Illusion of Gaia - Any%/100%

2008-12-10 03:41:27 pm

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

I agree. There are a few bumps in the 4th one (most you can't help), but not enough time lost, in my opinion, to be worth redoing the entire segment. As hard as you said it is to get a one-rounder on Castoth, I'd keep this for the time being, but it's all up to you.

RaneofSOTN

2008-12-10 05:58:22 pm

I want off the ride....

Quote:

So I agree about segment 4. There seems to be a few bumps but they would be a pain to iron out as it stands with gaia's control. You have it mastered from what I see and really the bumps would take so much effort. The 1 rounder pays off and anyone who'd try the same would probably pull their hair out. Your run your call though.

Nitrodon

2008-12-10 06:50:30 pm

Due to the positive response to segment 4, I have decided to keep it. I'll start working on segment 5 tomorrow.

Also, I can kill Castoth in one round about 10-20% of the time now if I'm lucky.

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2011-12-04 04:37:43 pm

puwexil: 2011-09-04 09:01:13 pm

puwexil: 2011-02-28 09:56:40 pm

puwexil: 2011-02-28 09:49:50 pm

puwexil: 2011-02-05 11:12:59 pm

puwexil: 2011-01-30 10:07:29 pm

puwexil: 2011-01-24 11:13:50 pm

puwexil: 2011-01-23 11:28:36 am

puwexil: 2011-01-22 07:53:59 pm

puwexil: 2011-01-22 05:18:19 pm

puwexil: 2011-01-22 05:17:58 pm

puwexil: 2011-01-22 05:17:01 pm

puwexil: 2010-03-06 02:34:52 pm

2010-01-25 06:13:27 pm

Professional Second Banana

I'm trying my hand at a segmented Illusion of Gaia speedrun (using the route suggested by Halamantariel at http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,6956.0.html), and thought I'd post my progress here to see if anyone has any comments or suggestions. This is my first speedrun attempt, so at this point I'm just shooting for no unintentional deaths or other major mistakes that cost significant amounts of time.

Posted Segments:
1. Start to Edward's Prison:

I use control type B so that I have easier access to the "not used" button for mashing to advance text during certain sequences without risk of pressing the talk or item button and wasting time.

2. Edward's Prison to Underground Tunnel:

Big thanks to Nitrodon for showing me the "orb glitch" that lets you skip the barrier destruction animations by entering the menu screen once the light orb appears. I don't use it at the end of the segment as even though you can walk through the barrier, the Dark Space doesn't spawn until the animation completes.

3. Underground Tunnel to Itory Village:

Pretty easy segment, thanks to the awesomeness that is Freedan's dash attack. Entering the first house in Itory saves you from having to wait for Kara and Lilly to walk over to the stairs.

4. Itory Village to Larai Cliff:

The Moon Tribe Cave is quite annoying due to the random movements of the caterpillars, and led to many resets. This one wasn't my best, but was passable for the quality I'm aiming for here.

Overall, the Incan Ruins is one of the easier dungeons to speedrun - enemies are easy to avoid due to the larger size of most of the rooms, you can use Will's charging attack to destroy the statue you normally need Freedan for (thus letting you skip a chunk of the dungeon), and the Melody of the Wind isn't required to open the final door.

5. Larai Cliff to Freejia

Castoth can be quite annoying depending on where his fireballs and fire chains go. A 1-phase win is possible if your attack timing is spot on.

It is possible to skip most of the "fishing" sequence on the raft by using an herb (since the trigger for story advancement is being at full health); but I decided not to do it so that I'd have 2 herbs for the Mu vampire battle.

6. Freejia to Diamond Mine

This segment sees the first use of the "ramp glitch", where if you run onto a ramp and use Will's jump attack at the right time, you can instantly build momentum to dash to the top of another ramp - this is used a few times in the run for sequence breaks.

I'm trying my hand at a segmented Illusion of Gaia speedrun (using the route suggested by Halamantariel at [url=http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,6956.0.html]http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,6956.0.html[/url]), and thought I'd post my progress here to see if anyone has any comments or suggestions.  This is my first speedrun attempt, so at this point I'm just shooting for no unintentional deaths or other major mistakes that cost significant amounts of time.

Posted Segments:
1. Start to Edward's Prison:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAWBQQ-yUYE
I use control type B so that I have easier access to the "not used" button for mashing to advance text during certain sequences without risk of pressing the talk or item button and wasting time.

2. Edward's Prison to Underground Tunnel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-6beVDoP5g
Big thanks to Nitrodon for showing me the "orb glitch" that lets you skip the barrier destruction animations by entering the menu screen once the light orb appears. I don't use it at the end of the segment as even though you can walk through the barrier, the Dark Space doesn't spawn until the animation completes.

