My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/SeriousSamSE.html
A co-op run done by Shadowwraith, Kibbo, dex, cortez, moooh, Boltr, Ewil, and probably someone else but there's way too many people to keep track of.
Laurent 'KlVis' Villard's Grand Cathedral OOB and no-OOB runs
Verifier Responses
co-op run
Great Cathedral
Decision: Accept all but the non-OOB run of Great Cathedral. The new verification PM system also gets an accept.
Reason: Co-op, and the Great Cathedral run is an improvement.
A co-op run done by Shadowwraith, Kibbo, dex, cortez, moooh, Boltr, Ewil, and probably someone else but there's way too many people to keep track of.
Laurent 'KlVis' Villard's Grand Cathedral OOB and no-OOB runs
Verifier Responses
co-op run
Quote:
Verifier: sierra de chiapas - straight run & gun, a nice fence jump trick and a great mooh's sacrifice
Verifier: valley of the jaguar - an interesting shortcut, I wish I could see also other players perspectives too
Verifier: the city of the gods - using secret corridor to get a cannon and perfectly waste some cannoballs, overall well done
Verifier: serpent yards - I can imagine how many tries it required to pass that stupid wall and still only one of three players did it
Verifier: the pit - that suicide bombers shooting in the bouncy corridor looked like a duck hunt, then later in the tunnel with funny gravity, this shooting to both side gives me a headache, kukulkan goes down very fast
Verifier: ziggurat - run & gun again and wall climbing trick
Verifier: elephant atrium - see above
Verifier: courtyards of gilgamesh - great shortcut found in there, then about 20 seconds of grass cutting - seriously, that grass looks cut already, a jump above the wall of which I have no idea how it was made but it's awesome
Verifier: tower of babel - thats some really nice shooting in here, some cannonballs jumping and the boss goes down in a ridiculously fast time
Verifier: the citadel - thats some nice bug sniping skills, again some wall jumping (this time you raped the game engine) and the room with spinning blades, it was surely hot in there
Verifier: land of the damned - hy! hy! hy! hy! ugh! hy! ugh! hy! and an epic failjump at the end, well done
Verifier: the grand cathedral - my ears hurt from this cacophony of sounds, there's a lot of shooting in this level, I can see why it took 8 players to finish it so fast, the boss goes down in an unexpectable way
Verifier: there is not much more to say, the run is done as fast as it could be, great job on it and I can't wait to see it from different perspectives
Verifier: ok thats it
Verifier: valley of the jaguar - an interesting shortcut, I wish I could see also other players perspectives too
Verifier: the city of the gods - using secret corridor to get a cannon and perfectly waste some cannoballs, overall well done
Verifier: serpent yards - I can imagine how many tries it required to pass that stupid wall and still only one of three players did it
Verifier: the pit - that suicide bombers shooting in the bouncy corridor looked like a duck hunt, then later in the tunnel with funny gravity, this shooting to both side gives me a headache, kukulkan goes down very fast
Verifier: ziggurat - run & gun again and wall climbing trick
Verifier: elephant atrium - see above
Verifier: courtyards of gilgamesh - great shortcut found in there, then about 20 seconds of grass cutting - seriously, that grass looks cut already, a jump above the wall of which I have no idea how it was made but it's awesome
Verifier: tower of babel - thats some really nice shooting in here, some cannonballs jumping and the boss goes down in a ridiculously fast time
Verifier: the citadel - thats some nice bug sniping skills, again some wall jumping (this time you raped the game engine) and the room with spinning blades, it was surely hot in there
Verifier: land of the damned - hy! hy! hy! hy! ugh! hy! ugh! hy! and an epic failjump at the end, well done
Verifier: the grand cathedral - my ears hurt from this cacophony of sounds, there's a lot of shooting in this level, I can see why it took 8 players to finish it so fast, the boss goes down in an unexpectable way
Verifier: there is not much more to say, the run is done as fast as it could be, great job on it and I can't wait to see it from different perspectives
Verifier: ok thats it
Quote:
Hello Mike, thank you for the demos.
Today I have carefully watched them. Here are my comments.
At first I want to share some technical notes that may be useful for classifying the runs and recording videos:
- From one level to the other there's not always the same number of players. In some levels (not necessarily the ones currently with the least runners!), I think some improvement may come when playing with more players.
- There is no info about options set for the server. This game offers much of them, which can dramatically impact gameplay. In particular: the extra multiplayer ennemies (I think this is disabled, didn't check), the increased ennemy power depending on the number of players (I think this is disabled), friendly fire (this is clearly disabled). Such information should be present on the web page.
