GTA 4 Rerun

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 10:02:11 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 10:02:06 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 04:09:17 pm

2011-03-24 07:02:30 pm

Edit: Links to all vids so far in the spoiler tags. Segments done so far are likely to be redone after finding improvements in segments 2 and 4. Original post is below.

Segment 1:
Segment 2:
Segment 3:
Segment 4:
Segment 5:
Segment 6:
Segment 7:
Segment 8:
Segment 9:
Segment 10:

So I thought I'd make a start on this.

Here's my first four segments. I think I'm about 100 seconds ahead of SCM at this point.

Segment 1:
Segment 2:
Segment 3:
Segment 4:

Some comments:

Segment 1 - turning around immediately at the start is faster than what SCM does. If you're not going for a cop car like I did, it's possible to be 3 seconds than SCM by getting to the apartment while Roman is on his 'I would stay in Broker' line. (The cutscene waits for the current line of dialogue to finish before proceeding, and can't be skipped until then.)

It took me a lot of retries to luck manipulate a police car in just the right spot at just the right moment. Grabbing the police car gives me several advantages (which I'll cover as they come into play) that are roughly equal to the (substantial) time I lose getting it. Looking back, I'm inclined to think it was a slight mistake to go for the police car and cost me maybe about 3 seconds, but I don't plan to restart the run over it.

Segment 2 - crossing the trigger for the 15 second hot dog tutorial whilst trying to enter a vehicle doesn't trigger the tutorial. Once you finish It's Your Call, the trigger is removed.

I get lucky and get a cop car here.

The cutscene upon arriving at the hardware store again can't be skipped until currently playing dialogue finishes. I've never quite been able to get there before Roman's 'they call me the Janitor' line starts, although I've come very close and am sure it's possible in theory. SCM could probably pull it off.

Already having a pistol at this point means I don't need to spend time getting one after finishing It's Your Call. This also means I'm free to end a segment here.

Segment 3 - Not much to say. Basically the same as in SCM's run.

Segment 4 - Two major route changes: killing Dardan before he enters his car, and taking Michelle to play darts instead of going to the Carnival.

It was pointed out in a previous thread that by going to the mission marker for First Date whilst on the phone, it's possible to do First Date before even taking the phone call from Roman asking you to come save him from Bledar. However, this doesn't help as much as I expected, because when you load the autosave after First Date, either it takes ages (over a minute) for Roman to call, or he calls instantly but the mission marker for Bleed Out doesn't appear and the game proceeds as if you had chosen to go on First Date instead of helping Roman (i.e. you get the call from the hospital, and then the call saying he's been cornered on the courts again).

One route I tested was triggering the call from Roman, driving close enough to trigger Bleed Out to start, suiciding by diving out of my car into an obstacle at speed, then going from the hospital to First Date with the intention of doing First Date and then using the Try Again option on the mission failed text to warp to the courts and start Bleed Out. Unfortunately, doing another mission clears any Mission Failed texts from your phone, so this idea didn't work out.

Anyway, I hope this is of some interest to some people and welcome any advice or help. I'd also welcome anyone getting in on the action and doing some segments (either beating recent segments I've already done, or doing new ones). If anyone's interested in helping, just say so and I'll make sure to upload all my save files as I go along.

Also, if SCM is still around, I wonder if seeing this motivates him to do a new run at all. Would be good to have an answer sooner rather than later, if so, because he clearly has more skill at this game than I do and I'm only saving time over his run through better planning and tricks; if he's up for doing a run, I'll quit this one and just help with his.

Thread title:

Edit: Links to all vids so far in the spoiler tags. Segments done so far are likely to be redone after finding improvements in segments 2 and 4. Original post is below.

[spoiler]Segment 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHbil7RVSO4
Segment 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1gImuOLCD0
Segment 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnSxYXhsZps
Segment 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBWACsz-BzU
Segment 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UB6Q_-3K4k
Segment 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dutkTmC_e1M
Segment 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZhQYbrt-_Q
Segment 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_2Bal6OfRM
Segment 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXk1dXoAOIk
Segment 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MIdt2MEg4[/spoiler]

So I thought I'd make a start on this.

Here's my first four segments. I think I'm about 100 seconds ahead of SCM at this point.