3. Underground Tunnel to Itory Village:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDPKnaUXxGg
Pretty easy segment, thanks to the awesomeness that is Freedan's dash attack.  Entering the first house in Itory saves you from having to wait for Kara and Lilly to walk over to the stairs.

4. Itory Village to Larai Cliff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejT0F6I3wD8
The Moon Tribe Cave is quite annoying due to the random movements of the caterpillars, and led to many resets.  This one wasn't my best, but was passable for the quality I'm aiming for here.

Overall, the Incan Ruins is one of the easier dungeons to speedrun - enemies are easy to avoid due to the larger size of most of the rooms, you can use Will's charging attack to destroy the statue you normally need Freedan for (thus letting you skip a chunk of the dungeon), and the Melody of the Wind isn't required to open the final door.

5. Larai Cliff to Freejia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPEtpk7RGQc
Castoth can be quite annoying depending on where his fireballs and fire chains go.  A 1-phase win is possible if your attack timing is spot on.

It is possible to skip most of the "fishing" sequence on the raft by using an herb (since the trigger for story advancement is being at full health); but I decided not to do it so that I'd have 2 herbs for the Mu vampire battle.

6. Freejia to Diamond Mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qipjq-E4E98
This segment sees the first use of the "ramp glitch", where if you run onto a ramp and use Will's jump attack at the right time, you can instantly build momentum to dash to the top of another ramp - this is used a few times in the run for sequence breaks.

DiluteD

2010-02-08 01:19:52 am

Any progress on this? Im very interested in having some times to compete against Smiley

Great work so far, your double tap for running definately gets better between segments

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2010-02-08 05:34:18 pm

2010-02-08 05:56:54 am

Professional Second Banana

Thanks for the compliment! I'm hoping to have at least the first Diamond Mine segment recording-ready in the next few days - my gaming time has been pretty short lately due to some projects at my job.

Nitrodon

2010-02-13 10:17:09 pm

The trick you couldn't pull off in segment 6 isn't too hard, but that particular ramp sometimes gives me a hard time with it. I'll try my best to explain how to do it.

A normal jump attack is done by attacking, then pressing the direction button during the attack. Normally, you can't attack on ramps. However, if you start the attack immediately before running onto a ramp, and have some momentum, you can move onto the ramp between the attack and pressing the direction button. In that way, you can use a jump attack while standing on the ramp. In the case of ramps like this one, you will stay on the ramp during the entire jump attack, and thus you will gain momentum to go left.

The same trick can be used on a ramp which is only one tile long. In that case, you will simply move forward, even if you weren't going fast enough to go up the ramp otherwise. This is useful in the bottom left room of Sky Garden, where it allows you to skip the entire room and just get the crystal ball.

puwexil

2010-02-15 12:46:26 pm

Professional Second Banana

Thanks Nitrodon! I'm practicing the Sky Garden now, and was just able to do the hill jump trick without too many attempts.

I'm also experimenting with death abuse in order to skip certain amounts of backtracking - so far I've identified the Diamond Mine, Sky Garden (northeast area and southwest areas), Mountain Temple, and Angkor Wat as candidates.

puwexil

2011-01-14 10:12:16 am

Professional Second Banana

Thanks to some encouragement from Nitrodon, Mickey_Mage, and Darkwing Duck, I'm going to start working on this again (took a break to play Final Fantasy XIII when it came out, then never came back to IoG). I'm going to do a full standard playthrough using the speedrun route before I start recording segments again; but hopefully I'll have something to post in the next few weeks.

PJ

2011-01-14 01:48:30 pm

Is PJ

I'm very glad to hear this, puwexil! I'm looking forward to watching your segments. After you complete this run, I will consider doing a SS run of it to round out the game page. Wink

DiluteD

2011-01-14 02:55:17 pm

Still watching this thread, looking forward to you continuing this run Smiley

puwexil

2011-01-15 11:37:14 am

Professional Second Banana

The TAS's for this game make pretty extensive use of a glitch where you can walk through enemies while they are flashing after you hit them (which looks quite useful against the golems in Mu and several other pre-Psycho Slider sections). This looks quite difficult to me to pull off on console (since I think you also need to cancel your attack animation in order to be able to get past the enemy in time); but has anyone else tried this on console?

PJ

Edit history:

PJ: 2011-01-15 11:41:19 am

2011-01-15 11:39:06 am

Is PJ

I have tried that a few times awhile ago. It is really hard to do with Will because of that lunge attack he does. If I'm remembering correctly though, I was eventually able to do it successfully a few times. I don't think I ever tried with Freedan, but I imagine it is much easier with him since he can attack while dashing.

Edit: I'll grab my controller and give it a few tries on emulator.

puwexil

2011-01-15 01:37:31 pm

Professional Second Banana

Cool, thanks PJ - I'll try it out too the next time I need a break from being humbled by the vampires.

The strat that I've had the most success with so far has been to slide through the trigger point for the battle, so that I can get in about 8 hits on the female vampire before she starts moving. I then chase her to the upper-left corner of the room and stay in her face, alternating between regular attacks and jump attacks (to knock me back in time to avoid her energy barrier counterattack), then run after her and slide into her before starting the pattern over. If she moves into position for the combo attack, since she can take damage up until the male vampire gets there and their capes change color, I'll attack about 3 times and then slide through the giant energy ball.

I've been able to beat the female vampire a few times now, but have only had enough HP (even after using the herb I picked up in Freejia) for 1-2 hits from the male vampire, who seems to start moving faster and less predictably once he's alone, making his energy barrier harder to avoid.

Cool, thanks PJ - I'll try it out too the next time I need a break from being humbled by the vampires.

The strat that I've had the most success with so far has been to slide through the trigger point for the battle, so that I can get in about 8 hits on the female vampire before she starts moving.  I then chase her to the upper-left corner of the room and stay in her face, alternating between regular attacks and jump attacks (to knock me back in time to avoid her energy barrier counterattack), then run after her and slide into her before starting the pattern over.  If she moves into position for the combo attack, since she can take damage up until the male vampire gets there and their capes change color, I'll attack about 3 times and then slide through the giant energy ball.

I've been able to beat the female vampire a few times now, but have only had enough HP (even after using the herb I picked up in Freejia) for 1-2 hits from the male vampire, who seems to start moving faster and less predictably once he's alone, making his energy barrier harder to avoid.

Darkwing Duck

2011-01-15 08:50:36 pm

Highly Evolved

Quote from puwexil:

Cool, thanks PJ - I'll try it out too the next time I need a break from being humbled by the vampires.

The strat that I've had the most success with so far has been to slide through the trigger point for the battle, so that I can get in about 8 hits on the female vampire before she starts moving. I then chase her to the upper-left corner of the room and stay in her face, alternating between regular attacks and jump attacks (to knock me back in time to avoid her energy barrier counterattack), then run after her and slide into her before starting the pattern over. If she moves into position for the combo attack, since she can take damage up until the male vampire gets there and their capes change color, I'll attack about 3 times and then slide through the giant energy ball.

I've been able to beat the female vampire a few times now, but have only had enough HP (even after using the herb I picked up in Freejia) for 1-2 hits from the male vampire, who seems to start moving faster and less predictably once he's alone, making his energy barrier harder to avoid.

Ah, reminiscing about a time way back when when vampires were things to be feared. Nowhere moreso than in this game.

[quote="puwexil"]Cool, thanks PJ - I'll try it out too the next time I need a break from being humbled by the vampires.

The strat that I've had the most success with so far has been to slide through the trigger point for the battle, so that I can get in about 8 hits on the female vampire before she starts moving.  I then chase her to the upper-left corner of the room and stay in her face, alternating between regular attacks and jump attacks (to knock me back in time to avoid her energy barrier counterattack), then run after her and slide into her before starting the pattern over.  If she moves into position for the combo attack, since she can take damage up until the male vampire gets there and their capes change color, I'll attack about 3 times and then slide through the giant energy ball.

I've been able to beat the female vampire a few times now, but have only had enough HP (even after using the herb I picked up in Freejia) for 1-2 hits from the male vampire, who seems to start moving faster and less predictably once he's alone, making his energy barrier harder to avoid.[/quote]

Ah, reminiscing about a time way back when when vampires were things to be feared.  Nowhere moreso than in this game.

puwexil

2011-01-15 09:40:45 pm

Professional Second Banana

Quote from Darkwing Duck:

Ah, reminiscing about a time way back when when vampires were things to be feared. Nowhere moreso than in this game.

I was thinking the same thing when I searched earlier today (in vain) for Youtube videos of the vampire battle using Will instead of Freedan, and found a video of the fight titled "Vampires don't sparkle."

I just finally beat the vampires using a pretty aggressive strat where I would go for Jack first and basically pin him to the right wall using jump attacks (if I'm standing right on top of him, I just jump in place and keep dealing damage instead of getting knocked back like the jump attack normally does). This drains his HP pretty quickly since I can usually get at least 4 hits per jump attack, but also means I take damage too if I land from the jump attack in the middle of Jack's energy barrier.

