Hitman: Blood Money - May 29th, 2009

2009-05-29 09:07:25 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Mark 'ExplodingCabbage' Amery's single-segment Rookie run

Verifier Responses

Before Mark's run came along, someone else submitted a run. Responses are below.

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Video/sound quality is great, no signs of cheating. It should also be noted that the runner completes all the optional objectives.

I timed the missions (or checked the ending, he didn't give much time for that) though I wasn't asked to, I was just curious to see them myself.

Individual levels:

DOAS 3:10 (manually timed)
Good mission, especially liked the way he used shotgun to move the bodies closer to boxes near the beginning.

AVY 1:20
Some trouble hitting the first target, but it doesn't matter since he has to wait for the elevator anyway.

CD 0:29
Nothing to complain about here.

Flatline 4:21
Like in the previous run, the mine could have been used sooner. Cost a few seconds, but that's all. After that, it's just unskippable cutscenes and waiting.

ANL 0:43
Misses the target at first, but still gets a great time compared to other similar single level runs.

TMOC 1:12
Over 30 seconds faster than the previous run and overall pretty nice. Question to Siyko: Can you explain what you were looking for when you came out the door? I know there's some way to see if the sniper is there, I just never understood it.

YBWO 1:32
Nothing worth mentioning.

DOTM 1:19
Fast and simple. "Dies" when escaping, but that doesn't affect anything in the run.

TDDUP 1:06
A bit of time is lost in the end while finding the priest and getting the boat key.

AHOC 6:04
Mission is based on a timer, not much can be done about it.

ADWTD 2:55
Gets a bit lost downstairs, but gets back on tracks quickly enough.

AXXV 2:22
Difficulties when placing the mine and switched the lights

Requiem 0:37 (manually timed)
Unfortunately had to reload before killing the priest, which cost maybe a little time. He would have had to reload anyway, but he could have ran closer to the last enemies if the priest was dead by that time.

Towards the end of the run, fully upgraded Silverballer would have been a better choice of weapon that MP5, but it seemed to be doing it's job well enough.

Overall it's a fast run, I'll say yes to it. Accepted.

Some stuff I noticed in the comments that could use editing:

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Till death do we part:
This level is unique, because there's someone here i'm NOT supposed to kill (well this and Flatline I guess).

Also TMOC.

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Amendment XXV:
I mess up a bit on my way here, but it doesn't matter because i would have had to just wait for the VP to walk around a bit more.

I suppose that means the assassin? And his walking is based on if your movements near the window (he goes away when close and gets back when you leave), so it does matter. Unless it doesn't happen when in that spot, which is something I have never checked.

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Requiem:
The goal here is to not leave any witnesses, and the damn priest and reporter have an unfortunate habit of running away once I start shooting people, so I shoot them early.

The priest was actually one of the last persons to be shot.

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route planning was excellent but the runner makes lots of little mistakes (such as failing to shoot open the locks on most doors that he tries to, accidentally or intentionally picking up something that is unnecessary). however, these mistakes probably cost under 15 seconds across the entire run.

as usual, i would have preferred an SS but since he's playing on rookie, the notoriety system is disabled (which makes guards recognize you easier if you do earlier levels less than stealthily). for this reason, i think IL runs should only be done on rookie or else you would have to keep track of your notoriety.

here's a question though: the last level "requiem" is technically an optional level. if you do not move, the priest performs the last rites, the credits roll, and then 47 gets cremated. a 'bad' ending, no doubt but wouldn't that technically mean the timer ends at the end of the second to last level. i like seeing that extra level, i just wanted to raise that point in case you need to harmonize it with SDA policy.

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Hitman: Blood Money comments:

Audio/video quality: Great.

Overall: I liked the previous one and this one is better than that. Obvious accept.

Death of a Showman: Nice.

A Vintage Year: This one didn't go so well. Bad aim slowed him down on the first dude and some doors. He also hesitated before killing the dude in the mansion, which was odd.

Curtains Down: Some bad aim strikes again, sadly. The remote mine seemed like a backup plan, but I guess it isn't much of a problem.

Flatline: Good.

A New Life: Also good. Nice of those dudes to open the front door too.

The Murder of Crows: Very nice shooting, but a little rough at the end. Some trouble with that first door too, which I think that stupid NPC was trying to open.

You Better Watch Out: Took a few tries to nail the first guy and there was a noticeable brain fart after killing Lorne. Other than that though, things went well.

Death on the Mississippi: Nicely done.

Till Death Do Us Part: I'm confused as to what was going on at the end, like last time. The only thing I know was a mistake was shooting the door before the T.V. room, when it would have been better to just open the darn thing normally. Not a big deal at all though.

A House of Cards: Well done, like before.

A Dance with the Devil: Small mistake when waiting for the first elevator, because he was too busy slaughtering some dude. The top area went much better than last time, that's for sure. The gold dude was right freaking there when he opened the door. Some fumbling in the lower area when looking for the chick, which looked pretty rough.

Still decent enough overall, if you ask me.

Amendment XXV: Those doorknobs must be ninjas, because he's missing a lot of shots. Also, the hesitation before getting that first guy was kind of like a "deer in headlights" thing. Other than that though, I don't see much to complain about.

Requiem: No complaints.

Now you can imagine Mark wasn't too happy with this run.

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Okay, I've watched the Hitman: Blood Money run. Firstly: there's no cheating, video/audio is fine. There is a question of how to time this run - if we were to use real time, I'd reject it straight off based on poor menu handling alone (the runner seems to be trying to get through the menus quickly, but makes multiple mistakes, going into upgrade menus for stuff he doesn't need to upgrade and doing everything with the keyboard when the mouse could speed things up significantly). I'm going to be charitable and assume this is because the runner intended the in-game timer to be used, which doesn't time menus. This leaves the question of how to deal with Death Of A Showman and Reqiuem, after which the in-game timer is not shown. It also leaves the question of why the bastard runner HAMMERS ENTER THROUGH THE SCREEN THAT SHOWS THE TIME FOR EACH LEVEL SO WE ONLY SEE IT FOR ONE FRAME. ARGH! I figure the best we can do is use the in-game timer for everything except Death Of A Showman and Reqiuem and manually time them (there is a precedent for this on SDA - the Seoul level of the Splinter Cell Chaos Theory run. Also, there should be no difference between manual timing and in-game timing for Death Of A Showman and Reqiuem since the runner doesn't enter the inventory once in them.)

Quality of play/execution is impressive; mistakes are few and mostly minor. Also, the runner luck-manipulates A Murder Of Crows successfully to get the randomly-placed target in the right position.

However, there are multiple significant planning mistakes throughout the run which are much bigger than the execution mistakes.

