How am I the first person to start verifying?

BTW, this is Mike Uyama, as if it wasn't obvious from how detailed this verification is.

Anyway, let's do this one segment at a time.

Before going over segments, I just want to point out that even when you segment this game, it is impossible to get perfect luck. You can get very good luck, but perfect luck is impossible because of how random the enemies and Farah can be.

Another thing I want to point out is that if I say UCPro is lucky in a battle rather than being skillful or fast, it's because luck plays a huge role in battles. How fast a battle goes is at least half determined by luck, if not more than half.

Segment 1: This segment is pretty much perfect aside missing out on a bigger shortcut at the very beginning. We didn't know about making said shortcut more consistent until after the run was finished.

Segment 2: This is just getting the dagger of time early and the first battle. There's really not much to say except there's a half-second timesaver in the beginning of this segment that UCPro discovered after he finished this run. Aside from that, this segment is also nearly perfect.

Segment 3: Again, most of the mistakes I can point out are time-savers and route improvements that were found after the run was finished. There's some very minor movement mistakes in a couple of areas, but I don't think they add up to a second. The most notable one is how he hesitates before a jump at around 9:23 in the video, even though that's not a difficult jump to line up.

The father battle goes pretty smoothly. UCPro definitely had some very good luck in the battle. The only part that puzzles me is towards the end where he doesn't bother drawing sand from some of the red guards right next to him for about 3-4 seconds, and he didn't zoom out to landscape view right away when drawing sand from the Prince's father.

UCPro plans on splitting up this segment into two parts in his new run because he plans on doing a rewind trick and a palm tree shortcut in the latter half. And yes, that means the jump UCPro hesitated on won't even be relevant in his new run.

Segment 4: Random little fact. A segmented run always saves a minute over a single-segment run here because it can skips a dialogue cutscene between the Prince and Farah.

The only thing I doubt is when UCPro rolls instead of taking damage at around 1:15. I think it's very slightly faster to take damage there instead of rolling.

BTW, I've tried that rewind trick and it is really really hard to do. You also lose a minute+ if you fail it.

If anyone is wondering why UCPro hesitates around 3:40ish, he's simply being careful and making sure he skips the enemy spawn trigger.

The fight luck at the very end of the segment was RIDICULOUSLY good. Seriously, if an enemy trips another enemy, that is incredibly good luck.

Segment 5: This is basically just getting up to the next save. While the save is a little out of the way, it is justified because of how stupid the next segment is.

I think the bug fight would have been a little faster if UCPro torpedoed off one of the barrels, but it's not a big deal.

Segment 6: This is by far the sloppiest segment in the run, but I don't blame UCPro for accepting a segment this sloppy, because the luck needed in this segment is incredibly stupid.

So you need to get a wall run that has maybe a couple of frames of leniency, and then a rewind trick at the start of the segment, which already means you have to retry a lot. After you get the second sword, you need to pray and hope you get lucky spawns so you can swing at the wall without being interrupted. UCPro says it's about 50/50, I'd say the chance of getting good luck at that wall is more like 20-30% from experience.

Then after all that, you have to hit a trick called the mess hall skip, which is COMPLETELY DEPENDENT ON FARAH! There is a way to set up this trick to make it more consistent, but I'd say the odds of having a chance of doing it (that's right, not hitting it) are about 50%. So yeah, this segment sucks.

The only good thing about doing this segment for a new run is that UCPro won't get stuck inside an object like he did in this run because of a new rewind trick.

One thing that I will criticize is how UCPro handled the bug fight. He had a lot of opportunities to wall torpedo, but didn't take them, and I'm not sure why.

I really don't blame UCPro for moving on with the run with a segment 6 like this, because this such a long and draining segment to run, especially since so much of it is luck-based.

Segment 7: This is just a short little segment to hit a save point that's along the way. It's a very convenient save point because there's a fairly difficult trick right at the beginning of segment 8.

Segment 8: Again, there's a save point right along the way that hardly wastes time. The only thing I'm going to point out is that about a minute in, UCPro slashes some barrels, but you can actually just wallrun right past the barrels.

Segment 9: There's really not much in the way of shortcuts here. I know there's some rewind tricks that can let you go oob, but you fail to hit the loading trigger for the next area so it's not like you can do anything with them.

