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mikwuyma: 2011-02-15 07:33:07 pm
My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

James 'Aftermath's IL runs

Verifier Responses

Quote:
Wow, amazing vid and audio quality (at least on the HQ) Glad I have this on my hard drive now. This is going to be an easy accept for the whole IL table, but I guess I'll leave some comments on the runs anyway. Also in case you're wondering about Hard mode vs. Normal mode ILs, I think it'd be dumb to have a Normal mode IL table even though it's technically possible because you can't get all the optimal equipment until the later stages in Hard mode anyway and the runs would pretty well look exactly the same. So if anyone else submitted an IL table for a different character, it'd be nice if it was also on Hard mode.

Ch. 1: It's kinda funny how Aftermath chose the "Into the Dark Night" remix for the whole stage, but it is pretty cool. His own comments on the run cover this pretty well.

Ch. 2: Just curious, how much damage does the Beef Curry add to each Valmanway hit? There's obviously no reason not to boost the damage, I'm just wondering how much time it actually cuts with that brokenass weapon since I still haven't had a Valmanway drop after all this time that the game's been out (granted, I've played it very irregularly).

Ch. 3: No comment. Optimized, and I'd be surprised if anyone beat this time.

Ch. 4: Nice choice at the start to beam the entire row of enemies. Seems to work better than previous runs I saw on YouTube that didn't do that. It's kinda sad how much of a joke a game is with the Valmanway.

Ch. 5: I'm glad Aftermath went back and improved this stage. When I was anticipating his 1:06 to be submitted as the IL, I was thinking about 3 seconds could be cut off, and that's exactly what happened since he hit the corner boost on the pendulum and got a better Death pattern. If the Death pattern can be even better than this run, then the time saved would be so minuscule that it wouldn't be worth all the extra attempts to get it (unless you're REALLY hardcore about this, I guess).

Ch. 6: I still find it cute and funny that the Ch. 7 default music is used in the Ch. 6 run. It makes it seem a lot less epic than the default music, but that makes sense since the finale is pretty anticlimactic with optimal equipment. At least he uses epic music for all of... 2 seconds that Dracula's final form exists. Not really much to say about the actual run, it's pretty good. I think a missed corner boost on the final set of stairs before Dracula's door is the only visible mistake, unless doing that with the winged boots overshoots the switch or something and it's not a mistake at all.

Ch. 7: Pretty weird route, but it's understandable since the door skip trick can save so much time. I'm going to assume this was thoroughly tested against going through the door on the other side of the pyramid and heading straight up to the boss with Yorick. If it wasn't, that'd be another route to consider. Or how about the door that's to your left when you finally go inside the pyramid in this route? Skipping that also seems like it'd lead to a quick boss entrance. Maybe there's something I'm missing about this stage, though. It's a good run anyway, just a bit less flashy than some of the others since Valmanway does jack on Astarte and the stage in general is kinda tedious.

It's weird how many of the strategies came from the GameFAQs community for this game. I don't usually see that mentioned in SDA runs. Pretty cool. Also, these runs were done on the unpatched version of the game, since the newest patch gets rid of the door skip glitch. I imagine if anyone wanted to try to obsolete anything on this IL table (lol good luck) or do runs with other characters, they'd also want to use the unpatched version. If for some reason the patched version helped some stages go faster (Miser Ring, perhaps?), I'm not sure how you'd want to approach the rules for mixing stages on the patched or unpatched versions.

Anyway, good job Aftermath. It was fun to watch these (including the ones I already saw).


Quote:
Nothing to mention for Chapter 1. Nothing different can really be done.

Only flaw I can pick out in Chapter 2 is he could've jumped earlier at the Yorick he kills. Also, damn lucky to get a Thief Ring on that run.

Chapter 3 and 4 are flawless.

I'm really impressed with Chapter 5. The cornerboost and all the Yorick hops were stunning.

I think the cornerboosts in Chapter 6 are pretty impressive. The music choice, though. That's just odd.

The route for Chapter 7 is crazy. I would've never thought of that.

Obviously I'm accepting all these runs for publication.

However, I am going to also comment on the patch. These runs were made without the recent patch made to the game. It negatively affects Chapters 2 and 7 because the patch fixed the gold door glitch. There's no negative effect to the others, but the patch also made the Miser Ring a drop. Miser Ring is the best Attack accessory in the game, offering a maximum of +10 ATK each. And the item is usable without the patch. So all of these runs can actually be beaten by using Misers to add 10+ points of damage to each sword hit. Would it be legal to use Misers in unpatched runs?


