Grand Theft Auto 4 - May 21st, 2010

2010-05-21 09:41:18 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

PC version run by 'SCM'

Verifier Responses

Now there was a previous verification that suffered a slight bit of contention, but I'll post it for posterity.

Quote from mikwuyma:

Quote:

Verifying run "Grand Theft Auto 4".

===============
Verdict: ACCEPT
===============

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Cheating: no.

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Timing: in-game-timer. [4:40:02]

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Quality (capture):
i've used link (the verification link) also used ( for problem parts
"gta4-v-35.avi" - cannot play this part, that part was verified through youtube link ( "Grand Theft Auto 4 Speedrun (4:40:02) Part 15" starting 4:20 ending 9:00)
"gta4-v-34.avi" - audio level here is noticably lower comparing to other parts (also noticed within corresponding youtube video) ( 2:30)
"gta4-v-54.avi - at 2:56 there are several seconds of encoding bugs (health-ammo gauge) // not noticed in corresponding youtube ( "Grand Theft Auto 4 Speedrun (4:40:02) Part 27" 2:51)
hope there will be HQ-version.

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Quality (gameplay):
1. Planning: Whole run is very well planned.
1.1 Taxis are used to save time needed for driving.
1.2 Short-cuts are used heavily while driving (when taxis cannot be used).
1.3 Short-cuts/time-savers for mission-start or mission-finish are used.
1.4 Cut-scenes are skipped (not all, some scenes cannot be skipped)
1.5 Phone conversations are skipped.
1.6 "Vehicle Density" is manipulated (decreased before driving parts, increased before looking-for-taxi parts)
1.7 Missions not-needed for finishing the game are not played through.
1.8 During "Loose your wanted level" parts vehicle is moving towards final destination (if taxi cannot be used afterwards)
1.9 "Revenge" branch is chosen
2. Execution/playing: Excellent
2.1 Luck manipulation is used while looking-for-taxi
2.2 Driving/riding/flying is fast. Nice turns, quick landings, max speed.
2.3 Running and sprinting.
2.4 A lot of head-shots while shooting.
2.5 Shooting while moving or while driving.

Of course there are some imperfections during the run, which cause seconds or sometimes fractions of a second. These are totally acceptable taking into account whole run's time. (No significant time losses).

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Consistency:
Since the run is multi-segment one there were things-to-check between saves.
1. Save slot. After-save's load should go from same slot. Load which takes place after auto-save should go from auto-save slot.
2. Load after auto-save. Nico should apper in save-house which is closest to auto-save place.
3. Nico should wear the same clothes.
4. Money amount.
5. Health/Armor. Gauges with no numerical representation are used in game.
6. Weapons/Ammo. Weapons are checked, ammo is checked where possible.

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Questions:
1. Game patch/version ? (1.0.4.0 ?)
2. part06: "CRIME AND PUNISHMENT": Is first van always wrong one?
3. Is segment amount correct? ( part22 = auto-save takes place, but no load, part25 = 3 saves in-a-row )

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Biggest time loss: part37: "THREE LEAF CLOVER": looking for taxi after loosing wanted level.

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Surely it would be nice to hear comments from runner, if he decides to do audio commentary.

Quote:

GTA 4 Verification

There is a lot to be said so I'll actually structure my comments with subtitles and try to be succinct rather than rambling like I normally do.

Timer Issues

There is a major problem that I think will make it impossible for SDA to accept this run, so I'll bring it up first and in detail. The runner clearly intended the in-game timer to be used. However, the in-game timer partly times loading screens.

I did some tests, consisting of checking the in-game timer just before and after a taxi ride skip and comparing with timing stuff with a stopwatch. In a typical taxi ride on my system, there's some 10-20 seconds (real time) of loading screens, of which some 3-10 seconds is included on the in-game timer, with more time passing on the in-game timer the longer the loading screen is. In other words, while the timer does not time entire loading screens, it times a significant amount of them and that amount depends on loading screen length. Presumably it will be less on faster computers, too.

Also, this run is optimised for the in-game timer, not for real time, so timing this run manually would mean it would be horribly suboptimal due to all the unnecessary time spent in menus. As such, I think our only option is to reject. All the same, I will give a full review of the gameplay and possible improvements in the hope that the runner will do another run.

Summary of actual run quality

Firstly, the fact that GTA4 has autosaves and taxi warps makes it a very different game for speedrunning to its predecessors. Before, segments were long and route planning revolved around finishing missions near the start of other missions. Now, the optimal strategy once taxis are available is to have only one or two missions per segment to allow optimal taxi manipulation. The runner does this.

Short segment length notwithstanding, execution in this run is still damn impressive. Even at its worst it is decent; at its best, in some of the shooting missions, it's insane. But as happens frutratingly often, the run is let down by a significant handful of major planning errors, some of them really basic ones that could've been avoided just by doing basic testing or flicking through the walkthrough at www.gta4.net, and almost all of them things that wouldn't have happened if the runner had simply read the threads at SDA before doing the run. In all fairness there's a few clever tricks the runner came up with himself, though.

I'll give details of all the improvements I've found below for the runner (or anyone else) to use if he does a rerun. The only major issues I haven't really tested are which missions are necessary (a lot of work to test and I think I'll just trust the runner hasn't screwed up here) and how to minimise the time wasted waiting for plot-advancing phone calls, which eats huge amounts of time in the final segments. I suspect, though I have not tested, that rather than devoting multiple segments to phone calls at the end of the run, it would have saved a minute or so if the runner had spread them out earlier in the run at the beginning of segments before taking missions. Then some of the time spent getting into taxis and travelling to mission markers would overlap with time spent waiting for phone calls, saving time over waiting for them with nothing else to do.

Mistakes

Really big basic mistakes that together I think warrant rejection are underlined.

1) I found a neat trick right after the first mission (the only trick I found that hadn't
already been pointed out months ago on the forum, I later discovered). If you jack a car before finishing The Cousins Bellick and park it outside the hideout, then later leave the hideout by entering the car instead of simply running out of the door, you'll skip the 15-second tutorial about hot dogs entirely for a net saving of a few seconds.

2) The runner doesn't use the trick, posted on the SDA forums, that lets you do First Date before Bleed Out (without having to pick Roman up from the hospital). He also needlessly triggers the cutscene with Darden's thugs beating up Roman instead of just shooting them from the car.

3) The runner should've just done Easy Fare in segment 2, then had a resaving segment to advance time to get the Vlad mission that unlocks taxis so he could use them for Jamaican Heat and Concrete Jungle, which would save several tens of seconds.

4) On Hung Out To Dry, the van can be stopped earlier by shooting out one of its front tyres as it goes into the first turn to spin it.

5) On clean getaway, the runner should've cleaned the car at the pay 'n' spray next to the garage he has to deliver it to, instead of at the car wash. This was a pointless 30 second detour.

6) In Uncle Vlad, the runner chases Vlad out of the back door and runs around the building to get back to his car instead of simply turning around and going out the front door instead, which is silly but only costs 5 seconds or so.

7) Do You Have Protection is absolutely riddled with mistakes. Firstly, the runner should've manually called Roman to unlock the mission, instead of waiting for his call. Secondly, the runner drives huge distances instead of using a taxi; my only explanation for this is that he hadn't realised yet that you can use taxis when someone is following you, which is a pretty huge and basic mistake. Thirdly, the runner should've run behind the guys you have to shoot in the leg and shot the guy who has to give money to Dimitri towards Dimitri instead of away from him to save a second or two. Fourthly, as soon as the money is handed over, the runner should've skipped the rest of the lengthy dialogue by killing the remaining porn guys and leaving, which prompts Dimitri to say 'This is a mess. Let's get out of here.' and run out of the building after you, instead of walking out slowly. Together these mistakes add up to almost 2 minutes wasted on a single mission.

8) On Logging On, the runner could've saved a second by shooting to scare the receptionist BEFORE talking to her to avoid a second of dialogue.

9) The runner squanders some 15-20 seconds or so on Escuela Of The Streets by, again, driving instead of using a taxi when he has a companion. (After this mission, the runner always correctly uses taxis whenever possible.)

10) The autosave at the end of Luck Of The Irish is weird in that, unlike every other mission, it happens after the post-mission phone call instead of when the mission actually ends. However, if you jump over the edge of the balcony so you're falling when the mission ends and hence can't immediately make the call, the call is postponed and the save happens immediately, saving 4 seconds.

11) The runner fails to skip several cutscenes on Easy As Can Be and Call And Collect, probably because he didn't realise they were skippable (they need to be skipped with enter instead of spacebar). This costs a minute. (Cutscenes that need to be skipped with enter later in the run are.)

12) The runner shoots Goldberg and leaves through the front entrance on Final Interview, meaning he has to deal with a shootout and escape from police. It is about a minute faster to silently knife Goldberg and leave through the window. This solution to the mission was posted about on the forum and can be found in any walkthrough.

13) On Late Checkout, it would've been a good 10 seconds quicker to leave the roof via the outside elevator instead of the inside one. Even more time could almost certainly have been saved by using one of the multiple 'damageless falling' tricks posted on YouTube or on the forum to jump off the roof without dying.

14) Killing Derrick in Blood Brothers is a mistake. As any walkthrough or basic testing could tell you, it means you have to drive to a much more distant cemetery on Undertaker, and costs 40 seconds.

15) There's 5-10 seconds to be saved on Dining Out by using a rocket to kill the manager instead of running into the office and back again.

16) Buoys Ahoy can be completed over 45 seconds earlier without adding any difficulty by simply shooting everyone on the boat instead of shooting the boat until it eventually explodes. I imagine a full 60 seconds would be savable by blowing up the boat with a rocket at the very start of the level, but rocket trajectories are so random that would take some luck and I wasn't able to pull it off in testing.

After all that criticism, I feel the need to point out a couple of moments that especially impressed me (not the only ones, just a couple that spring to mind).

1) Luck-manipulating a high-suspension vehicle on Waste Not Wants Knots in order to take an otherwise untravesible route was a great idea that could easily have been missed.

2) The shooting on Entourage was some of the fastest aiming at heads I've ever seen.

Conclusion

I'm going to have to reject this. Firstly, the in-game timer can't be used because it times a significant portion of the loading screens, which means the run would have to be timed manually, which means that all the time spent on the map screen (much of it unnecessary, or spent having a quick breather after placing a waypoint before going back to the game) would end up costing several minutes.

Even if that issue didn't exist, I would reject for run quality. While the execution is impressive throughout and there are a handful of nice tricks in there, there are just too many basic mistakes, together costing well over 5 minutes, resulting from a lack of simple knowledge that could've been easily picked up on the forum, through walkthroughs, or through the most simple testing. On top of that, there are other, less obvious or less serious mistakes costing even more time – and there's bound to be others I've missed not included in my list above.