Anyway, this segment is just getting up to the save point right before the sewer rewind trick, there's really nothing else to mention.

Segment 10: UCPro gets a nice clean version of the sewer rewind, though it is possible to get a slightly better angle that puts you higher up on the rope when you jump. Maybe something to consider fora future run.

Just in case if anyone is wondering, UCPro doesn't dagger stab any of the enemies during this fight because he needs haste for the observatory. The fight is mostly clean, the biggest mistake that was his fault was how he had trouble finding a wall to torpedo off of for a couple of seconds, a problem that is easily fixed by going into landscape view. One of UCPro's torpedoes missed, but considering how many torpedoes have missed during my SS attempts, I can hardly blame him.

Segment 11: I'm not sure why UCPro chose such a strange method to push the mirrors in the hall of learning. He definitely lost some time from knocking over one of the purple soldiers in a spot that prevented him from pushing a mirror in an optimal spot.

It's unfortunate how UCPro couldn't pull the mirror after knocking away the first swarm of bats because the game's overly forgiving controls thought he was trying to wall run instead.

Overall this segment was clean with good luck. The fact UCPro didn't have to rewind while descending towards the third sword saved a good 10 seconds or so, and his observatory fight was very fast and lucky.

Segment 12: This is a setup segment for two really difficult tricks in segment 13. This segment wouldn't be so short otherwise. I will say that the cutscene skip for the lever (you probably won't notice it) is really difficult and erratic. I've only pulled it off twice out of at least 50 or so tries.

P.S. The torpedo is dumb.

Segment 13: Yes, this segment is under a minute and a half for the entire length of the video, and yes, it is completely justified. I have never once managed to climb up the left palm tree, and then there's a rewind trick.

Segment 14: Unlike the last two segments, this segment is fairly long because there's no convenient save point until the hourglass of time.

I swear I never get that lucky pushing the box in the prison. I always have to kill off most of the sand monsters first. :-/

You can actually get the button rewind trick in two rewinds (this is what I got at SGDQ, actually), but it's not the most consistent trick, and just hitting it is a good thing. Also UCPro was super lucky to get the save on the fourth rewind, because that's actually a very rare occurance (probably around 5-10%).

Aside from the rewind trick, the most important part of this segment is the elevator fight, which was very very good. UCPro had a ton of good luck (an enemy almost hit him and he torpedoed two enemies at once), and he was able to take care of each enemy after the initial haste very efficiently.

Segment 15: Unfortunately, there's not a lot of shortcuts to this final stretch. Everything is spread so far apart that there's not much in the way of skips. It doesn't help that you don't get the dagger of time.

This segment is very tightly optmized, and UCPro has a good fight at the end. For anyone wondering about the blocked sword swings, they don't waste much time and anytime one isn't blocked, UCPro basically gets a bonus kill.

Segment 16: This segment is just get a perfect fight against the Vizier, and that's exactly what UCPro does. There is one very very minor optimization that can made in this segment, and that is it's very slightly faster to land the last four hits on the Vizier with this pattern: dagger stab, two sword swings, then a dagger stab. That pattern cuts out the slow sword swing at the very end and replaces it with the faster dagger stab.

BTW, this improvement is about a quarter of a second at most, so it's not worth redoing the segment for.

Overall this is a great run. I didn't nitpick everything because there wasn't really much to nitpick that UCPro doesn't already know, since all of the new tricks discovered since UCPro finished this run were discovered by UCPro himself. Optimizing this game is incredibly tough because not only are there a lot of difficult, precise tricks, but you also have to get lucky when it comes to battles (and rewind tricks). The only segment that really sticks out like a sore thumb is segment 6, but that segment is stupid so I can definitely be more lenient on it.

I accept this run because it's an awesome run of an awesome game that deserves better than the outdated 6 or 7-year old run that's currently on the site..

BTW, I timed the run at 1:31:49. UCPro isn't necessarily wrong, but he used the last save on the in-game timer for timing the run, and we don't use that for timing this game.

This isn't really a big deal, but the framerate on the video is 59.94 fps, which is basically just doubling every frame because the game runs at 30/29.97. Otherwise the a/v is fine.

