Severance: Blade of Darkness - April 30th, 2012

2012-04-30 09:29:15 am

1-Up!

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

best ending run with the knight, segmented run

Verifier Responses

Quote:

Not sure where to post the response, so I'll post it here. :>

A/V is good. I didn't notice any cheating.
The game physics engine was quite advanced for the time (2001) and it was supposed to provide realistic movement to the game. However it tried a little too hard and became more of a source of frustration than anything else. The runner takes the ultimate revenge on it and bends it in all directions. Literally. Disarming Dal-Gurak was also totally cool.
The runner's comments are extensive and I can't add much to them, apart from some nitpicks. Yes, there are some inconsistencies, but even the most noticeable of them doesn't have any effect on the rest of the run. The runner also uses a couple of mods, but those are purely aestethical. What bothers me slightly, is that even though some of the tricks are easy to perform, like "airclimbing", others are not, most noticeably "breakdancing", and the runner had to remap some of the keys to help with the those tricks. If key rebinding between the segments is ok (it doesn't seem to directly violate the rules), then I see no reasons not to accept the run.

I conferred with the staff and it was decided that the key rebinding is acceptable. Sadly, this is my only verifier response, so it will have to do.

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Miles 'Tesseract' Lajoie!

Thread title:

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

best ending run with the knight, segmented run

[b]Verifier Responses[/b]

[quote]Not sure where to post the response, so I'll post it here. :>

A/V is good. I didn't notice any cheating.
The game physics engine was quite advanced for the time (2001) and it was supposed to provide realistic movement to the game. However it tried a little too hard and became more of a source of frustration than anything else. The runner takes the ultimate revenge on it and bends it in all directions. Literally. Disarming Dal-Gurak was also totally cool.
The runner's comments are extensive and I can't add much to them, apart from some nitpicks. Yes, there are some inconsistencies, but even the most noticeable of them doesn't have any effect on the rest of the run. The runner also uses a couple of mods, but those are purely aestethical. What bothers me slightly, is that even though some of the tricks are easy to perform, like "airclimbing", others are not, most noticeably "breakdancing", and the runner had to remap some of the keys to help with the those tricks. If key rebinding between the segments is ok (it doesn't seem to directly violate the rules), then I see no reasons not to accept the run.[/quote]

I conferred with the staff and it was decided that the key rebinding is acceptable. Sadly, this is my only verifier response, so it will have to do.

[b]Decision[/b]: Accept

Congratulations to Miles 'Tesseract' Lajoie!

mike89

2012-04-30 09:35:58 am

SEGA Junkie

Quote from verifier:

Yes, there are some inconsistencies, but even the most noticeable of them doesn't have any effect on the rest of the run.

This seems like something slightly more serious than just an innocuous "oh, it's there, but whatever". Have you got examples of this?

KhanFusion

Edit history:

KhanFusion: 2012-04-30 11:16:54 am

2012-04-30 11:15:27 am

Quote from mike89:

This seems like something slightly more serious than just an innocuous "oh, it's there, but whatever". Have you got examples of this?

There were just two health inconsistencies in the run, and both of them were to the runner's disadvantage. At the end of the volcano level he suddenly lost 200 health (out of 3800) and became poisoned, and somewhere else he lost just 1 health point.

Actually, the most serious question (at least for me) was to try to make sure that he performed all his tricks by hand. Because when I saw the game on the verification thread I googled about it and found a forum where the runner had described some of the more simple tricks for his upcoming run. He also mentioned that he used scripts to find them. Hopefully, only for that and nothing else. The run is heavily segmented, so that speaks agains use of scripts during actual playthrough. He also provided descriptions of the glitches, which I used to successfully recreate them. The hardest of them, "breakdancing", allowed me to scale walls and took about an hour to perform it even once, but I did it anyway.

So, in the end, the tricks are humanly possible to perform, unrealiable and hard ones are isolated in separate segments, routes are straitforward, inconsistencies are either irrevelant or don't give any advantages. With all that, I had only one issue with the run, and I mentioned it in my response.

[quote="mike89"]This seems like something slightly more serious than just an innocuous "oh, it's there, but whatever". Have you got examples of this?[/quote] There were just two health inconsistencies in the run, and both of them were to the runner's disadvantage. At the end of the volcano level he suddenly lost 200 health (out of 3800) and became poisoned, and somewhere else he lost just 1 health point.

