AGDQ 2014 practice thread

2013-12-28 03:43:26 am

Practice update: Streemerz any% I now have a 4:02, 16 bags I have a 5:14 (new WR) and ALttP I now have a 1:28:07 which puts solidus and I 4s apart in pbs lol. Should be good races all around :>

George

2013-12-28 06:15:24 am

Streamed some THPS3 practice. A few decent runs out of the bunch. I want to be hitting sub 4:30 consistently in time for the marathon.

Bismuth

Edit history:

Bismuth: 2013-12-28 04:35:06 pm

2013-12-28 04:34:21 pm

Worthless categories WR master

Doing some offline practice, making 10+ copies of a save to practice certain sections. I'll probably do marathonesque no-reset safe runs on stream within the next week. I can't surefire reduce the estimate quite yet, not before I complete those no-reset runs and see what the ultimate worst case scenario is, but I am confident that it can be 30 (including the +5 for pc games). Average runs are about 19 to 21 minutes but I guess the extra dupes for safety can add maybe up to a minute to that.

ProfessorBroman

2013-12-28 06:11:35 pm

Did some SSim practice the other day, even with wretched luck 13,13 and 16 min respectively! So well under estimate! AGDQ HYPE!

LLCoolDave

2013-12-29 05:54:50 am

Just did a practice run of Duke Nukem 3D after not having played for a week. 12:05, and the glitch show off at the end took about 6 minutes, so the 25 minute estimate is pretty good.

Pheenoh

2013-12-29 07:48:43 pm

Pheenoh the mean-o

TP All Dungeon runs I've done:

4:21:39
4:20:28
4:22:22
4:18:37
4:15:16
4:18:05 (no reset run)
4:33:43 (no reset run) <-- this is why my estimate is 4:40

dram55

2013-12-29 10:26:57 pm

www.smwwiki.com

no reset runs through out December:

small mario only: 17:20, 16:59, 16:26, 16:03, 16:16, 17:22, 16:00, 17:41, 15:20, 16:46, 16:22, 19:30, 16:00, 15:10, 16:31, 18:38, 16:53, 16:13

no cape no starworld: 35:06, 35:09, 36:41, 35:14

Vortale

2013-12-29 10:55:37 pm

http://www.twitch.tv/vortale/c/3467196

New PB for Doom 2 of 33:29. Not as good as Dime's PB, but I primarily stuck to safety strats and didn't do the crazy precise map07 jump. I will be working on this more up until the day I head out.

Again, I'm aware of the circumstances of the 3 player race, but just letting you know that if I'm wanted/needed, I'll be attempting to be ready by then.

UraniumAnchor

2013-12-29 11:00:13 pm

Not a walrus

I figured out a keycode for a door in Deus Ex that should make the Ascension ending both a bit faster and far more reliable.

Other than that, nothing really of note. Practice going fine other than the game crashing on me a couple times, so it would be good if Moooh and Jay remind me to mash quicksave all the time. Wink

Sunblade

2013-12-29 11:31:04 pm

Only Offense Will Survive

Finally. I am really happy with that result and this one will be very hard to beat. I will stop practising for now.

Joka

2013-12-30 01:59:12 am

Personal text

Small update:

Nemo: Not at all worried. A deathless run should be sub 24 (JP version).
Darkwing: Ok. I'd rather play low% because I think I have a better chance to win that race Smiley

Also don't have to worry about gas drops. Low% runs have been in the 14:50 - 16:00 range. A little rusty on any% but still 13:00 - 15:00.
(RMF: Well, I recently got a new WR, so I'm feeling pretty good. Need to work out some more marathon-safe strats though.)

Graviton

2014-01-01 12:24:25 am

Just got a massive improvement on my own Blast Corps Any% world record today (-29s)! 25:23 is the new time.

I think I'm ready to go.

Omnigamer

2014-01-01 12:35:45 am

All the things

Few more PBs and runs and runs with Kendo Rage, including at least two runs where I made it through the last 3 bosses without getting hit. Definitely good to go, even with the new strats. I will review the old strats for safety though.

Bismuth

Edit history:

Bismuth: 2014-01-01 04:07:45 pm

2014-01-01 04:07:13 pm

Worthless categories WR master

I did a nice practice session and I now have pretty much everything setup for the marathon. I also did a WR attempt and got the worst nether and dragon luck, killed myself once and still got an RTA of 18:18. In-game time was off PB by over a minute, ending around 16:45 or something like that but at least I see that as long as I play well, I can have shit luck and still sub-20. The minecraft server was so fast today that the duping saved roughly 1:00 to 1:30 over my PB's RTA time of 18:16. So by this point I think I would only do a time over 30 if the minecraft server is slow as hell on jan 11, if I get terrible stronghold luck and lose 4 minutes to finding one skeleton, if I get nether luck as horrendous as I did once today with 9 blazes without a rod, if the dragon kills me when entering the end (a death that happens about 5 to 10% of the time and you can't prevent really), and if the dragon trolls me by flying around forever like an idiot. All of that combined and maybe I would do over 30 minutes. Chances of all of that happening are probably less than 1/2000 but marathon luck is marathon luck.

giuocob

2014-01-01 09:45:24 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

I've been keeping LADX up to par and feel ready for a marathon.

Quick question: will there be consoles provided for the practice area, or will we have to bring our own if we wish to practice before our runs?

kirbymastah

2014-01-01 09:49:29 pm

<(^_^)>

People are bringing equipment which you can see here - https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/agdq_2014_equipment_thread__runners_bring_your_games.html

Most of the consoles not in the main marathon room will likely be in the practice room, free for others to use/practice on. Though it's probably best if you bring your own too for the practice room Smiley

Barbarossa89

2014-01-02 01:56:51 pm

A forumer PMed me and thought it would be a good idea to give a short description of each scenario. Here is the list again. Those with a * are in my "top 5 interesting." Those with a # can be done in under 10 minutes consistently.

Also, significant credit should go to Gombil for inspiring me to attempt this at a marathon in the first place. I copied (stole) many of his strategies.

Joan of Arc campaign:

(1) An Unlikely Messiah - There are no significant shortcuts in this scenario. Joan walks slowly, and you have to get her across the map. It's all about wasting as little time as possible.
#(2) The Maid of Orleans - Expected way is to deliver the trade carts, liberate the town, build an army, and crush a castle. Instead, have Joan and the carts go to town, while taking the rest of your initial military force and storming a castle immediately. By the time the carts arrive in Orleans, the castle is almost dead.
(5) The Siege of Paris - This is just a beat 'em up, in RTS format. Villagers walk slowly, so that's the limiting factor on the scenario. Personally, I hope it doesn't win the bid war, because there's a lot of just mashing the clicking for it.

Saladin

#(1) An Arabian Knight - The expected way involves fighting your way through Frank forces, storming Jerusalem, forcing them to surrender, and then defeating the east Franks. Instead, I take my mounted forces, avoid the west Franks, run through Jersusalem, and pretty much defeat the east franks purely with mounted forces. The rest of my forces never have time to catch up.
*#(3) The Horns of Hattin - Normal way is to build up, storm the enemies, and capture the relic by force. I wall off the entire route to the relic, send a monk and a little siege along, and steal the relic without ever worrying about fighting enemy forces.
(4) The Siege of Jerusalem - Normally, one builds up, raises a huge army, and storms Jerusalem. Here, I use my initial force, plus a few rams, to take out the towers, causing them to surrender.
(5) Jihad! - I would NEVER have guess this tactic without Gombil. Rather than take a long protracted war to defeat the enemies, just build ONE TOWER to defeat the Persians in the north by killing all their villagers within the first five minutes, then sneak monks past the towers to the south and convert a villager, who can then build a stable to make a knight to kill the other villagers.

Genghis Khan

(1) Crucible - Not much of a shortcut to be found; just execute everything as fast as possible. The hardest part is just collecting 20 sheep.
#(2) A Life of Revenge - Why build up an army to take down Kushluk, when you can just do a suicide charge to kill him right away?

Frederick Barbarossa

(1) Holy Roman Emperor - A complex scenario, the solution involving blitzing out to recruit Mongol mercenaries while simultaneously storming three duchies with Teutonic Knights.
(2) Henry the Lion - The Poles have no villagers, but infinite resources. Don't bother getting the villagers, it takes too long. Instead, make rams and knights and attack them until they surrender.
#(3) Pope and Antipope - My personal favorite, just because of the contrast between expected and my strat. Instead of building up a massive force to storm Milan, I take my initial four monks in the back door of Milan and convert the cathedral immediately.
(4) The Lombard League - Another tip of the hat to Gombil on this one. Don't storm anything, just build a market, trade some resources, and use initial villagers to build the wonder right away, as you sacrifice your military to distract enemies from harming you.
*(5) Barbarossa's March - Gombil's strategy, unfortunately, doesn't work in the expansion. Therefore, I have a different strategy that I prefer to keep under wraps. I will say that in involves assaulting Constantinople with just four paladins and two crossbowmen, and forcing them to surrender.
(6) The Emperor Sleeping - Rather than risk war with the Saracens, I initially send a scout to inspire Richard the Lionheart to attack. On the off chance that he manages to breach the walls, I can slip in through there. Otherwise, mangonels can kill the wall quite effectively, allowing me to rush the pickle barrel to Jerusalem.

(Only campaign that is marathon safe in its entirety, besides William Wallace, which I won't even list here.)

Attila the Hun

(1) Scourge of God - Impress the Huns to get the largest possible force, then storm the Byzantines, finding horses along the way. Begin advancing through the ages, and mine stone. Once I free the Scythian scout, send Attila with ten horses to their town, to get their help against the Persians. The villagers I freed from the Romans should be able to build a castle for petards, hastening the demise of the Persian empire.
#(2) The Great Ride - Split forces to defeat all the initial towns. Once I get six villagers, sacrifice them to the Scythian wild woman in exchange for hunting wolves and petards. These should be enough to blow up the Roman fort.
*(3) Walls of Constantinople - No gold? Let's extort some! Basically, blitz two town centers, then transport a knight into Constantinople, frightening the Byzantines so much they will pay a hefty ransom to get me to leave.
(4) A Barbarian Betrothal - Build castles in all the Frank towns, forcing them to surrender. Then block the road so the Roman empire can't attack. You win!

El Cid

(1) Brother against Brother - Have fun storming the castle! With care, you can do this with your initial force.
#(4) Black Guards - After you save the king, just take a villager to the river and make a dock. Now make fire ships and destroy all the other docks. Victory!
(5) King of Valencia (Barely; the scenario is won basically by surviving 20 minutes) - Survive until the wonder is complete. There's no way to make this scenario faster or slower by more than a minute or so. In fact, I think it should be eliminated.

Montezuma

*(1) Reign of Blood - Send eagle warriors to capture three of the four shrines, advance to the castle age, get villagers to build a dock in the north, make monks, capture the relics. The execution is fun to watch, I think, and easy to understand even for non-RTS gamers.
#(4) La Noche Triste - Super fast. You're supposed to use your initial warrior to gain allies, free prisoners, build an army, and storm the Spanish. Or, you can just storm the Spanish with your starting warrior and STILL raze their wonder singlehandedly. Who cares about those prisoners anyway?
(6) Broken Spears - Turtle ships are the key to victory. Because this game is historically accurate, you know.

Battles of the Conquerors

#Agincourt - Who needs to fight through the French forces to get back to England? Henry V can leave his army to die in France and escape on his own, running around the battlefield. This is the single shortest scenario in the game, because Henry in on a horse.
#Tours - While Charly hammer guy goes to Tours, his entourage invades the invaders, stealing their baggage. With no toothbrushes or dental floss, the Moors are forces to go back to Spain.
Noryang Point - Admiral Yi Sun Shin is a powerful enough hero to win all by himself. This scenario is all about the execution. It's hard to actually lose.
*Vinlandsaga - With enough speed, you can do this without ever triggering Ornlu. Get to Greenland, walk all the way across it, build on the other side, and invade the Celts inhabiting Newfoundland. For lulz, send your ships to the sea of wyrms and watch them get eaten.

If someone in a decision-making capacity could state one way or the other whether I will have everything available for bid war, or just a few, it would help my crunch-time practice sessions a lot. If it were up to me, I would have only those with a # or * available for scenario bid - war, but I wanted to be fair and give the maximum number of scenarios I am capable of doing within the time limit.

