Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

2012-11-01 10:30:58 pm

Anyone speedrunning this yet? There's a time attack mode, great for it.

My best times so far are:
1st level: 49:48
2nd level: 48:13
The others i'm still too bad

Thread title:

Melodia

Edit history:

Melodia: 2012-11-02 12:11:59 am

2012-11-02 12:10:07 am

Thanks for making this topic, was tempted to myself but I'll never be able to actually speed run.

The way I see it, there's three categories for running here:
-Each level in TA mode with the internal times'
-A normal run through adventure mode. This can't be run though streight because you need enough gems to get stars to unlock the bosses. Though I guess with no deaths (or <2 as I mention below) might temper this. The complete mechanics are somewhat unknown at the moment.
-A 100% run, which would be all gems and big gems.

Hardcore mode, from what I gather, is irrelevant since it's the same game, just no checkpoints. Only difference is a normal run could use the occasional death-warp for time, though I believe you need 2 or less deaths for two stars from deaths.

Melodia

Edit history:

Melodia: 2012-11-02 12:12:14 am

2012-11-02 12:11:44 am

(akk double post)

Venick409

2012-11-02 02:14:09 am

I'm learning to run this. So far I've learned through world 1.

These are my best times for world 1 Time Attacks:

1-1: 0:33:39
1-2: 0:31:42
1-3: 1:02:11
1-4: 1:03:00
1-5: 1:14:80
1-6: 4:15:14

Also on the subject of the categories.

-Adventure Any% This should for sure be a category. To unlock a boss level you need an average of 3 stars in a level. For example 5 stars in 1-1, 4 in 1-2, 2 in 1-3/4/5 for world 1.
I made a video of an RTA of world 1. Note this was before I found a bunch of strats for the levels, but it shows off how a run would look.

-Adventure 100% For this category I think it should be, 5 stars in every level, and all secret Gems. It should not be all gems in the levels, because you only need about 75% (more in later stages.) to get 5 star. The reason I think you should't have to get every gem is because the game doesn't keep track of them, if you get them all, after the results screen it doesn't show them, like it does with Secret Gems and Stars. (Well on the subject of stars, the deaths you can get and still get 2 stars is on a level by level basis.)

-TA mode This could be cool, I don't really mind if it was a thing or not.

- Hardcore/Uber Hardcore With Hardcore you have the choice on doing the levels in any order, and you don't have to get 5 stars in any levels, TA mode would basically make this unneeded as a category. With Uber Hardcore it makes you do the levels without ever getting a death (Do you have to get the stars?) This will change death warping, it would also have to do safe strats. I think this should be a category, in the same vane that VVVVVV has a deathless category, though the death warps don't save as much time as in VVVVVV, I could see people arguing it shouldn't be a category.

I'm learning to run this.  So far I've learned through world 1.

These are my best times for world 1 Time Attacks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz-78guIbB4

1-1: 0:33:39
1-2: 0:31:42
1-3: 1:02:11
1-4: 1:03:00
1-5: 1:14:80
1-6: 4:15:14

Also on the subject of the categories.

-Adventure Any%  This should for sure be a category.  To unlock a boss level you need an average of 3 stars in a level.  For example 5 stars in 1-1, 4 in 1-2, 2 in 1-3/4/5 for world 1.
I made a video of an RTA of world 1.  Note this was before I found a bunch of strats for the levels, but it shows off how a run would look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr_UmljoWMc

-Adventure 100%  For this category I think it should be, 5 stars in every level, and all secret Gems.  It should not be all gems in the levels, because you only need about 75% (more in later stages.) to get 5 star.  The reason I think you should't have to get every gem is because the game doesn't keep track of them, if you get them all, after the results screen it doesn't show them, like it does with Secret Gems and Stars.  (Well on the subject of stars, the deaths you can get and still get 2 stars is on a level by level basis.)

-TA mode  This could be cool, I don't really mind if it was a thing or not.

- Hardcore/Uber Hardcore  With Hardcore you have the choice on doing the levels in any order, and you don't have to get 5 stars in any levels, TA mode would basically make this unneeded as a category.  With Uber Hardcore it makes you do the levels without ever getting a death (Do you have to get the stars?) This will change death warping, it would also have to do safe strats.  I think this should be a category, in the same vane that VVVVVV has a deathless category, though the death warps don't save as much time as in VVVVVV, I could see people arguing it shouldn't be a category.

Melodia

2012-11-02 12:05:34 pm

I see the point about 'safe strats' but I the only case where it'd save time to die while on the main route is likely the first one with the keys. Perhaps the lack of needing to unlock boss levels might change things, however.

