Extreme Assault - September 25, 2019

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2019-09-25 08:18:04 am

2019-09-02 11:29:41 am

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Extreme Assault () (pc) [Any %] [Segmented] [Extreme]

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to 'ktwo'!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2019-09-02 11:29:41 am

Run Information

Extreme Assault () (pc) [Any %] [Segmented] [Extreme]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/extremeassault-20190828/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). If you wish to remain anonymous, you can also send a pm with your reply to 'sdaverification' (please state clearly in that case which run you have verified). This is not a contest where the majority wins - Each verification will be judged on its content.

LotBlind

2019-09-10 08:05:07 am

"The amount of ammo increases the firing rate"? Weird.

You didn't mention how you're controlling it.

What kind of stuff are you manipulating in a segment like 04?
09 - 1:21 - audio cuts off a little short. Similar stuff in all or most segments. I think it always happens during cutscenes though.
12 - start - could you back up a little ways as you're turning to be that much closer to your target?
19 - you say that your setup for this mission is "very consistent" but I guess you mean "consistenly gives the fastest times"?
43 - is there any reason for those extra shots at the start?

The segments end when you hit some key to bring up the save menu? Or are there quick saves?

Did you test to see if the technique known as trichording (3D straferunning) works in this game like it does in the Descent series? In other terms, is the velocity vector always normalized? There's sometimes weird ways to bypass this such as moving steadily in one direction (releasing the binds) and strafing left and right while turning.

Did you try to see if the game reacted in interesting ways to dropping the frame rate as an experiment? No clipping through stuff?

"The amount of ammo increases the firing rate"? Weird.

You didn't mention how you're controlling it.

What kind of stuff are you manipulating in a segment like 04?
09 - 1:21 - audio cuts off a little short. Similar stuff in all or most segments. I think it always happens during cutscenes though.
12 - start - could you back up a little ways as you're turning to be that much closer to your target?
19 - you say that your setup for this mission is "very consistent" but I guess you mean "consistenly gives the fastest times"?
43 - is there any reason for those extra shots at the start?

The segments end when you hit some key to bring up the save menu? Or are there quick saves?

Did you test to see if the technique known as trichording (3D straferunning) works in this game like it does in the Descent series? In other terms, is the velocity vector always normalized? There's sometimes weird ways to bypass this such as moving steadily in one direction (releasing the binds) and strafing left and right while turning.

Did you try to see if the game reacted in interesting ways to dropping the frame rate as an experiment? No clipping through stuff?

ktwo

2019-09-13 07:32:57 am

I play on keyboard.

04?- I assume you mean segment 3? In segment 3, I manipulated a laser cannon drop from the ring of mines at the very beginning. It was simply done by restarting the segment until I got the drop I wanted. There was no particular manipulation in segment 4.

12 - You're right, I tested this and it's slightly faster. I will redo this segment. It's funny, I remember having tested this exact same thing in seg 24/mission 4-3, concluding that backing up and turning was faster than only turning. I must have overlooked that the same situation occurred here.

19 - The comment was mainly directed towards someone trying to reproduce the tricks in this speedrun. Especially when smartbombs are involved, you often need to move in a specific way and then launch it from a fairly specific position to take out all the enemies. Some of the missions are still not consistent, while others are. This one can consistently be cleared as described in the comments. At the same time, I'm not aware of a riskier method that results in a faster solution. Then I would have used that one instead.

43 - The purpose was to destroy the two missiles from the boat. I previously used a slightly slower method and then the missiles would hit you before clearing the mission if not shot down first. Rewatching the video, it looks like I don't shoot enough to destroy the missiles with the gun, but the smartbomb with the new method actually takes care of them instead, so there is no point in firing at them. It has no impact on the speedrun, but of course looks a bit unpolished, so I'll keep it in mind for another time.

Segment endings - There are no quicksaves in the game. You can only play a mission from the start. Most missions end by pressing F12 when the corresponding message pops up. A few missions end by destroying the target that is the objective of that mission or by entering a goal area. There is no real pattern to which missions end one way or the other.

Trichording - Good catch. I tested this and found that it does give a small speed increase. Around 5% or so. I'll go over the individual segments and see where this is worth implementing.

I play on keyboard.

04?- I assume you mean segment 3? In segment 3, I manipulated a laser cannon drop from the ring of mines at the very beginning. It was simply done by restarting the segment until I got the drop I wanted. There was no particular manipulation in segment 4.

12 - You're right, I tested this and it's slightly faster. I will redo this segment. It's funny, I remember having tested this exact same thing in seg 24/mission 4-3, concluding that backing up and turning was faster than only turning. I must have overlooked that the same situation occurred here.

19 - The comment was mainly directed towards someone trying to reproduce the tricks in this speedrun. Especially when smartbombs are involved, you often need to move in a specific way and then launch it from a fairly specific position to take out all the enemies. Some of the missions are still not consistent, while others are. This one can consistently be cleared as described in the comments. At the same time, I'm not aware of a riskier method that results in a faster solution. Then I would have used that one instead.

43 - The purpose was to destroy the two missiles from the boat. I previously used a slightly slower method and then the missiles would hit you before clearing the mission if not shot down first. Rewatching the video, it looks like I don't shoot enough to destroy the missiles with the gun, but the smartbomb with the new method actually takes care of them instead, so there is no point in firing at them. It has no impact on the speedrun, but of course looks a bit unpolished, so I'll keep it in mind for another time.

Segment endings - There are no quicksaves in the game. You can only play a mission from the start. Most missions end by pressing F12 when the corresponding message pops up. A few missions end by destroying the target that is the objective of that mission or by entering a goal area. There is no real pattern to which missions end one way or the other.

Trichording - Good catch. I tested this and found that it does give a small speed increase. Around 5% or so. I'll go over the individual segments and see where this is worth implementing.

LotBlind

2019-09-13 02:05:53 pm

Did you consider playing with a joystick instead? I think the Descent guys play keyboard as well since they mostly want the fastest rotation and acceleration and can do without the precision.

04 - Yeah I meant segment 4. Initially I thought you were only segmenting if things were getting tough but then I noticed you'd segmented each time there's a transition.

So the game gets choppy but doesn't slow down with lag? That was the impression I got. I.e. the only reasons to think about lag management are if you can control the vehicles more easily or to make the recordings better? I'm sure other things override this but I'm curious if you thought about this stuff, e.g. choosing to look away from explosions and such.

Okay, then timing just the gameplay is par for the course since it autosaves.

ktwo

2019-09-14 12:55:20 am

I haven't managed to get the gamepad I have to work with this game. It's not something I spent a lot of time on though since I feel pretty comfortable with the keyboard setup.

I also think the lag due to quality issues mainly impact the recording, but not the time. It's not evident to test, so I'm not completely sure though. Looking away from areas with a lot of action should reduce lag. It doesn't always help though. See e.g. the end of seg 22/mission 4-1. I'm staring into the wall and the game still lags quite badly. Most of the time, looking away wastes more time by not moving in the right direction though.

It looks like I forgot to address your frame rate comment in my previous post. You can't change the frame rate while playing and I don't see how you would be able to build up huge amounts of lag to try clipping through walls and stuff. Even if it were possible to change the framerate, my gut feeling is that it's not going to be possible to clip through. The vehicle hitbox is pretty enormous and you move pretty slowly, which I assume doesn't favor this type of clips.

I haven't managed to get the gamepad I have to work with this game. It's not something I spent a lot of time on though since I feel pretty comfortable with the keyboard setup.

I also think the lag due to quality issues mainly impact the recording, but not the time. It's not evident to test, so I'm not completely sure though. Looking away from areas with a lot of action should reduce lag. It doesn't always help though. See e.g. the end of seg 22/mission 4-1. I'm staring into the wall and the game still lags quite badly. Most of the time, looking away wastes more time by not moving in the right direction though.

It looks like I forgot to address your frame rate comment in my previous post. You can't change the frame rate while playing and I don't see how you would be able to build up huge amounts of lag to try clipping through walls and stuff. Even if it were possible to change the framerate, my gut feeling is that it's not going to be possible to clip through. The vehicle hitbox is pretty enormous and you move pretty slowly, which I assume doesn't favor this type of clips.