P.S. UCPro, I will finish the single-segment run someday. I just keep getting sidetracked with other projects. D:

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Visual and Audio are fine

No signs of cheating

Well before I begin my verification I’d like to point out that Farah is painfully damaging to any run attempts at this game. The fighting system has some flaws which make a perfect fight less likely when you have increasing numbers of enemies and as a result more luck is required. Finally the rewind trick is a lot more difficult than it looks and can be a real segment killer. Luckily a lot of the tricks occur at the beginning of segments. 

I try to point out the most useful time savers and possible points where time could be saved for the runner and anyone else who wants to know what is going on, or any potential runners who need to know the new tricks and timesavers. The time maybe slightly off by a few seconds if the statID is included.

I give a few hints as to my identity so UCPro can catch on although he can probably guess from the length of this verification

Now for my essay… I mean verification.


Segment 1:
Do you think that UCPro had felt regret as he gazed upon the destruction that he had wrought, or at least humility at the speed at which this run was performed? If you think so you are mistaken. From that moment on he thought of one thing only. The honour and glory he would bring by destroying this game.

To begin with, there is a shortcut right at the start but it is incredibly difficult to perform and at the time of this runs submission, there was currently no consistent way to perform that particular shortcut. The runner instead uses another shortcut by using a method of wall running vertically slightly higher than normal to access a platform that you normally had to jump to. 

The rest of this segment is pretty much perfect with all the little timesavers that are possible.



Segment 2:
And there it lay, just out of reach. The dagger of time. There was a treasure UCPro would carry with pride as he abuses its rewind ability to gain victory. If only he could get there.

Some nice wall running and platform jumping. Several seconds saved up until the big skip at 1:08 to get the dagger of time early. The runner gets what he came for and gets out as fast as possible.

First battle went pretty well. A more recent discovery after the submission of this run allows for a manipulation of the enemy spawn where you can save an additional few seconds but nothing really else in this segment. It was pretty much perfect.



Segment 3:
There are a few additional time savers and route changes that are possible in this segment, however these were discovered after the run was submitted.

Not much to say about the first few minutes of this segment. All the known timesavers at the time are used and a smooth series of drops to initiate the cutscene where the Prince finally catches up to Farah.  First use of the daggers rewind trick occurs shortly after the cutscene at 3:30. The death at the bottom was intentional so the next section of level loads. This death is much quicker than trying to manipulate the sand monsters into killing you.  A good chunk of time saved with this shortcut.

Nice cutscene skip at 4:30, then comes the boring part. The reason why I hated this segment the most. This puzzle just kills the momentum of this segment and not just because it activates all the traps. Well the trap activation puzzle was done as fast as possible. No problems there. Unfortunately those cursed demons didn’t rue the day they attacked the palace of Azad.

All the timesavers were used up until the courtyard. There is a shortcut here which involves jumping back and forth from a wall to the palm tree. There is also another which involves a rewind trick. The palm tree shortcut is immensely difficult and given how much this game is luck based, it really isn’t worth trying it two thirds of the way through such a long, luck dependant segment. The rewind glitch wouldn’t save more than a few seconds, and as it would’ve taken a few second to get more sand it would save less time. If this segment is split into 2 parts then it would be worth doing the palm tree shortcut.

There is a slight pause around 9:23 where the runner attempts to line up the camera to make a quite easy jump. A bit surprising to see given that UCPro seems to make impossible jumps from crappy camera angles all throughout the rest of the run

Nice saw avoiding jump at 10:16. Good thing Reaver showed that little trick

Then we get to the cutscene before the big fight. I feel Farah may have been more successful at stopping the Princes dad had she shot her arrow at his knee… Sorry couldn’t resist. I apologise.

Quite a decent fight. The fighting is quite dependant on luck so it his highly unlikely you will get a perfect fight, especially if there are a lot of enemies spawning. There was a bit of a delay before switching to landscape view, although it didn’t cost anytime. At 12:32 there is some rather unusual walking alongside a red sand monster, not particularly sure why then a switch out of landscape view when the jump over occurs, causing the slow motion scene. This cost maybe 3 to 4 seconds. The only thing I can guess is that UCPro was waiting to see if a blue soldier would spawn in, freeze him and then replenish the sand with the red one.  Decent dad fight. He did block once and there was a bit of slow motion at the end where he absorbed the sand costing another 2 seconds.

