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mikwuyma: 2009-09-13 01:28:23 pm
My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/BaldursGateTotSC.html

Benjamin 'beenman500' Culley's single-segment run

and Julien Langer's run

Verifier Responses

Quote:
Everything about these runs is great. Both the SS and the multisegment have the insane planning of their predecessors but considering they improve existing runs, how on earth can I say no? These are truly posterchilds for RPG breaking.


Quote:
Hey Mike, I've watched julien's TotSC run and here are my comments:

Execution is solid throughout. There are no obvious misclicks. Even the BG shopping is fast. Wherever luck is needed (basically for pickpocketing and saving throws), it is manipulated perfectly to achieve the required result first time. Basically I can't see any segment in the run where extra retries would've gotten the time down, leaving aside the issues of the healing potion in Ulgoth's Beard and the runner's handling of the map screen, both of which are more planning/thought issues which I'll come to below.

However, there are a handful of route improvements or thus-far-undiscovered tricks that I found, ranging from minor changes to a short sequence of actions to save a second, to a major route tweak that could save over a minute.

In chronological order, then, everything I could find wrong with the run:

1) The speed potion duping right after Imoen joins is pretty sloppily done, to be honest. There's 25 seconds of inventory management done while both characters stand still, followed by 12 seconds of running in which no inventory management is done - this is inefficient. I would guess there's at least 5 seconds to shave here, if not more, by making the two processes run in parallel as much as possible. It's no that hard to snap momentarily out of the inventory after a character has drunk a health potion to give a move order, then keep both characters moving until the last possible moment to drink and grab a speed potion. Also, once the underflow on the speed potions has occurred, both characters can be kept moving by dropping the stack on the ground, leaving the inventory and pausing, giving a move order, re-entering the inventory (thus unpausing the game and starting the characters moving), and lifting 111 potions into ich's inventory while ich and Immy run. Then you can give them another move order before returning to the inventory to split Immy's share from ich's, rather than taking it from the ground stack. The same inventory management is achieved, with little or no time wasted, and ich and Immy will be most of the way to the end of the map when it's done.

2) The runner loses a few frames every time he goes onto the world map due to having to move the cursor. There's no reason for this - the cursor should be positioned above the target destination before the map appears so that he can click immediately. Use blu-tack on the monitor to mark the locations if you have to. Over the course of the whole run I'd guess this would save about 2 seconds.

3) Stopping to drink a healing potion and wait for Immy to talk in Ulgoth's beard is 5 seconds of wasted time, plain and simple. The runner rightly states that kicking Immy from the party and leaving her in Ulgoth's Beard without listening to her kicked-from-the-party dialogue is not an option because it precludes resting on Ice Island, BUT the obvious way around this is simply to take Imoen to Ice Island and not kick her out until ich leaves Ulgoth's Beard to Peldvale. This has the added bonus that there'll be someone standing on the Ice Island exit trigger from the instant Dezkiel is pickpocketed, which saves a further second (the time it takes to leave after pickpocketing him).

4) I think the runner buys five more arrows of detonation than he ends up needing. Either that or I can't count. Costs a second.

5) The big time saver. Candlekeep. I quote the runner's comments:
Quote:
For this to work you have to give ALL but your main character the command to enter another area. Then you have to talk (with the main character) to the NPC
whose script would teleport you and pause the game immediatly after the
dialog AND give your main character some other command like walking somewhere
else. Then unpause the game and voila, nobody is teleported away. [b]Note that this
does _not_ work if you talk to the NPC with another PC than your main character.
That's why I placed Imoen outside Candlekeep and not my main character (which
would be faster if it would work).
[/b]

(Emphasis mine)

I decided to look more closely into why the glitch supposedly doesn't work when you talk to the NPC using a character besides the main character. The issue is that, for reasons mysterious, if you pause the instant after a conversation, the main character won't teleport immediately and you can give them another order to prevent the teleport, but other party members will normally teleport instantly unless they've been given an order to leave the area or loot a container (for reasons equally mysterious). The assumption that then seems to have been made is that, if you have a party member converse with the NPC with the teleport script, then at the end of the conversation the party member won't have any standing orders (like leaving the area or looting a container or leaving the area) and will teleport instantly. This is a bad assumption to make - there's actually a way around this.