A forumer PMed me and thought it would be a good idea to give a short description of each scenario. Here is the list again. Those with a * are in my "top 5 interesting." Those with a # can be done in under 10 minutes consistently.

Also, significant credit should go to Gombil for inspiring me to attempt this at a marathon in the first place. I copied (stole) many of his strategies.

Joan of Arc campaign:

(1) An Unlikely Messiah - There are no significant shortcuts in this scenario. Joan walks slowly, and you have to get her across the map. It's all about wasting as little time as possible.
#(2) The Maid of Orleans - Expected way is to deliver the trade carts, liberate the town, build an army, and crush a castle. Instead, have Joan and the carts go to town, while taking the rest of your initial military force and storming a castle immediately. By the time the carts arrive in Orleans, the castle is almost dead.
(5) The Siege of Paris - This is just a beat 'em up, in RTS format. Villagers walk slowly, so that's the limiting factor on the scenario. Personally, I hope it doesn't win the bid war, because there's a lot of just mashing the clicking for it.

Saladin

#(1) An Arabian Knight - The expected way involves fighting your way through Frank forces, storming Jerusalem, forcing them to surrender, and then defeating the east Franks. Instead, I take my mounted forces, avoid the west Franks, run through Jersusalem, and pretty much defeat the east franks purely with mounted forces. The rest of my forces never have time to catch up.
*#(3) The Horns of Hattin - Normal way is to build up, storm the enemies, and capture the relic by force. I wall off the entire route to the relic, send a monk and a little siege along, and steal the relic without ever worrying about fighting enemy forces.
(4) The Siege of Jerusalem - Normally, one builds up, raises a huge army, and storms Jerusalem. Here, I use my initial force, plus a few rams, to take out the towers, causing them to surrender.
(5) Jihad! - I would NEVER have guess this tactic without Gombil. Rather than take a long protracted war to defeat the enemies, just build ONE TOWER to defeat the Persians in the north by killing all their villagers within the first five minutes, then sneak monks past the towers to the south and convert a villager, who can then build a stable to make a knight to kill the other villagers.

Genghis Khan

(1) Crucible - Not much of a shortcut to be found; just execute everything as fast as possible. The hardest part is just collecting 20 sheep.
#(2) A Life of Revenge - Why build up an army to take down Kushluk, when you can just do a suicide charge to kill him right away?

Frederick Barbarossa

(1) Holy Roman Emperor - A complex scenario, the solution involving blitzing out to recruit Mongol mercenaries while simultaneously storming three duchies with Teutonic Knights.
(2) Henry the Lion - The Poles have no villagers, but infinite resources. Don't bother getting the villagers, it takes too long. Instead, make rams and knights and attack them until they surrender.
#(3) Pope and Antipope - My personal favorite, just because of the contrast between expected and my strat. Instead of building up a massive force to storm Milan, I take my initial four monks in the back door of Milan and convert the cathedral immediately.
(4) The Lombard League - Another tip of the hat to Gombil on this one. Don't storm anything, just build a market, trade some resources, and use initial villagers to build the wonder right away, as you sacrifice your military to distract enemies from harming you.
*(5) Barbarossa's March - Gombil's strategy, unfortunately, doesn't work in the expansion. Therefore, I have a different strategy that I prefer to keep under wraps. I will say that in involves assaulting Constantinople with just four paladins and two crossbowmen, and forcing them to surrender.
(6) The Emperor Sleeping - Rather than risk war with the Saracens, I initially send a scout to inspire Richard the Lionheart to attack. On the off chance that he manages to breach the walls, I can slip in through there. Otherwise, mangonels can kill the wall quite effectively, allowing me to rush the pickle barrel to Jerusalem.

(Only campaign that is marathon safe in its entirety, besides William Wallace, which I won't even list here.)

Attila the Hun

(1) Scourge of God - Impress the Huns to get the largest possible force, then storm the Byzantines, finding horses along the way. Begin advancing through the ages, and mine stone. Once I free the Scythian scout, send Attila with ten horses to their town, to get their help against the Persians. The villagers I freed from the Romans should be able to build a castle for petards, hastening the demise of the Persian empire.
#(2) The Great Ride - Split forces to defeat all the initial towns. Once I get six villagers, sacrifice them to the Scythian wild woman in exchange for hunting wolves and petards. These should be enough to blow up the Roman fort.
*(3) Walls of Constantinople - No gold? Let's extort some! Basically, blitz two town centers, then transport a knight into Constantinople, frightening the Byzantines so much they will pay a hefty ransom to get me to leave.
(4) A Barbarian Betrothal - Build castles in all the Frank towns, forcing them to surrender. Then block the road so the Roman empire can't attack. You win!

El Cid

(1) Brother against Brother - Have fun storming the castle! With care, you can do this with your initial force.
#(4) Black Guards - After you save the king, just take a villager to the river and make a dock. Now make fire ships and destroy all the other docks. Victory!
(5) King of Valencia (Barely; the scenario is won basically by surviving 20 minutes) - Survive until the wonder is complete. There's no way to make this scenario faster or slower by more than a minute or so. In fact, I think it should be eliminated.

Montezuma

*(1) Reign of Blood - Send eagle warriors to capture three of the four shrines, advance to the castle age, get villagers to build a dock in the north, make monks, capture the relics. The execution is fun to watch, I think, and easy to understand even for non-RTS gamers.
#(4) La Noche Triste - Super fast. You're supposed to use your initial warrior to gain allies, free prisoners, build an army, and storm the Spanish. Or, you can just storm the Spanish with your starting warrior and STILL raze their wonder singlehandedly. Who cares about those prisoners anyway?
(6) Broken Spears - Turtle ships are the key to victory. Because this game is historically accurate, you know.

Battles of the Conquerors

#Agincourt - Who needs to fight through the French forces to get back to England? Henry V can leave his army to die in France and escape on his own, running around the battlefield. This is the single shortest scenario in the game, because Henry in on a horse.
#Tours - While Charly hammer guy goes to Tours, his entourage invades the invaders, stealing their baggage. With no toothbrushes or dental floss, the Moors are forces to go back to Spain.
Noryang Point - Admiral Yi Sun Shin is a powerful enough hero to win all by himself. This scenario is all about the execution. It's hard to actually lose.
*Vinlandsaga - With enough speed, you can do this without ever triggering Ornlu. Get to Greenland, walk all the way across it, build on the other side, and invade the Celts inhabiting Newfoundland. For lulz, send your ships to the sea of wyrms and watch them get eaten.

If someone in a decision-making capacity could state one way or the other whether I will have everything available for bid war, or just a few, it would help my crunch-time practice sessions a lot. If it were up to me, I would have only those with a # or * available for scenario bid - war, but I wanted to be fair and give the maximum number of scenarios I am capable of doing within the time limit.

Vulajin

2014-01-02 02:08:20 pm

Your top 5 interesting are included in the bid war, and no others, it appears: http://gamesdonequick.com/tracker/bid/1049

Pheenoh

2014-01-02 08:17:25 pm

Pheenoh the mean-o

Two more All Dungeons runs:

4:22:50 (no reset run)
4:26:53 (no reset run)

Vulajin

2014-01-03 01:16:54 am

Final Bastion update. I completed 140 no-reset runs (look, it's a short run, ok) over the last 2 weeks, with the vast majority of times sub-17, and only a tiny handful even as high as 18 otherwise. Today, on my last day of practice, I got ten straight sub-16 runs, with only minor mistakes to waste time. I think I'm ready to go.

cramer

2014-01-03 01:44:21 am

Been doing MGR no-reset runs offline (can't stream atm), most are coming in under 1:25 even with some screw-ups.

andrewg

2014-01-03 08:35:22 am

looking pretty good for me, most runs for warpless bear 20 minutes even. Best yesterday 19:19, worst was 22 minutes. Solid consistant play.

Marche_Fighter_Paladin

2014-01-03 07:00:49 pm

Claimh Happy

Antichamber is right where it needs to be with sub 7 consistently for any% lagless and sub 10 consistently for any% no ESC. and when I say consistent I mean I'm getting that on runs where notable things go wrong.

Sonic Adventure is somehow consistently under estimate, though not by much (estimate is a little stricter than normal, though). Once setup is over I'll be able to grind out the problem spots (I've been sticking to full game practice since I wasn't sure how hard it would be to derust), which should knock 2 or 3 minutes off of my runs.