My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/BaldursGate2.html
Eli 'Smilge' Chase's run
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: At this rate, the next run will be about 10 minutes, tops.
Eli 'Smilge' Chase's run
Verifier Responses
Quote:
heres my section by section breakdown of the BG2 run done by smilge/smlige
section 1 (first 10 mins)
could (does) yoshimo do a backstab on the portal with his katana, that could be faster to have him take them out with a backstab. which might save 1/1000th of a second.
also maybe imoen could pick up a sword earlier and perform a backstab too.
custscene skips looks too fidily to complain about it
when he first appears in amn, if imoen casted haste and gave items to smlige, he could have started running of to the adventures mart earlier
the cutscene when irenicus and imoen are sent to spell hold, where some simulacrum limited wish / leaving party members type breaks attempted. id hope so.
again cutsceney breaky possibleness maybe, esspecially in the spellhold cutscene as the party is probably in the top left corner of the map, and if that is the case then maybe this would be an opertunity to skip to spellhold, but this is just speculation, no time lost
section 2 (6 mins)
the polymorphs here are epic, the Different area diologes here are also epic. the micro here rivals, jesus.
all quests handed in at the same time, unimaginable. and brilliant.
by clicking on a message as it is being said, you advance conversation, so if he clicks on the message and spams enter, he can get through convos faster, probably my biggest anoyance with this run, as the runner refused my obvious greatness when i suggested this to him, 3-4 seconds lost(possibly) over the course of the run. here is where it is first evident that it may be viable as convos dont take 1/4 second they take a second.
runner does not mention (i think) why he attacks seamon haverian, mabye its just for shits and giggles.
runner spends momnets, tring to save, rather than just getting on with things and saving half a second later once slightly closser to his original goal
yoshimo should have been transformed back to natural before entering spellhold.
he should change yoshimo to troll (faster) so he catches up with smlige and then maybe a collision check glitch could be activated (no return to natural form) and spellhold would be skipped slightly faster.
section 3 (8 mins)
a crit on that gnome dude may be slightly faster, but luck manipulation is a bitch.
dragon quest fail is increddible.
could he activate a stone skin so that when the archer fires at him, when waylaid by drizzt. he doesn't lose time to recoil.
in bohdis lair, he moves minsc to the far left corner of the elf encounter map, but couldn't a DAD be done closer to where you hand in the quest? appears that it would make no difference
yoshimos ring of air control can be activated faster by using f1-f8 keys, rather than using the mouse.
suldeneselar segment is one giant mind fuck. im gonna just say its fast.
after seeing imoen squirm and go into her death talk-alot mode, maybe this could be used to help break cusscenes, pre-fire lighning bolt, she dies in cutscenen BAM, broken as she starts to blab.
section 4 (5 mins)
tree of life is fast. much faster that cloudkill most certainly.
i think i have a slightly old version of hell here, so i can't reveiw it properly but yoshimo should be using troll form to run about faster throughout.
FUUUUCCCKKK: its already over.
um, accept, i see 10 seconds possibly of RIDICULOUSLY hard to correct mistakes. i wish i could make anything of this quality
audio visual = good, very good infact.
section 1 (first 10 mins)
could (does) yoshimo do a backstab on the portal with his katana, that could be faster to have him take them out with a backstab. which might save 1/1000th of a second.
also maybe imoen could pick up a sword earlier and perform a backstab too.
custscene skips looks too fidily to complain about it
when he first appears in amn, if imoen casted haste and gave items to smlige, he could have started running of to the adventures mart earlier
the cutscene when irenicus and imoen are sent to spell hold, where some simulacrum limited wish / leaving party members type breaks attempted. id hope so.
again cutsceney breaky possibleness maybe, esspecially in the spellhold cutscene as the party is probably in the top left corner of the map, and if that is the case then maybe this would be an opertunity to skip to spellhold, but this is just speculation, no time lost
section 2 (6 mins)
the polymorphs here are epic, the Different area diologes here are also epic. the micro here rivals, jesus.
all quests handed in at the same time, unimaginable. and brilliant.
by clicking on a message as it is being said, you advance conversation, so if he clicks on the message and spams enter, he can get through convos faster, probably my biggest anoyance with this run, as the runner refused my obvious greatness when i suggested this to him, 3-4 seconds lost(possibly) over the course of the run. here is where it is first evident that it may be viable as convos dont take 1/4 second they take a second.