Actually, the most serious question (at least for me) was to try to make sure that he performed all his tricks by hand. Because when I saw the game on the verification thread I googled about it and found a forum where the runner had described some of the more simple tricks for his upcoming run. He also mentioned that he used [b]scripts[/b] to find them. Hopefully, only for that and nothing else. The run is heavily segmented, so that speaks agains use of scripts during actual playthrough. He also provided descriptions of the glitches, which I used to successfully recreate them. The hardest of them, "breakdancing", allowed me to scale walls and took about an hour to perform it even once, but I did it anyway.

So, in the end, the tricks are humanly possible to perform, unrealiable and hard ones are isolated in separate segments, routes are straitforward, inconsistencies are either irrevelant or don't give any advantages. With all that, I had only one issue with the run, and I mentioned it in my response.

Flip

2012-04-30 11:18:26 am

1-Up!

Looks like we may need to look at this further (ah, the disadvantage of having verifiers disappear). If you provide timestamps, I'll provide the v link for anybody who is interested in looking at the discrepancies. If no reasonable explanation can be found, this will have to change to a reject.

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/Blade-of-Darkness-Speedrun for anybody interested.

Thanatos

2012-04-30 01:04:13 pm

definitely gonna look at the run, I loved this game and played the hell out of it many years ago.

Flip

2012-04-30 01:18:13 pm

1-Up!

Why didn't you offer to verify?!?

IsraeliRD

2012-04-30 04:37:31 pm

Dragon Power Supreme

The runner provides explanations in the .txt files (and also segment times).

Quote:

All segments were recorded sequentially except for segments 01-08, 33-35, 44-46, and 75-77. You will notice the following desyncs:

Segment 10: I learn "Punch" again when I have already learned it.
Segment 36: I have 1 less health than before the cutscene skip.
Segment 47: I am slightly wounded with one application of -6 poison after the cutscene skip.
Segment 77: The suspense zinger cuts out as the functional ending cutscene is spliced in.

These happened because I went back and redid some segments after the run. None of the desyncs change the outcome of the run or required a different state to occur. The biggest desync is when I am suddenly poisoned on segment 47, this is because I took a hit from a dark knight in a previous segment that I redid. However, I end the level with over 1000 health, so even if I were to gain the health instead of losing it, the difference would be negligible.

On a different note the run is very entertaining. Shame it only had 1 verifier.

The runner provides explanations in the .txt files (and also segment times).
[quote]All segments were recorded sequentially except for segments 01-08, 33-35, 44-46, and 75-77.  You will notice the following desyncs:

Segment 10: I learn "Punch" again when I have already learned it.
Segment 36: I have 1 less health than before the cutscene skip.
Segment 47: I am slightly wounded with one application of -6 poison after the cutscene skip.
Segment 77: The suspense zinger cuts out as the functional ending cutscene is spliced in.

These happened because I went back and redid some segments after the run.  None of the desyncs change the outcome of the run or required a different state to occur.  The biggest desync is when I am suddenly poisoned on segment 47, this is because I took a hit from a dark knight in a previous segment that I redid.  However, I end the level with over 1000 health, so even if I were to gain the health instead of losing it, the difference would be negligible.[/quote]

On a different note the run is very entertaining. Shame it only had 1 verifier.

InsipidMuckyWater

Edit history:

InsipidMuckyWater: 2012-05-02 06:24:06 am

2012-05-01 02:52:47 pm

Visit my profile to see my runs!

Inconsistencies AND remapping? *stink eye*

I don't like it personally, even if the inconsistencies only detriment the player and the remapping just makes easier things a person could do. The latter in particular sure smells a lot like the cliche pro-scripting arguments. At best, it's borderline, so you won't see my crying about it if you decide to disqualify the run.

That being said, I don't know dick about this run, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Just my thoughts.

EDIT: I think I misunderstood something earlier.

Quote:

The hardest of them, "breakdancing", allowed me to scale walls and took about an hour to perform it even once, but I did it anyway.

I thought what KhanFusion was saying was that it normally always takes an hour to do this, but he was just saying that it took him an hour to do it for his first time. In other words, I thought the runner was cutting an hour's worth of work every time he performed the breakdancing. That, combined with the inconsistencies and the mention of using scripts to search for glitches got my red flag radar raised perhaps prematurely. But because it sounds like the tricks the runner used were performed legitimately, albeit with remapping, I'll just defer to whatever the overtime verifiers have to say.

Inconsistencies AND remapping?      *stink eye*

I don't like it personally, even if the inconsistencies only detriment the player and the remapping just makes easier things a person could do.  The latter in particular sure smells a lot like the cliche pro-scripting arguments.  At best, it's borderline, so you won't see my crying about it if you decide to disqualify the run.

That being said, I don't know dick about this run, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.  Just my thoughts.

EDIT:  I think I misunderstood something earlier.