I see the point about 100% but I find it very silly that just because it's not shown in game (and they are possibly changing that by the way) means it shouldn't be done. It's a very visible obvious thing in the game and it doesn't feel like "100% of the game" if you're not actually showing all of the game. This isn't the same as stuff like bombs/arrows in Zelda (where it's just tedium) or missing out on chests in an RPG....this is a main part of the game.

emgotcha77

2012-11-04 04:50:45 am

Hello guys.

Very nice Venick409!
I'm trying this game by myself... only get 39:80 in 1-1 Smiley

Still much to learn.

The dash timing is really tricky.

Melodia

Edit history:

Melodia: 2012-11-04 12:01:49 pm

2012-11-04 12:00:49 pm

I was thinking about a 'New Game+' type run where you wouldn't have to unlock the bosses, thus you don't have to worry about jewels, and can death warp (the level with the keys for instance one could probably, not sure).

Of course, perhaps it'd need to be titled 'New Game +, all levels', otherwise it's a last level run...

emgotcha77

2012-11-05 01:20:53 am

I get 35:08 in 1-1 and 35:70 in 1-2 now. The "tunnel" at the end of 1-2 seems so random to pass through...

@Venick409 btw. you can dash down at the start in 1-1 but i guess its not worth even a second

iDunnyX

2013-07-22 01:17:35 pm

I kinda wanted to revive this thread. A while back I wanted to run this game but ran into the same annoyances as everyone else. Collecting Gems to unlock bosses was completely boring and made this game unrunnable. Now they have decided to add an easy mode. This mode basically has more shields in the levels and no boss locks. So this opens up tons of things, actual runs, messing around with dying ect. I believe this game can actually be taken seriously now. Anyone with interest should come back to the thread and do some planning Cheesy

Hope to see some interest once again.

Melodia

2013-07-23 12:05:09 am

I didn't realize it was that tedious to do an any%. Incidently, at some point they lowered the lock requirements so that should have made it even less problematic. But I can't see it being TOO bad given that you get two stars for minimal dying and I'd think part of speedrunning fun would be planning the best route to get slightly out of the way gems...

But without the locks of course it's pretty streight forward, and again outside of the levels with keys (2-3 and the last one are the main ones, IIRC) death warping shouldn't be needed. There are a few alternate/quick routes here and there, but mostly it's a matter of finding shortcuts (like being able to dash up to the bridge on 1-1)

iDunnyX

2013-07-23 12:07:43 am

Well everyone i talked to including myself that planned this game quit it because frankly it was annoying. What is ur PB with the locks?

footbigmike

2013-07-23 02:40:03 am

If this game is now pretty much time attacks of all the levels in sequence, you should check out Omgarrett on twitch. He's done some pretty sick runs doing just that, instead of starting from a clean file.

teronism

2013-07-24 01:59:25 am

I don't remember where I'd seen it, but there was a glitch you could do to switch between sisters and enter the wrong world to bypass some obstacles; does that still work?

teronism

2013-07-25 06:06:46 pm

said glitch, I'll test it when I get home to see if it still works:

Hsanrb

2013-09-26 09:17:45 am

I usually don't like to revive threads, but if anyone wants to try and look for ways Out and back in bounds, we have some hope.

This might help get above or around areas of levels with locks and such but I haven't found a way back in. Not even sure how I stumbled into this but it might be worth looking into if theres a quick way in, but I've only learned about this an hour ago.

crate

2014-01-16 07:49:08 am

I guess I'll post this here since Owlverlord is more of an expansion than a standalone game. I like it a fair bit more than GSTD for a few reasons so I've been running it for a few months. This is basically what I have:

(that run with good boss luck is basically my goal time at the moment)

It's possible I'm missing something since I've done all of the routing myself.

I think time attack is the way to go, primarily since the in-game timer is very good (and like many pc games, loading times are both noticeable and inconsistent, so using the in-game timer dramatically simplifies removing them). I suppose there might be something interesting in collecting gems to unlock the boss level but personally I don't see why that would be more interesting or better and you lose the in-game timer.

---

As far as any useful out of bounds stuff, there are a few places I know of in both GSTD and Owlverlord where you can manage to get out of bounds or otherwise where the collision detection with walls/objects is bad but I haven't ever gotten back in afterward.

I guess I'll post this here since Owlverlord is more of an expansion than a standalone game.  I like it a fair bit more than GSTD for a few reasons so I've been running it for a few months.  This is basically what I have:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThnVtrFrnB8

(that run with good boss luck is basically my goal time at the moment)

It's possible I'm missing something since I've done all of the routing myself.

