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INTJ
Technically, you could. But that would require an expert level vampire. I can be wrong, but I don't think there is any Expert Vampire on the way near enough, to justify getting one. To elevate Elsbeth to expert you'd have to go to Shadowspire, since all Vampire trainers are there. But in the current route you don't go to Shadowspire.

Maybe, if you can save more time elsewhere with levitate it could be useful, but I currently can't see it oô.. As I said, I think there is no expert vampire on the way, but I may be wrong ^^
You play to win the game!
There is only one instance that I can think of where levitate would be of any use and it really doesn't justify getting a vampire and teaching it to them.
Might be magic...
Nice thought tho. I've found that getting Cauri to cast Fire Resistance allows her to survive long enough to get in and out of the elemental prison with the lava floor.
Might be magic...
Just started recording a second version of the speedrun using all the little enhancements that have been posted here since last round. Managed to get the Ravenshore Magic Shop to spawn both a Scroll of Stone to Flesh and a Scroll of Invisibility Smiley

Will post a video of progress soon. It seems to be a slightly better time than the previous effort already (probably because of rebinding my keys)
Edit history:
gammadragon: 2012-09-02 04:38:28 am
gammadragon: 2012-09-01 11:11:46 pm
gammadragon: 2012-09-01 11:11:28 pm
Might be magic...
Got a really good time so far, but unfortunately I think I've ruined it! The fountain in Ravenshore no longer gives me 200 gold - it must only work the first 2 times or something.

I only need 16 gold for the travel to Alvar. Any ideas? I've thought of:
* The chest before the magic shop - works, but a bit slower than normal
* Killing peasants or a Dark Elven Defender - peasants only give 3 or 4 gold each and the others take too long to kill
* Selling something - there are no shops on the way, so it's also too slow

Edit: Newer video available
You play to win the game!
I can't wait to see your new run.

I need to find another computer to try and run M&M8 on because for some reason when I enter the air plain the game slows down to like 4-8fps.

I don't know if it the computer of just windows. On another note i haven't been able to get anything done because my computer has started to randomly crash. Just after i got my segments sorted. I still try now and again to see if i can get that magical luck for maybe a ss run, but so far no luck at all.
Edit history:
gammadragon: 2012-09-01 11:58:50 pm
Might be magic...
Quote from Mr. Nevoli:
I can't wait to see your new run.

Thanks, I'll try to make it worthwhile Smiley

The new run is already 15s faster, but it's hard to measure exactly because there is a slightly different route this time around.

I think I might just abandon the existing progress and start again. Pity.

Good luck with your single segment run, I want to see that one when it's done!
Edit history:
gammadragon: 2012-09-04 03:22:37 pm
Might be magic...
Managed to redo all the previous segments - on top of that, beat the previous time by 2 seconds Smiley

Edit: Updated vdeo available
Edit history:
Yagamoth: 2012-09-03 08:29:37 pm
INTJ
Quote from gammadragon:
Managed to redo all the previous segments - on top of that, beat the previous time by 2 seconds Smiley



That looks really good Smiley

Edit: Is the gold concern still there? Currently can't think of anything but the chest either, but I can look around once in a while
Might be magic...
Quote from Yagamoth:
Is the gold concern still there? Currently can't think of anything but the chest either, but I can look around once in a while

I've redone the first few segments again without doing the extra "fountain grab" in the first segment, which now gives just enough fountain money to get through Smiley

Quote from Mr. Nevoli:
Is there any particular reason that you take the route that you do in the Earth plane gammadragon? I have been going to the right after the first two boulders at the entrance and just following the main path to the same area.

You are right! I measured it properly this time and the path to the right is about 10s faster.

The new run is going really well, the time of nearly every segment has improved by at least 1s, with some segments having some pretty huge gains. Thanks to everyone who has contributed ideas so far!
Edit history:
gammadragon: 2012-09-23 02:43:25 am
Might be magic...
Finished segment 10. It's a bit easier to measure the improvement now, as this is the point where the two different routes converge. So far it looks like the total time improvement to this point is around 50s. There are still a few more tricks coming in the last 6 segments as well, so stay tuned.

Video should be up in 2 hours, but for some reason the audio and video got slightly out of sync when I encoded it.
Edit: Updated video available
Might be magic...
This run is still alive Smiley

Haven't had a whole lot of time to spend on this lately, but I've completed segment 11 which is just a small "get to the crystal door" run. Managed to beat the previous time by about 2 seconds too, through crafty use of the Telekinesis spell.

The next segment is a long 3 minute one and Escaton's Crystal is proving to be a spot of trouble. Made about 100 attempts last night but none of them made it through to the palace - those pesky crystal dragons keep running right into the optimal path.
Might be magic...
Quote from gammadragon:
Quote from Yagamoth:
- Does jumping actually benefit you? o.o

I was trying to figure this out actually. After measuring the video frames I came to the conclusion that it was a grand total of 3 frames quicker (1/10 of a second) to jump the whole way down a corridor, which was probably just due to slightly different starting position. It's weird though because the whole movement system in MM8 seems really odd - moving one way down a corridor seems slower than going the opposite way for some strange reason.


Update: It looks like jumping actually does have a speed benefit, but only when moving in certain directions - diagonally looks to have the most improvement. This seems to be due to the weird "swimming upstream" effect that the indoors movement system has in the game engine.

It was quite hard to see any noticeable difference until I came to the long Escaton's Palace segment, where there is a lot of running around and pulling levers. I had a really good run without jumping but it was still slower than the previous run's time. I played both of the clips side by side and there were certain spots where movement was a bit faster in the jumping clip.

The segment from the new run was about 3 seconds slower. I'll do it again with jumping added, but not going to redo any previous segments, because there aren't that many places where it would be noticable (maybe the Earth plane?). I'll leave it as a challenge for someone to take up later Smiley
Edit history:
gammadragon: 2012-09-23 03:57:35 am
Might be magic...
Run completed - final time was 17m 58s. It's uploading now:



I thought that it would be a better time from my previous estimates but it didn't quite seem to work out - must have made a mistake somewhere. Still, it's a pretty decent improvement over the previous run.

Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas. If someone else wants to make an attempt then I think a few seconds can be shaved off some areas if you are really dedicated. There's always the possibility of finding some more shortcuts too.

Edit: After reading the rules, time spent in the menus used to save and load the game are not counted in the final time, but a half-second time penalty is added for each additional segment. After removing all the video frames which consisted of starting character creation and load/save menus, the total time was 17m 19s + 0.5s x 15 extra segments = 17m 27s after rounding up. Does that calculation sound about right?
Might be magic...
It's actually pretty interesting to watch the old run and the new run side by side. There are some places (Escaton's Crystal, Escaton's Palace) where the movement speed is a bit faster in the old run and I can't explain why. I manage to make up the difference by doing better manouvering in the new run (probably due to better key bindings) but if that effect can be exploited then it could be possible to improve the time for these areas further.

Maybe changing the turn rate to 16x or 32x might help?
Edit history:
Yagamoth: 2012-09-23 08:31:18 am
INTJ
On the movement - this game has some really weird mechanics, I agree. At times, you walk at an angle for no apparent reason.. Is it possible, that this game has some form of a "helping" mechanic, that is intended for you to help stay on paths?.. As in - it intentionally tilts your walking angle a bit to ensure you wouldn't fall down into the Lava at times, but it also kicks in in normal corridors?

If so, try walking in the middle of a corridor as opposed to the side... Maybe this makes a difference

Just watched the Maze-Part of your run: Now I'm fairly sure, that it has such a mechanic... Did you notice, that you walk "perfectly" straight down the corridors unless you deliberately face the wall? Depending on the angle you are facing it seems to go faster/slower. I'm not sure it has anything to do on where in the corridor you actually are..

Interesting... I never noticed before it's doing it like that.. I recently played another game (can't remember which) that did that. It drove me crazy being unable to choose the precise walking path. I guess I simply learned how to handle it in MM8

Overall on the run: It looks really solid, I like it Smiley

I didn't know you can "go into doors" via Telekinesis... Couldn't you in theory also do that in some more spots? oô... It looks optimized to me, but I don't know if you considered each door to do that on ^^
Might be magic...
Quote from Yagamoth:
On the movement - this game has some really weird mechanics, I agree. At times, you walk at an angle for no apparent reason.. Is it possible, that this game has some form of a "helping" mechanic, that is intended for you to help stay on paths?.. As in - it intentionally tilts your walking angle a bit to ensure you wouldn't fall down into the Lava at times, but it also kicks in in normal corridors?

Could be - it's a really strange effect that I can't quite place my finger on. One thing that I noticed is that moving at angles of multiples of 45 degrees seems to be faster in general than the angles in between. There should be some way that we can test this out too jut by walking from one end of a map to the other and using careful timing.
Quote from Yagamoth:
If so, try walking in the middle of a corridor as opposed to the side... Maybe this makes a difference

Just watched the Maze-Part of your run: Now I'm fairly sure, that it has such a mechanic... Did you notice, that you walk "perfectly" straight down the corridors unless you deliberately face the wall? Depending on the angle you are facing it seems to go faster/slower. I'm not sure it has anything to do on where in the corridor you actually are..

Interesting... I never noticed before it's doing it like that.. I recently played another game (can't remember which) that did that. It drove me crazy being unable to choose the precise walking path. I guess I simply learned how to handle it in MM8

Overall on the run: It looks really solid, I like it Smiley

Thanks for all the help you gave with the planning!
Quote from Yagamoth:
I didn't know you can "go into doors" via Telekinesis... Couldn't you in theory also do that in some more spots? oô... It looks optimized to me, but I don't know if you considered each door to do that on ^^

I considered a fair few, but there could be more spots that Telekinesis can be used. As far as I know it can be used for anything you can normally click on, but from any distance (as long as you have line of sight). Now that you mention it, there might be a few more places that it can be used before the crystal stage - Stables, Water heart, more?
INTJ
You say, Telekinesis works as long as the line of sight is? o_o... That's a long distance.. That's really long. In essence, it may even be beneficial then to get Cauri earlier for that alone (She is the one that learns telekinesis, right?)

- Stables seems to be a good idea in any case, if you are quick enough it's a time gain in any case
- Maybe the fountain? But it's on the way anyway, so it might not be worth it
- Assuming you take Cauri with you right after the first death - the Water portal is pretty much max. distance (You save around 5 seconds of flying - cauri probably doesn't need as long to die?)
- Not sure about getting the Water Heart - you have to die right after... I guess you'll have to test it for a good setup
- Patriarch Quest and Magic Shop in Alvar (Probably fly at an angle, so you get near the Map transition)
- Fire Portal
- Fire Halls
- Earth Portal
- Basically any door in the Plane between Planes

One thing to consider, later you use Cauri for flying, right? So this may get in the way a little, because of the quickspell setup oô.. Not sure

On the walking in corridors - it seems you are right, the more you walk at an angle, the higher your speed seems to be.. Another note would be: It seems, you keep speed and angle even after you leave a corridor, not sure if that's useful though.
Might be magic...
Quote from Yagamoth:
You say, Telekinesis works as long as the line of sight is? o_o... That's a long distance.. That's really long. In essence, it may even be beneficial then to get Cauri earlier for that alone (She is the one that learns telekinesis, right?)

Very good ideas! Here's my input:
Quote from Yagamoth:
- Stables seems to be a good idea in any case, if you are quick enough it's a time gain in any case
- Maybe the fountain? But it's on the way anyway, so it might not be worth it

I think Stables is probably a good idea, but we may not use the stables any more by the time Cauri gets Telekinesis. I wonder if it's possible to get enough money to buy Town Portal, grab it on the way through to rescue Cauri, then give it to Cauri as soon as she is hired, TP to Alvar and get the rest of the spells then?

Quote from Yagamoth:
- Assuming you take Cauri with you right after the first death - the Water portal is pretty much max. distance (You save around 5 seconds of flying - cauri probably doesn't need as long to die?)
- Not sure about getting the Water Heart - you have to die right after... I guess you'll have to test it for a good setup

This should save some good time. The heart is a little hard to target from far away as it's quite small, and flying towards it doesnt take that long anyway, but potentially a few seconds could be saved there too.
Quote from Yagamoth:
- Patriarch Quest and Magic Shop in Alvar (Probably fly at an angle, so you get near the Map transition)

The tricky part here is that we need to visit both of these to actually get the Telekinesis spell in the first place :P. If we can get some quick cash beforehand, then we might be able to buy it on the way through to rescue Cauri.
Quote from Yagamoth:
- Fire Portal
- Fire Halls
- Earth Portal
- Basically any door in the Plane between Planes

Unfortunately casting Telekinesis cancels Invisibility so these might not work out.

Quote from Yagamoth:
One thing to consider, later you use Cauri for flying, right? So this may get in the way a little, because of the quickspell setup oô.. Not sure

Actually, we have enough cash to buy Fly from the Magic Shop, and there is only one point in the whole run where we need Fly to last longer than one hour (cast it just before Escaton's Crystal), so potentially we can buy the spell and have Telekinesis as the quick spell. Good thinking!
Quote from Yagamoth:
On the walking in corridors - it seems you are right, the more you walk at an angle, the higher your speed seems to be.. Another note would be: It seems, you keep speed and angle even after you leave a corridor, not sure if that's useful though.

One of these days I'll actually measure it out and figure out exactly which angles work best
Might be magic...
I was going through an old hard drive and found the savegames from this speedrun. Now attached to this post.
TASer
Just wanted to say, this seems to be an interesting and useful source of information to different aspects of the game:
http://telp.org/mm8/ (Analysis)

It explains how attributes work (there are thresholds that have to be passed before attributes contribute to anything), how they affect anything, how recovery time works, how to collect all artifacts (which becomes impossible if you mess up), etc.
I'm having a nice read right now, I'm going to find out what the Age stat does finally. This source also covers some stuff about glitches.
Edit history:
MUGG: 2014-06-20 01:43:15 pm
MUGG: 2014-06-15 05:29:36 pm
TASer
I apologize as I will make another post.

I played through the whole game again (up until entering Escaton's crystal). I had a blast and could imagine learning to speedrun this game in the future, but that's a big maybe... I was wondering about what strats to use in non-segmented run (=RTA)...

Also I wanted to note, during my playthrough, in the cleric temple, my game would always crash when I saved and loaded in the underground passage..

EDIT: The game would always crash as soon as I entered Escarton's Palace...
Might be magic...
The game crashing is most likely due to a bug with the music soundtrack. If you're using the gog.com version, there's a solution here

You can also try turning the music off before entering Escaton's Palace.
Edit history:
MUGG: 2014-06-23 11:56:50 am
TASer
Thank you. I actually googled for this solution an hour ago. It's good to see you are still around.

I have a question: Why was the walk through doors trick not used? It does not work for me though, maybe my computer is too slow?
I found that I can at least use telekinesis spell through doors right after loading a savegame, but it has to be the first party member - because that's the party member that will be selected right after loading a save.

Btw, there is a spell where you can set a point and then teleport back to it on second use, right? But I don't know if that spell has scrolls and you would need 2 scrolls to make it a time saver. Unfeasible.
Might be magic...
Quote from MUGG:
Thank you. I actually googled for this solution an hour ago. It's good to see you are still around.

No worries - I've been a bit quiet lately. Mainly focusing on real life at the moment but also casually doing a few Heroes of Might and Magic 4 videos as well.

Quote from MUGG:
I have a question: Why was the walk through doors trick not used? It does not work for me though, maybe my computer is too slow?
I found that I can at least use telekinesis spell through doors right after loading a savegame, but it has to be the first party member - because that's the party member that will be selected right after loading a save.

I couldn't get that trick to work either - I was thinking it was because my PC is too fast! This game probably was made to run on a 300 MHz PC back in the day, so it may have only worked at those speeds. The Telekinesis trick sounds interesting though, but I can't think of anywhere to use it on my route offhand. If you can find a way of making this trick work it would take minutes off the final time.

Quote from MUGG:
Btw, there is a spell where you can set a point and then teleport back to it on second use, right? But I don't know if that spell has scrolls and you would need 2 scrolls to make it a time saver. Unfeasible.

Yes, "Lloyd's Beacon" but it requires a Lich with Grandmaster Water Magic skill and none join you until after the alliance quest is done. You can find scrolls for it - from what I remember there is one in the Shadowspire magic shop building somewhere. Unfortunately my route doesn't go anywhere near a magic shop that sells these - I think they are only available in Shadowspire and Regna. And you're right about needing two scrolls for it to be useful.