Segment 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHbil7RVSO4
Segment 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1gImuOLCD0
Segment 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnSxYXhsZps
Segment 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBWACsz-BzU

Some comments:

Segment 1 - turning around immediately at the start is faster than what SCM does. If you're [i]not[/i] going for a cop car like I did, it's possible to be 3 seconds than SCM by getting to the apartment while Roman is on his 'I would stay in Broker' line. (The cutscene waits for the current line of dialogue to finish before proceeding, and can't be skipped until then.)

It took me a [i]lot[/i] of retries to luck manipulate a police car in just the right spot at just the right moment. Grabbing the police car gives me several advantages (which I'll cover as they come into play) that are roughly equal to the (substantial) time I lose getting it. Looking back, I'm inclined to think it was a slight mistake to go for the police car and cost me maybe about 3 seconds, but I don't plan to restart the run over it.

Segment 2 - crossing the trigger for the 15 second hot dog tutorial whilst trying to enter a vehicle doesn't trigger the tutorial. Once you finish It's Your Call, the trigger is removed.

I get lucky and get a cop car here.

The cutscene upon arriving at the hardware store again can't be skipped until currently playing dialogue finishes. I've never [i]quite[/i] been able to get there before Roman's 'they call me the Janitor' line starts, although I've come very close and am sure it's possible in theory. SCM could probably pull it off.

Already having a pistol at this point means I don't need to spend time getting one after finishing It's Your Call. This also means I'm free to end a segment here.

Segment 3 - Not much to say. Basically the same as in SCM's run.

Segment 4 - Two major route changes: killing Dardan before he enters his car, and taking Michelle to play darts instead of going to the Carnival.

It was pointed out in a previous thread that by going to the mission marker for First Date whilst on the phone, it's possible to do First Date before even taking the phone call from Roman asking you to come save him from Bledar. However, this doesn't help as much as I expected, because when you load the autosave after First Date, either it takes ages (over a minute) for Roman to call, or he calls instantly but the mission marker for Bleed Out doesn't appear and the game proceeds as if you had chosen to go on First Date instead of helping Roman (i.e. you get the call from the hospital, and then the call saying he's been cornered on the courts again).

One route I tested was triggering the call from Roman, driving close enough to trigger Bleed Out to start, suiciding by diving out of my car into an obstacle at speed, then going from the hospital to First Date with the intention of doing First Date and then using the Try Again option on the mission failed text to warp to the courts and start Bleed Out. Unfortunately, doing another mission clears any Mission Failed texts from your phone, so this idea didn't work out.

Anyway, I hope this is of some interest to some people and welcome any advice or help. I'd also welcome anyone getting in on the action and doing some segments (either beating recent segments I've already done, or doing new ones). If anyone's interested in helping, just say so and I'll make sure to upload all my save files as I go along.

Also, if SCM is still around, I wonder if seeing this motivates him to do a new run at all. Would be good to have an answer sooner rather than later, if so, because he clearly has more skill at this game than I do and I'm only saving time over his run through better planning and tricks; if he's up for doing a run, I'll quit this one and just help with his.

heledir

2011-03-24 07:17:46 pm

It's actually a crustacean!

Wow, this should be interesting. Especially after the slight bit of controversy about SCM's run.

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-26 02:44:37 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-26 02:44:28 am

2011-03-25 02:26:35 pm

~~Still uploading atm but at some point in the next half hour segment 5 will be live here~~

Segment 5:

IsraeliRD

2011-03-25 05:06:26 pm

Dragon Power Supreme

Good driving there, keep the segments coming Smiley

dballin

2011-03-25 11:03:48 pm

Balls jerky

"dont attract any unnecessary attention"
*runs over pedestrian*

hehe. Looking good so far!

OnyxShadow

2011-03-27 02:23:52 pm

May the way of the Hero lead to the Triforce!

Cool stuff. Nice improvements so far.

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-27 02:55:24 pm

2011-03-27 02:54:50 pm

Okay, three more segments done, links incoming as I get them encoded and uploaded. There's comments on the YouTube videos themselves, but here's some extra comments:

Segment 5: Doing the long straights up to Jermaine's and then to the lock-up is harder than it looks. Usually I'd end up having to slow down at some point, or else clip a curb badly and flip, get blocked by another car, or spin out on a turn. This was the only time I ever reached the lockup at an earlier point in Jermaine's dialogue than SCM did.

