MDK

djcj

2008-09-21 10:55:15 am

Now that OOB is allowed on SDA I would appriciate a MDK run using those tricks.

Kabuto

2008-09-21 02:40:24 pm

I've almost forgotten about my plans of an MDK run. Should I ever take this up again there are a few things to solve or clarify first:

1) I didn't find a good strategy for the reflecting are(n)a in level 2. Sometimes the nuke appears early, sometimes very late and I have no clue yet what triggers that. A clue would be very helpful.

2) Loading savestates somehow distracts the in-game timer so the game runs much faster for fractions of a second, I guess this makes the run about half a second faster for each additional segment. You can clearly see this in http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=xzem9tdxtFc if you watch closely. This is probably caused by the game taking the entire level loading time as a single frame and then feeling the urge to catch up with rendering. As I'm using a selfmade recording software anyway I might find a way around this, e.g. by sending fake timer values to the game while it's loading, but I doubt this is acceptable for SDA.

3) I might have gotten out of practice Sad

About the OOB trick: So far I only know one place where this would save time ( ). Note, however, that you need to detonate the explosives in the building at the end of the shooting range anyway as AFAIK it triggers the appearance of the sniper grenade which is absolutely required (without it defeating the boss would take much longer than what's saved by entirely skipping the shooting range as shown in this video).

I've almost forgotten about my plans of an MDK run. Should I ever take this up again there are a few things to solve or clarify first:

1) I didn't find a good strategy for the reflecting are(n)a in level 2. Sometimes the nuke appears early, sometimes very late and I have no clue yet what triggers that. A clue would be very helpful.

2) Loading savestates somehow distracts the in-game timer so the game runs much faster for fractions of a second, I guess this makes the run about half a second faster for each additional segment. You can clearly see this in http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=xzem9tdxtFc if you watch closely. This is probably caused by the game taking the entire level loading time as a single frame and then feeling the urge to catch up with rendering. As I'm using a selfmade recording software anyway I might find a way around this, e.g. by sending fake timer values to the game while it's loading, but I doubt this is acceptable for SDA.

3) I might have gotten out of practice :(

About the OOB trick: So far I only know one place where this would save time ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=uL4ZoOcZnwQ ). Note, however, that you need to detonate the explosives in the building at the end of the shooting range anyway as AFAIK it triggers the appearance of the sniper grenade which is absolutely required (without it defeating the boss would take much longer than what's saved by entirely skipping the shooting range as shown in this video).

dex

2008-09-21 03:33:47 pm

Invisible avatar

Quote from Kabuto:

I've almost forgotten about my plans of an MDK run. Should I ever take this up again there are a few things to solve or clarify first:

1) I didn't find a good strategy for the reflecting are(n)a in level 2. Sometimes the nuke appears early, sometimes very late and I have no clue yet what triggers that. A clue would be very helpful.

2) Loading savestates somehow distracts the in-game timer so the game runs much faster for fractions of a second, I guess this makes the run about half a second faster for each additional segment. You can clearly see this in http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=xzem9tdxtFc if you watch closely. This is probably caused by the game taking the entire level loading time as a single frame and then feeling the urge to catch up with rendering. As I'm using a selfmade recording software anyway I might find a way around this, e.g. by sending fake timer values to the game while it's loading, but I doubt this is acceptable for SDA.

3) I might have gotten out of practice Sad

About the OOB trick: So far I only know one place where this would save time ( ). Note, however, that you need to detonate the explosives in the building at the end of the shooting range anyway as AFAIK it triggers the appearance of the sniper grenade which is absolutely required (without it defeating the boss would take much longer than what's saved by entirely skipping the shooting range as shown in this video).

Good luck! MDK is an awesome game :).

Also, self made recording software? Sounds interesting, what is it?

[quote="Kabuto"]
I've almost forgotten about my plans of an MDK run. Should I ever take this up again there are a few things to solve or clarify first:

1) I didn't find a good strategy for the reflecting are(n)a in level 2. Sometimes the nuke appears early, sometimes very late and I have no clue yet what triggers that. A clue would be very helpful.

2) Loading savestates somehow distracts the in-game timer so the game runs much faster for fractions of a second, I guess this makes the run about half a second faster for each additional segment. You can clearly see this in http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=xzem9tdxtFc if you watch closely. This is probably caused by the game taking the entire level loading time as a single frame and then feeling the urge to catch up with rendering. As I'm using a selfmade recording software anyway I might find a way around this, e.g. by sending fake timer values to the game while it's loading, but I doubt this is acceptable for SDA.

3) I might have gotten out of practice :(

About the OOB trick: So far I only know one place where this would save time ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=uL4ZoOcZnwQ ). Note, however, that you need to detonate the explosives in the building at the end of the shooting range anyway as AFAIK it triggers the appearance of the sniper grenade which is absolutely required (without it defeating the boss would take much longer than what's saved by entirely skipping the shooting range as shown in this video).
[/quote]

Good luck! MDK is an awesome game :).

