Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

2005-06-20 12:36:06 pm

@Gorash: Indeed, thoguh I'd download it.. strange, whatever, by what I've seen by now - F A N T A S T I C

@marshmallow: (you posted that about not beating the game in 90min or something, and the poster posting those times): I wouldn't try to predict what the times are going to be in the future since the 7h+ has obviously prooved wrong and your (marshmallow) comment on the HL2 run is completely wrong about the fact that the hl2dq guys can shorten it by two or three mins since they've cutted about 15minutes by now compared to your time.
It's not a criticism to you, I just wanted to point out that prediction is *often* wrong. How can you say now that 60minutes will be the absolute uber time? what if more and more shortcuts come up, some "bugusing" or something that will shorten it easiely to eg. 70mins. 60mins isn't that "uber" anymore.

Renember the words of someone (forgot his name) living in the late 19th century:

Quote:

Everything that can be invented, has been invented!

marshmallow

Edit history:

marshmallow: 2005-06-20 02:13:19 pm

2005-06-20 02:13:03 pm

Jack of all Trades

xeen: That's why I always qualify such statements...

Quote:

No. Just...no. No one is getting 90 minutes unless something horrible happens.

I'm pretty confident that NO ONE WILL EVER get 90 minutes unless the maps are insanely short and somehow packed to the max with uber amounts of enemies that allow you to level up faster in less space. Remember, you have to be level 20 to get past the ancients. Even then...no.

As for Hl2, I predicted no one would get sub 2:00 unless there was some crazy glitches. Then people found some...crazy glitches. Like being able to fly across ravines with the blue balls or, you know, picking up random pieces of cardboard and being able to literally fly through the air.

Gorash

2005-06-20 03:08:12 pm

${$uid.$user}{' usertext'}

too much use of uber without dots... I know it's an accepted englisch word, but I like the spelling über (get the ü with alt+129) better. Smiley

About possible improvements:
I tested if it would be beneficial to get less exp in act1, carry a relative lack of levels with you and catch up on marshs level later on. So far I have half a level less in first and second segment, both being a minute faster than marsh. In the third segment I tried for curiosity to make up the lost exp in act2, and catching up on him there is only 30 seconds slower than marsh's third segment totalling in 90 seconds of improvement. Not much, but it's constant so far. Of course I will carry the half level penalty through to act3 and try to gain even more until then.

Yes I'm using the same ole trap sin.

Pushing this to the envelope one should be constantly 5 level flat below the enemies to get maximum exp everywhere.

xeen

Edit history:

xeen: 2005-06-21 05:19:56 pm

2005-06-21 05:04:21 pm

@marsh: Wasn't flying already known when you did your run, can't remember it exactly...
However, if you ignore those 'crazy glitches' (the bypassed the blabla in the canals level by the way) it'd still think it would be much faster than yours (~5mins) since they *really* save a lot due their hopping. They've found several other glitches, too.
However, I still wouldn't try guessing what's impossible or not. The given statements were proven wrong in the most cases.

However, if someone really get's lucky he may have "good" maps and finds some 'speed shoes' quite early (I've never been that much into dia) and maybe he's got another (or faster) way to kill enemies... who knows, future will tell.
I don't think it makes sense to argue any further since I got what you wanted to say, and I guess it's the same the other way round, is it?

xeen
double üü should be an normal ü without dots, but the forum doesn't allow me to use a single üü in my posts. Thanks.
@Gorash: Depending on the keyboard layout installed you get get an ü or any other umlaut by pressing the quote button " and then the normal üü. This sucks for normal writing though, since the pc doesn't know whether you want to quote something beginning with an üü a or o or if you want to get an umlaut.
I however use autohotkey and remapped the right windows key to work as an "umlaut" key. a, s (for the german sz: ß), üü and o aren't mapped by any function in windows, so you can easily use umlauts and don't eg. loose the 2nd windows key. This way it's quite easy working on an english keyboard though you need your "special" letters very often. Should work with many other languages, too - I can send you the script if you want, since it's quite tricky if you want to get a capitalized umlaut using shift.
xeen

Quote:

An Error Has Occured!

You can not use 'u' on this forum. You fail at English.

You see, pcs are stupid, aren't they?

hey, it accept's üü in quotes... nice one!

@marsh: Wasn't flying already known when you did your run, can't remember it exactly...
However, if you ignore those 'crazy glitches' (the bypassed the blabla in the canals level by the way) it'd still think it would be much faster than yours (~5mins) since they *really* save a lot due their hopping. They've found several other glitches, too.
However, I still wouldn't try guessing what's impossible or not. The given statements were proven wrong in the most cases.

However, if someone really get's lucky he may have "good" maps and finds some 'speed shoes' quite early (I've never been that much into dia) and maybe he's got another (or faster) way to kill enemies... who knows, future will tell.
I don't think it makes sense to argue any further since I got what you wanted to say, and I guess it's the same the other way round, is it?

xeen
double üü should be an normal ü without dots, but the forum doesn't allow me to use a single üü in my posts. Thanks.
@Gorash: Depending on the keyboard layout installed you get get an ü or any other umlaut by pressing the quote button " and then the normal üü. This sucks for normal writing though, since the pc doesn't know whether you want to quote something beginning with an üü a or o or if you want to get an umlaut.
I however use autohotkey and remapped the right windows key to work as an "umlaut" key. a, s (for the german sz: ß), üü and o aren't mapped by any function in windows, so you can easily use umlauts and don't eg. loose the 2nd windows key. This way it's quite easy working on an english keyboard though you need your "special" letters very often. Should work with many other languages, too - I can send you the script if you want, since it's quite tricky if you want to get a capitalized umlaut using shift.
xeen

[quote]An Error Has Occured!

You can not use 'u' on this forum. You fail at English.[/quote]
You see, pcs are stupid, aren't they?

hey, it accept's üü in quotes... nice one!

Gorash

Edit history:

Gorash: 2005-06-21 06:44:30 pm

2005-06-21 06:06:28 pm

${$uid.$user}{' usertext'}

Quote:

double üü should be an normal ü without dots, but the forum doesn't allow me to use a single üü in my posts.

What? Can't you post single u now or a single ü?*

About getting your PC (read: Windows) to print chars, I personally use the shortcut alt+left shift to toggle between the 3 char sets I use frequently on my machine.

I also liked the method of MacOS 8 (never used 9 and 10, don't know if it's still the same), where you had the key meta+u for indicating that the following character should get dots. This also worked with a lot of chars that don't even should get dots, including space. Similar shortcuts would bring the entire char set into reach.

And for people using linux... I expect them to be able to get their OS to do what they want anyway. Wink

*: Sorry Radix...
Strangely it doesn't work without the double space... I'd very much like to see this checking code... split at regular spaces, strip rest of non alphanumeric codes and decline if one equals you-know-what would have been the trivial guess, but that doesn't explain a lot of things...

EDIT: Stupid me... looking into the source would have been easier than first computing the ascii codes of the source and then searching the position. The check applies after HTML generation right?

[quote]double üü should be an normal ü without dots, but the forum doesn't allow me to use a single üü in my posts. [/quote]
What? Can't you post single  u  now or a single ü?*

About getting your PC (read: Windows) to print chars, I personally use the shortcut alt+left shift to toggle between the 3 char sets I use frequently on my machine.

I also liked the method of MacOS 8 (never used 9 and 10, don't know if it's still the same), where you had the key meta+u for indicating that the following character should get dots. This also worked with a lot of chars that don't even should get dots, including space. Similar shortcuts would bring the entire char set into reach.

And for people using linux... I expect them to be able to get their OS to do what they want anyway. ;)

*: Sorry Radix...
Strangely it doesn't work without the double space... I'd very much like to see this checking code... split at regular spaces, strip rest of non alphanumeric codes and decline if one equals you-know-what would have been the trivial guess, but that doesn't explain a lot of things...

EDIT: Stupid me... looking into the source would have been easier than first computing the ascii codes of the source and then searching the position. The check applies after HTML generation right?

Coriolanus

Edit history:

Coriolanus: 2005-08-02 04:17:27 pm

2005-06-21 10:35:04 pm

From the video:

level attained seconds
----------------------------------------
2 66
3 79
4 62
5 157
6 207
7 219
8 220
9 158
10 200
11 310
12 412
13 191
14 220
15 191
16 282
Fights Duriel
17 399
18 302

Total Time 3675 seconds, 61:15.
Average per level, 216 seconds, 3:36.

Marsh defeats Diablo with 19.6 levels, approximately 2 levels more than he has when he fights Duriel. If a player gets level 18 before fighting Duriel, then in the course of normal playing, he should get level 20 before fighting the ancients without having to go back and get exp.

So, 17 levels at 3:36 a peice yeilds 61:15, then the rest of the game is a strait run to kill Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo, The Ancients, and Baal. At ten minutes a peice, that is 111:15. Now I think the time per level can be reduced, and also the amount of time it takes to reach and then kill the bosses can be reduced. My feeling is that teleport with static field can make short work of the latter half of the game. To supplement the sorcerous, one could buy use staves and rods with fire and ice damage. If Izual is on the way from the Plains of Despair and the City of the Damned, then the 2 skills he provides may be worth the time (maybe not).

One question, should I exclude the loading and "save and exit" screens from the time?

Any thoughts?

From the video:

level attained          seconds
----------------------------------------
      2                           66
      3                           79
      4                           62
      5                           157
      6                           207
      7                           219
      8                           220
      9                           158
     10                          200
     11                          310
     12                          412
     13                          191
     14                          220
     15                          191
     16                          282
Fights Duriel
     17                          399
     18                          302

Total Time 3675 seconds,  61:15.
Average per level, 216 seconds, 3:36.

Marsh defeats Diablo with 19.6 levels, approximately 2 levels more than he has when he fights Duriel. If a player gets level 18 before fighting Duriel, then in the course of normal playing, he should get level 20 before fighting the ancients without having to go back and get exp.

So, 17 levels at 3:36 a peice yeilds 61:15, then the rest of the game is a strait run to kill Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo, The Ancients, and Baal. At ten minutes a peice, that is 111:15. Now I think the time per level can be reduced, and also the amount of time it takes to reach and then kill the bosses can be reduced. My feeling is that teleport with static field can make short work of the latter half of the game. To supplement the sorcerous, one could buy use staves and rods with fire and ice damage. If Izual is on the way from the Plains of Despair and the City of the Damned, then the 2 skills he provides may be worth the time (maybe not).

One question, should I exclude the loading and "save and exit" screens from the time?

Any thoughts?

Yoshi348

2005-06-22 12:08:07 am

dinosaur from the past

Radix times you until the game actually physically starts saving (so menus to get to the save button count, but hard drive speed doesn't). Loading screens I'm pretty sure are cut out.

coolek

2005-07-29 01:43:50 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

hi guys...
first of all, sorry for my english Smiley

i've read the topic but still don't understand 1 thing: /players X is allowed or not?

thanks in advance

Siyko

2005-07-29 01:53:43 am

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

It's either not allowed, or it'd be in a different section. Both marshmallow and I did our runs in /players 1, so may as well stick with that.

coolek

Edit history:

coolek: 2005-07-29 02:08:36 am

2005-07-29 02:00:56 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

thanks...
btw... current fastest run belongs to marshmallow? or there is a faster run, just not posted oficially?

and one more question... reloading location to clean it up again is allowed?

Siyko

2005-07-29 03:09:51 am

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

I beat marsh's run by like 2 minutes with a sorc instead of asn, but it's not up yet.

Killing repopulation between segments is allowed.

coolek

2005-07-29 02:39:54 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

i dont think the way you make your runs can be considered "fair"...

1. you make it in single player, so you have access to the mpq files and can change them as you like... for example make certain mob always drop certain item (for example 40frw boots)... or decrease damage of certain mobs... or increase exp for certain mobs... etc. and there is NO WAY to detect it using movie files.

2. you can open maps during the run: s&e -> stop capturing -> copy files in other directory -> open maps -> remeber\print them -> copy files back with closed maps -> start capturing ->continue playing.

and again it's not detectable... you can always say "it's luck"... but it's actually not :)) look at marsh's run... he ALWAYS know where to run even when not running on paths in act1... the first way he went in arcane was right... and etc.

I'm not sayin "you use that"... i'm just sayin "you can use it, and if so, it's not detectable", so that's why i think these runs cant be considered "fastest runs in d2".

i think the way to make fair run is: 1. some people should stand behind and watch. 2. there must be access only to shortcut "d2"... no access to the directory or smth else. 3. no map opening before run\during run (with stopped capturing). 4. no save and exits.

and if no save and exits, /players X should be allowed...

yes, i realize that it's almost impossible to make all these conditions, but...

as a solution... the run may be made in battle.net...

hm... again i'm very sorry for my english...

i dont think the way you make your runs can be considered "fair"...

1. you make it in single player, so you have access to the mpq files and can change them as you like... for example make certain mob always drop certain item (for example 40frw boots)... or decrease damage of certain mobs... or increase exp for certain mobs... etc. and there is NO WAY to detect it using movie files.

2. you can open maps during the run: s&e -> stop capturing -> copy files in other directory -> open maps -> remeber\print them -> copy files back with closed maps -> start capturing ->continue playing.

and again it's not detectable... you can always say "it's luck"... but it's actually not :)) look at marsh's run... he ALWAYS know where to run even when not running on paths in act1... the first way he went in arcane was right... and etc.

I'm not sayin "you use that"... i'm just sayin "you can use it, and if so, it's not detectable", so that's why i think these runs cant be considered "fastest runs in d2".

i think the way to make fair run is: 1. some people should stand behind and watch. 2. there must be access only to shortcut "d2"... no access to the directory or smth else. 3. no map opening before run\during run (with stopped capturing). 4. no save and exits.

and if no save and exits, /players X should be allowed...

yes, i realize that it's almost impossible to make all these conditions, but...

as a solution... the run may be made in battle.net...

hm... again i'm very sorry for my english...

Lag.Com

2005-07-29 03:05:29 pm

sda loyalist

What marshmallow did was run through the maps beforehand, THEN stop playing, and start capturing. This is perfectly legal as defined by Radix. We have to take his word for it that it was captured using an unmodified v1.10 LOD patch; I personally see nothing strange about the item drops, seems about average for the run.
I know the potential for malpractice is there, but I'm sure most long-time players of Diablo II would agree with me when I say nothing out of the ordinary happened during either of the two runs.

Siyko

2005-07-29 03:12:49 pm

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

1) You'd have to reprogram the entire game. Mob drops are totally seed based, looking at your CPU time to generate random numbers, which are used to determine drops. You'd have to reprogram the way D2 looks at random numbers. The same could be said for ANY PC game. You reprogram it, you win.

If someone really cared, they could see if you were using some of this stuff (he kills 12 zombies and 8 fallen to hit level 2, when is only 80 exp when he should need 100), but I don't think anyone is gonna reprogram the game to do a speedrun. You might as well draw each frame by hand and rip the audio from the game to make an avi, it'd be much easier.

2) Legal technique, used by marsh and myself. One of the advantages of a segmented run. Check his comments.

/players X is not allowed because it goes outside of the game controls to modify the way the game is played. It's the same as changing sv_gravity in a half-life run.

Lag.Com

2005-07-29 03:14:42 pm

sda loyalist

Siyko, that's not actually true. Smiley

It's kinda easy to change one monster to drop a certain item. For example, you could make Bone Ash always drop a nice +speed boots if you wanted, without too much trouble.

coolek

2005-07-29 03:20:20 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

yes... no need to reprogramm smth... it's VERY easy... d2 unlike most games uses mpq files... which can be represented as xls or txt files... and all you need is to edit one value (and there is an explanation, which value you should edit and how Smiley

)

Coriolanus

2005-07-29 03:24:46 pm

lets not go there

Siyko

2005-07-29 04:50:34 pm

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

wait, i don't follow you, unless drops on battle.net is programmed very differently than single player, which it very well might be.

coolek

2005-07-29 04:59:12 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

drops in battle.net are determined in the same way as in single player, using the mpq file. the difference is that when you play on battle.net, the game uses server mpq files, not yours.

Siyko

2005-07-29 05:19:21 pm

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

so how can you force single mobs to drop single items? If a drop lokos at mlvl and chooses a t-class, rolls for a type, then rolls for normal/magic/rare/set/unique, how would you set a specific drop without completely messing up everyone's drops? I could see filling every possible t class with shakos and rings, and setting unique to 100%, but that'd be just plain weird, and everyone would notice it.

coolek

Edit history:

coolek: 2005-07-29 05:33:04 pm

2005-07-29 05:31:49 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

it's better to see the mpq file structure... than to listen to my explanation... cause it's (file structure) pretty simple :)) and there is no problem to make one certain mob (for example rakanishu) drop one certain item...

Gorash

2005-07-29 06:00:42 pm

${$uid.$user}{' usertext'}

Messing with exp -> you can calculate the excact exp he should get, because it's fixed... you just need to count the mobs that die. Once he opens his status screen for spending stat points check up on the number. Same with almost every other stat, running speed in frames, hit speed, hit recovery, mana recharge, all fixed.

So cheating there undetectable is not possible.

He openly stated what was going on with knowing the map, so I don't see your point. We all know that it's not what you would do on battle.net, because it's segmented anyway.

And changing item drops, that's ridiculous, even if one would be so bold as to refactor the games drops he would have to settle for 2 good items or it would smell fishy to the others. Two good drops can be managed by simply trying a bit without cheating.

The only thing that would help is getting less damage from the big guys, but I've played the same char and didn't notice any difference.

Siyko

2005-07-29 08:46:30 pm

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

I guess I don't know as much about drops as I thought. Oh well.

Cheating in any PC game is possible, there's no denying that, but there's also no way to make sure no cheating was done. But any cheating that will give you an advantage and reduce your time will more than likely be apparent in the run, especially to a seasoned player, and especially if they take the time to add up the numbers and look closely.

I'm sure if you think cheating was done, you can politely ask how XXX was done (a friend called BS on the lakitu skip in sm64, until we checked the board and found it is a technique) and hopefully your fears will be put to rest.

Lag.Com

2005-07-29 09:42:56 pm

sda loyalist

As he mentioned, he's not necessarily pointing fingers; it's just a fairly trivial thing to change Diablo II this way. Doing this in other games is usually not -quite- as easy. For example when we do Quake speedrunning we use a patch created by the QDQ team; if we recorded using a custom patch, that say, changed speed variables, it would be easily discovered. Also, because of the EXTREME randomness of Diablo II item drops, it would be easy to just say "I got lucky" . I hope you understood what he and I were trying to say. Smiley

I personally think both runs are legit, but I bear in mind these points.

Siyko

2005-07-29 10:10:47 pm

I used to be athiest until I realized I was God.

gotcha. Hope I didnt come off too defensive