In A Vintage Year, it was correctly established in the old verification thread that, with the escape route that Siyko took, the level was effectively on a timer due to the scripted elevator he used. However, what nobody picked up on was the fact that there is a faster escape route altogether; instead of using the elevator, to leave by the window to the left of the second target, then run down the hill outside to get to the seaplane. This is around 4 seconds faster. Runner should've tested this.

Curtains Down was good.

Secondly, in Flatline, he throws the mine he uses to draw out the cells area guards MUCH too late. If he threw it earlier, those guards would have opened not only the keycard door but also the door whose lock he picks in this run BEFORE he arrives. This mistake costs him 6 seconds.

I'm guessing the runner assumed that after sedating the CIA agent, the level was effectively on a timer until he arrives at the morgue. Well, the runner was wrong. From the moment that the agent starts to be removed from his cell the level is on a timer. But that event does NOT occur a fixed amount of time after the agent is sedated, rather it occurs once the player gets outside a predefined area around the room with the cells. The fastest way to get out of this area is to take the fire-exit-like door out of the room and then jump over the balcony. Instead, the runner leaves the same way he enters, gets bogged down in combat and makes no attempt to be fast, believing he no longer needs to be. This costs him a huge amount of time, 9 or 10 seconds. The level could be done 15 seconds faster purely with these two route improvements and without making the route any harder at all.

A New Life was good.

Now, A Murder Of Crows. Certainly, the runner luck-manipulates the target into the right position, which must have required him to bin many runs, and that is admirable. But the route he uses once he's done that is shite. Firstly, he waits until the end of the level to kill the target that starts straight across the street from him - why? You can throw a mine through the door at the very start of the level and kill the target there and then. Then you can throw your remaining mine through the window of the target the runner kills second instead of going up the stairs - I presume the runner didn't bother with this because he thought he was going to have to wait around at the end of the level anyway. Adding together these mistakes you have 25 seconds wasted here. Also, note that neither of these throws is at all hard - my first attempt at running the level for testing, I pulled off both (having never tried the throws before) and killed both targets, finishing with a time 20 seconds faster than the runner's despite not knowing where I was going and having to check my map. And the worst that would happen if you mess them up is that you revert to the route the runner used, so there's no reason not to attempt them.

You Better Watch Out was good.

On Death On The Mississippi, 2 seconds of walking time could've been saved by spraying down the first target with the SMG the moment the runner gets to the top of the steps at 15:55, then going left and heading through the doors to the second target. I have no idea why the runner chose a longer route.

Nothing severe on Till Death Do Us Part, though since timing is being done using the in-game timer he should've used his adrenaline/painkillers to heal just before the end (which is all done in the inventory menu so costs no time) allowing him to drop down straight onto the ground and survive the fall, rather than having to drop down onto the fence first. Including the hesitation before dropping onto the fence to make sure he doesn't miss it as well, I'd say this costs a second, maybe slightly less.

Something goes wrong in A House Of Cards. I don't know what. I can complete that mission in comfortably under 6 minutes, and I've seen it done on youtube too, yet it takes him 6:04. It seems that he loses over a second each time a limousine arrives. I'm not sure exactly what causes this, but I just ran some tests and found that when I killed nothing the Sheikh arrived 10 seconds earlier than when I killed everything in sight and left the bodies in the road, despite being careful never to block a limousine. It appears that it takes longer for people to exit the limos when there are bodies nearby or combat going on, and once they're out the limos take longer to move off - the latter possibly a result of being blocked by their panicked ex-passengers. Admittedly I haven't tested this very thoroughly and don't really want to right now; I suggest rather than taking my analysis at face value you ask the runner whether he has any idea what causes the lost time in this level and whether it's random or controllable. If he doesn't know... well, it's his job to, so as far as I'm concerned this is 8 seconds of planning mistakes unless the runner has tested the level thoroughly and concluded time discrepancies are random.
Oh, also, the runner should've used the ample time he had before the final target arrived to jam open the doors to the exit using corpses. This would've saved mere fractions of a second and the in-game timer is in seconds, but there's always the chance that it'll save a second if you finish on the borderline between two times so it should've been done anyway.

Moving on. By my reckoning/crude testing, it's at least a couple of seconds faster on A Dance With The Devil to go down to the hell level via the stairs instead of the elevator (factoring out the time the runner lost struggling to find the final target). You end up with much less walking once you're down there if you go down the stairs. I'm going to hesitantly call this a 3-second mistake - potentially you could save more, but I'm not sure how much.

On Amendment XXV, there are two planning mistakes, one minor and one major. The minor one is wasting a second shooting at a lock that he should've known was indestructible. The major one is how he does the trick bombing the Oval Office. Basically, he should've thrown the bomb instead of walking up to the wall and fucking around for several seconds trying to place it. This would've saved 12 seconds. In fact, it would've saved more than this, since the 12 seconds figure doesn't factor in that you have to detonate the bomb when the target is near the outside wall, and the target had JUST gone past where he needed to be when the runner placed his bomb, so the runner had to wait for him to come all the way round again. On the other hand, there is the possibility of misthrowing a bomb if you choose to throw it instead of plant it - but this wouldn't cost more than 3 seconds, since you have two bombs and you'd then know how to adjust your shot to make the second land in the right place. So I'll settle for labelling this level as having 13 seconds of planning mistakes - 12 seconds from the bomb planting, and 1 second from shooting at an invincible lock.

Requiem is okay. Possibly should've grabbed a pistol off the ground just before having to reload his silverballers since the reload time on those things is ridiculous. That might leave him with ammo problems though. Not sure what'd be faster on average. Maybe I should test it? Nah, that's too much effort. I'll let this one go.

Here's a breakdown of times for the run:

Death Of A Showman: 3:10 (manually timed from the first frame of the level to the first frame of the loading screen after the level. Is this the appropriate way to time it? No idea.)
A Vintage Year: 1:20
Curtains Down: 0:29
Flatline: 4:21
A New Life: 0:43
A Murder Of Crows: 1:12
You Better Watch Out: 1:32
Death On The Mississippi: 1:19
Till Death Do Us Part: 1:06
A House Of Cards: 6:04
A Dance With The Devil: 2:55
Amendment XXV: 2:22
Requiem: 0:36 (manually timed, like Death Of A Showman)
Total Time: 27:09 (give or take a few seconds depending on how you handle the manual timing).

Adding up all the planning mistakes I identified, you get to something like 1 minute, 3 seconds of planning errors, even without including the weirdness in A House Of Cards. If the runner can't defend himself over A House Of Cards then it's 1 minute 10 seconds of planning errors. Now, a little over a minute of execution errors in a 27 minute single-segment run I would say was easily forgivable. But over a minute of PLANNING errors, in a run that is honestly fairly simple? That's no more forgivable than it would be in a segmented run. I suspect the other verifiers will accept this run because there are only a few seconds of execution mistakes and they won't go to the effort of finding the planning errors. Having found them, I have to REJECT this run, with the hope that the runner will take my route improvements on board and come back in a few weeks with a 26 minute run that will be genuinely SDA-worthy.