Escaping the wanted circle could've gone a couple of seconds faster if I'd driven better (hadn't really practised that bit at all, I'd changed that part my route just a couple of attempts before this attempt and was incredibly lucky to even have it go as well as it did), but given how well the segment went up until arrival at the lock-up, I figured I'd keep it anyway.

Segment 6:

As explained in more detail on the video comments, I change the mission order here from what SCM did in order to save time.

I originally posted a version of this segment where I used the downtime waiting for Vlad's text to jack a car and store it in my parking space. However, I later realised that this was basically useless (even after getting a mission from Vlad, it takes pretty much the same time to jack a vehicle passing by on the same side of the road as to cross to get a vehicle from the parking space), and what's more, it actually ended up slowing me down, because by chance the vehicle I strored was a taxi, and by some queer peculiarity of the game's mechanics, if you have a taxi stored in your parking space, none of the random vehicles that initially spawn when you load a save will be taxis. This was delaying me getting a taxi in segment 8, so I swapped to another (slightly faster) version of segment 6 I already had recorded where I didn't store a car.

Segment 7:

I was unlucky having to run so far to the taxi at the end, but I had good luck through the rest of the segment so I took it. By the way, note how on the final two taxi trips I make sure I end up sat on the side of the taxi furthest from the yellow marker, in order than Little Jacob is closer to it.

Segment 8:

I laughed out loud when I discovered this little exploit.

All in all, at the moment I seem to be beating SCM's run by bigger margins than I had expected, and finding new timesavers as I go along. I'm very hopeful for this run.

Okay, three more segments done, links incoming as I get them encoded and uploaded. There's comments on the YouTube videos themselves, but here's some extra comments:

Segment 5: Doing the long straights up to Jermaine's and then to the lock-up is harder than it looks. Usually I'd end up having to slow down at some point, or else clip a curb badly and flip, get blocked by another car, or spin out on a turn. This was the only time I [i]ever[/i] reached the lockup at an earlier point in Jermaine's dialogue than SCM did.

Escaping the wanted circle could've gone a couple of seconds faster if I'd driven better (hadn't really practised that bit at all, I'd changed that part my route just a couple of attempts before this attempt and was incredibly lucky to even have it go as well as it did), but given how well the segment went up until arrival at the lock-up, I figured I'd keep it anyway.

Segment 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dutkTmC_e1M

As explained in more detail on the video comments, I change the mission order here from what SCM did in order to save time.

I originally posted a version of this segment where I used the downtime waiting for Vlad's text to jack a car and store it in my parking space. However, I later realised that this was basically useless (even after getting a mission from Vlad, it takes pretty much the same time to jack a vehicle passing by on the same side of the road as to cross to get a vehicle from the parking space), and what's more, it actually ended up slowing me down, because by chance the vehicle I strored was a taxi, and by some queer peculiarity of the game's mechanics, if you have a taxi stored in your parking space, none of the random vehicles that initially spawn when you load a save will be taxis. This was delaying me getting a taxi in segment 8, so I swapped to another (slightly faster) version of segment 6 I already had recorded where I didn't store a car.

Segment 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZhQYbrt-_Q

I was unlucky having to run so far to the taxi at the end, but I had good luck through the rest of the segment so I took it. By the way, note how on the final two taxi trips I make sure I end up sat on the side of the taxi [i]furthest[/i] from the yellow marker, in order than Little Jacob is closer to it.

Segment 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_2Bal6OfRM

I laughed out loud when I discovered this little exploit.

All in all, at the moment I seem to be beating SCM's run by bigger margins than I had expected, and finding new timesavers as I go along. I'm very hopeful for this run.

IsraeliRD

2011-03-27 05:09:47 pm

Dragon Power Supreme

segment 8 was hilarious, that came out of nowhere. Segment 7 took you a while before you got a taxi; was it not possible to manipulate a closer one?

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-27 05:32:56 pm

2011-03-27 05:32:35 pm

Quote:

Segment 7 took you a while before you got a taxi; was it not possible to manipulate a closer one?

