Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine

2008-08-10 01:37:09 am

unemployed Dragon

Quote from Goggen:

Secure up-to-date routers is kinda irrelevant once you quite actively *install* the thing. Which you apparently covered with that remark about Brain 2.0, so, yeah...

that's what "Brain 2.0" is for: "Think before you install/click (on) something."

Goggen

2008-08-20 07:25:02 pm

"Time to go to work..."

Roy_Hess:

that's what "Brain 2.0" is for: "Think before you install/click (on) something."

Well, even though I wasted an immense amount of time and effort on using my old Brain 1.1, I *still* say I'm ahead of the game with all the times I click on stuff without spending time and effort on thinking first.
And I think all of you should too. Really, it just makes sense.

Okay, progress report again! ...At last!

I've finished off the second-to last segment of Palawan Volcano, at 3:30 minutes, so yay another long segment.
Not so yay: The *incredible* amount of time it took. Including two new records:
Possibly the longest gaming session without interruption even from crashes: 214 attempts, 2:43 hours
The even longer possibly the longest gaming session without interruption even from crashes: 255 attempts, 3:22 hours
And with the remaining six sessions being 94 attempts and 1:08 hours, that means it took me (roughly) 7 hours and 13 minutes, and 563 attempts, for an average of 46 seconds to a segment. And only eight of those made it past a particularly tricky 1:05 minutes.
But that includes the successful one! Oh yes!
It is mostly perfect, except for a one second getting-turned-around-and-back-again-and-luckily-not-running-into-the-lava-like-I-was-just-about-to-mistake, but *definitely* not something I'd run this again for.
Although actually, the one trick that caused the most time waste caused about one second as well, so if I *had* gone ahead and abandoned it like I was thinking of doing after five or so hours, I'd have been just as well off.
Oh well.

Anyway, this segment lasts from the top of the ladder after getting the key, down the elevator (cutscene 1), over the little lava stream (cutscene 2) to the statue that I whip (cutscene 3), then across the surprisingly cool gate room to the climb-out, the disastrous trick being jumping up to the shimmy so far left I can get up in just two shimmies, then up the lava-creek without a lava-proof paddle, down the hole where I sloppily submachinegun a commie (hey, with one quarter circle of health to go, you would too!), then over to Sophia (cutscene 4) then use the key (cutscene 5), then a run back to the gate room and Sophia (cutscene 6), very nearly running into the lava for the whip across to the gate (cutscene 7), and then finally after nearly running into the lava again and wasting a second, ending the segment after jumping across to the next section. (And it's everybody's favourite: the block puzzle!)

Hopefully, I'll be able to end the level without wasting any more health (and wasting as much time).

Oh yes, and statistics of course:
17:27/20:15 according to plan, 86% done, in 16 minutes flat (curiously enough) of actual game time.

Roy_Hess:

[i]that's what "Brain 2.0" is for: "Think before you install/click (on) something."[/i]

Well, even though I wasted an immense amount of time and effort on using my old Brain 1.1, I *still* say I'm ahead of the game with all the times I click on stuff without spending time and effort on thinking first.
And I think all of you should too. Really, it just makes sense.

Okay, progress report again! ...At last!

I've finished off the second-to last segment of Palawan Volcano, at 3:30 minutes, so yay another long segment.
Not so yay: The *incredible* amount of time it took. Including two new records:
Possibly the longest gaming session without interruption even from crashes: 214 attempts, 2:43 hours
The even longer possibly the longest gaming session without interruption even from crashes: 255 attempts, 3:22 hours
And with the remaining six sessions being 94 attempts and 1:08 hours, that means it took me (roughly) 7 hours and 13 minutes, and 563 attempts, for an average of 46 seconds to a segment. And only eight of those made it past a particularly tricky 1:05 minutes.
But that includes the successful one! Oh yes!
It is mostly perfect, except for a one second getting-turned-around-and-back-again-and-luckily-not-running-into-the-lava-like-I-was-just-about-to-mistake, but *definitely* not something I'd run this again for.
Although actually, the one trick that caused the most time waste caused about one second as well, so if I *had* gone ahead and abandoned it like I was thinking of doing after five or so hours, I'd have been just as well off.
Oh well.

Anyway, this segment lasts from the top of the ladder after getting the key, down the elevator (cutscene 1), over the little lava stream (cutscene 2) to the statue that I whip (cutscene 3), then across the surprisingly cool gate room to the climb-out, the disastrous trick being jumping up to the shimmy so far left I can get up in just two shimmies, then up the lava-creek without a lava-proof paddle, down the hole where I sloppily submachinegun a commie (hey, with one quarter circle of health to go, you would too!), then over to Sophia (cutscene 4) then use the key (cutscene 5), then a run back to the gate room and Sophia (cutscene 6), very nearly running into the lava for the whip across to the gate (cutscene 7), and then finally after nearly running into the lava again and wasting a second, ending the segment after jumping across to the next section. (And it's everybody's favourite: the block puzzle!)

Hopefully, I'll be able to end the level without wasting any more health (and wasting as much time).

Oh yes, and statistics of course:
17:27/20:15 according to plan, 86% done, in 16 minutes flat (curiously enough) of actual game time.

Goggen

Edit history:

Goggen: 2008-08-28 03:01:32 pm

2008-08-28 02:48:14 pm

"Time to go to work..."

Right, finished off Palawan! ...Volcano!
Finally!

The final segment was a surprisingly quick little thing, only a couple hours work (well, a couple of hours and one minute, exactly) most of which may in some way be tied to the *slight* irritant that is blocks. And three of them in one big pile, too. Urgh.
Aside from that and the opening leap-of-faith-of-lava-not-falling-into, there were no real irritants, and at two minutes 50 seconds I doubt there's much to shave off. Except for one second from some unknown source early on, and perhaps one second more from a slight detour in unfamiliar territories right at the end as it was the first time I'd gotten that far whilst running. Oh, and I missed a chance to mess up a cutscene, which is a slight shame. But curiously enough, only one frame different. And one frame *faster*, too, so this is a keeper.

Also, for those of you at the edge of your seats, I *was* able to survive to the end of the level with only a quarter circle of health left. Although the only threat was one trap and one commie officer with a submachine gun, so yeah, you can leave the edge of your seats now. If you want to.

So, without further stalling:

06 - Palawan Volcano
18 minutes 51 seconds, 7 segments
Minor: Pulling the block only once, jumping from its edge to whipping.
Route: First swim to the door opener, then over to the boat and the key.
Minor: At the door opener block bit, first jump over the first block, then push it twice, then pull the second block.
Minor: For some reason, Indy can still move while he's picking up the shell key. Abuse!
Medium: In lava room, only moving the second block.
Major: After turning on lava, jumping from start-side platform to center bridge, saving one block to move earlier.
Obvious: Jumping over the final trap, rather than the five-minute fairly optional trek around them. Indy even *says* that they make him "jumpy".

Impossible?: Jumping straight across without moving *any* blocks. Works on dry no-lava tests, but it seems there is a blocking field on the blocks when they're in the wrong position, causing Indy to just slide off. And die, horribly. And no, sadly, there seems to be no way around it. It also means the second block has to be pushed twice, even though once (or none) would be enough.

I've also adjusted the statistics, to correct for this level being 20 minutes shorter than it mistakenly is in the planning document.

Levels done: 06/17 (35,29%)
Plan, level/game: 22/350 (06,28%)
Game, plan: 116/350 (33,14%) (Hey, nearly a third!)
Segments, this run/plan: 7 / 4 (175%)
Average segment length: 2 minutes 42 seconds
Segments, whole run, so far/plan: 30/11 (273%)
This level, time: 18:51 (out of 22; 14,32% saved)
Time so far: 1:29:03 (out of 116; 23,23% saved)
Time spent on this level: 2 months. And during summer vacation. Well, this hasn't been very impressive progress.

Right, finished off Palawan! ...Volcano!
Finally!

The final segment was a surprisingly quick little thing, only a couple hours work (well, a couple of hours and one minute, exactly) most of which may in some way be tied to the *slight* irritant that is blocks. And three of them in one big pile, too. Urgh.
Aside from that and the opening leap-of-faith-of-lava-not-falling-into, there were no real irritants, and at two minutes 50 seconds I doubt there's much to shave off. Except for one second from some unknown source early on, and perhaps one second more from a slight detour in unfamiliar territories right at the end as it was the first time I'd gotten that far whilst running. Oh, and I missed a chance to mess up a cutscene, which is a slight shame. But curiously enough, only one frame different. And one frame *faster*, too, so this is a keeper.

Also, for those of you at the edge of your seats, I *was* able to survive to the end of the level with only a quarter circle of health left. Although the only threat was one trap and one commie officer with a submachine gun, so yeah, you can leave the edge of your seats now. If you want to.

So, without further stalling:

06 - Palawan Volcano
18 minutes 51 seconds, 7 segments
Minor: Pulling the block only once, jumping from its edge to whipping.
Route: First swim to the door opener, then over to the boat and the key.
Minor: At the door opener block bit, first jump over the first block, then push it twice, then pull the second block.
Minor: For some reason, Indy can still move while he's picking up the shell key. Abuse!
Medium: In lava room, only moving the second block.
Major: After turning on lava, jumping from start-side platform to center bridge, saving one block to move earlier.
Obvious: Jumping over the final trap, rather than the five-minute fairly optional trek around them. Indy even *says* that they make him "jumpy".

Impossible?: Jumping straight across without moving *any* blocks. Works on dry no-lava tests, but it seems there is a blocking field on the blocks when they're in the wrong position, causing Indy to just slide off. And die, horribly. And no, sadly, there seems to be no way around it. It also means the second block has to be pushed twice, even though once (or none) would be enough.

I've also adjusted the statistics, to correct for this level being 20 minutes shorter than it mistakenly is in the planning document.

Levels done:                                   06/17  (35,29%)
Plan, level/game:                             22/350 (06,28%)
Game, plan:                                    116/350 (33,14%) (Hey, nearly a third!)
Segments, this run/plan:                    7 / 4 (175%)
Average segment length:                    2 minutes 42 seconds
Segments, whole run, so far/plan:        30/11 (273%)
This level, time:                                 18:51   (out of 22; 14,32% saved)
Time so far:                                     1:29:03 (out of 116; 23,23% saved)
Time spent on this level:                     2 months. And during summer vacation. Well, this hasn't been very impressive progress.

qaylIS

2008-08-30 05:12:27 pm

There is no victory without combat

Hi,

just passing the forums after some months of absence, and seeing you still doing this run is great. From your last run I know you are an perfectionist, and so I wondered if it was to much work to accomplish, but i am impressed. Keep on the good work dude.

Roy_Hess

2008-08-31 02:54:20 am

unemployed Dragon

after reading how much time you're spending on all the levels with all the attempts it can only be a nearly-perfect run! :-)
If would be perfect if someone does it with key-macros (like in the Half Life 2 speedrun) more likely kinda TAS-Run.

Goggen

2008-09-01 01:12:37 pm

"Time to go to work..."

Kahless_GOA:

Hi,
Hello,

just passing the forums after some months of absence, and seeing you still doing
Well, some months *might* be long enough for there to be comparative progress, so yeah.

this run is great.
Aw, I had to do almost no conspicuous editing for that compliment, thanks!

From your last run I know you are an perfectionist,
And how!

and so I wondered if it was to much work to accomplish,
And how!

but i am impressed.
And, uhm, how. No, that doesn't work. Thanks, though.

Keep on the good work dude.
Thanks, though!

Roy_Hess:

after reading how much time you're spending on all the levels with all the attempts it can only be a nearly-perfect run! :-)
Uhm. Hm. Yeah... *Perfect*... That's what it's going to be... Not shabby at all... Of course...

If would be perfect if someone does it with key-macros (like in the Half Life 2 speedrun) more likely kinda TAS-Run.
Doubt that's possible, though, since the engine isn't really that kind of engine, it seems. To my knowledge. Hm.
Anyway, the game uses the horrifically obsolete, even at the time, Jedi Knight engine.
This is the reason why the game is so very awkward, in terms of movement and physics and even the animation system.
Also, the key macros are really for games that like using the console, like modern FPSes, which this isn't.

Of course, actual *research* by me on this is, uhm, limited, yeah...
Maybe oughta have done that early on...

But anyway, one thing I forgot last update.
Segmentation:
Segment 01b: 3 minutes 43,7 seconds
From start of level through the swim and climb to the gate opening button, to the climb-out before the key-fetching.
Segment 02c: 2 minutes 10,067
Through the small lava room, to the boat-launching button, trek to the boat, grab the key, and ending at the climb-out to the door.
Segment 03a: 4 minutes 52,95
From the opening of the door, through the massive lava room, up to Sophia, through the cutscene, ending when unholstering the SMG.
Segment 04d: 42,767 seconds
SMGing my way through the enemies until I trigger the elevator, ending when I unholster the SMG for *that*
Segment 05b: 59,667 seconds
SMGing my way through those four enemies, taking the lift up, grenading my way through to the key, ending at the top of the ladder there.
Segment 06a: 3 minutes 29,583 seconds
Taking the elevator down, trekking through to Sophia's jail, using the key and trekking through to the cutscene-heavy Sophia-door-opening, ending at the jump over to the crate puzzle.
Segment 07a: 2 minutes 49,833 seconds
The crate puzzle, trek down to the cable-tram thing, take that, and end of the level.

Aside from that, progress on the next level is that I've recorded a playthrough of the first couple minutes, which is very heavy on the lava. Also, will probably be very heavy on the Indy falling into the lava. Following that, it will probably be very heavy on the game crashing because of effect-heavy deaths. Oh, and the level starts with a half-minute cutscene that I'll have the joy of seeing over and over. So that ought to be fun.
But I *have* found one trick, that may actually save a couple of seconds, once I get busy on recording and comparing it.
Oh, and one last thing; this level is even *longer* than Palawan Volcano, so progress ought to be comparable...

Aside from that:
<blog> I'll be moving abroad for school in about two weeks, for about ten months, so that'll hamper progress a *tad*. Also, I am taking the opportunity to build a new beast of a computer to bring along, which hampers a bit more. My present one is too crappy for new games or even school work, and is also just too heavy to bring along on aircraft. Or even most ground vehicles, at that.
However, if the new one will even be able to run Infernal Machine is unknown, which is matched in uncertainty by whether I'll even have any time to do so. But since I won't have any work/people to distract me on weekends, and if school work isn't as heavy as I've been told/forewarned, I may still be able to make progress. Maybe.
Worst case scenario, I'll neither get the game to work, nor have time to run, in which case I'll probably just leave my present computer sitting here and speedrun during vacations. Of course, if the new beast *does* run the game, that kinda opens up the question of if I can actually run in vacations then, but I guess I can do both. Maybe.
But all that is still a couple weeks off, so I guess I'll find out then.
</blog>

Kahless_GOA:

[i]Hi,[/i]
Hello,

[i]just passing the forums after some months of absence, and seeing you still doing[/i]
Well, some months *might* be long enough for there to be comparative progress, so yeah.

[i]this run is great.[/i]
Aw, I had to do almost no conspicuous editing for that compliment, thanks!

[i]From your last run I know you are an perfectionist,[/i]
And how!

[i]and so I wondered if it was to much work to accomplish,[/i]
And how!

[i]but i am impressed.[/i]
And, uhm, how. No, that doesn't work. Thanks, though.

[i]Keep on the good work dude.[/i]
Thanks, though!

Roy_Hess:

[i]after reading how much time you're spending on all the levels with all the attempts it can only be a nearly-perfect run! :-)[/i]
Uhm. Hm. Yeah... *Perfect*... That's what it's going to be... Not shabby at all... Of course...

[i]If would be perfect if someone does it with key-macros (like in the Half Life 2 speedrun) more likely kinda TAS-Run.[/i]
Doubt that's possible, though, since the engine isn't really that kind of engine, it seems. To my knowledge. Hm.
Anyway, the game uses the horrifically obsolete, even at the time, Jedi Knight engine.
This is the reason why the game is so very awkward, in terms of movement and physics and even the animation system.
Also, the key macros are really for games that like using the console, like modern FPSes, which this isn't.

Of course, actual *research* by me on this is, uhm, limited, yeah...
Maybe oughta have done that early on...

But anyway, one thing I forgot last update.
Segmentation:
Segment 01b: 3 minutes 43,7 seconds
From start of level through the swim and climb to the gate opening button, to the climb-out before the key-fetching.
Segment 02c: 2 minutes 10,067
Through the small lava room, to the boat-launching button, trek to the boat, grab the key, and ending at the climb-out to the door.
Segment 03a: 4 minutes 52,95
From the opening of the door, through the massive lava room, up to Sophia, through the cutscene, ending when unholstering the SMG.
Segment 04d: 42,767 seconds
SMGing my way through the enemies until I trigger the elevator, ending when I unholster the SMG for *that*
Segment 05b: 59,667 seconds
SMGing my way through those four enemies, taking the lift up, grenading my way through to the key, ending at the top of the ladder there.
Segment 06a: 3 minutes 29,583 seconds
Taking the elevator down, trekking through to Sophia's jail, using the key and trekking through to the cutscene-heavy Sophia-door-opening, ending at the jump over to the crate puzzle.
Segment 07a: 2 minutes 49,833 seconds
The crate puzzle, trek down to the cable-tram thing, take that, and end of the level.

Aside from that, progress on the next level is that I've recorded a playthrough of the first couple minutes, which is very heavy on the lava. Also, will probably be very heavy on the Indy falling into the lava. Following that, it will probably be very heavy on the game crashing because of effect-heavy deaths. Oh, and the level starts with a half-minute cutscene that I'll have the joy of seeing over and over. So that ought to be fun.
But I *have* found one trick, that may actually save a couple of seconds, once I get busy on recording and comparing it.
Oh, and one last thing; this level is even *longer* than Palawan Volcano, so progress ought to be comparable...

Aside from that:
<blog> I'll be moving abroad for school in about two weeks, for about ten months, so that'll hamper progress a *tad*. Also, I am taking the opportunity to build a new beast of a computer to bring along, which hampers a bit more. My present one is too crappy for new games or even school work, and is also just too heavy to bring along on aircraft. Or even most ground vehicles, at that.
However, if the new one will even be able to run Infernal Machine is unknown, which is matched in uncertainty by whether I'll even have any time to do so. But since I won't have any work/people to distract me on weekends, and if school work isn't as heavy as I've been told/forewarned, I may still be able to make progress. Maybe.
Worst case scenario, I'll neither get the game to work, nor have time to run, in which case I'll probably just leave my present computer sitting here and speedrun during vacations. Of course, if the new beast *does* run the game, that kinda opens up the question of if I can actually run in vacations then, but I guess I can do both. Maybe.
But all that is still a couple weeks off, so I guess I'll find out then.
</blog>

Roy_Hess

2008-09-02 01:34:51 am

unemployed Dragon

Quote from Goggen:

Also, the key macros are really for games that like using the console, like modern FPSes, which this isn't.

You forgot about external programs or the macro capabilities of Logitech G15 Keyboard + Software

Goggen

2008-09-03 06:43:39 pm

"Time to go to work..."

Roy Hess:

"You forgot about external programs or the macro capabilities of Logitech G15 Keyboard + Software"

1. Nah, doubtful. The game has no bunny-hopping or continuous rolling or anything like that (yep, even checked this time), and there are very few "combo moves", either. Additionally, many of the combo moves that *do* exist, are either ones where you hold a key down, where you can tap a key at any time, or where it's just plain-ol' easy to do manually.
And even then, I can't think of any real tricks that aren't just "press jump/roll from precise position A in precise direction B", which would doubtfully work with scripts.
Besides, pretty much everything is just pressing one button.
Except when moving blocks, where *no* kind of input device can help you.
2.Teh Official SDA Rules(tm):
"Many PC games allow you to use scripts or macros to automate certain actions. Internal scripts that are built into a game are allowed, but external ones like AutoHotkey are not."
Yeah, don't think a software-scripted keyboard-pressing is gonna fly. Particularly not from *hardware*.
3. Don't have a Logitech G15. Can't be bothered to learn about that kind of ~~cheating~~ scripting.
4. I could spend money on a Logitech G15 to run the game.
Or I could spend money on a vintage N64 and the non-horrific-controls version of this game.
And I checked, because that's my thing: I could buy *two* N64s and Indy64s for the same price as one G15. Including shipping. To another continent.

Not that it's a bad idea, mind you. Except for the soul-less, soul-less cheating.
Also I can't think of any circumstances where it would help. Dang.
But thanks for the suggestion, though. I won't have anyone say I don't listen to suggestions. Before horribly shooting them down in every way, breaking people's spirits and forever crushing their will to ever make helpful suggestions to anyone ever again.
Keep 'em coming, though!

And, for the record; yes, I *would* like to try this game without the horrible horrible controls. Which also happens to have better lighting and such. And is arguably the most technically advanced game of the entire console. And which is not possible to emulate just to try it.
Both a console, and game, now that I've checked, which is very much available on eBay for not very much money...
Hm...

Roy Hess:

"You forgot about external programs or the macro capabilities of Logitech G15 Keyboard + Software"

1. Nah, doubtful. The game has no bunny-hopping or continuous rolling or anything like that (yep, even checked this time), and there are very few "combo moves", either. Additionally, many of the combo moves that *do* exist, are either ones where you hold a key down, where you can tap a key at any time, or where it's just plain-ol' easy to do manually.
And even then, I can't think of any real tricks that aren't just "press jump/roll from precise position A in precise direction B", which would doubtfully work with scripts.
Besides, pretty much everything is just pressing one button.
Except when moving blocks, where *no* kind of input device can help you.
2.Teh Official SDA Rules(tm):
"[i]Many PC games allow you to use scripts or macros to automate certain actions. Internal scripts that are built into a game are allowed, but external ones like AutoHotkey are not.[/i]" 
Yeah, don't think a software-scripted keyboard-pressing is gonna fly. Particularly not from *hardware*.
3. Don't have a Logitech G15. Can't be bothered to learn about that kind of [s]cheating[/s] scripting.
4. I [i]could[/i] spend money on a Logitech G15 to run the game.
Or I could spend money on a vintage N64 and the non-horrific-controls version of this game.
And I checked, because that's my thing: I could buy *two* N64s and Indy64s for the same price as one G15. Including shipping. To another continent.

Not that it's a bad idea, mind you. Except for the soul-less, soul-less cheating.
Also I can't think of any circumstances where it would help. Dang.
But thanks for the suggestion, though. I won't have anyone say I don't listen to suggestions. Before horribly shooting them down in every way, breaking people's spirits and forever crushing their will to ever make helpful suggestions to anyone ever again.
Keep 'em coming, though!

And, for the record; yes, I *would* like to try this game without the horrible horrible controls. Which also happens to have better lighting and such. And is arguably the most technically advanced game of the entire console. And which is not possible to emulate just to try it.
Both a console, and game, now that I've checked, which is very much available on eBay for not very much money...
Hm...

Roy_Hess

2008-09-04 08:16:48 am

unemployed Dragon

you write too much, havin' much time arent ya?

Goggen

Edit history:

Goggen: 2008-09-04 06:49:43 pm

2008-09-04 06:28:53 pm

"Time to go to work..."

Roy_Hess:

"you write too much,"
First I've heard of it.
And just you wait for my speedrun comments.

"havin' much time arent ya?"
Not exactly. Firstly, I write that much very quickly, and secondly, I write when I don't have the "proper" time for running. I prefer not to run when there's interruptions, like work, working on my computer, food, sleep, or anything really. So yeah, I wonder *why* there's been so little progress lately...

But even so: Progress!
I've found a neat little 15-second-saving trick, that naturally works once every few dozen attempts.
After retrieving the shell key, you can drop down to the floor of the big room without climbing down. If you long-jump to the left, and hit the lower edge of a slope there, you can bounce and slide down to the bottom of the room. In several ways:
1. You can lose 1,5 circles of health, and bounce to the little rock monster area.
2. Same place, lose 0,5 health.
3. You can lose 1,5 health, landing on a tiny little outcropping between the rock monster area and the bottom of the climb area.
4. Same place, losing no health.
5. You can land on the bottom of climb area, losing 0,5 health.
6. Same, but losing 2,5 health.

Now, you might think that 5 is better, since I am closer to the lava hopping. But you'd be wrong. Actually, 4 is best, since lost health has to be replenished with health kits, which take 2,2 seconds to pick up, and an additional second if they're the large ones and have to be used through the menu. Also, I lose no real time to rolling off that outcropping.
Of course, this trick hardly ever works. 1 times out of 10 when aiming carefully, 1/15 when not aiming at all, and surprisingly only 1/20 when half-aiming. I think I'm going to go for the no-aiming, since the trick is so random anyway that wasting a second or two lining up is kinda silly when it still barely ever works. Annoyingly, of course, if I miss, then Indy falls to his death, which causes a fair few crashes. Although, as you can see, they happen a few dozen deaths apart, rather than half-a-dozen. Mostly because I reload mid-air, though.
At present, I'm about three minutes into the level, just planning the thing.
Oh, and of the different ways, they all happen randomly, and way 4 even more randomly. That is, less often.
With no real control of it from me. Yeah...
But strangely, the first time it happened was also the first time I didn't try aiming, so who knows.

Now, one more ~~blog~~ thing: Over the next week or two, before moving abroad, I'll have to use my recording drive to store data, and since I'll be a hard drive short in my new rig, I probably won't have the space to record until after I've bought yet another one. So expect yet more delay. If the game works on my new rig, of course. If not, well, *lots* more delay. Anyway, we'll see.

