 01:35 |
|
|
ChibiSoma posted:After a certain point of waiting to see a speed run/RTA/TAS of a game you like, you start thinking maybe you should just do it yourself, since it doesn't look like anyone else is going to. And then you replay those games and go 'ohhh. No, I can't do this at all, can I?' I keep planning a speedrun of System Shock and never actually doing it. I'm pretty sure I have the skills, I just need the time. And to actually finish my mapping program so I can plan a good route. It's kind of disheartening to know that it'll never be accepted by SDA, too. 
|
| # ¿ Mar 16, 2012 20:10 |
|
|
fleshweasel posted:why wouldn't it get accepted? fleshweasel posted:I guess running DOS games to their standards is a pain in the rear end. Like you might have to get an old PC that runs DOS and connect the video out to a capture card. No DOSBox allowed Pretty much this. Official emulators are allowed, but there's no official emulated release of SS1, and the "official" windows DOS emulator (NTVDM) is a total shitheap and doesn't run System Shock anyways. I do not care enough about having a run published on SDA to set up a DOS or Win98 machine to play System Shock on. Shadow Ninja 64 posted:I thought they were considering allowing DOSBox runs at some point recently. I don't know what came of those discussions, though. Last I heard the decision was "dosbox is allowed, but only if it's an official release packaged with dosbox, and the runner has to submit footage of themselves playing it so we know they haven't replaced the one it was packaged with with a rerecording version", but that was a while ago and they may have come up with something slightly less insane since then. Ramadu posted:What on earth do they need to verify it? I don't get that. To
|
| # ¿ Mar 28, 2012 02:53 |
|
|
Install Gentoo posted:Not true. You're forgetting that the NTVDM is not meant to run things that didn't hew close enough to the official MSDOS apis and all that, and is primarily meant for executing Windows 3.1 applications, in a virtual 16 bit enviroment. Even for those purposes it's pretty bad - no peripheral or block device emulation (except for really bad SoundBlaster emulation in the XP version), no speed/timing correction (hope you don't want to run an app that talks to an external device and waits for a reply, it'll time out instantly), unreliable DPMI implementation, no 64-bit support. It was excusably bad in the NT 3.x days when it was the only thing going, but MS basically did nothing to improve it and gave up entirely post-XP. That said, for the purpose of running games, which is rather the point of this thread, it is and always has been a total shitheap, which is problematic because it's the closest thing there is to an "official" DOS emulator per SDA rules. HKR posted:I imported a pocketstation for FF8 and it made the game so loving easy. I wish it didn't get stolen cause I'd love to play FF8 like that again. The PC version of FF8 came with a PocketStation emulator, you could always play that version. 
ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at Mar 31, 2012 around 14:49 |
| # ¿ Mar 31, 2012 14:42 |
|
|
Krenzo posted:It makes you wonder what other records out there are based on people's NES running differently. Emulator supremacy.
|
| # ¿ Apr 5, 2012 23:11 |
|
|
HKR posted:-Ideally the game shouldn't be run to death already(Super Metroid, Mario 1,3,W etc) since a lot of those times are nearly impossible for new players to approach and thus discouraging. Of course the game shouldn't be completely obscure either. I'm going to toss out a bunch of PC games that I think would be appropriate.
|
| # ¿ Apr 9, 2012 14:47 |
|
|
Dominic White posted:The developer of those speedruns his own games. And he is really goddamn good at it. Yeah, but I'm assuming Daniel Remar won't be competing in the Scrub League.  Breetai posted:What about games that aren't traditionally 'completable', but that can have some sort of goal criteria? For example; fastest time to a population of 200,000 in Simcity 4. In that case I'd also toss Kerbal Space Program into the ring. The most recent version (14.4) is $15, but the 13.x releases are freeware and support everything needed. The KSP thread has been doing informal races in it for a while - fastest to 10km, fastest to the moon, fastest to land on the moon and return to the launchpad intact, etc. Stock parts only, of course.
|
| # ¿ Apr 9, 2012 15:34 |
|
|
JAssassin posted:I can't believe people could actually get their shuttles off the ground. I not only get them off the ground, I fly them to the north pole, leave a few satellites in orbit on the way, drop a remote-controlled rover there, then return and land on the runway at the space centre.  I don't do it very quickly, though. All of my speed-oriented designs tend to either tear themselves apart or burst into flames before leaving atmosphere.
|
| # ¿ Apr 9, 2012 15:46 |
|
|
HoldYourFire posted:
Bungie open-sourced the Marathon 2/Infinity engine around 2000, at which point it was pretty rapidly polished up and ported to a bunch of different platforms (and M1 was ported to it, as well). The actual game content was released as freeware some years later. It's only relatively recently that Aleph One (the open-source version) has become polished enough to be considered "1.0", though. And it's still not as slick as, say, gzDoom or eduke32 (for example, it still uses shear pitch). A lot of Marathon TCs work with it too. And multiplayer is actually playable over the internet now. 
|
| # ¿ Apr 9, 2012 21:44 |
|
|
For glitch runs, I'm also fond of Link's Awakening in 3'49" and Link's Awakening DX in 5'38".Liku posted:I think I've seen this one, but god drat what the hell happened. The fun part about old cartridge-based games is that, in effect, everything - all of the program code, the level maps, the graphics, cutscene text, variables recording things like how many lives the player has and whether they've beaten the game - is stored in one big "file", all packed together. The other fun part is that, with so little computing power (and storage space) to spare, few games from this era incorporate any sort of safety checks. So, if you can - say - confuse the game sufficiently that it thinks you're on level -20 rather than level 2, rather than displaying an error message or gracefully crashing, it will simply look at whatever is stored in the cartridge before the first level and try to load that as if it were a level map. So now you're running through a "level" that actually represents the graphics for Mario, or part of the soundtrack. Or, if you can make your way back to "level" -29 or so, the variable that indicates whether you've beaten the game or not. The TAS does just this - convinces the game that they're on a negative level, then hikes through it to level -29 or so. Then it's just a matter of finding the have-you-won variable (which actually keeps track of how many worlds are left to beat, so it starts at 6 and counts down). When loaded as part of a level, it shows up as a crushable block. Crush it and it changes from 6 to 0 - oh hey, that means there are no worlds left to beat! He must have beaten the game! Roll credits.
|
| # ¿ Apr 16, 2012 14:06 |
|
|
RoadCrewWorker posted:Thanks for linking that, its really interesting (although i don't see how that's a TAS and there are still more than a few people who care about the distinction). I don't know, he pulls enough weird poo poo with save/reload abuse and macros that I'd say it crosses the line from "segmented" to "tool-assisted".
|
| # ¿ Apr 17, 2012 14:18 |
|
|
HKR posted:I still want to do speed run scrub league, so I'll be getting that together as soon as I get back. I've decided the game of choice will be Marathon II. We'll run it for the month of may, but you guys can get a head start. Since I've never played the game myself I have no idea what's in store for us but if anyone familiar with the game wants to chime in on things like categories, strategies and such feel free to. I'll start the thread as soon as I'm back on my computer. I've never tried to speedrun M2, but I have played it normally a bunch (and have done some M1 speedruns and Vidmasters of single levels), so here goes. Getting the game: you can download it here for linux, windows, or OSX (along with the original Marathon and the third game, Marathon Infinity). M2 is also available on XBLA, if you prefer - as far as I know there are no significant differences in gameplay. Recording might be trickier, though! It is worth playing through the game once without speedrunning (and M1 and Mi, if you have time) just for the levels and story. Setup: the default settings map Q and E to look left/right and have a really shockingly high mouse sensitivity. You probaby want to change this. Difficulty level is also configured in the preferences, not when you start a new game. Categories: the biggest distinction is between whole-game or single-level, and which difficulty level you play on (higher difficulty levels change enemy numbers, types and placement, not just AI/damage/hp). There are also further challenges you could impose, such as no damage taken, no healing used, all enemies killed, fists only, etc, but you don't want too many categories. For the scrub league, individual level runs on Normal or Total Carnage is probably the best choice. Single-level play: hold down CTRL+SHIFT while starting a new game and it'll take you to a level select menu. You will start the one selected with 100% health and air, one pistol, and 32 bullets. A "traditional Vidmaster run" means playing each level this way (limiting yourself to fists, pistol, and whatever weapons you can find in the level proper) on the hardest difficulty level - Total Carnage. Whole-game play: just start a new game and play until the end. You can do it either single-segment or segmented, but be aware that Marathon uses save points, so you can't always end a segment right before a particularly nasty part. Personally I find whole-game too much work and will stick with single-level play. And now, some useful techniques. Chording: running diagonally (forward+left/right) is faster than running straight forward or sideways. Floating: you can't jump, but you fall very slowly and with no loss of forward momentum, making it easy to cross gaps that look impassable. You can also curve your trajectory sharply by turning left or right as you fall. Grenade jumping: the alt-fire on the assault rifle is a grenade launcher. Launch the grenade ahead of you for height, or behind you for distance. Don't die! Grenade switching: switches and buttons can be triggered from afar using grenades or fusion bolts. This is mandatory in some levels, but even when it's not, triggering a switch from across the room can save you some time. Note that this won't trigger terminals, doors, or health chargers. Infighting: like in Doom, enemies will turn on each other if you can get them to hit one another. Friendlies will also turn on you if you attack them, so watch out. Turbo Fist: the humble fist does damage dependent on how fast you're moving. At a full-speed run, a single punch is more powerful than a pistol bullet and will instantly liquefy weaker enemies. Objectives: in most levels you can complete the mission objectives whether you read about them on the terminals or not - the first level is a good example of this, as you can install both chips without ever talking to Durandal, then run back and access the terminal to skip the original briefing entirely and end the level. I'll post some stuff on recording once I've done more testing of it; Marathon's built-in demo recording was originally intended for recording deathmatches and is notoriously finicky in singleplayer in both the original and Aleph One. You can of course always use external recording software like FRAPS.
|
| # ¿ Apr 22, 2012 23:18 |
|
|
Recording Marathon speedruns Marathon has a built-in demo recording feature. This feature is an unreliable clusterfuck and will bring you nothing but pain. It is primarily useful for recording multiplayer games. In general you are much better off recording externally, either with video capture hardware or with something like Fraps; once you have that you can transcode to something more compact (like H.264+AAC, or possibly even H.264+AAC) and upload. Keep in mind that Marathon is, natively, widescreen; in the original version the HUD covered the bottom portion of the screen entirely, in modern versions it just fills the entire (wide) screen and uses a transparent HUD. It is also locked at 30fps, so recording at framerates greater than that are a waste; that said, I've had massive headaches with video editing software assuming that 30fps is actually 29.97fps (NTSC framerate), so you may want to record at 29.97 or 60 just to avoid this. If you must resort to Marathon's built in recording, here's how. First of all, this won't work for multi-level runs; it starts recording when the level loads, but it stops recording when you switch levels (or, sometimes, keeps recording but desyncs hilariously). For single-level runs, start play normally. When you get to the final terminal, open the terminal and let it sit for a few seconds (sometimes the last few seconds of video get cut off). Then close the terminal and teleport out as normal. Hit escape, return to the menu, and click "save last film". Then watch it (with "replay saved film") to make sure that it doesn't cut off ten seconds before the terminal or desync five seconds in or something. Congratulations, you now have a Marathon demo file (called Replays/something.filA in your Aleph One user settings directory). You can now replay it yourself, or share it with other people (and pray it doesn't desync for them). If it doesn't record you teleporting out, that's entirely normal. If it cuts off before you even reach the terminal, however, you need to wait for longer. Yes, this can be a problem if you reach the terminal while under fire. There's a reason I recommend using fraps. Here is a fairly sloppy run of the first level, Waterloo Waterpark, in 1'08" (timed from when the level finishes loading to when I open the final terminal). Here is the corresponding demo file.
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2012 03:19 |
|
|
absolutely anything posted:http://www.twitch.tv/moltov/b/326362152?t=3h1m25s aaaaa holy gently caress  My cats think that my laptop is possessed by Satan now, nice going.
|
| # ¿ Jul 28, 2012 14:04 |
|
|
Nahxela posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7IINwTFVw I just watched the OoT run and that is amazing. I'll check out his and Peaches__'s stuff from this and previous AGDQs; are there any other runners who you'd recommend as having outstanding commentary? I find that in general, plain runs don't interest me unless they're technically or visually spectacular in some way (the TASes of Sonic Advance, NES Monopoly, and King's Bounty are good examples) or I already know the game really well, but I'm a sucker for good commentary even if I've never played the game. 
|
| # ¿ Feb 13, 2013 02:15 |
|
|
Kyrosiris posted:So the YI TAS is done processing on Youtube now, and I am seven minutes in and I have probably had my jaw on the floor for six of those. This is a goddamned masterpiece. It's impressive, but I get the impression that it's a great deal more so if you've actually played Yoshi's Island.
|
| # ¿ Feb 14, 2013 14:10 |
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 24, 2013 13:56 |
|
|
Ajaxify posted:I've searched and searched and searched but I can't find this Ocarina of Time speedrun I was linked to at some point. It is from one of the Good Games Done Quick marathons (I think the most recent one) and was of someone doing Ocarina of Time in 20 minutes. It had a nice description of what exactly the bug was and a kind of history of the speedrun techniques for this game. Does anyone have a link to it? That was just linked last page: Nahxela posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7IINwTFVw And it is  It's also worth watching his runs of Commander Keen 5 and 6 and, if you have five hours to kill, Wind Waker, also from AGDQ'13 - they are all excellently commentaried glitchfests.
|
| # ¿ Feb 16, 2013 02:28 |
|