Overall a good segment. A couple of movement errors and a tiny bit of bad luck with the fight, but overall it didn’t cost too much in such a long, difficult and luck based segment.



Segment 4:
Due to the segmentation, a dialogue cutscene is skipped between the Prince and Farah.

0:53 By opening the door as fast as possible before Farah dies, you can skip that fight. Jumping off the edge saves a few seconds before the game over screen appears after Farah dies. 

1:22 Here we see a nice little timesaver that UCPro found which skips some wall running and ledge walking. This is currently the quickest known method up to the top.

3:03 The rewind trick across this wall saves a huge chunk of time instead of having to open a gate, avoid traps and having to run back to where you started, down to Farah and then across to the next lever.

Good avoidance of the enemy spawn trigger at 3:40. Beats hanging off the edge and crawling around it.

3:50 UCPro jumps straight down to the lower platform by landing on the rail to break the fall. A genius must’ve come up with the idea to do this which inspired him to find this shortcut…

Death at 3:59 was to speed things up.

The alternative method to hitting the button to open the gate at the bottom is to use the rewind trick to wall run further along the wall and hit the button. Due to the use of the rewind trick at the top of this section that is no longer possible. The method UCPro uses avoids the enemy spawn trigger so he can move one box on the floor without enemy interference. This allows him to raises the platform which he then jumps back up to and uses to reach the button.

UCPro had good luck with the 4 big hammer sand monsters. They all stayed close to him instead of one going after Farah and one even took another out for him, saving him the trouble.

Overall a very good segment. Not much possible at the moment to improve this segment unless something new is discovered.



Segment 5:
Start of the segment shows a nice little shortcut that allows you to sneak up behind the birds and take some out quickly. This segment is made even better by manipulating Farah into taking out the remaining birds.

1:25 The roll into the cage allowed for a cutscene skip. This was the fastest method to the top of the cage known at the time.

Scarab fight could’ve been slightly luckier with the torpedo but nothing really to complain about as sometimes the Prince will fly around his enemies rather than hit them…

4:30 I believe there is a shortcut to get up the right hand side rather than taking the route in this run, but it was discovered more recently after submission.

All the small timesavers were used to get to the switch to open the gate before saving.
Overall a pretty perfect segment.



Segment 6:
Right near the beginning of this segment there is some bad luck with an enemy spawn at 1:05. A sand monster spawns right in front of the Prince blocking his path for about 2 seconds.

1:11 The rewind trick is used to create an invisible ledge that the Prince can walk along. There are several shortcuts to get up to the higher section of this room. Each one can be difficult and some save more time than others. This is probably one of the quickest methods at the time of submission although it came with a bit of a time cost at 1:25.

This shortcut allows you to get the new sword much quicker and avoid puzzles.

1:25 Prince stuck in the wall costing several seconds. 

2:58 Little shortcut to get down to Farah.

3:09 Breaking this wall before an enemy spawns is extremely difficult. UCPro says he gets it 50% of the time. I manage it once in a blue moon… If you don’t break it before an enemy gets too close then you are trapped for a good minute+ fighting enemies before you get another chance. The problem here is if an enemy gets close enough the Prince will automatically lock on to them and you cannot hit the wall. The only way at that point is to defeat the enemies nearby then hit the wall again before another wave spawns in.

3:35 Using the trick to wall run slightly higher allows you to reach a pole that you normally need to pull a block to get too. There is a gap behind the block that you pull out, which Farah normally squeezes through. Despite not exposing the gap she mysteriously gets transported to the other side of this section of level. This is normal… Well what counts as normal for this game. 

4:13 This jump looks easy but if you are slightly off it can go terribly wrong.

4:26 As Mike pointed out it was possible for UCPro to use more torpedo attacks on the scarabs here to save a few seconds. The torpedo attack on the last enemy allows a cutscene skip where you watch the Prince put his sword and dagger away.

5:43 some bad luck with the auto-targeting of the fighting system as the torpedo attack went after the frozen sand monster instead of the blue soldier one.

5:51 More bad luck as the frozen sand monster is now free and spawns right next to the wall that was about to be smashed.

6:00 The knocked down blue soldier is now back on his feet and spawns directly in front of the Prince as he tried to break the wall. Luckily he is in a position that allows the wall to still be broken.

It is possible to get through that section much faster and it did look a bit sloppy.

Here comes one of the most difficult sections of the segment which involves skipping the mess hall fight saving several minutes.

7:24 Nice little shortcut that avoids going the much longer and dangerous way.
By pulling the lever and opening the door before Farah died, it allowed the entire mess hall fight to be avoided. This saves several minutes.

From 10:00 – 12:00 there are a few rewind tricks possible to use as timesavers in this section but given the length of this segment and the amount of luck already required to get that far it wasn’t worth the risk.

10:35 A missed jump

12:20 Some good luck with the birds where they don’t continuously attack and knock you to the ground. It is possible to run all the way across and avoid them completely but you’d have to be really lucky.

Overall I felt this segment was good. There were a few sloppy looking moments around the 5:30 mark as UCPro was approaching the 2nd wall to break through. Getting the sword early requires a good bit of luck, but then to break through the wall 1st attempt, use the majority of the small timesavers and the large luck based mess hall skip all in one segment was pretty damn good. This segment was extremely difficult and requires a lot of luck so I don’t blame him for keeping it and moving on to the next segment despite the slightly sloppy part.



Segment 7:
A nice short segment to recover from the previous one.

Right from the start there is a huge timesaver that saves about 20 seconds just by performing a difficult jump straight across to the wall. There is another method but it is very difficult and involves a rewind trick. The method used is the easiest although still difficult.

The rest of the segment is a bunch of small timesavers and a cutscene skip at 1:11

There is a wall jump skip that cuts out the majority of the next segment but UCPro chooses to move along to the save point and choose an alternative route.

Overall a perfect segment



Segment 8:
Another nice little segment.

25 seconds in a nice little wall jumping session to get to the button.

0:38 Shows the method to get down without the ladder.

1:07 A cutscene skip and a rewind trick shortcut.

Overall a perfect segment.


 
Segment 9:
Another short segment. This one involves getting to the next save point. Nothing much to say.

There is a few rewind tricks that let you go out of bounds but you can’t progress as the latter sections aren’t properly loaded without you crossing the trigger (As Mike mentioned).

There is one rewind trick that lets you cut out some wall running and pillar jumping but getting the distance and the camera angle to get back in bounds costs as much time as it saves so isn’t really worth it.

Overall some great pillar jumps, wall running, ledge walking, bat avoidance, ladder sliding and water rolling in this segment. 



Segment 10:
This segment begins with the rewind trick to get onto an invisible ledge and walk along it directly to the rope bypassing the entire underground section saving several minutes.

Overall a decent end fight to this segment. Bit of bad luck one time with a torpedo attack hitting the one enemy capable of blocking it and a bit of wandering around trying to get to a wall to use the torpedo. There were also 2 missed torpedo attacks. As already mentioned it’s highly unlikely to get a perfect fight given the luck required and the amount of enemies in this particular fight.

4:55 By moving the statue then it allows you to skip a lot of standing around and waiting on Farah in the next segment as she has some dialogue with the Prince.

Other than a bit of bad luck in the fight it was a good, solid segment.



Segment 11:
Again due to the segmentation a cutscene has been skipped.

The beginning battle with the sand monsters was a bit unlucky with a missed torpedo attack, but luckily another sand monster took out the one he missed. To be honest I feel it would be far easier to leave the red sand monster the last
one as he is by far the easiest to deal with.

The suicide at 3:15 was to stop the sand monster chasing you.

There are about half a dozen methods and various alternative routes to getting the 2nd sword quicker and I believe a slightly faster method has been recently discovered after this run was submitted. The one in this run was one of the quicker methods.

3:56 Bit unlucky with the bats and the wall run instead of pulling the mirror.

A good observatory battle. The blue guards are capable of blocking the torpedo attacks at the latter stages but fortunately they didn’t here.

Overall a pretty good segment.



Segment 12:
Due to the segmentation the game loaded Farah in the observatory, where as in the previous section she was left behind. This is perfectly normal… Well normal for this game.

Again right at the start of this segment is the shortcut where you run along the outside of a supposedly inaccessible section.

Fastest climbing method up the ropes in the observatory.

The suicide at 0:50 was to hit the trigger to load the next section of the game.

2:04 Camera angle change stopped a cutscene.

2:35 ….  Example of torpedo doing exactly what you expect it to do when everything is going so well.

Overall a near perfect segment… Damn that torpedo attack.



Segment 13:
Another short segment. Some great shortcut finder showed it was possible to climb up the left palm tree although it’s a pain in the ass compared to the right one.

A nice find to get back down to the save point.



Segment 14:
Just to give an example of how painfully unlucky you can be on this game the part where he shouts “watch out for spikes” I’ve seen Farah just run straight off into them. Later after the cutscene where Farah says “look, that’s the bridge to the tower of dawn” I’ve run along toward the gate and seen Farah in the background run straight off the wall and kill herself. Keep in mind she can do something dumb like this in every segment. I’m not even joking. She’s especially bad in the hall of learning where she just runs off into some spikes. I feel sorry for anyone attempting a single segment run of this game…

2:47 Nice little shortcut in the prison there.

Anyone wondering about the camera angle change at ~ 3:00 minutes, that was to help prevent the sand monsters attacking so you can move the box. This is the consistent method that UCPro uses, which never works for me...

3:27 Nice use of haste to quickly dispatch the sand monsters. One is left alive to stop another wave spawning in.
The ascent out of the prison was pretty much perfect.

5:34 The rewind trick to get more height with a vertical wall run. I’ve always found this to be the most difficult of the rewind tricks. This can be a segment killer right here. This one was pulled off luckily on the 4th rewind.

5:55 That was clever thinking to avoid that wild hammer swing.

The fight on the elevator went very well. Some great luck with the enemies after haste was used. Just a second or 2 lost when he got caught on the wall.

Overall a great segment.



Segment 15:
Starts off with an unavoidable cutscene then comes the fun little door puzzle. For those unaware, if you turn up your sound you can hear water dripping/splashing as you get close to the correct door. Still it’s a lot easier to remember the door sequence.

4:48 By drawing your sword before you enter the cutscene you have an invisible sword in the next section even though it was supposed to have been taken by Farah. This is normal… Well normal for this game.

6:09 bit of bad luck with the enemies blocking his path. Costs a second.

7:20 Nice little shortcut

There are only small timesavers in this section of the game where you don’ have the dagger.

This segment went pretty good.

After the cutscene where Farah dies you mysteriously have glitched the final sword into your hands. This is normal… Well normal for this game.

The end fight went pretty damn well. It’s worth having a swing at some of the enemies after a torpedo as you might get lucky. No real time lost on blocked shots.



Segment 16:
Final fight with the Vizier. Perfect

I would’ve liked to have seen the very final blow given to the Vizier with the dagger that he desired so much, but I’m unusual like that.

Overall a truly awesome run.

Decision: Accept.

Congratulations UCPro.

Sorry this took so long, been watching this in pieces ever since I got the videos and I finally got around to finishing them off.

Pretty much everything that needs to be said gameplay wise has already been said better than I could by the above two verifiers.

My only concern with the verification videos, as the first verifier brought up, is that they're encoded at 59.94 when the bulk of the gameplay seems to be at 29.97, so this is a small waste of bitrate. Given that it lacks the statids I assume this is runner-encoded. It's not a showstopper by any means, but if it's possible to fix it would result in a minor increase to the video quality for the same filesize. Or a slightly smaller file, depending on how exactly this was encoded.

Accept.

I'm not going to hold this up any further.  A/V are good, and I don't see any cheating (and tried a number of the tricks for myself).

I'll just say that the number of shortcuts that ucpro found (and continues to find) is incredible.  So many cutscenes and transitions just skipped entirely.  A lot of clearly-practiced no-look jumps and precise jumps at odd angles (jumping toward the camera and the like).  Wall-jumping off surfaces that clearly weren't meant for it, etc.  Even some of the "shortcuts within the rules of the game" are amazing (I particularly enjoy the trip down through the waterfall/cave section for some really nice wall-running/jumping that the designers probably didn't have in mind).  And the Dagger of Time tricks are really neat.

A vast quality improvement over previous runs on the site (even if they were SS), and a big step forward for running this game in general.  Accept.