I mean he wasn't happy with the run at all.

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Mike, a couple of amendments/additions to my last message. Firstly, what I said about the slight route change at the start of Death On The Mississippi was somewhat unfair; it actually takes a lot of luck to hit at that distance so you can easily spend 2 seconds shooting, making it tough to call which route is really better. However, I also found two more planning issues. Firstly, on Death Of A Showman, the runner doesn't skip the cutscenes instantly; they should've been skipped on the first frame. This costs exactly 0.8 of a second. The trick to consistently skipping them on the first frame is to enter a state in which the menu cannot be entered (e.g. by holding a coin back ready to throw) and then hammering the 'Escape' key. It's small but it's a planning mistake and totally unavoidable, so I point it out anyway.

Secondly, on Till Death Do Us Part, the runner should've equipped Rapid Fire on the SMG, it would make killing the first target almost instant instead of taking a second.

Thirdly, I noticed that the point about throwing the mine earlier in Flatline was made in the last verification thread, so it's disappointing it wasn't taken on board.

In fact, he seems extremely disappointed in the run.

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Mike,
Sorry to send so many messages on the same run. Anyway, I did two test runs, single-segmenting Hitman: Blood Money (with one caveat on the 'single-segmented' bit - I restarted A Murder Of Crows until the target spawned in the right position. For the purpose of a test run, this made more sense than replaying the first 5 levels over and over just to get a vital bit of luck-manipulation to work). The first run I fucked up, the second I beat the runner's time by 92 seconds (excluding Death Of A Showman and Requiem; I played these levels, but didn't bother to record them and time them, I just took the times off the in-game timer for those levels which have one. Anyway I doubt the timerless levels would've made much difference; I was a little slower than the runner on Death Of A Showman and a little faster on Reqiuem). Anyway, if a run can be beaten by this much in only two attempts, it's clearly not SDA-worthy. I'd expect a run in this category to be over 100 seconds faster than the one the runner submitted this time before I'd accept it.

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ Mark, why don't you just submit a run? Oh wait, he did. Responses below:

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Verifier: Hanzo just reminded me: I watched that Hitman run this morning. Definite yes vote, even moreso than the previous runs.
Verifier: It's like a more polished version of those, so I don't think I need to go into much detail.
Verifier: I can't say I liked the route to the plane in A Vintage Year though. It looked so slow. :/
me: I forgot to paste the comments IIRC
me: maybe that will explain everything
Verifier: No, I got those.
Verifier: I have to re-read them.
Verifier: He doesn't explain the change there.
Verifier: Regardless though, the other stuff made up for it. Particularly, the new plan for Till Death Do Us Part and the smoothness of A Murder of Crows.
Verifier: The other thing was that the game got brighter when he went into first-person mode. I'm not familiar with the PC version, so I don't know if that is normal or not.
me: [20:06] Mark: ha
me: [20:06] Mark: well actually he's sort of right
me: [20:07] Mark: it ended up one second slower than if i wouldve used siyko's route, since i misestimated the times of each route due to getting the time of siyko's run which is affected by hitman's weird timer / varied gamespeed issues
me: there's your answer for a vintage year
me: [20:09] Mark: on average the route is faster though, i just executed it badly that time
Verifier: Oh, ok. It wasn't a huge deal anyway.

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I'll keep this short. Good audio/video quality, no signs of cheating. The brightness goes a bit crazy sometimes in fps mode, which is a bug in version 1.2.

The routes for all levels are nearly flawless. TDDUP has a bit odd route, but that costs only about 5 seconds, if thatPlaying is great as well, the mistakes don't cost much time. Only little things like taking 2-3 bursts to kill someone or grabbing a body when trying to escape. Approved for sure, the run is 3 minutes faster than Siyko's run, which was already pretty good.

Noticed some typos in the description. Going by the Youtube accounts, the people mentioned are TI2ophy, TheKotti and HitGod47. Also, the sixth mission is called The Murder of Crows, not A MoC. (abbreviations lol)

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Hello Mike,

here's a quick verif from me... no death no cheats, good video and sound quality (as far as I can tell).

Death Of A Showman: 3:05

Very quick beggining nothing much to say here. Maybe grabbing the TMP wasn't compulsory.

A Vintage Year: 1:15

Same thing here, jut maybe a little loss due to a guard blocking the way, nothing important.

Curtains Down: 0:29

In and out.

Flatline: 4:03

No flaws here either for me. (why doesn't the corpse take more time to get to the morgue when everybody else is dead ? :p)

A New Life: 0:41

A new quick mission... maybe some guards could have been dealt better thus avoiding the urge to take pills...

A Murder Of Crows: 0:42

Way to go ! didn't know it was possible to do this mission this quick.. nice "luck" (and lots of tries..)

You Better Watch Out: 1:22

As i didn't experiment the trick myself, I don't really know but maybe less bullets would have been necessary to make the senator flee.
Little door mistake at the end.

Death On The Mississippi: 1:12

Nearly flawless.. just missed a step on the end.

Till Death Do Us Part: 0:43

Here too... weird action at the end, and pills were probably not necessary.

A House Of Cards: 5:59

This a pain in the neck... well nothing can be done about it. good apreciation of the remote detonator distance.

A Dance With The Devil: 2:16

Very good run.

Amendment XXV: 1:54

Nothing really revelant to say... the second bomb was jsut extra cautious... well at that point it's understandable.

Requiem: 0:26

really quick, even if I get the felling it could have turned out smoother.

Overall thoughts :

Well, this game is just difficult, and it can take really really a lot amount of time to get somthing close to this run even if the level is "easy".
I can't really imagine something better then 20 seconds on this. The only big problem about this run would be that the runner is to cautious.
Thus it is An accept for me.

Decision: Accept

Reason: I think this game has nearly been ran to death at this point.

Thread title:

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Mark 'ExplodingCabbage' Amery's single-segment Rookie run

[b]Verifier Responses[/b]

Before Mark's run came along, someone else submitted a run. Responses are below.

[quote]Video/sound quality is great, no signs of cheating. It should also be noted that the runner completes all the optional objectives.

I timed the missions (or checked the ending, he didn't give much time for that) though I wasn't asked to, I was just curious to see them myself.

Individual levels:

DOAS 3:10 (manually timed)
Good mission, especially liked the way he used shotgun to move the bodies closer to boxes near the beginning.

AVY 1:20
Some trouble hitting the first target, but it doesn't matter since he has to wait for the elevator anyway.

CD 0:29
Nothing to complain about here.

Flatline 4:21
Like in the previous run, the mine could have been used sooner. Cost a few seconds, but that's all. After that, it's just unskippable cutscenes and waiting.

ANL 0:43
Misses the target at first, but still gets a great time compared to other similar single level runs.

