Body Harvest 64 improvements?

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-11 12:28:07 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-11 12:27:15 pm

2011-02-11 12:25:49 pm

Jack of all Trades

Thanks for the description.

Are you playing it on hero mode? I think Bush was doing it on easy...but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I should upgrade to hero and just skip easy? And a proc on hero I think would take forever and a day to kill with a pistol, hence the machine gun thought. But I haven't really tried. On easy I just sit there and tank all the shots since it doesn't do much. I know on hero those plasma balls do crazy damage and those exploding fleas wreck you.

Don't hold me to this, but we were discussing the jellies in relation to using the hangman idea instead of the VTOL. IIRC the jellies do not spawn until you dump the scud in the fenced area, so you're gonna be in the hangman either way. Isn't there a 2nd VTOL in the base? Maybe I'm wrong. But this is something I won't check for awhile, so meh. I'll test it all out when I need to, but I'm pretty sure the hangman idea is not so hot.

leftysheroes

2011-02-11 01:34:14 pm

There is a VTOL in the base but I'm pretty sure its locked until after you launch the scud. I also think that you have to go into the base and talk to the guy before the jellies spawn. Luckily I have a file on Siberia so I will do some "experimenting" later. If there is a convenient palce in Siberia to pick up a rifle that would help quite a bit.

As far as hero mode goes, many of the easy strats just wont be possible. For instance:
- If you try the America 1 strat youll most likely game over due to too many people getting eaten.
- In Java especially you will have to take out out-of-the-way harvester waves for the same reason.
- Jumping the acid river on the comet is probably impossible.
- If you sink faster in the water on hero(probable) Greece 2/Java 1 skips would most likely be impossible.
Well, I'm sorry if that puts a damper on fhe Hero mode run enthusiasm.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-11 08:16:48 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-11 08:15:55 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-11 08:12:03 pm

2011-02-11 08:09:54 pm

Jack of all Trades

Here's some stuff I captured earlier today... (right click save each link)

Java 1 Help?

Lefty, you said:

Quote:

First there are two green paths originating near the big house with the machine gun inside. Park the jeep parallel to the shore at the tip of the southernmost path.

I'm a little confused because there's like 4 green paths that come from the house. And the southern most one is facing SE, which I don't think is the one. In the above vid I drive around in the boat trying to find a piece of land to stand on in the water. Just tell me where in the video I'm in the right spot (both for launching, and for the land). It seems to me the easiest piece of land is in the north, almost.

I think you want me to be on the little thing at 1:44.

I have gotten across, in the north, but that felt pretty wrong. I got across with very little health so I think I messed up even that. Wouldn't it be best to get the rifle in the start area? Then you'd have rifle for this proc + the one on the island later.

I so hate manipulating that stubborn goliath beetle.

Greece 3 Jump Close?

This was my best Greece 3 jump, before I read your newest description. Do you think I would've had it with a luckier jump out of the vehicle, or do I still need to hit the sweetspot for some extra oomph? And have you ever gotten the bike all the way to the other side, or do you always have to ditch it?

Java Storm Skip

This is more or less the route you take, right? Just making sure. Ignore the exploding plane, just unlucky.

Barely worth mentioning: In Greece 3 you don't have to blow up the test plane, you can just exit immediately and open the hangar door again. The test plane will have disappeared, so it won't block you. Saves like 5 seconds from what I was doing. Maybe obvious, but it's new to me.

Here's some stuff I captured earlier today... (right click save each link)

[url=http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/java1%20trick%20help.mp4]Java 1 Help?[/url]

Lefty, you said:

[quote]First there are two green paths originating near the big house with the machine gun inside. Park the jeep parallel to the shore at the tip of the southernmost path.[/quote]

I'm a little confused because there's like 4 green paths that come from the house. And the southern most one is facing SE, which I don't think is the one. In the above vid I drive around in the boat trying to find a piece of land to stand on in the water. Just tell me where in the video I'm in the right spot (both for launching, and for the land). It seems to me the easiest piece of land is in the north, almost.

I [i]think[/i] you want me to be on the little thing at 1:44.

I have gotten across, in the north, but that felt pretty wrong. I got across with very little health so I think I messed up even that. Wouldn't it be best to get the rifle in the start area? Then you'd have rifle for this proc + the one on the island later.

I so hate manipulating that stubborn goliath beetle.

[url=http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/greece%203%20close%20or%20not.mp4]Greece 3 Jump Close?[/url]

This was my best Greece 3 jump, before I read your newest description. Do you think I would've had it with a luckier jump out of the vehicle, or do I still need to hit the sweetspot for some extra oomph? And have you ever gotten the bike all the way to the other side, or do you always have to ditch it?

[url=http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/java%20storm%20skip%20route.mp4]Java Storm Skip[/url]

This is more or less the route you take, right? Just making sure. Ignore the exploding plane, just unlucky.

Barely worth mentioning: In Greece 3 you don't have to blow up the test plane, you can just exit immediately and open the hangar door again. The test plane will have disappeared, so it won't block you. Saves like 5 seconds from what I was doing. Maybe obvious, but it's new to me.

Heidrage

2011-02-11 09:47:20 pm

Willing to teach you the impossible

Very much looking forward to this! Expect much lurking from me on this project.

leftysheroes

2011-02-12 01:21:47 pm

Alright lets start wth some good news. The Siberia 4 Hangman B strat works amazingly well mainly because the jellies do spawn after dropping the scud. The strategy is as follows.
- Fly through the portal and fly to the scud. You have to loop around the road so that aliens dont spawn.
- Fly back to the base and drop the scud off again avoiding flying near the road.
- Keep flying and ditchas close to the jellies as possible. The hangman can take a hit and survive. Use the hangman as cover to take out the first jelly and the building where the first jelly was for cover to take out the second.
- On your way back pick up the VTOL and drop it next to the scud(Fly east for a little before turning for the VTOL unless you want to deal with some Hoveros').
- Get the key an d launch the scud and nuke the base. Try to avoid causing aliens to spawn prematurely here.
- With the VTOL right there you have enouhh time to take off and kill the proc before the huge rush of aliens catches up.
- The only negative is that the proc#2 fight is brutal, especially when youre trying to do it as fast as possible.

Now for the bad news. Due to current computer trouble that I'm having I can only use my Wii for internet for the time being and the only video it seems to be able to view is youtube(for instance I was able to watch andrewgs new smb run.) As far as the path I'm talking about sand with your left shoulder against the house with the machine gun inside and run east and you will cross the correct path. For Greece 3 you can do everything right and you still wont make it most of the time. I personally have never cleared it without having to ditch.

Finally, I started experimenting with the bosses. The crab parts do drop the same eeapons everytime. From your perspective I would take out the bottom left pincer first since it drops Fragcannon.

Alright lets start wth some good news. The Siberia 4 Hangman B strat works amazingly well mainly because the jellies do spawn after dropping the scud. The strategy is as follows.
- Fly through the portal and fly to the scud. You have to loop around the road so that aliens dont spawn. 
- Fly back to the base and drop the scud off again avoiding flying near the road.
- Keep flying and ditchas close to the jellies as possible. The hangman can take a hit and survive. Use the hangman as cover to take out the first jelly and the building where the first jelly was for cover to take out the second.
- On your way back pick up the VTOL and drop it next to the scud(Fly east for a little before turning for the VTOL unless you want to deal with some Hoveros'). 
- Get the key an d launch the scud and nuke the base. Try to avoid causing aliens to spawn prematurely here.
- With the VTOL right there you have enouhh time to take off and kill the proc before the huge rush of aliens catches up.
- The only negative is that the proc#2 fight is brutal, especially when youre trying to do it as fast as possible.

Now for the bad news. Due to current computer trouble that I'm having I can only use my Wii for internet for the time being and the only video it seems to be able to view is youtube(for instance I was able to watch andrewgs new smb run.) As far as the path I'm talking about sand with your left shoulder against the house with the machine gun inside and run east and you will cross the correct path. For Greece 3 you can do everything right and you still wont make it most of the time. I personally have never cleared it without having to ditch.

Finally, I started experimenting with the bosses. The crab parts do drop the same eeapons everytime. From your perspective I would take out the bottom left pincer first since it drops Fragcannon.

marshmallow

2011-02-13 09:28:43 am

Jack of all Trades

I've been playing an inhuman amount of siberia. I still have more to do. I'll have an exhaustive strategy time comparison report later. I'll also have a lot of vids and I'll put them on youtube for you lefty.

leftysheroes

2011-02-13 08:12:30 pm

Alright here is a list for all the boss weapon drops. Description is from your point of view when looking at his face.

GREECE BOSS
-Bottom left: Fragcannon
-Bottom Right: Plasma Bombs
-Top Left: Lazer Missles
-Top Right: Fragcannon
I prefer Fragcannon since its fairly easy to get point blank shots in.

JAVA BOSS
-Electric Ball Thing: Fragcannon
-Both Arms: No weapon when you knock them off but Lazer Missles when you finish them(the main body is invulnerable till you do this).
-Head/Mask: Power Bombs.

America Boss:
-Wheel Dispenser: Lazer Missles
Left Arm: Lazer Missles
Right Arm: Fragcannon
I use Lazer Missles since hes pretty hard to hit with Fragcannon especially the final phase.

SIBERIA BOSS:
All of his parts drop Fragcannon. Luckily its fairly easy to hit him with it.

For the comet bosses you should have everything you need although its worth noting that Scorpio drops some Resonater ammo on defeat. Same deal after first phase of the final boss.

As far as Java weapon goes there seem to be 2 options. The machine gun in the house at the beginning of Java 1 or the Rocket Launcher form the bunker that is right there after doing Airboat Jump. I'm going to see if the machine gun has the range to hit proc#2 from the road. If it does then thats most likely the best option.

Alright here is a list for all the boss weapon drops. Description is from your point of view when looking at his face.

GREECE BOSS
-Bottom left: Fragcannon
-Bottom Right: Plasma Bombs
-Top Left: Lazer Missles
-Top Right: Fragcannon
I prefer Fragcannon since its fairly easy to get point blank shots in.

JAVA BOSS
-Electric Ball Thing: Fragcannon
-Both Arms: No weapon when you knock them off but Lazer Missles when you finish them(the main body is invulnerable till you do this).
-Head/Mask: Power Bombs.

America Boss:
-Wheel Dispenser: Lazer Missles
Left Arm: Lazer Missles
Right Arm: Fragcannon
I use Lazer Missles since hes pretty hard to hit with Fragcannon especially the final phase.

SIBERIA BOSS:
All of his parts drop Fragcannon. Luckily its fairly easy to hit him with it.

For the comet bosses you should have everything you need although its worth noting that Scorpio drops some Resonater ammo on defeat. Same deal after first phase of the final boss.

As far as Java weapon goes there seem to be 2 options. The machine gun in the house at the beginning of Java 1 or the Rocket Launcher form the bunker that is right there after doing Airboat Jump. I'm going to see if the machine gun has the range to hit proc#2 from the road. If it does then thats most likely the best option.

Leviathan

2011-02-14 12:24:32 am

This game is brutal. I own a PAL cart of it and I never ended up beating it but this thread has inspired me to do so.

Interesting fact I found out a while ago, the engine used for this game is actually a primitive form of the engine used in GTA 3

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:41:55 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:39:03 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:38:05 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:29:58 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:27:39 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:26:22 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:18:32 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:11:26 am

marshmallow: 2011-02-14 02:10:46 am

2011-02-14 01:54:06 am

Jack of all Trades

I'm too tired to parse links so I'm just gonna dump them.

Previous vids put on youtube for lefty:

Greece 3 jump close or not quite?

Java storm skip route (ignore the exploding plane, just making sure we do the same route)

Java 1 trick help

Siberia stuff...

ICEBERG SKIP:

This is my boulder skip strategy.

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%202%20iceberg%20skip%20beach%20running.zip

Running up the seam and on top of the iceberg is old news. My strat (which I described 2 years ago) is to run along the beach all the way to the foot of the nuke plant. Running across like that takes about a minute; driving across in the boat takes about 20 seconds. So to beat my strat you'd have to be able to burn the boulder and swim back to the ship in less than 40 seconds. Is that possible? It always takes me forever and a day and is really hard, which is what made me just run across in the first place. Although I'm not sure if I've ever had the dragonfly enemies chip in.

THE VTOL QUESTION:

I was pretty sure skipping the VTOL was slower and the numbers bear that out. But it was fun trying out all these different setups and approaches. It made me learn more about the levels and forced me to really know how to execute my tricks (e.g. sub lift).

For awhile I tried to find a way to cross over the mountain near the iceberg and land right on top of the 2nd proc. Then I realized that he doesn't actually show up until either the nuke plant blows up or you save the day.

Either way, you have to enter the building and talk to the engineer. Then you jump in the dozer and...

Earning the VTOL and killing the 2nd Proc: 2:40
Letting the nuke plant blow and killing the 2nd Proc with the APC: 1:38

Even ignoring the VTOL puzzle you still have to drive all the way to the proc area, swim a little (maybe possible to bounce the dozer all the way to the other side and drive to the APC, which would save like 5-8 seconds over what I do which is to bounce into the middle of the water), watch a 14 second cinema of the plant blowing up, then fight the proc and a scorpion + 2 super scorpions with an APC. My best time is a consistent 38 seconds, which I achieve by killing all the scorpions and then focusing on the proc until it dies. Leaving the scorpions alive means they slap you around and it's impossible to aim, plus you'll get knocked like 100 feet to the side. Alternate, ballsier strategies seem possible, but even just leaving one of them alive for too long is a big problem.

So that means skipping the VTOL leaves you with a 1 minute cushion. This is going to disappear quickly.

- 10 seconds driving the APC to the area 3 base vs. flying with VTOL
- 8 seconds picking up the machine gun + ammo behind the military guy in area 3 (won't count on ingame time, but will for potential real time SDA purposes). This machine gun is needed to kill the tower jellies in area 4.

LAKE PROC

The lake proc doesn't show up until you're in the submarine so both strats are similar here. Park flying vehicles on the shore near the tunnel entrance, go into the tunnels, reappear on the surface, and wait. A little trick here is to go in front of the door and press the button as the timer goes to 1. After the cinema of the rigs blowing up is over you'll enter the building almost immediately.

The VTOL skip route means you have to drive the submarine through the lake maze to get to the proc.

The VTOL route means you get to use one of the coolest pure art tricks in the game, the sub lift maneuver.

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%203%20submarine%20lift%20fast.zip

(note: during the rig explosion countdown you lift the VTOL down to the shore, so at the end after the boat ride you climb in and zoom off. Yes, I know I sucked and ate a lot of proc missiles. A little tip also, when diving it seems your "jump into the sub range" is shortened -- I had to let go of dive there to jump into the sub from so far away).

That strat gets me to the proc in 1:19 (subtract purple arrow map time + sub intro cinema). For comparison, in an already cleared level I can reach the proc with the sub in about 1:26.

But...

Unless I need to play it a lot more that's pretty much impossible with enemies present. Even if you run past them all and get to the end you will die almost instantly. There will be so many enemies you literally won't be able to move and your game will be lagging like crazy. The fastest I've gotten to the proc is 1:45, but I died. The fastest I've reached it and then actually killed it was 2:20, or almost a minute slower than the VTOL strat (which is now made up the minute and more). I think that time could be pushed down with a lot of practice but it'd be pretty random. The trick is to kill the fish on the move as they spawn, but it's easier said than done.

Sidenote: to show how ridiculously bad my first speedrun is I'll show my old lake time: 3:33. Actually the entire siberia segment of that run is probably one of the most poorly executed segment to ever be hosted on this site and I'm ashamed of it. But now I can make up for it.

The hangman strat loses about 8 seconds flying to the area 4 portal entrance (you're going to be bleeding time whenever flying with the hangman instead of the VTOL).

For yet another aside, I am embarrassingly bad at getting the hangman through that little portal. Is it even possible to do reliably head on? My only hope of getting it in one smooth motion is to take it almost sideways. I have killed 3 or 4 hangmans by being stubborn. I'm glad this isn't the fastest strat because, well, the sub lift trick is pure awesomeness, but also because like half my runs would end because the hangman has a fat ass.

Siberia 4

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%204%20aggressive%20hangman%20route.zip

This is from the hangman strategy's POV.

The starting point for the video is turning left (north) at the entrance and going to the corner. I take the first angle too aggressively and actually overshoot the SCUD. On the way back it seems if you keep low the SCUD won't get shot at as much. I show a neat little ledge to snipe the jellies from. There are other ledges, but they have particular issues which I won't explore here. I also had a weird glitch about 50% of the time when landing right next to the jellies where Adam would aim straight down at the ground and refuse to budge -- a bizarre game ender (which is what made me think of sniping them in the first place).

Another time saver is to move the VTOL near the SCUD on the way back from the jellies, instead of on the way to the jellies.

Lefty claimed he could outrun the bugs but I don't see how that's possible. They always get me. This video was a minor miracle since I usually get killed easily when trying to take off from the jellies. I can take a route from the SCUD back to the base that is much safer and activates zero bugs by hugging the northern shield wall. But it's 10 seconds slower (considering the hangman's turtle speed, the large environment, and a straight line vs. a loop I'm surprised it's not a lot more).

Although...it seems with the VTOL I could do the more direct route and not worry. Because the VTOL destroys the jellies in like 15 seconds, whereas the hangman takes (trying to allow for the fact I'd have to fly the hangman to the VTOL, land, get out, jump in, etc.) about a minute, which also includes flying back to the base. This is the last place where the VTOL strat is a lot faster. It just rips the tower jellies to pieces and zips back to base like it's nothing.

Even back in the base when you have to land the VTOL, get the key, jump in the VTOL, lift off, land by the SCUD, etc. that takes 13 seconds...and it takes about 13 seconds to run from the building to the SCUD area as well. So it's not even slower there.

The only place where the VTOL strat might lose like 10-15 seconds is when you first come into siberia 4. You zip to the base, land next to the hangman (it's not locked), jump out, jump in, and take off. A safe northern route to the SCUD takes the same amount of time as a safe southern route from the portal entrance so that doesn't matter, but the vehicle switching + flying to the base is something the hangman strat doesn't have to deal with.

Totaling up the VTOL speed advantage (approximate in seconds):

10 (APC driving)
8 (collecting machine gun)
30-60 (lake sub lift trick vs. sub driving)
8 (flying to area 4)
60? seconds for tower jellies (difficult to gauge, could be like 30 or 40 instead but still a lot)
-15 for going to the base and then landing next to the hangman for the SCUD run

VTOL net: Max 2m11s faster, with a fudge factor of probably like 30-45 seconds or maybe even up to a minute depending on what I'm overlooking or if you can do the lake a lot faster or bounce the dozer to the proc 2 area etc. But VTOL will always fly faster, kill jellies WAY faster, and the sub lift trick is faster – it just depends by how much. VTOL could be another ~10 secs faster too if it lets me be more aggressive with the hangman (i.e. take a direct route from the SCUD back to the base instead of the giant loop).

---

I tried to be cute and see what would happen if I nuked where the processor appears. Did he spawn and die instantly in the blastwave?! Well, no. Funny video though:

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%204%20nuking%20the%20proc%20for%20the%20lulz.zip

For an N64 game it actually does have good terrain deformation. The caution stripe textures even align with the crater more or less.

NOTE: When launching the SCUD, you don't actually have to hit the enemy radio base. You can just make it crash right in front of you. If you turn it around you can nuke yourself too. Yes, you die, but it's not funny with screaming and blood splattering. Bit of a let down. I also tried to maneuver the nuke all the way back to the alpha-1 in siberia1, but the low portal makes it really tough to not hit the ground. I wonder what would happen if you did that though...game over? Crash the system? Floating alpha-1 above a giant crater? In the water? Corrupt cart? We may never know.

Having fun with the submarine on land:

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/land_submarine.zip

Random glitch: I noticed when doing siberia4 over and over it would keep giving me free machine gun ammo after each death. After a short while I had 900 ammo at the start. WTF? I hope that doesn't show up in the speedrun or I'll have to (annoyingly) do a system reset each time I fail.

Leviathan:
On PAL I believe it won't even let you access the final world (comet) unless you're on hero difficulty. That is pretty sadistic. Although it seems like this game's difficulty is all about the excluded middle (e.g. easy is REALLY easy).

I'm too tired to parse links so I'm just gonna dump them.

Previous vids put on youtube for lefty:

Greece 3 jump close or not quite?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er5L70eTkLY

Java storm skip route (ignore the exploding plane, just making sure we do the same route)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfVubbui-Q

Java 1 trick help
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF6Gm6s4vmo

Siberia stuff...

[b]ICEBERG SKIP:[/b]

This is my boulder skip strategy.

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%202%20iceberg%20skip%20beach%20running.zip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHRDX9HTkAY

Running up the seam and on top of the iceberg is old news. My strat (which I described 2 years ago) is to run along the beach all the way to the foot of the nuke plant. Running across like that takes about a minute; driving across in the boat takes about 20 seconds. So to beat my strat you'd have to be able to burn the boulder and swim back to the ship in less than 40 seconds. Is that possible? It always takes me forever and a day and is really hard, which is what made me just run across in the first place. Although I'm not sure if I've ever had the dragonfly enemies chip in.

[b]THE VTOL QUESTION:[/b]

I was pretty sure skipping the VTOL was slower and the numbers bear that out. But it was fun trying out all these different setups and approaches. It made me learn more about the levels and forced me to really know how to execute my tricks (e.g. sub lift).

For awhile I tried to find a way to cross over the mountain near the iceberg and land right on top of the 2nd proc. Then I realized that he doesn't actually show up until either the nuke plant blows up or you save the day.

Either way, you have to enter the building and talk to the engineer. Then you jump in the dozer and...

Earning the VTOL and killing the 2nd Proc: 2:40
Letting the nuke plant blow and killing the 2nd Proc with the APC: 1:38

Even ignoring the VTOL puzzle you still have to drive all the way to the proc area, swim a little (maybe possible to bounce the dozer all the way to the other side and drive to the APC, which would save like 5-8 seconds over what I do which is to bounce into the middle of the water), watch a 14 second cinema of the plant blowing up, then fight the proc and a scorpion + 2 super scorpions with an APC. My best time is a consistent 38 seconds, which I achieve by killing all the scorpions and then focusing on the proc until it dies. Leaving the scorpions alive means they slap you around and it's impossible to aim, plus you'll get knocked like 100 feet to the side. Alternate, ballsier strategies seem possible, but even just leaving one of them alive for too long is a big problem.

So that means skipping the VTOL leaves you with a 1 minute cushion. This is going to disappear quickly.

- 10 seconds driving the APC to the area 3 base vs. flying with VTOL
- 8 seconds picking up the machine gun + ammo behind the military guy in area 3 (won't count on ingame time, but will for potential real time SDA purposes). This machine gun is needed to kill the tower jellies in area 4.

[b]LAKE PROC[/b]

The lake proc doesn't show up until you're in the submarine so both strats are similar here. Park flying vehicles on the shore near the tunnel entrance, go into the tunnels, reappear on the surface, and wait. A little trick here is to go in front of the door and press the button as the timer goes to 1. After the cinema of the rigs blowing up is over you'll enter the building almost immediately.

The VTOL skip route means you have to drive the submarine through the lake maze to get to the proc.

The VTOL route means you get to use one of the coolest pure art tricks in the game, the sub lift maneuver.

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%203%20submarine%20lift%20fast.zip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U82WNQidDHY

(note: during the rig explosion countdown you lift the VTOL down to the shore, so at the end after the boat ride you climb in and zoom off. Yes, I know I sucked and ate a lot of proc missiles. A little tip also, when diving it seems your "jump into the sub range" is shortened -- I had to let go of dive there to jump into the sub from so far away).

That strat gets me to the proc in 1:19 (subtract purple arrow map time + sub intro cinema). For comparison, in an already cleared level I can reach the proc with the sub in about 1:26.

But...

Unless I need to play it a lot more that's pretty much impossible with enemies present. Even if you run past them all and get to the end you will die almost instantly. There will be so many enemies you literally won't be able to move and your game will be lagging like crazy. The fastest I've gotten to the proc is 1:45, but I died. The fastest I've reached it and then actually killed it was 2:20, or almost a minute slower than the VTOL strat (which is now made up the minute and more). I think that time could be pushed down with a lot of practice but it'd be pretty random. The trick is to kill the fish on the move as they spawn, but it's easier said than done.

Sidenote: to show how ridiculously bad my first speedrun is I'll show my old lake time: 3:33. Actually the entire siberia segment of that run is probably one of the most poorly executed segment to ever be hosted on this site and I'm ashamed of it. But now I can make up for it.

The hangman strat loses about 8 seconds flying to the area 4 portal entrance (you're going to be bleeding time whenever flying with the hangman instead of the VTOL).

For yet another aside, I am embarrassingly bad at getting the hangman through that little portal. Is it even possible to do reliably head on? My only hope of getting it in one smooth motion is to take it almost sideways. I have killed 3 or 4 hangmans by being stubborn. I'm glad this isn't the fastest strat because, well, the sub lift trick is pure awesomeness, but also because like half my runs would end because the hangman has a fat ass.

[b]Siberia 4[/b]

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%204%20aggressive%20hangman%20route.zip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lqf1imEK-k

This is from the hangman strategy's POV.

The starting point for the video is turning left (north) at the entrance and going to the corner. I take the first angle too aggressively and actually overshoot the SCUD. On the way back it seems if you keep low the SCUD won't get shot at as much. I show a neat little ledge to snipe the jellies from. There are other ledges, but they have particular issues which I won't explore here. I also had a weird glitch about 50% of the time when landing right next to the jellies where Adam would aim straight down at the ground and refuse to budge -- a bizarre game ender (which is what made me think of sniping them in the first place).

Another time saver is to move the VTOL near the SCUD on the way back from the jellies, instead of on the way to the jellies.

Lefty claimed he could outrun the bugs but I don't see how that's possible. They always get me. This video was a minor miracle since I usually get killed easily when trying to take off from the jellies. I can take a route from the SCUD back to the base that is much safer and activates zero bugs by hugging the northern shield wall. But it's 10 seconds slower (considering the hangman's turtle speed, the large environment, and a straight line vs. a loop I'm surprised it's not a lot more).

Although...it seems with the VTOL I could do the more direct route and not worry. Because the VTOL destroys the jellies in like 15 seconds, whereas the hangman takes (trying to allow for the fact I'd have to fly the hangman to the VTOL, land, get out, jump in, etc.) about a minute, which also includes flying back to the base. This is the last place where the VTOL strat is a lot faster. It just rips the tower jellies to pieces and zips back to base like it's nothing.

Even back in the base when you have to land the VTOL, get the key, jump in the VTOL, lift off, land by the SCUD, etc. that takes 13 seconds...and it takes about 13 seconds to run from the building to the SCUD area as well. So it's not even slower there.

The only place where the VTOL strat might lose like 10-15 seconds is when you first come into siberia 4. You zip to the base, land next to the hangman (it's not locked), jump out, jump in, and take off. A safe northern route to the SCUD takes the same amount of time as a safe southern route from the portal entrance so that doesn't matter, but the vehicle switching + flying to the base is something the hangman strat doesn't have to deal with.

[b]Totaling up the VTOL speed advantage (approximate in seconds):[/b]

10 (APC driving)
8 (collecting machine gun)
30-60 (lake sub lift trick vs. sub driving)
8 (flying to area 4)
60? seconds for tower jellies (difficult to gauge, could be like 30 or 40 instead but still a lot)
-15 for going to the base and then landing next to the hangman for the SCUD run

VTOL net: Max 2m11s faster, with a fudge factor of probably like 30-45 seconds or maybe even up to a minute depending on what I'm overlooking or if you can do the lake a lot faster or bounce the dozer to the proc 2 area etc. But VTOL will always fly faster, kill jellies WAY faster, and the sub lift trick is faster – it just depends by how much. VTOL could be another ~10 secs faster too if it lets me be more aggressive with the hangman (i.e. take a direct route from the SCUD back to the base instead of the giant loop).

---

I tried to be cute and see what would happen if I nuked where the processor appears. Did he spawn and die instantly in the blastwave?! Well, no. Funny video though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DNH14YVfsE
http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/siberia%204%20nuking%20the%20proc%20for%20the%20lulz.zip

For an N64 game it actually does have good terrain deformation. The caution stripe textures even align with the crater more or less.

NOTE: When launching the SCUD, you don't actually have to hit the enemy radio base. You can just make it crash right in front of you. If you turn it around you can nuke yourself too. Yes, you die, but it's not funny with screaming and blood splattering. Bit of a let down. I also tried to maneuver the nuke all the way back to the alpha-1 in siberia1, but the low portal makes it really tough to not hit the ground. I wonder what would happen if you did that though...game over? Crash the system? Floating alpha-1 above a giant crater? In the water? Corrupt cart? We may never know.

Having fun with the submarine on land:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx8Lw4XIpZQ
http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/land_submarine.zip

[b]Random glitch:[/b] I noticed when doing siberia4 over and over it would keep giving me free machine gun ammo after each death. After a short while I had 900 ammo at the start. WTF? I hope that doesn't show up in the speedrun or I'll have to (annoyingly) do a system reset each time I fail.

[b]Leviathan:[/b]
On PAL I believe it won't even let you access the final world (comet) unless you're on hero difficulty. That is pretty sadistic. Although it seems like this game's difficulty is all about the excluded middle (e.g. easy is REALLY easy).

Leviathan

2011-02-14 02:47:45 am

Holy bollocks that is awful! Yeah whenever I played it way back when I did so on hero difficulty, judging by the fact that one of the speedruns I saw the guy said he had to abandon the idea of doing it on hero because he was having trouble staying alive I'm not surprised I didn't make it past america.

leftysheroes

Edit history:

leftysheroes: 2011-02-15 06:34:20 pm

2011-02-14 08:52:04 pm

First that is pretty much the route I use for storm skip. The only differences are I turn for the proc a few seconds earlier and fly higher for most of the flight.

For Java 1 you are aiming at my takeoff point at .10 and standing on my break spot at .38. There is another way that I have made it across with before but I would glitch into the spot of land anf die 90+% of the time. The method I suggested works 100% of through time for me.

I pretty much figured that the VTOL would be faster if sub lift was done although I did have more aggressive strategies. Anyway after using the hangman to place the VTOL you should have time to bring a boat over and drive it to a spot near the shield portal where you can climb out and then use the Vladacar to drive back to the base. This would save however much time it takes to run through the tunnel.

When I was talking about escaping the bug rush I meant after launching the scud. If the huge swarm catches up before you take off in the VTOL it would usually get destroyed. Thats why the VTOL needs to be next to the scud otherwise you would have to clear the aliens with the tank first.

Here are some minor comet ideas.
- There is a spot where you can drive over the mountain without having to drive all the way north. Its on the same latitude as the entrance to the alien city. I have been trying to find a way to crook the river there but haven't had any luck.
- The Resonater can take out an entire engine in 2 shots if you use it on top of the main platform from 2 opposing corners. The first one will take out 2 of the side things and the middle. You can drive through the exhaust to the other corner. You would need 3 resonator pickups to do this.

Ill have more info on greece 3 later but you could try driving to the edge of the cliff to line up your jump and then back up the hill. If you did that quickly it would probably take 20 seconds which may not be that bad considering how precise the jump has to be.
EDIT: Fo Greece 3 youre not aiming at the right spot on the cliff. In the video there are 2 sections on the cliff that are about the same distance away. You need to aim for the center of the one on the left.

First that is pretty much the route I use for storm skip. The only differences are I turn for the proc a few seconds earlier and fly higher for most of the flight.

For Java 1 you are aiming at my takeoff point at .10 and standing on my break spot at .38. There is another way that I have made it across with before but I would glitch into the spot of land anf die 90+% of the time. The method I suggested works 100% of through time for me.

I pretty much figured that the VTOL would be faster if sub lift was done although I did have more aggressive strategies. Anyway after using the hangman to place the VTOL you should have time to bring a boat over and drive it to a spot near the shield portal where you can climb out and then use the Vladacar to drive back to the base. This would save however much time it takes to run through the tunnel.

When I was talking about escaping the bug rush I meant after launching the scud. If the huge swarm catches up before you take off in the VTOL it would usually get destroyed. Thats why the VTOL needs to be next to the scud otherwise you would have to clear the aliens with the tank first.

Here are some minor comet ideas.
- There is a spot where you can drive over the mountain without having to drive all the way north. Its on the same latitude as the entrance to the alien city. I have been trying to find a way to crook the river there but haven't had any luck.
- The Resonater can take out an entire engine in 2 shots if you use it on top of the main platform from 2 opposing corners. The first one will take out 2 of the side things and the middle. You can drive through the exhaust to the other corner. You would need 3 resonator pickups to do this.

Ill have more info on greece 3 later but you could try driving to the edge of the cliff to line up your jump and then back up the hill. If you did that quickly it would probably take 20 seconds which may not be that bad considering how precise the jump has to be.
EDIT: Fo Greece 3 youre not aiming at the right spot on the cliff. In the video there are 2 sections on the cliff that are about the same distance away. You need to aim for the center of the one on the left.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 09:41:47 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 09:39:38 pm

2011-02-15 09:39:25 pm

Jack of all Trades

Quote from leftysheroes:

I pretty much figured that the VTOL would be faster if sub lift was done although I did have more aggressive strategies.

Oh? I'd love to hear them. Especially if you think it might make up the time difference. Although the only thing I can think in my vid that wasn't aggressive was the way I killed the jellies.

Quote:

Anyway after using the hangman to place the VTOL you should have time to bring a boat over and drive it to a spot near the shield portal where you can climb out and then use the Vladacar to drive back to the base. This would save however much time it takes to run through the tunnel.

Seriously, how do you know all this stuff? Is there a secret Body Harvest site I don't know about? Are you Bush's alter ego? Were you gonna do a speed run and couldn't and now you're coaching me? Have you tried to walk up every mountain in the entire game? This stuff is just pure gold.

But...I couldn't figure it out. I could upload a 6 min vid of me running along the icy coast, finding unwalkable spots, going back to the boat, finding another walkable spot, etc. but I don't know how productive that would be. This would save a good 20 seconds from going through that tunnel. I tried to look up top instead to see if any part looked different. I could climb up from a little indent in the ground near the portal but I just slid down the hill and had no traction so I dunno how to get there.

Quote:

When I was talking about escaping the bug rush I meant after launching the scud. If the huge swarm catches up before you take off in the VTOL it would usually get destroyed. Thats why the VTOL needs to be next to the scud otherwise you would have to clear the aliens with the tank first.

Ah, OK. Well, you'd want the VTOL next to the scud anyway because running is sooo slow. When I was detonating the scud right in front of me I was doing it (accidentally) where some of the bugs warp in. Thought it was funny how a scorpion would be at the bottom of the giant crater.

Quote:

Here are some minor comet ideas.
- There is a spot where you can drive over the mountain without having to drive all the way north. Its on the same latitude as the entrance to the alien city. I have been trying to find a way to crook the river there but haven't had any luck.

I'll be on the look out whenever I start messing around on that level.

Quote:

The Resonater can take out an entire engine in 2 shots if you use it on top of the main platform from 2 opposing corners. The first one will take out 2 of the side things and the middle. You can drive through the exhaust to the other corner. You would need 3 resonator pickups to do this.

That's cool, although it takes awhile to get a res by killing those green crystal things iirc. Res also own the black Adam fight a la my first speed run.

Thanks for the Greece 3 stuff again.

You can do the greece 2 jump and swim fine in Hero mode, except the fight with the proc on foot with a pistol is NUTS. Machine gun seems like it'd just be plain faster because it kills so much faster. Maybe use like 30-40 bullets from it on the first proc too.

Quote from Leviathan:

Holy bollocks that is awful! Yeah whenever I played it way back when I did so on hero difficulty, judging by the fact that one of the speedruns I saw the guy said he had to abandon the idea of doing it on hero because he was having trouble staying alive I'm not surprised I didn't make it past america.

Yeah that was me, I did the first (awful) BH run on this site. It wasn't so much surviving per se. The problem was I tried to go fast by ignoring harvester waves and in hero mode they harvest humans REALLY fast so mutants would come when I was in the fat java boat and stomp me to death. I didn't want to sacrifice speed for killing so I just changed it to easy. I'm honestly surprised I never tried a hero mode run for fun. Either way, nowadays the strats are so insane that you're barely in most levels long enough for mutants to matter. Still would be a huge challenge.

[quote="leftysheroes"]
I pretty much figured that the VTOL would be faster if sub lift was done although I did have more aggressive strategies.[/quote]

Oh? I'd love to hear them. Especially if you think it might make up the time difference. Although the only thing I can think in my vid that wasn't aggressive was the way I killed the jellies.

[quote]Anyway after using the hangman to place the VTOL you should have time to bring a boat over and drive it to a spot near the shield portal where you can climb out and then use the Vladacar to drive back to the base. This would save however much time it takes to run through the tunnel.[/quote]

Seriously, how do you know all this stuff? Is there a secret Body Harvest site I don't know about? Are you Bush's alter ego? Were you gonna do a speed run and couldn't and now you're coaching me? Have you tried to walk up every mountain in the entire game? This stuff is just pure gold.

But...I couldn't figure it out. I could upload a 6 min vid of me running along the icy coast, finding unwalkable spots, going back to the boat, finding another walkable spot, etc. but I don't know how productive that would be. This would save a good 20 seconds from going through that tunnel. I tried to look up top instead to see if any part looked different. I could climb up from a little indent in the ground near the portal but I just slid down the hill and had no traction so I dunno how to get there.

[quote]
When I was talking about escaping the bug rush I meant after launching the scud. If the huge swarm catches up before you take off in the VTOL it would usually get destroyed. Thats why the VTOL needs to be next to the scud otherwise you would have to clear the aliens with the tank first.[/quote]

Ah, OK. Well, you'd want the VTOL next to the scud anyway because running is sooo slow. When I was detonating the scud right in front of me I was doing it (accidentally) where some of the bugs warp in. Thought it was funny how a scorpion would be at the bottom of the giant crater.

[quote]
Here are some minor comet ideas.
- There is a spot where you can drive over the mountain without having to drive all the way north. Its on the same latitude as the entrance to the alien city. I have been trying to find a way to crook the river there but haven't had any luck.[/quote]

I'll be on the look out whenever I start messing around on that level.

[quote]The Resonater can take out an entire engine in 2 shots if you use it on top of the main platform from 2 opposing corners. The first one will take out 2 of the side things and the middle. You can drive through the exhaust to the other corner. You would need 3 resonator pickups to do this.[/quote]

That's cool, although it takes awhile to get a res by killing those green crystal things iirc. Res also own the black Adam fight a la my first speed run.

Thanks for the Greece 3 stuff again.

You can do the greece 2 jump and swim fine in Hero mode, except the fight with the proc on foot with a pistol is NUTS. Machine gun seems like it'd just be plain faster because it kills so much faster. Maybe use like 30-40 bullets from it on the first proc too.

[quote="Leviathan"]Holy bollocks that is awful! Yeah whenever I played it way back when I did so on hero difficulty, judging by the fact that one of the speedruns I saw the guy said he had to abandon the idea of doing it on hero because he was having trouble staying alive I'm not surprised I didn't make it past america.[/quote]

Yeah that was me, I did the first (awful) BH run on this site. It wasn't so much surviving per se. The problem was I tried to go fast by ignoring harvester waves and in hero mode they harvest humans REALLY fast so mutants would come when I was in the fat java boat and stomp me to death. I didn't want to sacrifice speed for killing so I just changed it to easy. I'm honestly surprised I never tried a hero mode run for fun. Either way, nowadays the strats are so insane that you're barely in most levels long enough for mutants to matter. Still would be a huge challenge.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 10:14:06 pm

2011-02-15 10:11:06 pm

Jack of all Trades

Can't drive a boat on land after dropping it there with a hangman. Cheesy

Scorpions won't push you through the shield wall a la the American 1 trick (easily, anyway).

Just making sure for one last time just in case, but you can't even target the lake proc with a boat. Bullet seem to stop cold at the water. VTOL missiles explode on the water. VTOL machine gun can target the proc and bring his health meter up and you can seemingly damage him (he flashes red) but his health meter either doesn't change at all or very little. And you can't hover and continously fire for more than a couple seconds so you have to keep backing up (or at least I do). You can't quite aim down either so you have to kinda be moving forward anyway.

Yeah he's cheating and everything but around 1:04 he starts to do a cheat boost that sends him flying over a wall and into the proc area. That wall looks...kinda low. Maybe it just stops you cold or is too vertical, but it has potential maybe.

Can't drive a boat on land after dropping it there with a hangman. :D

Scorpions won't push you through the shield wall a la the American 1 trick (easily, anyway).

Just making sure for one last time just in case, but you can't even target the lake proc with a boat. Bullet seem to stop cold at the water. VTOL missiles explode on the water. VTOL machine gun can target the proc and bring his health meter up and you can seemingly damage him (he flashes red) but his health meter either doesn't change at all or very little. And you can't hover and continously fire for more than a couple seconds so you have to keep backing up (or at least I do). You can't quite aim down either so you have to kinda be moving forward anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48BBoESfxvM

Yeah he's cheating and everything but around 1:04 he starts to do a cheat boost that sends him flying over a wall and into the proc area. That wall looks...kinda low. Maybe it just stops you cold or is too vertical, but it has potential maybe.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 11:52:23 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 11:52:11 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 11:34:25 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 10:53:04 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 10:50:57 pm

2011-02-15 10:48:07 pm

Jack of all Trades

Here's the vid of my icy adventures (should be the most boring vid in the thread by far):

For the Greece tower shield I can kill it about as fast with the airplane as I can by ditching the plane and using the croc tank. The tank one shots the missile caps and the tower and is basically invincible, but is slow. The airplane is fast in a straight line but turns slowly (unless there's a technique I'm missing) and kills slowly. I am also very, very frightened about using it after a successful bike jump + not blowing my plane up on the proc. It's very easy to dive bomb into the ground or miss a cap on a pass. Maybe I should do more attempts with the plane since it seems like it SHOULD be faster. Even just going on the ground and driving around the tower seems about as fast as the croc method.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 11:54:10 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-15 11:50:05 pm

2011-02-15 11:46:54 pm

Jack of all Trades

Two tries in one vid. I should have edited out the preparation, sorry. So the fish own me hardcore. I think the one time I got across several days ago the fish shot me once and I barely lived with a sliver of health. Do you spawn them by going into the water earlier and then kill them? I tried that but then the beetle followed me down there and it made it really hard to do the boost then. Or maybe I am just completely clueless as to what I'm doing. I know the first try was a little off but still OK I think. The second one seemed pretty ideal except for those annoying fish. Maybe I should be a little lower on the beach but it seems the beetle has a limit where he'll just stop for some reason.

Random sidenote: I hate when Adam does the knee buckling thing when exiting a vehicle @ 0:18. So random too. I don't understand what triggers it. I've tried to cancel it by shooting but it always takes me by surprise so I'm not sure if I'm being too slow or if I just have to accept it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPnnDz_9sUY

Two tries in one vid. I should have edited out the preparation, sorry. So the fish own me hardcore. I think the one time I got across several days ago the fish shot me once and I barely lived with a sliver of health. Do you spawn them by going into the water earlier and then kill them? I tried that but then the beetle followed me down there and it made it really hard to do the boost then. Or maybe I am just completely clueless as to what I'm doing. I know the first try was a little off but still OK I think. The second one seemed pretty ideal except for those annoying fish. Maybe I should be a little lower on the beach but it seems the beetle has a limit where he'll just stop for some reason.

Random sidenote: I hate when Adam does the knee buckling thing when exiting a vehicle @ 0:18. So random too. I don't understand what triggers it. I've tried to cancel it by shooting but it always takes me by surprise so I'm not sure if I'm being too slow or if I just have to accept it.

leftysheroes

Edit history:

leftysheroes: 2011-02-16 12:39:38 am

2011-02-16 12:37:02 am

Some quick thoughts
-On Java 1 I don't kill the fish first but they seem to have really bad aim at least on my game.
- I think you may be trying to escape the water in Siberia 3 by the wrong portal. The area you can climb out is near the entrance from Siberia 2.
- I actually made greece 3 3 times in a row by carefully lining up the jump first.
- If you end up going through the northern green crystal field on the comet a point blank fragcannon shot destroys the crystals instantly. You also get 3 resonater ammo as reward for beating Scorpio.
- Unless there is a way to sequence break thr underwater section of Siberia 3 no amount of aggressive strats will really make a difference.

marshmallow

2011-02-16 10:22:45 am

Jack of all Trades

Quote from leftysheroes:

-On Java 1 I don't kill the fish first but they seem to have really bad aim at least on my game.

Hmm...OK. Maybe I should try to land between the two groups. I think I can more or less do this trick, it just comes down to luck if the fish kill me or not. Although I'll be disoriented on the other side because I've been there on foot like once. And they'd shoot at me still when I'm going to the bunker/airboat area.

Quote:

- I think you may be trying to escape the water in Siberia 3 by the wrong portal. The area you can climb out is near the entrance from Siberia 2.

Nope. I'm on the map screen @ 30 seconds showing that I'm by the area 2 portal.

Quote:

- I actually made greece 3 3 times in a row by carefully lining up the jump first.

I hate you. Cheesy

Quote:

- Unless there is a way to sequence break thr underwater section of Siberia 3 no amount of aggressive strats will really make a difference.

I'm just curious. I know about the tricks in America 2 and 3, even though they're useless. It's fun!

[quote="leftysheroes"]
-On Java 1 I don't kill the fish first but they seem to have really bad aim at least on my game.[/quote]

Hmm...OK. Maybe I should try to land between the two groups. I think I can more or less do this trick, it just comes down to luck if the fish kill me or not. Although I'll be disoriented on the other side because I've been there on foot like once. And they'd shoot at me still when I'm going to the bunker/airboat area.

[quote]- I think you may be trying to escape the water in Siberia 3 by the wrong portal. The area you can climb out is near the entrance from Siberia 2.[/quote]

Nope. I'm on the map screen @ 30 seconds showing that I'm by the area 2 portal.

[quote]- I actually made greece 3 3 times in a row by carefully lining up the jump first.[/quote]

I hate you. :D

[quote]
- Unless there is a way to sequence break thr underwater section of Siberia 3 no amount of aggressive strats will really make a difference. [/quote]

I'm just curious. I know about the tricks in America 2 and 3, even though they're useless. It's fun!

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-16 02:28:53 pm

2011-02-16 02:28:12 pm

Jack of all Trades

I'm able to do the Java 1 trick now.

Here's a trick to make it easier: go behind the white building and use the bulldog as a wall so the goliath beetle doesn't go behind the building. Then you can jump out and grab the machine gun, go back to the jeep, go to your spot, and the beetle will still probably be along the wall of the building looking right at you. Then he'll charge and you'll be happy. Can do it without even killing enemies, sometimes.

Fish are still a problem though. You can get across if they hit you once, but you'll have very low health. Two hits = death.

Not sure it's faster to just charge the proc on foot with a machine gun or to follow the shore to the south and get the airboat.

If I did Java all as one segment it'd be pretty painful. Java1 trick, the Kubelwagon trick in java 2 is tricky (plus there's a way to make it go across the river I think), then the java3 airboat volcano skip I can do like 10% of the time (all seems dependent on which side Adam jumps out of). Getting into the base isn't too bad, but it's easy to mess up a lot too with that much pressure. Then the potential freezing at the proc + lightning death.

Oh yeah, last night in siberia 2 I was able to get the dozer to bounce across the little river to the land with the proc. Didn't save that much time though because it drives up the hill like a snail for some reason.

I'm able to do the Java 1 trick now.

Here's a trick to make it easier: go behind the white building and use the bulldog as a wall so the goliath beetle doesn't go behind the building. Then you can jump out and grab the machine gun, go back to the jeep, go to your spot, and the beetle will still probably be along the wall of the building looking right at you. Then he'll charge and you'll be happy. Can do it without even killing enemies, sometimes.

Fish are still a problem though. You can get across if they hit you once, but you'll have very low health. Two hits = death.

Not sure it's faster to just charge the proc on foot with a machine gun or to follow the shore to the south and get the airboat.

If I did Java all as one segment it'd be pretty painful. Java1 trick, the Kubelwagon trick in java 2 is tricky (plus there's a way to make it go across the river I think), then the java3 airboat volcano skip I can do like 10% of the time (all seems dependent on which side Adam jumps out of). Getting into the base isn't too bad, but it's easy to mess up a lot too with that much pressure. Then the potential freezing at the proc + lightning death.

Oh yeah, last night in siberia 2 I was able to get the dozer to bounce across the little river to the land with the proc. Didn't save that much time though because it drives up the hill like a snail for some reason.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-16 06:26:49 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-16 06:25:44 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-16 06:25:17 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-16 06:24:45 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-16 06:23:52 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-16 06:23:25 pm

2011-02-16 06:22:40 pm

Jack of all Trades

Did a lot of Java testing, still not done comparing different things but:

- java 3 proc can be killed ridiculously far away with rocket launcher and his save point is on the ground way before you can get there, so the logical order would be to do java-1-2-3 in one segment and save, then do 4-shield totem-boss to finish it off.

- I'm a lot better at the volcano skip than I remember. I can do it like 50% of the time.

- In Java 2, figured out how to make the kubelwagon go across the river

- When getting the kubelwagon over the ledge near the jelly you can do A+B and turn to force the rear tires over.

- In Java 2 I was sometimes getting a mutant ridiculously fast for easy mode. I guess that first spider is next to a boatload of easy to eat people.

leftysheroes

Edit history:

leftysheroes: 2011-02-16 08:06:35 pm

2011-02-16 08:03:15 pm

Okay about Siberia 3, I probably should have tested this like I did with everything else in my year and a half old notes but Since I didn't have any problems with anything else I didnt bother. Naturally I cant figure out how I did it way back when either but if it wasnt just some random fluke I'll find it again. As far as the strategies.
- Putting the hangman near the bunker entrance by the portal to Sib4 makes up a little time.
- As you already know you can jump over with the bulldozer. It picks up enough speed at the top of the hill to get to the APC before the cutscene starts.
- My strat for proc2 was kill one missle scorpion, hide under its corpse and blast the pricessor hoping I'll get the health it drops and that the Golden Scorpion doesnt knock me all the way to Alaska. Naturally it wasn't very consistent.
- My strat with the jellies was also faster. I didn't have any glitch problems(side note: My cart also has the freeze in the America 2 desert problem. Thats the first reason I looked at the glitches for this because the freezing was so bad completing America 2 was impossible. I had all but given up hope of being able to shred up the zombies in Sib1 again).

I did some screwing around with Dynamite in Greece. If you quickly lay 2 charges at the base of the Shield Generator the first will take out the four pods and the second destroys the tower. That leaves one charge left. I cabt seem to get close enough to the processors so Im currently trying to see if I can usi it against the "wait for it" giant crab boss. Given the power and blast range I would not be surprised if it knocked all four pincers off in one shot. BTW that would be freakin awesome.

Exactly how far can you hit the proc with the Rocket Launcher. If its from the mainland you wouldnt have to kill a crapload of aliens before swimming. If you get the launcher the time saved getting a machine gun for proc 1 would be more than the time lost killing the proc with the pistol. Just blast it in the face and it dies before the red flying things crash into you so I would just skip the machine gun in that case.

Small Java Trick. After throwing a grenade into the eye just walk thdough the rock. You dont have to wait for it to fall.

Okay about Siberia 3, I probably should have tested this like I did with everything else in my year and a half old notes but Since I didn't have any problems with anything else I didnt bother. Naturally I cant figure out how I did it way back when either but if it wasnt just some random fluke I'll find it again. As far as the strategies.
- Putting the hangman near the bunker entrance by the portal to Sib4 makes up a little time. 
- As you already know you can jump over with the bulldozer. It picks up enough speed at the top of the hill to get to the APC before the cutscene starts.
- My strat for proc2 was kill one missle scorpion, hide under its corpse and blast the pricessor hoping I'll get the health it drops and that the Golden Scorpion doesnt knock me all the way to Alaska. Naturally it wasn't very consistent.
- My strat with the jellies was also faster. I didn't have any glitch problems(side note: My cart also has the freeze in the America 2 desert problem. Thats the first reason I looked at the glitches for this because the freezing was so bad completing America 2 was impossible. I had all but given up hope of being able to shred up the zombies in Sib1 again).

I did some screwing around with Dynamite in Greece. If you quickly lay 2 charges at the base of the Shield Generator the first will take out the four pods and the second destroys the tower. That leaves one charge left. I cabt seem to get close enough to the processors so Im currently trying to see if I can usi it against the "wait for it" giant crab boss. Given the power and blast range I would not be surprised if it knocked all four pincers off in one shot. BTW that would be freakin awesome.

Exactly how far can you hit the proc with the Rocket Launcher. If its from the mainland you wouldnt have to kill a crapload of aliens before swimming. If you get the launcher the time saved getting a machine gun for proc 1 would be more than the time lost killing the proc with the pistol. Just blast it in the face and it dies before the red flying things crash into you so I would just skip the machine gun in that case.

Small Java Trick. After throwing a grenade into the eye just walk thdough the rock. You dont have to wait for it to fall.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-17 02:08:52 pm

2011-02-17 02:06:34 pm

Jack of all Trades

But I think the rocket launcher is a waste of time. Adds about 23 seconds, if you only get the launcher itself (also got the glitch where each new run gives me a lot more ammo). Best strat is probably going to be to swim to the island in front of me in the above vid and snipe the proc with the machine gun. That's what Bush did. Only problem might be getting enough ammo + not getting hurt too much. Because you lose some health swimming that far.

Getting the machine gun takes about +20 seconds, then another 5 for more ammo in the grenade bunker. Of course, that's in real time, not on the game timer. First proc dies in 5-6 seconds with MG. I haven't timed killing the first proc (and that sniper thing nearby) with a pistol yet. Machine gun is also good for killing the tower jelly and it helps kill the mantisaur things after you do the volcano trick (takes about 6 secs with pistol). You need their health drops because you lose half your hp going across the lava texture for the airboat skip.

Another possible test would be getting rifle + ammo in the first harvester wave. Dunno how long that would take, but it could last the entire world and be pretty useful. That will probably be the last thing I test.

lefty:

IIRC getting the MG from the mines adds about a minute. So dynamite might be a little less, but still a lot of time. So doing the crab trick would have to be possible to make it worth it I think. I have doubts that's even possible because it won't let you damage any limb you want, only 2 certain ones and then the last 2 when an existing one on that side dies. Still an amazing idea though, definitely go for it (won't you die REALLY fast outside the alpha-1?).

I know about the grenade skull rock thing. I even did that in my first run.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWZQjEZxw9M

But I think the rocket launcher is a waste of time. Adds about 23 seconds, if you only get the launcher itself (also got the glitch where each new run gives me a lot more ammo). Best strat is probably going to be to swim to the island in front of me in the above vid and snipe the proc with the machine gun. That's what Bush did. Only problem might be getting enough ammo + not getting hurt too much. Because you lose some health swimming that far.

Getting the machine gun takes about +20 seconds, then another 5 for more ammo in the grenade bunker. Of course, that's in real time, not on the game timer. First proc dies in 5-6 seconds with MG. I haven't timed killing the first proc (and that sniper thing nearby) with a pistol yet. Machine gun is also good for killing the tower jelly and it helps kill the mantisaur things after you do the volcano trick (takes about 6 secs with pistol). You need their health drops because you lose half your hp going across the lava texture for the airboat skip.

Another possible test would be getting rifle + ammo in the first harvester wave. Dunno how long that would take, but it could last the entire world and be pretty useful. That will probably be the last thing I test.

[b]lefty:[/b]

IIRC getting the MG from the mines adds about a minute. So dynamite might be a little less, but still a lot of time. So doing the crab trick would have to be possible to make it worth it I think. I have doubts that's even possible because it won't let you damage any limb you want, only 2 certain ones and then the last 2 when an existing one on that side dies. Still an amazing idea though, definitely go for it (won't you die REALLY fast outside the alpha-1?).

I know about the grenade skull rock thing. I even did that in my first run.

leftysheroes

2011-02-17 07:29:30 pm

Well, I dynamited the crab.
- Good news: it does hit all four pincers when placed right.
- Really bad news: It does about as much damage as 1 chaingun shot. Oh well. Apparently Adam can absorb 3 of the crabs rockets before dieing.

I figured out how to cross the acid river near the Alien City entrance.
- First you need to clear the enemies out.
- There is a green crystal in the middle of the river that needs to be removed.
- In order to make it across you have to do the jump going BACKWARD. After you land shoot some Fragcannon. The recoil will help push you to the other side. Hopefully youll pick up the resonaters while doing this. There is another crystal actually on the shore nearby but going near it causes 2 Suppressors to beam in.

After crossing(youll be at 20% health) you can either backtrack 10 seconds and save to refill your energy or go by one of the doors where those Gargoyle things spawn and use the health they drop to refill before fighting black alpha 1.

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 10:03:33 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 10:02:10 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 09:58:20 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 09:53:22 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 09:52:34 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 09:50:21 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 09:40:44 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 09:40:23 pm

marshmallow: 2011-02-23 09:37:57 pm

2011-02-23 09:37:09 pm

Jack of all Trades

Last week I made a BH64 timing questions thread in the SDA discussion board. It unfortunately hasn't received much attention.

Processors:

If you shoot them by standing in front you do the most damage. With a machine gun you can kill them in about 4-5 seconds; with a pistol, around 11-12 (complicated by fleas hogging your auto-aim on Greece). If you stand near them but to the side, such that they turn their head to look at you, you do about half as much damage even if you shoot them directly in the mouth. Or, sometimes, about half your bullets will miss. It's kinda weird. Moral of the story: stand in front of them for the most damage. You can still be a decent distance away, as long as you're in front and not to the side.

Bosses:

The bosses in my old run are cringe inducing. Almost a Wouter Goes Bananas level of ineptitude. In total, they can be done 2:54 faster.

The Greece crab is the most random, which greatly concerns me since I'll have to kill him in the same segment as the greece 3 jump. Sometimes he will stay still; other times he charges directly at you. If he gets too close he'll either send you flying with a claw (awful) or puke on you (not so bad). You can keep backing up to a wall and it might work out, or you'll get stuck under him unable to shoot the claw, or he'll teleport away (awful). Even when shooting him with frag he can send you flying a little bit even if you're a good 50 feet away. Usually you can still shoot him so it doesn't matter, but sometimes the angles work out so you can't. Also sometimes when you duck in to get that frag he'll send you flying. Also it's possible to one shot his armless stage with frag if you're really close, although I can't find a consistent way to pull it off. Stupid crab.

Java boss is easy and will be in a short segment anyway.

America boss is pretty tough to kill in the air quickly and he does a lot of damage. But the America segment will be relatively short, so meh.

Siberia boss is the next most concerning, since Siberia will be a long segment and it's easy to screw up this guy. If you're too much in front he'll charge and warp, wasting a lot of time. I hate shooting his stinger because the collision detection seems weird. I wait to get the frag because if you don't he'll warp on top of you and you'll fly away. In the vid I already had frag because I used the replay feature and it gives you 5 of everything I think (using res on the crab is fun).

Greece:

Dynamite doesn't save enough time at the shield tower, although it's a cool trick.

Could've been 5 secs faster with a more direct route and luckier hop out of the plane, but yeah, it's just not fast enough. Getting the dyanmite takes like an extra 50 seconds. Getting the machine gun takes like an extra 14 if you're getting the dynamite and that doesn't make up enough time to get the MG, let alone the dynamite (although I think MG in hero mode will be good).

Greece 2 bike jump:

This is pretty easy and I knew it for awhile, but it's important to do it right. You basically fall into a nub and it propels you really far. You can cross with like 2/3 of your hp intact if you do it perfectly, which is about 8 secs faster than if you don't. Might make a vid later.

Greece 3 bike jump:

Haven't tried this in awhile. Are these any closer to where I should be looking, lefty? Or should it be leftys?

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/BH_greece_line1.png
http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/BH_greece_line2.png

Greece 3 potential skip:

Go to the boat and use it to reach this ledge. So close, yet so far. I'm actually not sure if this would be faster than the bike jump since you'd have to kill the proc on foot, go to the boat behind it, drive to the airfield in the ocean, and then climb up and get a plane. I don't know what triggers those planes to unlock. If it's rescuing that airplane instructor that would be pretty funny. And for all I know the proc doesn't spawn until then, either (like the siberia 3 lake proc doesn't spawn until you get the submarine). Although it is marked on the map I think.

Java:

I'm pretty good at the Java 1 skip now. If anything, I suck at the kubelwagon skip in java 2, but I'll manage. I discovered after you cross the bay in java 1 there's a large amount of shallow water near the bunker, so you can just run across. Getting the MG from that bunker is faster than the one in the white building on the shore, unless activating the beetle earlier makes you cross the water faster (might have to test). Also, there's no need to get extra MG ammo in the grenade bunker in java 2. If you're front of the first proc you can kill him with 50-65 bullets remaining. Then kill the java 2 tower jelly and the java 3 mantids with pistol and use the rest of the MG on the java 3 proc.

I wasted a good 20 minutes trying to find a way to seam walk or drive up a mountain to get to that NE airfield in Java 3 that has all those airplanes. I came pretty close a couple times in some areas, but it doesn't seem very likely. I even tried using a nearby tank to see if I could use the recoil of its gun to propel it backwards. But still, this area has awesome potential. Because if you could get up there you could just fly to the java 3 proc, kill it, then fly to the java 4 proc, etc.

For Java 3, I feel pretty dumb. I'm not going to go into details, but let's just say I missed an obvious alternate route. The rocket launcher takes way longer than an extra 25 secs, so it's even more of a no go than before. Here are the two Java 3 proc strats I have now:

The snipe method is much riskier and more difficult to pull off and you die a lot more often. The back route is very easy and is actually faster if I wanted to do the entire level in one segment. I might have to test a much riskier snipe method where I just swim across and ignore more enemies, although I think that would kill me about 90% of the time. For now it's the back route.

Java 4:

The java 4 proc froze on me like 8 times in a row. Fuck that guy. Maybe if I could get one more missile in sometimes he would've died, but when he randomly kills himself/gets hit by lightning or whatever is several seconds faster and more reliable. Definitely saving in java 3.

Fastest shield tower strat:

I tried using the howitzer thinking maybe it'd be the like dynamite in greece. It isn't.

America:

Not much to say, except I still hate the hi-boy jumps. They seem so random. Even the "normal" jump across the gorge you're supposed to do.

Siberia:

To test: using dragonfly enemies and the hovering thing to see if I can blow the boulder up faster than running across the beach.

Siberia 2 ice beach:

Lefty, I still can't see anywhere to run up the ice shore. In fact, you don't even need a boat to reach any point on it, as far as I can see.

There's part of it I can't run on. I thought maybe that was it, so I tried to use a boat to see if Adam would launch himself up there. Never happened. Are you positive this is possible? I'd really appreciate some help on this because I'm lost.

On the er, bright side I guess I did find a trick to seam walk up the tunnel entrance near the siberia 4 entrance.

It's extremely difficult to pull off cleanly. It's easy to get stuck air walking or clip inside an object and fall. You can use the hangman to crush part of the yellow fence to make a direct path back to the base, but you'd basically get one shot at doing this seam walk during the oil rig count down and if you failed the segment would be over I think because it takes like 30 seconds to run back to base from there. So yeah, running up the ice shore on the other side of the lake would be much, much easier...if I knew how.

Pretty sure the scud can't be skipped, but hope springs eternal.

Maybe I could try it from even further away? I wonder what would happen if you cheated to get dynamite and then ran away. I have a feeling the scud blowing up kills you no matter where you are in the level.

Still need to find a quick and consistent way to kill the shield tower with the VTOL. I'm scared of that...

Comet:

Lefty's jump is cool and all, but I think LC's original jump is faster since you don't have to clear as many enemies. I'll have to test this out though. Do you still loop around from the top and then go south through the green crystal field or do you jump the mountains somewhere to get directly to the jump point?

You can kill the engines with 2 res, not 3, which takes ~9-10 seconds. You can even use a hybrid strat where you kill the first 3 engine parts (2 side, middle) with 1 res then finish the last 2 off with missiles. That only takes about 12 seconds.

Still hate those clingy gates with the fire of 1000 suns.

Inspired by the America skips, I tried using enemies to see if they would boost me through. Tried seeing it they could hurt the gate itself (it has health if you aim at it). Nada. I'm curious if you used a gameshark or something if the last boss would actually appear if you didn't kill the scorpion boss. Black Adam's dialogue pops up, but it robot doesn't offer you a save either. Hmm.

I've had trouble killing the dark alpha-1 quickly -- takes me at least 3 res. In my old baddie speed run I just go up to him, use it 2x, and he dies in literally 5 seconds like it ain't a thing. Better to be lucky than good.

The scorpion boss before you kill the hivemind drops frag ammo, not res (are you testing me lefty? Trying to get my hopes up?). Can kill him with less than 30 missiles; maybe even as low as 22-25. Pickups give 15 missiles.

Need to reach the last boss with at least 3 res. Tried using plasma bombs but they don't do enough damage (ditto against greece crab). For laughs you can kill Dark Adam and yourself with a rocket launcher simultaneously, still counts as a game over tho.

After you beat the last boss and reload the file it automatically saves the fact you beat him + your ammo count, so for doing the last boss multiple times you'll need a backup file (I'm paranoid when I do runs so I'll be using all my save slots anyway, but this is still good to know since it's unavoidable AFAIK).

For the lulz:

I failed the kubel trick like 7 times and a mutant started chasing me. Has nothing to do with speed running so ignore things like driving around the building and stuff, just kinda funny (and something that could happen in hero mode).

Last week I made [url=http://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/body_harvest_64_timing_questions.html]a BH64 timing questions[/url] thread in the SDA discussion board. It unfortunately hasn't received much attention.

[b]Processors:[/b]

If you shoot them by standing in front you do the most damage. With a machine gun you can kill them in about 4-5 seconds; with a pistol, around 11-12 (complicated by fleas hogging your auto-aim on Greece). If you stand near them but to the side, such that they turn their head to look at you, you do about half as much damage even if you shoot them directly in the mouth. Or, sometimes, about half your bullets will miss. It's kinda weird. Moral of the story: stand in front of them for the most damage. You can still be a decent distance away, as long as you're in front and not to the side.

[b]Bosses:[/b]

The bosses in my old run are cringe inducing. Almost a [url=http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/Wouter/Wouter%20Goes%20Bananas.zip]Wouter Goes Bananas[/url] level of ineptitude. In total, they can be done 2:54 faster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9eRrIbzGk4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puWvcXxqG4k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APLKLX8SKdQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQC_FolNK-8

The Greece crab is the most random, which greatly concerns me since I'll have to kill him in the same segment as the greece 3 jump. Sometimes he will stay still; other times he charges directly at you. If he gets too close he'll either send you flying with a claw (awful) or puke on you (not so bad). You can keep backing up to a wall and it might work out, or you'll get stuck under him unable to shoot the claw, or he'll teleport away (awful). Even when shooting him with frag he can send you flying a little bit even if you're a good 50 feet away. Usually you can still shoot him so it doesn't matter, but sometimes the angles work out so you can't. Also sometimes when you duck in to get that frag he'll send you flying. Also it's possible to one shot his armless stage with frag if you're really close, although I can't find a consistent way to pull it off. Stupid crab.

Java boss is easy and will be in a short segment anyway.

America boss is pretty tough to kill in the air quickly and he does a lot of damage. But the America segment will be relatively short, so meh.

Siberia boss is the next most concerning, since Siberia will be a long segment and it's easy to screw up this guy. If you're too much in front he'll charge and warp, wasting a lot of time. I hate shooting his stinger because the collision detection seems weird. I wait to get the frag because if you don't he'll warp on top of you and you'll fly away. In the vid I already had frag because I used the replay feature and it gives you 5 of everything I think (using res on the crab is fun).

[b]Greece:[/b]

Dynamite doesn't save enough time at the shield tower, although it's a cool trick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3-WONwt5YE

Could've been 5 secs faster with a more direct route and luckier hop out of the plane, but yeah, it's just not fast enough. Getting the dyanmite takes like an extra 50 seconds. Getting the machine gun takes like an extra 14 if you're getting the dynamite and that doesn't make up enough time to get the MG, let alone the dynamite (although I think MG in hero mode will be good).

Greece 2 bike jump:

This is pretty easy and I knew it for awhile, but it's important to do it right. You basically fall into a nub and it propels you really far. You can cross with like 2/3 of your hp intact if you do it perfectly, which is about 8 secs faster than if you don't. Might make a vid later.

Greece 3 bike jump:

Haven't tried this in awhile. Are these any closer to where I should be looking, lefty? Or should it be leftys?

http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/BH_greece_line1.png
http://marsh.speedrunwiki.com/bh/BH_greece_line2.png

Greece 3 potential skip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC-EwR3r2Zg

Go to the boat and use it to reach this ledge. So close, yet so far. I'm actually not sure if this would be faster than the bike jump since you'd have to kill the proc on foot, go to the boat behind it, drive to the airfield in the ocean, and then climb up and get a plane. I don't know what triggers those planes to unlock. If it's rescuing that airplane instructor that would be pretty funny. And for all I know the proc doesn't spawn until then, either (like the siberia 3 lake proc doesn't spawn until you get the submarine). Although it is marked on the map I think.

[b]Java:[/b]

I'm pretty good at the Java 1 skip now. If anything, I suck at the kubelwagon skip in java 2, but I'll manage. I discovered after you cross the bay in java 1 there's a large amount of shallow water near the bunker, so you can just run across. Getting the MG from that bunker is faster than the one in the white building on the shore, unless activating the beetle earlier makes you cross the water faster (might have to test). Also, there's no need to get extra MG ammo in the grenade bunker in java 2. If you're front of the first proc you can kill him with 50-65 bullets remaining. Then kill the java 2 tower jelly and the java 3 mantids with pistol and use the rest of the MG on the java 3 proc.

I wasted a good 20 minutes trying to find a way to seam walk or drive up a mountain to get to that NE airfield in Java 3 that has all those airplanes. I came pretty close a couple times in some areas, but it doesn't seem very likely. I even tried using a nearby tank to see if I could use the recoil of its gun to propel it backwards. But still, this area has awesome potential.  Because if you could get up there you could just fly to the java 3 proc, kill it, then fly to the java 4 proc, etc.

For Java 3, I feel pretty dumb. I'm not going to go into details, but let's just say I missed an obvious alternate route. The rocket launcher takes way longer than an extra 25 secs, so it's even more of a no go than before. Here are the two Java 3 proc strats I have now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv2hsclkoes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvL8iPL-cO0

The snipe method is much riskier and more difficult to pull off and you die a lot more often. The back route is very easy and is actually faster if I wanted to do the entire level in one segment. I might have to test a much riskier snipe method where I just swim across and ignore more enemies, although I think that would kill me about 90% of the time. For now it's the back route.

Java 4:

The java 4 proc froze on me like 8 times in a row. Fuck that guy. Maybe if I could get one more missile in sometimes he would've died, but when he randomly kills himself/gets hit by lightning or whatever is several seconds faster and more reliable. Definitely saving in java 3.

Fastest shield tower strat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1zFULwrbog

I tried using the howitzer thinking maybe it'd be the like dynamite in greece. It isn't.

[b]America:[/b]

Not much to say, except I still hate the hi-boy jumps. They seem so random. Even the "normal" jump across the gorge you're supposed to do.

[b]Siberia:[/b]

To test: using dragonfly enemies and the hovering thing to see if I can blow the boulder up faster than running across the beach.

Siberia 2 ice beach:

Lefty, I still can't see anywhere to run up the ice shore. In fact, you don't even need a boat to reach any point on it, as far as I can see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQqJMXoAGw

There's part of it I can't run on. I thought maybe that was it, so I tried to use a boat to see if Adam would launch himself up there. Never happened. Are you positive this is possible? I'd really appreciate some help on this because I'm lost.

On the er, bright side I guess I did find a trick to seam walk up the tunnel entrance near the siberia 4 entrance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGvktg5knck

It's extremely difficult to pull off cleanly. It's easy to get stuck air walking or clip inside an object and fall. You can use the hangman to crush part of the yellow fence to make a direct path back to the base, but you'd basically get one shot at doing this seam walk during the oil rig count down and if you failed the segment would be over I think because it takes like 30 seconds to run back to base from there. So yeah, running up the ice shore on the other side of the lake would be much, much easier...if I knew how.

Pretty sure the scud can't be skipped, but hope springs eternal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTKpWxk8i-o

Maybe I could try it from even further away? I wonder what would happen if you cheated to get dynamite and then ran away. I have a feeling the scud blowing up kills you no matter where you are in the level.

Still need to find a quick and consistent way to kill the shield tower with the VTOL. I'm scared of that...

[b]Comet:[/b]

Lefty's jump is cool and all, but I think LC's original jump is faster since you don't have to clear as many enemies. I'll have to test this out though. Do you still loop around from the top and then go south through the green crystal field or do you jump the mountains somewhere to get directly to the jump point?

You can kill the engines with 2 res, not 3, which takes ~9-10 seconds. You can even use a hybrid strat where you kill the first 3 engine parts (2 side, middle) with 1 res then finish the last 2 off with missiles. That only takes about 12 seconds.

Still hate those clingy gates with the fire of 1000 suns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bz_8Mtryi8

Inspired by the America skips, I tried using enemies to see if they would boost me through. Tried seeing it they could hurt the gate itself (it has health if you aim at it). Nada. I'm curious if you used a gameshark or something if the last boss would actually appear if you didn't kill the scorpion boss. Black Adam's dialogue pops up, but it robot doesn't offer you a save either. Hmm.

I've had trouble killing the dark alpha-1 quickly -- takes me at least 3 res. In my old baddie speed run I just go up to him, use it 2x, and he dies in literally 5 seconds like it ain't a thing. Better to be lucky than good.

The scorpion boss before you kill the hivemind drops frag ammo, not res (are you testing me lefty? Trying to get my hopes up?). Can kill him with less than 30 missiles; maybe even as low as 22-25. Pickups give 15 missiles.

Need to reach the last boss with at least 3 res. Tried using plasma bombs but they don't do enough damage (ditto against greece crab). For laughs you can kill Dark Adam and yourself with a rocket launcher simultaneously, still counts as a game over tho.

After you beat the last boss and reload the file it automatically saves the fact you beat him + your ammo count, so for doing the last boss multiple times you'll need a backup file (I'm paranoid when I do runs so I'll be using all my save slots anyway, but this is still good to know since it's unavoidable AFAIK).

[b]For the lulz:[/b]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-neIEzjOnK0

I failed the kubel trick like 7 times and a mutant started chasing me. Has nothing to do with speed running so ignore things like driving around the building and stuff, just kinda funny (and something that could happen in hero mode).

leftysheroes

Edit history:

leftysheroes: 2011-02-24 12:15:14 am

2011-02-23 10:34:02 pm

Okay let me try to answer some of these questions.

-Greece 3: I'm 100% positive you have to at least free the flight instructor before you can get planes from the southern island. I've also spent a considerable amount of time trying to get up on the mainland with the processor unsuccessfully.

- For the jump the first one is pretty close. Maybe aim slightly more to the left.

- I never would have thought other the java 3 plane field.us Hopefully Ill have better luck than you.

- For tha first America jump(this is so stupid) but in my experience I never making it if I take the slow lane. Maybe they decided to make a half-assed attempt to teach road safety there.

- The dragonfly shots are to weak to damage the iceberg.

- Yes I mentioned before there is a spot where you can drive across the mountain. If you stay as far west as possible its immediately after the first Suppressor. If uou look at the mountain its pretty obvious where you can get over.

- About Scorpio: When I tested to see what he dropped it was from a save I made after destroying the engines and he dropped some of everything, Resonaters included. I then tried some full comet runs(from the time I got control of the Alpha 1 it was taking less than ten minutes to get to him and beat him which is comically fast) and he dropped ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! My theory is it has something to with the 100 other aliens scattered around the comet but Im not sure.

I did a just for fun single segment try of this(all tricks but greece 3) and got all the way to Scorpio. Of course I messed up my strat and got destroyed. There was also the running around the jelly tower in java 2 while fighting off 2 MUTANTS!!! All in all it was pretty fun. Ill have to do it again soetime(I demand a rematch Scorpiass)

EDIT: I did it. I got up to the airfield and thank god the planes arent locked(please dont hate me). I used a Trekker. The hill to the right of the land bridge can be climbed but you have to jiggle the joystck to climb over the top of the hills. You also have to do this wierd trick where you bounce off the shield wall to get deflected over a hill that cant be climbed otherwise.

Okay let me try to answer some of these questions.

-Greece 3: I'm 100% positive you have to at least free the flight instructor before you can get planes from the southern island. I've also spent a considerable amount of time trying to get up on the mainland with the processor unsuccessfully.

- For the jump the first one is pretty close. Maybe aim slightly more to the left.

- I never would have thought other the java 3 plane field.us Hopefully Ill have better luck than you.

- For tha first America jump(this is so stupid) but in my experience I never making it if I take the slow lane. Maybe they decided to make a half-assed attempt to teach road safety there.

- The dragonfly shots are to weak to damage the iceberg.

- Yes I mentioned before there is a spot where you can drive across the mountain. If you stay as far west as possible its immediately after the first Suppressor. If uou look at the mountain its pretty obvious where you can get over.

- About Scorpio: When I tested to see what he dropped it was from a save I made after destroying the engines and he dropped some of everything, Resonaters included. I then tried some full comet runs(from the time I got control of the Alpha 1 it was taking less than ten minutes to get to him and beat him which is comically fast) and he dropped ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! My theory is it has something to with the 100 other aliens scattered around the comet but Im not sure.

I did a just for fun single segment try of this(all tricks but greece 3) and got all the way to Scorpio. Of course I messed up my strat and got destroyed. There was also the running around the jelly tower in java 2 while fighting off 2 MUTANTS!!! All in all it was pretty fun. Ill have to do it again soetime(I demand a rematch Scorpiass)

EDIT: I did it. I got up to the airfield and thank god the planes arent locked(please dont hate me). I used a Trekker. The hill to the right of the land bridge can be climbed but you have to jiggle the joystck to climb over the top of the hills. You also have to do this wierd trick where you bounce off the shield wall to get deflected over a hill that cant be climbed otherwise.

marshmallow

2011-02-24 09:16:41 pm

Jack of all Trades

Quote from leftysheroes:

EDIT: I did it. I got up to the airfield and thank god the planes arent locked(please dont hate me). I used a Trekker. The hill to the right of the land bridge can be climbed but you have to jiggle the joystck to climb over the top of the hills. You also have to do this wierd trick where you bounce off the shield wall to get deflected over a hill that cant be climbed otherwise.

Wow, you really are a hero!

But hey, at least I get to take half credit for a major skip now, instead of just sponging off LC and you. Cheesy

What about that siberia 3 ice shore running thing though?