If you mean the first one I get, it doesn't matter because I'm waiting for Vlad's text anyway before starting the mission. If you mean the final one, then yeah, it could've been closer, but I only have a finite amount of patience.

dballin

2011-03-27 06:20:06 pm

Balls jerky

rejected. should have gotten a closer taxi

Paraxade

2011-03-28 12:08:23 am

lmao at segment 8. This run's awesome so far, keep it up.

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 07:56:29 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 07:55:46 am

2011-03-28 07:52:35 am

Segment 9:

This was the first mission that I had a major complaint about in SCM's run, and fittingly I give his time a thorough beating and shave 40 seconds or so.

Edit: I'd roughly guess I'm about 3 minutes ahead of SCM in total now, though I haven't been keeping track.

Edit 2:

Quote from dballin:

rejected. should have gotten a closer taxi

I'm looking forward to the verification thread for this run, lol.

IsraeliRD

Edit history:

IsraeliRD: 2011-03-28 08:06:13 am

IsraeliRD: 2011-03-28 08:06:12 am

2011-03-28 08:04:31 am

Dragon Power Supreme

I probably won't verify, my experience ends with the timing of the run Smiley

Actually, you can always send me a copy of your run if you want and I can give you a time after each segment you post.

1:09-1:19 in that video was pretty good looking. All in all, really fast and good driving, but the taxi could be closer <_< kidding.

Oh, and I was wondering... why did you break the taxi window? Tongue

I assume no time is ever saved?

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 10:47:35 am

2011-03-28 09:25:23 am

Quote from IsraeliRD:

Actually, you can always send me a copy of your run if you want and I can give you a time after each segment you post.

Thanks for the offer, but I don't really care enough about how much I'm beating SCM by to go to the effort of uploading each segment to another place just to get a running breakdown of the time difference. I can wait until I submit for that. Smiley

Quote:

1:09-1:19 in that video was pretty good looking.

Thanks. I span out quite a few times on that stretch. If you're rotating even slightly when you go into the air, you keep rotating, and if you hit the ground anything other than straight, you spin.

Quote:

the taxi could be closer

True, and I could've gotten a slightly closer arrival point to the Blista if I'd clicked better, as well.

Quote:

Oh, and I was wondering... why did you break the taxi window?

Just dicking about. Sometimes I shoot Jimmy for fun. It is occassionally helpful to shoot out of the back of a taxi, because in rare circumstances this will lead to the taxi stopping sooner, but that didn't apply here.

Anyway, I've been testing Ivan The Not So Terrible. Turns out, it is possible, though very hard, to kill Ivan whilst he is still in his car. He has a shitton of health (I'm guessing it'd take over 20 pistol hits to kill him) and takes no extra damage from headshots, and hitting someone 20 times who is in the front of a weaving car whilst chasing them from a distance without crashing is basically impossible. However, the way I managed to kill him was to take a shortcut to get ahead of him to a corner where I know he will swerve and get down to low speed, get out of the car and wait with my automatic shotgun, then pump a bunch of rounds into his head at close range through his driverside window as he passes.

This isn't as helpful as it sounds, however, because if you kill him before the car stops, it keeps on going, with a dead driver, until it crashes, and only then does the mission end! I guess this could still help if I decide to do Ivan The Terrible and Uncle Vlad in the same segment.

As for Uncle Vlad, I tried glitching the mission by combinations of leaving cars to block his egress before entering Comrade's and leaving a car where his car spawns. The results were fairly unpredictable and over the course of my tests I made a bunch of stupid shit happen, including the cars I'd left flying off at high speed and ending up on top of buildings, Vlad warping into his car instead of entering it normally, Vlad becoming invisible and warping into his car, and even Vlad's car driving off with no driver, Vlad becoming invisible and remaining standing outside Comrade's, only to become visible again when I hit him with a vehicle. Even then, he was completely invulnerable to bullets, explosions, fire, impacts and crushing, so basically this was all useless. I think I'm going to have to do this mission the intended way.

[quote="IsraeliRD"]Actually, you can always send me a copy of your run if you want and I can give you a time after each segment you post.[/quote]

Thanks for the offer, but I don't really care enough about how much I'm beating SCM by to go to the effort of uploading each segment to another place just to get a running breakdown of the time difference. I can wait until I submit for that. :)

[quote]1:09-1:19 in that video was pretty good looking.[/quote]

Thanks. I span out quite a few times on that stretch. If you're rotating even slightly when you go into the air, you keep rotating, and if you hit the ground anything other than straight, you spin.