[quote]The hardest of them, "breakdancing", allowed me to scale walls and took about an hour to perform it even once, but I did it anyway. [/quote]

I thought what KhanFusion was saying was that it normally always takes an hour to do this, but he was just saying that it took him an hour to do it for his first time.  In other words, I thought the runner was cutting an hour's worth of work every time he performed the breakdancing.  That, combined with the inconsistencies and the mention of using scripts to search for glitches got my red flag radar raised perhaps prematurely.  But because it sounds like the tricks the runner used were performed legitimately, albeit with remapping, I'll just defer to whatever the overtime verifiers have to say.

mike89

2012-05-01 11:58:21 pm

SEGA Junkie

Yeah, I don't know anything about this game either, and the explanations that were forthcoming sit fine with me. That said, there's nothing wrong with checking to make sure Smiley

KhanFusion

Edit history:

KhanFusion: 2012-05-02 08:24:52 am

2012-05-02 08:24:27 am

Quote from InsipidMuckyWater:

I thought what KhanFusion was saying was that it normally always takes an hour to do this, but he was just saying that it took him an hour to do it for his first time. In other words, I thought the runner was cutting an hour's worth of work every time he performed the breakdancing.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it took him an hour every time he performed the trick. The direction you'll end up facing after performing the trick is totally random, but you need it within certain limits if you need to climb a specific wall. And the only thing I wanted to achieve was to make the character lean in any direction at an angle high enough to climb any nearby wall.
So, if there were two breakdancing tricks in one segment, that would be cheating 100%. Even if there was one such trick in a segment, but that segment wasn't trivial, that would be very suspicious.

ShadowWraith

2012-05-02 09:45:42 am

.

Remapping keys doesn't sound like scripting to me. It's something you do in the ingame menu, is it not?

Bud Bud

2012-05-02 01:46:22 pm

Quote from ShadowWraith:

Remapping keys doesn't sound like scripting to me. It's something you do in the ingame menu, is it not?

He used macroscripts with a 3rd party program for the tricks.

ShadowWraith

Edit history:

ShadowWraith: 2012-08-01 12:51:46 pm

2012-05-02 01:53:50 pm

.

Well, that's pretty much against the rules...

KhanFusion

Edit history:

KhanFusion: 2012-05-02 03:42:41 pm

2012-05-02 03:42:24 pm

Quote from Bud Bud:

He used macroscripts with a 3rd party program for the tricks.

I guess it should be noted, that this assumption is based on the fact that you "tried some of the movement tricks but gave up after an hour with default settings".

InsipidMuckyWater

Edit history:

InsipidMuckyWater: 2012-05-02 07:08:48 pm

2012-05-02 07:08:30 pm

Visit my profile to see my runs!

So he did or did not use a 3rd party program? Is there an in-game remapping feature?

KhanFusion

2012-05-02 07:44:00 pm

Quote from InsipidMuckyWater:

So he did or did not use a 3rd party program? Is there an in-game remapping feature?

He claims he used macros only to find tricks and not during the run itself. And you can remap keys in the main menu, just as usual.

mikwuyma

2012-08-01 09:26:02 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

This run deserves an award for comedy of the year. The End.

ThomasDollar

2012-08-02 01:04:17 am

The awkward moment when you watch the Severance: Blade of Darkness speedrun for the first time.

zallard1

2012-08-02 10:14:42 am

B+Left, Left, Up+B, ★

Only 20 seconds in and I'm already in tears. I know what I'm watching today.

Kotti

2012-08-02 11:09:30 am

After reading the previous comments I watched the first level and decided that I simply must download it on IQ.

Tesseract

2012-08-06 03:29:06 pm

Hope you guys enjoyed this run!

The blooper reel was included in the Extras folder when I uploaded, along with the other videos referenced in the comments. If anyone is willing to update the speedrun comments/game page to include at least the bloopers, that would be nice. In the meantime, those videos can still be accessed in the verifier link Flip posted above.

mikwuyma

2012-08-06 03:40:04 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

*gasp*, I hope the bloopers weren't discarded.

moooh

2012-08-07 12:26:23 am

Exoray

I was not given any instructions regarding extra videos for this submission so that's why the game page doesn't reference them.
v-links are usually cleaned out after a run has been posted, which indeed seems to have been the case with the above link.
If you (Tesseract) still have those files around you can pm me with new links and I'll add them to your comments.

nate

2012-08-07 10:08:34 am

http://nate.quandra.org/bladeofdarkness_Bloopers_HQ.mp4

moooh

2012-08-07 12:16:33 pm

Exoray

The bloopers are now added to the game page.
nate: you can now remove the file from that link if you want.