All that said, I'll emphasise once again that the execution is tight and the runner is clearly very skilled, it's just that this run was a bit premature and he dove into it without doing anywhere near enough testing and without reading the stuff that had already been posted on SDA and elsewhere that would've helped him shave many minutes off his time. I really hope he isn't discouraged and that he'll do another run improving all the mistakes we're able to find and submit it.

The game was re-verified because of all of the controversy. The following are the new responses.

Quote:

I'll say "yay" to this.

My opinion on this whole issue? I'm not going to get into a huge debate - I'll leave that to you guys and simply listen to the music from the Mortal Kombat movie while I read the thread - but if we obsess over tricks, a run will never get done. Look at the MGS series. They keep finding new tricks all the time, but the end result of people wanting to publish the perfect run on the first try results in a run that never ends up getting done.

As the second verifier in the first thread mentioned, the run is impressive for what it is. There are a few annoyances in the form of the runner seemingly learning as he goes along (one example is him using manual waypoints to reach destinations via taxis early on), but hey, that's been seen in runs that have been accepted before, right? A few mistakes are indeed out and about, but this is SDA. There will always be mistakes. Wink

Really, you guys just need to open your mind a little. Smiley

The run isn't terrible, and it's a good start for what will hopefully be many more runs for this great game. If not that, then think of it this way. One of the unmentioned points of SDA is to post runs that are impressive. And while I can't speak for everyone, to me, this run was indeed impressive. None of the mistakes that are made are ugly (which is the difference between acceptable mistakes and reject-worthy mistakes), and the average viewer (also known as the target audience) probably won't notice a majority of them like missing trick X. A good chunk of the reported "mistakes" seem to be simply not knowing trick X. And besides, there are a respectable amount of tricks in it anyway, so it's not like it does it straight all the way through.

That being said, the only really evident problem I remember that everyone will notice was taking too long to find a cab at the start of one of the segments - I think it was 56 or 53, but don't quote me on that. Doesn't waste too much time, however. And I'd imagine some time could be saved by putting a few missions that are relatively close together in segments together, rather than just using the auto-save to bridge between them all. Also, all the phone call segments were kind of boring, but that's an issue for another day. Tongue

The pros far outweigh the cons in this case, however, and there even was a respectable amount of random stuff that didn't seem planned, but just seemed to work (such as in Mr. and Mrs. Bellic, a passenger getting out of the stolen car allowed Kate to get in a second quicker).

All the tricks that were missed and problems can be worried about in a later version of the run. As long as the average viewer doesn't see too much wrong with a run, it should be accepted IMO. That being said, once we get this out of the way, regardless of whether the final decision is to accept or reject, it may be reason to call for rule reform, in order to clarify this and prevent ugly incidents like this from ever happening again. Does every single solitary trick known at the time need to be used - possibly including those that are discovered after the run is made but before it is verified (this run seems to have been done in late 2009) - or can some leeway be given, so long as the execution of the run is good? If something in the whole process seems problemistic, as was the case with death abuse, we discuss it and figure out what to do.

It is a tough call, really, but I say, give it the pass for the time being. The opposition is valid, sure, but it's better to pass it and deal with the run later should we decide that tricks like that are not allowed to be missed, than to fail it and have it turn out that it should've been accepted. Worst case: we put the decision on hold until that discussion finishes.

Oh, and one last thing: more people should test the in-game timer thing. I say that only because it takes around 3-8 seconds to load taxi rides on this run, which is the around same amount the original second verifier reported gets recorded. Maybe it's a problem with slow PCs? Just a little hunch I had. I'm a player of the PS3 version, so I can't verify it for the PC. If it turns out it's still doesn't work...well, it's still fast enough. Smiley

Quote:

Grand Theft Auto 4 verification:

A/V - Looks good.
Cheating - None detected

Overall, I was very impressed with this run. I'm no speedrunner extraordinaire by a longshot when it comes to GTA 4, but as someone casually familiar with the game I think this is a good run. The execution throughout the entire run was top-notch and it's clear that the runner has exceptional skill when it comes to this game. The runner would always get to mission markers as quickly as possible, most of the time by using taxis to instantly warp to the destination. Other times the runner would arrive just because the marker appears, be it triggered via phone call or message or what have you. Phone calls were also spread out pretty well throughout the run, usually only spending a few seconds waiting next to a marker for the call to come which doesn't take much time at all. There were also numerous places where the runner creates some very unique, quick, and entertaining routes during the few places they actually have to drive. It's hard for me to find a lot of bad things to say about it really.

One of the best aspects about this run was that the shooting was excellent throughout. The runner would always quickly pick off targets one-by-one (or in some cases, all at once with the rocket launcher) and would almost immediately move on to the next one. Missions where I would always have to take cover and meticulously choose my targets have been shortened by standing out in the open and quickly taking down all opposition. The runner displayed excellent skill in that regard, it's a major part of why it's so impressive.

Another good aspect was that the driving whenever necessary was always solid. After Bull In A China Shop the runner uses taxis pretty efficiently, though I feel there may have been a few times early on where it would have been more beneficial to take a taxi than to drive manually. When the runner did drive, it was very solid. It's easy to run into problems with random cars getting in your way but this was minimized to only a few occurrences. The runner always knew the best route to get there (while sometimes inventing his own as I already mentioned) and did it as quickly as possible. It's also worth nothing that the runner did a great job on the car chases. Since for a lot of them you can't take the vehicle out before its predetermined stopping point the runner gets to that point as quickly as possible in order to make the target vehicle drive at ridiculous speeds along its less-than-optimal path.

One thing that does bring the run down a little bit though, as has already been mentioned, is that the run seems to be optimized using the in-game timer. As previously noted it shouldn't be considered accurate to use for SDA's timing. Because of that he spends a little too much time in the menu screens which, while not adding to the game timer, would add to SDA's timing. That can make watching it a little bit dicey, as the average viewer might ask themselves "Why is he wasting so much time here?" That being said however, the menu screens are really only a few seconds for each occurrence. While you could argue the run would be easily improvable by just cutting that out, I think that fact alone doesn't detract from how good this run is overall.

Another issue is there are a few planning mistakes. Keep in mind here that I'm not an expert at speedrunning this game. My familiarity comes from having beaten it casually multiple times and just playing around on my own. Also keep in mind that I haven't read through the comments entirely from the first verification, and as such what I'm listing is just what I noticed. As I've already mentioned it would've been faster in a few cases early on to hail a cab. And when you have to choose between killing Francis or Derrick, the choice should have been Francis. I believe the cemetery you have to drive him to later in the game is quite a lot closer than Derrick's. I also noticed a couple of smaller things. When chasing Vlad in Uncle Vlad out of the bar, it would've been better to just turn around and run out the front door instead of following him all the way around the building. When saving Roman from Dardan and his crew I believe you can just shoot them from the car. All of that being said though, those were literally all the mistakes that I could pick up on throughout the entire 4.5 hour run.

Now for the conclusion. It's no secret that this run and the initial verification were controversial, to say the least. When I'm verifying this run, I'm basically treating this as if the whole debate had never happened. I'm looking only at the run sent to me and what my impressions were of it based on what I could see. And what I could see, is that I was honestly very impressed with the run. In my own personal opinion, this run would be good for SDA to host. Yes, the run has some time wasted in menu screens. Yes, there were a few missions that could've been done quicker. At the same time however... Yes, the execution was brilliant throughout the entire run. Yes, there were a lot of missions that were incredibly fast (even ones with mistakes were still pretty fast). Yes, there were times when I had to step back and just say "Wow, that was really cool." When I weigh all of these factors, I just can't find the justification to say that this run would not benefit SDA in any way. Execution is solid throughout, there are a lot of neat tricks, and this is MUCH faster than your average playthrough. Overall, it's good. That's enough for me.

My verdict: Accept

Quote:

Grand Theft Auto 4 Re-Verification

Verdict: Accepted

Reasons:
No cheating as far as I can notice with my knowledge.
Quality of video is reasonable okay (enough for the viewer to notice any hypothetical cheating attempts or attempts to hide tricks or glitches that is not known by an ordinary player). Although some clips does not play back very well, I am guessing this is only a encoding/muxing glitch that can be fixed.
Game play is well above average; only an experienced speed runner of this game would notice any mistakes, without analyzing the individual missions in more detail than required by an ordinary play through. Also with today’s knowledge these small mistakes only add up to one or two percent of the total time. It would be different if only a single mistake by itself would add up to the same time amount of time.
Timing is controversial, although not a specific problem to this run but a problem for all future runs if previously pointed out errors in the timing algorithm is correct.

Explanation:

I will start by stating my own experience in playing this game and analyzing speedruns in general; I have completed the game two times before (once myself on a PC and once with a friend on the Xbox360), although I have never tried to speedrun the game or individual missions for that matter. I have been a long time fan of speedruns and have watched most of the runs on this site that have the same type of game play (including the 6 hour commentated run of GTA:SA).

Quality:

The quality of the video is quite poor for such a new and high end game. Although this could be justified by the high demand for computing power for the game itself, which means that the video recording software has to maintain a low footprint in order for the game to be playable (in the future with more powerful computers a better quality would probably be expected). However since the quality is enough in order for me to observe every move the player makes and also for me to exclude cheating, I see no point in rejecting the run due to quality issues although I would have liked to see a higher resolution video.

Timing:

The most important aspect that could result in a rejection is that the run is optimized for the use of the in game timer. And it has been previously pointed out that that timer actually counts some of the loading times, which could in fact differ depending on the speed of the computer used. Although this is not a problem specific to this run in particular, since it would be present in any speedrun of this game. This leads me to say that it is not a reason for rejection for this run, although an important problem to solve for any speedrun for this game. But I consider myself to have limited knowledge of the timing problems in this game, since I have not been able to make reliable tests of the timer myself.

Gameplay:

From my point of view the run is very well planned and executed, if it wasn't for a few previously mentioned mistakes, I would never have noticed any mistakes to speak of and especially that would make me consider a rejection. And even with the knowledge of these mistakes I do not think they are reasons for rejection. However since they were the reason for this re-verification, I will try and justify why I believe this run is good enough for an acceptance. I will try and justify the mistakes that previously have been pointed out as rejection worthy.

Mistakes previously pointed out:

Most of the mistakes pointed out have been related to bad path choices or suboptimal decisions during missions. In my point of view I cannot see that these mistakes can be reasons for rejection. I consider this is a relatively new game and as a first speedrun, the runner has not had any previous official runs for use as reference. And in my opinion, one cannot demand from the runner, to search for solutions on the internet/literature for all the optimal paths and decisions in a game. A runner must be able to speedrun a game with good intentions and without the ability to use internet (for example a person who cannot read English and can therefore not participate in any of the available discussions about the game in question) and get the run accepted anyway.