[quote]the taxi could be closer[/quote]

True, and I could've gotten a slightly closer arrival point to the Blista if I'd clicked better, as well.

[quote]Oh, and I was wondering... why did you break the taxi window?[/quote]

Just dicking about. Sometimes I shoot Jimmy for fun. It is occassionally helpful to shoot out of the back of a taxi, because in rare circumstances this will lead to the taxi stopping sooner, but that didn't apply here.

Anyway, I've been testing Ivan The Not So Terrible. Turns out, it is possible, though very hard, to kill Ivan whilst he is still in his car. He has a shitton of health (I'm guessing it'd take over 20 pistol hits to kill him) and takes no extra damage from headshots, and hitting someone 20 times who is in the front of a weaving car whilst chasing them from a distance without crashing is basically impossible. However, the way I managed to kill him was to take a shortcut to get ahead of him to a corner where I know he will swerve and get down to low speed, get out of the car and wait with my automatic shotgun, then pump a bunch of rounds into his head at close range through his driverside window as he passes.

This isn't as helpful as it sounds, however, because if you kill him before the car stops, it keeps on going, with a dead driver, until it crashes, and only then does the mission end! I guess this could still help if I decide to do Ivan The Terrible and Uncle Vlad in the same segment.

As for Uncle Vlad, I tried glitching the mission by combinations of leaving cars to block his egress before entering Comrade's and leaving a car where his car spawns. The results were fairly unpredictable and over the course of my tests I made a bunch of stupid shit happen, including the cars I'd left flying off at high speed and ending up on top of buildings, Vlad warping into his car instead of entering it normally, Vlad becoming invisible and warping into his car, and even Vlad's car driving off with no driver, Vlad becoming invisible and remaining standing outside Comrade's, only to become visible again when I hit him with a vehicle. Even then, he was completely invulnerable to bullets, explosions, fire, impacts and crushing, so basically this was all useless. I think I'm going to have to do this mission the intended way.

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 03:50:21 pm

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 03:28:37 pm

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 03:28:28 pm

2011-03-28 03:26:29 pm

Okay, a pretty entertaining and reasonably well-optimised segment 10 featuring the early kill on Ivan will be posted as soon as I can encode and upload it.

I'm pretty happy with it. The trick saves a nice chunk of time and I'm faster chasing Vlad as well thanks to a better route.

Link:

Paraxade

2011-03-28 03:29:32 pm

Haha, I'd love to see a video of some of that Uncle Vlad stuff, sounds awesome.

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-28 03:59:00 pm

2011-03-28 03:58:13 pm

Quote from Paraxade:

Haha, I'd love to see a video of some of that Uncle Vlad stuff, sounds awesome.

I would do this, except that the only really entertaining one is where you get Vlad's car driving off on its own and an invisible invincible Vlad to beat up, and that only happened to me once. I spent an hour trying to recreate it for further testing, but without success. Fun though it was, I don't really want to invest an unknown amount of time to recreating a glitch that isn't useful. Sorry.

Silmaranza

2011-03-28 05:04:37 pm

Oh this is fun! I thought SCM's run was pretty damn good already, I was surprised to see you post that you are 3 minutes faster already. Maybe that's because I don't know much about optimal routes and strategies in this game. Looking good though! I thought the driving, especially in the first couple of segments, was a bit sloppy at times (crashing into obstacles, slow corners), but I guess that has to do with the crappy driving physics. At least I was always terrible at driving a car in GTA IV. Still, with segments this short, I personally wouldn't accept any mistakes or hold-ups.

I'm certainly gonna enjoy this rerun, seeing new strategies is always fun and exciting I think. Smiley

It's too bad that I don't really know the game that well though, speedruns are more fun if you've played the game yourself. I sold my copy because I thought IV was a horrible, horrible game compared to the previous generation GTAs. Just my opinion though, keep it up!

ExplodingCabbage

2011-03-28 05:28:09 pm

Quote from Silmaranza:

Oh this is fun! I thought SCM's run was pretty damn good already

As you know, I disagreed. Tongue

Quote:

I was surprised to see you post that you are 3 minutes faster already.