TMOC 1:12
Over 30 seconds faster than the previous run and overall pretty nice. Question to Siyko: Can you explain what you were looking for when you came out the door? I know there's some way to see if the sniper is there, I just never understood it.

YBWO 1:32
Nothing worth mentioning.

DOTM 1:19
Fast and simple. "Dies" when escaping, but that doesn't affect anything in the run.

TDDUP 1:06
A bit of time is lost in the end while finding the priest and getting the boat key.

AHOC 6:04
Mission is based on a timer, not much can be done about it.

ADWTD 2:55
Gets a bit lost downstairs, but gets back on tracks quickly enough.

AXXV 2:22
Difficulties when placing the mine and switched the lights

Requiem 0:37 (manually timed)
Unfortunately had to reload before killing the priest, which cost maybe a little time. He would have had to reload anyway, but he could have ran closer to the last enemies if the priest was dead by that time.

Towards the end of the run, fully upgraded Silverballer would have been a better choice of weapon that MP5, but it seemed to be doing it's job well enough.

Overall it's a fast run, I'll say yes to it. Accepted.

Some stuff I noticed in the comments that could use editing:
[quote]Till death do we part:
This level is unique, because there's someone here i'm NOT supposed to kill (well this and Flatline I guess).[/quote]Also TMOC.[quote]Amendment XXV:
I mess up a bit on my way here, but it doesn't matter because i would have had to just wait for the VP to walk around a bit more.[/quote]I suppose that means the assassin? And his walking is based on if your movements near the window (he goes away when close and gets back when you leave), so it does matter. Unless it doesn't happen when in that spot, which is something I have never checked.[quote]Requiem:
The goal here is to not leave any witnesses, and the damn priest and reporter have an unfortunate habit of running away once I start shooting people, so I shoot them early.[/quote]The priest was actually one of the last persons to be shot.
[/quote]

[quote]route planning was excellent but the runner makes lots of little mistakes (such as failing to shoot open the locks on most doors that he tries to, accidentally or intentionally picking up something that is unnecessary). however, these mistakes probably cost under 15 seconds across the entire run.

as usual, i would have preferred an SS but since he's playing on rookie, the notoriety system is disabled (which makes guards recognize you easier if you do earlier levels less than stealthily). for this reason, i think IL runs should only be done on rookie or else you would have to keep track of your notoriety.

here's a question though: the last level "requiem" is technically an optional level. if you do not move, the priest performs the last rites, the credits roll, and then 47 gets cremated. a 'bad' ending, no doubt but wouldn't that technically mean the timer ends at the end of the second to last level. i like seeing that extra level, i just wanted to raise that point in case you need to harmonize it with SDA policy.[/quote]

[quote]Hitman: Blood Money comments:

Audio/video quality: Great.

Overall: I liked the previous one and this one is better than that. Obvious accept.

Death of a Showman: Nice.

A Vintage Year: This one didn't go so well. Bad aim slowed him down on the first dude and some doors. He also hesitated before killing the dude in the mansion, which was odd.

Curtains Down: Some bad aim strikes again, sadly. The remote mine seemed like a backup plan, but I guess it isn't much of a problem.

Flatline: Good.

A New Life: Also good. Nice of those dudes to open the front door too.

The Murder of Crows: Very nice shooting, but a little rough at the end. Some trouble with that first door too, which I think that stupid NPC was trying to open.

You Better Watch Out: Took a few tries to nail the first guy and there was a noticeable brain fart after killing Lorne. Other than that though, things went well.

Death on the Mississippi: Nicely done.

Till Death Do Us Part: I'm confused as to what was going on at the end, like last time. The only thing I know was a mistake was shooting the door before the T.V. room, when it would have been better to just open the darn thing normally. Not a big deal at all though.

A House of Cards: Well done, like before.

A Dance with the Devil: Small mistake when waiting for the first elevator, because he was too busy slaughtering some dude. The top area went much better than last time, that's for sure. The gold dude was right freaking there when he opened the door. Some fumbling in the lower area when looking for the chick, which looked pretty rough.

Still decent enough overall, if you ask me.

Amendment XXV: Those doorknobs must be ninjas, because he's missing a lot of shots. Also, the hesitation before getting that first guy was kind of like a "deer in headlights" thing. Other than that though, I don't see much to complain about.

Requiem: No complaints.[/quote]

Now you can imagine Mark wasn't too happy with this run.

[quote]Okay, I've watched the Hitman: Blood Money run. Firstly: there's no cheating, video/audio is fine. There is a question of how to time this run - if we were to use real time, I'd reject it straight off based on poor menu handling alone (the runner seems to be trying to get through the menus quickly, but makes multiple mistakes, going into upgrade menus for stuff he doesn't need to upgrade and doing everything with the keyboard when the mouse could speed things up significantly). I'm going to be charitable and assume this is because the runner intended the in-game timer to be used, which doesn't time menus. This leaves the question of how to deal with Death Of A Showman and Reqiuem, after which the in-game timer is not shown. It also leaves the question of why the bastard runner HAMMERS ENTER THROUGH THE SCREEN THAT SHOWS THE TIME FOR EACH LEVEL SO WE ONLY SEE IT FOR ONE FRAME. ARGH! I figure the best we can do is use the in-game timer for everything except Death Of A Showman and Reqiuem and manually time them (there is a precedent for this on SDA - the Seoul level of the Splinter Cell Chaos Theory run. Also, there should be no difference between manual timing and in-game timing for Death Of A Showman and Reqiuem since the runner doesn't enter the inventory once in them.)

Quality of play/execution is impressive; mistakes are few and mostly minor. Also, the runner luck-manipulates A Murder Of Crows successfully to get the randomly-placed target in the right position.

However, there are multiple significant planning mistakes throughout the run which are much bigger than the execution mistakes.

In A Vintage Year, it was correctly established in the old verification thread that, with the escape route that Siyko took, the level was effectively on a timer due to the scripted elevator he used. However, what nobody picked up on was the fact that there is a faster escape route altogether; instead of using the elevator, to leave by the window to the left of the second target, then run down the hill outside to get to the seaplane. This is around 4 seconds faster. Runner should've tested this.

Curtains Down was good.

Secondly, in Flatline, he throws the mine he uses to draw out the cells area guards MUCH too late. If he threw it earlier, those guards would have opened not only the keycard door but also the door whose lock he picks in this run BEFORE he arrives. This mistake costs him 6 seconds.

I'm guessing the runner assumed that after sedating the CIA agent, the level was effectively on a timer until he arrives at the morgue. Well, the runner was wrong. From the moment that the agent starts to be removed from his cell the level is on a timer. But that event does NOT occur a fixed amount of time after the agent is sedated, rather it occurs once the player gets outside a predefined area around the room with the cells. The fastest way to get out of this area is to take the fire-exit-like door out of the room and then jump over the balcony. Instead, the runner leaves the same way he enters, gets bogged down in combat and makes no attempt to be fast, believing he no longer needs to be. This costs him a huge amount of time, 9 or 10 seconds. The level could be done 15 seconds faster purely with these two route improvements and without making the route any harder at all.