All you have to do is send the party member to talk to Tethoril, then at the very instant that the conversation begins, give them an order to loot a container or leave the area. You'll know you've got it right if the conversation appears but you can see the green cross on the ground marking where you ordered them to go. I find that to get the timing right it helps to pause the game the moment before the conversation starts, then simultaneously unpause and give an order to loot a container. Anyhow, if you do this, you can pause and give both party member and main character other orders to cancel the teleport as usual. This means there's nothing stopping the runner from sending Imoen to talk to Tethoril while the main character dances on the chapter increment trigger, which should save around 45 seconds of escaping from the crypt, plus several further seconds not having to go into the map screen every time Imoen has to be given an order to leave the area. Better yet, the runner could even pick up Xzar or Quayle and have them dance on the chapter trigger while the main character heads straight for the area exit, skipping a further 30 second trek at the cost of having to micro an extra character every time the teleport break is performed. (Should the runner do another run using this method, it may or may not be useful to him to know that for some reason scripted teleports don't seem to affect characters who have multiple move orders queued up with checkpoints until they reach the end of their checkpointed route.)

6) The five second wait outside the tavern at 11:54 doesn't seem justified; I assume that the runner didn't want to head in before using his oil of speed for fear of not getting past the ogre in time and being accosted, but he could've just hidden in the shadows and gone straight in. Maybe a couple of seconds wasted here.

On a related note, I'm also not convinced that the route the runner uses (using Dimension Door) to get from Candlekeep to the tavern is faster than simply going from Candlekeep to North Baldur's Gate, travelling from there to North-East Baldur's Gate, and running a few extra metres. Especially considering that that way he could drink a haste potion the moment he arrived in North Baldur's Gate, without having to wait for the cooldown after using the DD scroll before hasting like he does with the route he uses. I don't think there's much in it either way really but I wonder if the runner considered both options?

And with that, I'm out of criticisms.

I'll finish with the good. Having never watched any Baldur's Gate I runs before, I was awed by the power of the dimension door glitch and the nimbleness with which it allows the runner to leap around the map. The game-raping chapter increment glitch with Tethoril was also pretty neat to see. The highlight of the run for me, however, had to be seeing the greater dopplegangers dispatched by firing arrows of detonation at a charmed, otiluked Flaming Fist guard; it's a cunning idea executed here beautifully.

As I said before, it's clear a lot of effort has gone into optimisation and luck manipulation for this run, and by any standards it's a damn great run. It'd be cool to see another run from been or Julien implementing the improvements I suggested and trimming off another 90 seconds or so, but for now, from me this run gets a loud ACCEPT.


Quote:
Mike,

Ah, I was tricked by the file names into the impression that been's SS was of vanilla BGI without TotSC. Now that I've looked at the run and realised that's not the case, I can whip out my comments before bed:

* There's an irritating graphics issue with flickering sprites throughout the run, but it doesn't make it unwatchable. Meh.
* Execution is good throughout. Very good in fact, I wouldn't think too badly of it if it were in a segmented run.
* Route is basically the same as the MS route. The only changes I spotted were not bringing Immy to Ulgoth's Beard (for fear of her being killed by Ankhegs on the way? I dunno) and killing the Ice Island mages and Slythe instead of pickpocketing them (because charming them would be near impossible and bring you into their sight range, so you'd only have one shot at it).
Seeing unconscious mages being beaten on by a level 1 character with a staff made me lol. Awesome strategy.
Slythe was also raped quite effectively.
* Wow, I was amazed to see the arrows of detonation method used to kill the greater dopplegangers in an SS. Awesome. It's a pity the flickering sprites are at their worst here, damaging what should be one of the best moments of the run.
Did the runner consider buying some normal enchanted arrows as a faster means of finishing straggling dopplegangers? I think it might be faster.
* Sarevok gets pwned quite efficiently. The main character's death at the end was funny and isn't grounds for disqualification or a seperate category as far as I'm concerned - the ending still played, the game was still won.

Basically, it's an excellent run, and an easy accept.


Decision: Accept

Reason: Yeah this game is broken.

P.S. What difficulty were these runs played on?
Thread title:  
Joke of all trades
yay thanks guys, 8)

sorry about the sprites flickering in my run, i've got a newer shinnyier computer now so hopefully that won't be a problem in the future

the difficulty was on normal i think,also note normal is not AD&D core rules, its a slightly easier version(at least it is in bg2/icewind dales IIRC and i lost my manual eons ago and 1 month ago having recently aquired TOSC).
there are 4 settings easy, normal, AD&D core rules and hard in that order. this was on normal.

looking at the second verifiers comments i notice that alot of them are about juliens run so ill let him comment on most off them but...
if what you say worksin your 5) point, which i am soon to go test, then there's nothing stoping us from sending the main cha out and using imoen to activate the chapter trigers. getting a new one(xar) would be pointless as "you must gather your party before entering forth" at candlekeep library, which is why we even bring imoen inside candle keep atall.  Regardless we could still easily get the main cha out and if imoen canactivate the triggers without too much trouble, then is would save about 50 seconds or so.

also when you where complaing about using dimension door to get to the tavern, i could't go to north baldur's gate because it wasn't unlocked, only central east and NE.  using the map screens two-three times is also pretty slow so doing too much fancy zoning is actually just stupid. also when finding where to click on the world map, using blutack won't nessasarily work as the world map can move so its not always in the same place, and blutac does limit vision a little, especially with 20 or so map transisions, though in an MS maybe...

In relation to the final guy, Not bringing imoen to ulgoths beard is mainly for saftey and for some ease of execution but i also don't bring her back there when i got back to pick her up as there is a high chance of being wailed and setting her up to not get mullered in one of them would take extra time and cause much frustration for me, an SS is a bitch.

also the arrows of detonation are cool, :), and the positioning can be anoying in an SS but credit for that goes to clone rizzo (i am a theif). the plan with the arrows of detonation was to kill all the dopples, and 8/10 times it deos. there are rarely stragless so spenging 1 second more shopping is not soo great though it does appear it would be faster, using a terrible bow like the one i have migt cause THACO problems.

woop woop
Quote from beenman500:
if what you say worksin your 5) point, which i am soon to go test, then there's nothing stoping us from sending the main cha out and using imoen to activate the chapter trigers. getting a new one(xar) would be pointless as "you must gather your party before entering forth" at candlekeep library, which is why we even bring imoen inside candle keep atall.


Nah, you misunderstood. The idea isn't that an extra NPC could get you to the chapter trigger quicker - it couldn't, precisely because of the party-required area transition you've just pointed out. However, if you had Xzar and the main character both DD out of Candlekeep, you could immediately send the main character to east edge of the map while Xzar handles the chapter trigger and Imoen chats with Tethoril. Then as soon as you hit Chapter 7, just kick them both and leave the map, without having to lose any time running from the chapter trigger to the map edge.

The micro might make this unworkable in practice if you had to run through unrevealed territory, but perhaps there's a scroll of Clairvoyance somewhere you can use to make it feasible?

Quote:
also when you where complaing about using dimension door to get to the tavern, i could't go to north baldur's gate because it wasn't unlocked, only central east and NE.


Doh, just looked at the run and realised you're right. My bad.

Quote:
also when finding where to click on the world map, using blutack won't nessasarily work as the world map can move so its not always in the same place,


Yeah, you'd generally need one piece of blu-tac per transition, not just per destination, obviously.

Quote:
and blutac does limit vision a little, especially with 20 or so map transisions, though in an MS maybe...


Yeah I was suggesting this primarily for the MS, although I just counted and I think you'd only need 12 or 13 bits of blu-tac for the SS so maybe it's usable.

Quote:
In relation to the final guy, Not bringing imoen to ulgoths beard is mainly for saftey and for some ease of execution but i also don't bring her back there when i got back to pick her up as there is a high chance of being wailed and setting her up to not get mullered in one of them would take extra time and cause much frustration for me, an SS is a bitch.

also the arrows of detonation are cool, :), and the positioning can be anoying in an SS but credit for that goes to clone rizzo (i am a theif). the plan with the arrows of detonation was to kill all the dopples, and 8/10 times it deos. there are rarely stragless so spenging 1 second more shopping is not soo great though it does appear it would be faster, using a terrible bow like the one i have migt cause THACO problems.


That all sounds reasonable. Fair enough.
Edit history:
Beenman500: 2009-09-13 03:43:00 pm
Joke of all trades
Quote from ExplodingCabbage:
Quote from beenman500:
if what you say worksin your 5) point, which i am soon to go test, then there's nothing stoping us from sending the main cha out and using imoen to activate the chapter trigers. getting a new one(xar) would be pointless as "you must gather your party before entering forth" at candlekeep library, which is why we even bring imoen inside candle keep atall.


Nah, you misunderstood. The idea isn't that an extra NPC could get you to the chapter trigger quicker - it couldn't, precisely because of the party-required area transition you've just pointed out. However, if you had Xzar and the main character both DD out of Candlekeep, you could immediately send the main character to east edge of the map while Xzar handles the chapter trigger and Imoen chats with Tethoril. Then as soon as you hit Chapter 7, just kick them both and leave the map, without having to lose any time running from the chapter trigger to the map edge.

The micro might make this unworkable in practice if you had to run through unrevealed territory, but perhaps there's a scroll of Clairvoyance somewhere you can use to make it feasible?


that sounds nice in theory, time saving would be so tiny though as half of the time with chapterskips you are paused and having to give three characters comands to stop the teleport is more time consuming, you'd have to be pretty good at micro as you said, clairevoyance is an option, but casting it is actually gonna slow us down by 6 seconds or so,(i think thats its casting time), and again if using xar to activate the skips you'd have to stop main cha a bunch anyway to break the teleport sequence, the best we could hope for is a considerably more sloppy version of juliens new run where he moves his main cha up the library and imoen to the inn and dds to the chapter trigger. maybe in a TAS, also switching between characters in different areas does produce a small amount of lag  >0.5 seconds but though i guess you'd be doing that anyway...

