International Track and Field 2 - September 11, 2014

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2014-09-11 03:59:01 am

2014-08-22 03:06:12 pm

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

International Track and Field 2 (Any %) (Single Segment)

Decision: Accept

Reason: Maybe a bit borderline, but from what I'm reading it's pretty hard to actually optimize this game.

Congratulations to 'Chris-X'!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2014-08-22 03:06:14 pm

Run Information

International Track and Field 2 (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/international_track_and_field_2-v_HQ.mp4

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by Sept. 5, 2014.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.

Elren

2014-08-24 11:55:58 am

A/V: good
Cheating: None

Now to the hard part. I'll try to sum up how I see the game before verifieing the run.
The game consits of 12 disciplines in which the player needs to reach a minimum criteria to Qualify/Beat the discipline. In name these disciplines are: Horse Vault, Sprint, Canoeing, 100m, Long Jump, Pole Vault, Hammer Throw, Javelin, Weightlifting, Springboard, 50m Freestyle, 1km Time Trail .
These are seperable in two blocks, the ones where saving time is possible and where its not or a meager amount.
The ones where its not possible are horse vault, 100m, Long Jump, Pole Vault, Hammer Throw, Javelin, Weightlifting, Springboard and 50m Freestyle. The main reasons being that the animations for attempts take similarily long and in (most?) races you have to wait for the CPU to finish(The races mentioned here have only slim differences in times so only meager time wins/losses))
That leaves Sprint, Canoeing and 1km Time Trial to save time.
In Sprint it should be possible to push the time by going fast from the start since the CPU follows closely anyway.
Canoing is the race with the biggest time differences so a good RNG could save a bit of time here.
The 1km Time Trial is self explanotary, just being faster gives a better time.
To sum it all up the difference between a good and a bad run in this game is a matter of seconds only.

Now to the run:
The run starts of with what i regard as a grave mistake considering how little time can be saved over the course of the run - He does unnecessary menu work which wastes several seconds out of conviniency. To be exact choosing horse vault, choosing tricks and choosing canoeing. Overall ~8 seconds of unnecessary time loss.
There are some small possible time savers missed too.
The Javelin throw should be at a lower angle to reduce animationtime(if possible), shorter jump and shorter hammer throw. But these arent necessarily needed. It seems possible to beat the springboard challenge in two attempts so if possible one can scrap the third try like before. In the Canoeing section was non-optimal RNG, the last place came in much later.
Otherwise the runner fares fairly good in the competitions, especially in the 1km trial the most imortant one i think. But due to the menuing in the beginning, this run will be worse than most finished runs that skip it. Therefore a clear and sad reject from me.

If I misunderstood anything the runner can try to convince me if he wants.

A/V: good
Cheating: None

Now to the hard part. I'll try to sum up how I see the game before verifieing the run.
The game consits of 12 disciplines in which the player needs to reach a minimum criteria to Qualify/Beat the discipline. In name these disciplines are: Horse Vault, Sprint, Canoeing, 100m, Long Jump, Pole Vault, Hammer Throw, Javelin, Weightlifting, Springboard, 50m Freestyle, 1km Time Trail .
These are seperable in two blocks, the ones where saving time is possible and where its not or a meager amount.
The ones where its not possible are horse vault, 100m, Long Jump, Pole Vault, Hammer Throw, Javelin, Weightlifting, Springboard and 50m Freestyle. The main reasons being that the animations for attempts take similarily long and in (most?) races you have to wait for the CPU to finish(The races mentioned here have only slim differences in times so only meager time wins/losses))
That leaves Sprint, Canoeing and 1km Time Trial to save time. 
In Sprint it should be possible to push the time by going fast from the start since the CPU follows closely anyway.
Canoing is the race with the biggest time differences so a good RNG could save a bit of time here.
The 1km Time Trial is self explanotary, just being faster gives a better time.
To sum it all up the difference between a good and a bad run in this game is a matter of seconds only.

Now to the run:
The run starts of with what i regard as a grave mistake considering how little time can be saved over the course of the run - He does unnecessary menu work which wastes several seconds out of conviniency. To be exact choosing horse vault, choosing tricks and choosing canoeing. Overall ~8 seconds of unnecessary time loss.
There are some small possible time savers missed too. 
The Javelin throw should be at a lower angle to reduce animationtime(if possible), shorter jump and shorter hammer throw. But these arent necessarily needed. It seems possible to beat the springboard challenge in two attempts so if possible one can scrap the third try like before. In the Canoeing section was non-optimal RNG, the last place came in much later.
Otherwise the runner fares fairly good in the competitions, especially in the 1km trial the most imortant one i think. But due to the menuing in the beginning, this run will be worse than most finished runs that skip it. Therefore a clear and sad [b]reject[/b] from me.

If I misunderstood anything the runner can try to convince me if he wants.

ktwo

Edit history:

ktwo: 2014-09-09 10:39:58 am

2014-08-26 09:49:08 am

I'm kind of in the same boat as the verifier above me. On top of what's already mentioned, it seems like the third diving jump was made unnecessarily long. The runner only needed 10 points or so to qualify, but still did a full jump (which included spending time to build up power for a full jump). Wouldn't it have sufficed to just jump asap? I'm also questioning if you really need 3 out of 3 approvals in weight lifting? I know the runner says so in the run comments, but in real-life you only need 2 out of 3. I have no experience with this game though, so if the runner sees this, feel free to reply. (These comments have been addressed by the runner.)

In summary, there is unnecessary menu work that'll be included in the timing and what appears to be a few strategical mistakes in some of the events. Since most stuff are on a fixed timer in this game, these minor time losses have a fairly big impact on the optimization level in my opinion.

~~(weak) reject~~ neutral
reason: I still think the time losses due to menu work and some other minor things make this video a bit questionable from a speedrun perspective. So on one hand I'd like the runner to redo this. On the other hand, this is a bad speedgame (out of the 20 min or so that this game takes, only a few seconds would differ between a successful playthrough and a speedrun). As such this is likely the only speedrun attempt we'll ever see. For those kind of games, I think it's in general better to accept than to reject. I'm kind of conflicted between accept and reject and will just say that I don't care either way. Sorry for choosing the easy way out... ;-)

I'm kind of in the same boat as the verifier above me. [s]On top of what's already mentioned, it seems like the third diving jump was made unnecessarily long. The runner only needed 10 points or so to qualify, but still did a full jump (which included spending time to build up power for a full jump). Wouldn't it have sufficed to just jump asap? I'm also questioning if you really need 3 out of 3 approvals in weight lifting? I know the runner says so in the run comments, but in real-life you only need 2 out of 3. I have no experience with this game though, so if the runner sees this, feel free to reply.[/s] (These comments have been addressed by the runner.)

[s]In summary, there is unnecessary menu work that'll be included in the timing and what appears to be a few strategical mistakes in some of the events. Since most stuff are on a fixed timer in this game, these minor time losses have a fairly big impact on the optimization level in my opinion.[/s]

[s](weak) reject[/s] neutral
reason: I still think the time losses due to menu work and some other minor things make this video a bit questionable from a speedrun perspective. So on one hand I'd like the runner to redo this. On the other hand, this is a bad speedgame (out of the 20 min or so that this game takes, only a few seconds would differ between a successful playthrough and a speedrun). As such this is likely the only speedrun attempt we'll ever see. For those kind of games, I think it's in general better to accept than to reject. I'm kind of conflicted between accept and reject and will just say that I don't care either way. Sorry for choosing the easy way out... ;-)

AlecK47

Edit history:

AlecK47: 2014-08-29 07:31:26 pm

2014-08-29 03:33:22 pm

A/V good, no cheating detected.

I fully understand the points made by the previous verifiers, but in all honesty the criticism on menuing seems egregious to me. The runner goes up three at the start to select Horse Vault, then down one after completing the Horse Vault to postpone the 1km Trial. For picking tricks, I count a total of seven inputs (two down then four up in Horse Vault [as far as I can tell the cursor started on the same trick each time], and one up in Springboard). Beyond that every menu is mashing so far as I can tell, and the few additions I mentioned add 5-6 seconds to the run (this is based off watching the timer as the runner does each relevant menu - I have NO idea where the 8 second estimate came from, barring some extra lag that somebody who has played this game would be aware of or something like that - which is minor enough already IMO). Am I missing something? I honestly can't find sufficient grounds to reject this run. In the main, at least for me, it comes down to the events, and there isn't much time lost in those either, except perhaps for the dive. In that case, the runner needed 10.3 points to advance, but I'm guessing a full set of inputs were needed (or at least the time to input them), in which case the main point is the time needed to select and perform the final dive, and the runner performs the final dive available as quickly as I am inclined to believe is possible - so is there a better dive to select at that point? The one selected there takes an additional six seconds to perform as compared to the previous two, but I have no idea if there is another dive nearby in the menu that could speed things up. The other time losses in events were minor, maybe two to three seconds lost to my somewhat untrained eye.

So based on my current knowledge I honestly have to give this one a solid accept. More information could swing that opinion in either direction, but that's where I stand now.

A/V good, no cheating detected.

I fully understand the points made by the previous verifiers, but in all honesty the criticism on menuing seems egregious to me.  The runner goes up three at the start to select Horse Vault, then down one after completing the Horse Vault to postpone the 1km Trial.  For picking tricks, I count a total of seven inputs (two down then four up in Horse Vault [as far as I can tell the cursor started on the same trick each time], and one up in Springboard).  Beyond that every menu is mashing so far as I can tell, and the few additions I mentioned add 5-6 seconds to the run (this is based off watching the timer as the runner does each relevant menu - I have NO idea where the 8 second estimate came from, barring some extra lag that somebody who has played this game would be aware of or something like that - which is minor enough already IMO).  Am I missing something?  I honestly can't find sufficient grounds to reject this run.  In the main, at least for me, it comes down to the events, and there isn't much time lost in those either, except perhaps for the dive.  In that case, the runner needed 10.3 points to advance, but I'm guessing a full set of inputs were needed (or at least the time to input them), in which case the main point is the time needed to select and perform the final dive, and the runner performs the final dive available as quickly as I am inclined to believe is possible - so is there a better dive to select at that point?  The one selected there takes an additional six seconds to perform as compared to the previous two, but I have no idea if there is another dive nearby in the menu that could speed things up.  The other time losses in events were minor, maybe two to three seconds lost to my somewhat untrained eye.

So based on my current knowledge I honestly have to give this one a solid accept.  More information could swing that opinion in either direction, but that's where I stand now.

Elren

2014-08-29 07:59:46 pm

Just to explain the 8 seconds:
I added the time needed to choose tricks during horse vault to the time. With that substracted it matches your 5-6 seconds well.

chris_x

2014-09-08 12:20:26 pm

Hello!

Thanks for your comments. I'd like to explain a few things to hopefully change your decision:

- Menu: I choose Horse Vault and Sprint as the first two events because they are the hardest by far. I don't think the time loss is more than 3 seconds here.
- Horse Vault: You're right. If I chose the two tricks suggested by default (9.8 and 9.4), I would save about 3 seconds here.
- Sprint: There's a handicap mode implemented in this event, so the leader can't go faster than a particular speed (depending on the current round). There's only one little section where I don't ride the highest possible speed (in semifinal).
- Springboard: I tried a very bad jump and got 20 points. So you're right on the one hand. But my 3rd attempt could not be much faster (timing input is perfect and rush cannot be accelerated, only the finish could be a little faster).
- Weightlifting: The 3rd light is necessary, so this is as fast as possible.
- Canoeing: I made a few attempts and every time the last opponent was about 12 to 14 seconds slower than me. I don't think this could be much faster.

Additionally, this is the first run of this game. This was a reason to accept runs of other games.

Chris-X

Hello!

Thanks for your comments. I'd like to explain a few things to hopefully change your decision:

- Menu: I choose Horse Vault and Sprint as the first two events because they are the hardest by far. I don't think the time loss is more than 3 seconds here.
- Horse Vault: You're right. If I chose the two tricks suggested by default (9.8 and 9.4), I would save about 3 seconds here.
- Sprint: There's a handicap mode implemented in this event, so the leader can't go faster than a particular speed (depending on the current round). There's only one little section where I don't ride the highest possible speed (in semifinal).
- Springboard: I tried a very bad jump and got 20 points. So you're right on the one hand. But my 3rd attempt could not be much faster (timing input is perfect and rush cannot be accelerated, only the finish could be a little faster).
- Weightlifting: The 3rd light is necessary, so this is as fast as possible.
- Canoeing: I made a few attempts and every time the last opponent was about 12 to 14 seconds slower than me. I don't think this could be much faster.

Additionally, this is the first run of this game. This was a reason to accept runs of other games.

Chris-X

SDAVerification

2014-09-11 03:59:05 am

Decision posted.