A New Life was good.

Now, A Murder Of Crows. Certainly, the runner luck-manipulates the target into the right position, which must have required him to bin many runs, and that is admirable. But the route he uses once he's done that is shite. Firstly, he waits until the end of the level to kill the target that starts straight across the street from him - why? You can throw a mine through the door at the very start of the level and kill the target there and then. Then you can throw your remaining mine through the window of the target the runner kills second instead of going up the stairs - I presume the runner didn't bother with this because he thought he was going to have to wait around at the end of the level anyway. Adding together these mistakes you have 25 seconds wasted here. Also, note that neither of these throws is at all hard - my first attempt at running the level for testing, I pulled off both (having never tried the throws before) and killed both targets, finishing with a time 20 seconds faster than the runner's despite not knowing where I was going and having to check my map. And the worst that would happen if you mess them up is that you revert to the route the runner used, so there's no reason not to attempt them.

You Better Watch Out was good.

On Death On The Mississippi, 2 seconds of walking time could've been saved by spraying down the first target with the SMG the moment the runner gets to the top of the steps at 15:55, then going left and heading through the doors to the second target. I have no idea why the runner chose a longer route.

Nothing severe on Till Death Do Us Part, though since timing is being done using the in-game timer he should've used his adrenaline/painkillers to heal just before the end (which is all done in the inventory menu so costs no time) allowing him to drop down straight onto the ground and survive the fall, rather than having to drop down onto the fence first. Including the hesitation before dropping onto the fence to make sure he doesn't miss it as well, I'd say this costs a second, maybe slightly less.
 
Something goes wrong in A House Of Cards. I don't know what. I can complete that mission in comfortably under 6 minutes, and I've seen it done on youtube too, yet it takes him 6:04. It seems that he loses over a second each time a limousine arrives. I'm not sure exactly what causes this, but I just ran some tests and found that when I killed nothing the Sheikh arrived 10 seconds earlier than when I killed everything in sight and left the bodies in the road, despite being careful never to block a limousine. It appears that it takes longer for people to exit the limos when there are bodies nearby or combat going on, and once they're out the limos take longer to move off - the latter possibly a result of being blocked by their panicked ex-passengers. Admittedly I haven't tested this very thoroughly and don't really want to right now; I suggest rather than taking my analysis at face value you ask the runner whether he has any idea what causes the lost time in this level and whether it's random or controllable. If he doesn't know... well, it's his job to, so as far as I'm concerned this is 8 seconds of planning mistakes unless the runner has tested the level thoroughly and concluded time discrepancies are random.
Oh, also, the runner should've used the ample time he had before the final target arrived to jam open the doors to the exit using corpses. This would've saved mere fractions of a second and the in-game timer is in seconds, but there's always the chance that it'll save a second if you finish on the borderline between two times so it should've been done anyway.

Moving on. By my reckoning/crude testing, it's at least a couple of seconds faster on A Dance With The Devil to go down to the hell level via the stairs instead of the elevator (factoring out the time the runner lost struggling to find the final target). You end up with much less walking once you're down there if you go down the stairs. I'm going to hesitantly call this a 3-second mistake - potentially you could save more, but I'm not sure how much.

On Amendment XXV, there are two planning mistakes, one minor and one major. The minor one is wasting a second shooting at a lock that he should've known was indestructible. The major one is how he does the trick bombing the Oval Office. Basically, he should've thrown the bomb instead of walking up to the wall and fucking around for several seconds trying to place it. This would've saved 12 seconds. In fact, it would've saved more than this, since the 12 seconds figure doesn't factor in that you have to detonate the bomb when the target is near the outside wall, and the target had JUST gone past where he needed to be when the runner placed his bomb, so the runner had to wait for him to come all the way round again. On the other hand, there is the possibility of misthrowing a bomb if you choose to throw it instead of plant it - but this wouldn't cost more than 3 seconds, since you have two bombs and you'd then know how to adjust your shot to make the second land in the right place. So I'll settle for labelling this level as having 13 seconds of planning mistakes - 12 seconds from the bomb planting, and 1 second from shooting at an invincible lock.

Requiem is okay. Possibly should've grabbed a pistol off the ground just before having to reload his silverballers since the reload time on those things is ridiculous. That might leave him with ammo problems though. Not sure what'd be faster on average. Maybe I should test it? Nah, that's too much effort. I'll let this one go.

Here's a breakdown of times for the run:

Death Of A Showman: 3:10 (manually timed from the first frame of the level to the first frame of the loading screen after the level. Is this the appropriate way to time it? No idea.)
A Vintage Year: 1:20
Curtains Down: 0:29
Flatline: 4:21
A New Life: 0:43
A Murder Of Crows: 1:12
You Better Watch Out: 1:32
Death On The Mississippi: 1:19
Till Death Do Us Part: 1:06
A House Of Cards: 6:04
A Dance With The Devil: 2:55
Amendment XXV: 2:22
Requiem: 0:36 (manually timed, like Death Of A Showman)
Total Time: 27:09 (give or take a few seconds depending on how you handle the manual timing).

Adding up all the planning mistakes I identified, you get to something like 1 minute, 3 seconds of planning errors, even without including the weirdness in A House Of Cards. If the runner can't defend himself over A House Of Cards then it's 1 minute 10 seconds of planning errors. Now, a little over a minute of execution errors in a 27 minute single-segment run I would say was easily forgivable. But over a minute of PLANNING errors, in a run that is honestly fairly simple?  That's no more forgivable than it would be in a segmented run. I suspect the other verifiers will accept this run because there are only a few seconds of execution mistakes and they won't go to the effort of finding the planning errors. Having found them, I have to REJECT this run, with the hope that the runner will take my route improvements on board and come back in a few weeks with a 26 minute run that will be genuinely SDA-worthy.[/quote]

I mean he wasn't happy with the run at all.

[quote]Mike, a couple of amendments/additions to my last message. Firstly, what I said about the slight route change at the start of Death On The Mississippi was somewhat unfair; it actually takes a lot of luck to hit at that distance so you can easily spend 2 seconds shooting, making it tough to call which route is really better. However, I also found two more planning issues. Firstly, on Death Of A Showman, the runner doesn't skip the cutscenes instantly; they should've been skipped on the first frame. This costs exactly 0.8 of a second. The trick to consistently skipping them on the first frame is to enter a state in which the menu cannot be entered (e.g. by holding a coin back ready to throw) and then hammering the 'Escape' key. It's small but it's a planning mistake and totally unavoidable, so I point it out anyway.

Secondly, on Till Death Do Us Part, the runner should've equipped Rapid Fire on the SMG, it would make killing the first target almost instant instead of taking a second.