Yeah, I was surprised by this too. A lot of it is down to significant new tricks, like those on Bleed Out, First Date, and Ivan The Not So Terrible.

Quote:

I thought the driving, especially in the first couple of segments, was a bit sloppy at times (crashing into obstacles, slow corners), but I guess that has to do with the crappy driving physics.

I probably could've pushed for a little more optimisation in most segments, yeah. I will point out though, in case you haven't already realised, that many of the crashes are intentional. Basically, if you try to take sharp corners at speed in GTA 4, you skid and spin your car, and acceleration at low speed is much less than in past GTA games, which means that you really want to preserve some speed if possible when taking corners. This means turning should be minimised, and braking is a necessity when taking corners. This further means that sometimes skidding diagonally into a wall is the fastest way to take a corner without skidding, that plowing through obstacles can sometimes be faster than avoiding them, and that sometimes hitting obstacles can be useful as an aid or alternative to braking.

Of course, some of the crashes are just fuckups, and some of the corners I really did take too cautiously, especially in early segments. Segment 4 in particular makes me cringe looking at now, just a few days later. I was still getting used to the driving controls, I guess.

Quote:

I sold my copy because I thought IV was a horrible, horrible game compared to the previous generation GTAs. Just my opinion though

Not an uncommon opinion, though. Most of my friends liked GTA 4 way less than its predecessors. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Anyway, thanks for the interest and encouragement. Smiley

[quote="Silmaranza"]Oh this is fun! I thought SCM's run was pretty damn good already[/quote]

As you know, I disagreed. :P

[quote]I was surprised to see you post that you are 3 minutes faster already.[/quote]

Yeah, I was surprised by this too. A lot of it is down to significant new tricks, like those on Bleed Out, First Date, and Ivan The Not So Terrible.

[quote]I thought the driving, especially in the first couple of segments, was a bit sloppy at times (crashing into obstacles, slow corners), but I guess that has to do with the crappy driving physics.[/quote]

I probably could've pushed for a little more optimisation in most segments, yeah. I will point out though, in case you haven't already realised, that many of the crashes are intentional. Basically, if you try to take sharp corners at speed in GTA 4, you skid and spin your car, and acceleration at low speed is much less than in past GTA games, which means that you really want to preserve some speed if possible when taking corners. This means turning should be minimised, and braking is a necessity when taking corners. This further means that sometimes skidding diagonally into a wall is the fastest way to take a corner without skidding, that plowing through obstacles can sometimes be faster than avoiding them, and that sometimes hitting obstacles can be useful as an aid or alternative to braking.

Of course, [i]some[/i] of the crashes are just fuckups, and some of the corners I really did take too cautiously, especially in early segments. Segment 4 in particular makes me cringe looking at now, just a few days later. I was still getting used to the driving controls, I guess.

[quote]I sold my copy because I thought IV was a horrible, horrible game compared to the previous generation GTAs. Just my opinion though[/quote]

Not an uncommon opinion, though. Most of my friends liked GTA 4 way less than its predecessors. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Anyway, thanks for the interest and encouragement. :)

IsraeliRD

2011-03-28 05:45:17 pm

Dragon Power Supreme

Great segment as always. Ivan's mission was pretty sweet, the discovery was very well done. Uncle Vlad great driving (altough traffic wasn't as nice) and lol at killing him by shooting his arm. I'd also love to see videos of the mission screwing up everything, but it's okay if it doesn't happen.

I partially agree with Silmaranza about the short segments. I understand if it isn't SCM's impressive execution, but the additional testing, tricks and time saving as a whole complements a really good gameplay from you that definitely is up to par, so I definitely would accept.
Regardless, your driving techniques show very well on segment 10, where you crash into light poles to slow down really fast. Another point is that next to markers you started to turn just before them so you can align for later.

ExplodingCabbage

2011-03-28 05:57:14 pm

Quote from IsraeliRD:

Uncle Vlad great driving (altough traffic wasn't as nice)

Ty, though most of those vehicles are scripted (they usually are on chase missions).

Quote:

Regardless, your driving techniques show very well on segment 10, where you crash into light poles to slow down really fast. Another point is that next to markers you started to turn just before them so you can align for later.