Roy_Hess:

"you write too much,"
First I've heard of it.
And just you wait for my speedrun comments.

"havin' much time arent ya?"
Not exactly. Firstly, I write that much very quickly, and secondly, I write when I don't have the "proper" time for running. I prefer not to run when there's interruptions, like work, working on my computer, food, sleep, or anything really. So yeah, I wonder *why* there's been so little progress lately...

But even so: Progress!
I've found a neat little 15-second-saving trick, that naturally works once every few dozen attempts.
After retrieving the shell key, you can drop down to the floor of the big room without climbing down. If you long-jump to the left, and hit the lower edge of a slope there, you can bounce and slide down to the bottom of the room. In several ways:
1. You can lose 1,5 circles of health, and bounce to the little rock monster area.
2. Same place, lose 0,5 health.
3. You can lose 1,5 health, landing on a tiny little outcropping between the rock monster area and the bottom of the climb area.
4. Same place, losing no health.
5. You can land on the bottom of climb area, losing 0,5 health.
6. Same, but losing 2,5 health.

Now, you might think that 5 is better, since I am closer to the lava hopping. But you'd be wrong. Actually, 4 is best, since lost health has to be replenished with health kits, which take 2,2 seconds to pick up, and an additional second if they're the large ones and have to be used through the menu. Also, I lose no real time to rolling off that outcropping.
Of course, this trick hardly ever works. 1 times out of 10 when aiming carefully, 1/15 when not aiming at all, and surprisingly only 1/20 when half-aiming. I think I'm going to go for the no-aiming, since the trick is so random anyway that wasting a second or two lining up is kinda silly when it still barely ever works. Annoyingly, of course, if I miss, then Indy falls to his death, which causes a fair few crashes. Although, as you can see, they happen a few dozen deaths apart, rather than half-a-dozen. Mostly because I reload mid-air, though.
At present, I'm about three minutes into the level, just planning the thing.
Oh, and of the different ways, they all happen randomly, and way 4 even more randomly. That is, less often.
With no real control of it from me. Yeah...
But strangely, the first time it happened was also the first time I didn't try aiming, so who knows.

Now, one more [s]blog[/s] thing: Over the next week or two, before moving abroad, I'll have to use my recording drive to store data, and since I'll be a hard drive short in my new rig, I probably won't have the space to record until after I've bought yet another one. So expect yet more delay. If the game works on my new rig, of course. If not, well, *lots* more delay. Anyway, we'll see.

Goggen

2008-10-14 01:55:16 pm

"Time to go to work..."

It took a month, but I'm back! Oh yeah!

Now, my new compy is working fine (-ish), it's nice and powerful, and amazingly awesomely, it runs Infernal Machine.
And even better than my old one did. Boo-yah.
And since I had no internet connection for THREE WEEKS in this new country, and I'm also pathetically boring person with no social life, I've also done a fair amount of running. Which means, that with great pride, I can tell you that Palawan Temple is now finished! And entirely!

Basically, 15 minutes long (freakily enough, 15:00) and eight segments.
More detailed specifics are forthcoming, I'm just busy updating myself on everything after a month offline.

There is one thing that I would like to ask in the meantime.
Now, this level is pretty much the only one I would consider re-running, *because* there's a blatantly obvious shortcut that I couldn't seem to get to. Now, once you get out of the opening temple, and enter that valley, you can see, off in the distance, a lake on the other side of the bridge?
That's the lake you pour on the boss. Really.
And you know those ropes that the bridges are made of?
You can run on them. Really.
And did the level designer notice?
Yes, he did.

So, the question (or pleading, really):
Do *any* of you know of any way through the invisible barrier on that bridge?
It would save TEN MINUTES. And not even the same ten minutes I saved by messing up the level time plan again. An actual TEN MINUTES of gameplay.
If there are *any* ideas, let me know. I'd hate to move on with the run and then find out years later that it *was* possible to skip that much.

So, aside from that:
Details to follow. End transmission.

It took a month, but I'm back! Oh yeah!

Now, my new compy is working fine (-ish), it's nice and powerful, and amazingly awesomely, it runs Infernal Machine.
And even better than my old one did. Boo-yah.
And since I had no internet connection for THREE WEEKS in this new country, and I'm also pathetically boring person with no social life, I've also done a fair amount of running. Which means, that with great pride, I can tell you that Palawan Temple is now finished! And entirely!

Basically, 15 minutes long (freakily enough, 15:00) and eight segments.
More detailed specifics are forthcoming, I'm just busy updating myself on everything after a month offline.

There is one thing that I would like to ask in the meantime.
Now, this level is pretty much the only one I would consider re-running, *because* there's a blatantly obvious shortcut that I couldn't seem to get to. Now, once you get out of the opening temple, and enter that valley, you can see, off in the distance, a lake on the other side of the bridge?
That's the lake you pour on the boss. Really.
And you know those ropes that the bridges are made of?
You can run on them. Really.
And did the level designer notice?
Yes, he did.

So, the question (or pleading, really):
Do *any* of you know of any way through the invisible barrier on that bridge?
It would save TEN MINUTES. And not even the same ten minutes I saved by messing up the level time plan again. An actual TEN MINUTES of gameplay.
If there are *any* ideas, let me know. I'd hate to move on with the run and then find out years later that it *was* possible to skip that much.

So, aside from that:
Details to follow. End transmission.

Roy_Hess

Edit history:

Roy_Hess: 2008-10-15 01:38:24 am

2008-10-15 12:42:36 am

unemployed Dragon

i can try to find any shortcut around that but i've just installed Indiana Jones on my Notebook so i need Savegames :O
Ah forget that i have found some Savegames on my old computer! Now i need to investigate which ropes you're actually talking about (screenshot would be nice) :p
I found two bridges from that place you have mentioned which i was able to pass the first one by jumping on the rope and then slowly walking to the first plank where i have dropped from the rope and walked onto the ground in the middle.
Iam workin on the second bridge.. if there's a way we'll find it ... eventually

Too bad there is no strafejumping

Goggen

2008-10-15 03:55:10 am

"Time to go to work..."

Huh. Apparently I'm the only one who noticed that, then.

Okay, when you enter the outdoors (finally), there are two bridges in front of you. One un-jumpable, leading forward to an "island" of sorts, and one above, leading sideways. Now, the way it's supposed to go, you climb up to the top bridge, don't make the jump across to the one intact plank, drop down to the bottom bridge, go across to the island, and then jump over to the next section.
However, there's a third completely broken bridge, leaving from that island, to a lake in the distance.

*This* bridge is the one I'm talking about, and that lake is the boss-killing one.
About 90% of the way across, there's an invisible wall.

Now, as for screenshot, I don't really have one and can't be bothered figuring out how to screencap from my videos. So instead, the far less descriptive version:
YouTube'd!

Huh, maybe I shoulda have searched YouTube for speedruns of the game. Apparently there is one. A horrible, horrible one, of what I've seen, but maybe there's tricks. Would feel bad about taking them, though.
Also: The trailer. He starts running across that very bridge at 17 seconds.

Since I'll get the question; you get on the rope with a running jump aimed *precisely* along the rope. I actually had to attach a sight to my monitor to do so, since I do use rope-running in the run.

Also, incidentally, the faster route is actually the top bridge, running across the rope. You have to climb up a ladder either way, and that route is just a bit shorter. But not by much.

Oh, and yeah, I'll update details soon. Busy.

Huh. Apparently I'm the only one who noticed that, then.

Okay, when you enter the outdoors (finally), there are two bridges in front of you. One un-jumpable, leading forward to an "island" of sorts, and one above, leading sideways. Now, the way it's supposed to go, you climb up to the top bridge, don't make the jump across to the one intact plank, drop down to the bottom bridge, go across to the island, and then jump over to the next section.
However, there's a third completely broken bridge, leaving from that island, to a lake in the distance.

*This* bridge is the one I'm talking about, and that lake is the boss-killing one.
About 90% of the way across, there's an invisible wall.

Now, as for screenshot, I don't really have one and can't be bothered figuring out how to screencap from my videos. So instead, the far less descriptive version:
[b]YouTube'd![/b]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SmkKo8Kn6qA
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iSEvb-CTzYw

Huh, maybe I shoulda have searched YouTube for speedruns of the game. Apparently there is one. A horrible, horrible one, of what I've seen, but maybe there's tricks. Would feel bad about taking them, though.
Also: The trailer. He starts running across that very bridge at 17 seconds.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WjvrCfnVlgI&feature=related

Since I'll get the question; you get on the rope with a running jump aimed *precisely* along the rope. I actually had to attach a sight to my monitor to do so, since I do use rope-running in the run.

Also, incidentally, the faster route is actually the top bridge, running across the rope. You have to climb up a ladder either way, and that route is just a bit shorter. But not by much.

Oh, and yeah, I'll update details soon. Busy.

Roy_Hess

2008-10-16 01:53:59 am

unemployed Dragon

Yes i have found this one mentioned on this youtube video:

I made a savegame so i can try to get past later, but i doubt the map creator will let people get past his little invisible barrier.

Maybe you shouldnt go there anyway before doing other things or it'll mess the game up
(missing artifacts or other stuff)
It would be nice to have a noclip mode to test it out (or just hex-edit indy thru the barrier)

Goggen

Edit history:

Goggen: 2008-10-18 09:18:04 am

2008-10-18 06:36:13 am

"Time to go to work..."

Quick note to Roy_Hess:
*Kinda* sounds like when you pointed out that video you found on YouTube as a new thing, when it's the exact same video I linked to. And posted. And recorded. By me.
Which I find kinda funny. Ideally, you should have said it in Doug Lee's Indiana Jones voice, and gone "Look what *I* found! Success! Well well, look at this!"
Not intending to make fun of you, just seemed kinda funny. To me. ...I'm weird.

Anyway, yes:
"Maybe you shouldnt go there anyway before doing other things or it'll mess the game up
(missing artifacts or other stuff)"
Amazingly, I don't think it would. In Canyonlands, I was able to start the final cutscene without the potsherd *or* Sophia flying in first.
Additionally, there's the very nice shortcut in King Solomon's Mines, where you skip one of the gems. I'm sure there are other examples.
From what I guess, the level scripts don't have condition flags, since the level designer assumed it would be linear and without shortcuts (and made sure, the bastard).
Although, obviously, if you could kill the boss and run past his corpse to the exit, then you'd skip Taklit's Part. However:
1. You could probably still pick it up, unless the picking-up-cutscene broke somehow, what with the boss being dead already.
2. You could probably just skip it anyway, since I can't think of anywhere you'll *need* it until Meroë, and before that there's V.I. Pudovkin, where you pick all the parts up again anyway. I don't see how that wouldn't work, since they're placed in the level, and not in a package like your weapons are.
3. It probably wouldn't be worth it even if you *could* pick it up, since it's only useful for skipping enemies, most of which you can run past anyway, and even if you can't, there's these things called "guns". Of special note, the amount of time required to pick up that part is probably an *awful* lot more than the time you'd save on skipping enemies.

*EDIT*
Yes, you *can* skip straight to the exit, and also skip the machine part. I god-moded inside the bossfight room, which means you can run on lava. Then a run over to the button, killifying the boss. Then, either out the door, or over to the part (where the cutscene omits the boss) and then out. Works fine. If you skip the part, (obviously) you don't have it the next level.
Speaking of which, I've thought of one place you might need it before the ship; the bossfight against Quetzalcoatl in Olmec Valley. Fairly easy to test, though; load a savegame, and try to fight the boss without ever using it.

"It would be nice to have a noclip mode to test it out (or just hex-edit indy thru the barrier)"
I haven't found one, the closest would be these console commands:
"coords", which tells you where you are (to pin-point the barrier location, and to test how wide it is, etc.).
"fixme", which will move Indy from a stuck location to a freely movable location as close as possible. Theoretically, you could teleport to the other side of the barrier with this, if could get closer to it than the closeby one. Would doubtfully be allowed, since it's a cheat code, although it's listed as a "feature" in the manual. (Hm, I wonder if it works if you jump off the rope, then "fixme"...? *EDIT* No it doesn't.)
"taklit_marion 1" god-mode. For instance, you can drop down to the canyon floor. And can't get up. This is *probably* how I got that massive skip to work in Canyonlands, by accident, since I think godmode doesn't reset when you load a game.

As for hex-edit, there's various tools for Jedi Knight that allow you to extract various files.
By accident, I unpatched my game doing this, not noticing until I'd broken the opening cutscene for Jeep Trek, which is probably what happened to Shambala Sanctuary, meaning I've been running the game mostly unpatched. I've had to patch it now, though, for Jeep Trek.
Anyway, you can open up various scripts and things in notepad, but to open up the levels I think you'd need a level editor to know what to look for. I haven't been able to find one that works, but that's mostly because I can't figure out where the levels are hidden.
Technically, the game used the Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight engine, so one of those *might* do. (Let me know if you find one!)