After Jack went down, I was too low on HP to do it again with Silvana and ended up using hit and run attacks to beat her (which ended up taking almost twice as long as Jack - the clock on the bomb was around 30 when I beat Silvana). On my next playthrough, I'm going to grab the herb in Edward's dungeon so that I'll have 2 for the vampires, which should let me use what I'm calling the "in your face" strategy on both of them.

[quote="Darkwing Duck"]

Ah, reminiscing about a time way back when when vampires were things to be feared.  Nowhere moreso than in this game.[/quote]
I was thinking the same thing when I searched earlier today (in vain) for Youtube videos of the vampire battle using Will instead of Freedan, and found a video of the fight titled "Vampires don't sparkle."

I just finally beat the vampires using a pretty aggressive strat where I would go for Jack first and basically pin him to the right wall using jump attacks (if I'm standing right on top of him, I just jump in place and keep dealing damage instead of getting knocked back like the jump attack normally does).  This drains his HP pretty quickly since I can usually get at least 4 hits per jump attack, but also means I take damage too if I land from the jump attack in the middle of Jack's energy barrier.

After Jack went down, I was too low on HP to do it again with Silvana and ended up using hit and run attacks to beat her (which ended up taking almost twice as long as Jack - the clock on the bomb was around 30 when I beat Silvana).  On my next playthrough, I'm going to grab the herb in Edward's dungeon so that I'll have 2 for the vampires, which should let me use what I'm calling the "in your face" strategy on both of them.

PJ

2011-01-17 12:31:33 am

Is PJ

Here is the shitty speed run playaround of Edward's Prison that I promised, puwexil:

That's my approach to going through enemies after hitting them. Hopefully it's easier to understand what I meant after watching. ^_^

puwexil

2011-01-17 02:04:01 pm

Professional Second Banana

Cool - thanks! Currently practicing the pass-through trick with Shadow, since it'll be a necessity to speedrun the Pyramid. I think I'm ready to take back what I said about Mu being the "hump" of the run, since the 3rd room from the left in the Pyramid has groups of laser orbs that can kill you in 4 hits with how underleveled you are at that point; and since the room has a floor you need Shadow to get through, sliding through the orbs as Will isn't an option. Sad

puwexil

2011-01-18 10:56:03 pm

Professional Second Banana

Finished the first test run yesterday; and to get through the above Pyramid room (that I'm now calling the "laser room of DOOM") I ended up sacrificing some speed to kill enough of the first group of 4 orbs so that I could pass through the rest without getting hit. This was mainly so that I could make it to the final group of 6 orbs with full heath, which I still ended up having to use my herb to make it through.

Now I'm going to start going through the segments in more depth to practice the enemy dodges, etc. I'll start posting some segment attempts here once I'm feeling comfortable with them.

perkocett

2011-01-19 05:47:06 pm

Planning, I suck at it. :-(

This is one of those games that begs to be sped through.
I'll be looking forward to your next videos. Smiley

puwexil

2011-01-22 05:37:06 pm

Professional Second Banana

Segments 1 and 2 are up - if this goes well enough and I decide to invest in equipment to record from console so I can submit a run, I'll combine these into 1 segment since the prison Dark Space isn't necessary.

Still working on passing through enemies as Will (been able to pull it off a few times now, though not consistently yet) - fortunately the skeleton in the second room of the tunnel that it would be useful to pass through was kind enough to move out of my way instead.

PJ

2011-01-22 06:59:09 pm

Is PJ

I never knew about opening the menu to skip the explosion thingy animation. That's awesome!

Combining segments 1 and 2 together would be very annoying to run, IMHO. For a segmented run, I'd expect most dungeons to be perfect, including King Edward's prison (no missed hits, no damage, no accidentally triggering dialogue from Lily, etc). Since all of these are very common, and since the beginning of the game has like 6-7 minutes of cutscene and dialogue, that'd get very tiresome to repeat I think. I think it's worth the 10 seconds or whatever that you sacrifice by saving in the Prison to ensure that you get a perfect run of the dungeon. That's just what I would do though, because I'm impatient. Tongue

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2011-01-23 11:30:20 am

2011-01-22 08:14:31 pm

Professional Second Banana

Quote from PJ:

I never knew about opening the menu to skip the explosion thingy animation. That's awesome!

Nitrodon showed me that glitch at the marathon - definitely makes for some fun tricks!