LotBlind

2019-09-14 10:43:30 am

Another idea is sometimes the game might let you pick up or activate something through a wall or obstacle on low FPS.

ktwo

2019-09-21 09:53:50 am

I do stuff through walls in many missions. Most of it consists of firing a thunderbolt against a wall to destroy a target on the other side.
I've only found one place where something could be collected from another side of an obstacle. In mission 6-5/segment 45, a smartbomb is placed in such a way that I collected it above ground while the object is located in a tunnel below.

I've redone a fair amount of the segments to implement trichording and the improvement idea in 3-1/12. I also found a minor shortcut in 4-5/26 by dropping off two of the ramps after the bridge. The new segments are available in the folder "Improvements".

LotBlind

2019-09-24 07:06:42 am

Okay, so you're really accelerating in three directions. I thought you were just going to do forwards + up. In that case this really should be called trichording. Ha! It works with the tank too? Looks kinda ridiculous. I don't know if it should be called "bichording" or "straferunning" then...

One question about the encodes: don't you think you wanna supply a copy that has every segment appended into one file WITH the cutscenes in case someone wants the complete experience? I guess we've allowed leaving untimed parts of segments to be left out though?

The sound level seems a lot more quiet in the new segments. It would probably be worth batch editing them to match before joining together. Don't ask me how to do that.

Seg 24 is still ridiculous.
26 - looks like you saved just 1 second here despite using strafing? I must be overestimating how big the benefit is. It should obviously be less than trichording.

I think with the audio levels balanced, this should now be an

accept

ktwo

2019-09-24 11:01:16 am

Moving forward will automatically tilt the helicopter, so it's nothing I intentionally did to speed things up. It's therefore only "bichording" in both the helicopter and the tank. I have changed the run comments to refer to this movement method as "bichording/straferunning". I did test combining this with actively moving up and down to get a speed-up from the third axis of movement as well, but I couldn't notice any speed increase.

The improvement videos are actually the raw files. The size difference wasn't that big, so I thought it was convenient to skip the encoding step since this was just temporary files. I hadn't noticed the difference in sound level before, but it has to do with the encoding. The sound level of the raw files of my original segments was also low. So the audio won't be a problem for the final encodes.

26 - I think only the last stretch is strafing in this segment. Most of the mission requires dodging and taking out enemies, so it was difficult to incorporate the strafe speed-up. Most of the time save probably came from the new shortcut (dropping down the paths). To get a feeling for how much it saves, it's better to look at a segment like 33/mission 5-2. It's a long segment and most of it is done bichording. Around 1.5 seconds saved. I agree that it's not that much and not easy to see by simply watching, but the speed-up is very noticeable once you start frame-count comparing completed missions with the two methods.

Moving forward will automatically tilt the helicopter, so it's nothing I intentionally did to speed things up. It's therefore only "bichording" in both the helicopter and the tank. I have changed the run comments to refer to this movement method as "bichording/straferunning". I did test combining this with actively moving up and down to get a speed-up from the third axis of movement as well, but I couldn't notice any speed increase.

The improvement videos are actually the raw files. The size difference wasn't that big, so I thought it was convenient to skip the encoding step since this was just temporary files. I hadn't noticed the difference in sound level before, but it has to do with the encoding. The sound level of the raw files of my original segments was also low. So the audio won't be a problem for the final encodes.

26 - I think only the last stretch is strafing in this segment. Most of the mission requires dodging and taking out enemies, so it was difficult to incorporate the strafe speed-up. Most of the time save probably came from the new shortcut (dropping down the paths). To get a feeling for how much it saves, it's better to look at a segment like 33/mission 5-2. It's a long segment and most of it is done bichording. Around 1.5 seconds saved. I agree that it's not that much and not easy to see by simply watching, but the speed-up is very noticeable once you start frame-count comparing completed missions with the two methods.

SDAVerification

2019-09-25 08:18:06 am

Decision posted.