So that's basically it, yeah.

Well, right, finally got a moment to post a more elaborate update.
Actually, I'm supposed to be doing something else important, but dangit if I can be bothered to do *that*.
Time to go to work!

First off, getting blogging out of the way:
I've just moved abroad, and after setting up my new computer (or what's left of it, after baggage handling) I had plenty of time to speedrun, since school hadn't started properly and I didn't have an internet connection. Now I do, and school has started, so progress will slow down. How much, for how long, I don't know.
Now, this new computer, simply just copying from my notes:

A brief note in my new compy. It's got a quad-core Intel, an ATi HD4870X2, plenty of RAM, and enough oomph to set itself on fire if I'm not careful. Also, it's watercooled, and it *does* have enough oomph to set the water on fire too. So there.
Surprisingly, the game actually works on it. Even more surprisingly, it seems to run *better*. I haven't had a single crash, even after falling into lava a hundred or so times.
And continuing the good news, the sound isn't as low as it was, *and* it isn't out of sync like before. At least, until I started recording. It's lower than ever, now. Well, it was nice while it lasted.
And for some inexplicable reason, all the files now have twice the video bandwidth, and presumably a tiny bit of better graphics. Oh, and the multi-core processor and beefy graphics card means there seems to be no upper limit to how high I can push the settings. Previously, I had a choice between getting 800*600@50-60FPS, or 1024*768@20-30FPS. So I went with the smoother option. Now, I can run 1024*768 at 60FPS, no problem. Unbelievably enough, if I tried like I did and went with the highest possible resolution, while still at 50-60FPS... 1280*960. Amazingly, the files don't get any larger. And they're so big I can't play them back, which proves that *yes*, an almighty god could create a rock so heavy he can't lift it.
Wow.
And I haven't even been able to find out how high 800*600 goes in framerate, because Fraps is capped at 100 and my monitor at 75. Interestingly, the added bandwidth is apparently the same for all the high resolutions, and also has the slight effect of halving the amount of time I can play before a reel change occurs; pretty exactly two-and-a-half minutes. (Although, like before, it varies depending on what part of the level I'm on).
So, in short: Boo-yah!

And now for what I got up to. I finished off the entirety of Palawan Temple, from start to finish in eight segments, in 15 minutes.
Note that in planning it was 26 minutes, another typo. And also eight segments, here in minutes: (1+3+4+6+7+2+1+2) = 26
My guess the typo came in at the 6 or 7 point or so. The way timing works in Infernal is that it counts the whole number of minutes since you started the level, *or* the time in minutes since you last loaded. And with absolutely no sense of time myself, these typos show up all the time. Also, it's clearly obvious that I got tired with the level in planning, with all those 1-minute segments all the time.
Now rehearsals, which, if you don't know already, is just a video of me running through the whole level, doing every trick, edited together with no concern for continuity or segmentation. I'd done about three minutes worth before I came here, and did the rest right away. Total time: 15:41.
And then the whole level, speedran, at 15:00.

And now's the breakdown:

07 - Palawan Temple
15:00 (2:18+1:27+1:21+1:20+56+3:35+1:35+2:28)
PROBLEM: This level didn't work at all due to some bug happening when loading Indy's model. (Specifically, in the opening cutscene, after blasting the wall.) *However*, this seems to be a feature of the gear he's wearing; S&W and machete was broken, Tokarev and SMG worked.
SOLUTION: Redo previous level, stay away from (presumably) the machete toward the end.

Segment 01
2:18 (2:25)
Note: This segment lasts from start, until climbing up to top after picking up the shark key.
Minor (obvious): Skipping lava platforms wherever possible, jumping while they're still lowered.
Minor: After climbing to top entrance of Shark key's area, rolling to corner incline and bounce off to bottom, unharmed.

Segment 02
1:27 (1:30)
Note: Segment lasts from top of post-keygrab climb, down to the floor and across to the tiki statue, and ending before the jump over to the temple floor.
[Obvious: You can drop down from the climbing, one climb below the horizontal climbing bit. Slower than the other way.]
Medium: You can skip climbing down, by long-jumping to the left-hand side, aiming *just* at the end of that upper slope, bouncing down to the floor, at the cost of about 1.5 circles of health. Then, from that side area, you can long-jump to the climbing base area withour any lava hopping.
Minor: Jumping off whipping while boulder still rolling. Exact moment; climbing up when the boulder reaches the doorway, dropping off at top.
Minor: You can skip the ladder by climbing up on the broken wall over the lava stream, then long-jumping to exit.

Segment 03
1:21 (1:20)
Note: Lasts from the wall, through the lava room, out to the ladder before the first rope bridge.
Minor: You can avoid some platforming by jumping from the shark key side platform to the rock monster, then jump on that rock and climb up on the side thing, then running to the door.

Segment 04
1:20 (1:26)
Note: Segment lasts from the rope bridge section, over to the stream, and ending at the top of the ladder at the lake.
Minor (obvious): Jumping the top broken rope bridge straight across, rather than drop down to lower rope bridge and going on.
Minor: When jumping the top bridge, landing on the rope and running across.
[Unbelievably massive!?: You can jump on the rope and run halfway over to the button that kills the boss. Problem being, the douchebag level designer blocked it off.]
Minor: You can skip the small ladder after the rope bridge by running up the incline and jumping.

Segment 05
56 (1:01)
Note: Segment lasts from top of climb before cutting the rope bridge, until the final climb-up before slashing web and traps and whatnot.
Minor: You can skip the ladder at the entrance by jumping on the rock next to it, then jumping at the wall.
Fun: After cutting the rope bridge, jumping on top of palm tree then rolling onto next rope bridge. (Mildly faster.)

Segment 06
3:35 (3:48)
Note: Lasts from the climb-up, thorugh the key and tiki thing, to the whip-climb after the rolling boulders.
Minor: In area with lots of spiders, jumping straight across to impaled skeleton, rather than jump into the room and climb up.
Minor: In spike trap, skipping second half (and giant lizard) by jumping over right-hand rubble.
Minor: You can skip the ladder at the entrance again by jumping on the rock next to it, then jumping at the wall.
Minor: You can skip the opening boulder cutscene by jumping from the doorframe to the first pathway.
Minor: On boulder pathways, stand on outmost corner of second path, then run after boulder.

Segment 07
1:35 (1:38)
Note: Lasts from the final whip climb, over to the boss fight, and ending at the final pre-part-collecting climb-up of the island hopping.
Minor: Jumping on the rope of the rope bridge, running across.

Segment 08
2:28 (2:32)
Note: Lasts the rest of the boss fight, to the end of the level.
Medium: There's a sound bug where lines are cut when Indy picks up Taklit's Part. It seems to happen most often when you stand at a distance and angle to the part. Possibly, by triggering only the plaque and not the part.

Levels done: 07/17 (41,18%)
Plan, level/game: 16/340 (04,70%)
Game, plan: 132/340 (38,82%)
Segments, this run/plan: 8 / 8 (100%) (Won't see one of these for a while)
Average segment length: 1 minutes 52 seconds
Segments, whole run, so far/plan: 38/19 (200%)
This level, time: 15:00 (,33) (out of 16; 6,25% saved)
Time so far: 1:44:03 (out of 132; 21,17% saved)
Projected final time: 4:28:02

And that's it. Phew.

Quick note to Roy_Hess:
*Kinda* sounds like when you pointed out that video you found on YouTube as a new thing, when it's the exact same video I linked to. And posted. And recorded. By me.
Which I find kinda funny. Ideally, you should have said it in Doug Lee's Indiana Jones voice, and gone "Look what *I* found! Success! Well well, look at this!"
Not intending to make fun of you, just seemed kinda funny. To me. ...I'm weird.

Anyway, yes:
"Maybe you shouldnt go there anyway before doing other things or it'll mess the game up
(missing artifacts or other stuff)"
Amazingly, I don't think it would. In Canyonlands, I was able to start the final cutscene without the potsherd *or* Sophia flying in first.
Additionally, there's the very nice shortcut in King Solomon's Mines, where you skip one of the gems. I'm sure there are other examples.
From what I guess, the level scripts don't have condition flags, since the level designer assumed it would be linear and without shortcuts (and made sure, the bastard).
Although, obviously, if you could kill the boss and run past his corpse to the exit, then you'd skip Taklit's Part. However:
1. You could probably still pick it up, unless the picking-up-cutscene broke somehow, what with the boss being dead already.
2. You could probably just skip it anyway, since I can't think of anywhere you'll *need* it until Meroë, and before that there's V.I. Pudovkin, where you pick all the parts up again anyway. I don't see how that wouldn't work, since they're placed in the level, and not in a package like your weapons are.
3. It probably wouldn't be worth it even if you *could* pick it up, since it's only useful for skipping enemies, most of which you can run past anyway, and even if you can't, there's these things called "guns". Of special note, the amount of time required to pick up that part is probably an *awful* lot more than the time you'd save on skipping enemies.

*EDIT*
Yes, you *can* skip straight to the exit, and also skip the machine part. I god-moded inside the bossfight room, which means you can run on lava. Then a run over to the button, killifying the boss. Then, either out the door, or over to the part (where the cutscene omits the boss) and then out. Works fine. If you skip the part, (obviously) you don't have it the next level.
Speaking of which, I've thought of one place you might need it before the ship; the bossfight against Quetzalcoatl in Olmec Valley. Fairly easy to test, though; load a savegame, and try to fight the boss without ever using it.

"It would be nice to have a noclip mode to test it out (or just hex-edit indy thru the barrier)"
I haven't found one, the closest would be these console commands:
"coords", which tells you where you are (to pin-point the barrier location, and to test how wide it is, etc.).
"fixme", which will move Indy from a stuck location to a freely movable location as close as possible. Theoretically, you could teleport to the other side of the barrier with this, if could get closer to it than the closeby one. Would doubtfully be allowed, since it's a cheat code, although it's listed as a "feature" in the manual. (Hm, I wonder if it works if you jump off the rope, then "fixme"...? *EDIT* No it doesn't.)
"taklit_marion 1" god-mode. For instance, you can drop down to the canyon floor. And can't get up. This is *probably* how I got that massive skip to work in Canyonlands, by accident, since I think godmode doesn't reset when you load a game.

As for hex-edit, there's various tools for Jedi Knight that allow you to extract various files. 
By accident, I unpatched my game doing this, not noticing until I'd broken the opening cutscene for Jeep Trek, which is probably what happened to Shambala Sanctuary, meaning I've been running the game mostly unpatched. I've had to patch it now, though, for Jeep Trek.
Anyway, you can open up various scripts and things in notepad, but to open up the levels I think you'd need a level editor to know what to look for. I haven't been able to find one that works, but that's mostly because I can't figure out where the levels are hidden.
Technically, the game used the Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight engine, so one of those *might* do. (Let me know if you find one!)

So that's basically it, yeah.

Well, right, finally got a moment to post a more elaborate update.
Actually, I'm supposed to be doing something else important, but dangit if I can be bothered to do *that*.
Time to go to work!

First off, getting blogging out of the way:
I've just moved abroad, and after setting up my new computer (or what's left of it, after baggage handling) I had plenty of time to speedrun, since school hadn't started properly and I didn't have an internet connection. Now I do, and school has started, so progress will slow down. How much, for how long, I don't know.
Now, this new computer, simply just copying from my notes:

A brief note in my new compy. It's got a quad-core Intel, an ATi HD4870X2, plenty of RAM, and enough oomph to set itself on fire if I'm not careful. Also, it's watercooled, and it *does* have enough oomph to set the water on fire too. So there.
Surprisingly, the game actually works on it. Even more surprisingly, it seems to run *better*. I haven't had a single crash, even after falling into lava a hundred or so times.
And continuing the good news, the sound isn't as low as it was, *and* it isn't out of sync like before. At least, until I started recording. It's lower than ever, now. Well, it was nice while it lasted.
And for some inexplicable reason, all the files now have twice the video bandwidth, and presumably a tiny bit of better graphics. Oh, and the multi-core processor and beefy graphics card means there seems to be no upper limit to how high I can push the settings. Previously, I had a choice between getting 800*600@50-60FPS, or 1024*768@20-30FPS. So I went with the smoother option. Now, I can run 1024*768 at 60FPS, no problem. Unbelievably enough, if I tried like I did and went with the highest possible resolution, while still at 50-60FPS... 1280*960. Amazingly, the files don't get any larger. And they're so big I can't play them back, which proves that *yes*, an almighty god could create a rock so heavy he can't lift it.
Wow.
And I haven't even been able to find out how high 800*600 goes in framerate, because Fraps is capped at 100 and my monitor at 75. Interestingly, the added bandwidth is apparently the same for all the high resolutions, and also has the slight effect of halving the amount of time I can play before a reel change occurs; pretty exactly two-and-a-half minutes. (Although, like before, it varies depending on what part of the level I'm on).
So, in short: Boo-yah!

And now for what I got up to. I finished off the entirety of Palawan Temple, from start to finish in eight segments, in 15 minutes.
Note that in planning it was 26 minutes, another typo. And also eight segments, here in minutes: (1+3+4+6+7+2+1+2) = 26
My guess the typo came in at the 6 or 7 point or so. The way timing works in Infernal is that it counts the whole number of minutes since you started the level, *or* the time in minutes since you last loaded. And with absolutely no sense of time myself, these typos show up all the time. Also, it's clearly obvious that I got tired with the level in planning, with all those 1-minute segments all the time.
Now rehearsals, which, if you don't know already, is just a video of me running through the whole level, doing every trick, edited together with no concern for continuity or segmentation. I'd done about three minutes worth before I came here, and did the rest right away. Total time: 15:41.
And then the whole level, speedran, at 15:00.

And now's the breakdown:

07 - Palawan Temple
15:00 (2:18+1:27+1:21+1:20+56+3:35+1:35+2:28)
PROBLEM: This level didn't work at all due to some bug happening when loading Indy's model. (Specifically, in the opening cutscene, after blasting the wall.) *However*, this seems to be a feature of the gear he's wearing; S&W and machete was broken, Tokarev and SMG worked.
SOLUTION: Redo previous level, stay away from (presumably) the machete toward the end.

Segment 01
2:18 (2:25)
Note: This segment lasts from start, until climbing up to top after picking up the shark key.
Minor (obvious): Skipping lava platforms wherever possible, jumping while they're still lowered.
Minor: After climbing to top entrance of Shark key's area, rolling to corner incline and bounce off to bottom, unharmed.

Segment 02
1:27 (1:30)
Note: Segment lasts from top of post-keygrab climb, down to the floor and across to the tiki statue, and ending before the jump over to the temple floor.
[Obvious: You can drop down from the climbing, one climb below the horizontal climbing bit. Slower than the other way.]
Medium: You can skip climbing down, by long-jumping to the left-hand side, aiming *just* at the end of that upper slope, bouncing down to the floor, at the cost of about 1.5 circles of health. Then, from that side area, you can long-jump to the climbing base area withour any lava hopping.
Minor: Jumping off whipping while boulder still rolling. Exact moment; climbing up when the boulder reaches the doorway, dropping off at top.
Minor: You can skip the ladder by climbing up on the broken wall over the lava stream, then long-jumping to exit.

Segment 03
1:21 (1:20)
Note: Lasts from the wall, through the lava room, out to the ladder before the first rope bridge.
Minor: You can avoid some platforming by jumping from the shark key side platform to the rock monster, then jump on that rock and climb up on the side thing, then running to the door.

Segment 04
1:20 (1:26)
Note: Segment lasts from the rope bridge section, over to the stream, and ending at the top of the ladder at the lake.
Minor (obvious): Jumping the top broken rope bridge straight across, rather than drop down to lower rope bridge and going on.
Minor: When jumping the top bridge, landing on the rope and running across.
[Unbelievably massive!?: You can jump on the rope and run halfway over to the button that kills the boss. Problem being, the douchebag level designer blocked it off.]
Minor: You can skip the small ladder after the rope bridge by running up the incline and jumping.

Segment 05
56 (1:01)
Note: Segment lasts from top of climb before cutting the rope bridge, until the final climb-up before slashing web and traps and whatnot.
Minor: You can skip the ladder at the entrance by jumping on the rock next to it, then jumping at the wall.
Fun: After cutting the rope bridge, jumping on top of palm tree then rolling onto next rope bridge. (Mildly faster.)

Segment 06
3:35 (3:48)
Note: Lasts from the climb-up, thorugh the key and tiki thing, to the whip-climb after the rolling boulders.
Minor: In area with lots of spiders, jumping straight across to impaled skeleton, rather than jump into the room and climb up.
Minor: In spike trap, skipping second half (and giant lizard) by jumping over right-hand rubble.
Minor: You can skip the ladder at the entrance again by jumping on the rock next to it, then jumping at the wall.
Minor: You can skip the opening boulder cutscene by jumping from the doorframe to the first pathway.
Minor: On boulder pathways, stand on outmost corner of second path, then run after boulder.

Segment 07
1:35 (1:38)
Note: Lasts from the final whip climb, over to the boss fight, and ending at the final pre-part-collecting climb-up of the island hopping.
Minor: Jumping on the rope of the rope bridge, running across.

Segment 08
2:28 (2:32)
Note: Lasts the rest of the boss fight, to the end of the level.
Medium: There's a sound bug where lines are cut when Indy picks up Taklit's Part. It seems to happen most often when you stand at a distance and angle to the part. Possibly, by triggering only the plaque and not the part.

Levels done:                                   07/17  (41,18%)
Plan, level/game:                             16/340 (04,70%)
Game, plan:                                    132/340 (38,82%)
Segments, this run/plan:                    8 / 8 (100%) (Won't see one of these for a while)
Average segment length:                    1 minutes 52 seconds
Segments, whole run, so far/plan:        38/19 (200%)
This level, time:                                 15:00 (,33)   (out of 16; 6,25% saved)
Time so far:                                     1:44:03 (out of 132; 21,17% saved)
Projected final time:                          4:28:02

And that's it. Phew.

Roy_Hess

Edit history:

Roy_Hess: 2008-10-18 04:11:16 pm

2008-10-18 03:53:26 pm

unemployed Dragon

you should stop talking so much crap and instead come right to the point.
at the moment iam pissed off because this game refuses to run stable, after i entered the tomb of Quetzalcoatl - and opened the doors - the game crashes with access violations all over the place and no media player or other software prevents that. yet i made it further, hit the snake like 19 times in a row with the spikes coming out of the bottom which doesnt even do anything to Quetzalcoatl at all (yes different platforms used!).
this game is so weird - like your comments.

I have read it should run stable under Vista, can anyone prove this?

Goggen

2008-10-20 06:43:09 am

"Time to go to work..."

Roy_Hess:
"you should stop talking so much crap and instead come right to the point."
See, that's a skill I haven't quite mastered yet. But I *am* quite good at babbling, though.

"at the moment iam pissed off because this game refuses to run stable, after i entered the tomb of Quetzalcoatl - and opened the doors - the game crashes with access violations all over the place and no media player or other software prevents that."
Generally, running WMP and IE would prevent the game from crashing for instance when you pick up an object (the menu, and the 3D pickup animations, are rendered separately or something, which screws the game up without WMP/IE).
As for in-level scripts, that's all random. However, general suggestions:
1. Try holstering different weapons. On the starting cutscene of Palawan Temple, the cutscene crashed when Indy spawned when he had the machete and revolver holstered. When I changed to the SMG and TT-33, it worked.
2. Try doing things in a different order. For some reason, if you skip (irrelevant) things, or do things out of order, the game would crash. In Nub's Tomb, the game would crash if I charged up the elevator socket before I charged up an irrelevant wall-socket to open up a heavenly crystal I wasn't going to use (and didn't).
3. Patch the game. Simple. v1.2 patch is widely available. Although I've apparently run the game unpatched until now (by accident), I've re-patched the game to solve camera issues.
4. Try, try again. Some levels are much more unstable than others. While Olmec Valley posed no problems for me, I had a lot of problems with the Infernal Machine level because gunfire or enemy attacks would randomly crash the game.

However, since you *did* make it past, it would be nice for me to know how, just in case. A solution like the Palawan Temple or Nub's Tomb example is kinda hard to come up with, so it never hurts to have other examples to draw from.

"yet i made it further, hit the snake like 19 times in a row with the spikes coming out of the bottom which doesnt even do anything to Quetzalcoatl at all (yes different platforms used!)."
I've never been fully able to understand this bossfight. As I remember from my first playthrough, you were supposed to stab Quetzalcoatl multiple times in the same place, which is horrible. Basically, each time you stabbed a body section, it would shrink slightly, and when it got small enough it exploded, taking the rest of the snake with it. Simplest way to time this is to jump on the platform at the precise moment the head is over a spike; then it spikes the same body part over and over, more or less.
However, in planning, the body sections did *not* shrink, which might mean that they've patched the game to X number of attacks on any part of the body, which kills the snake.
A third option: Go for the head. Kill the head, and the rest of the snake dies. Timing this is a pain, but since the head is the first thing you can hit, it's what I'll be doing for the speedrun, out of pragmatism.
My guess is that you're running on the unpatched version, where you need to hit one specific link 3-5 times before the snake dies. And with the snake having like 20 parts, it's very possible that you just kept hitting different ones all the time.

"this game is so weird - like your comments."
And how!

"I have read it should run stable under Vista, can anyone prove this?"
I've been meaning to get around to installing Vista to test it out, but I needed an internet connection for that. And now that I do, and school has started, I haven't really bothered to get around to that. But if I do, I'll be sure to quickly check if the game runs.

Roy_Hess:
"you should stop talking so much crap and instead come right to the point."
See, that's a skill I haven't quite mastered yet. But I *am* quite good at babbling, though.

"at the moment iam pissed off because this game refuses to run stable, after i entered the tomb of Quetzalcoatl - and opened the doors - the game crashes with access violations all over the place and no media player or other software prevents that."
Generally, running WMP and IE would prevent the game from crashing for instance when you pick up an object (the menu, and the 3D pickup animations, are rendered separately or something, which screws the game up without WMP/IE).
As for in-level scripts, that's all random. However, general suggestions:
1. Try holstering different weapons. On the starting cutscene of Palawan Temple, the cutscene crashed when Indy spawned when he had the machete and revolver holstered. When I changed to the SMG and TT-33, it worked.
2. Try doing things in a different order. For some reason, if you skip (irrelevant) things, or do things out of order, the game would crash. In Nub's Tomb, the game would crash if I charged up the elevator socket before I charged up an irrelevant wall-socket to open up a heavenly crystal I wasn't going to use (and didn't).
3. Patch the game. Simple. v1.2 patch is widely available. Although I've apparently run the game unpatched until now (by accident), I've re-patched the game to solve camera issues.
4. Try, try again. Some levels are much more unstable than others. While Olmec Valley posed no problems for me, I had a lot of problems with the Infernal Machine level because gunfire or enemy attacks would randomly crash the game.

However, since you *did* make it past, it would be nice for me to know how, just in case. A solution like the Palawan Temple or Nub's Tomb example is kinda hard to come up with, so it never hurts to have other examples to draw from.

"yet i made it further, hit the snake like 19 times in a row with the spikes coming out of the bottom which doesnt even do anything to Quetzalcoatl at all (yes different platforms used!)."
I've never been fully able to understand this bossfight. As I remember from my first playthrough, you were supposed to stab Quetzalcoatl multiple times in the same place, which is horrible. Basically, each time you stabbed a body section, it would shrink slightly, and when it got small enough it exploded, taking the rest of the snake with it. Simplest way to time this is to jump on the platform at the precise moment the head is over a spike; then it spikes the same body part over and over, more or less.
However, in planning, the body sections did *not* shrink, which might mean that they've patched the game to X number of attacks on any part of the body, which kills the snake.
A third option: Go for the head. Kill the head, and the rest of the snake dies. Timing this is a pain, but since the head is the first thing you can hit, it's what I'll be doing for the speedrun, out of pragmatism.
My guess is that you're running on the unpatched version, where you need to hit one specific link 3-5 times before the snake dies. And with the snake having like 20 parts, it's very possible that you just kept hitting different ones all the time.

"this game is so weird  - like your comments."
And how!

"I have read it should run stable under Vista, can anyone prove this?"
I've been meaning to get around to installing Vista to test it out, but I needed an internet connection for that. And now that I do, and school has started, I haven't really bothered to get around to that. But if I do, I'll be sure to quickly check if the game runs.