- Some players have only a limited role, and become "useless" when they helped their friends getting further in the level, yet they continue playing for fun. I think it would have been better if they immediately quit the game, commited suicide or just stopped running and playing. This would make the run much easier to understand when watching. I don't know how these runs are going to be recorded on video (split screen? the game only allows for 4 players at once on screen and there is up to 9 players in a run), anyway I recommend stopping recording the corresponding video (or rendering the corresponding part of the image to black) when a player stops participating to "the real thing".
- Normal or Serious difficulty runs would look quite different, since these modes allow rocket jumping. I don't know why Tourist difficulty was chosen for these runs (apart that Tourist is the funniest way to play Serious Sam!), but I doubt that the increased ennemy power would cancel the speed gained with the use of rocket jumping (cf. the single player Serious run).
Positive:
- Speedrunned cooperative Serious Sam SE rocks hard.
- The guys know what they are doing, there is no real mistake in the runs, it's a pleasure to watch.
- The times given in demo names are exact, according to the ingame timer (/hud_bShowTime=1). Therefore you don't need to time the runs.
Negative:
- In "City of the Gods" a major glitch is exploited, which allows the runners to skip the whole level by walking under the ground. This distorts rendering and hurts performance (with 4 players in split screen I got under 10FPS). It is in no way comparable to other more classical "skybox walking" glitches because they litterally walk through the level. I personally think this kind of level skip should not be accepted (It's absolutely no fun for the viewer) and I don't remember seing such thing in other runs. The single player run currently online has similar run time and doesn't use such a radical glitch. A similar trick is used at the end of Serpent Yards (when the single player run "only" jumps over the door by walking inside the ceiling to join the next and final room, the coop run falls completely under the level to directly get to the end). There are other "out of the level bounds" parts on other levels, but if I remember correctly they all seem 100% acceptable to me as there is still some ground (like in First Encounter runs or the single player run).
These runs should obviously be accepted because they have really good quality and Serious Sam SE coop is so much fun, but I would reject City of the Gods and Serpent Yards in their current form. Now I'm not a SDA rules specialist, so ignore this if walking straight forward to the exit with no ground, distorded rendering and dozens of feet away from the nearest walkable surface is not a rejection factor.
Today I have carefully watched them. Here are my comments.
At first I want to share some technical notes that may be useful for classifying the runs and recording videos:
- From one level to the other there's not always the same number of players. In some levels (not necessarily the ones currently with the least runners!), I think some improvement may come when playing with more players.
- There is no info about options set for the server. This game offers much of them, which can dramatically impact gameplay. In particular: the extra multiplayer ennemies (I think this is disabled, didn't check), the increased ennemy power depending on the number of players (I think this is disabled), friendly fire (this is clearly disabled). Such information should be present on the web page.
- Some players have only a limited role, and become "useless" when they helped their friends getting further in the level, yet they continue playing for fun. I think it would have been better if they immediately quit the game, commited suicide or just stopped running and playing. This would make the run much easier to understand when watching. I don't know how these runs are going to be recorded on video (split screen? the game only allows for 4 players at once on screen and there is up to 9 players in a run), anyway I recommend stopping recording the corresponding video (or rendering the corresponding part of the image to black) when a player stops participating to "the real thing".
- Normal or Serious difficulty runs would look quite different, since these modes allow rocket jumping. I don't know why Tourist difficulty was chosen for these runs (apart that Tourist is the funniest way to play Serious Sam!), but I doubt that the increased ennemy power would cancel the speed gained with the use of rocket jumping (cf. the single player Serious run).
Positive:
- Speedrunned cooperative Serious Sam SE rocks hard.
- The guys know what they are doing, there is no real mistake in the runs, it's a pleasure to watch.
- The times given in demo names are exact, according to the ingame timer (/hud_bShowTime=1). Therefore you don't need to time the runs.
Negative:
- In "City of the Gods" a major glitch is exploited, which allows the runners to skip the whole level by walking under the ground. This distorts rendering and hurts performance (with 4 players in split screen I got under 10FPS). It is in no way comparable to other more classical "skybox walking" glitches because they litterally walk through the level. I personally think this kind of level skip should not be accepted (It's absolutely no fun for the viewer) and I don't remember seing such thing in other runs. The single player run currently online has similar run time and doesn't use such a radical glitch. A similar trick is used at the end of Serpent Yards (when the single player run "only" jumps over the door by walking inside the ceiling to join the next and final room, the coop run falls completely under the level to directly get to the end). There are other "out of the level bounds" parts on other levels, but if I remember correctly they all seem 100% acceptable to me as there is still some ground (like in First Encounter runs or the single player run).