I also consider that the previously estimated time loss from the mistakes can have been slightly overestimated in some cases (in this case 2 minutes). For example the mission "Do You Have Protection" the player have to go to 3 different locations (first retrieve an item and shoot some persons, second to pick up a weapon, third to drop of a person):

From my timing and by excluding dialog that is not possible to skip, the mission took slightly more than 3 minutes. With my experience I don't think that by taking taxi instead of driving and shooting guys in a different manner could have reduced the time of the mission to only slightly more than one minute. Also the previous verifier stated that the player should have called Roman instead of waiting for the call, although the call comes exactly at the time as the player arrives at the start of the mission (no time lost as I can understand?).

Although some of the pointed out mistakes such as not skipping cut scenes is more serious. But I think that even these mistakes can be justified by the fact that the player had to use a specific keyboard key to skip them, which also is different from other cut scenes. I would almost go as far as classify this as a glitch in the game as it is not stated in any official manual which button you have to press in that particular mission.

Decision: Accept

Reason: This might not be a perfect run, but it's still a very good run, and definitely a good start for the site.

Thread title:

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

PC version run by 'SCM'

[b]Verifier Responses[/b]

Now there was a previous verification that suffered a slight bit of contention, but I'll post it for posterity.

[quote="mikwuyma"]
[quote]Verifying run "Grand Theft Auto 4".

===============
Verdict: ACCEPT
===============

---
Cheating: no.

---
Timing: in-game-timer. [4:40:02]

---
Quality (capture):
i've used link (the verification link) also used (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0C320D2AF8634A36) for problem parts
"gta4-v-35.avi" - cannot play this part, that part was verified through youtube link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4rRUYExgXQ "Grand Theft Auto 4 Speedrun (4:40:02) Part 15" starting 4:20 ending 9:00)
"gta4-v-34.avi" - audio level here is noticably lower comparing to other parts (also noticed within corresponding youtube video) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4rRUYExgXQ 2:30)
"gta4-v-54.avi - at 2:56 there are several seconds of encoding bugs (health-ammo gauge) // not noticed in corresponding youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBf3TFtJHBU "Grand Theft Auto 4 Speedrun (4:40:02) Part 27" 2:51)
hope there will be HQ-version.

---
Quality (gameplay):
1. Planning: Whole run is very well planned.
1.1 Taxis are used to save time needed for driving.
1.2 Short-cuts are used heavily while driving (when taxis cannot be used).
1.3 Short-cuts/time-savers for mission-start or mission-finish are used.
1.4 Cut-scenes are skipped (not all, some scenes cannot be skipped)
1.5 Phone conversations are skipped.
1.6 "Vehicle Density" is manipulated (decreased before driving parts, increased before looking-for-taxi parts)
1.7 Missions not-needed for finishing the game are not played through.
1.8 During "Loose your wanted level" parts vehicle is moving towards final destination (if taxi cannot be used afterwards)
1.9 "Revenge" branch is chosen
2. Execution/playing: Excellent
2.1 Luck manipulation is used while looking-for-taxi
2.2 Driving/riding/flying is fast. Nice turns, quick landings, max speed.
2.3 Running and sprinting.
2.4 A lot of head-shots while shooting.
2.5 Shooting while moving or while driving.

Of course there are some imperfections during the run, which cause seconds or sometimes fractions of a second. These are totally acceptable taking into account whole run's time. (No significant time losses).

---
Consistency:
Since the run is multi-segment one there were things-to-check between saves.
1. Save slot. After-save's load should go from same slot. Load which takes place after auto-save should go from auto-save slot.
2. Load after auto-save. Nico should apper in save-house which is closest to auto-save place.
3. Nico should wear the same clothes.
4. Money amount.
5. Health/Armor. Gauges with no numerical representation are used in game.
6. Weapons/Ammo. Weapons are checked, ammo is checked where possible.

---
Questions:
1. Game patch/version ? (1.0.4.0 ?)
2. part06: "CRIME AND PUNISHMENT": Is first van always wrong one?
3. Is segment amount correct? ( part22 = auto-save takes place, but no load,  part25 = 3 saves in-a-row )

---
Biggest time loss: part37: "THREE LEAF CLOVER": looking for taxi after loosing wanted level.

---
Surely it would be nice to hear comments from runner, if he decides to do audio commentary.[/quote]

[quote][b]GTA 4 Verification[/b]

There is a lot to be said so I'll actually structure my comments with subtitles and try to be succinct rather than rambling like I normally do.

[b]Timer Issues[/b]

There is a major problem that I think will make it impossible for SDA to accept this run, so I'll bring it up first and in detail. The runner clearly intended the in-game timer to be used. However, the in-game timer partly times loading screens.

I did some tests, consisting of checking the in-game timer just before and after a taxi ride skip and comparing with timing stuff with a stopwatch. In a typical taxi ride on my system, there's some 10-20 seconds (real time) of loading screens, of which some 3-10 seconds is included on the in-game timer, with more time passing on the in-game timer the longer the loading screen is. In other words, while the timer does not time entire loading screens, it times a significant amount of them and that amount depends on loading screen length. Presumably it will be less on faster computers, too.

Also, this run is optimised for the in-game timer, not for real time, so timing this run  manually would mean it would be horribly suboptimal due to all the unnecessary  time spent in menus. As such, I think our only option is to reject. All the same, I will give a full review of the gameplay and possible improvements in the hope that the runner will do another run.

[b]Summary of actual run quality[/b]

Firstly, the fact that GTA4 has autosaves and taxi warps makes it a very different game for speedrunning to its predecessors. Before, segments were long and route planning revolved around finishing missions near the start of other missions. Now, the optimal strategy once taxis are available is to have only one or two missions per segment to allow optimal taxi manipulation. The runner does this.

Short segment length notwithstanding, execution in this run is still damn impressive. Even at its worst it is decent; at its best, in some of the shooting missions, it's insane. But as happens frutratingly often, the run is let down by a significant handful of major planning errors, some of them really basic ones that could've been avoided just by doing basic testing or flicking through the walkthrough at www.gta4.net, and almost all of them things that wouldn't have happened if the runner had simply read the threads at SDA before doing the run. In all fairness there's a few clever tricks the runner came up with himself, though.

I'll give details of all the improvements I've found below for the runner (or anyone else) to use if he does a rerun. The only major issues I haven't really tested are which missions are necessary (a lot of work to test and I think I'll just trust the runner hasn't screwed up here) and how to minimise the time wasted waiting for plot-advancing phone calls, which eats huge amounts of time in the final segments. I suspect, though I have not tested, that rather than devoting multiple segments to phone calls at the end of the run, it would have saved a minute or so if the runner had spread them out earlier in the run at the beginning of segments before taking missions. Then some of the time spent getting into taxis and travelling to mission markers would overlap with time spent waiting for phone calls, saving time over waiting for them with nothing else to do.

[b]Mistakes[/b]

Really big basic mistakes that together I think warrant rejection are underlined.

1) I found a neat trick right after the first mission (the only trick I found that hadn't 
already been pointed out months ago on the forum, I later discovered). If you jack a car before finishing The Cousins Bellick and park it outside the hideout, then later leave the hideout by entering the car instead of simply running out of the door, you'll skip the 15-second tutorial about hot dogs entirely for a net saving of a few seconds.

2) The runner doesn't use the trick, posted on the SDA forums, that lets you do First Date before Bleed Out (without having to pick Roman up from the hospital). He also needlessly triggers the cutscene with Darden's thugs beating up Roman instead of just shooting them from the car.

3) The runner should've just done Easy Fare in segment 2, then had a resaving segment to advance time to get the Vlad mission that unlocks taxis so he could use them for Jamaican Heat and Concrete Jungle, which would save several tens of seconds.

4) On Hung Out To Dry, the van can be stopped earlier by shooting out one of its front tyres as it goes into the first turn to spin it.

[u]5) On clean getaway, the runner should've cleaned the car at the pay 'n' spray next to the garage he has to deliver it to, instead of at the car wash. This was a pointless 30 second detour.[/u]

6) In Uncle Vlad, the runner chases Vlad out of the back door and runs around the building to get back to his car instead of simply turning around and going out the front door instead, which is silly but only costs 5 seconds or so.

7) Do You Have Protection is absolutely riddled with mistakes. Firstly, the runner should've manually called Roman to unlock the mission, instead of waiting for his call. [u]Secondly, the runner drives huge distances instead of using a taxi; my only explanation for this is that he hadn't realised yet that you can use taxis when someone is following you, which is a pretty huge and basic mistake.[/u] Thirdly, the runner should've run behind the guys you have to shoot in the leg and shot the guy who has to give money to Dimitri towards Dimitri instead of away from him to save a second or two. [u]Fourthly, as soon as the money is handed over, the runner should've skipped the rest of the lengthy dialogue by killing the remaining porn guys and leaving, which prompts Dimitri to say 'This is a mess. Let's get out of here.' and run out of the building after you, instead of walking out slowly.[/u] [u]Together these mistakes add up to almost 2 minutes wasted on a single mission.[/u]

8) On Logging On, the runner could've saved a second by shooting to scare the receptionist BEFORE talking to her to avoid a second of dialogue.

[u]9) The runner squanders some 15-20 seconds or so on Escuela Of The Streets by, again, driving instead of using a taxi when he has a companion.[/u] (After this mission, the runner always correctly uses taxis whenever possible.)

10) The autosave at the end of Luck Of The Irish is weird in that, unlike every other mission, it happens after the post-mission phone call instead of when the mission actually ends. However, if you jump over the edge of the balcony so you're falling when the mission ends and hence can't immediately make the call, the call is postponed and the save happens immediately, saving 4 seconds.

[u]11) The runner fails to skip several cutscenes on Easy As Can Be and Call And Collect, probably because he didn't realise they were skippable (they need to be skipped with enter instead of spacebar). This costs a minute.[/u] (Cutscenes that need to be skipped with enter later in the run are.)

[u]12) The runner shoots Goldberg and leaves through the front entrance on Final Interview, meaning he has to deal with a shootout and escape from police. It is about a minute faster to silently knife Goldberg and leave through the window. This solution to the mission was posted about on the forum and can be found in any walkthrough.[/u]

13) On Late Checkout, it would've been a good 10 seconds quicker to leave the roof via the outside elevator instead of the inside one. Even more time could almost certainly have been saved by using one of the multiple 'damageless falling' tricks posted on YouTube or on the forum to jump off the roof without dying.