Roy_Hess

Edit history:

Roy_Hess: 2008-10-21 01:38:51 am

2008-10-20 12:36:12 pm

unemployed Dragon

i got past Quezalcoatl by downloading a Savegame from IL Pudovkin
the rest of the game went pretty well.
Currently i am at the beginning of "infernal machine" (level 15) where you have to regather all artifacts, iam stuck in the place where i have to use the urgons artifact, i removed the nub artifact and put in the urgon artifact, now i cant go back to the main room
update: i made it past the metal things.. finally
update2: iam thru, screw this game

when you are in "aetherium" you way "roll" into the 'water" or whatever that stuff is you are swimming inside up and down
its a bit faster than just running into the 'water'
you know how slow indy is, its not like emperors tomb

when charging up the whip in marduks room you dont need to hit it like 5 times (thats 25 charges, i dont think you ever need 25 charges in the game) 2 or 3 times will be ok enough.

there aint so much shortcuts in this game plus indy's crappy animation and his notoric pause after a jump or so, doesnt make it easy.

btw: i was able to play "back to peru" for a minute without having media player open, then it crashed with an access violation because indy wants to say something about a door which is closed.

i got past Quezalcoatl by downloading a Savegame from IL Pudovkin
the rest of the game went pretty well. 
Currently i am at the beginning of "infernal machine" (level 15) where you have to regather all artifacts, iam stuck in the place where i have to use the urgons artifact, i removed the nub artifact and put in the urgon artifact, now i cant go back to the main room
update: i made it past the metal things.. finally
update2: iam thru, screw this game

when you are in "aetherium" you way "roll" into the 'water" or whatever that stuff is you are swimming inside up and down
its a bit faster than just running into the 'water'
you know how slow indy is, its not like emperors tomb

when charging up the whip in marduks room you dont need to hit it like 5 times (thats 25 charges, i dont think you ever need 25 charges in the game) 2 or 3 times will be ok enough.

there aint so much shortcuts in this game plus indy's crappy animation and his notoric pause after a jump or so, doesnt make it easy.

btw: i was able to play "back to peru" for a minute without having media player open, then it crashed with an access violation because indy wants to say something about a door which is closed.

Goggen

Edit history:

Goggen: 2008-11-02 05:30:18 am

2008-11-02 05:02:44 am

"Time to go to work..."

Not that I have anything to update *with*, I have nonetheless decided to do a quick update.

This run is effectively on hold, since school is really sucking away my spare time. Yes, that's as painful as it sounds.
Since speedrunning is massively time-consuming, particularly the way I do it, I simply can't prioritize it in any way until I'm done with the even more time consuming schoolwork.
Which ends in, uh... May.
So that's not good, then. Shame, since the game runs so well on this new rig. Oh well...
If I somehow magically run into an extra few dozen hours a day, then it might be back on track. Until then:
Time to go to work...

Oh, and quick comments a month late:

Roy_Hess:
"update2: iam thru, screw this game"
You were furstrated with the game and didn't continue playing? You can *do* that!? This changes *everything*!

"when you are in "aetherium" you way "roll" into the 'water" or whatever that stuff is you are swimming inside up and down
its a bit faster than just running into the 'water'"
I suppose that makes sense. Rolling is the second-fastest movement, and since it has higher speed mid-roll than anything else, it should give you a boost of speed. I think, working from spotty memory, that a long-jump also gives speed *and* height when entering the floaterium.

"you know how slow indy is, its not like emperors tomb"
Quite so. Quite so indeed. Quite so Indeed 2: Electric Boogaloo.

"when charging up the whip [...] 2 or 3 times will be ok enough."
Quoted from my (two-and-a-half-year-old, yikes) notes on Aetherium:
"Minor: Only recharge the whip the necessary amount, no more. Each one recharges five, so I'll have to see how many fives are left over. Forgot to check. But fifteen ought to be plenty: 1 to get to the main chamber, three to whip the electric balls, and about six or so for Marduk. Yes, that's ten. I'll probably miss some."
Naturally, I *won't* miss any while speedrunning, since that wastes five or so seconds to the missed whipping *and* another five to the recharge, if it goes over ten.

Actually, here's some real research:
[Warning: Running is so slow it's like 2 Girls 1 Cup for speedrunners.]

Starting at 8:30 in P3, he uses, indeed, 1 whip for the main room door, (P4) 3 whips for the balls (which takes 5 freaking minutes!), and 3-4 for Marduk (2:50, P5). And he only misses 1-2 times, for 5 total!
Interestingly, he seems to hit Marduk twice in the second swoop. And Marduk drops in just three whippings (one times two, maybe), so this might actually be very very quick indeed. My guess is he's on Easy, though. But still, hm, double-hitters...
There might not be enough time in the world to watch the whole playthrough, but at least this one trick I hadn't come up with. Accreditations away!

"there aint so much shortcuts in this game -"
Actually, my shortcut file is twice as long as for Emperor's Tomb, but I may be even more obsessively high-detail in these notes. Oh, and the game is roughly three times longer, so the *density* certainly is lower.

"- plus indy's crappy animation -"
Interesting, that. I have training in animation, and this isn't all that bad for segment-skeletal animation. For the most part. ...Some of it.
It aims more to have Indy be slow and tough, like in the movies. (And to not get sued for ripping off the more graceful Tomb Raider.) Unfortunately, the animation system simply isn't up to the task, and was bad even by *1999* standards. So a lot of it is, yeah, crap.
By contrast, though, Emperor's Tomb's animation-blended's animations were *also* crap, although in completely the wrong direction, since all his movements are far too exaggarated. Makes him look like un-Indy-like. Oh well...

"- and his notoric pause after a jump or so, doesnt make it easy."
Didn't know it was that well known. But yes, doesn't make it easy indeed. That's most of the reason why I usually roll instead of jump; after a roll Indy slides, while in a jump he stops completely. Also a roll is faster. And more fun. But mostly the slidey bit.

Not that I have anything to update *with*, I have nonetheless decided to do a quick update.

This run is effectively on hold, since school is really sucking away my spare time. Yes, that's as painful as it sounds.
Since speedrunning is massively time-consuming, particularly the way I do it, I simply can't prioritize it in any way until I'm done with the even more time consuming schoolwork.
Which ends in, uh... May.
So that's not good, then. Shame, since the game runs so well on this new rig. Oh well...
If I somehow magically run into an extra few dozen hours a day, then it might be back on track. Until then:
Time to go to work...

Oh, and quick comments a month late:

Roy_Hess:
"update2: iam thru, screw this game"
You were furstrated with the game and didn't continue playing? You can *do* that!? This changes *everything*!

"when you are in "aetherium" you way "roll" into the 'water" or whatever that stuff is you are swimming inside up and down
its a bit faster than just running into the 'water'"
I suppose that makes sense. Rolling is the second-fastest movement, and since it has higher speed mid-roll than anything else, it should give you a boost of speed. I think, working from spotty memory, that a long-jump also gives speed *and* height when entering the floaterium.

"you know how slow indy is, its not like emperors tomb"
Quite so. Quite so indeed. Quite so Indeed 2: Electric Boogaloo.

"when charging up the whip [...] 2 or 3 times will be ok enough."
Quoted from my (two-and-a-half-year-old, yikes) notes on Aetherium:
"Minor: Only recharge the whip the necessary amount, no more. Each one recharges five, so I'll have to see how many fives are left over. Forgot to check. But fifteen ought to be plenty: 1 to get to the main chamber, three to whip the electric balls, and about six or so for Marduk. Yes, that's ten. I'll probably miss some."
Naturally, I *won't* miss any while speedrunning, since that wastes five or so seconds to the missed whipping *and* another five to the recharge, if it goes over ten.

Actually, here's some real research:
[Warning: Running is so slow it's like 2 Girls 1 Cup for speedrunners.]
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ptHTZ8wCmbQ&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SA9h-iR3mwE&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdT-UNJ6Duo&feature=related
Starting at 8:30 in P3, he uses, indeed, 1 whip for the main room door, (P4) 3 whips for the balls (which takes 5 freaking minutes!), and 3-4 for Marduk (2:50, P5). And he only misses 1-2 times, for 5 total!
Interestingly, he seems to hit Marduk twice in the second swoop. And Marduk drops in just three whippings (one times two, maybe), so this might actually be very very quick indeed. My guess is he's on Easy, though. But still, hm, double-hitters...
There might not be enough time in the world to watch the whole playthrough, but at least this one trick I hadn't come up with. Accreditations away!

"there aint so much shortcuts in this game -"
Actually, my shortcut file is twice as long as for Emperor's Tomb, but I may be even more obsessively high-detail in these notes. Oh, and the game is roughly three times longer, so the *density* certainly is lower.

"- plus indy's crappy animation -"
Interesting, that. I have training in animation, and this isn't all that bad for segment-skeletal animation. For the most part. ...Some of it.
It aims more to have Indy be slow and tough, like in the movies. (And to not get sued for ripping off the more graceful Tomb Raider.) Unfortunately, the animation system simply isn't up to the task, and was bad even by *1999* standards. So a lot of it is, yeah, crap.
By contrast, though, Emperor's Tomb's animation-blended's animations were *also* crap, although in completely the wrong direction, since all his movements are far too exaggarated. Makes him look like un-Indy-like. Oh well...

"- and his notoric pause after a jump or so, doesnt make it easy."
Didn't know it was that well known. But yes, doesn't make it easy indeed. That's most of the reason why I usually roll instead of jump; after a roll Indy slides, while in a jump he stops completely. Also a roll is faster. And more fun. But mostly the slidey bit.

jopa

2008-12-02 12:37:54 am

Don't give up on the Infernal Machine!!!

My brothers and I own/beat the game on both the PC and the N64, so we've obviously huge fans of the game, and seeing a speed run of this awesome game would be the coolest.

If you simply cannot finish the run, could you please post the segments you have completed at least? I know how tough school can be, but you cannot give up after coming as far as you have...

Goggen

2008-12-02 03:47:52 am

"Time to go to work..."

jopa: "Don't give up on the Infernal Machine!!!"
Oh I haven't, I just don't have time to do anything about it until after school finishes. In May. Yeah...

"My brothers and I own/beat the game on both the PC and the N64, so we've obviously huge fans of the game,"
You know, I've been looking into getting this game for the N64 just to see what the differences are. Also I'd need a N64. Yes, *I'm* also that much of a fan.

"and seeing a speed run of this awesome game would be the coolest."
Would it ever! Boy, I wish some guy would get around to finishing one of those. Lazy bastard, not working on a speedrun at the moment. What a jerk he is, not finishing what he starts.

"If you simply cannot finish the run, could you please post the segments you have completed at least?"
You know, that's rapidly becoming very tempting. Normally, I wouldn't, for several reasons. And here they are!
1. Time spent uploading videos is time not spent running. Since I'm not running anyway, not a problem then.
2. Speedrun pirates might grab my strategies, run the game, and steal my fortune and glory. Also, they wouldn't be able to get my totally awesome strategies for the final levels, so that part would suck from lack of my awesomeness. And we wouldn't want that. However, competition might actually bring out some new strategies that *I* could steal, so I do think it's a good idea to upload then. Yarr.
3. Takes a lot of time to upload on my old ISDN 8kB/s up connection. But since I'm on the other side of the North Sea from that connection, and the connection on *this* side of North Sea is 64kB/s up, that'd be a totally awesome and uncalculatable increase in speed. Rough estimate: 4MB/min of YouTube High Quality multplied by 104 minutes of speedrun thus far = 416 MB to upload, at 64kB/s that's 1 hour 51 minutes. Yep, totally doable. And on ISDN, 14 hours 48 minutes. However, on review: The videos I already uploaded are 10s/MB, so now we're talking a six-fold increase in data, 2,4GB or so. So closer to twelve hours for 64kB/s. Also, I'm pretty sure that uploads work by uploading the whole videos, *then* YouTube recompress them. My already fast-compressed videos are at 3,2GB already, which takes a 14h 39min while. Still doable over two nights, in theory, but that still doesn't count the time needed to ready them for upload with comments and what-have-you, which I couldn't do at night. And because my internet connection has a bandwidth throttler in place if I go over 700MB up between 15 and 20 o'clock, I couldn't really do very much then. And, additionally, the 10-minute limit on YouTube means I'd have to split it all into 14 parts. Still, a couple parts a day, one ten-minute 60MB part taking an hour or so to upload, that could be done in a week.
...
...
You know, I'll be looking into that...

"I know how tough school can be, but you cannot give up after coming as far as you have..."
School: Tough.
Indy: Also tough.
School: Not fun.
Indy: Fun! ...Ish. But hey, beats school!
Giving up: No.
However, I just can't rationally defend playing some game obsessively, instead of doing school work ultimately leading to some far-off financially rewarding (and possibly fun) job in the future. (Cough, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, end cough.) Also I've paid shamefully much for this year of school just to let it go down the drain. So yeah, sorry it has to be put on the backburner. And I *am* sorry about that. Always a shame to let people down, and also a shame for me to start a project and not get it finished anytime soon. But still, there's hope for the future!

jopa: "Don't give up on the Infernal Machine!!!"
Oh I haven't, I just don't have time to do anything about it until after school finishes. In May. Yeah...

"My brothers and I own/beat the game on both the PC and the N64, so we've obviously huge fans of the game,"
You know, I've been looking into getting this game for the N64 just to see what the differences are. Also I'd need a N64. Yes, *I'm* also that much of a fan.

"and seeing a speed run of this awesome game would be the coolest."
Would it ever! Boy, I wish some guy would get around to finishing one of those. Lazy bastard, not working on a speedrun at the moment. What a jerk he is, not finishing what he starts.