An additional note about the light post I crash into at 2:09 and my route around the corner immediately afterwards; I found that if I stayed another foot to the left to avoid hitting the poles, I would consistently fail the mission ('Vlad got away'), but this way I consistently get through. I figure maybe there are boxes you have to be within when Vlad reaches particular points in his route to not get the 'Vlad got away' message, rather than it being simply based upon your distance from Vlad; I can't see why such a small change in distance would consistently affect whether or not I fail the mission, otherwise.

[quote="IsraeliRD"]Uncle Vlad great driving (altough traffic wasn't as nice)[/quote]

Ty, though most of those vehicles are scripted (they usually are on chase missions).

[quote]Regardless, your driving techniques show very well on segment 10, where you crash into light poles to slow down really fast. Another point is that next to markers you started to turn just before them so you can align for later.[/quote]

An additional note about the light post I crash into at 2:09 and my route around the corner immediately afterwards; I found that if I stayed another foot to the left to avoid hitting the poles, I would consistently fail the mission ('Vlad got away'), but this way I consistently get through. I figure maybe there are boxes you have to be within when Vlad reaches particular points in his route to not get the 'Vlad got away' message, rather than it being simply based upon your distance from Vlad; I can't see why such a small change in distance would consistently affect whether or not I fail the mission, otherwise.

ExplodingCabbage

2011-03-29 08:02:12 am

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. The first major planning mistake of my own has come and bitten me in the arse. I should've held on to that cop car I stored in segment 1 instead of using it in segment 4, so that on Crime And Punishment I could taxi to it and use it instead of having to steal one.

I guess this doesn't necessarily mean redoing segment 4 and everything afterwards because I can still try and steal a cop car from the Broker police station without getting a wanted level. That's going to make Crime And Punishment a real bitch, though; I'll need to luck-manipulate it so that there IS a police car at the station, there AREN'T any cops there to see me steal it, and on top of that have the correct van have the TVs in it. I'm not even entirely sure yet whether it's possible for there not to be any cops outside the station. If it isn't, then it may be run restart time since if I'd have to redo seg 4 onwards anyway I might as well try to tidy up the execution in earlier segments while I'm at it.

Fuckity fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. The first major planning mistake of my own has come and bitten me in the arse. I should've held on to that cop car I stored in segment 1 instead of using it in segment 4, so that on Crime And Punishment I could taxi to it and use it instead of having to steal one.

I guess this doesn't necessarily mean redoing segment 4 and everything afterwards because I can still try and steal a cop car from the Broker police station without getting a wanted level. That's going to make Crime And Punishment a real bitch, though; I'll need to luck-manipulate it so that there IS a police car at the station, there AREN'T any cops there to see me steal it, and on top of that have the correct van have the TVs in it. I'm not even entirely sure yet whether it's possible for there not to be any cops outside the station. If it isn't, then it may be run restart time since if I'd have to redo seg 4 onwards anyway I might as well try to tidy up the execution in earlier segments while I'm at it.

Fuckity fuck.

DJS

2011-03-29 08:41:46 am

torch slug since 2006

Quote from ExplodingCabbage:

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. The first major planning mistake of my own has come and bitten me in the arse. I should've held on to that cop car I stored in segment 1 instead of using it in segment 4, so that on Crime And Punishment I could taxi to it and use it instead of having to steal one.

I guess this doesn't necessarily mean redoing segment 4 and everything afterwards because I can still try and steal a cop car from the Broker police station without getting a wanted level. That's going to make Crime And Punishment a real bitch, though; I'll need to luck-manipulate it so that there IS a police car at the station, there AREN'T any cops there to see me steal it, and on top of that have the correct van have the TVs in it. I'm not even entirely sure yet whether it's possible for there not to be any cops outside the station. If it isn't, then it may be run restart time since if I'd have to redo seg 4 onwards anyway I might as well try to tidy up the execution in earlier segments while I'm at it.

Fuckity fuck.

i hate when i do these kind of mistakes (both when speedrunning and non-speedrunning)...

[quote="ExplodingCabbage"]Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. The first major planning mistake of my own has come and bitten me in the arse. I should've held on to that cop car I stored in segment 1 instead of using it in segment 4, so that on Crime And Punishment I could taxi to it and use it instead of having to steal one.

