Thought I'd share my latest effort here, put together everyone's suggestions and did a couple of small route changes - along with a significant hardware upgrade as well. Would be pretty solid if it wasn't for Burial Isle and Sun in Shadow - still decent though. I cant think of many changes to the route from this point on - barring a new exploit being discovered in the future of course. Might grind out some attempts for a submission, may be a little too soon considering the game's age though so I'm unsure. Anyways, hope you enjoy.
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Sweet. Kana's sword really does make a huge difference.
I'm kinda disappointed with how little use that dialogue glitch ends up offering. I wasn't actually able to replicate it before, I'll try again to see if I can explore with it. It'd be nice to skip some of those later dialogues as well, and you do still have two companions to kill off.
Edit: Strange. When I do the dialogue glitch (with Durance instead of Kana), part of the UI turns off and I can't move between areas anymore. I wonder if that's a version difference.
I'm kinda disappointed with how little use that dialogue glitch ends up offering. I wasn't actually able to replicate it before, I'll try again to see if I can explore with it. It'd be nice to skip some of those later dialogues as well, and you do still have two companions to kill off.
Edit: Strange. When I do the dialogue glitch (with Durance instead of Kana), part of the UI turns off and I can't move between areas anymore. I wonder if that's a version difference.
http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/7/entry-183-patch-notes-105-in-progress/
Patch 1.05 will severely slow down the speedrun route. Don't update.
Patch 1.05 will severely slow down the speedrun route. Don't update.
Well, I finally have a run that I'm happy with. Very minor mistake at Northweald which I believe was due to odd spawning, as I used the landmarks I normally use to get past there without stealthing but still got into combat. Missed the seemingly random skip before going to Oldsong, but I think that's maybe a 2 second loss tops. Caravan fight could have also been a bit faster, but getting past it is always the hardest part of the run so whatever. Also showcases a new glitch in Sun in Shadow, so hopefully you guys enjoy that. I'm pretty much done with this category for now, and I'm considering submitting this run to the site as well.
Wow, a very solid run, indeed. Thank you for the beautiful mouse movements that followed the music. That is a minor detail that makes the run a piece of art.
These are some minor improvements I can think of now, but these might also make the run considerably harder:
* Easy: Suicide trick without pausing? Should save 1-2 seconds? (Or at least: Let the spell animation run a bit longer before pausing.)
* Medium: When doing the large skip trick in the city, maybe we could run directly to the correct spot with everyone, or at least closer to the door before micromanaging the individual characters? I don't think those guys need to be arranged so nicely and precisely. Some messier and faster character arrangement strategy definitely exists. Spamming the move command will make the guys move quite effectively sometimes. Doing this spot faster might not be as reliable, but might save even as much as ~5 seconds?
* Hard: When attack-spamming, the inventory is sometimes visible a few frames. Pressing ESC even more precisely might save ~0.5 seconds throughout the run.
I tried, but couldn't think of anything else. Damn, you're good.
These are some minor improvements I can think of now, but these might also make the run considerably harder:
* Easy: Suicide trick without pausing? Should save 1-2 seconds? (Or at least: Let the spell animation run a bit longer before pausing.)
* Medium: When doing the large skip trick in the city, maybe we could run directly to the correct spot with everyone, or at least closer to the door before micromanaging the individual characters? I don't think those guys need to be arranged so nicely and precisely. Some messier and faster character arrangement strategy definitely exists. Spamming the move command will make the guys move quite effectively sometimes. Doing this spot faster might not be as reliable, but might save even as much as ~5 seconds?
* Hard: When attack-spamming, the inventory is sometimes visible a few frames. Pressing ESC even more precisely might save ~0.5 seconds throughout the run.
I tried, but couldn't think of anything else. Damn, you're good.
Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad that you guys enjoyed it! I'll touch on some of the things that were brought up.
I had thought of moving Player as well, but during some runs it seemed like the extra auto-attack damage from Player were instrumental in making sure it was a 1 stun fight at the end as opposed to two - though in this run you're probably right since I had to stun again anyways (I think it grazed). Old habits die hard I suppose.
The suicide trick is something I had been working on - you'll see the number of pause buffers has decreased significantly since my last encoded run. However we really only have two queues to follow which are the casting animation and the audio. In my experience, you can never truly rely on the audio as sometimes it plays later, and sometimes earlier. The audio queue I used in the run is by far the most consistent I've found with it taking 2-4 buffers every time. On the other hand relying on the casting animation is far, far too volatile for a single segment attempt in my opinion, as its either you get it first try or you don't. Still in the end you're correct, and I'd love to see a run do it first try. Although this would probably boost the prologue to ending over 99% of runs as opposed to the 80%+ it does in the current route haha.
The issue with moving everyone closer to the doors is quite simple. One party member will, almost without fail, get stuck on the way up the stairs. This simply may be an issue with my hardware or the game version, but it happened every time I tried. Having them in the middle of the hall allowed me to not worry about it while making sure Itumak was in the correct position. As far as positioning goes you are definitely correct, but to be fair this was one of the slower set ups I've had. A combination of habit and the extra care I take at that part (The 5 big run enders are the caravan, the suicide, this door clip, death trap in Sun in Shadow and Thaos) seemed to make it more of a mess than it needed to be.
I don't think I could really improve the inventory spamming (I just spam "I" by the way, no ESC needed!) at this point because the muscle memory is pretty integrated to the rhythm of the estoc's attacks. Many times that it's open too long are because I'm hesitating a bit due to thinking about what's going on. Just a consequence of my mindset during single-segment runs I guess.
I will admit that over all, time could be saved by doing things that are not as reliable. I would imagine that a segmented run could get somewhere in the neighborhood of low 24 or high 23 even, depending on how much one was willing to grind out on it. If anyone wants to tackle that, all the more power to them.
I had thought of moving Player as well, but during some runs it seemed like the extra auto-attack damage from Player were instrumental in making sure it was a 1 stun fight at the end as opposed to two - though in this run you're probably right since I had to stun again anyways (I think it grazed). Old habits die hard I suppose.
The suicide trick is something I had been working on - you'll see the number of pause buffers has decreased significantly since my last encoded run. However we really only have two queues to follow which are the casting animation and the audio. In my experience, you can never truly rely on the audio as sometimes it plays later, and sometimes earlier. The audio queue I used in the run is by far the most consistent I've found with it taking 2-4 buffers every time. On the other hand relying on the casting animation is far, far too volatile for a single segment attempt in my opinion, as its either you get it first try or you don't. Still in the end you're correct, and I'd love to see a run do it first try. Although this would probably boost the prologue to ending over 99% of runs as opposed to the 80%+ it does in the current route haha.
The issue with moving everyone closer to the doors is quite simple. One party member will, almost without fail, get stuck on the way up the stairs. This simply may be an issue with my hardware or the game version, but it happened every time I tried. Having them in the middle of the hall allowed me to not worry about it while making sure Itumak was in the correct position. As far as positioning goes you are definitely correct, but to be fair this was one of the slower set ups I've had. A combination of habit and the extra care I take at that part (The 5 big run enders are the caravan, the suicide, this door clip, death trap in Sun in Shadow and Thaos) seemed to make it more of a mess than it needed to be.
I don't think I could really improve the inventory spamming (I just spam "I" by the way, no ESC needed!) at this point because the muscle memory is pretty integrated to the rhythm of the estoc's attacks. Many times that it's open too long are because I'm hesitating a bit due to thinking about what's going on. Just a consequence of my mindset during single-segment runs I guess.
I will admit that over all, time could be saved by doing things that are not as reliable. I would imagine that a segmented run could get somewhere in the neighborhood of low 24 or high 23 even, depending on how much one was willing to grind out on it. If anyone wants to tackle that, all the more power to them.
Stumbled across some information that is quite helpful for people who may be interested in some kind of glitchless run, or a run on the current patch(I think its the current patch anyways). Linked below is a Triple Crown Solo "glitchless" speedrun that has a couple of solid tactics and overall really interesting play. Its really not designed truly for speed, I noticed a lot of things that could be done quicker - but the sneaking especially is extremely well done. In addition, it seems like they've cracked the random item RNG, and have set up a table for the spots that it affects. The link for the document is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6undqgpuzwsk9g1/PoErandom-no-pics-1.01.xlsx?dl=0. It seems to rely on saving and loading at least once to set up the RNG, and then its based on the day you open the chest. This could explain some of the variances that Onin experienced in his runs. I couldnt see a reliable/quick spot to get boots of speed unfortunately though, so it doesn't have much baring on the current any% run as far as I can tell.
In a side note, the run for PoE is up for public verification, so if you can spare the time to check it out I'd greatly appreciate it.
In a side note, the run for PoE is up for public verification, so if you can spare the time to check it out I'd greatly appreciate it.
I was wondering if it is possible to install an older patch for a disk version. For a bit of fun I wanted to try run this game but I am up to date with updates on GOG and can only go back to 1.06. So I used my kickstarter backer cd(it is drm free so no forced updates from steam) but it comes pre patched to 1.0.4.0540. I am not sure if it is because this version has been fixed or if I am doing it wrong but every time I try to become the debug character the screen goes into the loading screen for about 1 second then it comes back to the room I was in then it just comes up with the game over screen. I want to try a completely unpatched version. Do I need to download a torrent or is it possible to remove patches.