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Fire Emblem?
I tried running Level 2 again today... I really can't find an optimum strategy. I tried an early rush (it always fails), training warriors (probably the best choice, but it seems slow), building huts and rushing with just a shaman (doesn't work), and the dismantle glitch (which I can't get to work - when the enemy hut is selected, there's no dismantle option...).

Level 22, I think I can do. I have a strategy, so we'll see if I can get that. It's about... 4 minutes, I think. Maybe a little less.

And I found out where my CD is, so I won't need that. My sister's boyfriend is borrowing it  Undecided
Edit history:
ReCover: 2008-10-02 11:46:10 am
Okay, I've run level 7 today. Got the time 2:59. This level can be improved by a couple of seconds just by optimizing the path.
The braves I converted on the other island was supposed to kill the enemy shaman, then camp by the reincarnation site. Unfortunately I was only able to get two braves (you need three to take out the shaman).
Anyway, this was the best time I got and I didn't feel like running this level any more.
Let me know if anyone want to download a video file instead like before.
Fire Emblem?
Hey, ReCover, are you still interested in doing this?

As has become unfortunately obvious to me, I'm not really able to work on this run. I can't get Fraps running without my game lagging to almost unplayable levels, and even if I could I rarely have enough time anymore. I can still organise the topic and everything (and possibly route planning), but I doubt I'll be able to do any levels.

Also, anyone else interested in doing runs of any levels?
Oh yea, I'm still interested. Smiley
I've just had to prioritize lately and haven't had the time to record anything.

Yea, Populous is one hard game to record. I'm pretty sure it's because Populous is grabbing 100% cpu.
I'm only able to record since I have a dualcore processor, thus Populous only take 50% cpu (one core), and I can run Fraps in the other core. But as you might see from my recordings, it's still pretty laggy.
I wonder if it is possible to somehow patch the game to take less cpu, since it's unlikely Populous is really doing something with all of it. Maybe we should ask this to one of the guys who have made the unofficial 1.03 patch...
ok i've been playing populous for years so i think i can help with these speed runs if thats ok?
Sure, we would love your help Smiley
Just run a level and record it in about the same fashion as the current runs.
You can pick any level, even one that have already been done, but then you have to get a better time, of course Smiley
I used Fraps to record my runs, it was pretty laggy but it was "doable".
I would love to come back to this, I have been busy a while and I still am a bit busy, but I should be able to run a level or two.
Edit history:
ReCover: 2008-12-07 09:50:27 am
Okay guys, I've now recorded level 11 Smiley
I'm very pleased with this level, got the very nice time of 3:32 Cheesy
Also, it's the first run of a level with 2 enemy tribes!

I started practicing for the level this morning, first I got a time around 7 minutes, then after a bit of optimizing and a lot of luck, I managed to get the time 3:51.
Then I started recording, and since running when recording is very different (because of the heavy lag), it took quite some time until I managed to get around the same time.
A couple of runs ended up at around 3:57, and then finally I got 3:32.
It was mostly luck, if you notice in the run that, for some reason, everyone in the enemy tribe gather at a specific location. That happened in both bases in this run, and when it happens it is a lot easier to blast the followers. This is a huge time saver since you don't have to go look in all the huts.
I had to rely on luck for some other reasons as well, mostly to be able to convert enough wildmen with the shaman at the first base.

I hope I will get the time to record more levels soon! Cheesy

Edit: You might wonder why I used the first convert on a seeming less random location. I used it on the boat building because you can't build if there are wildmen standing where the building is going to be built, they will delay the building until they go away, which can take a while.
Quote from ReCover:
Okay, I've run level 7 today. Got the time 2:59. This level can be improved by a couple of seconds just by optimizing the path.
The braves I converted on the other island was supposed to kill the enemy shaman, then camp by the reincarnation site. Unfortunately I was only able to get two braves (you need three to take out the shaman).
Anyway, this was the best time I got and I didn't feel like running this level any more.
Let me know if anyone want to download a video file instead like before.


i just got 3:03 would of been shorter but there shaman ressed without me noticing so i gained an extra 15secs Sad
Try to record a run or two, you'll notice that the game will start lagging so much, it's really much harder to play.
It takes a while to get used to but it is possible to get good times still.
I just wish there was some solution to that problem.  Undecided

Merry christmas everyone  Smiley
Fire Emblem?
Ah, sorry I haven't updated in a while. I added your level 11 run. That was incredible! I NEVER thought of using boats on that level, I always just Landbridged across with a brave rush; took me about 7 minutes (and I thought that was fast!).

kontradiktor, we'd be happy to have you help us. Are there any levels you'd like to try in particular? Or any level 'themes' (such as rushing, needing to build or even using the dismantle glitch) that you think you will be good at?

