My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/BaldursGateTotSC.html
Benjamin 'beenman500' Culley's single-segment run
and Julien Langer's run
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: Yeah this game is broken.
P.S. What difficulty were these runs played on?
Benjamin 'beenman500' Culley's single-segment run
and Julien Langer's run
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Everything about these runs is great. Both the SS and the multisegment have the insane planning of their predecessors but considering they improve existing runs, how on earth can I say no? These are truly posterchilds for RPG breaking.
Quote:
Hey Mike, I've watched julien's TotSC run and here are my comments:
Execution is solid throughout. There are no obvious misclicks. Even the BG shopping is fast. Wherever luck is needed (basically for pickpocketing and saving throws), it is manipulated perfectly to achieve the required result first time. Basically I can't see any segment in the run where extra retries would've gotten the time down, leaving aside the issues of the healing potion in Ulgoth's Beard and the runner's handling of the map screen, both of which are more planning/thought issues which I'll come to below.
However, there are a handful of route improvements or thus-far-undiscovered tricks that I found, ranging from minor changes to a short sequence of actions to save a second, to a major route tweak that could save over a minute.
In chronological order, then, everything I could find wrong with the run:
1) The speed potion duping right after Imoen joins is pretty sloppily done, to be honest. There's 25 seconds of inventory management done while both characters stand still, followed by 12 seconds of running in which no inventory management is done - this is inefficient. I would guess there's at least 5 seconds to shave here, if not more, by making the two processes run in parallel as much as possible. It's no that hard to snap momentarily out of the inventory after a character has drunk a health potion to give a move order, then keep both characters moving until the last possible moment to drink and grab a speed potion. Also, once the underflow on the speed potions has occurred, both characters can be kept moving by dropping the stack on the ground, leaving the inventory and pausing, giving a move order, re-entering the inventory (thus unpausing the game and starting the characters moving), and lifting 111 potions into ich's inventory while ich and Immy run. Then you can give them another move order before returning to the inventory to split Immy's share from ich's, rather than taking it from the ground stack. The same inventory management is achieved, with little or no time wasted, and ich and Immy will be most of the way to the end of the map when it's done.
2) The runner loses a few frames every time he goes onto the world map due to having to move the cursor. There's no reason for this - the cursor should be positioned above the target destination before the map appears so that he can click immediately. Use blu-tack on the monitor to mark the locations if you have to. Over the course of the whole run I'd guess this would save about 2 seconds.
3) Stopping to drink a healing potion and wait for Immy to talk in Ulgoth's beard is 5 seconds of wasted time, plain and simple. The runner rightly states that kicking Immy from the party and leaving her in Ulgoth's Beard without listening to her kicked-from-the-party dialogue is not an option because it precludes resting on Ice Island, BUT the obvious way around this is simply to take Imoen to Ice Island and not kick her out until ich leaves Ulgoth's Beard to Peldvale. This has the added bonus that there'll be someone standing on the Ice Island exit trigger from the instant Dezkiel is pickpocketed, which saves a further second (the time it takes to leave after pickpocketing him).
4) I think the runner buys five more arrows of detonation than he ends up needing. Either that or I can't count. Costs a second.
5) The big time saver. Candlekeep. I quote the runner's comments:
(Emphasis mine)
I decided to look more closely into why the glitch supposedly doesn't work when you talk to the NPC using a character besides the main character. The issue is that, for reasons mysterious, if you pause the instant after a conversation, the main character won't teleport immediately and you can give them another order to prevent the teleport, but other party members will normally teleport instantly unless they've been given an order to leave the area or loot a container (for reasons equally mysterious). The assumption that then seems to have been made is that, if you have a party member converse with the NPC with the teleport script, then at the end of the conversation the party member won't have any standing orders (like leaving the area or looting a container or leaving the area) and will teleport instantly. This is a bad assumption to make - there's actually a way around this.
All you have to do is send the party member to talk to Tethoril, then at the very instant that the conversation begins, give them an order to loot a container or leave the area. You'll know you've got it right if the conversation appears but you can see the green cross on the ground marking where you ordered them to go. I find that to get the timing right it helps to pause the game the moment before the conversation starts, then simultaneously unpause and give an order to loot a container. Anyhow, if you do this, you can pause and give both party member and main character other orders to cancel the teleport as usual. This means there's nothing stopping the runner from sending Imoen to talk to Tethoril while the main character dances on the chapter increment trigger, which should save around 45 seconds of escaping from the crypt, plus several further seconds not having to go into the map screen every time Imoen has to be given an order to leave the area. Better yet, the runner could even pick up Xzar or Quayle and have them dance on the chapter trigger while the main character heads straight for the area exit, skipping a further 30 second trek at the cost of having to micro an extra character every time the teleport break is performed. (Should the runner do another run using this method, it may or may not be useful to him to know that for some reason scripted teleports don't seem to affect characters who have multiple move orders queued up with checkpoints until they reach the end of their checkpointed route.)
6) The five second wait outside the tavern at 11:54 doesn't seem justified; I assume that the runner didn't want to head in before using his oil of speed for fear of not getting past the ogre in time and being accosted, but he could've just hidden in the shadows and gone straight in. Maybe a couple of seconds wasted here.
On a related note, I'm also not convinced that the route the runner uses (using Dimension Door) to get from Candlekeep to the tavern is faster than simply going from Candlekeep to North Baldur's Gate, travelling from there to North-East Baldur's Gate, and running a few extra metres. Especially considering that that way he could drink a haste potion the moment he arrived in North Baldur's Gate, without having to wait for the cooldown after using the DD scroll before hasting like he does with the route he uses. I don't think there's much in it either way really but I wonder if the runner considered both options?
And with that, I'm out of criticisms.
I'll finish with the good. Having never watched any Baldur's Gate I runs before, I was awed by the power of the dimension door glitch and the nimbleness with which it allows the runner to leap around the map. The game-raping chapter increment glitch with Tethoril was also pretty neat to see. The highlight of the run for me, however, had to be seeing the greater dopplegangers dispatched by firing arrows of detonation at a charmed, otiluked Flaming Fist guard; it's a cunning idea executed here beautifully.
As I said before, it's clear a lot of effort has gone into optimisation and luck manipulation for this run, and by any standards it's a damn great run. It'd be cool to see another run from been or Julien implementing the improvements I suggested and trimming off another 90 seconds or so, but for now, from me this run gets a loud ACCEPT.
Execution is solid throughout. There are no obvious misclicks. Even the BG shopping is fast. Wherever luck is needed (basically for pickpocketing and saving throws), it is manipulated perfectly to achieve the required result first time. Basically I can't see any segment in the run where extra retries would've gotten the time down, leaving aside the issues of the healing potion in Ulgoth's Beard and the runner's handling of the map screen, both of which are more planning/thought issues which I'll come to below.
However, there are a handful of route improvements or thus-far-undiscovered tricks that I found, ranging from minor changes to a short sequence of actions to save a second, to a major route tweak that could save over a minute.
In chronological order, then, everything I could find wrong with the run:
1) The speed potion duping right after Imoen joins is pretty sloppily done, to be honest. There's 25 seconds of inventory management done while both characters stand still, followed by 12 seconds of running in which no inventory management is done - this is inefficient. I would guess there's at least 5 seconds to shave here, if not more, by making the two processes run in parallel as much as possible. It's no that hard to snap momentarily out of the inventory after a character has drunk a health potion to give a move order, then keep both characters moving until the last possible moment to drink and grab a speed potion. Also, once the underflow on the speed potions has occurred, both characters can be kept moving by dropping the stack on the ground, leaving the inventory and pausing, giving a move order, re-entering the inventory (thus unpausing the game and starting the characters moving), and lifting 111 potions into ich's inventory while ich and Immy run. Then you can give them another move order before returning to the inventory to split Immy's share from ich's, rather than taking it from the ground stack. The same inventory management is achieved, with little or no time wasted, and ich and Immy will be most of the way to the end of the map when it's done.
2) The runner loses a few frames every time he goes onto the world map due to having to move the cursor. There's no reason for this - the cursor should be positioned above the target destination before the map appears so that he can click immediately. Use blu-tack on the monitor to mark the locations if you have to. Over the course of the whole run I'd guess this would save about 2 seconds.
3) Stopping to drink a healing potion and wait for Immy to talk in Ulgoth's beard is 5 seconds of wasted time, plain and simple. The runner rightly states that kicking Immy from the party and leaving her in Ulgoth's Beard without listening to her kicked-from-the-party dialogue is not an option because it precludes resting on Ice Island, BUT the obvious way around this is simply to take Imoen to Ice Island and not kick her out until ich leaves Ulgoth's Beard to Peldvale. This has the added bonus that there'll be someone standing on the Ice Island exit trigger from the instant Dezkiel is pickpocketed, which saves a further second (the time it takes to leave after pickpocketing him).
4) I think the runner buys five more arrows of detonation than he ends up needing. Either that or I can't count. Costs a second.
5) The big time saver. Candlekeep. I quote the runner's comments:
Quote:
For this to work you have to give ALL but your main character the command to enter another area. Then you have to talk (with the main character) to the NPC
whose script would teleport you and pause the game immediatly after the
dialog AND give your main character some other command like walking somewhere
else. Then unpause the game and voila, nobody is teleported away. [b]Note that this
does _not_ work if you talk to the NPC with another PC than your main character.
That's why I placed Imoen outside Candlekeep and not my main character (which
would be faster if it would work).[/b]
whose script would teleport you and pause the game immediatly after the
dialog AND give your main character some other command like walking somewhere
else. Then unpause the game and voila, nobody is teleported away. [b]Note that this
does _not_ work if you talk to the NPC with another PC than your main character.
That's why I placed Imoen outside Candlekeep and not my main character (which
would be faster if it would work).[/b]
(Emphasis mine)
I decided to look more closely into why the glitch supposedly doesn't work when you talk to the NPC using a character besides the main character. The issue is that, for reasons mysterious, if you pause the instant after a conversation, the main character won't teleport immediately and you can give them another order to prevent the teleport, but other party members will normally teleport instantly unless they've been given an order to leave the area or loot a container (for reasons equally mysterious). The assumption that then seems to have been made is that, if you have a party member converse with the NPC with the teleport script, then at the end of the conversation the party member won't have any standing orders (like leaving the area or looting a container or leaving the area) and will teleport instantly. This is a bad assumption to make - there's actually a way around this.
All you have to do is send the party member to talk to Tethoril, then at the very instant that the conversation begins, give them an order to loot a container or leave the area. You'll know you've got it right if the conversation appears but you can see the green cross on the ground marking where you ordered them to go. I find that to get the timing right it helps to pause the game the moment before the conversation starts, then simultaneously unpause and give an order to loot a container. Anyhow, if you do this, you can pause and give both party member and main character other orders to cancel the teleport as usual. This means there's nothing stopping the runner from sending Imoen to talk to Tethoril while the main character dances on the chapter increment trigger, which should save around 45 seconds of escaping from the crypt, plus several further seconds not having to go into the map screen every time Imoen has to be given an order to leave the area. Better yet, the runner could even pick up Xzar or Quayle and have them dance on the chapter trigger while the main character heads straight for the area exit, skipping a further 30 second trek at the cost of having to micro an extra character every time the teleport break is performed. (Should the runner do another run using this method, it may or may not be useful to him to know that for some reason scripted teleports don't seem to affect characters who have multiple move orders queued up with checkpoints until they reach the end of their checkpointed route.)
6) The five second wait outside the tavern at 11:54 doesn't seem justified; I assume that the runner didn't want to head in before using his oil of speed for fear of not getting past the ogre in time and being accosted, but he could've just hidden in the shadows and gone straight in. Maybe a couple of seconds wasted here.
On a related note, I'm also not convinced that the route the runner uses (using Dimension Door) to get from Candlekeep to the tavern is faster than simply going from Candlekeep to North Baldur's Gate, travelling from there to North-East Baldur's Gate, and running a few extra metres. Especially considering that that way he could drink a haste potion the moment he arrived in North Baldur's Gate, without having to wait for the cooldown after using the DD scroll before hasting like he does with the route he uses. I don't think there's much in it either way really but I wonder if the runner considered both options?
And with that, I'm out of criticisms.
I'll finish with the good. Having never watched any Baldur's Gate I runs before, I was awed by the power of the dimension door glitch and the nimbleness with which it allows the runner to leap around the map. The game-raping chapter increment glitch with Tethoril was also pretty neat to see. The highlight of the run for me, however, had to be seeing the greater dopplegangers dispatched by firing arrows of detonation at a charmed, otiluked Flaming Fist guard; it's a cunning idea executed here beautifully.
As I said before, it's clear a lot of effort has gone into optimisation and luck manipulation for this run, and by any standards it's a damn great run. It'd be cool to see another run from been or Julien implementing the improvements I suggested and trimming off another 90 seconds or so, but for now, from me this run gets a loud ACCEPT.
Quote:
Mike,
Ah, I was tricked by the file names into the impression that been's SS was of vanilla BGI without TotSC. Now that I've looked at the run and realised that's not the case, I can whip out my comments before bed:
* There's an irritating graphics issue with flickering sprites throughout the run, but it doesn't make it unwatchable. Meh.
* Execution is good throughout. Very good in fact, I wouldn't think too badly of it if it were in a segmented run.
* Route is basically the same as the MS route. The only changes I spotted were not bringing Immy to Ulgoth's Beard (for fear of her being killed by Ankhegs on the way? I dunno) and killing the Ice Island mages and Slythe instead of pickpocketing them (because charming them would be near impossible and bring you into their sight range, so you'd only have one shot at it).
Seeing unconscious mages being beaten on by a level 1 character with a staff made me lol. Awesome strategy.
Slythe was also raped quite effectively.
* Wow, I was amazed to see the arrows of detonation method used to kill the greater dopplegangers in an SS. Awesome. It's a pity the flickering sprites are at their worst here, damaging what should be one of the best moments of the run.
Did the runner consider buying some normal enchanted arrows as a faster means of finishing straggling dopplegangers? I think it might be faster.
* Sarevok gets pwned quite efficiently. The main character's death at the end was funny and isn't grounds for disqualification or a seperate category as far as I'm concerned - the ending still played, the game was still won.
Basically, it's an excellent run, and an easy accept.
Ah, I was tricked by the file names into the impression that been's SS was of vanilla BGI without TotSC. Now that I've looked at the run and realised that's not the case, I can whip out my comments before bed:
* There's an irritating graphics issue with flickering sprites throughout the run, but it doesn't make it unwatchable. Meh.
* Execution is good throughout. Very good in fact, I wouldn't think too badly of it if it were in a segmented run.
* Route is basically the same as the MS route. The only changes I spotted were not bringing Immy to Ulgoth's Beard (for fear of her being killed by Ankhegs on the way? I dunno) and killing the Ice Island mages and Slythe instead of pickpocketing them (because charming them would be near impossible and bring you into their sight range, so you'd only have one shot at it).
Seeing unconscious mages being beaten on by a level 1 character with a staff made me lol. Awesome strategy.
Slythe was also raped quite effectively.
* Wow, I was amazed to see the arrows of detonation method used to kill the greater dopplegangers in an SS. Awesome. It's a pity the flickering sprites are at their worst here, damaging what should be one of the best moments of the run.
Did the runner consider buying some normal enchanted arrows as a faster means of finishing straggling dopplegangers? I think it might be faster.
* Sarevok gets pwned quite efficiently. The main character's death at the end was funny and isn't grounds for disqualification or a seperate category as far as I'm concerned - the ending still played, the game was still won.
Basically, it's an excellent run, and an easy accept.
Decision: Accept
Reason: Yeah this game is broken.
P.S. What difficulty were these runs played on?
Thread title: