Dangerous Dave speedrunning thread

2014-07-22 05:47:26 pm

Well dang, I wish I had seen this sooner. I started learning Dave2 independent of anyone's elses information and my time is complete garbage by comparison!

Love the level 2+3 glitches, gonna have to figure out the timing for those.

I suppose my new focus will have to be on dodging zombies, because WOW do you dodge a lot of zombies. In some ways I didn't even think were possible. The staircase stuff makes sense, and in general being able to avoid them with jumps was intuitive enough, but essentially having the zombie miss altogether by standing in its sprite is crazy.

I was trying to figure out your current best time based on past broadcasts: is it 5:04? That's the closest number I could find, in which case my hat's off to you. Talk about a well-optimized time.

For the record I'll be attempting to learn all three games in the trilogy (and maaaaybe the very first pre-trilogy game but that one seems a bit boring). I see there's already a really good Dave3 time as well, so I've got a ton of effort to put into these! Looking forward to improving my movement, and many thanks to nXmaniac for all the time spent on Dave2 thus far.

Well dang, I wish I had seen this sooner. I started learning Dave2 independent of anyone's elses information and my time is complete garbage by comparison!

Love the level 2+3 glitches, gonna have to figure out the timing for those.

I suppose my new focus will have to be on dodging zombies, because WOW do you dodge a lot of zombies. In some ways I didn't even think were possible. The staircase stuff makes sense, and in general being able to avoid them with jumps was intuitive enough, but essentially having the zombie miss altogether by standing in its sprite is crazy.

I was trying to figure out your current best time based on past broadcasts: is it 5:04? That's the closest number I could find, in which case my hat's off to you. Talk about a well-optimized time.

For the record I'll be attempting to learn all three games in the trilogy (and maaaaybe the very first pre-trilogy game but that one seems a bit boring). I see there's already a really good Dave3 time as well, so I've got a ton of effort to put into these! Looking forward to improving my movement, and many thanks to nXmaniac for all the time spent on Dave2 thus far.

nXmaniac

2014-07-26 07:39:48 am

Hey, it's awesome to see someone else interested in running this. Let me start off by saying I have not completed a single run of this game yet; I only had a very promising one die on me at the very end of level 6. The 5:04 you saw on my channel is based on my individual level runs with a few added seconds of leeway, i.e. it is just a reference point (primarily for the viewers). So technically, you're the WR holder at the moment. Btw your run is pretty good considering you just started running the game.

As for my target time, it is going down quickly. With the recent level 6 route change and one small change in level 3, sub-5 seems quite possible. A perfect run would be around 4:45 but it requires luck in more than a few places, not to mention tight execution.

The zombies are definitely your worst enemy. I am thinking about making a tutorial video for the entire speed run and if I do, I will make sure I go out of my way to cover all the possible ways of dodging them that I know of. I guaranteee that with some dedicated practice it's not that bad. Also a good run can do without some of the harder tricks; sometimes they save less than a second. I always feel like attempting them but maybe that's the reason I haven't completed a run yet Smiley

Hopefully that will change soon though.

One last thing. I am not interested in running the other Dave games right now but the Dave3 run is truly awesome. However, it is not single-segment as far as I know; I think he played the levels individually and put the videos together. So by all means, take a crack at it. I'll be keeping an eye on your channel.

Hey, it's awesome to see someone else interested in running this. Let me start off by saying I have not completed a single run of this game yet; I only had a very promising one die on me at the very end of level 6. The 5:04 you saw on my channel is based on my individual level runs with a few added seconds of leeway, i.e. it is just a reference point (primarily for the viewers). So technically, you're the WR holder at the moment. Btw your run is pretty good considering you just started running the game.

As for my target time, it is going down quickly. With the recent level 6 route change and one small change in level 3, sub-5 seems quite possible. A perfect run would be around 4:45 but it requires luck in more than a few places, not to mention tight execution.

The zombies are definitely your worst enemy. I am thinking about making a tutorial video for the entire speed run and if I do, I will make sure I go out of my way to cover all the possible ways of dodging them that I know of. I guaranteee that with some dedicated practice it's not that bad. Also a good run can do without some of the harder tricks; sometimes they save less than a second. I always feel like attempting them but maybe that's the reason I haven't completed a run yet :) Hopefully that will change soon though.

One last thing. I am not interested in running the other Dave games right now but the Dave3 run is truly awesome. However, it is not single-segment as far as I know; I think he played the levels individually and put the videos together. So by all means, take a crack at it. I'll be keeping an eye on your channel.

CapnClever

2014-10-13 01:27:28 pm

Through brute force I've determined that the door trick warp only works if the zombie is inside where your hitbox should be when you exit the level. This makes keeping the zombie in front of the door not only necessary, but really hard to time such that he's exactly in front of the door. It took me a LONG time to get any slight consistency with this trick, and out of the 3500 attempts on this route, I'd gather 3000 of them were lost trying to get this trick down.

By the same understanding, I've managed to perform the warp on level 2 as well, but for whatever reason Dave doesn't exist when you enter level 3 in this manner. Would've not only saved time but made the run a lot simpler to skip level 3 entirely, ah well.

It's not a great time, but I have a (very high) 5:29 in Dave2 now (video here). Really should've looked more closely at your segments while I was running it, there are clearly a couple of at least small improvements I could've made on levels 3 and 6 (especially on the staircase). But it IS a deathless run, so until someone does better I'm gonna call it on that for the time being. The slimes and goblins throw enough luck into the mix that took me a hell of a lot of attempts just to get a single deathless run with the route nxManiac more or less does.

Time to move onto Dave3 and 4! The same guy who did Dave3 segmented that's linked in this thread also made one for Dave4 a couple months back, which I will use as a launchpad for routing. It's noted as being "slow" but that could simply be due to the general lack of tricks.

Through brute force I've determined that the door trick warp only works if the zombie is inside where your hitbox should be when you exit the level. This makes keeping the zombie in front of the door not only necessary, but really hard to time such that he's exactly in front of the door. It took me a LONG time to get any slight consistency with this trick, and out of the 3500 attempts on this route, I'd gather 3000 of them were lost trying to get this trick down.

By the same understanding, I've managed to perform the warp on level 2 as well, but for whatever reason Dave doesn't exist when you enter level 3 in this manner. Would've not only saved time but made the run a lot simpler to skip level 3 entirely, ah well.

It's not a great time, but I have a (very high) 5:29 in Dave2 now ([url=http://youtu.be/GNicIvr8t-g]video here[/url]). Really should've looked more closely at your segments while I was running it, there are clearly a couple of at least small improvements I could've made on levels 3 and 6 (especially on the staircase). But it IS a deathless run, so until someone does better I'm gonna call it on that for the time being. The slimes and goblins throw enough luck into the mix that took me a hell of a lot of attempts just to get a single deathless run with the route nxManiac more or less does.

Time to move onto Dave3 and 4! The same guy who did Dave3 segmented that's linked in this thread [url=http://youtu.be/m-P6iDf9Z0g]also made one for Dave4 a couple months back[/url], which I will use as a launchpad for routing. It's noted as being "slow" but that could simply be due to the general lack of tricks.

nXmaniac

2014-11-01 06:58:20 pm

The zombie hitbox being necessary for the door glitch is a very interesting find! The reason Dave does not appear on level 3 is maybe because his vertical position is out of bounds. I will definitely look into this.

Congratulations on the run! Apart from the small routing improvements that can be made, it's quite a clean run and that's tough to do in this game.

CapnClever

2014-11-03 11:42:42 am

I forgot to post my success on Dave3! It didn't take me long to get this, especially relative to Dave2, but it's still a pretty rough run in some places.

Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue 3:59

The second key grab in level 5 is the only thing I really consider a "messup", everything else is more or less planned as-is. Some of the segmented bits are incredibly hard to pull off (I'm looking at you, level 4), and of course the slime level isn't going to give you perfect luck. CrazyDDaver, the guy who has the segmented record, said his "practical time" for a supposed single-segment was four minutes, and this is just about four minutes. I'd call that a success.

With regards to things that could be done better than the segmented:
- On level 2, at the end before you descend to the door, you can actually jump through the entire top part of the ground. The segmented does this halfway, but you can clip through the whole thing if you want. Not even sure if it saves times (and only frames if it does) but worth looking into.
- It's possible on level 5 to grab the first key without a fist pump, but it's really hard to pull off without falling into the water. Also the luck could clearly be better in the final section: even in the record I happened to get, I was able to run cleanly without waiting for the dog, so the knife dodge is an obvious time loss.
- My door trick setup on level 8 is a little faster, and should be easier. It's just a matter of tapping down+jump and then buffering up before you land.
- I wouldn't be surprised if it's possible to skip all of the level-ending fist pumps (game end aside). The segmented skips most but I'd expect the same possibility to apply in every instance, even if it requires frame-precision at times.

I haven't even played Dave4, let alone run it, so it may be a while before I get around.

I forgot to post my success on Dave3! It didn't take me long to get this, especially relative to Dave2, but it's still a pretty rough run in some places.

Dangerous Dave's Risky Rescue [url=http://youtu.be/UegSGNa65fs]3:59[/url]

The second key grab in level 5 is the only thing I really consider a "messup", everything else is more or less planned as-is. Some of the segmented bits are incredibly hard to pull off (I'm looking at you, level 4), and of course the slime level isn't going to give you perfect luck. CrazyDDaver, the guy who has the segmented record, said his "practical time" for a supposed single-segment was four minutes, and this is just about four minutes. I'd call that a success.

With regards to things that could be done better than the segmented:
- On level 2, at the end before you descend to the door, you can actually jump through the entire top part of the ground. The segmented does this halfway, but you can clip through the whole thing if you want. Not even sure if it saves times (and only frames if it does) but worth looking into.
- It's possible on level 5 to grab the first key without a fist pump, but it's really hard to pull off without falling into the water. Also the luck could clearly be better in the final section: even in the record I happened to get, I was able to run cleanly without waiting for the dog, so the knife dodge is an obvious time loss.
- My door trick setup on level 8 is a little faster, and should be easier. It's just a matter of tapping down+jump and then buffering up before you land.
- I wouldn't be surprised if it's possible to skip all of the level-ending fist pumps (game end aside). The segmented skips most but I'd expect the same possibility to apply in every instance, even if it requires frame-precision at times.

I haven't even played Dave4, let alone run it, so it may be a while before I get around.