"If you simply cannot finish the run, could you please post the segments you have completed at least?"
You know, that's rapidly becoming very tempting. Normally, I wouldn't, for several reasons. And here they are!
1. Time spent uploading videos is time not spent running. Since I'm not running anyway, not a problem then.
2. Speedrun pirates might grab my strategies, run the game, and steal my fortune and glory. Also, they wouldn't be able to get my totally awesome strategies for the final levels, so that part would suck from lack of my awesomeness. And we wouldn't want that. However, competition might actually bring out some new strategies that *I* could steal, so I do think it's a good idea to upload then. Yarr.
3. Takes a lot of time to upload on my old ISDN 8kB/s up connection. But since I'm on the other side of the North Sea from that connection, and the connection on *this* side of North Sea is 64kB/s up, that'd be a totally awesome and uncalculatable increase in speed. Rough estimate: 4MB/min of YouTube High Quality multplied by 104 minutes of speedrun thus far = 416 MB to upload, at 64kB/s that's 1 hour 51 minutes. Yep, totally doable. And on ISDN, 14 hours 48 minutes. However, on review: The videos I already uploaded are 10s/MB, so now we're talking a six-fold increase in data, 2,4GB or so. So closer to twelve hours for 64kB/s. Also, I'm pretty sure that uploads work by uploading the whole videos, *then* YouTube recompress them. My already fast-compressed videos are at 3,2GB already, which takes a 14h 39min while. Still doable over two nights, in theory, but that still doesn't count the time needed to ready them for upload with comments and what-have-you, which I couldn't do at night. And because my internet connection has a bandwidth throttler in place if I go over 700MB up between 15 and 20 o'clock, I couldn't really do very much then. And, additionally, the 10-minute limit on YouTube means I'd have to split it all into 14 parts. Still, a couple parts a day, one ten-minute 60MB part taking an hour or so to upload, that could be done in a week.
...
...
You know, I'll be looking into that...

"I know how tough school can be, but you cannot give up after coming as far as you have..."
School: Tough.
Indy: Also tough.
School: Not fun.
Indy: Fun! ...Ish. But hey, beats school!
Giving up: No.
However, I just can't rationally defend playing some game obsessively, instead of doing school work ultimately leading to some far-off financially rewarding (and possibly fun) job in the future. (Cough, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, end cough.) Also I've paid shamefully much for this year of school just to let it go down the drain. So yeah, sorry it has to be put on the backburner. And I *am* sorry about that. Always a shame to let people down, and also a shame for me to start a project and not get it finished anytime soon. But still, there's hope for the future!

jopa

2008-12-02 09:10:01 am

Aside from some small changes in how you fight enemies and the fact that you cannot change at any time, the only real difference between the N64 and the PC versions seems to be glitches.

The N64 version is pretty glitched up. There are many freezing and graphical glitches. Certain actions cause the game to freeze up every time while others cause what's displayed to get very messed up. There are also a few classically funny gameplay glitches (which probabaly also existed in the PC version). The best of which was a time when I was able to get killed in the cut-scene with the boulder in Peru. Afterwards, since Indy only got killed in the cut scene, I wasn't actually dead and was able to walk around as if nothing had happened, only Indy's dead body from the cut scene was still laying there on the ground for me to see. The game also often thinks Indy is falling while he is really just walking around of wedged between objects, causing him to fly a foot above the ground flailing his arms and legs lol

Also, you say that you are afraid that people will steal your tricks if you post half a speed run, but if your speedrun is so easily broken, what's to stop them from doing that after you post a full speedrun? It seems like you are more likely to be the eventually record holder for an Indy speedrun if someone tries copying only half of your run, giving you the second half of theirs to copy, as opposed to having people try to copy your full run.

Anyways, I just wanted to show a little support for the speedrunning of this classic game. Best of luck (with school as well as the Infernal Machine)!

Aside from some small changes in how you fight enemies and the fact that you cannot change at any time, the only real difference between the N64 and the PC versions seems to be glitches.

The N64 version is pretty glitched up.  There are many freezing and graphical glitches.  Certain actions cause the game to freeze up every time while others cause what's displayed to get very messed up.  There are also a few classically funny gameplay glitches (which probabaly also existed in the PC version).  The best of which was a time when I was able to get killed in the cut-scene with the boulder in Peru.  Afterwards, since Indy only got killed in the cut scene, I wasn't actually dead and was able to walk around as if nothing had happened, only Indy's dead body from the cut scene was still laying there on the ground for me to see.  The game also often thinks Indy is falling while he is really just walking around of wedged between objects, causing him to fly a foot above the ground flailing his arms and legs lol

Also, you say that you are afraid that people will steal your tricks if you post half a speed run, but if your speedrun is so easily broken, what's to stop them from doing that after you post a full speedrun?  It seems like you are more likely to be the eventually record holder for an Indy speedrun if someone tries copying only half of your run, giving you the second half of theirs to copy, as opposed to having people try to copy your full run.

Anyways, I just wanted to show a little support for the speedrunning of this classic game.  Best of luck (with school as well as the Infernal Machine)!

Goggen

2008-12-03 06:40:46 am

"Time to go to work..."

"Aside from some small changes in how you fight enemies and the fact that you cannot change at any time, the only real difference between the N64 and the PC versions seems to be glitches."

True that, from what I've heard. Although I don't know what you mean by "change at any time", did you mean "save"?
However, I'm *still* curious about what other differences there are, the improvements to the control scheme are one thing, but just looking at YouTube I've noticed that there are other subtle differences.

Different music, changes to the font, new model for the helicopter (look at the tail boom), small things like that. And speaking of music:

Completely different. Might be interesting.

As for the glitches, some of those may be useful in speedrunning, perhaps maybe.

"Also, you say that you are afraid that people will steal your tricks if you post half a speed run, but if your speedrun is so easily broken, what's to stop them from doing that after you post a full speedrun? It seems like you are more likely to be the eventually record holder for an Indy speedrun if someone tries copying only half of your run, giving you the second half of theirs to copy, as opposed to having people try to copy your full run."

Raises a fair few valid points. Although I don't think my speedrun is likely to be easily broken, considering how obsessively I've replayed the levels over and over for hours and hours, what does worry me is, basically, being first. If I'm the first to play the game, near-perfecting it, forever will I be in the hall-of-fame of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine speedrunners, as the first guy to go ahead and do one and do a pretty darn good job of it too. It's kind of an ego trip, but considering the immense amount of work I've put into this, yeah, I *would* want some glory from it. Which is why I'm worried about someone else going ahead and doing the run before I can finish it using my tricks; basically, they'd get a lot of the credit that in a sense is rightfully mine.
However, once my run *is* out there, finished and all, then I have no problem with someone else improving on it. I'm a crap speedrunner, not naturally skilled at it at all, merely doing it over and over hundreds of times until by weight of statistics it ends up being fast. That's a lot of work that pretty much no-one outside SDA would appreciate.
However, I obviously don't want to be selfish about it. Already a run I'd been working on has been beaten, luckily before I could start proper; I was planning on improving Xeen's run of Mafia, but SCM beat me to it. And I don't mind; I even posted whatever strategies I'd thought of, that he hadn't, to his thread.
But when it comes down to who gets credit? Xeen gets first, for the original run even though other people helped him, and SCM does for the improvement, even though other people, including me, helped him.
So it would *really* suck, considering the hundreds of hours of work I've spent on the run, if someone came along and did a run that completely stole my thunder. That's basically the jist of it.

However.

Since I won't be able to do *any* work on the run for the next six months pretty much, I'll see about uploading what I have so far. Perhaps my remaining level tricks and tactics as well.
Why?
Well, someone might come along with something I hadn't thought of. So far, there's been two such instances; a minor one in the final bossfight where you can whip marduk twice before he retreats, which I saw in a YouTube video. Thanks, retroisland!
The *second* one is a major timesaver in Solomon's Mines, where I don't have to pick up a gem. Which saves minutes. Thanks, The MAZZTer, and specifically his brother who apparently found it. If there *are* any more tricks like that abound, I'd *really* regret not knowing about them beforehand, and if posting videos and strategies increases the likelihood of that then that's a good thing.
Somebody else "stealing" the run is basically so unlikely that I think I can risk it.

Compare that to Emperor's Tomb, where I never got around to checking if rolling continuosly was overall faster than running. A couple years later, somebody else brings that up, and ehm, yeah it was. Which, over the course of the whole run, would save minutes.
Now, nobody else has gotten around to doing so. Which brings me to the *real* reason why I don't want any unknown-to-me timesavers left out of my run...
Since nobody else is interested in improving on my not-quite-perfect run, then the only way it will happen is if *I* do it.
And unfortunately, I'm enough of a compulsive perfectionist to go ahead with it if necessary.
That's basically why I wanted to run Mafia; that original run was something even *I* could improve on.
No offense to Xeen, and all the props to him for actually doing the run, but driving with a "speed limiter" *enabled*? In a SPEED RUN?
However, now that SCM has come along and done that work; it means I won't have to. Yay!
...And I can't tell you how much I *don't* want to be the one to have to re-run any of these games. Oh my, no.
But doing it once? Yeah, gotta have something to do. And if *I* don't, then I don't think anybody else will.
But if I *do* do it, I'll darn well want my credit for it. Bow down before me, mortals!

"Aside from some small changes in how you fight enemies and the fact that you cannot change at any time, the only real difference between the N64 and the PC versions seems to be glitches."

True that, from what I've heard. Although I don't know what you mean by "change at any time", did you mean "save"?
However, I'm *still* curious about what other differences there are, the improvements to the control scheme are one thing, but just looking at YouTube I've noticed that there are other subtle differences.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yOodaB1z30U
Different music, changes to the font, new model for the helicopter (look at the tail boom), small things like that. And speaking of music:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Pu55r09_Y
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vr58T9e9sQo&feature=related
Completely different. Might be interesting.

As for the glitches, some of those may be useful in speedrunning, perhaps maybe.

"Also, you say that you are afraid that people will steal your tricks if you post half a speed run, but if your speedrun is so easily broken, what's to stop them from doing that after you post a full speedrun? It seems like you are more likely to be the eventually record holder for an Indy speedrun if someone tries copying only half of your run, giving you the second half of theirs to copy, as opposed to having people try to copy your full run."

Raises a fair few valid points. Although I don't think my speedrun is likely to be easily broken, considering how obsessively I've replayed the levels over and over for hours and hours, what does worry me is, basically, being first. If I'm the first to play the game, near-perfecting it, forever will I be in the hall-of-fame of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine speedrunners, as the first guy to go ahead and do one and do a pretty darn good job of it too. It's kind of an ego trip, but considering the immense amount of work I've put into this, yeah, I *would* want some glory from it. Which is why I'm worried about someone else going ahead and doing the run before I can finish it using my tricks; basically, they'd get a lot of the credit that in a sense is rightfully mine.
However, once my run *is* out there, finished and all, then I have no problem with someone else improving on it. I'm a crap speedrunner, not naturally skilled at it at all, merely doing it over and over hundreds of times until by weight of statistics it ends up being fast. That's a lot of work that pretty much no-one outside SDA would appreciate.
However, I obviously don't want to be selfish about it. Already a run I'd been working on has been beaten, luckily before I could start proper; I was planning on improving Xeen's run of Mafia, but SCM beat me to it. And I don't mind; I even posted whatever strategies I'd thought of, that he hadn't, to his thread.
But when it comes down to who gets credit? Xeen gets first, for the original run even though other people helped him, and SCM does for the improvement, even though other people, including me, helped him.
So it would *really* suck, considering the hundreds of hours of work I've spent on the run, if someone came along and did a run that completely stole my thunder. That's basically the jist of it.

However.

Since I won't be able to do *any* work on the run for the next six months pretty much, I'll see about uploading what I have so far. Perhaps my remaining level tricks and tactics as well.
Why?
Well, someone might come along with something I hadn't thought of. So far, there's been two such instances; a minor one in the final bossfight where you can whip marduk twice before he retreats, which I saw in a YouTube video. Thanks, retroisland!
The *second* one is a major timesaver in Solomon's Mines, where I don't have to pick up a gem. Which saves minutes. Thanks, The MAZZTer, and specifically his brother who apparently found it. If there *are* any more tricks like that abound, I'd *really* regret not knowing about them beforehand, and if posting videos and strategies increases the likelihood of that then that's a good thing.
Somebody else "stealing" the run is basically so unlikely that I think I can risk it.