I guess this doesn't necessarily mean redoing segment 4 and everything afterwards because I can still try and steal a cop car from the Broker police station without getting a wanted level. That's going to make Crime And Punishment a real bitch, though; I'll need to luck-manipulate it so that there IS a police car at the station, there AREN'T any cops there to see me steal it, and on top of that have the correct van have the TVs in it. I'm not even entirely sure yet whether it's possible for there not to be any cops outside the station. If it isn't, then it may be run restart time since if I'd have to redo seg 4 onwards anyway I might as well try to tidy up the execution in earlier segments while I'm at it.

Fuckity fuck.[/quote]

i hate when i do these kind of mistakes (both when speedrunning and non-speedrunning)...

Silmaranza

2011-03-29 09:18:57 am

EC, did you plan and practice the entire run in advance or are you just making up routes while you're advancing through the game? I highly suggest you plan the full run before doing any further serious run attempts and practice your full plan before doing the actual run. I did this with my GTA 3 run and I made a shitload of changes from my initial planning into what is now the final result, all stuff that you find out when you actually carry out what you've written on paper. I think it took me a couple of months of thinking about routes, trying out strategies and finding possible errors to get to a planning I considered optimal, and even then, after I seriously started running I found out things that could be better and made slight changes. It takes a bit of preparation but it's definitely worth the stress it prevents.

ExplodingCabbage

Edit history:

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 10:18:50 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 10:10:01 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 10:09:40 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 10:08:50 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 10:01:19 am

ExplodingCabbage: 2011-03-29 09:37:08 am

2011-03-29 09:36:43 am

Sil - I've been making it up as I go along. I'm going to take your advice now, I think. Though first I'm going to redo segments 4 and 5. The mission tree is completely linear up until then, and there's no downtime to store vehicles in, so there's no possibility of me getting anything wrong.

Update: New find. With my practiced and improved driving skills, I was able to pull off getting to the gambling den before Roman's 'they call me the janitor' line in segment 2. Looks like it's time for a total restart of the run. While I'm at it, I guess I might as well try to improve segment 1, although luck-manipulating a particular car to spawn in a particular place is a pain in the arse.

I need to revise for exams soon so I intend to plan the run out completely now and execute it later when time permits, probably over the summer. First though, I want to plan this run completely, and provide demonstration videos as I go along. I'll stick those on Dropbox, not YouTube, because I only want to upload final segments to YouTube.

Another new, accidental find. Something people who've played the game may already know is that in certain circumstances, Niko will teleport into vehicles when ordered to enter them if the doors are blocked. This also works with NPCs. I think you have to wait until they've chosen which door to head to (because I've seen NPCs get in the back of a car because the front passenger door was blocked before), but once they have done, if you drive the car into a position such that their target door becomes blocked, they teleport into the car.

Vids of both tricks are encoded and uploading now.

Okay, links:
Faster beginning of It's Your Call: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4533383/ItsYourCall_HQ.mp4
NPC teleport: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4533383/RomanTeleport_HQ.mp4

Sil - I've been making it up as I go along. I'm going to take your advice now, I think. Though first I'm going to redo segments 4 and 5. The mission tree is completely linear up until then, and there's no downtime to store vehicles in, so there's no possibility of me getting anything wrong.

Update: New find. With my practiced and improved driving skills, I was able to pull off getting to the gambling den before Roman's 'they call me the janitor' line in segment 2. Looks like it's time for a total restart of the run. While I'm at it, I guess I might as well try to improve segment 1, although luck-manipulating a particular car to spawn in a particular place is a pain in the arse.

I need to revise for exams soon so I intend to plan the run out completely now and execute it later when time permits, probably over the summer. First though, I want to plan this run completely, and provide demonstration videos as I go along. I'll stick those on Dropbox, not YouTube, because I only want to upload final segments to YouTube.

Another new, accidental find. Something people who've played the game may already know is that in certain circumstances, Niko will teleport into vehicles when ordered to enter them if the doors are blocked. This also works with NPCs. I think you have to wait until they've chosen which door to head to (because I've seen NPCs get in the back of a car because the front passenger door was blocked before), but once they have done, if you drive the car into a position such that their target door becomes blocked, they teleport into the car.

Vids of both tricks are encoded and uploading now.

Okay, links:
Faster beginning of It's Your Call: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4533383/ItsYourCall_HQ.mp4
NPC teleport: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4533383/RomanTeleport_HQ.mp4