These runs should obviously be accepted because they have really good quality and Serious Sam SE coop is so much fun, but I would reject City of the Gods and Serpent Yards in their current form. Now I'm not a SDA rules specialist, so ignore this if walking straight forward to the exit with no ground, distorded rendering and dozens of feet away from the nearest walkable surface is not a rejection factor.
Quote:
This probably took a while longer to verify than it should, but there's a lot of views to watch.
Can't comment on Audio/Video quality based on the demo files, but if Kibbo is making the encodes I expect no less than 8 person split screen with HD resolution for each player.
Running the game on tourist difficulty has the effect of players having double health, health regeneration, no splash damage on their own weapons and everything in the game dealing absolutely negligable damage. This means no rocket jumping, but also no sense of danger in any form. The only way to die is to drop in a deadly pit or squish yourself with your own cannonball and the enemies solely serve as roadblocks or triggers. This means that instead of being a one man army mowing down endless legions of enemy soldiers, this run feels much more like a group of kids steamrolling an ant hill. There is a total lack of suspense because none of the runners are endangered at any point.
It doesn't help that there is no faster way to move around than walking straight on in this game, and the levels are huge for the most part. They also feature insufficiently high walls most of the time, reducing many levels to just walking straight to the exit trigger by climbing over the walls in the way, either by bouncing of your own cannonball, or if unavailable, piling up a critical mass of players in the manliest tower the world has ever seen. In fact two of the levels, Serpent Yards and The City of the Gods are essentially cleared in a single player fashion by one player just walking straight to the exit trigger.
This, ultimately, is the downside of the run: Doing this game fast is, for the most part, impressivly dull. Serious Sam is a very fun game to PLAY, but I found verifying this to be a lot less entertaining than I expected it to be.
Nevertheless, I don't think that's enough justification for rejecting the run because it is mostly well done from a technical point of view. The number of players varies throughout the run, but every map always features enough people to get everything done as smoothly as possible. I couldn't find a spot where additional players would have allowed for a faster route or a significantly more efficient way of killing the necessary trigger enemies. All players also know their roles and have a good sense of what they need to do. There are no players sitting around killing random unnecessary enemies or going the wrong way and the players make sure not to step in each others path. Whenever enemies need to be obliterated you can clearly see that the strategy employed is a result of a fair amount of testing.
That said, there are still minor mistakes and sloppyness and each of the replays could quite clearly be improved still, even if just by a few seconds. Nevertheless, I feel the play quality is high enough for an accept, and I don't want to get my personal lack of enjoyment watching it get in the way of that verdict. It will certainly help watching this if you are free to skip a view you already saw in third person from the guy running behind him for most of the map.
A couple quick notes on a few of the maps:
The Pit: I personally enjoyed this run the most because it's one of the few levels that aren't more or less completely skipped. Instead you get some well planned out fights in most of the rooms.
Elephant Atrium: For a level that consists of almost nothing besides climbing over walls, having the first person (TheVoid) drop down instead of making it over a wall seems to be quite an unnecessary loss of time.
Tower of Babel: I'm a bit saddened you didn't recruit another player just to show off the secret egyptian level, it's so awesome it would have been worth it.
Land of the Damned: I'm aware that this map consists of mostly just running down the intented path for 5 minutes and then doing a tough cannonball jump at the end, I stil feel the time it took to do the jump was a bit long. It's also amusing how you heal faster on Tourist than the lava deals damage to you.
Grand Cathedral: I find it funny that TheVoid gets out of the level right at the start, then walks for minutes through the void just to arrive at the end only a couple seconds before the rest of the group. There also seems to be a faster strategy for this map just recently discovered, so I'm sure we'll see an improvement to this posted some time soon.
Overall, I can't find enough of a reason to reject this, but I don't really recommend watching it either.
Verdict: Accept
Can't comment on Audio/Video quality based on the demo files, but if Kibbo is making the encodes I expect no less than 8 person split screen with HD resolution for each player.