runner does not mention (i think) why he attacks seamon haverian, mabye its just for shits and giggles.
runner spends momnets, tring to save, rather than just getting on with things and saving half a second later once slightly closser to his original goal
yoshimo should have been transformed back to natural before entering spellhold.
he should change yoshimo to troll (faster) so he catches up with smlige and then maybe a collision check glitch could be activated (no return to natural form) and spellhold would be skipped slightly faster.
section 3 (8 mins)
a crit on that gnome dude may be slightly faster, but luck manipulation is a bitch.
dragon quest fail is increddible.
could he activate a stone skin so that when the archer fires at him, when waylaid by drizzt. he doesn't lose time to recoil.
in bohdis lair, he moves minsc to the far left corner of the elf encounter map, but couldn't a DAD be done closer to where you hand in the quest? appears that it would make no difference
yoshimos ring of air control can be activated faster by using f1-f8 keys, rather than using the mouse.
suldeneselar segment is one giant mind fuck. im gonna just say its fast.
after seeing imoen squirm and go into her death talk-alot mode, maybe this could be used to help break cusscenes, pre-fire lighning bolt, she dies in cutscenen BAM, broken as she starts to blab.
section 4 (5 mins)
tree of life is fast. much faster that cloudkill most certainly.
i think i have a slightly old version of hell here, so i can't reveiw it properly but yoshimo should be using troll form to run about faster throughout.
FUUUUCCCKKK: its already over.
um, accept, i see 10 seconds possibly of RIDICULOUSLY hard to correct mistakes. i wish i could make anything of this quality
audio visual = good, very good infact.
Quote:
Okay, Mike, the BGII run.
What to say? This run is amazing. I can't believe Smilge has almost halved his old time, and gotten the time down to less than a third of Damurdoc's original run. Many new tricks are used, and multitasking with the party is done well. In fact there are so many tricks and so much multitasking that you would have absolutely no chance of figuring out what's going on without Smilge's comments. I think I can say with reasonable confidence that this is the most technically complicated run submitted to SDA to date, or very close to it. The length of the comments reflects this.
Basically, execution is excellent with extremely precise high-speed clicking everywhere except at the end of a couple of the hardest segments, and planning is almost exclusively solid with a small handful of possible improvements that were found too late to be used.
Some of the new tricks are awesome and ridiculously powerful. Iron golem backstabbing rapes every boss in the game, and different-area-dialogue allows even more confusing multitasking than there would otherwise be. It's pretty lucky that cutscene breaking exists because it saves the viewer from a lot of boring cutscene time. What I also really like about the run though is all the little tricks and subtle optimisations that you really need to fully understand to appreciate, like different-area-dialoguing Imoen in Suldanesslar just before the party is teleported together to use her for item collection, or the use of the sword room autosave in Suldanesslar to enable Smilge to rest, or the familiar cast over skeletons in the Underdark, or moving the Simulacrum used to cast Limited Wish in the docks around to where it can also be used to help with a polymorph jump instead of using summons, or attacking Saemon in Brynnlaw to stop his dialogue. The average viewer will see and maybe understand all the big tricks and sequence breaks, but these subtleties will probably slip under most people's radar. Also I don't think people will really appreciate how tight the execution in this run is; clicking that accurately at high speed is really damn hard.
There are certainly some notable improvements possible, some of which I found and some of which I would probably never have discovered or noticed if Smilge hadn't pointed them out to me. The dryad skip, which lets you exploit Irenicus's dryads to teleport Minsc straight from the start of the second level of Irenicus's dungeon to the exit, skipping over a minute of dungeon, is probably the biggest single saver that wasn't used. The other major change that would likely be helpful is having the main character play as a Mage/Thief instead of a Mage, and take Shapechange for themselves instead of giving it to Yoshimo. In this run, Yoshimo should've been sent to talk to Desharik in Byrnnlaw using troll form, which is faster, and there's a silly mistake kicking Yoshimo out to go to the hell trial. And I'm pretty sure there was one other silly mistake Smilge mentioned but I can't remember now. Oh, and I personally still have some slight doubts about whether working for the Shadow Thieves would really work out slower than working for Bodhi, given there's a cutscene skip that saves about 50 seconds that's only usable if you side with the Shadow Thieves. There's probably enough left to wring out of this game that someone else who was sufficiently motivated (or maybe even Smilge himself) could improve this run one last time.
