Username:
B
I
U
S
"
url
img
#
code
sup
sub
font
size
color
smiley
embarassed
thumbsup
happy
Huh?
Angry
Roll Eyes
Undecided
Lips Sealed
Kiss
Cry
Grin
Wink
Tongue
Shocked
Cheesy
Smiley
Sad
1 page
--
--
List results:
Search options:
Use \ before commas in usernames
My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/CastlevaniaPoR.html

Single-segment run

Verifier Responses

There is some mention of the runner's recording setup. He actually uses a video mod that lets you capture the DS directly, which is explained here. Contrary to what the verifiers are saying, a video mod IS legal.

Quote:
His route is really weird. Sometimes he's using up to date strategies, but other times it looks like he's using a really old route. I'll get into specifics in a bit.

The fact that he doesn't use the quest reward glitch is enough to reject, actually. Use it to get Magical Tickets at the very least.

-Entrance-
He doesn't jump over the drawbridge. He doesn't damage boost off the third Zombie. He picks up Tome of Arms 1, likely for money later on that he should be getting from Blessed Rings. The way he destroys the pillars in the Behemoth chase seems abnormally fast. Is he Shield Dashing to do that? Again, I'd like to see video proof. He should be damage boosting off the Skeletons instead of running through them. That also prevents taking damage from the Axe Armor. He buys Shuriken. Are they really better than Darts? He never BDSes with them, so I dunno. He gets the route correct in that he saves City of Haze for later and goes to Sandy Grave right away. When setting up Partner Jumping, he could call out his partner a bit earlier.

-Great Stairway-
That's the Steel Plate he got? Not necessary. He gets STR Up, which is also a recent development. In the first room with Persephones, it's possible to jump between them without getting hurt. It's tricky, but screwing up and damage boosting off one might be better too. No infinite potion glitch either. The Partizan before the double jump is not necessary. And when getting double jump, he could call out his partner to stay on the platform, get the item, then switch to make the climb a bit shorter. Taking the path that leads to Iron Leggings is worse than dropping right away, and the footwear is certainly unnecessary. So is the Bathrobe. From now on, I'm not going to mention all these items he shouldn't be picking up, there's too many of them.

-Sandy Grave-
Switching after landing from a divekick is not a bad idea, but not the best mode of travel. Shorthops into divekicks are the way to go. He could kick off some enemies' heads once in a while. He does not damage boost past the Sand Worm. The Kaiser Knuckles do seem effective, I'll admit, but I don't know if they're worth it in the long run. He takes a while to do the shortcut. After the shortcut, his time is 5:58. I've done a partially completed, not optimized, unrecorded segmented run that had 5:30 before the shortcut. He doesn't activate the middle warp, which hurts him big time. The Astarte fight was not bad at all. Can't tell for sure if it's better than using Darts, though. He ends up going the long way around to the middle warp after the boss fight, which is downright stupid. The items he picked up on the way down will not make up for that huge detour.

-City of Haze-
It's a little bit quicker to scroll through the dialogue at the beginning of CoH than to skip it with Start. He gets Rush. Why on earth would he get that? He missed the Skill Cube somehow. The Dullahan fight was really quick, quicker than using Holy Claymore. Doesn't change the fact that he should have it by now. After the boss, there's another lengthy detour for an item. Instead of getting that Axe, he should be buying either a Battle Axe or a Katar later on. After getting the Push Cube, he should be using a Magical Ticket. Instead he has to use the warp room. He goes the wrong way for a second after warping to the CoH entrance, that's pretty sad.

-Nation of Fools-
He could've had his partner out before entering the portrait so that he could partner jump right away. The first swinging blade room is pretty ugly. He equips a bunch of stuff to boost his defense, which is rendered useless by infinite potions. He detoured quite a bit for these too, which really makes it hurt. At 17:27 his top screen wigs out a bit. Why did that happen? The first time he pauses in the Legion fight, his time is 16:42. He shouldn't be fighting Legion at all. Use a Magical Ticket after collecting the Cog to skip the fight entirely. I saved after warping out of the fight with a time of 16:26. He loses a lot of time from this.

-Tower of Death-
Holy Claymore is much better on Stella than Shuriken. First time he pauses during the fight his time is 18:34. Last time he pauses, he's at 18:51. I save after the fight, running to and activating the Forest of Doom warp with a time of 18:55. To show how old parts of his route seem, he gets cursed off the Marionette above Forest of Doom. He then goes to Eric and does a bunch of unnecessary quests.

-Forest of Doom-
Nothing to complain about in the stage. Everything's cool. The Dagon fight was nice, but again, Holy Claymore might be better. It's after the fight that makes me suspicious. When jumping up the water to get the orb, I remember there being more lag. Either he spaced himself out correctly, or the emulator he's using cuts the lag out.

-Getting Sanctuary and Fighting Death-
He takes a gigantic detour to the bottom warp point of Sandy Grave after getting Sanctuary. When he gets to the room outside Death's room, his time is 28:10. So he's really far off my time now. The correct procedure is to use a Magical Ticket after collecting Toad Morph, and use another after getting Sanctuary. Doing this, I saved at the room next to Death with a time of 26:00. And I saved before fighting the Sisters at 27:35. His Death fight is okay, but Spirit of Light is probably not the best move to use. Will INT Up really be necessary? Maybe.

-The Top Floor-
At 32:32, there's another weird video glitch, except it's on the bottom screen this time. I don't agree with the route he takes. He went up and used Rush to get past the Final Guard. I think going straight is better. He equips Sanctuary at 30:07 game time. Again, I was at that point at 27:35.

-Dark Academy-
In our routes we go to Forgotten City first and get Griffon Wing. It renders Owl Morph obsolete, and it makes the long ceilingless rooms easy to cross. The only advantage to the way he does it is he has Mercury Boots for Forgotten City. Does it really make that much of a difference? He wastes a lot of time by flying as an owl over an Old Axe Armor. Just kill the son of a bitch. He doesn't use Dark Rift to get rid of The Creature's bullets, so he's not attacking him enough. It was a pretty quick fight, though.

-Forgotten City-
He pauses before the Mummy with a time of 37:00. I stopped my run at the same time on the clock, but I had already completed both Dark Academy and Forgotten City, and was partway through Burnt Paradise. Mummy fight was okay. I have a feeling Dart BDS is quicker, though.

-Burnt Paradise-
He takes the left route, which is useless if you're not getting a Hercules Ring and/or Berserker Armor. A couple rooms before the left save point, his time read 38:25, so he's behind where I stopped by about ~1:30-2:00. Medusa fight was okay, but again, he wasn't hitting her often enough. Holy Claymore would've fixed that.

-13th Street-
I can't really complain about anything here. Maybe the boss fight, cause I don't know if Shuriken are better than Darts.

-Final Bosses-
43:43 is his time before starting the Brauner fight. The Brauner fight feels a bit slow. Can't say for sure if it's better or worse than with Holy Claymore. During the Death/Drac fight, the sound effects for Dark Inferno sounded fuzzy. Why is that? He kills Death a little after 46 minutes. The fight felt kinda slow again, but I don't know. When he starts True Drac, it's 46:22. The last time he pauses, he's at 47:47.

His final time is 48:14. I'm surprised it got that low cause the strategies used are at times very questionable, and at other times archaic. This is a world record time, but it can go even lower with the proper route. It's not like these routes came out yesterday, they've been in the works for a while. The language barrier has something to do with it, I'm sure.

I am rejecting this run because of suboptimal strategies and not using legal glitches. There's also suspicion of emulating or hardware modification, which would disqualify this run if the suspicions are correct.


Quote:
Well, [verifier's name redacted] pretty much nailed it on the head. There are a couple of additional places that stuck out to me:

Rush vs. "The Spinning Art" and "The Martial Art"
Using Rush to get by a few Final guards (and a minotaur), fine (route questionability aside). But couldn't he have just used the spinning art and damage boosted by them? Getting either Rush or the spinning art alone wouldn't raise too many alarms for me, but both? Really? And did he ever use either of the "Art"s besides doing the quests?

The Blue cape
At first this seemed totally unnecessary, but those 3 INT probably saved a couple of shuriken throws in the final few bosses. However, if he had used the infinite money glitch, he could have picked up some Holy Mantles (or hell, some Paludamentums what with the epic shop points he'd have) for the same purpose (only better), only without the really ugly room (30:33 - 30:50).

Shurikens vs. Darts
I might actually side with the runner on this one. Since shurikens travel in an arc instead of straight forward, they're damn handy for clearing a path ahead of you really quickly (like, say, in the underground path in Forest of Doom). The MP cost tradeoff (20 vs 3) was probably a really hard decision to make, and the amount of time the runner spent getting permanent MP increases isn't exactly small.

Magical Tickets (or the lack thereof)
Yeah, this cost the runner far too much time. Damn.

Unnecessary equipping
There was quite a bit of equipment changing. In a run this well executed, the only damage we should see is from damage boosting or clear time-savers, and your potions should take care of that. Getting and equipping armor just to increase DEF and MND is a waste.

I'm torn, because this was such an impressively executed run (perhaps not so in planning), but some decisions (not using allowed glitches) and the many-times-aforementioned suspicion of capture method make this run a reject from me. ):


Quote:
the other verifiers pretty much said what has to be said about the run's sub-optimal routes and planning, but i just have to say: no Magical Tickets? No infinite potion glitch? That's a reject for me right there. Castlevania runs are always better with legal glitches. Also, the fact that this sort of direct capture is only possible through emulation or opening up the DS to connect extra hardware is already deemed prohibited for SDA runs.


Quote:
Sorry for taking so long to respond, was messing about with the game while/after watching this.

Audio/Video: Seems to be some controversy on this, I'm inclined to believe the runner, maybe just because it'd be nice to have better quality DS videos. I guess if nothing else, we could just ask him to make a cell phone video or picture of him playing/recording? I don't think that'd be too huge of a deal.

Anyway, audio's great, but japanese. Video looks great, but the framerate is inconsistent.

Cheating:

Gameplay: This guy is really good at the game, I was really hoping that his route wouldn't be too ridiculous so that I could pass it just on execution. But, after watching the route get weirder and weirder and paying attention to how he does various tricks, I think both parts need to have some changes. I just want to make it clear that even though a lot of my comments are focusing on the errors, it's just because this runner could probably fix all of them easily.

Oh, and to respond to the verifier-guy that was saying something was weird about attacking the pillars, there isn't. I don't know if it's like shield dashing, but you can switch when you hit something, and since he took away Jonathan's whip, both characters hit instantly, so it's just timing the switches to be optimal and get the float. I was able to do it the same as the runner after a few minutes.

I don't think any of the route changes will prove any challenge to this guy, so I hope it's not too much trouble to churn out something with the strats everyone's suggesting. Biggest thing, obviously, is pretty near the start, get cursed by Succubus, Infinite Money glitch to get stuff, and then stop picking up everything lying around on the ground. It's a nice idea to do a no-quest glitch run, but it shouldn't be a separate category, so it's just a very inferior restriction.

Moving on, I'll try not to harp on the route, just be aware that there's a lot of picking up random things to sell, but I want to focus on the technical things he can improve on, and I don't know the correct route as well as the other verifiers.

The caution that doesn't pay off when running to the first painting is a little disappointing. The runner may not be aware of the potion glitch (done by tapping the far of the first line of items and then mashing A), but that stretch was just silly. He should have just taken the first Larva's hit. In the next room, he avoids running into an archer, then stalls to let an arrow pass before running into the next archer, which seemed intentional. Then he gets owned by the final archer when he could have clearly jumped over. I like this part; after the runner gets the double jump, he goes out of his way to get some pair of leggings. To continue, you have to go down two floors using breakable blocks, on the second floor, there's an addition block that can be broken by hitting it. The runner attempts to fall through the first then hit the other block with shurikens and fall through that. He fails, but it was really funny to see such an advanced/difficult trick on a section that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Like the other verifier, I was able to beat the runner's time to the shortcut, and I'd say basically all of the time saved came from not picking up stuff and doing the partner jumping in a better way. I found it interesting that in the fight against Astarte, he was using shorthopped attacks, but stops using them in later fights inexplicably. I really hope the runner is open to a quest glitch run, all of this picking up stuff is ridiculous.

Moving on though, I really like the Kaiser Knuckles for running through the levels, since Holy Claymore is too slow, I wonder if Serris would allow it in a route >_>

Whatever the second painting is goes pretty smoothly in my opinion, up until after the boss. But lol was that a dual crush? Also gets robbed of a skill cube that he clearly kicked through, and has to go back to get it. But yeah, boss gets raped, and the level should end after running straight to some random skill cube.

Nation of Fools follows the previous pattern. Great gameplay except a few spots, but totally invalidated by the fact that he's not using the quest glitch. That sentence probably sums up the whole thing, so I think I'm just going to stop typing and enjoy watching this again.

Last thing to mention is that the runner should look into learning the Death Skip.

Verdict: Reject. The runner is hella amazing, but the category restriction he went with is pointless and loses time constantly. The other major detractor is that he probably didn't know about the potion glitch, which causes him to be cautious in a lot of sections (which generally doesn't pay off).

Hope he adds in those things and redoes the run in the near future.


Decision: Reject

Reason: Amazing execution, but bad route planning and electing not to use the quest glitch makes the run longer than it should be.

The run will be available to download for a month. PM me if you want the link.
Thread title:  
Fucking Weeaboo
Can somebody translate that blog posting to English?  It may help other DS runners who want to do that hardware hack.
Master-88
IIRC quest glitch doesn,t work on PAL version.

If runner haved PAL version he can,t used that glitch.

This run might are super fast sub 50 minutes. I never was believe sub 50 is even possible. I am hearing someone are did sub hour run already.
DS Dictator
Quote:
Can somebody translate that blog posting to English?  It may help other DS runners who want to do that hardware hack.


THIS.
Google Translator
Quote from MASTER-88:
IIRC quest glitch doesn,t work on PAL version.

If runner haved PAL version he can,t used that glitch.

This run might are super fast sub 50 minutes. I never was believe sub 50 is even possible. I am hearing someone are did sub hour run already.


http://persona.world.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=144&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=d61ef9dac5a77f8e43272dbd6f65655f&start=150

Quote from MASTER-88:
Much is happen since my last visit. Congrats Serris your amazing WR run. 49 minutes sounds like very good. I remember old WR in last year was 1.08 and this as well sounds good. My own speedrun was 1h 13 but i never trying improve that.


>_>
Master-88
Damn i remember wrong. I just remember you got 59 minutes. It was 49 minutes im sorry with my bad memory i´ll going old.:-\

This run was still faster than 49 minutes. I surprised this was rejected. I watched it and its look really damn fast and also route look solid, but its might faster a today. Im not know because i never are see any better videos.

I have to say runner did really solid run and i enjoy every seconds, especially run was played without any dying. I´ll hope runner didn´t give up. Hope he used better route next time and making run look fast like this.thumbsup
Willing to teach you the impossible
I finished the run not to long ago, I have yet to read why it was rejected yet, so I might mention what has already been said. I am no Castlevania player, but I saw a HUGE time waister in this run. The runner did not use speed increasing abilities for faster travel. I don't know about the slide because of the recovery time, but the downward kick from the air is deff faster means of travel. The runner does it from time to time and you can clearly see that it is a faster horizontal movement than walking. Being how long this run is, I can see much time being taken off just by spamming this EVERYWHERE it can be done. Not trying to bash the run or runner at all, just something to keep in mind if they continue with this run.
Edit history:
Aftermath: 2010-11-19 12:48:55 pm
Quits halfway
Yeah, spamming shorter jumpkicks is a lot speedier than how he was doing it. For this game in particular though, there's an even faster/earlier form of fast movement. You do a slidekick, switch characters, and repeat ad nauseum.  Switching characters cuts the regular recovery time, and you can change like 4 times a second. From doing it myself, there's some dickish stuff about it, but you come out ahead of both regular running and the jumpkick the majority of the time. Ideally, a runner would switch between jumpkicking and sliding based on the room's layout.

Edit: wording