My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: doesn't exist yet.
Robert 'DrRob' D'Ascoli's Impossible difficulty single-segment run as a custom race.
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: SDA's first sub-minute (full game) run
Robert 'DrRob' D'Ascoli's Impossible difficulty single-segment run as a custom race.
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Video Quality: Very Good(just a bit dark)
Audio Quality: Almost Perfect
Planning: What can I say teching in this kinda game is useless when you can rush to victory if lucky. So fast production race with telepathy and your own luck is all you need to succeed in a rush like this. Planning was solid.
Gameplay: From what I saw first is that this is a Single Segment run which requires some bit of time scouting(one or two seconds is enough). But throughout the game the runner has some tenths of milliseconds wasted after battles.
First the runner uses hotkey to goto colony tab where the main Homeworld colony is easy to select unlike having to look for it in the Star System overview. Then he puts all population to production. Although 1 pop is lost in the first turn the worker makes up for it for the amount of production done.
Runners goes to build menu presses design hotkey and onto battleships. In the Design screen he clears the ships equipment with a hotkey and adds Battle Pods special for more space and adds Laser cannons which can do enough damage enemy ships that don't have Heavy Armor or shields in this case the Silicoid don't have either. Mouse cursor disappears when the runner starts adding weapons and reappears after design is done(but thats nothing to be suspicious about). When the weapon type is added runner adds these weapons as much as possible by holding "more" pressed which is faster than trying to mash the mouse button then exits with a hotkey(probably).
Then the two starting battleships are refitted. Turns passed and attack started. Ships are selected with F1 hotkey which cycles fleets. Then the runner targets closest silicoid planet which is probably the only one that he can reach at that point! The planet is protected by the primary fleet.
Battle is done on fast-auto by pressing "Z"(there is also the slow auto which can be stopped). When you look at real time you probably see nothing of how the battle go on. First runners battleships fire at the weakest enemy ship and then one battleship destroying both while damaging the other battleships structure. Then goes the CPU's turn in which it damages runners battleship(ship in middle) and then fast-auto finishes the battle destroying the other battleship and the starbase. Ships are repaired by the mind controlled colony and the runner moves on to the next Silicoid planet. All planets are defended by star bases with no other defenses or ships built. In the next battle the battleships move first and they move forward but then the star base is shown(either because of incoming projectile or CPU's turn) but with no damage received nevertheless the starbase couldn't hold against two battleships of that kind. There is no point talking about the other equal battles. One thing is that runner gets technology from conquering so often because of Telepathy Spy bonus.
Checking the time(Start right after colony has been named to right after last stolen tech skip is done) minus a 12 frames loading screen after naming colony which is about 350 milliseconds so the times is - 00:00:57:900-~->00:00:58 from my view.
Can it be faster. Well i don't think that animations were disabled which could have slightly increased time by a second and also the waiting after battles could have 2 to 3 seconds chopped off. A total of 3-4 seconds saved. Is it worth resetting 100 times? Depends on the runner.
In any case a 100% accept.
Audio Quality: Almost Perfect
Planning: What can I say teching in this kinda game is useless when you can rush to victory if lucky. So fast production race with telepathy and your own luck is all you need to succeed in a rush like this. Planning was solid.
Gameplay: From what I saw first is that this is a Single Segment run which requires some bit of time scouting(one or two seconds is enough). But throughout the game the runner has some tenths of milliseconds wasted after battles.
First the runner uses hotkey to goto colony tab where the main Homeworld colony is easy to select unlike having to look for it in the Star System overview. Then he puts all population to production. Although 1 pop is lost in the first turn the worker makes up for it for the amount of production done.
Runners goes to build menu presses design hotkey and onto battleships. In the Design screen he clears the ships equipment with a hotkey and adds Battle Pods special for more space and adds Laser cannons which can do enough damage enemy ships that don't have Heavy Armor or shields in this case the Silicoid don't have either. Mouse cursor disappears when the runner starts adding weapons and reappears after design is done(but thats nothing to be suspicious about). When the weapon type is added runner adds these weapons as much as possible by holding "more" pressed which is faster than trying to mash the mouse button then exits with a hotkey(probably).
Then the two starting battleships are refitted. Turns passed and attack started. Ships are selected with F1 hotkey which cycles fleets. Then the runner targets closest silicoid planet which is probably the only one that he can reach at that point! The planet is protected by the primary fleet.
Battle is done on fast-auto by pressing "Z"(there is also the slow auto which can be stopped). When you look at real time you probably see nothing of how the battle go on. First runners battleships fire at the weakest enemy ship and then one battleship destroying both while damaging the other battleships structure. Then goes the CPU's turn in which it damages runners battleship(ship in middle) and then fast-auto finishes the battle destroying the other battleship and the starbase. Ships are repaired by the mind controlled colony and the runner moves on to the next Silicoid planet. All planets are defended by star bases with no other defenses or ships built. In the next battle the battleships move first and they move forward but then the star base is shown(either because of incoming projectile or CPU's turn) but with no damage received nevertheless the starbase couldn't hold against two battleships of that kind. There is no point talking about the other equal battles. One thing is that runner gets technology from conquering so often because of Telepathy Spy bonus.
Checking the time(Start right after colony has been named to right after last stolen tech skip is done) minus a 12 frames loading screen after naming colony which is about 350 milliseconds so the times is - 00:00:57:900-~->00:00:58 from my view.
Can it be faster. Well i don't think that animations were disabled which could have slightly increased time by a second and also the waiting after battles could have 2 to 3 seconds chopped off. A total of 3-4 seconds saved. Is it worth resetting 100 times? Depends on the runner.
In any case a 100% accept.
Quote:
The run's one minute long, so it's gonna be kinda tough to be richly detailed here...
No video or audio problems.
Watched it carefully a few times to try and make sure there's no shenanigans. Comparing it to the earlier, super-lengthy two minute version was also helpful, as it's easier to tell what he's doing. Verdict: no cheating.
We do appear to be reaching the event horizon where there's so little gameplay there's no point in watching the video.
However, for now, we're still above that line. Approve.
No video or audio problems.
Watched it carefully a few times to try and make sure there's no shenanigans. Comparing it to the earlier, super-lengthy two minute version was also helpful, as it's easier to tell what he's doing. Verdict: no cheating.
We do appear to be reaching the event horizon where there's so little gameplay there's no point in watching the video.
Quote:
Hi there,
I'm sorry that I'm replying so late.
The video and sound quality is fine.
I couldn't find any sign of cheating. The autocombat might look weird but it's built ingame.
There are cheats for this game but they have to be typed in and that would be way to obvious.
The run is amazingly fast. All his actions (beneath the one he notes himself, more later) are very fast and I never thought that the game could be played that fast. (Not only the time is fast. I played that game a lot and every action I've done was slower. Well I almost never used the hotkeys. ;))
"From a technical standpoint, I had a few minor flaws. As I selected my fleet to attack their first colony, the mouse was on the border or the fleet window, even though the dotted line said I had a clear path to travel, so I had to move 2 pixels over to reselect, cost 1 second."
It looked a bit weird but the window popping up are really big as the game has such a low resolution (640x480 I guess) and this really happens often. I often move the window but that would cost way more time.
"I thought for an instant the planet “Hase” at the bottom of the screen was one of their star systems, (Starting planets are random, so I only have as much time to see the computers systems as you, the viewer, does) so I missed brining up my fleet menu to double check (F1) and my mouse darted to the bottom then corrected, cost less than a second."
The color of his opponent was a bit unlucky. White for the enemy and gray for the uncolonized systems can cause trouble. Couldd be avoided with choosing white as his own color.
"On invading the last planet, my hands had already moved to the ‘Z’ and ‘M’ in anticipation of the attack, forgetting I have to actually select the planet with my mouse, cost about a second."
That looks really as it costs a lot time. Could be avoided. :/
"I could have escaped the final tech screen faster, but I thought after I MC’d their last planet, the run was over anyway (no further input from myself). On a previous longer run, I had accidentally exited past the final cinematic, and as a speed run watcher I hate sitting through an entire run and not having the closing cinematic to watch, so I was being overly cautious. Cost 2 seconds."
Uhh I didn't even noticed that the first time watching.
2 seconds in such a short run is a lot.
I timed it at the end. The tech screen was 2,44 seconds long. It could have been avoided at all by choosing a tech that requires more tech points.
About the timing:
His action starts at frame 260 or 10.400 second and ends at frame 1755 or 1:10.200.
If the time counts where he mind controlled the last plant it's frame 1694 or 1:07.760. But the last tech screen is ingame so I fear the higher time counts.
That would be 59.800 seconds.
Sure there are some flaws in there and the time it costs is a lot in such a short run (4 seconds total I guess).
But nevertheless this run is amazingly fast for a game that is supposed to be played for hours.
Please let me know if I did something wrong.
I'm sorry that I'm replying so late.
The video and sound quality is fine.
I couldn't find any sign of cheating. The autocombat might look weird but it's built ingame.
There are cheats for this game but they have to be typed in and that would be way to obvious.
The run is amazingly fast. All his actions (beneath the one he notes himself, more later) are very fast and I never thought that the game could be played that fast. (Not only the time is fast. I played that game a lot and every action I've done was slower. Well I almost never used the hotkeys. ;))
"From a technical standpoint, I had a few minor flaws. As I selected my fleet to attack their first colony, the mouse was on the border or the fleet window, even though the dotted line said I had a clear path to travel, so I had to move 2 pixels over to reselect, cost 1 second."
It looked a bit weird but the window popping up are really big as the game has such a low resolution (640x480 I guess) and this really happens often. I often move the window but that would cost way more time.
"I thought for an instant the planet “Hase” at the bottom of the screen was one of their star systems, (Starting planets are random, so I only have as much time to see the computers systems as you, the viewer, does) so I missed brining up my fleet menu to double check (F1) and my mouse darted to the bottom then corrected, cost less than a second."
The color of his opponent was a bit unlucky. White for the enemy and gray for the uncolonized systems can cause trouble. Couldd be avoided with choosing white as his own color.
"On invading the last planet, my hands had already moved to the ‘Z’ and ‘M’ in anticipation of the attack, forgetting I have to actually select the planet with my mouse, cost about a second."
That looks really as it costs a lot time. Could be avoided. :/
"I could have escaped the final tech screen faster, but I thought after I MC’d their last planet, the run was over anyway (no further input from myself). On a previous longer run, I had accidentally exited past the final cinematic, and as a speed run watcher I hate sitting through an entire run and not having the closing cinematic to watch, so I was being overly cautious. Cost 2 seconds."
Uhh I didn't even noticed that the first time watching.
2 seconds in such a short run is a lot.
I timed it at the end. The tech screen was 2,44 seconds long. It could have been avoided at all by choosing a tech that requires more tech points.
About the timing:
His action starts at frame 260 or 10.400 second and ends at frame 1755 or 1:10.200.
If the time counts where he mind controlled the last plant it's frame 1694 or 1:07.760. But the last tech screen is ingame so I fear the higher time counts.
That would be 59.800 seconds.
Sure there are some flaws in there and the time it costs is a lot in such a short run (4 seconds total I guess).
But nevertheless this run is amazingly fast for a game that is supposed to be played for hours.
Please let me know if I did something wrong.
Quote:
The run was good and uses some tricks that I was not previously aware of. The execution after the player took control was excellent. Knowledge and use of race options was very good. I really liked the use of shortcut keys as this definitely sped up gameplay - especially for the spaceship battles.
The first improvement I saw in the gameplay was the inputting of the runner's name - this took about 1 second - though I can understand why it was done. Then again, this may not be counted in the final time. The second improvement was the pause before sending the fleet to the first system to begin attacking the other race. This pause was probably to decide the most efficient attack route - a less efficient route would likely have cost more time than the pause. It may possible to plan the route while the ships are being built which would yield a fraction of a second. A third improvement might be to bombard planets instead of using telepathy to capture them. If the bombarding wipes out the planet, you don't have to deal with the conquered planet screen or the possiblility of capturing enemy technology (three occurrences in the run). I can't say how much time this might save.
As far as luck goes, more attempts may yield a better result. Then again, the current run has pretty good luck and who knows how long it would take to get better luck.
Overall I am impressed with this run and feel that it should be accepted. I have been a fan of this game for years and am excited to see there is still interest in it.
The first improvement I saw in the gameplay was the inputting of the runner's name - this took about 1 second - though I can understand why it was done. Then again, this may not be counted in the final time. The second improvement was the pause before sending the fleet to the first system to begin attacking the other race. This pause was probably to decide the most efficient attack route - a less efficient route would likely have cost more time than the pause. It may possible to plan the route while the ships are being built which would yield a fraction of a second. A third improvement might be to bombard planets instead of using telepathy to capture them. If the bombarding wipes out the planet, you don't have to deal with the conquered planet screen or the possiblility of capturing enemy technology (three occurrences in the run). I can't say how much time this might save.
As far as luck goes, more attempts may yield a better result. Then again, the current run has pretty good luck and who knows how long it would take to get better luck.
Overall I am impressed with this run and feel that it should be accepted. I have been a fan of this game for years and am excited to see there is still interest in it.
Decision: Accept
Reason: SDA's first sub-minute (full game) run
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