[u]14) Killing Derrick in Blood Brothers is a mistake. As any walkthrough or basic testing could tell you, it means you have to drive to a much more distant cemetery on Undertaker, and costs 40 seconds.[/u]

15) There's 5-10 seconds to be saved on Dining Out by using a rocket to kill the manager instead of running into the office and back again.

16) [u]Buoys Ahoy can be completed over 45 seconds earlier without adding any difficulty by simply shooting everyone on the boat instead of shooting the boat until it eventually explodes.[/u] I imagine a full 60 seconds would be savable by blowing up the boat with a rocket at the very start of the level, but rocket trajectories are so random that would take some luck and I wasn't able to pull it off in testing.

After all that criticism, I feel the need to point out a couple of moments that especially impressed me (not the only ones, just a couple that spring to mind).

1) Luck-manipulating a high-suspension vehicle on Waste Not Wants Knots in order to take an otherwise untravesible route was a great idea that could easily have been missed.

2) The shooting on Entourage was some of the fastest aiming at heads I've ever seen.

[b]Conclusion[/b]

I'm going to have to reject this. Firstly, the in-game timer can't be used because it times a significant portion of the loading screens, which means the run would have to be timed manually, which means that all the time spent on the map screen (much of it unnecessary, or spent having a quick breather after placing a waypoint before going back to the game) would end up costing several minutes.

Even if that issue didn't exist, I would reject for run quality. While the execution is impressive throughout and there are a handful of nice tricks in there, there are just too many basic mistakes, together costing well over 5 minutes, resulting from a lack of simple knowledge that could've been easily picked up on the forum, through walkthroughs, or through the most simple testing. On top of that, there are other, less obvious or less serious mistakes costing even more time – and there's bound to be others I've missed not included in my list above.

All that said, I'll emphasise once again that the execution is tight and the runner is clearly very skilled, it's just that this run was a bit premature and he dove into it without doing anywhere near enough testing and without reading the stuff that had already been posted on SDA and elsewhere that would've helped him shave many minutes off his time. I really hope he isn't discouraged and that he'll do another run improving all the mistakes we're able to find and submit it.[/quote][/quote]

The game was re-verified because of all of the controversy. The following are the new responses.

[quote]I'll say "yay" to this.

My opinion on this whole issue? I'm not going to get into a huge debate - I'll leave that to you guys and simply listen to the music from the Mortal Kombat movie while I read the thread - but if we obsess over tricks, a run will never get done. Look at the MGS series. They keep finding new tricks all the time, but the end result of people wanting to publish the perfect run on the first try results in a run that never ends up getting done.

As the second verifier in the first thread mentioned, the run is impressive for what it is. There are a few annoyances in the form of the runner seemingly learning as he goes along (one example is him using manual waypoints to reach destinations via taxis early on), but hey, that's been seen in runs that have been accepted before, right? A few mistakes are indeed out and about, but this is SDA. There will [u][b]always[/b][/u] be mistakes. ;)

Really, you guys just need to open your mind a little. :) The run isn't terrible, and it's a good start for what will hopefully be many more runs for this great game. If not that, then think of it this way. One of the unmentioned points of SDA is to post runs that are impressive. And while I can't speak for everyone, to me, this run was indeed impressive. None of the mistakes that are made are ugly (which is the difference between acceptable mistakes and reject-worthy mistakes), and the average viewer (also known as the target audience) probably won't notice a majority of them like missing trick X. A good chunk of the reported "mistakes" seem to be simply not knowing trick X. And besides, there are a respectable amount of tricks in it anyway, so it's not like it does it straight all the way through.

That being said, the only really evident problem I remember that everyone will notice was taking too long to find a cab at the start of one of the segments - I think it was 56 or 53, but don't quote me on that. Doesn't waste too much time, however. And I'd imagine some time could be saved by putting a few missions that are relatively close together in segments together, rather than just using the auto-save to bridge between them all. Also, all the phone call segments were kind of boring, but that's an issue for another day. :P The pros far outweigh the cons in this case, however, and there even was a respectable amount of random stuff that didn't seem planned, but just seemed to work (such as in Mr. and Mrs. Bellic, a passenger getting out of the stolen car allowed Kate to get in a second quicker).

All the tricks that were missed and problems can be worried about in a later version of the run. As long as the [u]average viewer[/u] doesn't see too much wrong with a run, it should be accepted IMO. That being said, once we get this out of the way, regardless of whether the final decision is to accept or reject, it may be reason to call for rule reform, in order to clarify this and prevent ugly incidents like this from ever happening again. Does every single solitary trick known at the time need to be used - possibly including those that are discovered after the run is made but before it is verified (this run seems to have been done in late 2009) - or can some leeway be given, so long as the execution of the run is good? If something in the whole process seems problemistic, as was the case with death abuse, we discuss it and figure out what to do.

It is a tough call, really, but I say, give it the pass for the time being. The opposition is valid, sure, but it's better to pass it and deal with the run later should we decide that tricks like that are not allowed to be missed, than to fail it and have it turn out that it should've been accepted. Worst case: we put the decision on hold until that discussion finishes.

Oh, and one last thing: more people should test the in-game timer thing. I say that only because it takes around 3-8 seconds to load taxi rides on this run, which is the around same amount the original second verifier reported gets recorded. Maybe it's a problem with slow PCs? Just a little hunch I had. I'm a player of the PS3 version, so I can't verify it for the PC. If it turns out it's still doesn't work...well, it's still fast enough. :)[/quote]

[quote]Grand Theft Auto 4 verification:

A/V - Looks good.
Cheating - None detected

Overall, I was very impressed with this run. I'm no speedrunner extraordinaire by a longshot when it comes to GTA 4, but as someone casually familiar with the game I think this is a good run. The execution throughout the entire run was top-notch and it's clear that the runner has exceptional skill when it comes to this game. The runner would always get to mission markers as quickly as possible, most of the time by using taxis to instantly warp to the destination. Other times the runner would arrive just because the marker appears, be it triggered via phone call or message or what have you. Phone calls were also spread out pretty well throughout the run, usually only spending a few seconds waiting next to a marker for the call to come which doesn't take much time at all. There were also numerous places where the runner creates some very unique, quick, and entertaining routes during the few places they actually have to drive. It's hard for me to find a lot of bad things to say about it really.

One of the best aspects about this run was that the shooting was excellent throughout. The runner would always quickly pick off targets one-by-one (or in some cases, all at once with the rocket launcher) and would almost immediately move on to the next one. Missions where I would always have to take cover and meticulously choose my targets have been shortened by standing out in the open and quickly taking down all opposition. The runner displayed excellent skill in that regard, it's a major part of why it's so impressive.

Another good aspect was that the driving whenever necessary was always solid. After Bull In A China Shop the runner uses taxis pretty efficiently, though I feel there may have been a few times early on where it would have been more beneficial to take a taxi than to drive manually. When the runner did drive, it was very solid. It's easy to run into problems with random cars getting in your way but this was minimized to only a few occurrences. The runner always knew the best route to get there (while sometimes inventing his own as I already mentioned) and did it as quickly as possible. It's also worth nothing that the runner did a great job on the car chases. Since for a lot of them you can't take the vehicle out before its predetermined stopping point the runner gets to that point as quickly as possible in order to make the target vehicle drive at ridiculous speeds along its less-than-optimal path.

One thing that does bring the run down a little bit though, as has already been mentioned, is that the run seems to be optimized using the in-game timer. As previously noted it shouldn't be considered accurate to use for SDA's timing. Because of that he spends a little too much time in the menu screens which, while not adding to the game timer, would add to SDA's timing. That can make watching it a little bit dicey, as the average viewer might ask themselves "Why is he wasting so much time here?" That being said however, the menu screens are really only a few seconds for each occurrence. While you could argue the run would be easily improvable by just cutting that out, I think that fact alone doesn't detract from how good this run is overall.

Another issue is there are a few planning mistakes. Keep in mind here that I'm not an expert at speedrunning this game. My familiarity comes from having beaten it casually multiple times and just playing around on my own. Also keep in mind that I haven't read through the comments entirely from the first verification, and as such what I'm listing is just what I noticed. As I've already mentioned it would've been faster in a few cases early on to hail a cab. And when you have to choose between killing Francis or Derrick, the choice should have been Francis. I believe the cemetery you have to drive him to later in the game is quite a lot closer than Derrick's. I also noticed a couple of smaller things. When chasing Vlad in Uncle Vlad out of the bar, it would've been better to just turn around and run out the front door instead of following him all the way around the building. When saving Roman from Dardan and his crew I believe you can just shoot them from the car. All of that being said though, those were literally all the mistakes that I could pick up on throughout the entire 4.5 hour run.

Now for the conclusion. It's no secret that this run and the initial verification were controversial, to say the least. When I'm verifying this run, I'm basically treating this as if the whole debate had never happened. I'm looking only at the run sent to me and what my impressions were of it based on what I could see. And what I could see, is that I was honestly very impressed with the run. In my own personal opinion, this run would be good for SDA to host. Yes, the run has some time wasted in menu screens. Yes, there were a few missions that could've been done quicker. At the same time however... Yes, the execution was brilliant throughout the entire run. Yes, there were a lot of missions that were incredibly fast (even ones with mistakes were still pretty fast). Yes, there were times when I had to step back and just say "Wow, that was really cool." When I weigh all of these factors, I just can't find the justification to say that this run would not benefit SDA in any way. Execution is solid throughout, there are a lot of neat tricks, and this is MUCH faster than your average playthrough. Overall, it's good. That's enough for me.

My verdict: [b][i]Accept[/i][/b][/quote]

[quote]Grand Theft Auto 4 Re-Verification

Verdict: Accepted

Reasons:
No cheating as far as I can notice with my knowledge.
Quality of video is reasonable okay (enough for the viewer to notice any hypothetical cheating attempts or attempts to hide tricks or glitches that is not known by an ordinary player). Although some clips does not play back very well, I am guessing this is only a encoding/muxing glitch that can be fixed.
Game play is well above average; only an experienced speed runner of this game would notice any mistakes, without analyzing the individual missions in more detail than required by an ordinary play through. Also with today’s knowledge these small mistakes only add up to one or two percent of the total time. It would be different if only a single mistake by itself would add up to the same time amount of time.
Timing is controversial, although not a specific problem to this run but a problem for all future runs if previously pointed out errors in the timing algorithm is correct.

Explanation:

I will start by stating my own experience in playing this game and analyzing speedruns in general; I have completed the game two times before (once myself on a PC and once with a friend on the Xbox360), although I have never tried to speedrun the game or individual missions for that matter.  I have been a long time fan of speedruns and have watched most of the runs on this site that have the same type of game play (including the 6 hour commentated run of GTA:SA).

Quality:

The quality of the video is quite poor for such a new and high end game. Although this could be justified by the high demand for computing power for the game itself, which means that the video recording software has to maintain a low footprint in order for the game to be playable (in the future with more powerful computers a better quality would probably be expected). However since the quality is enough in order for me to observe every move the player makes and also for me to exclude cheating, I see no point in rejecting the run due to quality issues although I would have liked to see a higher resolution video.

Timing:

The most important aspect that could result in a rejection is that the run is optimized for the use of the in game timer. And it has been previously pointed out that that timer actually counts some of the loading times, which could in fact differ depending on the speed of the computer used. Although this is not a problem specific to this run in particular, since it would be present in any speedrun of this game. This leads me to say that it is not a reason for rejection for this run, although an important problem to solve for any speedrun for this game. But I consider myself to have limited knowledge of the timing problems in this game, since I have not been able to make reliable tests of the timer myself.

Gameplay:

From my point of view the run is very well planned and executed, if it wasn't for a few previously mentioned mistakes, I would never have noticed any mistakes to speak of and especially that would make me consider a rejection. And even with the knowledge of these mistakes I do not think they are reasons for rejection. However since they were the reason for this re-verification, I will try and justify why I believe this run is good enough for an acceptance. I will try and justify the mistakes that previously have been pointed out as rejection worthy.

Mistakes previously pointed out:

Most of the mistakes pointed out have been related to bad path choices or suboptimal decisions during missions. In my point of view I cannot see that these mistakes can be reasons for rejection. I consider this is a relatively new game and as a first speedrun, the runner has not had any previous official runs for use as reference. And in my opinion, one cannot demand from the runner, to search for solutions on the internet/literature for all the optimal paths and decisions in a game. A runner must be able to speedrun a game with good intentions and without the ability to use internet (for example a person who cannot read English and can therefore not participate in any of the available discussions about the game in question) and get the run accepted anyway.

I also consider that the previously estimated time loss from the mistakes can have been slightly overestimated in some cases (in this case 2 minutes). For example the mission "Do You Have Protection" the player have to go to 3 different locations (first retrieve an item and shoot some persons, second to pick up a weapon, third to drop of a person):

From my timing and by excluding dialog that is not possible to skip, the mission took slightly more than 3 minutes. With my experience I don't think that by taking taxi instead of driving and shooting guys in a different manner could have reduced the time of the mission to only slightly more than one minute. Also the previous verifier stated that the player should have called Roman instead of waiting for the call, although the call comes exactly at the time as the player arrives at the start of the mission (no time lost as I can understand?).

Although some of the pointed out mistakes such as not skipping cut scenes is more serious. But I think that even these mistakes can be justified by the fact that the player had to use a specific keyboard key to skip them, which also is different from other cut scenes. I would almost go as far as classify this as a glitch in the game  as it is not stated in any official manual which button you have to press in that particular mission.
[/quote]

[b]Decision[/b]: Accept

[b]Reason[/b]: This might not be a perfect run, but it's still a very good run, and definitely a good start for the site.

dballin

2010-05-22 12:50:13 am

Balls jerky

<3

ExplodingCabbage

2010-05-22 07:32:15 am

Hmm. I've no desire to get involved in another lengthy debate here, especially since the decision has been made, but I will make one post of comments / rebuttal / venting, and will reply to anything else if anyone asks me to.

To the first verifier:

You talk a lot in your response about 'tricks'. You go so far as to say

Quote:

A good chunk of the reported "mistakes" seem to be simply not knowing trick X

I really don't understand where you get this idea from. Out of the mistakes I labelled as serious in my response (the ones I underlined), the only thing I would call a 'trick' is failing to shoot the porn guys on Do You Have Protection, and perhaps using the Pay 'n' Spray to clean the car on Clean Getaway, and even those are simple tricks that should've been discovered during routine testing of the missions before starting the run (although if all five minutes of mistakes had been stuff like that rather than the more obvious stuff, I would've been much more forgiving). Using taxis where possible, skipping cutscenes where possible, and taking standard mission paths you can find in a walkthrough are all not tricks, they're the absolute basics of run planning. If these 5 minutes had genuinely been lost by not finding tricks, I wouldn't have rejected.

You also talk a lot about how things would look to the average viewer, and focus on how the mistakes look more than how serious they are. I think this is an illustrative quote:

Quote:

None of the mistakes that are made are ugly (which is the difference between acceptable mistakes and reject-worthy mistakes), and the average viewer (also known as the target audience) probably won't notice a majority of them

It's not my place to say that this is the 'wrong' way to approach verification, because I don't make the rules, but it's not an attitude I like. Avoiding planning mistakes is much easier than avoiding execution mistakes. Redoing a run fixing planning mistakes is also easier than redoing it to fix execution mistakes (because the latter requires you to improve your play and the former doesn't). Yet, like I said in the old thread, I feel as though if, rather than 5 minutes of mistakes resulting from the runner not planning the run properly, there had instead been 5 minutes of mistakes from, say, the runner spinning out his car 30 times on corners and losing 10 seconds each time, people like you would be calling for a rejection just because it was 'ugly'.

Quote:

That being said, the only really evident problem I remember that everyone will notice was taking too long to find a cab at the start of one of the segments - I think it was 56 or 53, but don't quote me on that.

I assume you mean 56, where the runner runs around for some 20 seconds to reach a taxi once he gets to the end of the road. This doesn't look to me to cost any time since he's waiting for a phone call anyway. Two things annoy me about the way you brought this up:
1) You think a 20 second luck manipulation issue is somehow more serious than 5 minutes of planning mistakes, just because it's more obvious to someone only slightly with the game.
2) Even though you feel strongly enough about this verdict to call for 'rule reform' later, you don't feel strongly enough to check your own response to make sure that things you're pointing out as 'mistakes' actually are. A controversial verification like this calls for the verifiers to take care with their responses, especially when making negative comments (I may be harsh, but I would much rather see a run accepted on the basis of mistakes made by verifiers than rejected because of such mistakes). You haven't taken that care here.

To the second verifier:

Very good, well-thought-out and well-composed response. You were clear on the fact that you chose to verify without reading the old responses in detail and also on your level of knowledge and familiarity with the game, which was helpful. You clearly signposted (possibly without consciously thinking about it) which opinions you expressed were indisputable and which were your own, probably much better than I did in my response where I fear I slipped out of 'measured and objective' mode and into 'advocating rejection' mode. It may surprise you that I actually agree with you on almost everything you say, and where I disagree, nonetheless your opinions are clearly sensible and well-justified.

I wish your response or a response like it had been in the original batch of responses. When I was writing my response I dwelled very little on the things that were good about the run and went into almost no detail at all about execution. I assumed these things would be covered by the other two verifiers and didn't want to make my response any longer than it already was, but then one didn't reply and one basically wrote a summary response (not a criticism; he was perfectly justified in being brief since he probably assumed the run was getting accepted anyway). You highlight and explain a lot of the good stuff very effectively and that provides balance that was definitely lacking from the original responses (since mine is almost exclusively negative), and I think that balance leads to a much more accurate picture of the run than reading mine alone (although my points still stand and I still defend my decision to reject). When Mike proposed reverification, I thought that getting more verifiers to review the run was pointless and wouldn't provide anything that hadn't been said before; you have changed my mind.

To the third verifier:
With respect, I disagree with some of what you say.

I don't think the proportion of the run's time that is cost by the mistakes is necessarily a good way of measuring their seriousness. Also, it's certainly not true that only an experienced speedrunner of the game would notice the mistakes; some, like failing to knife Goldberg or killing the wrong McReary brother are things that people who've only played the game through once could potentially pick up on just by watching the video (and indeed probably have; those mistakes have been pointed out on YouTube), and besides, I found them all and I'm not an experienced runner of GTA 4 so I'm an instant disproof of your claim.

From your comments on video quality I would guess this is your first time verifying; the videos the verifiers get are usually the 'Normal Quality' versions, and it's likely the runner has also submitted higher quality videos, though I dunno.

The possibility of a language barrier stopping SCM using the forums or internet to get information is something that never occurred to me when I was verifying, and you're right to bring it up in my opinion. I still think SCM should've been able to find the things I pointed out on his own (I did, so he can too), but the language barrier is certainly a good point to raise in mitigation.

You may or may not be right about me overestimating some of the times; they were somewhat rough estimates and there are probably some overestimates and underestimates in there. I don't think it changes very much.

I think perhaps you and others overestimate the difficulty of finding the mistakes I listed and are therefore too easy on the runner for them. Yes, most of the points were already posted on the forum or elsewhere on the internet. However, besides the choice of McReary to kill affecting the cemetery drive and the existence of no-fall-damage glitches, I found everything listed in my response myself just by testing stuff before I went to the internet to look for other possible improvements. If I can find all that stuff, then the runner should've been able to too. Yes, the testing takes time, but considering the amount of time that must've gone into actually running this game, it seems foolish not to have spent a few days testing stuff first.

To SCM:
Alright then: Mike's decision is made, and though I was against it, it's clear that he's weighed up the good and the bad with full knowledge of the mistakes in the run and decided on balance that it's still good enough for SDA. Having a run pass on its merits even after careful scrutiny reveals mistakes is probably more of an acheivement than getting onto the site by slipping past less thorough verifiers, so congrats.

I still would like to see this run redone someday with the mistakes fixed, and I still think that with the experience you already have of the game, you're easily the best man to do it. I hope there are no hard feelings over me wanting this rejected, and if you decide to do an improvement, I'll be more than happy to take another look at the current run and see if I can find anything else to improve and help you grind a little more off the time.

To Mike and SCM:
By the way, I presume that it's been decided that in future timing will be done manually including menu screens? It seems pretty important that this is decided if it hasn't been already, since SCM is working on a run of The Ballad Of Gay Tony which is presumably affected by the same timer issue. Also, how about this run? Are we going to manually time but exclude menu screens (which makes all the time spent in menus look less silly), or manually time but include menu screens for consistency with future runs?

Hmm. I've no desire to get involved in another lengthy debate here, especially since the decision has been made, but I will make one post of comments / rebuttal / venting, and will reply to anything else if anyone asks me to.

[b]To the first verifier:[/b]

You talk a lot in your response about 'tricks'. You go so far as to say
[quote]A good chunk of the reported "mistakes" seem to be simply not knowing trick X[/quote]

I really don't understand where you get this idea from. Out of the mistakes I labelled as serious in my response (the ones I underlined), the [i]only[/i] thing I would call a 'trick' is failing to shoot the porn guys on Do You Have Protection, and perhaps using the Pay 'n' Spray to clean the car on Clean Getaway, and even those are simple tricks that should've been discovered during routine testing of the missions before starting the run (although if all five minutes of mistakes had been stuff like that rather than the more obvious stuff, I would've been much more forgiving). Using taxis where possible, skipping cutscenes where possible, and taking standard mission paths you can find in a walkthrough are all not tricks, they're the absolute basics of run planning. If these 5 minutes had genuinely been lost by not finding tricks, I wouldn't have rejected.