Running the game on tourist difficulty has the effect of players having double health, health regeneration, no splash damage on their own weapons and everything in the game dealing absolutely negligable damage. This means no rocket jumping, but also no sense of danger in any form. The only way to die is to drop in a deadly pit or squish yourself with your own cannonball and the enemies solely serve as roadblocks or triggers. This means that instead of being a one man army mowing down endless legions of enemy soldiers, this run feels much more like a group of kids steamrolling an ant hill. There is a total lack of suspense because none of the runners are endangered at any point.
It doesn't help that there is no faster way to move around than walking straight on in this game, and the levels are huge for the most part. They also feature insufficiently high walls most of the time, reducing many levels to just walking straight to the exit trigger by climbing over the walls in the way, either by bouncing of your own cannonball, or if unavailable, piling up a critical mass of players in the manliest tower the world has ever seen. In fact two of the levels, Serpent Yards and The City of the Gods are essentially cleared in a single player fashion by one player just walking straight to the exit trigger.
This, ultimately, is the downside of the run: Doing this game fast is, for the most part, impressivly dull. Serious Sam is a very fun game to PLAY, but I found verifying this to be a lot less entertaining than I expected it to be.
Nevertheless, I don't think that's enough justification for rejecting the run because it is mostly well done from a technical point of view. The number of players varies throughout the run, but every map always features enough people to get everything done as smoothly as possible. I couldn't find a spot where additional players would have allowed for a faster route or a significantly more efficient way of killing the necessary trigger enemies. All players also know their roles and have a good sense of what they need to do. There are no players sitting around killing random unnecessary enemies or going the wrong way and the players make sure not to step in each others path. Whenever enemies need to be obliterated you can clearly see that the strategy employed is a result of a fair amount of testing.
That said, there are still minor mistakes and sloppyness and each of the replays could quite clearly be improved still, even if just by a few seconds. Nevertheless, I feel the play quality is high enough for an accept, and I don't want to get my personal lack of enjoyment watching it get in the way of that verdict. It will certainly help watching this if you are free to skip a view you already saw in third person from the guy running behind him for most of the map.
A couple quick notes on a few of the maps:
The Pit: I personally enjoyed this run the most because it's one of the few levels that aren't more or less completely skipped. Instead you get some well planned out fights in most of the rooms.
Elephant Atrium: For a level that consists of almost nothing besides climbing over walls, having the first person (TheVoid) drop down instead of making it over a wall seems to be quite an unnecessary loss of time.
Tower of Babel: I'm a bit saddened you didn't recruit another player just to show off the secret egyptian level, it's so awesome it would have been worth it.
Land of the Damned: I'm aware that this map consists of mostly just running down the intented path for 5 minutes and then doing a tough cannonball jump at the end, I stil feel the time it took to do the jump was a bit long. It's also amusing how you heal faster on Tourist than the lava deals damage to you.
Grand Cathedral: I find it funny that TheVoid gets out of the level right at the start, then walks for minutes through the void just to arrive at the end only a couple seconds before the rest of the group. There also seems to be a faster strategy for this map just recently discovered, so I'm sure we'll see an improvement to this posted some time soon.
Overall, I can't find enough of a reason to reject this, but I don't really recommend watching it either.
Verdict: Accept
Quote:
There are many times in the runs where mistakes are just acceptable timewise due to the fact that no time is lost overall (waiting for a trigger, character being unuseful for the rest of the run etc). I will concentrate on time costing mistakes and route planning errors and not much on what is "bad looking" on screen.
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Sierra de chapas:
Second part consist of running to the corner of the room with invincibility powerup. and needs 4 to 5 players to reach this point close to each other. The first trick is the use of a far away speed powerup timed so that they reach the first part end as the wall disappear. Execution on this is just mindblowing. The speedboosted guys are stuck by a door at some point though. Not sure if there isn't any way to have one of the runners open it for them.
There is one trick that may be missing then with the possibility to save a second or two. Arran (second player) is waiting on the edge while he may jump in the teleporter faster than dex (busy triggering this teleporter appearance). I raised this idea in the thread to see the reason it was absent. This is obviously a very hard to achieve improvement and wouldn't save alot of time.
The rest is pretty much straightforward running and shooting until the end and although there is might be the possibility of a kleer boosting (hit in the back by a kleer to accelerate) this is ok.
Time lost AFAIK: ~2s
+: Timing for maximum speed usefulness
-: Speedboosted team waiting for a door, not making use of the teleporter as it appears
ACCEPTED
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Valley of the Jaguar:
This map is making great use of teamplay to fullfil objectives at different locations.
The way the team will separate once outside is very well thought out. One player is needed to rush to the jaguar far away while a couple are trying to pick the second. They keep one player outside to put the statues in place and one player on top of the stairs ready to trigger the endlevel.
The first player is faster than the second team and second team run seems ok so I'd say that there is no time lost here. Though I believe that it could be better to see the first player rush to the closest jaguar and the second going far away. The second would then be late on timing but this may not be a problem if he could get one or two kleer boosts in the plain and never get stuck by lumberjacks.
Only a minor difference and the great timing between the two teams more than make up for it.
Time lost AFAIK: 1s
+: Separation of objectives between players once outdoor, close timing between both jaguar pickups
-:
ACCEPTED
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The City of the Gods:
Basically, this level is not a team performance. One player reaches the corner of the first room as fast as possible and use a glitch by crouching forward until he finds himself out of the level limits. He is then able to trigger the end of the level from a safe little room far away. Time matches solo run.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+: Break the game
-: Break the level
ACCEPTED
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Serpent Yards:
OOB is used again but is not as long as in the last level.
This is again a solo performance involving using a cannon jump. Time matches solo run.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+:
-: Break the level a bit
ACCEPTED
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The Pit:
In the flipper room teamwork is more than excellent and impressive with very astute placing allowing to crush every ennemy as it appears.
Dex is making an ugly mistake on the bridge on his way to the Newton's Nightmare room: he is getting stuck by a dead bull and loses a second.
I am not sure about the way it works here: in the biomech arena, is TheVoid triggering the apparition of the biomechs or is it another player by reaching the middle of the arena? In serious the two ways to trigger are to pick health or reach the high grounds. In tourist it may be triggered in the middle of the room (then no problem). Otherwise having TheVoid triggering it may not be as fast as having someone run to the trigger.
Some explanation on the cannon boosting in the slide would be interesting as I don't know the effect, anyway TheVoid with the powerboost is first and triggers the boss very fast. The battle is then sick quick given that three lasers and boosted grenades kill an easy difficulty boss in no time: awesome.
Time lost AFAIK: ~3s
+: Flipper room teamwork, Kukulkan down in no time
-: Stuck by werebull, biomechs triggering?
ACCEPTED
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Ziggurat:
That one is very messy but still interesting.
The first trick is sacrificing a player in order for other to skip a part. Boltr decided to play two players to leave one for this trick. It seems acceptable given that this player is close from useless afterwards and really anyone could play this role but noone would like to.
The end is very messy with many smallish mistakes: player waiting for his mates instead of clearing the zone, misses in village people tricks and they didn't try to use any harpy for jumping in the last battle (like moooh did in the solo run). There must be some time to save by polishing this run but the result is still good and fast. Mistakes seems acceptable enough for accepting the run I'd say.
Time lost AFAIK: >0s
+: Routes for gathering as much players as possible in the last room
-: Couple of missed village people tricks
ACCEPTED
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The Elephant Atrium:
This one is one of the closest from being rejected. The reason is that this is a very easy and short level to run and hence shouldn't have any mistake.
The first part consist of straight running while bombing around and avoiding getting stuck by any ennemy. Easy enough in serious to be piece of cake in tourist. Then the only difficulty is performing two village people tricks back to back to have two players reaching the last part as fast as possible. One is used as a step to allow rushing to the last trigger from the second. Once the last part is triggered it's all about killing kleers as they appear and it gives plenty of time to do this right.
The problem here is the fact that the two village people tricks should be perfect. Luck manipulation could have been used better to see TheVoid first outside and first a step in the last part. One miss is acceptable and doesn't represent much time but it just depends on odds of a perfect trick to happen. Since the village people trick seems quite unreliable I would still accept the run.
Time lost AFAIK: 1s
+:
-: Fails during the village people trick
ACCEPTED
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Courtyards of Gilgamesh:
This is a perfect run as far as I know.
They need the first player ouside to offer a step to the outside of the map, two players that will go in the long corridor at the end and a third player to achieve a perfectly timed shot at a target to trigger the catapult to the corridor.
This part is very well timed and make the run very impressive but this is nothing compared to the end.
While a player is running the endlevel the other is supposed to get rid of spawning monsters to trigger the opening of the last door. They make great use of spawning glitches to have one spawning close to the end and one spawning close to a powerup. Powershooting the ennemies is then piece of cake.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+: Timing at the catapult, spawning at two locations depending on needs
-:
ACCEPTED
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The Tower of Babel:
I am very impressed by this run.
There is a player that could try to pick a power boost before reaching the larva but I'm not sure that he would keep alot of boost nor that it would make a real difference since the larva dies very quickly in tourist.
Great performance on the Cannon boosts.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+: Perfect Cannon Boosts, running at the start is excellent
-:
ACCEPTED
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The Citadel:
This is another great run overall! I really like how they have planned teamplay during the fighting parts. The only thing that I see as a mistake is happening at the end of the level. They are three to enter the elevator but they don't try to launch a village people trick. They would save very little time but the fact that it is possible to jump on one's head or maybe even have a three men tower would improve the level and would look very neat on screen.
Time lost AFAIK: ~1s
+: great use of the player as a step on the rock
-: village people dislike elevators?
ACCEPTED
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Land of The Damned:
The runners are really cuting on edges which is quite hard in the caverns because any mistake result in instant death for a player.
There are only two small mistakes: first runner get stuck by a kleer in the Santa section with kamikazes and kleers and the first runner is missing his shot in the last cannon jump at the end. Given that he is followed by a team mate close to him each time the time lost isn't really a problem.
Time lost AFAIK: 1s
+: Sharp turning and great running in the caverns
-: Stuck by a kleer, missed cannon jump
ACCEPTED
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The Grand Cathedral:
I am both amazed and disappointed.
Amazed at the fact that they run the level as it is supposed to be instead of running out of the map or out of the bounds. But also disappointed because I am not sure that there isn't a faster way. First they save very little time compared to the solo run and they don't make use of a warping OOB point or the outside of the castle.
I think it would be better to have a couple of players making use of the known shortcuts.
There is a possibility of running outside of the map as in the solo run but the best trick may be to warp out of bounds. Just near the second red armor and third red backpack a cannon boost may allow to reach the top of the wall and jump to a glitched spot. The problem has been raised in the thread discussion already.
I will decide to refuse this run despite it being so entertaining. 3 seconds saved compared to the solo run is not enough in my opinion and even though I like seeing the whole level (compared to serious speedrun or tourist solo) I think this is not the goal and keeping coherent with their own rules, they could achieve a much better time.
Time lost AFAIK: 60s
+: Action packed map ran in full
-: Maybe not as fast as possible because no shortcuts
REFUSED
==================================================
Overall these are great runs! Allowing warping in the game breaks even more than before but I guess it is ok with SDA rules now. If warping is accepted in their rules and used in a run then it should be present when possible and faster which is the point in the last run. I am a bit disapointed by this warping rule. As many players were asking for less trick and more fight Tourist came with a nice improvement brought by rules: rocket jumps are impossible and cannon jumps are not as efficient so the levels are not cut as much as in serious most of the time. I don't know if warping and no warping could be considered separate categories for just a couple of levels but it would be a nice idea IMHO.
ACCEPTED: 11
REFUSED: 1
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Sierra de chapas:
Second part consist of running to the corner of the room with invincibility powerup. and needs 4 to 5 players to reach this point close to each other. The first trick is the use of a far away speed powerup timed so that they reach the first part end as the wall disappear. Execution on this is just mindblowing. The speedboosted guys are stuck by a door at some point though. Not sure if there isn't any way to have one of the runners open it for them.
There is one trick that may be missing then with the possibility to save a second or two. Arran (second player) is waiting on the edge while he may jump in the teleporter faster than dex (busy triggering this teleporter appearance). I raised this idea in the thread to see the reason it was absent. This is obviously a very hard to achieve improvement and wouldn't save alot of time.
The rest is pretty much straightforward running and shooting until the end and although there is might be the possibility of a kleer boosting (hit in the back by a kleer to accelerate) this is ok.
Time lost AFAIK: ~2s
+: Timing for maximum speed usefulness
-: Speedboosted team waiting for a door, not making use of the teleporter as it appears
ACCEPTED
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Valley of the Jaguar:
This map is making great use of teamplay to fullfil objectives at different locations.
The way the team will separate once outside is very well thought out. One player is needed to rush to the jaguar far away while a couple are trying to pick the second. They keep one player outside to put the statues in place and one player on top of the stairs ready to trigger the endlevel.
The first player is faster than the second team and second team run seems ok so I'd say that there is no time lost here. Though I believe that it could be better to see the first player rush to the closest jaguar and the second going far away. The second would then be late on timing but this may not be a problem if he could get one or two kleer boosts in the plain and never get stuck by lumberjacks.
Only a minor difference and the great timing between the two teams more than make up for it.
