How many attempts of a run do you make until you're satisfied?

2009-12-03 02:35:53 am

berserker status

What Dex said, it depends on the game mostly for me.

For Paperboy, it took me about three days on and off with each session lasting a few hours. So I'd say that run took me like a bit over 6 hrs. to complete. I don't know how many attempts that translates to but I'm willing to wager a lot of money that it'd take a lot more effort than that to beat my time as it stands.

Vagrant Story on the other hand took the better part of 2 1/2 months to plan and pull off. I'd say at least hundreds of attempts went into that since it's pretty much expected to die a shit load of times before you get anything reasonable.

So in the end, what Andrewg said is right pretty much: you just gotta try as many times as required. There are some games where you have to try over and over again b/c it's so difficult to get a good time while others require repetition just to shave off seconds that is fairly easy to do. Some games are more capricious than others...

Serial_gamer

2009-12-03 06:08:41 am

Welcome to the Future !

Personnaly, that was totally random...
In left 4 dead : a hit recieved -> time lost. Sometimes I had luck -30 tries-... Sometimes less -over 500 tries-, like in farmhouse finale's run (curse you, verifiers ;))- It depended on infected's spawn.
But I mostly stopped the attempt after 10 seconds, so that wasn't (too) long

ShadowWraith

2009-12-03 09:14:43 am

.

Quote from dex:

And the most I've heard is over a hundred thousand on e1m3_100 by Peter Horvath. Daamn.

What.

That's like... what.

Did it take him two years to do that or something?

Kibbo

2009-12-03 10:21:55 am

TIOLET!

Quote from ShadowWraith:

Quote from dex:

And the most I've heard is over a hundred thousand on e1m3_100 by Peter Horvath. Daamn.

What.

That's like... what.

Did it take him two years to do that or something?

He played 3 hours per day for 3 months or something like that.

ridd3r.

2009-12-03 11:46:35 am

we have lift off

Quote from ad3n:

Absolutely. I've been working on SWAT 4 for 2 years no (off and on) and I've redone levels that at the time seemed good. This particular game is mostly luck orientated with randomized AI and a lot of lucky gunfire, so I screwed up countless times. The final level, I've easily surpassed 2000 attempts if not more. I've only got a single recorded 100% run of it, but a 5 second screw up at the end makes me want to redo it, despite how long it took me to get that single video. One day I'll be happy enough to submit.... One day...

So you are still going with that run? Do you just have the final level to do?

Of the 3 runs I have done each took about 2.5 months to do. Apparently I have spent 200 hours on Max Payne since steam started recording hours which was around June or something. Pretty much all that is Speedrunning hours; either planning, practising or running. Since that does not include any of the time spent on my first run or any of the time I spent before that and I still have a fair way to go I would say I will have probably played it for a good 400 hours.

I thought it was funny that TSA mentioned he spent 25000 hours on ocarina of time.... As someone pointed out, that's almost 3 years of non-stop play. It is very easy to overestimate how much time you have spent on a game, but he clearly did not think about that figure very much Tongue

[quote="ad3n"]
Absolutely.  I've been working on SWAT 4 for 2 years no (off and on) and I've redone levels that at the time seemed good.  This particular game is mostly luck orientated with randomized AI and a lot of lucky gunfire, so I screwed up countless times.  The final level, I've easily surpassed 2000 attempts if not more.  I've only got a single recorded 100% run of it, but a 5 second screw up at the end makes me want to redo it, despite how long it took me to get that single video.  One day I'll be happy enough to submit.... One day...
[/quote]

So you are still going with that run? Do you just have the final level to do?

Of the 3 runs I have done each took about 2.5 months to do. Apparently I have spent 200 hours on Max Payne since steam started recording hours which was around June or something. Pretty much all that is Speedrunning hours; either planning, practising or running. Since that does not include any of the time spent on my first run or any of the time I spent before that and I still have a fair way to go I would say I will have probably played it for a good 400 hours.

I thought it was funny that TSA mentioned he spent 25000 hours on ocarina of time.... As someone pointed out, that's almost 3 years of [i]non-stop[/i] play. It is very easy to overestimate how much time you have spent on a game, but he clearly did not think about that figure very much :P

ad3n

2009-12-03 06:44:14 pm

rawr

Quote from ridd3r.:

So you are still going with that run? Do you just have the final level to do?

Yeah, I was about to get back into it, actually. Hopefully that means quicker videos will be up soon enough. I've gotta redo some of the earlier levels (using the early-run glitch), then the Diamond store (I could probably knock off at least 30sec-1min with more optimization of controls/teams), then the final level again. It's something I'll never just stop doing completely--I just need lengthy breaks after it drives me to the brink of insanity.

ridd3r.

2009-12-04 04:12:10 am

we have lift off

Well keep at it, I guess you have invested too much time to quit now Tongue

I know it's horrible having to redo levels because something new is found but now that you have a good standard for levels, I don't think you're too far off finishing this. At least by the time you only have the last level in to do, you may have to do a stupid amount of attempts, but you will be content knowing you are so very nearly done.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-04 02:21:35 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I'm embarrassed to admit I only put in 50 or less attempts into my Faxanadu run. Usually I bit more perfectionist (especially back when I played Ikaruga, ugh) but nowadays I try to stick to frezy's school of "don't stop recording a run ever, practice the whole game". With spot practice (thankfully Faxanadu has passwords so these past few months of no PC have been bearable) you'll eventually smooth out a lot of mistakes and you'll get a solid run except for a few mistakes. Then you can just improve it later.

sagema

2009-12-04 11:42:34 pm

I ran RE Outbreak for I think 5 months? I think I played each stage over 40-100 times. Hellfire had to be played around 100 times to get the perfect setup. Evil randomizer. However putting the randomizer in my favor wasn't enough. It had to be close to or the fastest absolute time. It's different for each game. In the case of RE5 the run was canceled due to lack of player 2 footage. Since I couldn't produce the secondary footage, any future attempts would be a waste of time. In normal cases when your run is rejected, just keep improving. But if you feel it's something you can't do, then move on.