You also talk a lot about how things would look to the average viewer, and focus on how the mistakes [i]look[/i] more than how serious they are. I think this is an illustrative quote:
[quote]None of the mistakes that are made are ugly (which is the difference between acceptable mistakes and reject-worthy mistakes), and the average viewer (also known as the target audience) probably won't notice a majority of them[/quote]

It's not my place to say that this is the 'wrong' way to approach verification, because I don't make the rules, but it's not an attitude I like. Avoiding planning mistakes is much easier than avoiding execution mistakes. Redoing a run fixing planning mistakes is also easier than redoing it to fix execution mistakes (because the latter requires you to improve your play and the former doesn't). Yet, like I said in the old thread, I feel as though if, rather than 5 minutes of mistakes resulting from the runner not planning the run properly, there had instead been 5 minutes of mistakes from, say, the runner spinning out his car 30 times on corners and losing 10 seconds each time, people like you would be calling for a rejection just because it was 'ugly'.

[quote]That being said, the only really evident problem I remember that everyone will notice was taking too long to find a cab at the start of one of the segments - I think it was 56 or 53, but don't quote me on that.[/quote]

I assume you mean 56, where the runner runs around for some 20 seconds to reach a taxi once he gets to the end of the road. This doesn't look to me to cost any time since he's waiting for a phone call anyway. Two things annoy me about the way you brought this up:
1) You think a 20 second luck manipulation issue is somehow more serious than 5 minutes of planning mistakes, just because it's more obvious to someone only slightly with the game.
2) Even though you feel strongly enough about this verdict to call for 'rule reform' later, you don't feel strongly enough to check [i]your own[/i] response to make sure that things you're pointing out as 'mistakes' actually [i]are[/i]. A controversial verification like this calls for the verifiers to take care with their responses, [i]especially[/i] when making negative comments (I may be harsh, but I would much rather see a run accepted on the basis of mistakes made by verifiers than rejected because of such mistakes). You haven't taken that care here.

[b]To the second verifier:[/b]

Very good, well-thought-out and well-composed response. You were clear on the fact that you chose to verify without reading the old responses in detail and also on your level of knowledge and familiarity with the game, which was helpful. You clearly signposted (possibly without consciously thinking about it) which opinions you expressed were indisputable and which were your own, probably much better than I did in my response where I fear I slipped out of 'measured and objective' mode and into 'advocating rejection' mode. It may surprise you that I actually agree with you on almost everything you say, and where I disagree, nonetheless your opinions are clearly sensible and well-justified.

I wish your response or a response like it had been in the original batch of responses. When I was writing my response I dwelled very little on the things that were good about the run and went into almost no detail at all about execution. I assumed these things would be covered by the other two verifiers and didn't want to make my response any longer than it already was, but then one didn't reply and one basically wrote a summary response (not a criticism; he was perfectly justified in being brief since he probably assumed the run was getting accepted anyway). You highlight and explain a lot of the good stuff very effectively and that provides balance that was definitely lacking from the original responses (since mine is almost exclusively negative), and I think that balance leads to a much more accurate picture of the run than reading mine alone (although my points still stand and I still defend my decision to reject). When Mike proposed reverification, I thought that getting more verifiers to review the run was pointless and wouldn't provide anything that hadn't been said before; you have changed my mind.

[b]To the third verifier:[/b]
With respect, I disagree with some of what you say.

I don't think the proportion of the run's time that is cost by the mistakes is necessarily a good way of measuring their seriousness. Also, it's certainly not true that only an experienced speedrunner of the game would notice the mistakes; some, like failing to knife Goldberg or killing the wrong McReary brother are things that people who've only played the game through once could potentially pick up on just by watching the video (and indeed probably have; those mistakes have been pointed out on YouTube), and besides, I found them all and I'm not an experienced runner of GTA 4 so I'm an instant disproof of your claim.

From your comments on video quality I would guess this is your first time verifying; the videos the verifiers get are usually the 'Normal Quality' versions, and it's likely the runner has also submitted higher quality videos, though I dunno.

The possibility of a language barrier stopping SCM using the forums or internet to get information is something that never occurred to me when I was verifying, and you're right to bring it up in my opinion. I still think SCM should've been able to find the things I pointed out on his own (I did, so he can too), but the language barrier is certainly a good point to raise in mitigation.

You may or may not be right about me overestimating some of the times; they were somewhat rough estimates and there are probably some overestimates and underestimates in there. I don't think it changes very much.

I think perhaps you and others overestimate the difficulty of finding the mistakes I listed and are therefore too easy on the runner for them. Yes, most of the points were already posted on the forum or elsewhere on the internet. However, besides the choice of McReary to kill affecting the cemetery drive and the existence of no-fall-damage glitches, I found everything listed in my response myself just by testing stuff before I went to the internet to look for other possible improvements. If I can find all that stuff, then the runner should've been able to too. Yes, the testing takes time, but considering the amount of time that must've gone into actually [i]running[/i] this game, it seems foolish not to have spent a few days testing stuff first.

[b]To SCM:[/b]
Alright then: Mike's decision is made, and though I was against it, it's clear that he's weighed up the good and the bad with full knowledge of the mistakes in the run and decided on balance that it's still good enough for SDA. Having a run pass on its merits even after careful scrutiny reveals mistakes is probably more of an acheivement than getting onto the site by slipping past less thorough verifiers, so congrats.

I still would like to see this run redone someday with the mistakes fixed, and I still think that with the experience you already have of the game, you're easily the best man to do it. I hope there are no hard feelings over me wanting this rejected, and if you decide to do an improvement, I'll be more than happy to take another look at the current run and see if I can find anything else to improve and help you grind a little more off the time.

[b]To Mike and SCM:[/b]
By the way, I presume that it's been decided that in future timing will be done manually including menu screens? It seems pretty important that this is decided if it hasn't been already, since SCM is working on a run of The Ballad Of Gay Tony which is presumably affected by the same timer issue. Also, how about this run? Are we going to manually time but exclude menu screens (which makes all the time spent in menus look less silly), or manually time but include menu screens for consistency with future runs?

Rakuen

2010-05-22 10:02:59 am

Weegee Time

Quote:

It's not my place to say that this is the 'wrong' way to approach verification, because I don't make the rules, but it's not an attitude I like. Avoiding planning mistakes is much easier than avoiding execution mistakes. Redoing a run fixing planning mistakes is also easier than redoing it to fix execution mistakes (because the latter requires you to improve your play and the former doesn't). Yet, like I said in the old thread, I feel as though if, rather than 5 minutes of mistakes resulting from the runner not planning the run properly, there had instead been 5 minutes of mistakes from, say, the runner spinning out his car 30 times on corners and losing 10 seconds each time, people like you would be calling for a rejection just because it was 'ugly'.

Okay, this particular argument has always bothered me. A planning mistake is not even close to an execution mistake. An execution mistake is almost exclusively obvious. Even if someone had never played the game before in his or her life, they would know that spinning out while taking a corner is a mistake, and a blatant one at that. About the only time they become nearly subtle is when you have to do something like intentionally damage yourself. Even then it will be obvious after the fact when they immediately pull it off. Planning mistakes are almost exclusively subtle. A casual player will almost never notice a mistake in the chosen route. Shoot, only a fraction of speedrunners (thus, a fraction of a fraction) of the game would see it: those who already know the more optimal route.

In other words, you're comparing apples to oranges here. I can eat an apple or an orange, and they will both relieve hunger, but there is no argument they are very different fruits. In the same manner, execution and planning mistakes both cost time in a run, but they are very different means to accomplish that same end. Which one is better is a matter of opinion. Just as I can say I prefer an apple to an orange, I can say I prefer a planning error to an execution error. Ergo, I believe your conclusion is a bit shaky.

[quote]It's not my place to say that this is the 'wrong' way to approach verification, because I don't make the rules, but it's not an attitude I like. Avoiding planning mistakes is much easier than avoiding execution mistakes. Redoing a run fixing planning mistakes is also easier than redoing it to fix execution mistakes (because the latter requires you to improve your play and the former doesn't). Yet, like I said in the old thread, I feel as though if, rather than 5 minutes of mistakes resulting from the runner not planning the run properly, there had instead been 5 minutes of mistakes from, say, the runner spinning out his car 30 times on corners and losing 10 seconds each time, people like you would be calling for a rejection just because it was 'ugly'.[/quote]
Okay, this particular argument has always bothered me.  A planning mistake is not even close to an execution mistake.  An execution mistake is almost exclusively obvious.  Even if someone had never played the game before in his or her life, they would know that spinning out while taking a corner is a mistake, and a blatant one at that.  About the only time they become nearly subtle is when you have to do something like intentionally damage yourself.  Even then it will be obvious after the fact when they immediately pull it off.  Planning mistakes are almost exclusively subtle.  A casual player will almost never notice a mistake in the chosen route.  Shoot, only a fraction of speedrunners (thus, a fraction of a fraction) of the game would see it: those who already know the more optimal route.

In other words, you're comparing apples to oranges here.  I can eat an apple or an orange, and they will both relieve hunger, but there is no argument they are very different fruits.  In the same manner, execution and planning mistakes both cost time in a run, but they are very different means to accomplish that same end.  Which one is better is a matter of opinion.  Just as I can say I prefer an apple to an orange, I can say I prefer a planning error to an execution error.  Ergo, I believe your conclusion is a bit shaky.

Paraxade

2010-05-22 11:49:33 am

I think his point is the run is inoptimal by the same amount whether it's a planning or execution mistake, because the same amount of time is lost either way, regardless of how obvious the mistake is, which is completely true. I do think you need to take into account things like how obvious the mistakes are though, because that impacts how impressive the run looks to an average viewer which has an effect on whether or not the run is good for SDA; ultimately the question is, will having the run on the site help SDA or will it hurt its image and give people the impression that SDA hosts bad runs? That's the entire point of play quality verification. I'm glad this run got accepted finally, it may not be perfect but ultimately I can't see it doing anything but help the site. Everything Cabbage said is perfectly reasonable and justified, but a little more leniency might be called for sometimes; it's obvious the runner did plan the run to at least some extent but evidently missed a lot of things here and there.

Although EC, I've seen you post a couple times if the improvements were more obscure you wouldn't have rejected over them; if it doesn't matter to you whether a mistake is obvious or not to the viewer, then why does it matter whether it should've been obvious or not to the runner? 5 minutes of obscure planning mistakes costs just as much time as 5 minutes of obvious planning mistakes. Or am I misunderstanding your point (apologies if I am)?

