Tomb Raider II - October 20, 2015

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2015-10-20 10:48:23 am

2015-10-06 01:40:52 pm

Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/TombRaider2.html

Tomb Raider II (pc) (pc) [Any %] [Segmented]

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to 'RadxxRyan'!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2015-10-06 01:40:53 pm

Run Information

Tomb Raider II (pc) (pc) [Any %] [Segmented]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/TombRaider2-20151004/

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). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

Fed981

2015-10-06 02:18:03 pm

I will verify the run, because I like the game and have knowledge of it. But, seriously, how long this run has been in the list before going to public verification??? Something like 1 day??? I don't understand this public verification anymore.

ktwo

2015-10-06 03:10:02 pm

When you submit a run nowadays, you have three options:
- "Allow public verification after 30 days" (the default)
- "Allow public verification immediately"
- "Never allow public verification"

The vast majority of runners change to the second option. To me, that means there is a high wish among the people to get a speedy process. For quite some time, there has been no backlog of runs in verification (even though it looks like there are plenty of runs ready to be verified, most of them are just idling waiting for runners to upload the videos). So as soon as a runner sends in their (self-encoded) videos, it's ready to go out to verification. In this case, the runner was very quick uploading the files, had selected immediate public verification and it also coincided with the weekly cycle I'm working with here (I post decisions and send out new runs to public verification on Tuesdays).

This is all fairly new, so I understand why you're wondering though.

Soliduz Znake

Edit history:

Soliduz Znake: 2015-10-07 05:15:39 pm

2015-10-06 03:13:04 pm

~~will verify this one. im so interested in these speedruns despite my lack of knowledge.~~
A/V: good
cheating: no
barely any mistakes in the run. the jumping and timing were done precisely. Accept

adeyblue

2015-10-07 02:13:45 pm

Looks good, sounds good, and as far as I can tell plays good. Almost didn't recognize this as a classic TR run due to the complete lack of corner bugs, I thought they were a mandatory part of these games, glitchless run or not Smiley

The only super minor thing I noticed was seemingly bumping into 2 walls on the snowmobile on the first level, but that probably doesn't even amount to a second lost.

Accept

RadxxRyan

Edit history:

RadxxRyan: 2015-10-07 05:46:30 pm

2015-10-07 05:33:38 pm

Thanks guys, not sure if I'm allowed to post a reply here (if not, sorry). just wanted to reiterate this was a glitchless run all the way through, so imo, no types of cornerbugs would be allowed for me. There are even several spots in the game where Lara can jump through a corner (such as at a doorway). This can allow you in certain spots, to skip the trigger of any enemy to appear. But that I also felt was a glitch.

And the mistakes with the snowmobile look bad, but there are a total of 3 snowmobile baddies there, I killed the first with my gun, and in a rare occurrence, the other 2 ignored me so I had to go with that segment, saved at least 10 seconds not having to kill the other 2 Smiley

And just wanted to make sure...I see my run is considered Any% even though it is a secrets run. Do you guys have a category for Secrets or is it just Any% vs 100%? Thanks again!

ktwo

2015-10-09 07:36:28 am

Ryan, you're more than welcome to follow this thread and reply here. From my understanding, "all secrets" is basically a community-definted category that is equivalent to 100% for other games. Without having consulted anyone else (and only being casually familiar with TR games), I don't see any reason to view it differently around here in this case (if I hear anything else, I will post here again). I can't tell you right now how the run will be labelled (all secrets or 100%), but I'll pass on the information that this is not a normal any% run (I'll also include the comment about this being in the glitchless category, also as defined by the community).

Fed981

Edit history:

Fed981: 2015-10-14 02:44:48 pm

2015-10-13 02:17:09 pm

Before posting any decision, I would like to ask some questions.

To the runner: 1) What was your hard drive configuration for recording? 2) What was the (default) framerate and was it constant all the time?

To the whole community (tomb runner guys?): 1) How popular is that category (both the terms glitchless and all secrets)? 2) Is the flare cancel considered as a glitch? 3) What is the impact of glitches (mainly corner bug) on this particular run in terms of time?

I'm also wondering about that survival after a step in the molten gold but that is secondary. Thanks for your answers!

KFC

2015-10-14 02:51:41 pm

ChickenB0h BOH! :D

I can't see any cheating or video/audio problems, and I can't really see much mistakes either. Solid run as always from RadxxRyan.
Easy accept

RadxxRyan

Edit history:

RadxxRyan: 2015-10-14 10:52:42 pm

2015-10-14 10:36:45 pm

@ Fed981

- 500 GB hdd with AMD A8 Radeon R5 Graphics. 2GHz processor and 8GB of RAM. Was played on a Lenovo laptop with Windows 8.1 64 bit OS. All the video files were saved to the hdd in a folder on the Desktop.

- I used FRAPS version 3.5.99 and recorded consistently at 30fps

Also, to your point about the molten gold - it also happened in LarasLawyer's run of the game but I don't feel it's a glitch or cheating. If it is, it's completely unintentional on my part. Just before I jump over the gold, it looks like the toe of Lara's right boot is still on the safe ledge. So maybe it was a matter of a split second difference between life or death? Lol

Fed981

Edit history:

Fed981: 2015-10-15 11:46:01 am

Fed981: 2015-10-15 11:45:00 am

Fed981: 2015-10-15 11:43:54 am

2015-10-15 11:38:33 am

So that was the cause of your freezes. SDA quality standard actually asks to use two drives, so that reading and writing processes don't interfere with each other. If you don't have two HDDs, you can use a USB device. Yes, a USB device. For this video rate it should be good enough (I recorded 1024x576@25FPS with this).