Quote from PJ:

Combining segments 1 and 2 together would be very annoying to run, IMHO. For a segmented run, I'd expect most dungeons to be perfect, including King Edward's prison (no missed hits, no damage, no accidentally triggering dialogue from Lily, etc). Since all of these are very common, and since the beginning of the game has like 6-7 minutes of cutscene and dialogue, that'd get very tiresome to repeat I think. I think it's worth the 10 seconds or whatever that you sacrifice by saving in the Prison to ensure that you get a perfect run of the dungeon. That's just what I would do though, because I'm impatient. Tongue

Good point - having to slog through the South Cape sequences over and over will certainly lead to lower standards for one of the annoying pre-Psycho Slider dungeons.

I've still got this thread in the "Casual Speedrunning" subforum since I'm mostly aiming just to get a complete recorded run of the game without any mistakes that cost more than a few seconds each. If I'm able to pull it off and think that with enough practice I can get the dungeon segments up to SDA's standards for segmented runs, I'll start working on a console run to submit. If not, then fun was had and there will be other games to try for records on.

[quote="PJ"]I never knew about opening the menu to skip the explosion thingy animation.  That's awesome![/quote]
Nitrodon showed me that glitch at the marathon - definitely makes for some fun tricks!

[quote="PJ"]Combining segments 1 and 2 together would be very annoying to run, IMHO.  For a segmented run, I'd expect most dungeons to be perfect, including King Edward's prison (no missed hits, no damage, no accidentally triggering dialogue from Lily, etc).  Since all of these are very common, and since the beginning of the game has like 6-7 minutes of cutscene and dialogue, that'd get very tiresome to repeat I think.  I think it's worth the 10 seconds or whatever that you sacrifice by saving in the Prison to ensure that you get a perfect run of the dungeon.  That's just what I would do though, because I'm impatient.  :P[/quote]
Good point - having to slog through the South Cape sequences over and over will certainly lead to lower standards for one of the annoying pre-Psycho Slider dungeons.

I've still got this thread in the "Casual Speedrunning" subforum since I'm mostly aiming just to get a complete recorded run of the game without any mistakes that cost more than a few seconds each.  If I'm able to pull it off and think that with enough practice I can get the dungeon segments up to SDA's standards for segmented runs, I'll start working on a console run to submit.  If not, then fun was had and there will be other games to try for records on.

PJ

2011-01-22 08:24:55 pm

Is PJ

Quote from puwexil:

I've still got this thread in the "Casual Speedrunning" subforum since I'm mostly aiming just to get a complete recorded run of the game without any mistakes that cost more than a few seconds each. If I'm able to pull it off and think that with enough practice I can get the dungeon segments up to SDA's standards for segmented runs, I'll start working on a console run to submit.

Oh yea, definitely. I was just commenting about the segmentation of the console run, if you do decide to do one. Smiley

Nitrodon

2011-01-22 10:42:00 pm

I can see two minor improvements for future reference in segment 1:
1. It is faster to tell King Edward you didn't bring the Crystal Ring. This is simply a matter of pressing B instead of A at that point.
2. You only need to look at moss once in the prison, even though it exists in two locations.

Quote from PJ:

Combining segments 1 and 2 together would be very annoying to run, IMHO. For a segmented run, I'd expect most dungeons to be perfect, including King Edward's prison (no missed hits, no damage, no accidentally triggering dialogue from Lily, etc). Since all of these are very common, and since the beginning of the game has like 6-7 minutes of cutscene and dialogue, that'd get very tiresome to repeat I think. I think it's worth the 10 seconds or whatever that you sacrifice by saving in the Prison to ensure that you get a perfect run of the dungeon. That's just what I would do though, because I'm impatient. Tongue

Then you'll really hate where I didn't save in segment 4 of my old run.

I can see two minor improvements for future reference in segment 1:
1. It is faster to tell King Edward you didn't bring the Crystal Ring.  This is simply a matter of pressing B instead of A at that point.
2. You only need to look at moss once in the prison, even though it exists in two locations.

[quote="PJ"]Combining segments 1 and 2 together would be very annoying to run, IMHO.  For a segmented run, I'd expect most dungeons to be perfect, including King Edward's prison (no missed hits, no damage, no accidentally triggering dialogue from Lily, etc).  Since all of these are very common, and since the beginning of the game has like 6-7 minutes of cutscene and dialogue, that'd get very tiresome to repeat I think.  I think it's worth the 10 seconds or whatever that you sacrifice by saving in the Prison to ensure that you get a perfect run of the dungeon.  That's just what I would do though, because I'm impatient.  :P[/quote]
Then you'll really hate where I didn't save in segment 4 of my old run.