Also, self made recording software? Sounds interesting, what is it?

Kabuto

2008-09-21 03:50:33 pm

Quote from dex:

Also, self made recording software? Sounds interesting, what is it?

I had the problem that no recording software (including Fraps) was able to capture MDK at 640x480,30 fps satisfactorily on my hardware, probably they all let the game render into gfx hardware and then try to read frames back from there which is probably the bottleneck of my PC.

This software was targeted specifically for software rendering windows games. Its inner working is quite simple:

* Give the game a fake frame buffer in system memory instead of the real one
* Whenever the game tries to display a frame copy the fake frame into the real frame buffer and write a copy to disk
* If neccessary, pause the game for a while and/or write skipped frames to match a constant frame rate
* Frames are stored in ZMBV format (also used by DosBOX) as I didn't want to have to write a custom codec, too

While this simple recipe works fine for MDK (except for the freefall parts where there are a few frame drops) there are problems with other games (e.g. it writes each frame twice in Dungeon Keeper) which I could not resolve. This and that people with better hardware will not need this anyway is why I did not release this program.

[quote="dex"]
Also, self made recording software? Sounds interesting, what is it?
[/quote]

I had the problem that no recording software (including Fraps) was able to capture MDK at 640x480,30 fps satisfactorily on my hardware, probably they all let the game render into gfx hardware and then try to read frames back from there which is probably the bottleneck of my PC.

This software was targeted specifically for software rendering windows games. Its inner working is quite simple:

* Give the game a fake frame buffer in system memory instead of the real one
* Whenever the game tries to display a frame copy the fake frame into the real frame buffer and write a copy to disk
* If neccessary, pause the game for a while and/or write skipped frames to match a constant frame rate
* Frames are stored in ZMBV format (also used by DosBOX) as I didn't want to have to write a custom codec, too

While this simple recipe works fine for MDK (except for the freefall parts where there are a few frame drops) there are problems with other games (e.g. it writes each frame twice in Dungeon Keeper) which I could not resolve. This and that people with better hardware will not need this anyway is why I did not release this program.

dex

2008-09-21 03:52:45 pm

Invisible avatar

Hah, that's a very nice idea. I bet there are people that would love to see this program, but yeah, I guess most people have machines good enough for fast capture already.

Kodanshi

2008-09-22 05:40:25 pm

Vocal Pugilist

LOL! I commented on the OOB video 10 months ago! Cheesy

Kabuto

2008-09-24 06:10:02 am

Supposed an MDK run is to be submitted to SDA what about the "savestate loading" problem (as mentioned above the game runs too fast for fractions of a second, skipping a total of about half a second per segment)?
* Will SDA add a modified penalty (after precisely timing this issue) as the default 0.5 seconds penalty will be nullified by this?
* Is it allowed to work around this issue via additional software (giving the game fake timer values while it's loading)?

Enhasa

2008-09-24 07:00:35 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

The 0.5 was actually chosen because it more or less exactly counteracted a savestate loading problem, so the 0.5 is it. Good to be consistent anyway.

Don't use additional software to modify the timer, even if it's more accurate in this case.

Looking forward to the run, I like MDK. Wink

Kabuto

Edit history:

Kabuto: 2008-10-01 04:53:26 pm

2008-10-01 04:35:22 pm

One technical question remains: There's a glitch in my recorder which might or might not be a problem.

MDK uses a frame of 600x360 pixels for gameplay within the entire screen of 640x480 pixels. The remaining border is single-colored most of the time, the only exceptions being sniper mode (border area is filled with static background graphics) and screen shaking (e.g. after nearby explosion which moves the frame around by a few pixels). All relevant gameplay always occurs within this 600x360 pixels frame.

The glitch in my recorder is that when recording the border area isn't cleared after leaving sniper mode. Video:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=jVBqtFuLFOk

Is this a problem for speedrunning MDK? Will the recorded video be cropped to 600x360 (hiding the glitch but not hiding gameplay) or is it allowed to cut the glitch out of the recorded video?

EDIT: uploaded to Youtube and replaced link because the filefront link created first doesn't seem to work

Kabuto

Edit history:

Kabuto: 2008-10-13 06:33:10 pm

2008-10-09 04:46:29 pm

I'm finally doing this run. My run will be segmented and use difficulty level "easy".

Why "easy"? MDK does not become much harder on "hard" difficulty. But one gets less ammo from each pickup and this would make the run longer as either less tricks can be used or (if possible at all) more time must be spent collecting that additional required ammo.

High quality version and possibly audio commentary will follow once this run has been completed.

