Pokemon FireRed - January 13th, 2009

2009-01-14 02:22:23 am

sda loyalist

Oh what the crap, I finally find the time to download this and it's already been verified. :p

2009-01-14 07:31:55 am

Back in the game!

Quote:

Watching it makes me wince repeatedly, and I suspect it will draw a similar reaction from the site, followed by a horde of people demanding someone do Fire Red 'right'. It's just too sloppy-looking to be an SDA run

Ouch.

mikwuyma

2009-01-14 07:38:30 am

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Lag.Com: The run was available for verification for at least a month, and now I had enough verifier responses to make a verdict.

2009-01-15 05:20:36 am

O Zlda?

I can't remember if I've seen this before or if the run I saw was an older, slower one, but I know exactly what the verifiers are talking about with the menu usage. Frankly, the sheer amount of things he has to do, and how many of them are directly dependent on random events, accounts for much of this. If even one more/less poke was caught in a certain area, using X more or less pokeballs, a lot of his purchases, order of doing things, and other strategies could completely change, based on the general plan. Unless a flexible route like this is used, this run takes a ton of attempts.

I mean, come on, it's a 5+ hour run. He only had so many times he could attempt it (all of them late at night) due to the size of the run and the fact he's got a family to take care of. I know Darren has the habit of tensing up and slowing down during menus/shopping, but he's been improving, and you're going to see at least a bit of it in anyone else's run of this game too if they have to stop and think for a minute, or fumble through a notepad... I wouldn't say this doesn't belong on SDA. I wouldn't say it's our best run either, since it's not been contested hotly for years or done several times before, but it's an achievement considering it was probably finished around 5 or 6am after an all-nighter, and it's a half hour faster than all previous attempts using basically the same strategy (which tells us two things... mostly, that a ton of luck is involved in the final time, but also that this particular strategy, assuming no improvements are thought up, has been executed to near or at it's full potential).

So the guy made a strategy, largely his own work, with advice or adjustments from others few and far between, and performed it as well as he could. That's what a first-run-of-the-category is at it's best. Give him a break; I don't think anyone impatient is going to be watching this one, anyway.

I can't remember if I've seen this before or if the run I saw was an older, slower one, but I know exactly what the verifiers are talking about with the menu usage. Frankly, the sheer amount of things he has to do, and how many of them are directly dependent on random events, accounts for much of this. If even one more/less poke was caught in a certain area, using X more or less pokeballs, a lot of his purchases, order of doing things, and other strategies could completely change, based on the general plan. Unless a flexible route like this is used, this run takes a ton of attempts.

I mean, come on, it's a 5+ hour run. He only had so many times he could attempt it (all of them late at night) due to the size of the run and the fact he's got a family to take care of. I know Darren has the habit of tensing up and slowing down during menus/shopping, but he's been improving, and you're going to see at least a bit of it in anyone else's run of this game too if they have to stop and think for a minute, or fumble through a notepad... I wouldn't say this doesn't belong on SDA. I wouldn't say it's our best run either, since it's not been contested hotly for years or done several times before, but it's an achievement considering it was probably finished around 5 or 6am after an all-nighter, and it's a half hour faster than all previous attempts using basically the same strategy (which tells us two things... mostly, that a ton of luck is involved in the final time, but also that this particular strategy, assuming no improvements are thought up, has been executed to near or at it's full potential).

So the guy made a strategy, largely his own work, with advice or adjustments from others few and far between, and performed it as well as he could. That's what a first-run-of-the-category is at it's best. Give him a break; I don't think anyone impatient is going to be watching this one, anyway.

Thomaz

2009-01-15 03:40:14 pm

Catchin' them all

I totally agree with DryBes. So many things can happen in the route and it has to stay flexible and I guess those menu errors make up for pretty much screwing up the route (and making it even longer) if stuff goes wrong.

2009-01-15 03:58:21 pm

Back in the game!

Maybe Thomaz and DRybes can help me fend off that hoard of people...

2009-01-16 02:03:40 am

sda loyalist

"Because it is long it doesn't matter if it is good"
Wha? Since when did we believe that? :-[

Enhasa

2009-01-16 07:28:59 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Too bad, you should have verified to throw in another reject then. Lips Sealed

2009-01-16 08:58:10 am

sda loyalist

Yeah well, I was on holiday :p And verifying a single-segment pokemon run is very much like work

2009-01-16 10:19:26 am

Back in the game!

Quote from Lag.Com:

Yeah well, I was on holiday :p And verifying a single-segment pokemon run is very much like work

At least you wouldn't have to verify it in a single-segment Undecided

Bill

2009-01-17 06:26:16 pm

Quote from DRybes:

I mean, come on, it's a 5+ hour run...

Quote from DRybes:

Give him a break...

Yeah you bastards! That is how you see this run? How dare you think that anyone in the future could improve upon this run by improving upon its shortcomings! It has no faults! You decide to give this run a...

Quote from mikwuyma:

Decision: Accept

Oh wait... was my point again?

2009-01-18 07:06:31 am

O Zlda?

Quote from Lag.Com:

"Because it is long it doesn't matter if it is good"
Wha? Since when did we believe that? :-[

Since when did someone say that? I just said he more or less did his best.

This sort of thing is why I hardly ever work on my WW run... I've never done a run for SDA before, and I might spend 4-8 hours of retries and attempts on a 10-15 minute segment, till I finally believe I've done my best (this is after letting a few others review the attempts and improving on them a few times), and someone invariably comes along and says it could have been 5-10 seconds faster. I don't know whether to retry or just give up sometimes because there are a lot of places where I feel I've done within a second or two of my possible best, and it has me worrying that's nowhere near good enough to even move on.

I'm not trying to start anything more than a legitimate discussion here. I think it's a situation where someone performed within about 5% of his possible best. It's still a good run. Also, for better or for worse, the general opinion around here seems to be that the longer a SS run or an individual segment in a run is, the more total time lost to errors is forgivable.

[quote="Lag.Com"]
"Because it is long it doesn't matter if it is good"
Wha? Since when did we believe that? :-[
[/quote]
Since when did someone say that? I just said he more or less did his best.

This sort of thing is why I hardly ever work on my WW run... I've never done a run for SDA before, and I might spend 4-8 hours of retries and attempts on a 10-15 minute segment, till I finally believe I've done my best (this is after letting a few others review the attempts and improving on them a few times), and someone invariably comes along and says it could have been 5-10 seconds faster. I don't know whether to retry or just give up sometimes because there are a lot of places where I feel I've done within a second or two of my possible best, and it has me worrying that's nowhere near good enough to even move on.

I'm not trying to start anything more than a legitimate discussion here. I think it's a situation where someone performed within about 5% of his possible best. It's still a good run. Also, for better or for worse, the general opinion around here seems to be that the longer a SS run or an individual segment in a run is, the more total time lost to errors is forgivable.

ShinerCCC

2009-01-20 02:16:16 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Until I watch this run for myself, this seems more like a "play Pokemon Fire Red as fast as you can" than a highly structured "speedrun" like most other vids on this site.

A 5-hour single segment is very tenacious and impressive indeed but expect it to be beaten.

Paused

2009-01-23 06:08:33 pm

Quote from DRybes:

This sort of thing is why I hardly ever work on my WW run...

I see your point.

And my response is, screw em.

You play video games to have fun. You (_hopefully) speedrun said video games, to extend/continue that fun.
Have fun speedrunning Wind Waker to the best of your ability. Then when you are done submit the videos to here.

If you pass verification, well done... a bunch of fellow geeks, including myself, will have 8 hours to occupy their free time. A small handfull will have even more, maybe as much as 20, to watch and come up with ideas to improve upon your run, and obsolete it several years down the line.

Or you do not pass verification,those peoples 8 hours have to be filled we something else. Spring is coming up. I am sure the average SDA'er could use the fresh air.

Who cares. You did the run to have fun. Pass the time. Fill an empty hour or two. Getting on SDA is an extra.

If SDA rejects decent runs, that (I assume for the sake of discussion, your run will be) because of its increasing elitism, then it will die, and at that point, there will be no one left to care.
Again, who cares. You enjoyed your speedrun. That is (/should be.) the point of the site. To enjoy speedrunning.

So I say do your speedrun and have fun doing it. And if you think it is good enough for other people to see then post the videos to YouTube/Filefront/MediaFire/Viddler/Archive/etc/etc.

Of course you could do the speedrun, hate doing it, and submit it the current SDA. I am pretty sure you just missed the point of Radix creating the site.

Fortunately this run was accepted despite its faults. So for this discussion it is not relevant.

From someone who is an WindWaker fan... You better get your motivation back, cos I am interested in seeing your progress regardless weather Enhasa's goons are or not.

[quote="DRybes"]
This sort of thing is why I hardly ever work on my WW run... [/quote]

I see your point.

And my response is, screw em.

You play video games to have fun.  You ([sub]hopefully[/sub]) speedrun said video games, to extend/continue that fun.
Have fun speedrunning Wind Waker to the best of your ability.  Then when you are done submit the videos to here.

If you pass verification, well done... a bunch of fellow geeks, including myself, will have 8 hours to occupy their free time.  A small handfull will have even more, maybe as much as 20, to watch and come up with ideas to improve upon your run, and obsolete it several years down the line.

Or you do not pass verification,those peoples 8 hours have to be filled we something else.  Spring is coming up.  I am sure the average SDA'er could use the fresh air.

Who cares.  You did the run to have fun. Pass the time.  Fill an empty hour or two.  Getting on SDA is an extra.

If SDA rejects decent runs, that (I assume for the sake of discussion, your run will be) because of its increasing elitism, then it will die, and at that point, there will be no one left to care.
Again, who cares.  You enjoyed your speedrun.  That is (/should be.) the point of the site.  To enjoy speedrunning.

So I say do your speedrun and have fun doing it.  And if you think it is good enough for other people to see then post the videos to YouTube/Filefront/MediaFire/Viddler/Archive/etc/etc.

Of course you could do the speedrun, hate doing it, and submit it the current SDA.  I am pretty sure you just missed the point of Radix creating the site.

Fortunately this run was accepted despite its faults.  So for this discussion it is not relevant.

From someone who is an WindWaker fan... You better get your motivation back, cos I am interested in seeing your progress regardless weather Enhasa's goons are or not.

Enhasa

2009-01-24 02:26:40 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Oh I hadn't seen this before, so I get it now. But now I just feel bad for you for being so completely misinformed and also being some rebellious teenager. Let me try to clear some of this up. Maybe you would know more of this if you paid more attention, but of course nobody can be expected to read everything so I understand.

First, I agree with you 100% and always have about speedrunning for yourself, for fun, and not for others. I have said this a billion times and there isn't anyone who feels more this way than me. Also, I don't think getting on SDA is all that important. I've only submitted 3 runs so far myself, but every single one of them, I put online elsewhere before submitting to SDA.

Also, DRybes's run has basically no chance of being rejected, and you know that. Out of this entire board, only 7/86 runs have been rejected, and every single one of those was for a game that doesn't already have a run. 1 of the 7 already has an accepted newer version from the same runner. I've already said in other threads that I don't have a goal of SDA as some sort of world record site, I just like to watch fun videos, and it's all about the videos. Unlike many runners who I greatly respect, I don't think I'd ever run a game with a lot of competition, because I think "why bother with a game that is already in good hands without me?" I just want more breadth of games covered. In every damn thread too, I lament about runs being prematurely killed from various moves such as real name required, move to DVD recorders, etc. In general, every single thing I do for this community is about getting more and more runs available for people to watch.

Do you have any evidence of increasing elitism? You don't have to answer that, I already know the answer. Mike has been here since 2006 and hasn't changed his standards any during this time, and in case you haven't noticed:

1) I have only been here since 2008.
2) Mike is the judge so you should complain about him if anyone. Tongue

3) I make fun of verifying just to reject something in this very thread.
4) I have no goons, lol. Tongue

5) Holy shit, did you just imply Lag was my goon?

It's ironic that the point of this board is greater transparency, but you use the hard data to draw the opposite conclusion. This site is MUCH less elitist than it was in the past, and I don't know how you could argue otherwise. Compare the tone of the old FAQ to the new one. Compare the previous mods to current mods. Compare some of the stricter old rules to the new ones (nothing became more strict, much was relaxed). Compare the m2k2 mottos (which are actually extremely elitist) with our very benign and positive one. Video quality rejecting has always been way more anal than play quality rejecting since day one, and always will. I'm sure that the % of runs that were rejected before (due to video quality, not liking the runner, not liking the genre, not finding verifiers, not being a good game, not following instructions, rules like OOB, etc etc) was much higher than it is now. It makes perfect sense too. With one person doing all the work, you would very understandably try to look for any reason to reject a run to make things easier. Instead, I'm such a freak that I actually try to contact people on other sites to get them to submit to SDA so more people can watch. (PS - I think it's funny that Zurreco can wish that Radix was back because he was a badass motherfucker who would tell people to shut up and they were dumb and lock their threads, and you can want the same person back because he's a nice guy who founded this kind site where runs are never rejected.)

You might have to get ready for this last part because it might shatter your entire cause of fighting the man, lol. I have always said that if I was starting a site like SDA from day one, I would just make it an uploader. That's right, no verification of any type, just submit vids and we host them, like super-play. Now, the current system is doing pretty well here, with only one complaint (you), so I wouldn't have the impudence to consider changing it, but I do think that tasvideos should just do away with the entire judging process even now, and publish every single submission, which I don't know if anyone has the balls to suggest. They have the perfect system in place (with torrents, community effort like encoding, rating system) to accomodate this, and I said before that I actually admire the speedruns.net mentality. Also I think that site should be about cool things you can do with an emulator, instead of a competitive focus on speed and obsoleting runs. I have always said I preferred the 2004-2005 era of nesvideos more than the current one, but I certainly don't blame administration or any one person. I do think that site has been getting more elitist (synonym is perfectionist), but that seems more like an inevitability than some conscious decision anyone made, so nothing to gripe about.

tl;dr: Please know even the slightest bit about me if you want to call me out, especially when you do it on another site where I probably won't see it, or in this thread which I might not read. No disrespect because I know, who has time to pay attention to anyone else online's viewpoints, but I think you could hardly be more wrong in interpreting this situation.

Oh I hadn't seen this before, so I get it now. But now I just feel bad for you for being so completely misinformed and also being some rebellious teenager. Let me try to clear some of this up. Maybe you would know more of this if you paid more attention, but of course nobody can be expected to read everything so I understand.

First, I agree with you 100% and always have about speedrunning for yourself, for fun, and not for others. I have said this a billion times and there isn't anyone who feels more this way than me. Also, I don't think getting on SDA is all that important. I've only submitted 3 runs so far myself, but every single one of them, I put online elsewhere before submitting to SDA.

Also, DRybes's run has basically no chance of being rejected, and you know that. Out of this entire board, only 7/86 runs have been rejected, and every single one of those was for a game that doesn't already have a run. 1 of the 7 already has an accepted newer version from the same runner. I've already said in other threads that I don't have a goal of SDA as some sort of world record site, I just like to watch fun videos, and it's all about the videos. Unlike many runners who I greatly respect, I don't think I'd ever run a game with a lot of competition, because I think "why bother with a game that is already in good hands without me?" I just want more breadth of games covered. In every damn thread too, I lament about runs being prematurely killed from various moves such as real name required, move to DVD recorders, etc. In general, every single thing I do for this community is about getting more and more runs available for people to watch.

Do you have any evidence of increasing elitism? You don't have to answer that, I already know the answer. Mike has been here since 2006 and hasn't changed his standards any during this time, and in case you haven't noticed:

1) I have only been here since 2008.
2) Mike is the judge so you should complain about him if anyone. :P
3) I make fun of verifying just to reject something in this very thread.
4) I have no goons, lol. :P
5) Holy shit, did you just imply Lag was my goon?

It's ironic that the point of this board is greater transparency, but you use the hard data to draw the opposite conclusion. This site is MUCH less elitist than it was in the past, and I don't know how you could argue otherwise. Compare the tone of the old FAQ to the new one. Compare the previous mods to current mods. Compare some of the stricter old rules to the new ones (nothing became more strict, much was relaxed). Compare the m2k2 mottos (which are actually extremely elitist) with our very benign and positive one. Video quality rejecting has always been way more anal than play quality rejecting since day one, and always will. I'm sure that the % of runs that were rejected before (due to video quality, not liking the runner, not liking the genre, not finding verifiers, not being a good game, not following instructions, rules like OOB, etc etc) was much higher than it is now. It makes perfect sense too. With one person doing all the work, you would very understandably try to look for any reason to reject a run to make things easier. Instead, I'm such a freak that I actually try to contact people on other sites to get them to submit to SDA so more people can watch. (PS - I think it's funny that Zurreco can wish that Radix was back because he was a badass motherfucker who would tell people to shut up and they were dumb and lock their threads, and you can want the same person back because he's a nice guy who founded this kind site where runs are never rejected.)

You might have to get ready for this last part because it might shatter your entire cause of fighting the man, lol. I have always said that if I was starting a site like SDA from day one, I would just make it an uploader. That's right, no verification of any type, just submit vids and we host them, like [url=http://www.super-play.co.uk/]super-play[/url]. Now, the current system is doing pretty well here, with only one complaint (you), so I wouldn't have the impudence to consider changing it, but I do think that tasvideos should just do away with the entire judging process even now, and publish every single submission, which I don't know if anyone has the balls to suggest. They have the perfect system in place (with torrents, community effort like encoding, rating system) to accomodate this, and I said before that I actually admire the speedruns.net mentality. Also I think that site should be about cool things you can do with an emulator, instead of a competitive focus on speed and obsoleting runs. I have always said I preferred the 2004-2005 era of nesvideos more than the current one, but I certainly don't blame administration or any one person. I do think that site has been getting more elitist (synonym is perfectionist), but that seems more like an inevitability than some conscious decision anyone made, so nothing to gripe about.

tl;dr: Please know even the slightest bit about me if you want to call me out, especially when you do it on another site where I probably won't see it, or in this thread which I might not read. No disrespect because I know, who has time to pay attention to anyone else online's viewpoints, but I think you could hardly be more wrong in interpreting this situation.

trihex

2009-01-25 06:42:25 pm

Yoshi's eggs are at my mercy!

Quote from Enhasa:

tl;dr: Please know even the slightest bit about me if you want to call me out, especially when you do it on another site where I probably won't see it, or in this thread which I might not read. No disrespect because know, who has time to pay attention to anyone else online's viewpoints, but I think you could hardly be more wrong in interpreting this situation.

I love how considerate you are for including this! LOL! (Not that I skimmed down to the bottom before reading the rest)

2009-01-26 12:30:42 am

O Zlda?

I think an author usually knows in advance if something they make is going to be accepted or rejected. It's just an issue for some of the more sensitive people who have a hard time seeing criticism of anything they've done after putting a ton of effort into it. I know I'm like that with stuff I make and I know Darius has gotten that way as well. You kinda have to take the good with the bad. Eventually I have to say sorry, I don't feel like redoing xxxx a hundred more times to take off a second or two. I have to continue after I've done what I consider to be either good enough or a level above it.

Darius knows more than anyone else that what he did and the strategy and effort he put into it is considerably more than just "quickly play through a game", even if a couple people disagree... I think that's been the main comment here that got under his skin. I have the same problem, like I said... I really hate it when people look at something I did as anything less than a holy-jesus-bow-down miracle. (Well, sort of an exaggeration, but I take criticism like I take a punch in the neck.)

As far as calling something a superplay instead of a speedrun, you could probably make a similar argument, of variable plausibility, for any run on here that isn't already ultra-optimized and over-analyzed by multiple active participants. Fuck it though, it's a perception issue. I don't think we're going to drop down to a TASvideos level here and start rejecting things on the basis of their popularity or entertainment values.

That's another thing... the standards aren't going up in requirement so much as people are continually putting out better videos. It's passed a point where a lot of old runs have been improved upon at least once and often multiple times. This wasn't forced. There's simply no way to improve a run 2 or 3 or more times without doing it a lot better each time.

I mean, it's cute if you want to argue about stuff or come to the rescue, and runners appreciate support, but we'd be flimsy people indeed if we didnt get to hear and accept negative criticism now and then. I bet it gets tiring really fast if you do a basically perfect run like SMB1 and everyone kisses your ass instead of giving you feedback about improvement or style so you're on your own about it. And if someone says something directed at you, you can say screw em, you can inform them of your opinion, whatever. Doesn't mean you have to insert clever little dicky phrases in your reply, either. I understand if you're trying to be subtle about it but that sometimes comes across as the dickiest of all... I'm calling out Enhasa's post for that, that's a little over the top dude. I think you sorta missed what he was trying to say with intentional exaggeration, goon rip aside.

I think an author usually knows in advance if something they make is going to be accepted or rejected. It's just an issue for some of the more sensitive people who have a hard time seeing criticism of anything they've done after putting a ton of effort into it. I know I'm like that with stuff I make and I know Darius has gotten that way as well. You kinda have to take the good with the bad. Eventually I have to say sorry, I don't feel like redoing xxxx a hundred more times to take off a second or two. I have to continue after I've done what I consider to be either good enough or a level above it.

Darius knows more than anyone else that what he did and the strategy and effort he put into it is considerably more than just "quickly play through a game", even if a couple people disagree... I think that's been the main comment here that got under his skin. I have the same problem, like I said... I really hate it when people look at something I did as anything less than a holy-jesus-bow-down miracle. (Well, sort of an exaggeration, but I take criticism like I take a punch in the neck.)