So, a few things to think about, now (the rest of this post is basically just me going through the levels left which can be rushed and any special considerations).
Level 6 can be rushed in basically the same way; you need to convert a brave to worship for hypnotise ASAP, though, to get the bridge across. Otherwise you need to wait for the Matak to bridge across, which is obviously slower.
Level 2 is pretty tricky to rush for the second level. I'll test it again sometime, try and find an effective strategy (I know I said that before...).
Level 8 can be rushed fairly easily, you just need some well aimed blasts to take out the Warriors.
Level 9 is also easy to rush. Might have to test if it's quicker to send your army around the world, then rush after they worship the totem pole, or to just charge a landbridge and rush across that. Do you know how to removed FoW (from the entire map, that is)? It's a cheat, but it might help in your practice runs. If not, I can explain it to you.
Level 13 is another easy rush. There's a two landbridge sized gap between the greens and the yellows; but building a boat hut here would also require a guard tower. I think that's probably still going to be the fastest solution, though. Or you could try aiming an earthquake into the water such that the lava forms a landbridge. It would be pretty tough to do, but might be the fastest way and it would be awesome to watch :D.
Level 14 is an awkward level. I know you can rush the Yellows easily (it's the only way I used to be able to pass the level), but from there it's difficult to then rush the other two without any building. Any thoughts?
Level 23 can also be rushed, and shouldn't be too difficult. Take out the reds, then the greens while charging a landbridge and building a guard tower so you can reach perhaps? Or maybe an amphibious assault again?

Can you test to see if you can do the dismantle glitch, ReCover? I said in the original post that I thought it was patch 1.03 which stopped me, but in retrospect I think it might have been another patch. It's a tough glitch to pull off, but it's one we're (well, you're) going to have to get good at pulling off.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Wow this game is awesome. Great stuff here. Would especially love to see some levels that you cannot just rush with your initial starting group though. I would try it but it's been ages since I've played Tongue

Let me know if there's an interesting level (preferably including building a village) that needs to be tackled though, I might give it a shot Wink
Glad you liked level 11, I'm pretty pleased with that one myself. Cheesy

About the next levels, I have tried level 6 and 14 a bit. I think I will run level 14 next. I think I got a good strategy in mind, but it requires a great deal of luck Smiley

By the way, wouldn't it be awesome if we got maps of the levels and draw paths on them? It's kinda hard to explain my strategy but it would be easier if I could draw it. I will look into this.

About the FoW, I agree, we should find a way to remove it during practice. I think it should be there on the actual run of course.

I tried the dismantle trick for the first time and was successful (with the 1.03 patch). To be honest I'm not a big fan of it since it certainly wasn't intended to be possible. But OK, if it saves a great deal of time, I will probably use it.

20-100: You should look at some of the later levels, I don't think we can get away with simple rushes on them Tongue
Fire Emblem?
^Except 23 :).

Maps of levels? Sure! I think I can get them easily. This is where I'm actually going to become valuable :P. I'll try and get them tommorow. On that note, would you like AI scripts as well? I don't mean the whole thing, obviously, but if you want me to check details on what triggers certain AI behaviour, I can find out for you. I doubt it'll matter here, but on some later levels (especially ones like Bloodlust... ugh), it might help.

I tried 14, but you're strategy is probably quicker anyway. On level 13, I wasn't able to make a bridge with EQ, it just doesn't work. I'm fairly certain building a boat hut and guard tower are quicker; I managed a tentative time of just under 5 minutes, which you can probably improve anyway.

I'll PM you the method to remove FoW. If anyone wants to hear it to run e.g. 18, just tell me.

Good to hear you can get it working. I tried again, and still couldn't. I don't know why, but I guess if you can it's still good. I know it wasn't intended, but glitches are like that. It doesn't go anywhere near the banned glitches on SDA, and I suspect our run times would be too long without it (like, 20-30 minutes for about 10 levels = not good).
Fire Emblem?
Okay, I have a strategy for level 2, which might be improvable, but it seems pretty fast to me (I got 3:13, I think sub 3:00 is possible).
Build a warrior hut with all of your braves
Send Shaman to worship the totem pole
Select two braves, and tell them to guard near the stone head and then to worship it (in other words, two orders)
As soon as the totem pole finishes worshipping, press N (this way, the braves immediately head to the stone head instead of waiting for the flyby to finish)
{when the Warrior hut is finished, train 3-5 warriors}
Send the Shaman just up to the enemy base. When the enemies come out of the hut and tower, retreat.
Try to kill as many enemies as possibly by blasting them into the water (if you can kill both of the warriors, that's fine).
Once your warriors are trained, attack (or possibly attack before they're all trained).
Use Tornado on the three huts.

The attack you're going to have to work out for yourself, though. I'm not sure what the fastest way to do it is. Hopefully everyone in the first hut has already been killed by your Shaman; if so, you can save a tornado for their Shaman.
I haven't run level 2 at all, but I'll check it out.

By the way, regarding the maps, I've done some work.
I mailed ALACN, the guy who made the World Editor, and asked if the source is available.
Got a response with the source code, he also said it's available on the web but I haven't found it.
Anyways, I have managed to edit the source so that it gives a bird's view of the map. It's working pretty well, but there are some bugs left I think.
Take a look at the map for level 1: http://recover89.googlepages.com/poplvl01.png

I also asked about the 100% cpu, but he didn't know how to fix that Sad
Edit history:
kontradiktor: 2009-01-09 07:01:52 pm
lvl 13 run an easy target i dont see how you can do it in less than 10mins scince the Dakini and the Matak tribe alreayd have a base developed but the Chamura are an easy one to wipe out quick but the others without a few warriors and preachers quick you wont last


i'm also going to see if i can use webcam to film it and hopefully wont lag as much
Fire Emblem?
I would check the rules closely about webcams. I suspect that if there was near perfect quality it would be accepted, but SDA is quite nitpicky about quality. In fact, I'm almost certain the answer would be no.