Thirdly, I noticed that the point about throwing the mine earlier in Flatline was made in the last verification thread, so it's disappointing it wasn't taken on board.[/quote]

In fact, he seems extremely disappointed in the run.

[quote]Mike,
Sorry to send so many messages on the same run. Anyway, I did two test runs, single-segmenting Hitman: Blood Money (with one caveat on the 'single-segmented' bit - I restarted A Murder Of Crows until the target spawned in the right position. For the purpose of a test run, this made more sense than replaying the first 5 levels over and over just to get a vital bit of luck-manipulation to work). The first run I fucked up, the second I beat the runner's time by 92 seconds (excluding Death Of A Showman and Requiem; I played these levels, but didn't bother to record them and time them, I just took the times off the in-game timer for those levels which have one. Anyway I doubt the timerless levels would've made much difference; I was a little slower than the runner on Death Of A Showman and a little faster on Reqiuem).  Anyway, if a run can be beaten by this much in only two attempts, it's clearly not SDA-worthy. I'd expect a run in this category to be over 100 seconds faster than the one the runner submitted this time before I'd accept it.[/quote]

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ Mark, why don't you just submit a run? Oh wait, he did. Responses below:

[quote]Verifier: Hanzo just reminded me: I watched that Hitman run this morning. Definite yes vote, even moreso than the previous runs.
Verifier: It's like a more polished version of those, so I don't think I need to go into much detail.
Verifier: I can't say I liked the route to the plane in A Vintage Year though. It looked so slow. :/
me: I forgot to paste the comments IIRC
me: maybe that will explain everything
Verifier: No, I got those.
Verifier: I have to re-read them.
Verifier: He doesn't explain the change there.
Verifier: Regardless though, the other stuff made up for it. Particularly, the new plan for Till Death Do Us Part and the smoothness of A Murder of Crows.
Verifier: The other thing was that the game got brighter when he went into first-person mode. I'm not familiar with the PC version, so I don't know if that is normal or not.
me: [20:06] Mark: ha
me: [20:06] Mark: well actually he's sort of right
me: [20:07] Mark: it ended up one second slower than if i wouldve used siyko's route, since i misestimated the times of each route due to getting the time of siyko's run which is affected by hitman's weird timer / varied gamespeed issues
me: there's your answer for a vintage year
me: [20:09] Mark: on average the route is faster though, i just executed it badly that time
Verifier: Oh, ok. It wasn't a huge deal anyway.[/quote]

[quote]I'll keep this short. Good audio/video quality, no signs of cheating. The brightness goes a bit crazy sometimes in fps mode, which is a bug in version 1.2.

The routes for all levels are nearly flawless. TDDUP has a bit odd route, but that costs only about 5 seconds, if thatPlaying is great as well, the mistakes don't cost much time. Only little things like taking 2-3 bursts to kill someone or grabbing a body when trying to escape. Approved for sure, the run is 3 minutes faster than Siyko's run, which was already pretty good.

Noticed some typos in the description. Going by the Youtube accounts, the people mentioned are TI2ophy, TheKotti and HitGod47. Also, the sixth mission is called The Murder of Crows, not A MoC. (abbreviations lol)[/quote]

[quote]Hello Mike,

here's a quick verif from me... no death no cheats, good video and sound quality (as far as I can tell).

Death Of A Showman: 3:05

Very quick beggining nothing much to say here. Maybe grabbing the TMP wasn't compulsory.

A Vintage Year: 1:15

Same thing here, jut maybe a little loss due to a guard blocking the way, nothing important.

Curtains Down: 0:29

In and out.

Flatline: 4:03

No flaws here either for me. (why doesn't the corpse take more time to get to the morgue when everybody else is dead ? :p)

A New Life: 0:41

A new quick mission... maybe some guards could have been dealt better thus avoiding the urge to take pills...

A Murder Of Crows: 0:42

Way to go ! didn't know it was possible to do this mission this quick.. nice "luck" (and lots of tries..)

You Better Watch Out: 1:22

As i didn't experiment the trick myself, I don't really know but maybe less bullets would have been necessary to make the senator flee.
   Little door mistake at the end.

Death On The Mississippi: 1:12

Nearly flawless.. just missed a step on the end.

Till Death Do Us Part: 0:43

Here too... weird action at the end, and pills were probably not necessary.

A House Of Cards: 5:59

This a pain in the neck... well nothing can be done about it. good apreciation of the remote detonator distance.

A Dance With The Devil: 2:16

Very good run.

Amendment XXV: 1:54

Nothing really revelant to say... the second bomb was jsut extra cautious... well at that point it's understandable.

Requiem: 0:26

really quick, even if I get the felling it could have turned out smoother.

Overall thoughts :

Well, this game is just difficult, and it can take really really a lot amount of time to get somthing close to this run even if the level is "easy".
   I can't really imagine something better then 20 seconds on this. The only big problem about this run would be that the runner is to cautious.
   Thus it is An accept for me.[/quote]

[b]Decision[/b]: Accept

[b]Reason[/b]: I think this game has nearly been ran to death at this point.

ExplodingCabbage

2009-05-30 05:50:19 am

Sweet. Thanks for the responses. LOL I think Mike might've got tired of my constant criticism of Siyko's run. Wink

Also it's been interesting for me to verify and then run a game myself. It's made me realise how much stuff you miss as a verifier, and indeed how much of what you propose in good faith that turns out not to work. e.g. telling Siyko he should throw the bomb on Ammendment XXV... :| madness in a SS.

Naturally then there are some verifier comments I disagree with here:

Quote:

for this reason, i think IL runs should only be done on rookie or else you would have to keep track of your notoriety.

Nah, the best way to do IL runs of this game is NG+ runs on Pro. NG+ means you don't have to worry about consistency. Also, consistency would be an issue even if you played on Rookie since you can only use standard weapons you acquire in previous levels, and the weapon upgrades you unlock for custom weapons depend upon your rank.

Quote:

Verifier: I can't say I liked the route to the plane in A Vintage Year though. It looked so slow. :/

I got confused here because there's some weird issues with the speed of the timer/game being different on different systems that nobody fully understands yet (hopefully they won't destroy the whole idea of speedrunning this game once we do understand them). I can possibly replicate these issues by playing at low FPS and they only seem to have an effect when you take the elevator, although the effect they have makes no logical sense at all. The upshot of it all anyway, is that, for me at least, taking the elevator would give a time of 1:14, which is also the average time I get taking the route I did. Sometimes I get 1:13 with my route, sometimes, as here, I screw up and get 1:15. I should've recognised as soon as I accidentally pushed the guard that I'd screwed up, and reverted to Siyko's route, but I didn't know I could get 1:14 with the elevator when I did this run.

Quote:

Verifier: The other thing was that the game got brighter when he went into first-person mode. I'm not familiar with the PC version, so I don't know if that is normal or not.