Time lost AFAIK: 1s
+: Separation of objectives between players once outdoor, close timing between both jaguar pickups
-:
ACCEPTED
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The City of the Gods:
Basically, this level is not a team performance. One player reaches the corner of the first room as fast as possible and use a glitch by crouching forward until he finds himself out of the level limits. He is then able to trigger the end of the level from a safe little room far away. Time matches solo run.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+: Break the game
-: Break the level
ACCEPTED
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Serpent Yards:
OOB is used again but is not as long as in the last level.
This is again a solo performance involving using a cannon jump. Time matches solo run.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+:
-: Break the level a bit
ACCEPTED
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The Pit:
In the flipper room teamwork is more than excellent and impressive with very astute placing allowing to crush every ennemy as it appears.
Dex is making an ugly mistake on the bridge on his way to the Newton's Nightmare room: he is getting stuck by a dead bull and loses a second.
I am not sure about the way it works here: in the biomech arena, is TheVoid triggering the apparition of the biomechs or is it another player by reaching the middle of the arena? In serious the two ways to trigger are to pick health or reach the high grounds. In tourist it may be triggered in the middle of the room (then no problem). Otherwise having TheVoid triggering it may not be as fast as having someone run to the trigger.
Some explanation on the cannon boosting in the slide would be interesting as I don't know the effect, anyway TheVoid with the powerboost is first and triggers the boss very fast. The battle is then sick quick given that three lasers and boosted grenades kill an easy difficulty boss in no time: awesome.
Time lost AFAIK: ~3s
+: Flipper room teamwork, Kukulkan down in no time
-: Stuck by werebull, biomechs triggering?
ACCEPTED
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Ziggurat:
That one is very messy but still interesting.
The first trick is sacrificing a player in order for other to skip a part. Boltr decided to play two players to leave one for this trick. It seems acceptable given that this player is close from useless afterwards and really anyone could play this role but noone would like to.
The end is very messy with many smallish mistakes: player waiting for his mates instead of clearing the zone, misses in village people tricks and they didn't try to use any harpy for jumping in the last battle (like moooh did in the solo run). There must be some time to save by polishing this run but the result is still good and fast. Mistakes seems acceptable enough for accepting the run I'd say.
Time lost AFAIK: >0s
+: Routes for gathering as much players as possible in the last room
-: Couple of missed village people tricks
ACCEPTED
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The Elephant Atrium:
This one is one of the closest from being rejected. The reason is that this is a very easy and short level to run and hence shouldn't have any mistake.
The first part consist of straight running while bombing around and avoiding getting stuck by any ennemy. Easy enough in serious to be piece of cake in tourist. Then the only difficulty is performing two village people tricks back to back to have two players reaching the last part as fast as possible. One is used as a step to allow rushing to the last trigger from the second. Once the last part is triggered it's all about killing kleers as they appear and it gives plenty of time to do this right.
The problem here is the fact that the two village people tricks should be perfect. Luck manipulation could have been used better to see TheVoid first outside and first a step in the last part. One miss is acceptable and doesn't represent much time but it just depends on odds of a perfect trick to happen. Since the village people trick seems quite unreliable I would still accept the run.
Time lost AFAIK: 1s
+:
-: Fails during the village people trick
ACCEPTED
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Courtyards of Gilgamesh:
This is a perfect run as far as I know.
They need the first player ouside to offer a step to the outside of the map, two players that will go in the long corridor at the end and a third player to achieve a perfectly timed shot at a target to trigger the catapult to the corridor.
This part is very well timed and make the run very impressive but this is nothing compared to the end.
While a player is running the endlevel the other is supposed to get rid of spawning monsters to trigger the opening of the last door. They make great use of spawning glitches to have one spawning close to the end and one spawning close to a powerup. Powershooting the ennemies is then piece of cake.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+: Timing at the catapult, spawning at two locations depending on needs
-:
ACCEPTED
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The Tower of Babel:
I am very impressed by this run.
There is a player that could try to pick a power boost before reaching the larva but I'm not sure that he would keep alot of boost nor that it would make a real difference since the larva dies very quickly in tourist.
Great performance on the Cannon boosts.
Time lost AFAIK: 0s
+: Perfect Cannon Boosts, running at the start is excellent
-:
ACCEPTED
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The Citadel:
This is another great run overall! I really like how they have planned teamplay during the fighting parts. The only thing that I see as a mistake is happening at the end of the level. They are three to enter the elevator but they don't try to launch a village people trick. They would save very little time but the fact that it is possible to jump on one's head or maybe even have a three men tower would improve the level and would look very neat on screen.
