My feelings on The Demon Rush
http://speeddemosarchive.com/BaldursGate.html
Benjamin 'beenman500' Culley's hardest difficulty run without the expansion.
Verifier Responses
I told the verifier to be more detailed, and this is what he said.
same verifier
And here's an IRC discussion I had today with Nate and Enhasa (enhasa has played through the game, and no, he's not a verifier)
Decision: Accept
Reason: It's another ridiculously fast Baldur's Gate run.
To the runner: I'm so sorry this took so long, it's completely my fault.
Benjamin 'beenman500' Culley's hardest difficulty run without the expansion.
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Video and audio quality fine. Looks awesome. Accept.
I told the verifier to be more detailed, and this is what he said.
Quote:
I'm no good at dissertations, but we'll try a short essay.
No video or audio problems. I do note that the video as given has a few seconds after each save before continuing to the 'real' segment (usually consisting of a random encounter, which is an automatic discard for the failed segment); I assume these will be edited out.
Excellent menu navigation and character control at all times. Especially impressive when using the dimension door glitch, which can be a little tricky (for me, anyway.)
Shameless glitch abuse aside (I admit I'd like to see more non-glitched runs in their own category, but I perfectly understand their use here - they're too big a time saver), strategies are excellent. Makes hash of all the bosses, including the final one.
Only levels once in the entire run, and that's purely for convenience - maxing out hide skill so it fails less often. The same run could probably done as a pure mage/thief, but the only reason to do so would be so you can level up more easily... and it'd be more likely to fail. So, big loss all around for the dual class.
Great run, and I can't see much further optimization possible - maybe a few seconds here and there if you got incredibly lucky on random rolls. Now how about the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion?
No video or audio problems. I do note that the video as given has a few seconds after each save before continuing to the 'real' segment (usually consisting of a random encounter, which is an automatic discard for the failed segment); I assume these will be edited out.
Excellent menu navigation and character control at all times. Especially impressive when using the dimension door glitch, which can be a little tricky (for me, anyway.)
Shameless glitch abuse aside (I admit I'd like to see more non-glitched runs in their own category, but I perfectly understand their use here - they're too big a time saver), strategies are excellent. Makes hash of all the bosses, including the final one.
Only levels once in the entire run, and that's purely for convenience - maxing out hide skill so it fails less often. The same run could probably done as a pure mage/thief, but the only reason to do so would be so you can level up more easily... and it'd be more likely to fail. So, big loss all around for the dual class.
Great run, and I can't see much further optimization possible - maybe a few seconds here and there if you got incredibly lucky on random rolls. Now how about the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion?
Quote:
Yes, I noticed it too, everything seems to flash during the video... quite strange, never saw that on Baldur's Gate...
Characters, all the screen blinks....
The gameplay is good, but i found the video quality quite bad.
Also, have you noticed on the video, at the end of segment 3, game is saved before reaching cloackwood part 3, then we see the character attacked by wyverns.
At the start of chapter 4, he starts from the savegame. He could have deleted this wyvern encounter from the video.
When I first watched segment 4 I said : hey where have passed the wyverns I saw just before ?
To my mind the video quality as it is, is not good enough for SDA, what do you think ?
Characters, all the screen blinks....
The gameplay is good, but i found the video quality quite bad.
Also, have you noticed on the video, at the end of segment 3, game is saved before reaching cloackwood part 3, then we see the character attacked by wyverns.
At the start of chapter 4, he starts from the savegame. He could have deleted this wyvern encounter from the video.
When I first watched segment 4 I said : hey where have passed the wyverns I saw just before ?
To my mind the video quality as it is, is not good enough for SDA, what do you think ?
Quote:
Hi ! Even if there are some big videos trouble, I want to tell a bit about the speedrun. The commentary is under the technical indication.
I think that the video isn't cut as it should be, because some parts are unsaved parts. Ask if you need help.
The run is a no tosc run. so the big challenge is to find the dimension door spell. In a tosc run, it's the first thing the runner should do. It's really different there because Baldur's gates have to be open. So the firsts parts look like the oldest runs (before the dimension door glitch was find).
Actually, I didn't remember if the previous runs use the frost wand or not, but the player use it wisely.
I always thought the actual run has to be in a "large skip" category...
So the game is in an harder difficulty (the hardest one), complete witout any damage, and with one more technical difficulty : no tosc (remember that tosc doesn't increase the difficulty of the run or what, it just allows the runner to find faster a spell).
The game is segmented which is pretty needed if you don't want to become crazy making a BG run.
For me, this run is even better than the TOSC one (even if the tosc one is shorter) because of the lack of large skip sections.
A new category has to be done, maybe should it be considered as a new game. I don't know if this run make the tosc ones obsolete but it's a possibility.
I was unable to detect any cheat here.
No more detailed explanation needed. The runner's commentary is pretty detailed, and I can't see any big mistakes so...
I think that the video isn't cut as it should be, because some parts are unsaved parts. Ask if you need help.
The run is a no tosc run. so the big challenge is to find the dimension door spell. In a tosc run, it's the first thing the runner should do. It's really different there because Baldur's gates have to be open. So the firsts parts look like the oldest runs (before the dimension door glitch was find).
Actually, I didn't remember if the previous runs use the frost wand or not, but the player use it wisely.
I always thought the actual run has to be in a "large skip" category...
So the game is in an harder difficulty (the hardest one), complete witout any damage, and with one more technical difficulty : no tosc (remember that tosc doesn't increase the difficulty of the run or what, it just allows the runner to find faster a spell).
The game is segmented which is pretty needed if you don't want to become crazy making a BG run.
For me, this run is even better than the TOSC one (even if the tosc one is shorter) because of the lack of large skip sections.
A new category has to be done, maybe should it be considered as a new game. I don't know if this run make the tosc ones obsolete but it's a possibility.
I was unable to detect any cheat here.
No more detailed explanation needed. The runner's commentary is pretty detailed, and I can't see any big mistakes so...
same verifier
Quote:
part 1:
At 05.14, some few frames indicate the game is saving. (grey with a skull etc...) It's the autosave used by the player. (I can see a strange frame right before... Probably due to the saving program... oO...)
part 2:
few frames contains a mouse moving in a black screen... Funny ^^ but nearly invisible in normal speed.
At 03.29 : autosave again.
part 3 : few frames at start, autosave at 2.50
part 4 : save at 1.03
part 5 : maybe one sec at start ; autosave at 1.57 (really few frames here...)
part 6 : we can heard but can't see the first menu (single player then load game...).
One dark frame at 04.14 or 15 during a video... seems strange.
end of the video is ok.
part 7 : few frames (I am seriously wonder what they are...)
The end is at 2.44
part 8 : the game finish (last shot) at 2.53.
There is always two or three seconds too much. But for 8 segments, it's something like 20 seconds too much... And the game was done in something like 20 minutes. So it's seems pretty big for me.
The game quality is really good, but the video and audio quality are so bad... I need a rest !!
At 05.14, some few frames indicate the game is saving. (grey with a skull etc...) It's the autosave used by the player. (I can see a strange frame right before... Probably due to the saving program... oO...)
part 2:
few frames contains a mouse moving in a black screen... Funny ^^ but nearly invisible in normal speed.
At 03.29 : autosave again.
part 3 : few frames at start, autosave at 2.50
part 4 : save at 1.03
part 5 : maybe one sec at start ; autosave at 1.57 (really few frames here...)
part 6 : we can heard but can't see the first menu (single player then load game...).
One dark frame at 04.14 or 15 during a video... seems strange.
end of the video is ok.
part 7 : few frames (I am seriously wonder what they are...)
The end is at 2.44
part 8 : the game finish (last shot) at 2.53.
There is always two or three seconds too much. But for 8 segments, it's something like 20 seconds too much... And the game was done in something like 20 minutes. So it's seems pretty big for me.
The game quality is really good, but the video and audio quality are so bad... I need a rest !!
And here's an IRC discussion I had today with Nate and Enhasa (enhasa has played through the game, and no, he's not a verifier)
Quote:
[13:28] <jewyama> actually nate
[13:28] <jewyama> do you know if the raw encode of baldur's gate blinks a ton?
[13:28] <jewyama> because the v copies are blinking a lot (yeah I know I've been slow with this run, it's had some issues I needed to address)
[13:33] <nate> only the sprites right
[13:33] <nate> yeah it looks like that's from the raw
[13:33] <nate> because you can see what's behind the sprites when they blink
[13:35] <Enhasa> it's supposed to blink a ton
[13:36] <Enhasa> unless you're talking about something else in which case feel free to ignore me
[13:42] <jewyama> um
[13:42] <jewyama> download the first segment and check
[13:42] <jewyama> if the game is naturally that flickery
[13:42] <jewyama> then that's fine
[16:24] <Enhasa> ok mike i checked it out, yeah the capture is kinda flickery at times (looks like framedropping) but i wouldn't reject it for vid quality
[16:24] <Enhasa> the character sprite blinking otoh is completely normal, that's hide in shadows, that's what i was saying
[16:24] <Enhasa> basically i would blame fraps hoho
[16:32] <jewyama> okay fair enough
[16:32] <jewyama> then the run is accepted
[13:28] <jewyama> do you know if the raw encode of baldur's gate blinks a ton?
[13:28] <jewyama> because the v copies are blinking a lot (yeah I know I've been slow with this run, it's had some issues I needed to address)
[13:33] <nate> only the sprites right
[13:33] <nate> yeah it looks like that's from the raw
[13:33] <nate> because you can see what's behind the sprites when they blink
[13:35] <Enhasa> it's supposed to blink a ton
[13:36] <Enhasa> unless you're talking about something else in which case feel free to ignore me
[13:42] <jewyama> um
[13:42] <jewyama> download the first segment and check
[13:42] <jewyama> if the game is naturally that flickery
[13:42] <jewyama> then that's fine
[16:24] <Enhasa> ok mike i checked it out, yeah the capture is kinda flickery at times (looks like framedropping) but i wouldn't reject it for vid quality
[16:24] <Enhasa> the character sprite blinking otoh is completely normal, that's hide in shadows, that's what i was saying
[16:24] <Enhasa> basically i would blame fraps hoho
[16:32] <jewyama> okay fair enough
[16:32] <jewyama> then the run is accepted
Decision: Accept
Reason: It's another ridiculously fast Baldur's Gate run.
To the runner: I'm so sorry this took so long, it's completely my fault.
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