Only ever happens happens with the Custom 1911 equipped on Requiem. No idea why. According to the next verifier it's a v1.2 bug; I'll take his word for it.

Quote:

TDDUP has a bit odd route, but that costs only about 5 seconds

I presume you mean going up the stairs and then dropping off the balcony instead of just running through the room with the groom. This was indeed a silly mistake (I didn't explore the level properly and realise the more direct route existed, partly because I was basically copying Siyko's run which had to go upstairs because he hadn't found the mine trick), but it's definitely not 5 seconds; in a SS I'd say it's no more than 2 or 3 seconds slower on average (my probably perfect IL run of the level used this route modification and was 5 seconds faster).

Quote:

Maybe grabbing the TMP wasn't compulsory.

Tee hee. Trust me, it is. Sometimes I died there even WITH shooting the guys I shot. The alternative would be to use the first-person disarming trick to get ahold of an SLP pistol at zero cost in time and use that instead, but the trouble is all the gangsters carry guns with only 2 shots in them for some stupid reason so you can't take out enough dudes to live before running out of ammo. Maybe in my upcoming IL run I'll disarm multiple gangsters to build up enough ammo to kill the guys near the ladder, we'll see.

Quote:

A new quick mission... maybe some guards could have been dealt better thus avoiding the urge to take pills...

Taking pills costs zero time, so I ignore guards unless they're in the way. This was correct play by me.

Quote:

As i didn't experiment the trick myself, I don't really know but maybe less bullets would have been necessary to make the senator flee.

Yeah you can do it with less but it was fairly inconsistent for me. Actually I think it's less to do with the number of shots as shooting once he's got to the correct spot in his path, though I'm really not sure. I probably should've tested this more thoroughly.

Quote:

weird action at the end

Yeah I got unlucky with the body. Probably shouldn't've killed the guy.

Quote:

pills were probably not necessary.

LOOOL look at my health the moment before I take the pills. They were very very necessary. I have like 1hp left and I'm about to have half my maximum health taken off by the fall. I realise that I've forgotten to heal a fraction of a second before dying and take the pills just in time. Scariest moment of the run.

Quote:

really quick, even if I get the felling it could have turned out smoother.

Yeah, it's a second or two slower than my average from practice. Most levels are actually, but I submitted anyway because I was so glad to finally get past TMOC in an actual run. BTW I have a video of Requiem done 5 seconds faster (on Pro) on youtube.

Quote:

Well, this game is just difficult, and it can take really really a lot amount of time to get somthing close to this run even if the level is "easy".

Well, I have to disagree. The only two hard points in the entire run are DOAS (shotgunning the gangsters towards the bins is very random, as is not dying later) and TMOC (only a 1 in 3 chance of getting the right spawn points, and less than that of pulling off the mine throws). The only other place you can realistically fail in DOTM, by screwing up the escape trick. Everything else is easy and not even that well executed here.

Quote:

I can't really imagine something better then 20 seconds on this. The only big problem about this run would be that the runner is to cautious.

Yeah I think if anyone wanted to improve this run a 20 second improvement would be the amount to aim for. Disagree I was too cautious in general though; the only cautious things I did were on Ammendment XXV and seeing as it was only the second time I EVER pulled off the mine throws in TMOC on an actual run (the first time I died doing the escape trick on DOTM) I wasn't going to risk fucking it up here. Future runners (if they ever exist, which they are unlikely to) should use one mine and not look at the map though.

Quote from mikwuyma:

I think this game has nearly been ran to death at this point.

Nah, this is a lame category and an unoptimised run. The good stuff (NG+ IL Pro runs) is yet to come.

Sweet. Thanks for the responses. LOL I think Mike might've got tired of my constant criticism of Siyko's run. ;)

Also it's been interesting for me to verify and then run a game myself. It's made me realise how much stuff you miss as a verifier, and indeed how much of what you propose in good faith that turns out not to work. e.g. telling Siyko he should throw the bomb on Ammendment XXV... :| madness in a SS.

Naturally then there are some verifier comments I disagree with here:

[quote]for this reason, i think IL runs should only be done on rookie or else you would have to keep track of your notoriety.[/quote]

Nah, the best way to do IL runs of this game is NG+ runs on Pro. NG+ means you don't have to worry about consistency. Also, consistency would be an issue even if you played on Rookie since you can only use standard weapons you acquire in previous levels, and the weapon upgrades you unlock for custom weapons depend upon your rank.

[quote]Verifier: I can't say I liked the route to the plane in A Vintage Year though. It looked so slow. :/[/quote]

I got confused here because there's some weird issues with the speed of the timer/game being different on different systems that nobody fully understands yet (hopefully they won't destroy the whole idea of speedrunning this game once we do understand them). I can possibly replicate these issues by playing at low FPS and they only seem to have an effect when you take the elevator, although the effect they have makes no logical sense at all. The upshot of it all anyway, is that, for me at least, taking the elevator would give a time of 1:14, which is also the average time I get taking the route I did. Sometimes I get 1:13 with my route, sometimes, as here, I screw up and get 1:15. I should've recognised as soon as I accidentally pushed the guard that I'd screwed up, and reverted to Siyko's route, but I didn't know I could get 1:14 with the elevator when I did this run.

[quote]Verifier: The other thing was that the game got brighter when he went into first-person mode. I'm not familiar with the PC version, so I don't know if that is normal or not.[/quote]

Only ever happens happens with the Custom 1911 equipped on Requiem. No idea why. According to the next verifier it's a v1.2 bug; I'll take his word for it.

[quote]TDDUP has a bit odd route, but that costs only about 5 seconds[/quote]

I presume you mean going up the stairs and then dropping off the balcony instead of just running through the room with the groom. This was indeed a silly mistake (I didn't explore the level properly and realise the more direct route existed, partly because I was basically copying Siyko's run which had to go upstairs because he hadn't found the mine trick), but it's definitely not 5 seconds; in a SS I'd say it's no more than 2 or 3 seconds slower on average (my probably perfect IL run of the level used this route modification and was 5 seconds faster).

[quote]Maybe grabbing the TMP wasn't compulsory.[/quote]

Tee hee. Trust me, it is. Sometimes I died there even WITH shooting the guys I shot. The alternative would be to use the first-person disarming trick to get ahold of an SLP pistol at zero cost in time and use that instead, but the trouble is all the gangsters carry guns with only 2 shots in them for some stupid reason so you can't take out enough dudes to live before running out of ammo. Maybe in my upcoming IL run I'll disarm multiple gangsters to build up enough ammo to kill the guys near the ladder, we'll see.

[quote]A new quick mission... maybe some guards could have been dealt better thus avoiding the urge to take pills...[/quote]

Taking pills costs zero time, so I ignore guards unless they're in the way. This was correct play by me.