Time lost AFAIK: ~1s
+: great use of the player as a step on the rock
-: village people dislike elevators?
ACCEPTED
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Land of The Damned:
The runners are really cuting on edges which is quite hard in the caverns because any mistake result in instant death for a player.
There are only two small mistakes: first runner get stuck by a kleer in the Santa section with kamikazes and kleers and the first runner is missing his shot in the last cannon jump at the end. Given that he is followed by a team mate close to him each time the time lost isn't really a problem.
Time lost AFAIK: 1s
+: Sharp turning and great running in the caverns
-: Stuck by a kleer, missed cannon jump
ACCEPTED
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The Grand Cathedral:
I am both amazed and disappointed.
Amazed at the fact that they run the level as it is supposed to be instead of running out of the map or out of the bounds. But also disappointed because I am not sure that there isn't a faster way. First they save very little time compared to the solo run and they don't make use of a warping OOB point or the outside of the castle.
I think it would be better to have a couple of players making use of the known shortcuts.
There is a possibility of running outside of the map as in the solo run but the best trick may be to warp out of bounds. Just near the second red armor and third red backpack a cannon boost may allow to reach the top of the wall and jump to a glitched spot. The problem has been raised in the thread discussion already.
I will decide to refuse this run despite it being so entertaining. 3 seconds saved compared to the solo run is not enough in my opinion and even though I like seeing the whole level (compared to serious speedrun or tourist solo) I think this is not the goal and keeping coherent with their own rules, they could achieve a much better time.
Time lost AFAIK: 60s
+: Action packed map ran in full
-: Maybe not as fast as possible because no shortcuts
REFUSED
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Overall these are great runs! Allowing warping in the game breaks even more than before but I guess it is ok with SDA rules now. If warping is accepted in their rules and used in a run then it should be present when possible and faster which is the point in the last run. I am a bit disapointed by this warping rule. As many players were asking for less trick and more fight Tourist came with a nice improvement brought by rules: rocket jumps are impossible and cannon jumps are not as efficient so the levels are not cut as much as in serious most of the time. I don't know if warping and no warping could be considered separate categories for just a couple of levels but it would be a nice idea IMHO.
ACCEPTED: 11
REFUSED: 1
Great Cathedral
Quote:
Hi
I don't see a reason for having separate categories for OOB and non-OOB. IIRC, there are just 4 levels in entire Serious Sam series that have possibility of OOB shortcut, so the OOB-only table would probably never get filled.
As for the run itself, I don't see any problems as long as the final stats screen is showed in final videos.
ACCEPT
I don't see a reason for having separate categories for OOB and non-OOB. IIRC, there are just 4 levels in entire Serious Sam series that have possibility of OOB shortcut, so the OOB-only table would probably never get filled.
As for the run itself, I don't see any problems as long as the final stats screen is showed in final videos.
ACCEPT
Quote:
IIRC there is already a run in the Serious IL that goes OOB (near the end of Serpent Yards) so I see no problem having them in the same table.
There are only a few levels where OOB shortcuts have been found over the past 3 years so we are not likely to see a full OOB table anyways.
This is also consistent with the team project where the runs with OOB shortcuts have obsoleted the previous records.
The run itself is pretty optimized and I don't see more than 1 second improvement being possible at the moment so it's a definite accept.
edit: BTW, I didn't reflect upon it until now, but this group topic setup is not the most optimal in the view of a verification thread, since we can see eachothers replies
There are only a few levels where OOB shortcuts have been found over the past 3 years so we are not likely to see a full OOB table anyways.
This is also consistent with the team project where the runs with OOB shortcuts have obsoleted the previous records.
The run itself is pretty optimized and I don't see more than 1 second improvement being possible at the moment so it's a definite accept.
edit: BTW, I didn't reflect upon it until now, but this group topic setup is not the most optimal in the view of a verification thread, since we can see eachothers replies
Quote:
Agreeing with what has been said so far. They should be in the same category.
Also agreeing that the runs are of good quality and should be accepted, so long as the stat screen is shown at the end.
I like the verification thread thing. It lets us have a bit of back and forth on any possible issues we might face.
Also agreeing that the runs are of good quality and should be accepted, so long as the stat screen is shown at the end.
I like the verification thread thing. It lets us have a bit of back and forth on any possible issues we might face.
Decision: Accept all but the non-OOB run of Great Cathedral. The new verification PM system also gets an accept.
Reason: Co-op, and the Great Cathedral run is an improvement.
Thread title: