Serious Sam: The First Encounter

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2023-09-26 05:26:37 pm

2023-09-11 02:35:13 pm

Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/SeriousSamFE.html

Serious Sam: The First Encounter (pc) (pc) [Any %] [Segmented] [Easy]

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to 'Blacksecret', 'Tarakan3000' & 'Carbonehell'!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2023-09-11 02:35:13 pm

Run Information

Serious Sam: The First Encounter (pc) (pc) [Any %] [Segmented] [Easy]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/SeriousSamFE-20230909/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). If you wish to remain anonymous, you can also send a pm with your reply to 'sdaverification' (please state clearly in that case which run you have verified). This is not a contest where the majority wins - Each verification will be judged on its content.

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2023-09-19 03:30:37 pm

2023-09-19 03:19:52 pm

Okay, so as I understand, this should obsolete the Normal difficulty run then?

Thanks for submitting, this was pretty dope again! My time stamps here are the same IGT as in your notes.

Hatshepsut

Is there a segment break at 0:03 already or what? To manipulate the lighting boost? (It's a lightning boost at 0:09 right?)

Tomb of Ramses III

I wonder why this 8-segment portion of the run is only 1 second faster than the IL. So if the real difference is 1.99 seconds, that would mean each segment break contributed roughly 0.3 s saved. But okay, your IL that I also watched, doesn't seem to have major slow-downs anywhere and the Gnaar lift is there similar to this run.

Suburbs

At 6:33 - what's this rocket you fire into the ground?

What generally speaking were you doing with the TEN segments in this level? I don't see that much by way of boosts from enemy fire for instance. Is it to keep enemies from getting in the way?

Karnak

18:20 - What IS this craziness? How does the game give you such large boosts out of water, and when the explosion happens at the bottom of the pool, too? Or wait, is that the "fish boost" that you describe in the last part of the comments for this level? That wasn't quite clear.

Honestly very few of these new optimizations look like they required rocket science (or indeed, in this case, rockets) to find. Just using enemy boosts more comprehensively in a lot of cases, and considering the pluses and minuses (testing them) of having various amounts of armor at different times and how to spend your health etc. Maybe the one where you say "This also applies to enemies tilting their heads if timed correctly." sounds like something a bit easier to miss. You're using the same tricks that you incorporated into the previous run off the back of my feedback so I don't have much feedback to add to that.

Okay, so as I understand, this should obsolete the Normal difficulty run then?

Thanks for submitting, this was pretty dope again! My time stamps here are the same IGT as in your notes.

Hatshepsut

Is there a segment break at 0:03 already or what? To manipulate the lighting boost? (It's a lightning boost at 0:09 right?)

Tomb of Ramses III

I wonder why this 8-segment portion of the run is only 1 second faster than the IL. So if the real difference is 1.99 seconds, that would mean each segment break contributed roughly 0.3 s saved. But okay, your IL that I also watched, doesn't seem to have major slow-downs anywhere and the Gnaar lift is there similar to this run.

Suburbs

At 6:33 - what's this rocket you fire into the ground?

What generally speaking were you doing with the TEN segments in this level? I don't see that much by way of boosts from enemy fire for instance. Is it to keep enemies from getting in the way?

Karnak

18:20 - What IS this craziness? How does the game give you such large boosts out of water, and when the explosion happens at the bottom of the pool, too? Or wait, is that the "fish boost" that you describe in the last part of the comments for this level? That wasn't quite clear.

Honestly very few of these new optimizations look like they required rocket science (or indeed, in this case, rockets) to find. Just using enemy boosts more comprehensively in a lot of cases, and considering the pluses and minuses (testing them) of having various amounts of armor at different times and how to spend your health etc. Maybe the one where you say "This also applies to enemies tilting their heads if timed correctly." sounds like something a bit easier to miss. You're using the same tricks that you incorporated into the previous run off the back of my feedback so I don't have much feedback to add to that.

Blacksecret

2023-09-20 11:38:34 am

Easy is the faster category so yeah it would obsolete normal

Hatshepsut - It's a boost from a projectile that the purple enemies shoot but its pretty rare (and saves barely any time) so Carbonehell used a save there

Tomb of Ramses III - The only real timesaves over the IL here are at 1:32; 2:06; 2:19 and 2:40, I'd say they add up to about 2 seconds also I'm not quite sure how the in game time carries over different levels in a full game setting (for example if you finish a level with a .5 decimal does the next level start at 0.5 to compensate for it) we suspect something like this might be happening because we had a lot of trouble on some of the more simpler levels to even tie the IL time despite having segments.

Suburbs - 6:33 You can't really see it but there is a gnaar right behind us and we kill him so enemies and their projectiles would hit us instead of him.

About the whole level in general it was done completely by our guest star Tarakan3000 (because his IL for the level is the fastest on the leaderboard and he only did this level) and he basically ended up making saves after each small trick. In general it was a challenge to keep the run standarts high between multiple people but at the same time each of us could do segments they are best at, also critisize and give feedback and ideas to others. (which ended up saving quite a lot of time over the whole run since each of us individually were making mistakes and using suboptimal strategies on multiple occasions)

Karnak - 18:20 So basically you get hit by the fish which by itself already gives you a pretty big boost, then you hit yourself with the cannonball bounced from the bottom of the pool (or rocket on normal) to amplify this boost even more AND you surface on the water which amplifies the boost even more. By combining all these 3 factors together perfectly you get a gigantic boost.

The notes probably could use some outside feedback since its quite hard for us to tell what people might not understand and what should we point out etc.

Easy is the faster category so yeah it would obsolete normal

Hatshepsut - It's a boost from a projectile that the purple enemies shoot but its pretty rare (and saves barely any time) so Carbonehell used a save there

Tomb of Ramses III - The only real timesaves over the IL here are at 1:32; 2:06; 2:19 and 2:40, I'd say they add up to about 2 seconds also I'm not quite sure how the in game time carries over different levels in a full game setting (for example if you finish a level with a .5 decimal does the next level start at 0.5 to compensate for it) we suspect something like this might be happening because we had a lot of trouble on some of the more simpler levels to even tie the IL time despite having segments.

Suburbs - 6:33 You can't really see it but there is a gnaar right behind us and we kill him so enemies and their projectiles would hit us instead of him.

About the whole level in general it was done completely by our guest star Tarakan3000 (because his IL for the level is the fastest on the leaderboard and he only did this level) and he basically ended up making saves after each small trick. In general it was a challenge to keep the run standarts high between multiple people but at the same time each of us could do segments they are best at, also critisize and give feedback and ideas to others. (which ended up saving quite a lot of time over the whole run since each of us individually were making mistakes and using suboptimal strategies on multiple occasions)

Karnak - 18:20 So basically you get hit by the fish which by itself already gives you a pretty big boost, then you hit yourself with the cannonball bounced from the bottom of the pool (or rocket on normal) to amplify this boost even more AND you surface on the water which amplifies the boost even more. By combining all these 3 factors together perfectly you get a gigantic boost.

The notes probably could use some outside feedback since its quite hard for us to tell what people might not understand and what should we point out etc.

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2023-09-21 03:02:24 pm

2023-09-21 02:55:25 pm

Yeah, the difficulty categories normally go like this: fastest always accepted, and then more difficult categories can exist on top of that even if they're slower. Do you feel like keeping the Normal difficulty run would have some merit or does this run suffice by itself? Lots of similar stuff of course but also some different, and not just because of missing optimizations in that one.

Game timer: Yeah, that would make sense that it stores the time in frames, not seconds. Can't you just check the start of the level to see how long it takes for the timer to tick up to the next second to confirm this?

Comments: The parts that I asked you about you could probably bear to explain in the comments as you have here. And cause the text on the top left is kinda small, you could explicitly mention that that one level is the only one Tarakan did and why (that's interesting to hear). And what kinds of little tricks were there in there that might not be obvious to the naked eye. Don't have to mention every instance of them necessarily. In fact you could just include a glossary of all the tricks you used and what they mean and what you call them at the start of the comments.

For every level, if there's something interesting that you had to use segments to get to happen, you could mention that separately too...

I didn't give my verdict yet...

easy accept

Yeah, the difficulty categories normally go like this: fastest always accepted, and then more difficult categories can exist on top of that even if they're slower. Do you feel like keeping the Normal difficulty run would have some merit or does this run suffice by itself? Lots of similar stuff of course but also some different, and not just because of missing optimizations in that one.

Game timer: Yeah, that would make sense that it stores the time in frames, not seconds. Can't you just check the start of the level to see how long it takes for the timer to tick up to the next second to confirm this?

Comments: The parts that I asked you about you could probably bear to explain in the comments as you have here. And cause the text on the top left is kinda small, you could explicitly mention that that one level is the only one Tarakan did and why (that's interesting to hear). And what kinds of little tricks were there in there that might not be obvious to the naked eye. Don't have to mention every instance of them necessarily. In fact you could just include a glossary of all the tricks you used and what they mean and what you call them at the start of the comments.

For every level, if there's something interesting that you had to use segments to get to happen, you could mention that separately too...

I didn't give my verdict yet...

easy accept

ktwo

2023-09-24 09:59:23 am

I watched this with my "casual glasses" on and without any investigation. I therefore don't have much constructive to say. But it was a good and entertaining watch. Well done and congrats on the improvement!

Watching this game completed so smoothly almost makes me forget the struggles I had and motivate me to play through another game in the series!

LotBlind

2023-09-25 02:22:39 pm

Quote from ktwo:

I watched this with my "casual glasses" on and without any investigation. I therefore don't have much constructive to say. But it was a good and entertaining watch. Well done and congrats on the improvement!

Watching this game completed so smoothly almost makes me forget the struggles I had and motivate me to play through another game in the series!

Those casual glasses are always dirty.

SDAVerification

2023-09-26 05:26:38 pm

Decision posted.

LotBlind

2023-12-16 02:19:39 pm

Blacksecret, if you're reading this, we've decided to keep the old run as well, given there's pretty big differences in strats available and the resulting routes. Also if you were going to add anything to the run comments, feel free to do that pretty soon given we're ramping up to publishing a number of runs soon, including this one.

Blacksecret

2024-01-22 12:37:41 pm

Sorry for the late reply, I'm not very good at making comments so it's ok if they stay the way they are and thank you guys for your time.