Quote:
Aftermath's comments are pretty complete.

I don't think 1~4 can be improved.*

In chapter 6, it is possible to corner boost off the rock before the 3rd Nova Skeleton and power through the skeleton and ectoplasm with Buer and Valmanway, but I'm not sure if it saves time. It may also be possible to get through the medusa head rooms faster by kicking off of them, but trying over and over until you get a good pattern is just masochistic.

There is one other place in chapter 7 which could be improved: if you dive kick onto the platform before the fire demon by the meat strip, you slide off instantly and don't have to stop and fall through. This trick may also be useful on the gear in chapter 5 after the imps, but I'm not sure that there's room to make setting up the kick worth it there. I'm sorry I didn't mention it earlier; MarsBringer just showed me the trick yesterday. I also want to point out to anyone who missed it, Aftermath sticks an extremely difficult trick around 28:43:50 when he Yoricks and then dive kicks onto the ledge. If you screw this up, you dive kick to the bottom of the pit he's in, but if you don't do it, I'm not sure it's possible to make it to the ledge with a single Yorick.

Incidentally, you can see the failed version of this trick around 28:38:95, but it doesn't cost him more than half a second.

Bottom line: THIS IS ART. Anyone who thinks he or she can beat Aftermath has a very steep pyramid to climb.

*Since the Miser Ring is the in non-updated item compendium, would it be kosher to update your game, farm miser rings, then delete the update? If so, 2 and 7 can be improved a lot. >_<


Quote:
audio/video quality is amazing, i love the soundtrack for this game.
chapter 1-a few minor mistakes but they dont really count as he said in the comments because of the timer. iv alsways wondered if its possible to kill gorgoth before he falls through the floor, and now i know its not.
chapter 2-another easy chapter, it feels slow for some reason, although im not sure why. very good and fast, iv always hated the puppet amster so its cool tos ee him destroyed without a second thought.
chapter 3-yorick jumping completely destroys this chapter, and it is quite optimized
chapter 4-yet another example of how amazing yorick jumping is. an optimized level
chapter 5-this chapter is not done perfectly, but the mistakes are negligable and overal it is a very good route.
chapter 6-due to the way it is built this is a rather long and boring level(compared to chaps 1-5) but it is done well  ,
chapter 7-this level loks fun, although i have never played it since it is dlc. looks like the ascension of the pyramid could have been done better but i am not sure since i have not done it. the boss fight easily took longest out of all the chapters, but it works.

it is easy to tell that aftermath worked hard on his times, and deserves to have these times up. ACCEPT


Quote:
Game- Castlevania Harmony of Despair
Run time-
Chapter 1: 1:25.82
Chapter 2: 0:48.82
Chapter 3: 0:41.11
Chapter 4: 0:44.13
Chapter 5: 1:03.20
Chapter 6: 2:27.34
Chapter 7: 1:56:01
Total table time: 9:06.43

Video quality- Excellent
Sound quality- Excellent

Evaluation of the run-
Seems like I'm the last one to get my verification notes up, but that usually means that I don't have to write as much since the others cover the same details. (Excuse to be lazy, I know.)

Chapter 1: Nicely done.  Loved how Gergoth was dead before he could get his head out of the floor.
Chapter 2: Puppet Master didn't even get to move (well, okay, he did move a little it seemed, but not much - an inch maybe).  Gold door skip worked well.  Thief ring is a nice bonus.
Chapter 3: Nice job with the corner boost and getting into position to take out Menace's torso and knee.
Chapter 4: Brauner's Blood Art attack had just barely started!  Way to ruin a potentially good painting...
Chapter 5: Impressive corner boost off the pendulum.  I don't know too many people who like this level (I always found it annoying), but whenever I played online, this level got played much more often than Chapter 6.  Bonus points for scoring Death's soul though.
Chapter 6: Can't say that I like the choice of music here, but hey, the gameplay is more important.  The medusa head rooms, while solid, could be improved by jump-kicking off of the medusa heads.  Granted, this does require a good pattern, so some luck will have to be involved.  It won't save much time, though, maybe a second or two at most.  Otherwise, this looks excellent.  Drac's soul?!  Come on, now!
Chapter 7: I've only played this map a couple of times, but now I want to go back and play it some more.  The route is solid, and I can't see anything else beyond what Aftermath says in his comments for improvement.