Compare that to Emperor's Tomb, where I never got around to checking if rolling continuosly was overall faster than running. A couple years later, somebody else brings that up, and ehm, yeah it was. Which, over the course of the whole run, would save minutes.
Now, nobody else has gotten around to doing so. Which brings me to the *real* reason why I don't want any unknown-to-me timesavers left out of my run...
Since nobody else is interested in improving on my not-quite-perfect run, then the only way it will happen is if *I* do it.
And unfortunately, I'm enough of a compulsive perfectionist to go ahead with it if necessary.
That's basically why I wanted to run Mafia; that original run was something even *I* could improve on.
No offense to Xeen, and all the props to him for actually doing the run, but driving with a "speed limiter" *enabled*? In a SPEED RUN?
However, now that SCM has come along and done that work; it means I won't have to. Yay!
...And I can't tell you how much I *don't* want to be the one to have to re-run any of these games. Oh my, no.
But doing it once? Yeah, gotta have something to do. And if *I* don't, then I don't think anybody else will.
But if I *do* do it, I'll darn well want my credit for it. Bow down before me, mortals!

jopa

2008-12-04 01:56:04 pm

Yeah, I meant to say "save" instead of "change"

Do whatever will make you happy. I just would like to see an Indy speedrun, or at least a preview, but obviously it isn't worth it to compromise something you have worked on for months just to entertain some people like me.

Still, I really would like to see your progress. Given that you are doing the game in many segments, it seems like the speedrun of this game would resemble that of Goldeneye, where people hold records for the runs of individual segments, in which case there would be no loss in posting your half-run.

Also, if your posting a half run were to spark competition, wouldn't that be better than posting a speedrun unopposed? Isn't it worth more to hold a contested title than to have a prize no one else has ever even fought for?

Anyways, I just really want to see a run of this game lol

Goggen

2008-12-05 03:19:47 pm

"Time to go to work..."

Jopa: "Do whatever will make you happy."
How Zen. And, like before, raises valid points. What *would* make me most pleased with the release of a run?
An utterly perfect run, released soon, in its complete form, to great critical acclaim. Also showerings of money. And hot chicks.
Of course, quite a few of those aren't going to happen. The run is, already, not utterly perfect (by *my* standards). Which counts against releasing anything early. Unless, of course, someone comes along with something that improves the remainder, thus counting for after all.
Released soon: Not gonna happen. Still got six months of school left. And, consider that this game started in January and I'm only 39% done. Oh, and that's January of 2007. See, my early joking about a projected finish date of 2011 really isn't that unrealistic... So that counts for releasing early.
Completeness: I do think that the run has greater impact if released complete, rather than anyone interested watching it bit by bit on YouTube as I make (or don't make) progress. Also, since I can't upload my 800*600@60FPS videos anywhere sensible, I do feel it's a shame to miss out on. Particularly since I doubt that people will willingly sit through a five-hour speedrun *twice*. So that counts against.
Critical acclaim: I actually liked the way, when my Emperor's Tomb run was released, people who hadn't even played the game (everybody, that is) were impressed with it. A lot of that shock and awe disappears if I release early. So, that counts against.
Money and hot chicks: Since everybody knows how much money there is to be had in speedrunning, and how hot chicks can't keep their hands and other body parts off a good speedrunner, I might as well release early since I'll have more money and hot chicks than I can ever find use for anyway.

"I just would like to see an Indy speedrun, or at least a preview, but obviously it isn't worth it to compromise something you have worked on for months just to entertain some people like me."
Well, entertaining some people like you (And perhaps more than only some people like you.) is basically my business, and the whole point of bothering to do this at all. As always, I reduce it to math, and... Here! We! Go!:
Time each other people would spend watching the speedrun: Little.
Time I spend on speedrun: Lots.
Number of other people: Lots.
Number of me: 1.
So, me spending, by my estimates, 1 hour per minute of speedrun, means that 60 people have to watch that minute, for my one hour of work to be worth it for sixty one-minutes of fun for somebody else. So, for instance, my Emperor's Tomb speedrun, which took comparatively long to produce, would require 60 people to watch it. And all the way through.
That's a lot.
And I don't know how to figure out how many people *did* watch it.
But checking archive.org, my speedrun files have been downloaded twelve-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-two times. On average, each file was then downloaded one-hundred-and-ninety-three times.
It would be worth it if 60 people watched the whole thing. And, counting that Archive is only part of the download source, with people also downloading from SDA, it's probably much more than those two hundred.
Oh, and on YouTube, where it's been posted by SDA: ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE views, on average, for the whole run. The smallest for any segment was still more than eight hundred. Man, if I ever have doubts about speedrunning, I'll re-read those comments, because dang how awesome I sound from what I've seen so far. True, not all those watched it all the way through, but still... Surely sixty would...
And there you see why I speedrun, really.
If I don't entertain these people with speedruns of mediocre Tomb Raider clones, who will...?

"Still, I really would like to see your progress."
Video sure would help in that regard.
But, well, I do post my progress to this forum. So that's like reading the Official Book Of The Movie(tm).
But since a picture says a thousand words, and I record at sixty pictures per second, I basically need to write sixty thousand words for one second of speedrun. With 6243 seconds so far, that's 375 million words I should have written so far for it to be equivalent.
So I'm actually not that far behind, with the way I write.
But yeah, video sure is a lot easier to get through.

"Given that you are doing the game in many segments, it seems like the speedrun of this game would resemble that of Goldeneye, where people hold records for the runs of individual segments, in which case there would be no loss in posting your half-run."
Nope, doesn't work like that for Infernal Machine. Items carry over from level to level, so the whole game has to be run in sequence. I just run it segmented because, really, there's no chance in hell I'd manage to manage a five-hour speedrun in one sitting. Not in a million years. And there's a pretty good chance in hell, that trying for a million years to speedrun the game in one sitting, is what hell is like.

"Also, if your posting a half run were to spark competition, wouldn't that be better than posting a speedrun unopposed? Isn't it worth more to hold a contested title than to have a prize no one else has ever even fought for?"
Actually, quite the opposite really. I like the idea that I'm the only one bothering to run this game. If the thinking goes; "if I don't do it, someone else will do it slightly worse", there's not *much* of a motivation. But if you think, like I do; "if I don't do it, no-one else will", that really feels like so much more motivating to me.
And no-one else *is* interested in this game. Well, except for this guy:

Actually, I think I should post my Babylon segment, just because I'm spending so much time pointing and laughing at that one, that I really ought to delegate that pointing-and-laughing to the wider community just out of concern for my own spare time. Really, there's only so much pointing and laughing one person can do with their time. I alone am just not enough!

Also, if I do play a game with competition, it's much more likely someone else will be better at it than me, because I'm crap. I make up for it by spending an awful lot more time on it. But that just means that someone else who *isn't* crap can come along and blow any attempt of mine clear out of the water. Like with Mafia back there, scheduled for me to speedrun, after I finish *this* game. In 2011.

But, more to the point: If I release my vids on YouTube, and can't finish the game until 2011, that gives some big jerk a *lot* of time to steal my work and run.
...Of course, *not* encouraging competition is also kind of a jerk move. And possibly an even bigger one. And, verily, what man would not seek to be the lesser of two big jerks?

"Anyways, I just really want to see a run of this game lol"
But an even bigger jerk move still, is to keep my videos on my hard drive when the legions of fans pine for its release.
So damn the ~~torpedoes~~ ~~ideology~~ speedrun-stealing big jerks!
Like I said, I'll see what I can do about uploading anyway.

You know, if I can be bothered to.

Jopa: "Do whatever will make you happy."
How Zen. And, like before, raises valid points. What *would* make me most pleased with the release of a run?
An utterly perfect run, released soon, in its complete form, to great critical acclaim. Also showerings of money. And hot chicks.
Of course, quite a few of those aren't going to happen. The run is, already, not utterly perfect (by *my* standards). Which counts against releasing anything early. Unless, of course, someone comes along with something that improves the remainder, thus counting [b]for[/b] after all.
Released soon: Not gonna happen. Still got six months of school left. And, consider that this game started in January and I'm only 39% done. Oh, and that's January of [b]2007[/b]. See, my early joking about a projected finish date of 2011 really isn't that unrealistic... So that counts [b]for[/b] releasing early.
Completeness: I do think that the run has greater impact if released complete, rather than anyone interested watching it bit by bit on YouTube as I make (or don't make) progress. Also, since I can't upload my 800*600@60FPS videos anywhere sensible, I do feel it's a shame to miss out on. Particularly since I doubt that people will willingly sit through a five-hour speedrun *twice*. So that counts [b]against[/b].
Critical acclaim: I actually liked the way, when my Emperor's Tomb run was released, people who hadn't even played the game (everybody, that is) were impressed with it. A lot of that shock and awe disappears if I release early. So, that counts [b]against[/b].
Money and hot chicks: Since everybody knows how much money there is to be had in speedrunning, and how hot chicks can't keep their hands and other body parts off a good speedrunner, I might as well release early since I'll have more money and hot chicks than I can ever find use for anyway.

"I just would like to see an Indy speedrun, or at least a preview, but obviously it isn't worth it to compromise something you have worked on for months just to entertain some people like me."
Well, entertaining some people like you (And perhaps more than only [i]some[/i] people like you.) is basically my business, and the whole point of bothering to do this at all. As always, I reduce it to math, and... Here! We! Go!:
Time each other people would spend watching the speedrun: Little.
Time I spend on speedrun: Lots.
Number of other people: Lots.
Number of me: 1.
So, me spending, by my estimates, 1 hour per minute of speedrun, means that 60 people have to watch that minute, for my one hour of work to be worth it for sixty one-minutes of fun for somebody else. So, for instance, my Emperor's Tomb speedrun, which took comparatively long to produce, would require 60 people to watch it. And all the way through.
That's a lot.
And I don't know how to figure out how many people *did* watch it.
But checking archive.org, my speedrun files have been downloaded [b]twelve-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-two[/b] times. On average, each file was then downloaded [b]one-hundred-and-ninety-three[/b] times.
It would be worth it if 60 people watched the whole thing. And, counting that Archive is only part of the download source, with people also downloading from SDA, it's probably much more than those two hundred.
Oh, and on YouTube, where it's been posted by SDA: [b]ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE[/b] views, on average, for the whole run. The smallest for any segment was still more than eight hundred. Man, if I ever have doubts about speedrunning, I'll re-read those comments, because dang how awesome I sound from what I've seen so far. True, not all those watched it all the way through, but still... Surely sixty would...
And there you see why I speedrun, really.
If [b]I[/b] don't entertain these people with speedruns of mediocre Tomb Raider clones, [i]who will[/i]...?

"Still, I really would like to see your progress."
Video sure would help in that regard.
But, well, I do post my progress to this forum. So that's like reading the Official Book Of The Movie(tm).
But since a picture says a thousand words, and I record at sixty pictures per second, I basically need to write sixty thousand words for one second of speedrun. With 6243 seconds so far, that's 375 million words I should have written so far for it to be equivalent.
So I'm actually not that far behind, with the way I write.
But yeah, video sure is a lot easier to get through.

"Given that you are doing the game in many segments, it seems like the speedrun of this game would resemble that of Goldeneye, where people hold records for the runs of individual segments, in which case there would be no loss in posting your half-run."
Nope, doesn't work like that for Infernal Machine. Items carry over from level to level, so the whole game has to be run in sequence. I just run it segmented because, really, there's no chance in hell I'd manage to manage a five-hour speedrun in one sitting. Not in a million years. And there's a pretty good chance in hell, that trying for a million years to speedrun the game in one sitting, is what hell [b]is[/b] like.

"Also, if your posting a half run were to spark competition, wouldn't that be better than posting a speedrun unopposed?  Isn't it worth more to hold a contested title than to have a prize no one else has ever even fought for?"
Actually, quite the opposite really. I like the idea that I'm the only one bothering to run this game. If the thinking goes; "if I don't do it, someone else will do it slightly worse", there's not *much* of a motivation. But if you think, like I do; "if I don't do it, [b]no-one[/b] else will", that really feels like so much more motivating to me.
And no-one else *is* interested in this game. Well, except for this guy:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I2r9a_uTTuw
Actually, I think I should post my Babylon segment, just because I'm spending so much time pointing and laughing at that one, that I really ought to delegate that pointing-and-laughing to the wider community just out of concern for my own spare time. Really, there's only so much pointing and laughing one person can do with their time. I alone am just not enough!

Also, if I do play a game with competition, it's much more likely someone else will be better at it than me, because I'm crap. I make up for it by spending an awful lot more time on it. But that just means that someone else who *isn't* crap can come along and blow any attempt of mine clear out of the water. Like with Mafia back there, scheduled for me to speedrun, after I finish *this* game. In 2011.

But, more to the point: If I release my vids on YouTube, and can't finish the game until 2011, that gives some big jerk a *lot* of time to steal my work and run.
...Of course, *not* encouraging competition is also kind of a jerk move. And possibly an even bigger one. And, verily, what man would not seek to be the lesser of two big jerks?

"Anyways, I just really want to see a run of this game lol"
But an even bigger jerk move still, is to keep my videos on my hard drive when the legions of fans pine for its release.
So damn the [s]torpedoes[/s] [s]ideology[/s] speedrun-stealing big jerks!
Like I said, I'll see what I can do about uploading anyway.

You know, if I can be bothered to.