[quote]As i didn't experiment the trick myself, I don't really know but maybe less bullets would have been necessary to make the senator flee.[/quote]

Yeah you can do it with less but it was fairly inconsistent for me. Actually I think it's less to do with the number of shots as shooting once he's got to the correct spot in his path, though I'm really not sure. I probably should've tested this more thoroughly.

[quote]weird action at the end[/quote]
Yeah I got unlucky with the body. Probably shouldn't've killed the guy.

[quote]pills were probably not necessary.[/quote]
LOOOL look at my health the moment before I take the pills. They were very very necessary. I have like 1hp left and I'm about to have half my maximum health taken off by the fall. I realise that I've forgotten to heal a fraction of a second before dying and take the pills just in time. Scariest moment of the run.

[quote]really quick, even if I get the felling it could have turned out smoother.[/quote]

Yeah, it's a second or two slower than my average from practice. Most levels are actually, but I submitted anyway because I was so glad to finally get past TMOC in an actual run. BTW I have a video of Requiem done 5 seconds faster (on Pro) on youtube.

[quote]Well, this game is just difficult, and it can take really really a lot amount of time to get somthing close to this run even if the level is "easy".[/quote]

Well, I have to disagree. The only two hard points in the entire run are DOAS (shotgunning the gangsters towards the bins is very random, as is not dying later) and TMOC (only a 1 in 3 chance of getting the right spawn points, and less than that of pulling off the mine throws). The only other place you can realistically fail in DOTM, by screwing up the escape trick. Everything else is easy and not even that well executed here.

[quote]I can't really imagine something better then 20 seconds on this. The only big problem about this run would be that the runner is to cautious.[/quote]

Yeah I think if anyone wanted to improve this run a 20 second improvement would be the amount to aim for. Disagree I was too cautious in general though; the only cautious things I did were on Ammendment XXV and seeing as it was only the second time I EVER pulled off the mine throws in TMOC on an actual run (the first time I died doing the escape trick on DOTM) I wasn't going to risk fucking it up here. Future runners (if they ever exist, which they are unlikely to) should use one mine and not look at the map though.

[quote="mikwuyma"]I think this game has nearly been ran to death at this point.[/quote]

Nah, this is a lame category and an unoptimised run. The good stuff (NG+ IL Pro runs) is yet to come.

UraniumAnchor

2009-05-30 09:27:28 am

Not a walrus

I think this is the first example I've seen (though I'm sure not the first) of a verifier putting his money where his mouth is and beating a submission before it even makes it through the process. Nice job.

negoxe

2009-05-31 01:33:15 pm

rawwr

Haha I haven't laughed this hard in a while. Great stuff in the verifier comments. And of course, the run seems to be really polished now. Good stuff.

ExplodingCabbage

2009-05-31 06:47:30 pm

Thanks to you both. Though the run isn't really that polished; it took under a week to make and this was the first attempt where I actually got to the end of the run while recording without screwing TMOC up (or dying).

As an aside, with the individual level runs on pro that I'm working on I expect to come in over a minute faster than this SS time.

Kotti

2009-06-01 12:08:09 pm

Gratz to you Cabbage.

I think brightness in fps-mode is indeed a bug in 1.2, as I said in the verification, but I'm not 100% sure. I use 1.2 but I don't have that bug, might be because of my ultra-low graphic settings. Based on what I've seen on my friend's computer, it depends on the item you're using. Try using a syring in fps-mode, you can't see a thing.

Quote:

The good stuff (NG+ IL Pro runs) is yet to come.

How about NG+ IL Pro SA 100%? Damn that sounds ridiculous :D. Btw, I haven't been doing much for that in a while, quite painful to play with low-ish fps. Hopefully a new hdd helps with that, should be getting that in a few days. Then I can, once again, learn to hate TMOC more than anything.

Siyko

2009-06-01 03:08:16 pm

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

Nice run, glad to see well-spoken improvements to my run followed by delivery!

As for beating it... well, anything's possible

ExplodingCabbage

2009-06-01 03:42:50 pm

Cheers Kotti.

Heh, there's NG+ IL Pro SA 100% too. Wink

Don't know what route you're using for TMOC, but it can't be worse than DOTM. Cheesy

Pure luck whether the bodies get found or not, and the odds of success are very very slim indeed.

Exams in 3 weeks though so I've got no time to speedrun. Once they're over, I'll probably finish my IL Pro runs, try to get a good SA run of DOTM, then continue my Bioshock run and leave the rest of the SA runs to you and msqrt.

Cheers Siyko also. Based on my IL Pro runs I'd say a SS couldn't realistically beat this time by more than 40 seconds. 20 is a very realistic ambition, though, especially with mine and Kotti's minor new tricks for Flatline that save 5 seconds, combined with only using one bomb on Ammendment XXV (2 seconds?), bombing the second target on AVY instead of shooting him (2 seconds?) and taking the more direct route on TDDUP (1 or 2 seconds). Then you'd need to trim off 10 seconds just by general optimisation, which seems very doable - there's plenty of minor mistakes like bumping into the guy on AVY or falling off the stairs on DOTM.

Cheers Kotti.

Heh, there's NG+ IL Pro SA 100% too. ;)

Don't know what route you're using for TMOC, but it can't be worse than DOTM. :D Pure luck whether the bodies get found or not, and the odds of success are very very slim indeed.

Exams in 3 weeks though so I've got no time to speedrun. Once they're over, I'll probably finish my IL Pro runs, try to get a good SA run of DOTM, then continue my Bioshock run and leave the rest of the SA runs to you and msqrt.

Cheers Siyko also. Based on my IL Pro runs I'd say a SS couldn't realistically beat this time by more than 40 seconds. 20 is a very realistic ambition, though, especially with mine and Kotti's minor new tricks for Flatline that save 5 seconds, combined with only using one bomb on Ammendment XXV (2 seconds?), bombing the second target on AVY instead of shooting him (2 seconds?) and taking the more direct route on TDDUP (1 or 2 seconds). Then you'd need to trim off 10 seconds just by general optimisation, which seems very doable - there's plenty of minor mistakes like bumping into the guy on AVY or falling off the stairs on DOTM.

Kotti

2009-06-08 11:47:34 am

Quote:

Don't know what route you're using for TMOC, but it can't be worse than DOTM. Cheesy Pure luck whether the bodies get found or not, and the odds of success are very very slim indeed.

Ooh, you don't know how TMOC route works. Because neither do I. It looks like it could be done in a minute with insane amounts of luck, but I'm not sure. So now I'm just mindlessly trying to make the what seems to be impossible happen without any good plans. msqrt mentioned he found some (unreliable) trick, which I have not tested yet. If that doesn't work, it probably won't be sub-1 min.

If I wanted to, I could probably do 1:10 in like 20-30 minutes of recording. But you know, 0:59 is just sooo much sweeter than 1:01 :D.