As far as calling something a superplay instead of a speedrun, you could probably make a similar argument, of variable plausibility, for any run on here that isn't already ultra-optimized and over-analyzed by multiple active participants. Fuck it though, it's a perception issue. I don't think we're going to drop down to a TASvideos level here and start rejecting things on the basis of their popularity or entertainment values.

That's another thing... the standards aren't going up in requirement so much as people are continually putting out better videos. It's passed a point where a lot of old runs have been improved upon at least once and often multiple times. This wasn't forced. There's simply no way to improve a run 2 or 3 or more times without doing it a lot better each time.

I mean, it's cute if you want to argue about stuff or come to the rescue, and runners appreciate support, but we'd be flimsy people indeed if we didnt get to hear and accept negative criticism now and then. I bet it gets tiring really fast if you do a basically perfect run like SMB1 and everyone kisses your ass instead of giving you feedback about improvement or style so you're on your own about it. And if someone says something directed at you, you can say screw em, you can inform them of your opinion, whatever. Doesn't mean you have to insert clever little dicky phrases in your reply, either. I understand if you're trying to be subtle about it but that sometimes comes across as the dickiest of all... I'm calling out Enhasa's post for that, that's a little over the top dude. I think you sorta missed what he was trying to say with intentional exaggeration, goon rip aside.

2009-01-26 09:10:19 am

Back in the game!

I think I'm over the initial shock of what the rejecting verifier said, so I'll go ahead and voice my opinion on everything now.

I think that DRybes was mostly right about everything he said pertaining to this run. Anyone who takes the time to watch this run will only get a glimpse of what was going through my head throughout the entire thing. A pikachu encounter in Viridian forest changes the entire setup of my list for SSing this particular category. (I actually encountered two, which is retardedly lucky, if you were playing the game normally) I guess that is one of the major points I would like to make, is that people are seeming to forget that Pokemon is a largely luck based game. You can number crunch all day long, come up with what seems like a great catch list, then an ordinarily very common, easy catching pokemon like safari zone exeggcute comes along and defies the mathematics, and only does so because you're doing a single segment, or an x-accuracied blizzard decides to repeatedly miss. I was over 20 minutes ahead of all my previous attempts even after a horrible final rival battle. Do I restart anyway, do EVERYTHING all over again and hope that the overall good luck throughout the run happens to be the same or better? Just to save a grand total of a couple of minutes?

I will assume that everyone knows nothing about torrent sweeping this game, and lend you my experience: The only way for it to work is to have a special attack based nature, and then I really can't afford to sacrifice speed or attack, so I'm stuck with Mild/Rash. 2/25, or 8% chance of the right nature. Thankfully it's at the very beginning of the run and I can simply restart until I get it. Next issue is IVs. Most important is special attack again. I need it to be at or above a certain point (and I confess I never bothered to do any calculations, only because I don't have time to try and figure it out in a SS anyway). I have no way of knowing for sure whether it's good enough until the second trainer after brock's gym. If it does not OHKO with the torrent ability, a reset is warrented.

The next issue is the attack IV. I don't know for sure until even later whether this is high enough, and I will admit that maybe I should have resetted for a better one with this run, but I didn't. I don't know until I fight the oddishes on nugget bridge whether it's where it should be. I should be able to OHKO all oddishes. And for this particular run, my speed IV was crap, I calculated it at between 0-5, which is why some random things were able to outspeed me. Not dire or anything, just a bit annoying.

The list is subject to change through the ENTIRE run. A Cubone encoutner before Gastly. A Weezing in Cinnibar Mansion, assuming I can catch it. Any of these, or any other rare catches, means I have to be able to immediately edit the list of 60, I have to know which would be the smartest one to cross off of this particular run, and so on and so forth. Back to the Pikachu in the forest thing: I was going to detour to the power plant for a pikachu, evolve to raichu, trade for electrode, and a catch voltorb and perhaps a magnemite/ton, if they showed up before pika/voltorb did, then masterball zapdos. Since it showed in the forest instead, I was able to edit the list to where I bought an abra then teleported back to vermilion to fight surge after I postponed him for SS purposes, since surge gives you fly, with virtually no time lost. (and that's not to mention the luck of getting the trash can switches right on the first try in a SS run!)

Yes, my menu navigation probably needs some work. I would rather go a bit slower and get it right first try rather than go quickly and bypass the item I am looking for once or more, but that's just me.

Due to poor luck, I was forced to X-item shop a third time, I can't say much to defend myself there. I can say that if everything went exactly according to plan, I could get away with only a single shopping stop for x-items, not too much I can do though.

I tried to make my itemfinder and amulet coin pickups be as close to needing the desired number as possible, so I wasn't doing any backtracking. The trade for Nidorina and my drowzee catch east of vemilion, for example.

Overall, I'd say I probably put around 120 hours of work into both of these SS Fire Red runs, with e4r2 having about 50 of those total. Maybe it's a small amount of time for such a large run, I don't know, but I do know I worked my ass off on trying to make it as good as possible and acceptable by SDA standards, and by my own. I would gladly put a bounty up of my own if I had the money, but I will almost guarantee that sub 5 is impossible in a SS run due to luck alone, and I honestly don't expect to be beaten by anyone for a very long time, if at all. To that rejecting verifier, I'd like to say fuck off, but rather than be like that, I'd rather take some constructive criticism, rather than simply be told how horrible it is. Tell me where to improve, how to do it. I don't mind criticism as long as it's helpful.

The one apology I would like to make is for causing what I thought was a simple speedrun into a firestorm of arguement.

I think I'm over the initial shock of what the rejecting verifier said, so I'll go ahead and voice my opinion on everything now.

I think that DRybes was mostly right about everything he said pertaining to this run.  Anyone who takes the time to watch this run will only get a glimpse of what was going through my head throughout the entire thing.  A pikachu encounter in Viridian forest changes the entire setup of my list for SSing this particular category.  (I actually encountered two, which is retardedly lucky, if you were playing the game normally)  I guess that is one of the major points I would like to make, is that people are seeming to forget that Pokemon is a largely luck based game.  You can number crunch all day long, come up with what seems like a great catch list, then an ordinarily very common, easy catching pokemon like safari zone exeggcute comes along and defies the mathematics, and only does so because you're doing a single segment, or an x-accuracied blizzard decides to repeatedly miss.  I was over 20 minutes ahead of all my previous attempts even after a horrible final rival battle.  Do I restart anyway, do EVERYTHING all over again and hope that the overall good luck throughout the run happens to be the same or better?  Just to save a grand total of a couple of minutes?

I will assume that everyone knows nothing about torrent sweeping this game, and lend you my experience:  The only way for it to work is to have a special attack based nature, and then I really can't afford to sacrifice speed or attack, so I'm stuck with Mild/Rash.  2/25, or 8% chance of the right nature.  Thankfully it's at the very beginning of the run and I can simply restart until I get it.  Next issue is IVs.  Most important is special attack again.  I need it to be at or above a certain point (and I confess I never bothered to do any calculations, only because I don't have time to try and figure it out in a SS anyway).  I have no way of knowing for sure whether it's good enough until the second trainer after brock's gym.  If it does not OHKO with the torrent ability, a reset is warrented.

The next issue is the attack IV.  I don't know for sure until even later whether this is high enough, and I will admit that maybe I should have resetted for a better one with this run, but I didn't.  I don't know until I fight the oddishes on nugget bridge whether it's where it should be.  I should be able to OHKO all oddishes.  And for this particular run, my speed IV was crap, I calculated it at between 0-5, which is why some random things were able to outspeed me.  Not dire or anything, just a bit annoying.

The list is subject to change through the ENTIRE run.  A Cubone encoutner before Gastly.  A Weezing in Cinnibar Mansion, assuming I can catch it.  Any of these, or any other rare catches, means I have to be able to immediately edit the list of 60, I have to know which would be the smartest one to cross off of this particular run, and so on and so forth.  Back to the Pikachu in the forest thing:  I was going to detour to the power plant for a pikachu, evolve to raichu, trade for electrode, and a catch voltorb and perhaps a magnemite/ton, if they showed up before pika/voltorb did, then masterball zapdos.  Since it showed in the forest instead, I was able to edit the list to where I bought an abra then teleported back to vermilion to fight surge after I postponed him for SS purposes, since surge gives you fly, with virtually no time lost.  (and that's not to mention the luck of getting the trash can switches right on the first try in a SS run!)

Yes, my menu navigation probably needs some work.  I would rather go a bit slower and get it right first try rather than go quickly and bypass the item I am looking for once or more, but that's just me.

