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Ugm
Ugm
Edit history:
Ugm: 2009-02-27 06:25:54 am
2009-01-02 04:54:53 pm
Vae Victus!
I'm planning to run running Jericho on Hard (no big difference between normal). I've done test run walk and it took about 2h45m in quite casual style. I'm fairly certain that going under 2h is hardly possible, but under 2h30m should be easy should be easy and I aim for 1h40m. The game is in general tough to speedrun because:
- there is no jumping (following the only route with no shortcuts is the only way - strafing adds some speed)
- there are sections where you have to kill all monsters that appear one after another to go further - these are great timewasters
- there are some unskippable dialogues during the game (together with skippable ones); you move slower ana cannot act in any other way while they last

So choosing right char and powers, taking enemies down quickly and omitting fights whenever possible is the key to run this game. Triggering checkpoints or other events is sometimes tricky and can be used for our advantage. The run can be cosidered as IL, since you always start every level with full ammo/health and fixed Jericho squad members. Every level can be redone later with no influence on following segments.

There is one run already done by AnokiSani which he posted on youtube. I'm quite certain it's not on hard difficulty, but at least I have something to compare my times with. His total time is 2:20:25. He's not that hard to beat since he didn't optimize details such as moving or using hotkeys. However there are couple of great levels when events were triggered surprisingly fast giving really nice times. Recently however, he deleted his run and announced something like rerun. He didn't respond to my message regarding his run, though.

Here is a list of all levels with new best times done by Xiaopang, TheVoid and me with comparison to Anoki's. Definitely not all times posted here are final yet. Time in our column link to temporary video. Some of them are really crappy encoded, but that's just before the run is complete.
According to Mike, the levels are timed from the first frame when player gains control (just after the beginning cutscene) to the frame before he looses it ("Loading" screen or ending cutscene). Some levels are not properly timed yet, according to the new rule (will be fixed in a days).

No.Level[right]Anoki's time[/right][right]New time[/right]
Runner
Comments
01The Storm[right]01:54[/right][right]01:41[/right]
TheVoid
3 frames away from a 1:40...
02The Tomb[right]04:17[/right][right]04:00[/right]
Xiaopang
final time?
03Operation Vigil[right]00:51[/right][right]00:47[/right]
Ugm
final time?
04Al Khali[right]04:34[/right][right]04:11[/right]
Ugm
<04:00 MAY be possible
05Green[right]04:45[/right][right]04:09[/right]
Xiaopang
<04:00 possible
06Man Down![right]08:24[/right][right]05:24[/right]
Ugm
NOT done yet
07Still With You[right]01:45[/right][right]01:26[/right]
TheVoid
push glitch
08The Path of Souls[right]04:37[/right][right]03:32[/right]
Ugm
likely final time
09Blackwatch[right]03:56[/right][right]02:49[/right]
Ugm
likely final time
10Ambush[right]03:42[/right][right]02:32[/right]
Ugm
<02:30 possible
11Flames of Anger[right]04:30[/right][right]02:49[/right]
Ugm
likely final time
12Exorcism[right]06:36[/right][right]04:25[/right]
Ugm
13Brandenburg Gate[right]01:37[/right][right]01:19[/right]
Ugm
real pain in the ass
14Rivers of Blood[right]07:48[/right][right]06:27[/right]
Xiaopang
15Motley Crew[right]04:00[/right][right]01:39[/right]
Ugm
great for speedrunning, likely final time
16Sewers[right]05:56[/right][right]04:25[/right]
Xiaopang
17Out of the Frying Pan...[right]05:03[/right][right]03:34[/right]
Ugm
<03:30 possible
18Tortured Souls[right]07:52[/right][right]05:58[/right]
Xiaopang
Demon glitch used
19Black Rose[right]04:11[/right][right]02:55[/right]
TheVoid
timing starts after the first cutscene and ends when your crosshair disappears
20Imperium[right]08:19[/right][right]04:30[/right]
Xiaopang
minor pain in the ass
21The Low Road[right]02:16[/right][right]01:55[/right]
TheVoid
likely final time
22Decadence[right]04:57[/right][right]03:28[/right]
Ugm
23Temple of Pain[right]04:57[/right][right]03:23[/right]
Ugm
NOT done yet
24Gardens of Hell[right]01:38[/right][right]01:04[/right]
TheVoid
Demon glitch used (?)
25Morituri te Salutant[right]06:31[/right][right]06:15[/right]
Xiaopang
26Guts[right]01:57[/right][right]01:45[/right]
TheVoid
timing stops when the crosshair disappears again at the end
27The GodSeal[right]03:26[/right][right]02:41[/right]
Xiaopang
Demon glitch used
28Spiritual Guide[right]02:02[/right][right]01:15[/right]
TheVoid
29Skin[right]01:39[/right][right]00:39[/right]
TheVoid
<00:39 possible
30Flesh[right]04:24[/right][right]02:07[/right]
TheVoid
<02:00 possible
31Blood[right]01:50[/right][right]01:16[/right]
TheVoid
timing stops when struck by teleporting beam
32Sacrifice[right]00:00[/right][right]00:00[/right]
Clive Barker
final time (just a skippable cutscene level)
33Pyxis Prima[right]02:34[/right][right]02:05[/right]
TheVoid
final time
Total time:[right]02:13:08[/right][right]<01:36:02[/right]expected time
Thread title:  
Ugm
2009-01-16 01:53:42 pm
Vae Victus!
I updated some of my times. Frying Pan and Gardens of Hell done 35 seconds better in total.

I'll soon encode (some of) my runs and post links here after I upload them somewhere.
Ugm
2009-01-18 09:47:18 am
Vae Victus!
I've done 02 - The Tomb at 04:13. Could done better, so I'll give this level a try in a future. It's quite impossible to get sub 4 mins since the only improvable part is the ending. The first minutes are just about getting to certain points, waiting for speeches to end and generally wasting my time Wink And the ending is just about running. Couple of seconds to be saved. No fun at all.

05 - Green done 2 secs better (04:17) AND smoother. It's just a long boring tale of taking down enemies that spawn at one place. Standard big fight timewaster.

30 - Flesh done in 02:49 (I expected something between 3 and 4 minutes, so it's nice one). Low FPS caused some general lag in reacting to my commands (shooting).

Also I retimed levels so far. I count just whole seconds, frames/miliseconds don't matter, do they? If so, 32 - Sacrifice is done in 0 secs (23 frames). Thus expected time has lost more than 2 minutes. Yay.
Ugm
2009-01-20 03:46:12 am
Vae Victus!
I finally encoded my efforts so far and uploaded them here. They look very crappy even though I used Anri-chan HQ settings. These are just rough previews so it's ok but I hope they will look way better finally.
Ewil
2009-01-20 08:57:09 am
HQ looks very good imho since the whole game is dark, you should see Serious Sam 2.

As for the run, it doesn't really look like you know what you're doing. First problem is  your framerate, which goes from 10-25 therefore you miss many times. You should do sth with that and redo. 50-60 for FPS is optimum, otherwise the run can't be called perfect. Second problem is that you should risk more and run around enemies instead of keep hiding. Third problem I see is that you don't fully use your teammates. I mean, sometimes when you "switch", they are quite behind, because you didn't order them to follow you, so you waste time with catching up. Also, it looks like that chick with sword and pistol runs faster than others. Couldn't you use her to activate some trigger ?

I don't know much of this game, but it looks very similar to Serious Sam 2, where you have to reach a certain point to activate a trigger, kill enemies as fast as possible, then a way further gets opened. I guess the same pattern is used here.

Btw, is there even a single shortcut ? I haven't noticed, although I didn't watch all the videos.

If I'd be a verifier, I'd reject it.
Ugm
2009-01-20 09:52:52 am
Vae Victus!
Thanks for your interest and reply Smiley

The most important thing - you should try to play this game actually to properly judge what's going on. Really. If you judge this game by e.g. Quake standards, it has no chance to defend. There's a lot of severe criticism over the internet concerning game mechanics and balance of Jericho in general.
Your teammates for example. They follow you by default but if some checkpoint isn't cleared or some mysterious trigger wasn't initiated, they just stand in place where you are supposed to be and you can't move them. Especially when they're dead Smiley And they get killed very often. AI of Jericho squad just sucks. Anyway in some cases it's just a matter of luck, not the orders if everyone is in place and you can't just make some char be where you want him to be for switching since he takes some predefined strategic positions and just stays there. They are really stupid. Like staying in place when enemy rushes towards them or exposing to open fire which is - in most cases - lethal. Maybe if you could tell me what you had on your mind with this unlucky switching, I could tell you more.
As for the teammates using. Did you watch Out of the Frying Pan video? It's the best example of member switching yet being one of few when it can really save your time. The game is painfully linear, what can we do? Thing worth mentioning is that switching chars becomes available only after Man Down. In general, due to randomness in your mates positions which you can't fully controll, subtle tactics like quick char switching just for running parts can only lead to unwanted delays.

Second thing - risking more. Hmm. Give me an example. In most cases I don't play hide and seek. I can recall one place in Ambush, where you have to hide and shoot from behind the corner because you'd be torn apart by chaingunners otherwise. And you have to kill them all to push through. Adding up facts like low health even at max, long reload time, no chances to survive an open fire and neccesity to kill all the monsters makes things like running around defenceless just a stupidity.

Hmm... is it about the beginning of Man Down? If so, you have to wait until the end of speech to be able to shoot and run at normal rate. Rushing at the enemies earlier is just a guaranteed suicide.

As for the framerate, I don't think that I'll get 60fps using comparable settings. And if so it's better not to try it at all? Actually 25fps makes no problems to me, it's getting worse when it goes down to 10...

If you think that I don't know what I'm doing it's because of lack of any commentary. Sometimes I have to make a few steps back to kill the monsters that appear there because my mates will die otherwise. It looks like I forgot the path and then change my mind again. In Al Khali for example the first running part is done with intentional delays just to make sure my team follows. If I rushed through all the monsters even killing them, the team would stuck behind. Beautiful mechanics, isn't it?

And to answer your question - there are no literal shortcuts in Jericho. The only way of beating level under it's time is omiting fights in certain places (you can sometimes make monsters stop spawning by activating some event like a further special monster killed) and taking down enemies quickly. And there is one level (Motley Crew) where you can do a very little sequence breaking so yes, there is actually one shortcut possible in this game (saves couple of seconds Wink ).

Ok, I'll try to make next recordings more self-explanatory and not so rough. But if anyone just bothered to play the game, it would be a whole different talk Wink

And for future replies - please, always try to tell which level you're talking about so that you give me chance to explain things or correct my mistakes. Thank you Smiley
MortyreR45
(user is banned)
MortyreR45
Edit history:
MortyreR45: 2013-05-27 10:11:00 pm
MortyreR45: 2013-05-27 09:21:50 am
2009-01-20 11:00:02 am
I AM FUCKED ANGRY
@ Ugm -> Thank for your work on this game and for the videos.

The video quality looks good, but not good enough. I can watch a slow to high frame in the video. The previous speaker had say it also. I have the self problem for the game to record it with fraps and more resolutions and better graphics.

I can you not help with this run, because I have played this game last year and only to ~75% and not to the end.
The problem for me to broken this game was, that this game need a team work gameplay. I can not handle with team boots in games. That the reason to broke this game.
But I find it good to see a user which run this game.

I am locking forward to your run.  Wink
Good Work

-


Quote from Ewil:
Btw, is there even a single shortcut ? I haven't noticed, although I didn't watch all the videos.

very short, only jumps over small objects or fence / walls
* The most problem of this game which ruined it, that the mission to kill the most of this monsters.

Quote from Ewil:
If I'd be a verifier, I'd reject it.

hm, to fast for your answer.
I watch it tomorrow.

have you play the game in your life ?
'Jericho' is 'Clive Barker' , the game is divers to other FPS games.

Yes, the game is more shooting, like you SS, but 'Jericho' is more slow to run and has more action bullets for arcade.
Ewil
2009-01-20 11:07:12 am
I wouldn't say a thing about a game I've never played before, so yes I did play the game and I didn't judge it by Quake standards, I compared it with Serious Sam 2, which seems to be very similar game except you don't have any teammates.

If teammates gets killed very often, can't you kill enemies so fast they won't even come close ? Like I said, due to your low framerate, you miss many shots thus you could kill enemies faster with higher. You may have no problems playing at 25fps with all eye-candy graphics on, but EVERYONE can aim better with higher framerate in fps game. It's also better for viewers, nobody wants to watch 10fps speedrun, you know. Personally, I don't even like these bloom or hdr effects.

Also, have you tried to order everyone to follow you, camp near the next checkpoint (where you can't go further and have to kill some enemies) and kill enemies from there instead of camping couple blocks away from the checkpoint, kill enemies, then move on ? Will teammates ignore every enemy and follow you or they are so stupid they'll start killing them on their own ? That way you could avoid getting your teammates killed so often and they also wouldn't be spread around entire level. It also depends how fast enemies are, but from what I've seen most of them are quite fast.

Quote:
* The most problem of this game which ruined it, that the mission to kill the most of this monsters.


Every game has a shortcut(s), you just have to find it. I thought Serious Sam 2 also doesn't have any shortcuts, because of the same kill-to-proceed, invisible walls and no weapons boosts scheme like in Jericho, but I was proven wrong couple times already.
MortyreR45
(user is banned)
MortyreR45
Edit history:
MortyreR45: 2013-05-27 10:11:00 pm
MortyreR45: 2013-05-27 09:22:05 am
2009-01-20 11:14:12 am
I AM FUCKED ANGRY
in some way , it is true
Ugm
2009-01-20 11:39:22 am
Vae Victus!
Ewil, if Jericho couldn't be speedran, I wouldn't bother and we wouldn't talk about it at all. The fact is, it can be done but the strange way you see in the vids. Ok, the run isn't perfect. I never said it was, but faulting me for the horrible mechanics is just not fair.
You can't control particular teammates, you have your team split in two halves instead. You can give three types of orders. Follow me - default one, stay at position - self explanatory and move to point you look at. When you order them to move they either stay where they stood and play a shooter game with monsters or go blindly which often leads to death. Brandenburg Gate is an example of a level which would be one of easiest if just your team could survive running like you do.
Sometimes whole team must be at some point to trigger checkpoint and sometimes some particular member is needed to interact which means that there are levels where you have to play some sort of babysitter guard to protect your team instead of doing your part and making level a quick rush.

And yes, you can kill single monsters to protect your mates and that's what sometimes slow you down. And when there are major monster spawn locations, it's the point where I run to as fast I can ordering the rest of the team to follow. It's obvious. Your advices in that matter are right but they are nothing I am not doing so far.
There are spawning locations that are not needed to be cleaned and these are major problem. Teammates get killed when I run past spawning enemies and order them to follow. And taking down enemies that spawn while my team gets through would be considered as just a waste of time by people watching this. Am I wrong? That's why my comments or verifier's knowledge and own experience are essential.

I haven't played SS2 but I can guess that comparing these similar games is like comparing q1 and q2. Why does nobody do circle jumps in q2? Tell me. They are similar aren't they? Rocket jumps, bunnyhops, armors, medkits and so on. Erm...
Xiaopang
2009-01-21 09:29:19 am
it's so sad to see that it took more than 2 weeks till finally someone honored this thread with a post and it's even more sad to see that the first post came from such a douche like ewil...and here's why:

Quote:
HQ looks very good imho since the whole game is dark, you should see Serious Sam 2.


you need your eyesight checked, or get some blurays, preferably both. the video quality is sufficient, but it certainly isn't good. anri chan is a steaming turd of a software, done by people who don't know shit about video encoding, judged by people who know even less. but hey, i can do more than just talk smack. here's my encode of "operation vigil", encoded with a good encoder instead:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=78T35LV0

same file size, about the same running time, but more than 3 times the resolution, yet my encode looks better...
the game being dark has nothing to do with encoding quality...at least not for mp4. either you know how to encode a video or you don't and if you do, then you also know your way around dark source material...



Quote:
As for the run, it doesn't really look like you know what you're doing. First problem is  your framerate, which goes from 10-25 therefore you miss many times. You should do sth with that and redo. 50-60 for FPS is optimum, otherwise the run can't be called perfect


what does the framerate have to do with someone not knowing what to do? did you experience a slight form of retardation here or how do you come logically from that bold statement to something unimportant like framerate? also, do you think he voluntarily plays the game at a slow frame rate? would anybody prefer to play a game that way? apparently not! if you want 60fps then you may be should donate money for a better rig, but i don't see you spearhead into that direction other than your stupid bitching and stupid it is. also, who said that he called the run perfect?

also, where is he missing "many times"?? he had some situations where he needed more than one shot, but that was mostly due to the fact that the enemies are extremely strong! in fact he placed a lot of top notch head shots in his runs! furthermore, there was only 1 video that actually showed serious lag and there he depended on a homing weapon. other than that, all videos looked smooth enough to watch and especially smooth enough to play.

i also run the game as you can see from the video above, and even in parts where i get 15fps the game stays extremely playable. it's quite impudent that a guy, who runs an 8 year old game requests from others a 60fps video of a current generation game that came out just more than a year ago.

also, you just shat out that claim that ugm doesn't know what he does, yet you fail to prove it. after comparing his run to mine, i can say that he DOES have some very sophisticated tactics and that you don't know shit about what you're talking about.


Quote:
I don't know much of this game

Quote:
I wouldn't say a thing about a game I've never played before, so yes I did play the game and I didn't judge it by Quake standards, I compared it with Serious Sam 2, which seems to be very similar game except you don't have any teammates.


alright, apparently you suffer from huge mental retardation...first you claim you don't know anything about the game and half an hour later you suddenly played it, yet your posts show that you don't know anything about it. either you just played the shareware level or just the intro. in any case you lack any competence to judge any jericho run! serious sam is deathmatch game directed at single players where an AI is non-existant and is compensated by an insane amount of enemies and tons of absurd weapons, while jericho doesn't even offer you to jump, let alone run past enemies. it also only consists of 2-3 battles per level with few, but strong monsters. furthermore it's heavy on the story, forcing you through quick time events and a ton of cutscenes. it also requires you to actually use tactics and make use of your team mates weapons and special powers, while you can just shoot away at all enemies in SS with your strongest gun...no tactics required there whatsoever! so much for you knowing the game... may be you should pull your head out of your ass so that you don't talk so much shit....might also help to base your opinion on more than just a steaming pile of your body waste!


Quote:
Btw, is there even a single shortcut ? I haven't noticed, although I didn't watch all the videos.


YES THERE ARE!!! tons of them! he used shortcuts by breaking the scripts, but how would you know that, since you never actually played it!



Quote:
If I'd be a verifier, I'd reject it.


well, i reject you. your stupidity borders on infinity. ugm made clear that those runs were just first tries and he made this post to improve these runs, because they aren't final, yet you moron act like he already submitted them! may be you should step off your high horse and actually do something that would help! shutting up until your babbling can be based on experience would be a good start!



Quote:
If teammates gets killed very often, can't you kill enemies so fast they won't even come close ?


i thought you knew the game? i thought you watched the runs?? oh wait...you think in serious sam terms again where the more firepower you have, the faster you can kill enemies...well apparently that isn't the case here... all kills that he made were very fast and even if some looked rough, only a hand ful were actually bad and could be improved. other than that, when talking of running times at around 2 hours, then a couple of seconds that a few faster kills would save, aren't really worth the trouble, especially if you know how buggy that game is. sequence breaking and running tactics are required here...


Quote:
Like I said, due to your low framerate, you miss many shots thus you could kill enemies faster with higher. You may have no problems playing at 25fps with all eye-candy graphics on, but EVERYONE can aim better with higher framerate in fps game


and that's why he had a pretty good hit rate! is framerate was good enough for playing everything else is just fancy but useless shit. according to your logic i should rule at q3 with my 400fps...but strangely enough i don't, yet i'm pretty sure i beat every one of those snotty rich kids at jericho, even if they can play the game in hd and 60+fps...



Quote:
It's also better for viewers, nobody wants to watch 10fps speedrun, you know. Personally, I don't even like these bloom or hdr effects.


you dare judge about that after stating that the video quality was good? my theory: you're an sda-bitch and because the video was encoded at hq with anri chan it must be the best quality there is. if it still looks bad, then blame the game (too dark), for all other things, blame the player (low framerate). i prefere a 25fps, yet perfectly encoded vid over a crappy hd-encode with tons of artifacts any time. and btw, stop acting so high and mighty like everything below 50fps would be crap. i'm pretty sure you didn't throw out your dvds once bluray-arrived just because they offer higher framerates


@ugm: i watched all of your videos and your run looks very promising. especially in the last levels you ran extremely smooth and they look almost perfect. don't listen to morons like ewil, but only those who actually played or even ran the game and especially those who actually tried the tactics they suggest instead of just pulling them out of their ass. oh and by the way, don't bother explaining the kinks of the game to people, who never played it. those who did know them and those who didn't won't be of use to you anyway, other than demotivate you and bitch about stupid shit like framerate
nate
2009-01-21 10:04:56 am
i downloaded both videos and checked them out. of course xiaopang's high res encode (basically same material, comparable framerate, comparable bitrate, dunno about x264 settings) has less detail/more artifacts than the anri hq encode. this is visible in several places in the below screencaps:

jericho_hires.png (from xiaopang)
jericho_lores.png (from anri)

look especially at the detail (or lack thereof) on the floor and wall at the left and at the amount of blocking on the bottom of the column in the center. large blocks are clearly visible in xiaopang's encode. this is due to encoding at too low of a bitrate to support the resolution, framerate and amount of detail per frame.

of course this entire conversation is probably moot since anri doesn't encode high resolution video at hq bitrate (will use xq or at least iq). so you don't have to worry about anri producing poor quality video like this.
Lag.Com
2009-01-21 11:08:24 am
sda loyalist
Quote from Xiaopang:
you don't
Ewil
2009-01-21 12:55:10 pm
Quote:
you need your eyesight checked, or get some blurays, preferably both. the video quality is sufficient, but it certainly isn't good. anri chan is a steaming turd of a software, done by people who don't know shit about video encoding, judged by people who know even less. but hey, i can do more than just talk smack. here's my encode of "operation vigil", encoded with a good encoder instead:


The quality is good for HQ standards. Why don't you help them to make it better instead of talking shit ?

Quote:
what does the framerate have to do with someone not knowing what to do?


Nothing. I didn't say there is a connection between not knowing what to do and framerate.

Framerate = aiming
Knowing what to do = activate triggers asap, use the shortest path, kill only necessary enemies etc.

Quote:
did you experience a slight form of retardation here or how do you come logically from that bold statement to something unimportant like framerate? also, do you think he voluntarily plays the game at a slow frame rate? would anybody prefer to play a game that way? apparently not! if you want 60fps then you may be should donate money for a better rig, but i don't see you spearhead into that direction other than your stupid bitching and stupid it is. also, who said that he called the run perfect?


Quote:
Final time in most cases means the level can't be done faster.
- Isn't this an explanation for "perfect" ?

It looks like he plays voluntarily at low (not slow) framerate. If he could lower details or turn off some effects, he would have higher framerate. It even looks like to me he played with AA, 640x480 without AA have more jagged lines unless the minimum resolution is 800x600 or so.

Quote:
also, where is he missing "many times"?? he had some situations where he needed more than one shot, but that was mostly due to the fact that the enemies are extremely strong! in fact he placed a lot of top notch head shots in his runs! furthermore, there was only 1 video that actually showed serious lag and there he depended on a homing weapon. other than that, all videos looked smooth enough to watch and especially smooth enough to play.


He missed many times, I could give you couple examples if you want. You should watch some FPS speedruns to see how aiming should be done.

Quote:
i also run the game as you can see from the video above, and even in parts where i get 15fps the game stays extremely playable. it's quite impudent that a guy, who runs an 8 year old game requests from others a 60fps video of a current generation game that came out just more than a year ago.


I suggested to use higher framerate, not requested. 15fps in FPS game is not really playable imho, especially when you speedrun. Jericho runs pretty fast on average rig, I played it on old Athlon 64 and 8800gts 320MB (1/3 slower than 8800gt) in 1024x768 medium or high (don't recall) and I mostly had 50+ fps, so excuses for game's high requirements are out of question.

SS2 was released in 2005, so it's not 8 years old.

Quote:
also, you just shat out that claim that ugm doesn't know what he does, yet you fail to prove it. after comparing his run to mine, i can say that he DOES have some very sophisticated tactics and that you don't know shit about what you're talking about.


If you can prove me wrong, I will apologize. So far, I haven't noticed.

Quote:
alright, apparently you suffer from huge mental retardation...first you claim you don't know anything about the game and half an hour later you suddenly played it, yet your posts show that you don't know anything about it. either you just played the shareware level or just the intro. in any case you lack any competence to judge any jericho run! serious sam is deathmatch game directed at single players where an AI is non-existant and is compensated by an insane amount of enemies and tons of absurd weapons, while jericho doesn't even offer you to jump, let alone run past enemies. it also only consists of 2-3 battles per level with few, but strong monsters. furthermore it's heavy on the story, forcing you through quick time events and a ton of cutscenes. it also requires you to actually use tactics and make use of your team mates weapons and special powers, while you can just shoot away at all enemies in SS with your strongest gun...no tactics required there whatsoever! so much for you knowing the game... may be you should pull your head out of your ass so that you don't talk so much shit....might also help to base your opinion on more than just a steaming pile of your body waste!


Ugh, I said I don't know much about the game, not that I've never played it. I actually finished it, just so you know.

It's nice from you to describe the game, yet the idea is pretty same as in SS2. Go through rooms, wait for enemies to spawn, kill them, get to the next room and so on. Yes, there are fewer and harder enemies and you have to use teammates, but that's like the only difference.

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YES THERE ARE!!! tons of them! he used shortcuts by breaking the scripts, but how would you know that, since you never actually played it!


Show me at least three and I'll be happy.

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well, i reject you. your stupidity borders on infinity. ugm made clear that those runs were just first tries and he made this post to improve these runs, because they aren't final, yet you moron act like he already submitted them! may be you should step off your high horse and actually do something that would help! shutting up until your babbling can be based on experience would be a good start!


I asked him if he can use this or that strategy. Some levels are already marked as final, not first tries.

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i thought you knew the game? i thought you watched the runs?? oh wait...you think in serious sam terms again where the more firepower you have, the faster you can kill enemies...well apparently that isn't the case here... all kills that he made were very fast and even if some looked rough, only a hand ful were actually bad and could be improved. other than that, when talking of running times at around 2 hours, then a couple of seconds that a few faster kills would save, aren't really worth the trouble, especially if you know how buggy that game is. sequence breaking and running tactics are required here...


"then a couple of seconds that a few faster kills would save, aren't really worth the trouble" - Really ? I thought that's the point of speedrunning. You don't even have a health bar in this game !

I would never say "all kills that he made were very fast" in a run, where a runner miss easy shots from 2 metres away.

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and that's why he had a pretty good hit rate! is framerate was good enough for playing everything else is just fancy but useless shit. according to your logic i should rule at q3 with my 400fps...but strangely enough i don't, yet i'm pretty sure i beat every one of those snotty rich kids at jericho, even if they can play the game in hd and 60+fps...


If you think he has a good hit rate, you are retarted, not me. Higher framerate helps with aiming, because the crosshair movement is smoother for your eyes up to a certain point, which every human has different. For casual players, it's about 20-60fps, for pros it's about 80-120. That's a fact you can't deny, but I think you have no idea what I'm talking about.

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you dare judge about that after stating that the video quality was good? my theory: you're an sda-bitch and because the video was encoded at hq with anri chan it must be the best quality there is. if it still looks bad, then blame the game (too dark), for all other things, blame the player (low framerate). i prefere a 25fps, yet perfectly encoded vid over a crappy hd-encode with tons of artifacts any time. and btw, stop acting so high and mighty like everything below 50fps would be crap. i'm pretty sure you didn't throw out your dvds once bluray-arrived just because they offer higher framerates


Your theory is wrong, you don't really got the point. Video quality and smoothness are two slightly different things. My point was that the amount of blocks, artefacts etc. is pretty low, but it uses hdr stuff, which I don't like, and the framerate is sometimes too low.

Everything below 50fps is not a crap, I never said that and I don't think so. I just said it would be better, easier and faster if he could manage it.



Stop making up things I never said, judge me from couple lines I wrote on a forum you'r re not even a registered member of and say I'm a douche when I just pointed out and criticized on a run I'd like to see. It seems to me you're the one high above everyone and apparently know very little about speedrunning.
Ugm
Ugm
Edit history:
Ugm: 2009-01-21 05:43:51 pm
2009-01-21 01:40:07 pm
Vae Victus!
Khem... comparing these two videos in terms of details is a bit pointless since Xiaopang obviously ran the game on lower details settings. Mine was maxed out (except for aa at 2x) so my video contains more detailed textures. Notice that his video isn't blurred by codec - geometrical edges are still very sharp.

Xiaopang:
Thank you for your reply Smiley Glad to see you also try to run this game. Yes, it is hard to see the speedrun behind these vids for someone who hasn't tried to get even close to my times. And hey, it's final time that counts, isn't it? With decent level of gameplay maintained of course. Do I suck at this game?
Anyway, going back to Xiaopang and times, are there any levels where you beat me so far? If so, I'd be glad to see your tactics! Since I don't want to produce tons of boring posts discussing every particular move, send me PM or something so that we may talk about it elsewhere, ok? There's lot to discuss, if you're only willing too Wink

I'd be glad if just a single person who didn't play this game in speed-style before, tried it. For future verification sake too, if it's ever going to be submitted.


Oh, Ewil's just replied. So:

Quote from Ewil:
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Final time in most cases means the level can't be done faster.

- Isn't this an explanation for "perfect" ?


No, it's an explanation for "fastest". Perfect is far more than just "fastest". And were you speaking about "final time" levels? Then there are just 3 of them. What's wrong with them, anyway? Low fps doesn't make any of them worse than they could possibly be with higher rate. I don't get this whole thing.

Quote from Ewil:
He missed many times, I could give you couple examples if you want. You should watch some FPS speedruns to see how aiming should be done.


Oh no, the only levels where I permit misses are the big action levels where it's all about killing things. Do you think that I should have 100% accuracy? If you think that I miss so many times that it's easy to beat me then just do it and prove me wrong.
Again: I don't call these attempts perfect, but if there are some misses and the time is still great, what's wrong? This game is so random in some places, also the enemies often dodge your shots efficiently making accidental misses quite often. Of course if there are too many of them, I restart the level, but please, don't be insane.

Quote from Ewil:
Jericho runs pretty fast on average rig, I played it on old Athlon 64 and 8800gts 320MB (1/3 slower than 8800gt) in 1024x768 medium or high (don't recall) and I mostly had 50+ fps, so excuses for game's high requirements are out of question.


Yet you have better PC than I have and my gfx card is "just" 8600gt. We play the same resolution.
Anyway, I dropped down to 640x480 with maximum low details. I still get around 30 fps while recording. Without it it's more like 60. The game ran completely fluent on my previous setting if I wasn't just recording...

Quote from Ewil:
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also, you just shat out that claim that ugm doesn't know what he does, yet you fail to prove it. after comparing his run to mine, i can say that he DOES have some very sophisticated tactics and that you don't know shit about what you're talking about.


If you can prove me wrong, I will apologize. So far, I haven't noticed.


Well, did you even bother to look for it? I don't want to end up explaining just everything and it seems that it would be this way so far.

Quote from Ewil:
It's nice from you to describe the game, yet the idea is pretty same as in SS2. Go through rooms, wait for enemies to spawn, kill them, get to the next room and so on. Yes, there are fewer and harder enemies and you have to use teammates, but that's like the only difference.


That's just your opinion. Even if it was the only difference, it's a big one. It's like advantage and disadvantage at the same time also.

Quote from Ewil:
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YES THERE ARE!!! tons of them! he used shortcuts by breaking the scripts, but how would you know that, since you never actually played it!

Show me at least three and I'll be happy.


I'll wait for Xiaopang so that the examples aren't subjective.
TheVoid
2009-01-21 04:49:06 pm
I've attempted level 1 and 3 a bit (Started playing the game because of the commotion going on in this thread... ;)), and I managed to improve your level 1 time with 4 seconds and level 3 with 1 second (Haven't tried any other level yet).
I timed it from when the "Loading" disappears in the beginning (And the background image has changed) till "Saving" showed up.

I've made a video from level 1 to show it to you which can be found here. The main reason for the improvement is because in your video it looked like you waited to execute the tutorial commands till the moment it's displayed on top. That's not necessary, you can just execute them as fast as possible in the correct order right away. 1 second could still be chopped off, faster cutscene skipping mainly (BUT I actually think those cutscenes won't be counted since you don't have character control yet).

Level 3 was actually just the same but I guess I did a bit of straighter running (Although I'm not entirely sure right now as to what exactly triggers the door to open. I think there are and/or can be a couple of factors. Like how fast you kill the enemy, how fast you're near the door and how fast your teammate is near the door).

Also, I'm very positive that strafewalking while you're in "combat mode" (Where you can shoot and walk faster) has no impact on speed. But strafewalking while you're in "dialog mode" indeed speeds you up a bit.
Ugm
2009-01-21 05:55:35 pm
Vae Victus!
Thanks! I actually knew I had to rerun the 1 level couple of minutes before I read your post, but that's fine - two reasons are better then one Wink It was one of first levels I ran (obvious reasons Wink ) so I might haven't tried doing all this commands as fast as possible.
As for the third one - it must have been this cultist that slowed me down after all. Or the gate opened to slow. Now you see, it's a mix of some strange conditions mentioned by you. And it's no complex situation here - just one monster, just one teammate, just one door. Believe me, later on things get very random sometimes...

As far as I checked, straferunning helps. How did you measure it?

And the update. Using Xiaopang's great help and tricks with Motley Crew, I was able to get 1:39 (I aimed for under 2:00). I did The Path of Souls too - I aimed for under 4:30, I managet to get 3:44 so far. The same with Exorcism - <5:00 aimed, 4:25 got. The only level which I tried and didn't succed yet is Rivers of Blood. 7:10 best so far but I still think it can be done in under 7:00 Wink
TheVoid
2009-01-22 02:31:01 am
Quote from Ugm:
As far as I checked, straferunning helps. How did you measure it?

Well, it wasn't exactly solidproof science, but I measured it by "feel/sense" and by comparing my run to your level 3 run Wink
In the 0:48 run I had I didn't use strafewalking when I was in "combat mode", but I already skipped the cutscene faster than you (You can immediately skip it and then you only see a couple of black frames) and I walked straighter around the corners towards the end of the level.
In your run you walked around those objects at the corners. The objects in this game are pretty funny, I mean that if there's a bigass crate in front of you, you can just walk right through it (Without slowdown) and it breaks 8)
So maybe there's still some added speed when strafewalking in "combat mode", I should check it a bit closer.
Ugm
2009-01-22 03:35:21 am
Vae Victus!
I wonder if all cutscenes can be "skipped" faster in post by trimming the video. How's that with SDA rules? I just play using numeric keyboard and I have to move my hand from mouse to ESC key. It doesn't affect the gameplay as such.

As for this straferunning - we'd have to compare some fixed segments and straight lines. But I always seemed to run slightly faster than computer-controlled characters. And comparing times of a bit longer similiar runs with and without using straferunning always favored this technique.

Nice observation with this passable obstackles. I thought they slow me down a bit when I ignored them in some levels. Must have been the wrong ones Smiley
Ewil
Ewil
Edit history:
Ewil: 2009-01-22 03:45:35 am
2009-01-22 03:38:14 am
Trimming a video to cut off unskippable stuff is not allowed.

TheVoid: Good job, I wonder how much time is possible to save in levels, where you actually have to kill some enemies.
Ugm
2009-01-22 03:55:45 am
Vae Victus!
Khem, I was clearly referencing to skippable cutscenes. So?
TheVoid
2009-01-22 04:11:53 am
I guess you're refering to the cutscenes before the actual gameplay level started, right? Like the 7 cutscenes you need to skip in the beginning of level 1? Don't edit them out though, they're still part of the level even though they're likely not included in the timing Smiley

And yeah it sucks that you can only skip them with ESC.
Ugm
2009-01-22 04:22:33 am
Vae Victus!
Yeah, the case with the starting/ending cutscenes is simple. I mean interscenes like for example meeting Muriel Green in 03 - Op. Vigil. There are several of them later on, some of them lead me to accidentaly push ESC and go to the menu because I try to end it before it actually starts Smiley
Reaver
2009-01-26 07:26:33 am
After reading through this thread I actually went out and got this game just to see what all this was about. After playing through more than half the game already I really cant see where all the criticism was coming from to be honest. You skip out loads of enemy spawns and take out enemies fairly quickly without losing the majority of your crappy squad who do nothing but die. You're quite good at using the teams abilities, such as using the fire attacks on the winged creatures and the blood magic stuff to speed through enemies. You obviously know what you're doing. Impressively you aim quite well with such low fps in places as well, although you would be far better off if you had higher fps :P. I'm looking forward to seeing this run completed.

One thing I was thinking was that one member (Sloan I think) has the ability to slow down time. Her gun is crap but you can switch grenades to impact mode so they detonate on impact. It might be useful in places with lots of enemy spawns to slow time up and drop grenades everywhere. Its faster than using Black's explosive rounds as it can take ages to reload. Also she has the ability to increase firepower later on in the game. Can you activate this and switch character? Didnt test it at the time so I don't know. Sorry if you did it in your later segments haven't seen them all yet.
Ugm
2009-01-26 12:16:50 pm
Vae Victus!
Thanks, Reaver. Seems like it isn't that hard to see how hard to run this game is. Thanks for appreciation!

It's Cole who has the ability to slow time and I use her in The Path of Souls. It's great for running and not involving in fights but when she'd be most helpful, she's not there. Brandenburg Gate being an example. Her grenades are powerful but very difficult to aim. They have also limited range making use of them hard. It just happens often that there are better choices than her in each particular place she'd be of help. Unfortunately when you activate fire damage and swap character, it wears off. I gave it just one try earlier, though.

I wasn't playing the game recently and from today's news:
01 - The Storm - I've got 01:44 so far. Activating Black is just random. Sigh.
03 - Operation Vigil - 00:47 and now it can be considered done Smiley
13 - Brandenburg Gate - 01:29 - a second better than expected
26 - Guts - 02:17 so far. I hate this level! This fat bastard dies so damn randomly! I don't like the gameplay, though, so no vid for that. Erm... no new vids at all Smiley But I can encode and upload them if anyone's curious.

Thanks to Xiaopang's new technique of killing suiciders, there is much space for improvement in early levels (especially 04 - Al Khali and 05 - Green). Stay tuned.