A bit of nitpicking myself, An Easy Target is level 12. Aerial Bombardment (which is easy to run) is level 13. I agree, sub 10 is probably not possible. I don't know what the best strategy will be at all, either. Probably grabbing Tornado and possibly Erode when you get a boat, and lbing to the Yellows on the left (from world view), to get the needed wood and attack the Reds without a boat. The dismantle glitch will come in somewhere. I got about 45 minutes (lol) on a psuedospeedrun, I suspect we'll actually get a time of around  15 minutes.
Quote from I_eat_tables:
I would check the rules closely about webcams. I suspect that if there was near perfect quality it would be accepted, but SDA is quite nitpicky about quality. In fact, I'm almost certain the answer would be no.

A bit of nitpicking myself, An Easy Target is level 12. Aerial Bombardment (which is easy to run) is level 13. I agree, sub 10 is probably not possible. I don't know what the best strategy will be at all, either. Probably grabbing Tornado and possibly Erode when you get a boat, and lbing to the Yellows on the left (from world view), to get the needed wood and attack the Reds without a boat. The dismantle glitch will come in somewhere. I got about 45 minutes (lol) on a psuedospeedrun, I suspect we'll actually get a time of around  15 minutes.



yes i realise i got the lvls mixed up is there a thread where i can read the rules to see if my speedruns are all nice and legal wont say any times until i find out if there are or not
I haven't had the time to run any Populous sadly, so I have made no progress. Sad
I had finals on Monday, and got finals on Friday as well. Hopefully I can run a level after that...

Quote from kontradiktor:
yes i realise i got the lvls mixed up is there a thread where i can read the rules to see if my speedruns are all nice and legal wont say any times until i find out if there are or not

If it's not too much trouble, can you start using punctuations? To be honest, it gets a bit annoying to read text with no punctuations.
Fire Emblem?
Try uploading ~30 seconds onto Youtube. If it looks okay to me/other people, check http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,8532.0.html and follow that.

And I second the motion to use punctuation. It really helps people follow your thoughts and gives your ideas more credibility.
Edit history:
ReCover: 2009-01-16 10:39:31 am
Another solution would be to somehow capture the output to the monitor, but I don't exactly know what extra hardware that requires.
It's probably too much trouble to get it done.
The bad thing with Populous is that you can't record demos as you can in other games.
If it was possible to record demos, then you could play without lag and then record with lag, it would be sooo much better.
It would also be possible to re-record if the need arises.

I just did the finals btw, hopefully I can play some populous this weekend. Cheesy
Joke of all trades
have you tried using another recording program because sometime fraps makes thigns laggy, and while you can still play it won't be with the fastest time
No, but my guess is that they are about the same or worse. I'm fairly certain the problem is with Populous, and not Fraps. Populous is hogging the cpu, which is fine when nothing else is hogging it. But when both Populous and Fraps try to hog it at the same time, the result lag.
And you're right, it's probably not that hard to get better better times without recording. The lag is definitely annoying and makes the run worse.
Edit history:
ReCover: 2009-01-21 03:01:14 pm
Okay, I finally played some Populous today. I picked level 13 and got the time 3:41.
My best time on that map is actually 3:40, but I didn't record that try. Meh.
Most things went really well, both tribes packed together all its followers one time, allowing for some really good blasts. It looks like they do that if you approach with a large enough army, 10 units worked for me.
The only real time I messed up a bit was when I was going to fire that blast from the boat. It's kinda tricky since a lot of times I've done that the enemy shaman have blasted my boat to hell. Tried to move away directly after the blast, but that didn't work too well. A few seconds lost there.

Unrelated: I encountered a bug that occurs sometimes when you start the map. If you press enter (to close the text dialog at the start of the level) quickly when you start a level, and then quickly space after that, then you get the view in a bird's point-of-view. Try it... I can record a video showing it if you can't get it to work. I guess it might be useful, but it wouldn't be that nice to watch. I haven't found a way to restore the normal view either without restarting the level.

Sorry for snatching all the easy levels Tongue

Edit:
I forgot to mention, but this time I changed the priority of Fraps to Low. I figured that Populous is whats lagging, so give it some more juice. If I'm not imagining things, it's a little smoother. I also recorded in 24 fps now, used 15 fps before. Try it and let me know if it works better for you too.
Fire Emblem?
Nice. I had considered building a boat hut like that, but I didn't think it would work. I'm impressed you pulled it off.

I'll look through the code and see what causes them to group like that. I think it's once you get within a certain radius with a certain number of people - the radius varies, but I think the number of people is usually 10 (which is consistent with what you observed).