Also, not totally relevant to the points I'm making but I had no idea you could knife Goldberg and skip the shootout, or that there's a different cemetery depending on which McReary you kill Tongue

I think his point is the run is inoptimal by the same amount whether it's a planning or execution mistake, because the same amount of time is lost either way, regardless of how obvious the mistake is, which is completely true. I do think you need to take into account things like how obvious the mistakes are though, because that impacts how impressive the run looks to an average viewer which has an effect on whether or not the run is good for SDA; ultimately the question is, will having the run on the site help SDA or will it hurt its image and give people the impression that SDA hosts bad runs? That's the entire point of play quality verification. I'm glad this run got accepted finally, it may not be perfect but ultimately I can't see it doing anything but help the site. Everything Cabbage said is perfectly reasonable and justified, but a little more leniency might be called for sometimes; it's obvious the runner did plan the run to at least some extent but evidently missed a lot of things here and there.

Although EC, I've seen you post a couple times if the improvements were more obscure you wouldn't have rejected over them; if it doesn't matter to you whether a mistake is obvious or not to the viewer, then why does it matter whether it should've been obvious or not to the runner? 5 minutes of obscure planning mistakes costs just as much time as 5 minutes of obvious planning mistakes. Or am I misunderstanding your point (apologies if I am)?

Also, not totally relevant to the points I'm making but I had no idea you could knife Goldberg and skip the shootout, or that there's a different cemetery depending on which McReary you kill :P

Zealie

2010-05-22 12:20:23 pm

I think the reason EC rejected to run is because they were very obvious ways of how the planning could be improved, but the runner neglected/ignored them or didn't do enough research. (but he is probably better qualified to answer that)

If you got a good (well executed) run but then he just stands still for 5 minutes doing nothing or running against a wall or w/e and after that continuing with the run.
Would that run still be accepted?

What I'm trying to say with the above is that the kind of 'mistake' (be it planning or execution) does matter. (imho ;p)
I am in no way saying that the runners mistakes are equivalent to my example given above, it's just an example.
I never played this game so I shut up now.

P.S. Congrats with the run I guess Smiley

[edit] I totally wrote some sentences wrong and stuff...

Rakuen

2010-05-22 02:35:14 pm

Weegee Time

Quote from ZaibirQuild:

If you got a good (well executed) run but then he just stands still for 5 minutes doing nothing or running against a wall or w/e and after that continuing with the run.
Would that run still be accepted?

That's not a planning or execution mistake. That's just stupidity. Much like every counterexample execution mistake that has been posted in either thread. Here, allow me to illustrate.

Let us imagine a game that has multiple paths through the levels. We'll say that taking the "less optimal" path through a level loses 2 seconds. It's not a tremendous amount of time, but it's there. So over the course of the game, our player loses 10 seconds of time. This is a planning mistake.

Now let us imagine a run where everything goes equally well, and the correct route is taken every time. However, he dies at one point in the run, and it costs him 10 seconds of time. This is an execution mistake.

Now for good measure, and to somewhat apply it to the real game we're talking about, we'll say it's a long game and/or it requires a lot of luck manipulation. Ergo, demanding a rerun is feasible (I guess), but it's a jerk move to pull.

Now, both of these runs are 10 seconds off of an "ideal" time for this person's skill level. However, the execution mistake is far more noticeable than the planning mistake. When you see a character die... it's THERE. Everyone knows dying in a game is generally a bad thing for a speed run. On the other hand, the only people that might ever see the planning mistake would be those that thoroughly know the game and could probably run and beat the time given enough effort.

So here we have a very logical, structured, and realistic simulation of the situation we are trying to describe (in other words, we're not making up bullshit conditions). Now with these given circumstances, I would not necessarily reject either run. I would take the one with the planning mistake over the execution mistake. If you can't tell me why at this point, then I have to say you're not paying very good attention to what I'm writing.

[quote="ZaibirQuild"]
If you got a good (well executed) run but then he just stands still for 5 minutes doing nothing or running against a wall or w/e and after that continuing with the run.
Would that run still be accepted?
[/quote]
That's not a planning or execution mistake.  That's just stupidity.  Much like every counterexample execution mistake that has been posted in either thread.  Here, allow me to illustrate.

Let us imagine a game that has multiple paths through the levels.  We'll say that taking the "less optimal" path through a level loses 2 seconds.  It's not a tremendous amount of time, but it's there.  So over the course of the game, our player loses 10 seconds of time.  This is a planning mistake.

Now let us imagine a run where everything goes equally well, and the correct route is taken every time.  However, he dies at one point in the run, and it costs him 10 seconds of time.  This is an execution mistake.

Now for good measure, and to somewhat apply it to the real game we're talking about, we'll say it's a long game and/or it requires a lot of luck manipulation.  Ergo, demanding a rerun is feasible (I [i]guess[/i]), but it's a jerk move to pull.

Now, both of these runs are 10 seconds off of an "ideal" time for this person's skill level.  However, the execution mistake is far more noticeable than the planning mistake.  When you see a character die... it's THERE.  Everyone knows dying in a game is generally a bad thing for a speed run.  On the other hand, the only people that might ever see the planning mistake would be those that thoroughly know the game and could probably run and beat the time given enough effort.

So here we have a very logical, structured, and realistic simulation of the situation we are trying to describe (in other words, we're not making up bullshit conditions).  Now with these given circumstances, I would not necessarily reject either run.  I [i]would[/i] take the one with the planning mistake over the execution mistake.  If you can't tell me why at this point, then I have to say you're not paying very good attention to what I'm writing.

arkarian

2010-05-22 03:44:53 pm

gamelogs.org

seems obvious to me that execution mistakes are generally much worse than planning mistakes. planning is important, but i would more readily accept a run with improper planning in the hopes that it'll be improved by someone else later than one with a bunch of awful looking execution errors.

ShadowWraith

2010-05-22 05:57:54 pm

.

can you guys make a separate thread in sda discussion for that stuff? :/

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2010-05-22 07:42:20 pm

2010-05-22 07:23:25 pm

Quote from Paraxade:

Although EC, I've seen you post a couple times if the improvements were more obscure you wouldn't have rejected over them; if it doesn't matter to you whether a mistake is obvious or not to the viewer, then why does it matter whether it should've been obvious or not to the runner? 5 minutes of obscure planning mistakes costs just as much time as 5 minutes of obvious planning mistakes. Or am I misunderstanding your point (apologies if I am)?

No apology is necessary, but yeah I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not claiming all mistakes are equal; if anything, I think that planning mistakes are generally more serious than execution mistakes costing the same amount of time. Essentially when judging the seriousness of a mistake (and indeed when making a final verdict) my yardstick is what I feel is reasonable to expect of the runner. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the runner to do the kind of basic testing needed to uncover the stuff I found before starting the run. I didn't think when I wrote my response that it was unreasonable to expect the runner to read the thread on the SDA forum and the top walkthrough of the game on Google to find all this stuff there, either; now that the point about a language barrier has been raised, I'm not as sure. If instead we were expecting the runner to have used obscure tricks that either hadn't been found when the run was made or were only mentioned on some distant corner of the internet, that wouldn't, in my eyes, be reasonable. Similarly if we were demanding an improvement in execution to a run where the runner had already put in many hundreds of attempts per segment, that wouldn't be reasonable. It's admittedly a highly subjective measure, but I personally think it's a sensible one.

Finally, there's one other reason I think planning mistakes should be given more importance than execution mistakes in verification. This is somewhat tangential to the question you asked of me but is a relevant and important point to the broader discussion of planning vs execution, and hasn't yet been raised by anyone, so I'll post it anyway. If you are to judge it fairly, any execution mistake has to be looked at in the context of how well the rest of the run or segment went execution- and luck-wise. A mistake may be cancelled out by freakishly good execution or a one-in-a-million lucky timesaver in the rest of the segment, because the end result of such a segment may be a time that the runner can't manage to beat even by fixing the mistake. This means you need to have an idea of how hard to execute the run or segment is and what time you should be expecting from it before you can judge whether a given mistake should actually count against the run or not. However, to be frank, as a verifier you simply can't gauge that unless you've run the game yourself, or at least run a game in the same series or engine. People who don't have running experience with a game rejecting over what they perceive as bad execution or luck manipulation in any but the most extremely crap cases risks creating a scenario where the runner (or indeed anyone else) simply can't pull off what is being demanded of them, which is stupid and helps no-one. (I gather this is what happened with Twisted Metal 2, with the verifiers demanding the runner luck-manipulate optimal AI behaviour that would basically never happen in practice, though I haven't played the game myself.)

The above issue doesn't apply to planning mistakes, though. A planning mistake is a planning mistake and doesn't require any experience of the game to gauge whether it should 'count' as a mistake or not. Of course, the question of how serious such a mistake is and how much leniency to allow as far as such mistakes go (there always must be some for games of any complexity) still remains.

I apologise for the length of this post. I meant to be concise, but I suck at it.

Edit: Hmm, ShadowWraith may be right about this belonging better in a seperate topic.

[quote="Paraxade"]Although EC, I've seen you post a couple times if the improvements were more obscure you wouldn't have rejected over them; if it doesn't matter to you whether a mistake is obvious or not to the viewer, then why does it matter whether it should've been obvious or not to the runner? 5 minutes of obscure planning mistakes costs just as much time as 5 minutes of obvious planning mistakes. Or am I misunderstanding your point (apologies if I am)?[/quote]

No apology is necessary, but yeah I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not claiming all mistakes are equal; if anything, I think that planning mistakes are generally more serious than execution mistakes costing the same amount of time. Essentially when judging the seriousness of a mistake (and indeed when making a final verdict) my yardstick is what I feel is reasonable to expect of the runner. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the runner to do the kind of basic testing needed to uncover the stuff I found before starting the run. I didn't think when I wrote my response that it was unreasonable to expect the runner to read the thread on the SDA forum and the top walkthrough of the game on Google to find all this stuff there, either; now that the point about a language barrier has been raised, I'm not as sure. If instead we were expecting the runner to have used obscure tricks that either hadn't been found when the run was made or were only mentioned on some distant corner of the internet, that wouldn't, in my eyes, be reasonable. Similarly if we were demanding an improvement in execution to a run where the runner had already put in many hundreds of attempts per segment, that wouldn't be reasonable. It's admittedly a highly subjective measure, but I personally think it's a sensible one.