I'll do the run in 5 parts, one for level 1 to 4 each and one for both level 5 and 6. This distinction is because from level 5 to 6 health and ammo are kept while levels 2 to 5 always start with no ammo and health 50 (at least when the "stream" (flying through that tube) part of the level before is ended by exhausting health which is strongly recommended because it's the fastest option anyway).

Level 1 is up: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha5cXH621Cs

Kabuto

2008-10-13 06:33:34 pm

Level 2 is up: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=ysFYXNK4Fu0

dex

2008-10-14 12:36:27 pm

Invisible avatar

Nice work, keep going strong :).

henkie

2008-10-14 02:22:33 pm

Great run - I love those OoB tricks Grin

Kabuto

2008-10-15 05:57:50 pm

Level 3 is up: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=G7QYUugeSig

This time there's no OOB but nonetheless other glitches are abused Smiley

Kabuto

2008-10-18 03:23:57 pm

Level 4 is up: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=9lQiHvTtOI0

This is IMHO the most boring level of MDK due to those long snowboarding or skateboarding or whatever rides that take 2/3 of this level's duration.

It'll take a while for me to run levels 5 and 6, they need to be planned and run together (and cannot be run separately like levels 1 to 4).

Kodanshi

2008-10-19 04:07:40 pm

Vocal Pugilist

Quote from Kabuto:

This is IMHO the most boring level of MDK due to those long snowboarding or skateboarding or whatever rides that take 2/3 of this level's duration.

I’ve watched all of them so far, completely riveted, so I’ll watch this too. I’ve not played MDK in years but I recall those snowboarding parts having awesome fake James Bond music in them. Good luck with the next segments!

Kabuto

2008-10-23 04:48:00 pm

The final levels 5 and 6 are finally up:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw8xyLJbnM
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=OnbIGpF63Pw

Note that the outro video is missing due to recording problems. Just search Youtube for MDK BZK if you want to see it anyway.

Kabuto

2008-10-25 02:42:45 am

Question to the community: MDK has 3 difficulty settings that can be changed anytime during gameplay. However, since changing difficulty during a run is even faster than "easy" this raises the question what to do with this:

a) Choose difficulty at game start, don't change during a run, 3 different categories (easy, medium, hard)
b) Choose difficulty at game start, don't change during a run, one category for all difficulties
c) If you change difficulty during a run it'll fall into a "flexible difficulty" category, otherwise into whatever difficulty you've chosen
d) If you change difficulty during a run it'll fall into a "flexible difficulty" category, otherwise into "fixed difficulty"
e) You're free to or not to change difficulty during a run and that won't create separate categories

henkie

2008-10-28 11:01:02 am

Great runs, Kabuto. I must say those last levels don't look familiar at all. Guess I never actually finished the game myself. Loved the spamming of grenades in the 5th level (I think it was the 5th), when you first encountered the endboss. Does that only work when you're throwing grenades while jumping, or does it work normally as well?

About switching difficulties during the run: I don't know how that'd work out. Normally, you'd stick with a single difficulty and play it through to the end, resulting in categories divided by difficulty. It happens more often that a run can be done faster at some point on a higher difficulty, but I haven't heard of this leading to a 'mixed difficulty' run. I imagine it'd be more difficult to verify too, although.... I guess if you accept that a run can have any difficulty at any point (as long as it's faster), you'd not have to check for current difficulty at all. I'd run it by Mike and see what he has to say about it.

Kabuto

Edit history:

Kabuto: 2008-10-28 03:18:59 pm

2008-10-28 02:04:07 pm

When jumping and holding the throw button you'll throw one grenade per frame whereas when you're running you'll just throw one grenade about every 1/3 second. (There's a limit of no more than 3 thrown objects at any time so it's not possible to throw 4 grenades in 4 consecutive frames or so.)

While this is great for spamming an enemy with grenades this really sucks when trying to throw just one object during a jump. I often ended throwing more than just what I was going to throw and had to retry that segment as hitting a key or button for just 1/30 second needs luck.

But I often have no alternative to throwing during a jump because throwing while running will freeze the player for that 1/3 second.

Kabuto

2008-11-07 02:40:47 am

I'm not going to submit this run as it is now. I've noticed too late that I've missed a big timesaver (see below). Maybe I'll redo the run some day. If you want to see it you can still resort to YouTube, only downside is that quality is even worse than SDA LQ MP4.

The trick I've missed: Usually when throwing a nuke it'll take 3 seconds for the explosion to finish. But if you save right after it starts and then load again the nuke will explode instantly, saving some time. I've run into this trick a few times during the run (e.g. first level, first door) but I didn't pay attention.

djcj

2009-02-10 03:17:02 am

Are you still working on your run?

Kabuto

2009-02-10 11:19:55 am

I might redo it someday but for now I'm finished with it. I'm not fully satisfied with it due to glitch oversight so I didn't submit it to SDA but you can still watch it on YouTube. (And if there's interest: I still have the original video in better quality.)