I think time attack is the way to go, primarily since the in-game timer is very good (and like many pc games, loading times are both noticeable and inconsistent, so using the in-game timer dramatically simplifies removing them).  I suppose there might be something interesting in collecting gems to unlock the boss level but personally I don't see why that would be more interesting or better and you lose the in-game timer.

---

As far as any useful out of bounds stuff, there are a few places I know of in both GSTD and Owlverlord where you can manage to get out of bounds or otherwise where the collision detection with walls/objects is bad but I haven't ever gotten back in afterward.

Mmeaninglessnamee

2014-04-13 08:26:30 pm

I've found a glitch in the game that's somewhat interesting - Infinite jumping up walls. From standing on the ground next to a wall to the RIGHT of you (And ONLY to the right, it does not work on left walls) hold right into the wall and mash jump to leap up the wall like it was vines. You don't get the effects of vines, just infinite jumps.

Although there are very few spots this helps in levels, it makes Hansel & Gretel a joke, as you can continually jump in the upper right corner and only need to dodge the two cycles of rocks.

A couple other things: I got OoB by accident my first two times playing through 2-4 (IIRC) and had to reset when I couldn't get back in Sad

The infinite jump was found by my roommate on his first playthrough, also by accident.

And a completely useless but still interesting bug: if you die while entering the end of level trigger, you still finish but do the end-of-level screen when you respawn at the last checkpoint. (found by accident on Breakneck Passage)

Anyone still running/streaming this game?
(nice shield-abuse strats by the way Venick409)

I've found a glitch in the game that's somewhat interesting - Infinite jumping up walls. From standing on the ground next to a wall to the RIGHT of you (And ONLY to the right, it does not work on left walls) hold right into the wall and mash jump to leap up the wall like it was vines. You don't get the effects of vines, just infinite jumps.

Although there are very few spots this helps in levels, it makes Hansel & Gretel a joke, as you can continually jump in the upper right corner and only need to dodge the two cycles of rocks.

A couple other things: I got OoB by accident my first two times playing through 2-4 (IIRC) and had to reset when I couldn't get back in :(
The infinite jump was found by my roommate on his first playthrough, also by accident.

And a completely useless but still interesting bug: if you die while entering the end of level trigger, you still finish but do the end-of-level screen when you respawn at the last checkpoint. (found by accident on Breakneck Passage)

Anyone still running/streaming this game?
(nice shield-abuse strats by the way Venick409)

Mmeaninglessnamee

2014-04-13 08:33:16 pm

Hi

Addendum: Oops, posted without registering. Sad

crate

2014-04-15 08:37:06 am

I'm still doing Owlverlord (and will be running it at SGDQ), lots of small improvements plus an obvious-in-retrospect way to skip the autoscroller in level 2 since my post above.
http://www.twitch.tv/crate3333/c/4015118
I didn't know about that wallclimb bug but I'm pretty sure it's useless in the Owlverlord run at least.

Haven't seen anyone else running either GSTD or Owlverlord though.

Melodia

2014-04-15 02:20:43 pm

Quote from crate:

I'm still doing Owlverlord (and will be running it at SGDQ),h.

Very happy to see that. Were I good enough for speedrunning I'd probably run these....but I suck, so...

Mmeaninglessnamee

2014-04-18 05:54:21 pm

Hi

I just saw the final SGDQ schedule, congratulations on getting a run in Crate! Good Luck!

I haven't looked for any good infinite jump tricks yet, I'm sure there must be a couple useful at least as a backup. There's a couple spots on 2-7 that I think might work. If I find anything notable I'll mention it. Smiley

Mmeaninglessnamee

2014-04-18 09:05:46 pm

Hi

I've found a few timesavers in world one as well as 2-7 from infinite jumping. (I haven't really looked at any other levels yet) I want to start recording the places I've found where wall jump is useful, but my streaming/recording software doesn't play well with fullscreen. I've tried the standard methods of forcing windowed (-w in the .exe target, alt+enter) but they haven't worked. What do you use to record/broadcast your runs Crate? Also, out of interest, do you use keyboard or a controller?

crate

2014-04-19 12:18:10 pm

Quote from Mmeaninglessnamee:

but my streaming/recording software doesn't play well with fullscreen. I've tried the standard methods of forcing windowed (-w in the .exe target, alt+enter) but they haven't worked. What do you use to record/broadcast your runs Crate? Also, out of interest, do you use keyboard or a controller?

I play in 1366x768 windowed (you can change this in the launcher, or at least I can) with all the graphics settings turned down (except I use 32-bit color instead of 16-bit, possibly I should turn that down too, since my gpu is on the low end for running GSTD), and then I just use OBS game capture.