Finally, there's one other reason I think planning mistakes should be given more importance than execution mistakes in verification. This is somewhat tangential to the question you asked of me but is a relevant and important point to the broader discussion of planning vs execution, and hasn't yet been raised by anyone, so I'll post it anyway. If you are to judge it fairly, any execution mistake has to be looked at in the context of how well the rest of the run or segment went execution- and luck-wise. A mistake may be cancelled out by freakishly good execution or a one-in-a-million lucky timesaver in the rest of the segment, because the end result of such a segment may be a time that the runner can't manage to beat even by fixing the mistake. This means you need to have an idea of how hard to execute the run or segment is and what time you should be expecting from it before you can judge whether a given mistake should actually count against the run or not. However, to be frank, as a verifier you simply can't gauge that unless you've run the game yourself, or at least run a game in the same series or engine. People who don't have running experience with a game rejecting over what they perceive as bad execution or luck manipulation in any but the most extremely crap cases risks creating a scenario where the runner (or indeed anyone else) simply [i]can't[/i] pull off what is being demanded of them, which is stupid and helps no-one. (I gather this is what happened with Twisted Metal 2, with the verifiers demanding the runner luck-manipulate optimal AI behaviour that would basically never happen in practice, though I haven't played the game myself.)

The above issue doesn't apply to planning mistakes, though. A planning mistake is a planning mistake and doesn't require any experience of the game to gauge whether it should 'count' as a mistake or not. Of course, the question of how serious such a mistake is and how much leniency to allow as far as such mistakes go (there always must be some for games of any complexity) still remains.

I apologise for the length of this post. I meant to be concise, but I suck at it.

Edit: Hmm, ShadowWraith may be right about this belonging better in a seperate topic.

gia

2010-05-22 08:39:07 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

EC, that sounds a pretty correct way to view verification, at least to me. Just would like to separate execution from luck manipulation, since execution being affected by luck manipulation isn't the only case, your optimal plan can be modified by the luck roll of the segment and I can see this happening on a segmented run if the chance of optimal is damn low or the segment is long enough. So basically a run can have good/bad planning, good/bad execution and good/bad luck manipulation and as a verifier you have to balance all three and how they interact on the given run.

Now I read the run has great execution and whenever luck is to be manipulated it is done great as well (not sure how big this is on the game though). Now you said the runner missed obvious points in planning, but did he figure out many non-obvious timesavers as well? if he did then that could mean he did his homework just he missed those points due to whatever reason. I read that some of those he missed he found out mid run and kept putting new segments without restarting the run, which sometimes can be okay since you don't want people restarting runs forever.

EC, that sounds a pretty correct way to view verification, at least to me. Just would like to separate execution from luck manipulation, since execution being affected by luck manipulation isn't the only case, your optimal plan can be modified by the luck roll of the segment and I can see this happening on a segmented run if the chance of optimal is damn low or the segment is long enough. So basically a run can have good/bad planning, good/bad execution and good/bad luck manipulation and as a verifier you have to balance all three and how they interact on the given run.

Now I read the run has great execution and whenever luck is to be manipulated it is done great as well (not sure how big this is on the game though). Now you said the runner missed obvious points in planning, but did he figure out many non-obvious timesavers as well? if he did then that could mean he did his homework just he missed those points due to whatever reason. I read that some of those he missed he found out mid run and kept putting new segments without restarting the run, which sometimes can be okay since you don't want people restarting runs forever.

dballin

2010-05-22 09:19:16 pm

Balls jerky

Well EC, you don't seem to have much leniacy even in games this long seeing as you put 1 improper taxi usage wasting 15-20 seconds in the Major Mistakes That Warrant Rejection category Tongue

Red Ox

2010-05-23 06:54:40 pm

But isn't a game like this (a long game that is highly segmented) effectively a submission of 30,40,100 (however many segments) 3-5 minute games? A 45 second planning mistake in a 4 hour run amounts to little more than a rounding error but a 45 second planning mistake in a 3 minute run is a big deal. That's akin to forgetting to take a warp whistle in sm3...

SCM

2010-05-24 06:57:57 am

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:

I assume you mean 56, where the runner runs around for some 20 seconds to reach a taxi once he gets to the end of the road. This doesn't look to me to cost any time since he's waiting for a phone call anyway.

This is not 'mistake' or smth, theres a script after last mission. If you enter a cab quickly, you dont receive phone call.

Quote:

Firstly, the in-game timer can't be used because it times a significant portion of the loading screens, which means the run would have to be timed manually, which means that all the time spent on the map screen (much of it unnecessary, or spent having a quick breather after placing a waypoint before going back to the game) would end up costing several minutes.

And so? In GTA3 (or another game) speedrun, when you timed the game manually, you count loading screens, saving screens time? I dont think so. Same thing here.
Several minutes? Sure, 3 seconds for placing waypoint against "quick" 2.5 seconds - a lot of time losing.

[quote="ExplodingCabbage"]

I assume you mean 56, where the runner runs around for some 20 seconds to reach a taxi once he gets to the end of the road. This doesn't look to me to cost any time since he's waiting for a phone call anyway.
[/quote]

This is not 'mistake' or smth, theres a script after last mission. If you enter a cab quickly, you dont receive phone call.

[quote]
Firstly, the in-game timer can't be used because it times a significant portion of the loading screens, which means the run would have to be timed manually, which means that all the time spent on the map screen (much of it unnecessary, or spent having a quick breather after placing a waypoint before going back to the game) would end up costing several minutes.
[/quote]

And so? In GTA3 (or another game) speedrun, when you timed the game manually, you count loading screens, saving screens time? I dont think so. Same thing here.
Several minutes? Sure, 3 seconds for placing waypoint against "quick" 2.5 seconds - a lot of time losing.

ExplodingCabbage

2010-05-24 11:16:10 am

Quote from SCM:

And so? In GTA3 (or another game) speedrun, when you timed the game manually, you count loading screens, saving screens time? I dont think so. Same thing here.

I don't understand what you're saying, but in-game menus are always included in timing, while loading and saving screens are not (on PC).

Thanatos

2010-05-24 06:55:57 pm

I'm glad this run was accepted.

The hard work of this man should not be dulled!

Axel Ryman

Edit history:

Axel Ryman: 2010-05-25 04:15:47 am

2010-05-25 04:08:19 am

We all scream for Eyes Cream

Quote from Rakuen:

Now let us imagine a run where everything goes equally well, and the correct route is taken every time. However, he dies at one point in the run, and it costs him 10 seconds of time. This is an execution mistake.

Now for good measure, and to somewhat apply it to the real game we're talking about, we'll say it's a long game and/or it requires a lot of luck manipulation. Ergo, demanding a rerun is feasible (I guess), but it's a jerk move to pull.

I'll probably feel stupid after posting this but I wanna post it anyway since it's sorta related to these 2 lines.

My KH2 Beginner SS took many months of actually playing to get the submitted run. Two runs I did that I thought about submitting had what I considered one of the worst mistakes I could have, and if I submitted them and the runs were rejected because of them, I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah it would be kind of a jerk move to pull on a nearly 5 hour single segment run, but I'd have to live with it and redo it. Summed up for those who don't know, knew but forgot, or are still confused, I died against Xemnas on his final form, and screwed up in the middle of the 2nd Demyx battle with the 10 water clones. Total time for these mistakes alone were about 2 minutes. I never submitted these runs(1 I discussed with Mike about submitting it, but I decided not to), even though I completed them from beginning to end. Few months after the 2nd run I didn't submit, I finally got one done and ready to submit. It got accepted and it's now on the site.

With 1 mistake taking place at the end of the game(Dying against Xemna's final form) and the other around the halfway point(Demyx's 10 clones timeout), I probably could of gotten away with it, especially since I had people say "Try submitting it anyway," to my Demyx timeout run because it was my fastest attempt, but I couldn't live knowing I submitted a run with such a bad mistake. Kirby 64 got accepted even though it had an accidental death in it, so could mine have? Probably, but its too late to find out now. Sometimes a small amount of time you can save compared to the length of the run is worth it.

Edit: I forgot to mention this. Although it wasn't a complete rejection of it, I was neutral on whether the Palom(The boy kid in FFIV and FFIV After Years..the Black Mage one) run would be accepted, before the runner beat his time easily. Main reason was because he didn't move his most used Black Magic spell to the first slot of his spell list, which, while just saving only a few seconds per use, would be faster than just scrolling down to it each time he needs to use it.

[quote="Rakuen"]
Now let us imagine a run where everything goes equally well, and the correct route is taken every time.  However, he dies at one point in the run, and it costs him 10 seconds of time.  This is an execution mistake.

Now for good measure, and to somewhat apply it to the real game we're talking about, we'll say it's a long game and/or it requires a lot of luck manipulation.  Ergo, demanding a rerun is feasible (I [i]guess[/i]), but it's a jerk move to pull.
[/quote]

I'll probably feel stupid after posting this but I wanna post it anyway since it's sorta related to these 2 lines.

My KH2 Beginner SS took many months of actually playing to get the submitted run. Two runs I did that I thought about submitting had what I considered one of the worst mistakes I could have, and if I submitted them and the runs were rejected because of them, I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah it would be kind of a jerk move to pull on a nearly 5 hour single segment run, but I'd have to live with it and redo it. Summed up for those who don't know, knew but forgot, or are still confused, I died against Xemnas on his final form, and screwed up in the middle of the 2nd Demyx battle with the 10 water clones.  Total time for these mistakes alone were about 2 minutes. I never submitted these runs(1 I discussed with Mike about submitting it, but I decided not to), even though I completed them from beginning to end. Few months after the 2nd run I didn't submit, I finally got one done and ready to submit. It got accepted and it's now on the site.

With 1 mistake taking place at the end of the game(Dying against Xemna's final form) and the other around the halfway point(Demyx's 10 clones timeout), I probably could of gotten away with it, especially since I had people say "Try submitting it anyway," to my Demyx timeout run because it was my fastest attempt, but I couldn't live knowing I submitted a run with such a bad mistake. Kirby 64 got accepted even though it had an accidental death in it, so could mine have? Probably, but its too late to find out now. Sometimes a small amount of time you can save compared to the length of the run is worth it.

Edit: I forgot to mention this. Although it wasn't a complete rejection of it, I was neutral on whether the Palom(The boy kid in FFIV and FFIV After Years..the Black Mage one) run would be accepted, before the runner beat his time easily. Main reason was because he didn't move his most used Black Magic spell to the first slot of his spell list, which, while just saving only a few seconds per use, would be faster than just scrolling down to it each time he needs to use it.

Rakuen

2010-05-25 05:24:29 pm

Weegee Time

Actually it makes perfect sense Axel. I'm sure there have been plenty of completed runs that have been shelved because the player decided they wanted to do it over again and tighten it up. Of course, you can't just keep doing it forever, and the point where errors balance with continued sanity should be left at the discretion of the runner. Likewise, determining the need for another run is at the discretion of the verifier. If it gets accepted, great. If it gets rejected, oh well.