Final Decision- How can I not say Accept to this?  This has made me want to play this game again.  These runs with Soma are done very well.  Now to get the other characters taken care of...


You might think the run was accepted easily, but I talked to Aftermath, and he said with the new items from the DLC stages, he can beat all of his current times. So yeah, the run was rejected by the runner himself.

Decision: Reject

Reason: Because Aftermath wants to improve these runs with the new DLC items.

The runs are available for download for a month. PM me for the link.
Thread title:  
SDA Apprentice -- (3-1)
At least we know that it is only going to get better from here, and how we are going to get two more Chapters along side with update from the other runs...  Can't wait to see the final final product...

I'll send that PM shortly...
Edit history:
Aftermath: 2011-02-15 08:50:16 pm
Quits halfway
Verifier 1: I agree that only hard mode runs should be accepted, for the reasons you gave. And yeah, my music choices were a little weird, but I love Hail to the Past.

Beef Curry adds around 10 damage per hit. I may try for a better Death pattern in the new runs, but I'll probably just throw in some extra corner boosts instead, and just go for an adequately good fight (I have absurdly bad Death luck). On chapter 6, there's a few extra corner boosts to hit, including the one at the top of the stairs, we'll see if I can stick all of them.

Chapter 7 was thoroughly tested, I have a run on youtube that goes through the pyramid to the door and it's about 8 seconds slower. The door I go through is more or less the only one that it is possible to go through in the level (there's one door lower than the one I used, but it doesn't spit you out in a convenient way). The doors have to be set in a certain way to push you through them, and the ones right next to Astarte aren't built that way.

And yeah, it is a little strange to see so many strats from GameFAQs, but just look at the date of the last post in the CVHD thread here to see why everything was from there.

Verifier 2: Thanks for all of the compliments. I definitely could have jumped past that Chapter 2 Yorick earlier, I was just scared of him >_>  That chapter is my least favorite to see, since my platforming is so bad (overjump everything).

Verifier 3: That rock cornerboost wouldn't be worth it, as far as difficulty vs time saved, I don't think. I'll definitely look into the Medusa kick thing, it shouldn't be terribly hard to improvise if there's an opportunity, and it does save some time. Chapter 7 thing is neat and will be done.

Verifier 4: Chapter 2 feels slow because I'm bad at platforming. Sad about Chapter 5, I tried my best. Thanks for the compliments on the other stuff though.

Verifier 5: Thanks for verifying, enjoyed reading your comments. Hopefully I can get these Soma improvements done quickly and move onto other characters (like Shanoa).


Patch stuff: So, here's how you can exploit the patch to your advantage. Chapter 7's patch items will all work pre-patch, but trying to load with Chapters 8 and on will freeze the game at startup. So as long as you only have Chapter 7's items (which were included in the original game code), you can run around with double Misers and finish every chapter 5 seconds faster or whatever. I have NOT tested whether deleting the ch8+ dlc will also take away those items from your save, or how that is handled, but it may be rather difficult to not make the game freeze. For every chapter other than 2 and 7, though, post-patch is far better, because you get Winged Boots and Valmanway +1.

What we could do is just say "All runs need to be post-patch" and it'd all be easy to run and improve and whatnot, even though Ch2 and 7 wouldn't technically be as fast as possible.. If that's not a rule, then someone (probably me) should really check out if it's possible/easy to get a save with ch8+ items to revert to one compatible pre-patch. Otherwise any runner would basically have to hex edit a new save to have all of the ch1-7 items and play pre-patch that way.

My vote is just to have all runs be post-patch.
My feelings on The Demon Rush
Well, our rule is generally IL runs should be done on just one version. So all runs should be post-patch, problem solved.
that Metroidvania guy
I recommend people actually take advantage of getting these runs before the month is up.
The Speedrunning Teacher
Quote from romscout:
I quite highly, with as much effort as is possible, recommend people actually take advantage of getting these runs before the month is up.

Fixed it for accuracy.  And seconded.
SDA Apprentice -- (3-1)
I already got my copy from Mr. Mike... So yea, if you are a Castlevania fan, it would be extremely, highly, recommended for people to take advantage of this chance to watch brilliance before it is taken to the next level...

So yea... Third...
Quits halfway
Just to show how much/easily these runs can be improved, here's an updated Chapter 1 run that took less than an hour to get. I'll have to test out some of Gergoth's animation timers, but this is probably going to be the actual run.