The main reason is server space. If they put up runs until someone put up better. Kind of like King of the Hill (not the TV series!!!). We'd have scores and score of runs that outright sucked balls. They'd be up for weeks, perhaps years because no one owned games like Treasure Master NES. The server would be clogged with scores of footage that would be mediocre to garbage. You need to put the best of the best up. It saves on server space. You are aiming for the best time in the world. Only a few people are going to have the equipment and or time to accomplish this. At the same time don't feel rushed if you have the setup. Plan carefully and expect set backs.

I ran RE Outbreak for I think 5 months? I think I played each stage over 40-100 times. Hellfire had to be played around 100 times to get the perfect setup. Evil randomizer. However putting the randomizer in my favor wasn't enough. It had to be close to or the fastest absolute time. It's different for each game. In the case of RE5 the run was canceled due to lack of player 2 footage. Since I couldn't produce the secondary footage, any future attempts would be a waste of time. In normal cases when your run is rejected, just keep improving. But if you feel it's something you can't do, then move on.

The main reason is server space. If they put up runs until someone put up better. Kind of like King of the Hill (not the TV series!!!). We'd have scores and score of runs that outright sucked balls. They'd be up for weeks, perhaps years because no one owned games like Treasure Master NES. The server would be clogged with scores of footage that would be mediocre to garbage. You need to put the best of the best up. It saves on server space. You are aiming for the best time in the world. Only a few people are going to have the equipment and or time to accomplish this. At the same time don't feel rushed if you have the setup. Plan carefully and expect set backs.

LeWoVoc

2009-12-09 08:26:22 am

When I was doing my Diablo II druid run, I did 6 hours every day for 6 days trying to get an item drop and experience shrine in the same segment. One attempt took a little under 40 seconds (including re-rolling time). That's only about 3200 attempts, but dear god did it feel like a LOT more.

Kotti

2009-12-09 09:51:43 am

The Murder of Crows in Hitman Blood Money took a very long time. The first version of the run (about 1:50) took me 8 hours and the second version (0:56) took an hour or two less, planning included. So that's 15 hours of attempts for a sub-minute run. It should have obviously taken less, but there's a lot luck involved and I had trouble getting down two precise mine throws. In that case it wasn't about "being satisfied" but just getting it done (during those last ~7 hours, I succeeded once).

And from other end of the scale, Total Overdose 1:17 single segment took 3 tries. Okay, I'm not completely satisfied with it despite the fairly good time, but that's because I accidentally chose a wrong side mission about half way through that cost me maybe a minute. Will be submitting once I get 1:16 ;D.

iMacmatician

2009-12-14 04:37:27 pm

I play Marble Blast Gold (and Platinum), and runs for SDA and WRs I spend much more time than runs for YouTube.

Skyscraper (26.84): 8.5 hours, about 143 .rec files saved before I got that time (and I saved one probably every 10-15 tries).
Skyscraper (23.45): 12.5 hours (I got 26.82 7 hours into my attempts, but I went for better because the 23 second path is different from the 26 second path)
Pathways (23.98): 6 hours on one path (that failed), tweaked it a bit, then spent 4 more hours (successful) for 10 hours total

Quote from Frezy_man:

It totally depends. One run could be finished in a couple of attempts while drinkjing beers. Another one took Close to three thousand attempts.

Elpis_TK31

2009-12-23 02:17:59 pm

PAL 50Hz KILL ME NOW

I get excited easily, for instance I had my Z1 Hard all missions in 26'08, and it sucked dick, but because I beat my old record by a minute, I thought it was good/submission worthy.
Same goes for Wario Land 2, altho I spent about 20 attempts on that whereas I spent 1 on the Z1 run.

Now however, after reading RaneofSOTN's rule, I feel like pushing more, and so far it's already helped grind my current project by 49 seconds, so thank you Rane! I'm going to apply your rule to all my future endeavors.

Vugmer

2009-12-24 11:54:15 pm

Cigar Man

I am never satisfied!

Stupid

2009-12-26 12:07:08 pm

defying gravity

The number of attempts in my Warcraft run reached from 2 (last level) to maybe 40-50 (only considering attempts 20sec+). Including attempts under 20 sec, at least double that. I never counted though so this can be totally off.

j.calling.2bad

2009-12-30 01:56:23 am

Usually it's few hundreds, but as I was running Tomb Raider Legend, one segment took me overa thousand attempts, and the very last segment took me exactly 17 247 attempts. It wasn't THAT hard, I just suck. (oh scratch that, it was THAT hard). Grin

Thomaz

2010-01-12 09:24:17 am

Catchin' them all

It really depends. In games where segments cannot be redone, I try to get the near best (unless trying for 1000 tries only gets you 2 seconds).

Like in Pokémon, some battles just have to go perfect, there's no other way, but resetting until I get it and not fuck up the route or controls during the rest of the segment (this has happened to me before. x___X).

I remember needing 800+ resets for a segment that was around the 30 seconds long, yeah, it's that bad. Stupid enhanced encounter rate in Viridian Forest. But I've also had times where I got a segment on the first few attempts.

LegendOfEvil

2010-01-22 10:40:34 am

Shoryuken Shall Punish!

Considering so far all I've done is 2D Platformer SS's, I keep running till there is a particular mistake-to-time ratio. E.g I let one mistake in my DKC run because its 0:44. My DKC2 run however I allowed a few because its double the time at 1:28. Gotta give myself a BIT of leeway you know? Don't wanna go crazy XD