Due to poor luck, I was forced to X-item shop a third time, I can't say much to defend myself there.  I can say that if everything went exactly according to plan, I could get away with only a single shopping stop for x-items, not too much I can do though.

I tried to make my itemfinder and amulet coin pickups be as close to needing the desired number as possible, so I wasn't doing any backtracking.  The trade for Nidorina and my drowzee catch east of vemilion, for example.

Overall, I'd say I probably put around 120 hours of work into both of these SS Fire Red runs, with e4r2 having about 50 of those total.  Maybe it's a small amount of time for such a large run, I don't know, but I do know I worked my ass off on trying to make it as good as possible and acceptable by SDA standards, and by my own.  I would gladly put a bounty up of my own if I had the money, but I will almost guarantee that sub 5 is impossible in a SS run due to luck alone, and I honestly don't expect to be beaten by anyone for a very long time, if at all.  To that rejecting verifier, I'd like to say fuck off, but rather than be like that, I'd rather take some [b]constructive[/b] criticism, rather than simply be told how horrible it is.  Tell me where to improve, how to do it.  I don't mind criticism as long as it's helpful.

The one apology I would like to make is for causing what I thought was a simple speedrun into a firestorm of arguement.

2009-01-26 04:47:53 pm

O Zlda?

Nice post man.

This is as much my fault for running to defend and mentioning my ego. I should have let you make the comment, was just that I followed your progress through almost the whole run on AIM so I felt the urge to rebut without really being able to cite information.

Enhasa

2009-01-26 07:25:17 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote from t r i - h e x:

I love how considerate you are for including this! LOL! (Not that I skimmed down to the bottom before reading the rest)

For reading the whole thing you get a GOLD STAR.

PS I must have been high or something when writing that post. Not that I don't stand by any of it, but shit that's a lot to write. Sad

Quote from DRybes:

That's another thing... the standards aren't going up in requirement so much as people are continually putting out better videos. It's passed a point where a lot of old runs have been improved upon at least once and often multiple times. This wasn't forced. There's simply no way to improve a run 2 or 3 or more times without doing it a lot better each time.

Yeah, this is a great point, and for some reason almost nobody gets it. People are always like "man, these old runs suck" or "these scores are awful" but tech just naturally gets better over time. If two runners who produce equal quality output, run a game, whoever did the run second will have a faster time. It doesn't even mean the older run is worse, it's just older.

Quote from DRybes:

I'm calling out Enhasa's post for that, that's a little over the top dude. I think you sorta missed what he was trying to say with intentional exaggeration, goon rip aside.

I was responding to a post he made on tasvideos that I had just randomly seen earlier the same day. I know, it looks weird if you didn't know that. It was more of a "say it to my face" thing instead of behind my back.

[quote="t r i - h e x"]
I love how considerate you are for including this! LOL! (Not that I skimmed down to the bottom before reading the rest)
[/quote]
For reading the whole thing you get a GOLD STAR.

PS I must have been high or something when writing that post. Not that I don't stand by any of it, but shit that's a lot to write. :(

[quote="DRybes"]
That's another thing... the standards aren't going up in requirement so much as people are continually putting out better videos. It's passed a point where a lot of old runs have been improved upon at least once and often multiple times. This wasn't forced. There's simply no way to improve a run 2 or 3 or more times without doing it a lot better each time.[/quote]
Yeah, this is a great point, and for some reason almost nobody gets it. People are always like "man, these old runs suck" or "these scores are awful" but tech just naturally gets better over time. If two runners who produce equal quality output, run a game, whoever did the run second will have a faster time. It doesn't even mean the older run is worse, it's just older.

[quote="DRybes"]I'm calling out Enhasa's post for that, that's a little over the top dude. I think you sorta missed what he was trying to say with intentional exaggeration, goon rip aside.[/quote]
I was responding to a post he made on tasvideos that I had just randomly seen earlier the same day. I know, it looks weird if you didn't know that. It was more of a "say it to my face" thing instead of behind my back.

Ultimetalhead

2009-01-28 07:55:05 am

Why so serious?

Is the run up yet? I went to the page, and it has a 2:50. That's not the Elite Four run is it?

2009-01-28 08:39:24 am

Back in the game!

Quote from Ultimetalhead:

Is the run up yet? I went to the page, and it has a 2:50. That's not the Elite Four run is it?

I was told that it should go up today or tomorrow.