i might do some timing to see how much faster a clairevoyanced run through a map is in comparison to a non-clairevoyance run is.

man i can't wait for the bg2 run

edit: also to use xar in candlekeep we'd need to give him some ddoors and an oil of speed which will require two sets of splits for the scrolls and potions just extra time lost, and he's not exactly completly accessable either and having to get rid of montaron , getting that weird gnome might be slightly faster but then he's not as close to the edge of the map. i think we also need to move this disscusion back to the PC games board once we've got something from julien
Quote from beenman500:
Quote from ExplodingCabbage:
Quote from beenman500:
if what you say worksin your 5) point, which i am soon to go test, then there's nothing stoping us from sending the main cha out and using imoen to activate the chapter trigers. getting a new one(xar) would be pointless as "you must gather your party before entering forth" at candlekeep library, which is why we even bring imoen inside candle keep atall.


Nah, you misunderstood. The idea isn't that an extra NPC could get you to the chapter trigger quicker - it couldn't, precisely because of the party-required area transition you've just pointed out. However, if you had Xzar and the main character both DD out of Candlekeep, you could immediately send the main character to east edge of the map while Xzar handles the chapter trigger and Imoen chats with Tethoril. Then as soon as you hit Chapter 7, just kick them both and leave the map, without having to lose any time running from the chapter trigger to the map edge.

The micro might make this unworkable in practice if you had to run through unrevealed territory, but perhaps there's a scroll of Clairvoyance somewhere you can use to make it feasible?


that sounds nice in theory, time saving would be so tiny though as half of the time with chapterskips you are paused and having to give three characters comands to stop the teleport is more time consuming,

Quote:
if using xar to activate the skips you'd have to stop main cha a bunch anyway to break the teleport sequence


Ah, but you wouldn't have to give the main character any commands if you used Clairvoyance. Just send them to the map edge, then stick a checkpoint after that, and they won't be teleported. That's why I mentioned the checkpoint thing. Actually, thinking about it, giving the character on the chapter incremement trigger a load of checkpoints during the downtime waiting for the trigger to fire is another potential timesaver I didn't mention in my comments.

Quote:
clairevoyance is an option, but casting it is actually gonna slow us down by 6 seconds or so


No it won't. Have either Xzar or the main character cast it after leaving the keep, depending upon which has time to spare. Unless you're very unlucky and the time taken to perform the chapter skips is the same as the time taken to run to the edge of the map to within 6 seconds, one of the characters should have enough slack to be able to cast a spell without delaying the critical path.


Quote:
edit: also to use xar in candlekeep we'd need to give him some ddoors and an oil of speed which will require two sets of splits for the scrolls and potions just extra time lost


Well, if you're not going to pick him up until after shopping in Baldur's Gate, you'll have spare time to do the splits while waiting to be teleported back from Ice Island after grabbing the cloak so that shouldn't be a problem. I don't know whether it'd be quicker to take him with you and Imoen to Ulgoth's Beard at the start though, to skip travelling back to the area he's in.

Quote:
having to get rid of montaron


Monty goes down easily enough to a simple backstab, or even just a lucky damage roll, and can be killed before or after taking them into the party (Monty's corpse joins the party if you kill him before accepting Xzar's offer).

Remember, it takes 30 seconds to get from the chapter increment trigger to the edge of the map. That means that if you can get clairvoyance and Xzar in less than 30 seconds, you'll save time overall.
Joke of all trades
just another thought but, if we set xzar up with a bunch of checkpoints all on the chapter trigger, then gave the main cha checkpoints at the edge of the map then we could do al the chapterskips from within the library. and unless it takes more time to do them than it does for main cha to get to the edge of the map it could save alot of time
Edit history:
julien: 2009-09-14 02:45:37 pm
Firstly: Many many thanks for the very thorough review.

1) I agree, this is executed very poorly.

2) I also agree on this one. On an unrelated note, my next run will also eliminate all the autosaves which also saves a few clicks.

3) This is a great idea. Don't know why I never thought about doing this.

4) Agreed. That's a bad habit I got from playtesting the SS route.

5) Now that's really good news. I'm glad that someone actually looked more closely at this glitch. I was pretty sure that it doesn't work with the main char outside CK but it seems I didn't try it thoroughly enough :-)
The thing with Xzar needs some careful analyzation (as beenman already pointed out)
Another possibility would be to use Quayle instead of Imoen.
This would have advantages and disadvantages:
+ no time wasted for dual classing
+ slightly faster travel to UB
- slight detour on the bridge
- point 3) won't be possible

About Clairvoyance: It's available in the shop in BG, so it should cost +1 second to buy it.

The thing with the checkpoints also sounds like a very good idea, could save quite a bit of micromanagement.

Again, thanks for the good review. Looks like I'll have something to do for the cold winter weekends :-)