I will again wait for more answers, especially about the category.

RadxxRyan

Edit history:

RadxxRyan: 2015-10-15 01:44:11 pm

2015-10-15 01:42:51 pm

The freezing was due to the background music abruptly changing. I tried like hell to fix it and tried looking for answers on tomb raider forums but it would still do it. I always have FRAPS set at high priority when recording. I also did try recording to a usb device but that didn't help either. I encoded to 960x720 on anri-chan because that was what was suggested when I posted an initial quality test.

Fed981

2015-10-15 02:12:57 pm

And these freezes also happen when you're not recording?

RadxxRyan

2015-10-15 07:57:40 pm

Yes, even if FRAPS is closed and not recording, the freezes still happen. And this is a new laptop just purchased last February.

Fed981

Edit history:

Fed981: 2015-10-18 04:46:51 am

Fed981: 2015-10-18 04:44:41 am

Fed981: 2015-10-18 04:43:58 am

Fed981: 2015-10-18 04:43:40 am

2015-10-18 04:43:22 am

All right, here's my verification post.

Audio/video quality is good, despite the small freezes that are you can't apparently avoid. I'm pretty sure the framerate is not 30 all the time (after watching frame by frame) but it's fluid enough.
I don't suspect any cheating, especially when it comes to that survival in the gold lake, since it -indeed- happened to another guy.
Generally speaking I don't really like the idea of a glitchless run, but the impact of the corner bug might quite big. We can have a debate but I'm going to call the flare stagger cancel a glitch, but it doesn't really have a significant impact on the time. And, from what I know, "all secrets" actually represents something in the TR community so I can't really say anything about the category.
These were the negative points. Now, overall the planning seems really good, as well as the comments and the segmenting. Also, the gameplay is pretty much flawless (aside from that snowmobile part which has tiny mistakes); it's really interesting to watch and I could feel the runner knows every bit of what he's doing. Especially because Golden Mask doesn't have any run on SDA yet, this one represents what the site needs.

Verdict: ACCEPT

Edit: where is the 960x720 encoding? is it only in the IQ/XQ files? I know it's not needed but I'm just curious.

All right, here's my verification post.

Audio/video quality is good, despite the small freezes that are you can't apparently avoid. I'm pretty sure the framerate is not 30 all the time (after watching frame by frame) but it's fluid enough.
I don't suspect any cheating, especially when it comes to that survival in the gold lake, since it -indeed- happened to another guy.
Generally speaking I don't really like the idea of a glitchless run, but the impact of the corner bug might quite big. We can have a debate but I'm going to call the flare stagger cancel a glitch, but it doesn't really have a significant impact on the time. And, from what I know, "all secrets" actually represents something in the TR community so I can't really say anything about the category.
These were the negative points. Now, overall the planning seems really good, as well as the comments and the segmenting. Also, the gameplay is pretty much flawless (aside from that snowmobile part which has tiny mistakes); it's really interesting to watch and I could feel the runner knows every bit of what he's doing. Especially because Golden Mask doesn't have any run on SDA yet, this one represents what the site needs.

Verdict: ACCEPT

Edit: where is the 960x720 encoding? is it only in the IQ/XQ files? I know it's not needed but I'm just curious.

RadxxRyan

2015-10-18 04:36:40 pm

Thanks Fed. I used to do only glitched runs (you can see every one of my TR runs on my youtube), but I took a lot of heat from some viewers that would say using glitches is cheating (even though we all know in a case of speedrunning, it is not). So, I started doing a few glitchless runs to show that I can still bang out a solid run without shortcuts.

For the 960x720, I entered the numbers in anri-chan at the aspect ratio part.

Fed981

2015-10-19 10:28:03 am

What I meant is that the highest quality video I had was 480p, not 720p.

SDAVerification

2015-10-20 10:48:26 am

Decision posted.

Worn_Traveler

2015-10-20 12:53:51 pm

Formerly known as Skullboy

Just out of curiosity, is this a set of expansion pack missions or something similar? I've played a bit of Tomb Raider II and I was going to verify but when Is started watching, I didn't recognize anything.

Fed981

2015-10-20 02:43:10 pm

This is a DLC or something like that, nothing like the main game.

RadxxRyan

2015-10-21 11:52:13 am

Thanks guys! @Worn_Traveler - This is a bonus game for Tomb Raider II. Often called 'Tomb Raider 2 Gold' it was only released for PC. This is my second run accepted by SDA. My other one is a bit old, but it's Tomb Raider III using glitches.

Worn_Traveler

2015-10-21 03:17:49 pm

Formerly known as Skullboy

I remember seeing TRII Gold in stores shortly after I got the base version. Thanks for the clarification.

RadxxRyan

2015-10-21 05:21:14 pm

Fun little fact about this run - Because I had always played the PlayStation versions of Tomb Raider, I had never once played TR2 Gold until late last year, when I found a brand new copy on Ebay for $10. So for me, it makes this speedrun even more special to have it accepted here with only beating the game once prior to the run.

Ewil

2015-10-27 02:28:10 am

The freezes could be related to playing the game with CD in drive since all music in TRII is stored as audiotracks iirc. This can be solved by creating an image and mounting it in for example daemon tools or alcohol 120%.

As for the any% / secrets dilemma, the community always accepted these runs as "secrets" category, not "100%" or anything else. 100% would be technically getting all kills, secrets and maybe pickups.

Flare cancel or any kind of animation or stumble cancels have always been considered NOT glitch.