I tried using dxtory to local record as well but that slowed my game down by ~8 seconds or so in level 1 of Owlverlord, so that was unacceptable and now I just use OBS local recording while I'm broadcasting (the obvious downside being my local recording is exactly the Twitch broadcast, when I'd prefer just the game). Possibly I should try again now that I've turned my settings down.

I use keyboard (wasd + hjkl) ... originally I had dash on k, which was problematic since it would lead to my hand hurting from pressing k so often with my ring finger. A couple months ago I actually played around with using wasd for directions + controller for the other actions, which is kind of amusing and was less painful, but I'm no good with it, so I just swapped dash to j instead and now I can play for a few hours without feeling like I'm going to tear something in my hand. I'm much better with kb than any controller dpad though so for pretty any game with digital directional input I prefer kb. My broadcasts use skeys to show my input, so you can figure it out from there.

---

The wallclimb isn't entirely useless in Owlverlord, actually: you can use it to climb the one shaft in level 4, but it's slower than dash-bouncing up. However the dash bounce requires kind of specific positioning so it's easy to get it wrong and fall back down and lose time. Unlikely I'll use it in record attempts, but probably I'll show it off at SGDQ. I didn't find anywhere else you can use it and save time.

[quote="Mmeaninglessnamee"]but my streaming/recording software doesn't play well with fullscreen. I've tried the standard methods of forcing windowed (-w in the .exe target, alt+enter) but they haven't worked. What do you use to record/broadcast your runs Crate? Also, out of interest, do you use keyboard or a controller?[/quote]
I play in 1366x768 windowed (you can change this in the launcher, or at least I can) with all the graphics settings turned down (except I use 32-bit color instead of 16-bit, possibly I should turn that down too, since my gpu is on the low end for running GSTD), and then I just use OBS game capture.

I tried using dxtory to local record as well but that slowed my game down by ~8 seconds or so in level 1 of Owlverlord, so that was unacceptable and now I just use OBS local recording while I'm broadcasting (the obvious downside being my local recording is exactly the Twitch broadcast, when I'd prefer just the game).  Possibly I should try again now that I've turned my settings down.

I use keyboard (wasd + hjkl) ... originally I had dash on k, which was problematic since it would lead to my hand hurting from pressing k so often with my ring finger.  A couple months ago I actually played around with using wasd for directions + controller for the other actions, which is kind of amusing and was less painful, but I'm no good with it, so I just swapped dash to j instead and now I can play for a few hours without feeling like I'm going to tear something in my hand.  I'm much better with kb than any controller dpad though so for pretty any game with digital directional input I prefer kb.  My broadcasts use skeys to show my input, so you can figure it out from there.

---

The wallclimb isn't entirely useless in Owlverlord, actually: you can use it to climb the one shaft in level 4, but it's slower than dash-bouncing up.  However the dash bounce requires kind of specific positioning so it's easy to get it wrong and fall back down and lose time.  Unlikely I'll use it in record attempts, but probably I'll show it off at SGDQ.  I didn't find anywhere else you can use it and save time.

Mmeaninglessnamee

2014-04-23 09:16:03 pm

Hi

I'm working on finding and making a video of all the timesavers and extra strats I can find using infinite jumping. I though I'd found a skip on Owlbeak Castle (1-5), but I rewatched Venick409's video of world 1 and realized it was already possible without infinite jumping.

I'll hopefully have the video done soon, or at least a list. It will probably take me a few weeks though, because I'll get distracted.
I can at least confidently say that there are actual timesavers in Twisted Dreams, unlike Olverloard. The most common one is jumping up a shaft that already has a rising platform in it because you jump faster than the platform rises.
Also, infinite jumping works coming out of water. I've only found one place where this is relevant, near the end of Dreadful Straights (2-7).

Mmeaninglessnamee

Edit history:

Mmeaninglessnamee: 2014-04-23 11:11:28 pm

Mmeaninglessnamee: 2014-04-23 10:58:31 pm

2014-04-23 10:57:27 pm

Hi

Here's a small skip I found on 2-2 (Old Crasher's Castle) not involving infinite wall jumping.
Other people may have already found this, but if not, here it is. [let's see if I can properly embed a video link!]
http://www.twitch.tv/mmeaninglessnamee/c/4122015

And here's a quick-and-dirty video on infinite wall jumps in 1-4 (Soar Wing Hills)
The use here (outrunning already rising platforms) is right now the most common use i've found for the glitch.
http://www.twitch.tv/mmeaninglessnamee/c/4122063

[edit: no, I can't get the video on the page. I'm really bad at this kind of thing.]
[edit 2: added another video to this message rather then add another.]