None of this diminishes the awesomeness of this run, though, which is a huge improvement on the old one and really takes running of this game to a new level. I reckon the limit for this game is close to being reached - but then I would never have believed there was this much time to be shaved off the old run when Smilge started this run. Anyway, I accept, in the strongest possible way.
What to say? This run is amazing. I can't believe Smilge has almost halved his old time, and gotten the time down to less than a third of Damurdoc's original run. Many new tricks are used, and multitasking with the party is done well. In fact there are so many tricks and so much multitasking that you would have absolutely no chance of figuring out what's going on without Smilge's comments. I think I can say with reasonable confidence that this is the most technically complicated run submitted to SDA to date, or very close to it. The length of the comments reflects this.
Basically, execution is excellent with extremely precise high-speed clicking everywhere except at the end of a couple of the hardest segments, and planning is almost exclusively solid with a small handful of possible improvements that were found too late to be used.
Some of the new tricks are awesome and ridiculously powerful. Iron golem backstabbing rapes every boss in the game, and different-area-dialogue allows even more confusing multitasking than there would otherwise be. It's pretty lucky that cutscene breaking exists because it saves the viewer from a lot of boring cutscene time. What I also really like about the run though is all the little tricks and subtle optimisations that you really need to fully understand to appreciate, like different-area-dialoguing Imoen in Suldanesslar just before the party is teleported together to use her for item collection, or the use of the sword room autosave in Suldanesslar to enable Smilge to rest, or the familiar cast over skeletons in the Underdark, or moving the Simulacrum used to cast Limited Wish in the docks around to where it can also be used to help with a polymorph jump instead of using summons, or attacking Saemon in Brynnlaw to stop his dialogue. The average viewer will see and maybe understand all the big tricks and sequence breaks, but these subtleties will probably slip under most people's radar. Also I don't think people will really appreciate how tight the execution in this run is; clicking that accurately at high speed is really damn hard.
There are certainly some notable improvements possible, some of which I found and some of which I would probably never have discovered or noticed if Smilge hadn't pointed them out to me. The dryad skip, which lets you exploit Irenicus's dryads to teleport Minsc straight from the start of the second level of Irenicus's dungeon to the exit, skipping over a minute of dungeon, is probably the biggest single saver that wasn't used. The other major change that would likely be helpful is having the main character play as a Mage/Thief instead of a Mage, and take Shapechange for themselves instead of giving it to Yoshimo. In this run, Yoshimo should've been sent to talk to Desharik in Byrnnlaw using troll form, which is faster, and there's a silly mistake kicking Yoshimo out to go to the hell trial. And I'm pretty sure there was one other silly mistake Smilge mentioned but I can't remember now. Oh, and I personally still have some slight doubts about whether working for the Shadow Thieves would really work out slower than working for Bodhi, given there's a cutscene skip that saves about 50 seconds that's only usable if you side with the Shadow Thieves. There's probably enough left to wring out of this game that someone else who was sufficiently motivated (or maybe even Smilge himself) could improve this run one last time.
None of this diminishes the awesomeness of this run, though, which is a huge improvement on the old one and really takes running of this game to a new level. I reckon the limit for this game is close to being reached - but then I would never have believed there was this much time to be shaved off the old run when Smilge started this run. Anyway, I accept, in the strongest possible way.
Quote:
Baldur's Gate 2
Great video and audio. Probably no cheats.
I say 'probably' because the game is so broken at this point it's hard to tell what is going on, even if you have played the game through a billion times. This run is the culmination of so many strange bugs with the Infinity Engine that make the game into a warpfest. I'm just about able to follow the action (I'm glad I made that Infinity Engine tricks page on the kb) and what I see is both hectic, well planned and quick.
As an improvement and excellent run, this is an accept.
Great video and audio. Probably no cheats.
I say 'probably' because the game is so broken at this point it's hard to tell what is going on, even if you have played the game through a billion times. This run is the culmination of so many strange bugs with the Infinity Engine that make the game into a warpfest. I'm just about able to follow the action (I'm glad I made that Infinity Engine tricks page on the kb) and what I see is both hectic, well planned and quick.
As an improvement and excellent run, this is an accept.
Decision: Accept
Reason: At this rate, the next run will be about 10 minutes, tops.
Thread title:
