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Guest

2009-10-14 09:25:44 am

Thanks for the videos, it's a very entertaining run, perhaps not as polished as FU3L3D's though.

KhanFusion

Edit history:

KhanFusion: 2010-04-21 04:37:17 am

2010-04-21 04:21:58 am

I guess it's time for even more grave digging. Ok, so I'd never played RtCW before until I watched s1cksyst3m's speedrun like two weeks ago. I really liked the game and it's sad that it was speedrunned several times but only one run survived, and it's on youtube not on SDA. So I decided to run the game trying to improve every level of his run. It was a "bit" challenging for me even with his run and tricks before my eyes since I'm a casual Quakelive player and not a speedrunner or a defragger and can't really bunnyhop properly. So I tried to compensate for the lack of skill by being more aggressive, taking more damage, picking up less healthkits, more luck manipulation etc.

Here are some shortcuts that I added over those that can be seen in s1cksyst3m's run:
In Village2 you can throw a grenade to alert the first victim so that he runs down the stairs (very rarely) saving you a few seconds.
In Forest its possible to make the truck start moving earlier if you run straight to the trigger area. Of course you alert the guys in the first house, who most of the time alert the guys on the bridge with their gunfire.. Saved me six secons compared to s1cksyst3m's run.
In Dam I just couldn't reproduce s1cksyst3m's jump since it way too defraggish for me. My jump is a little bit slower but it's much, MUCH more reliable. It's so safer that in one attempt i managed to get both good time and three extra rockets which will come in very handy agains the super soldiers.
In Norway I take an alternative route (as alternative as it can be in a such a linear level) and it saves me like 10 secons compared to his run.
And in Boss2 you can just run past the first proto soldier. There is no need to kill him.

So, here are the links:

Btw, all the end level timers (except the one in the first level which shows ten seconds more than it should due to the cutscene) show the correct level time. Yes, it means I restarted the game every time I failed. Judging by those timers the total time is 41:39, s1cksyst3m's run time i measured is around 43:20 (i might be wrong or biased on this one).

Well, tell me what you think. Will this qualify for SDA?

I guess it's time for even more grave digging.  Ok, so I'd never played RtCW before until I watched s1cksyst3m's speedrun like two weeks ago. I really liked the game and it's sad that it was speedrunned several times but only one run survived, and it's on youtube not on SDA. So I decided to run the game trying to improve every level of his run. It was a "bit" challenging for me even with his run and tricks before my eyes since I'm a casual Quakelive player and not a speedrunner or a defragger and can't really bunnyhop properly. So I tried to compensate for the lack of skill by being more aggressive, taking more damage, picking up less healthkits, more luck manipulation etc.

Here are some shortcuts that I added over those that can be seen in s1cksyst3m's run:
In Village2 you can throw a grenade to alert the first victim so that he runs down the stairs (very rarely) saving you a few seconds.
In Forest its possible to make the truck start moving earlier if you run straight to the trigger area. Of course you alert the guys in the first house, who most of the time alert the guys on the bridge with their gunfire.. Saved me six secons compared to s1cksyst3m's run.
In Dam I just couldn't reproduce s1cksyst3m's jump since it way too defraggish for me. My jump is a little bit slower but it's much, MUCH more reliable. It's so safer that in one attempt i managed to get both good time and three extra rockets which will come in very handy agains the super soldiers.
In Norway I take an alternative route (as alternative as it can be in a such a linear level) and it saves me like 10 secons compared to his run.
And in Boss2 you can just run past the first proto soldier. There is no need to kill him.

So, here are the links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZzG8UHlvI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZJddSQpauA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yzS7e65zkc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFQ15o6nyqM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW2n1E7L2vs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_srarGlJmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ehV8mMHR8

Btw, all the end level timers (except the one in the first level which shows ten seconds more than it should due to the cutscene) show the correct level time. Yes, it means I restarted the game every time I failed. Judging by those timers the total time is 41:39, s1cksyst3m's run time i measured is around 43:20 (i might be wrong or biased on this one).

Well, tell me what you think. Will this qualify for SDA?

Ewil

2010-04-21 07:19:27 am

Yes, it looks submittable, although it's on Easy. s1cksyst3m (InsaneB4st4rd) did it on Hard.

KhanFusion

Edit history:

KhanFusion: 2010-04-21 02:25:28 pm

2010-04-21 02:10:03 pm

Easy? It's certainly on Hard. Undecided

In mission 1 at 1:53 a healthkit would heal 25 hp if it was easy, but it heals only 15hp.

Ewil

2010-04-21 03:51:01 pm

You take just 2hp for one hit while you normally take 6hp on Hard. That's one of the reasons why your run is 2 minutes faster.

Btw, you missed quite an obvious shortcut in the very first level. When you're jumping on the wall with a hidden sniper, you can jump on the railing on your right if you keep enough momentum thus getting a small shortcut.

groobo

2010-04-21 04:04:40 pm

boss

Watched the first part, will get to the rest later. So far it looks ok, but it could be heavily improved with better execution.

KhanFusion

2010-04-21 04:44:01 pm

"You take just 2hp for one hit while you normally take 6hp on Hard."
Err, when? I rewatched the first level end my health changes like this 100-94-88-100-94-88-82-76. Plus enemy damage is the same on all levels. To be completely sure i reloaded autosaves and checked serverInfo and g_gameSkill said 3.

About execution. Most of the time i settled for a time better than in youtube's run. Certainly it could be improved (the best time i got in level 1 is 1:08 but only with 30 health), but again I'm a casual player and this thing is first and foremost intented to get the ball rolling. Seeing quake 3 based game not speedrunned was quite puzzling and sad. It will be really nice to see sub 40 minutes run.

Ewil

2010-04-22 01:29:07 am

Sorry, you are right. I totally forgot about armor, which saves 2/3 or your health.

My best time for very first level was 1:04 with plenty of health and I wasn't even trying that hard.

KhanFusion

2010-04-22 02:02:31 am

Was that with the cutscene or did you load straight from the level autosave?

Ewil

2010-04-22 02:36:15 am

With cutscene.

EDIT: Hmm, this might be wrong as well. I would have to attempt it to make sure of the time.

Thinkshooter

2010-04-22 05:29:54 am

Runs: FCP, FC3, XWA, HD1-2, KotOR1-2

I've watched your run on Youtube. I've got to say it's a very solid effort from someone who never even played (let alone speedrun) RTCW until a few weeks ago! You definitely have a speedrunner's mindset and you catch on quickly.

There's definite improvement in the latter missions over the first ones.

The only thing that came to mind is that sometimes (rarely) you seem to shoot enemies for no apparent gain; there may be more time to be spared by pushing this "aggressive / taking more damage" philosophy even further.

Since your run is already faster than previous ones, I wouldn't worry too much about bunnyhopping. Although if you submit your run, it will be vulnerable to challengers who borrow your route *and* bunnyhop. But you're already almost doing it.

BhaaL

2010-04-23 04:31:40 am

Very nice work, I just thought to have a glimpse at your videos but ended up watching them all, I say go for a round two and polish those segments even more, there's some room for improvement and you are very likely capable of pulling it off.

zato

2010-04-23 03:40:43 pm

Hey, I only watched first mission so far, Ill watch the rest.

One thing i can say right away is that I'm pretty sure the cg_fov command is cheat protected (in single player) so you might have to play with default fov if its not allowed.

good luck.

groobo

2010-04-23 06:22:50 pm

boss

Quote from BhaaL:

I say go for a round two and polish those segments even more, there's some room for improvement and you are very likely capable of pulling it off.

This.

About cg_fov: I'm sure that altered visuals are allowed, as long as they're not too severe.

zato

2010-04-24 03:02:47 pm

As far as I know 125 & above let's you see around corners, he appears to be using 110 though (like most people)

Ewil

2010-04-24 03:11:38 pm

That doesn't really give you much advantage in single player since you already know, where enemy will be.

KhanFusion

2010-04-26 01:39:27 am

Well, i see people(including pretty vocal ones) say reject and redo, so I'll leave this run here as it is. I can't redo it because exams and work are upon me. Also I see very little point in improving the run unless it makes the run sub 40. That means chopping off 4 seconds on average (3 secs from 1 minute long levels and 5 seconds for 2 minute long) from every time I've got and that's going to take some REAL effort from me. I pulled this off in level 1 (time is 1:07 or 0:57 without the cutscene). I believe it could be further improved even by me, but again, such improvements for every level in the entire run are for someone else to do.

Btw, I didn't use the railing shortcutjump because that sniper is a real jerk. When I had 1:08 he put 2 bullets in me, now he put only one, but it was a headshot!

Also, if anyone interested, i found very old run by fu3l3d. It wasn't very serious run as the final time was 58 minutes and he later improved it by 12 minutes or so, but it's the very first one (i guess). So here's the link: http://games.sina.com.cn/downgames/save/pcgames/2004/12/2482255.shtml. It's a chinese site so it's a bit hard to navigate, and download speed is very low (takes almost an hour to download a mission), but it's there and you can get.

Also, here are the times for all levels of my run for reference.
m1 - 5:25 - 1:00 1:49 2:36
m2 - 8:11 - 1:27 1:48 2:08 1:51 0:57
m3 - 8:47 - 2:48 2:35 1:19 2:05
m4 - 5:43 - 2:42 0:53 0:47 1:21
m5 - 4:13 - 0:56 1:54 1:23
m6 - 5:30 - 1:08 1:27 1:11 1:44
m7 - 3:50 - 1:09 1:45 0:56
total - 41:39

Well, i see people(including pretty vocal ones) say reject and redo, so I'll leave this run here as it is. I can't redo it because exams and work are upon me. Also I see very little point in improving the run unless it makes the run sub 40. That means chopping off 4 seconds on average (3 secs from 1 minute long levels and 5 seconds for 2 minute long) from every time I've got and that's going to take some REAL effort from me. I pulled this off in level 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxx1Dx99F9U (time is 1:07 or 0:57 without the cutscene). I believe it could be further improved even by me, but again, such improvements for every level in the entire run are for someone else to do.

Btw, I didn't use the railing shortcutjump because that sniper is a real jerk. When I had 1:08 he put 2 bullets in me, now he put only one, but it was a headshot!

Also, if anyone interested, i found very old run by fu3l3d. It wasn't very serious run as the final time was 58 minutes and he later improved it by 12 minutes or so, but it's the very first one (i guess). So here's the link: http://games.sina.com.cn/downgames/save/pcgames/2004/12/2482255.shtml. It's a chinese site so it's a bit hard to navigate, and download speed is very low (takes almost an hour to download a mission), but it's there and you can get.

Also, here are the times for all levels of my run for reference.
m1 - 5:25 - 1:00 1:49 2:36
m2 - 8:11 - 1:27 1:48 2:08 1:51 0:57
m3 - 8:47 - 2:48 2:35 1:19 2:05
m4 - 5:43 - 2:42 0:53 0:47 1:21
m5 - 4:13 - 0:56 1:54 1:23
m6 - 5:30 - 1:08 1:27 1:11 1:44
m7 - 3:50 - 1:09 1:45 0:56
total - 41:39

Ewil

2010-04-26 02:10:04 am

Yeah that sniper is annoying, but you can save there at least a second using the railing shortcut. It's just about trial/error not to get hit.

KhanFusion

Edit history:

KhanFusion: 2010-05-11 10:14:35 pm

2010-05-11 09:15:38 pm

Bump up, and an update. I'm not running the game, just fooling around in some of the levels. So here's a rather major shortcut in the factory level. It was very annoying level to run, seeing all those broken walls around where you think you can jump from brick to brick all the way to the top but instead you end up bumping into invisible walls. The shortcut saves 20 seconds minimum. The link:

Lol. Found another shortcut on youtube in the very same place. It's a bit different and seems less reliable, but I was able to reproduce it.

KhanFusion

Edit history:

KhanFusion: 2010-05-12 12:52:42 am

2010-05-12 12:06:47 am

I'm on the roll today it seems. Here's another shortcut, this time in the first crypt level. You need quite a bit of luck to execute it quickly and it saves less than 10 seconds, but every second counts. The link:

Edited the post a few times, thought i found yet another trick....

zato

2010-05-12 01:35:06 pm

Thanks for the factory jump, i might use it when i play online ^_^

KhanFusion

2010-05-14 02:56:34 pm

Well, now I'm confident that I can do a sub 40 run (sometime in the future). I've just finished running mission 1 (first 3 levels) and level improvements over my main run are 5, 22 and 10 seconds, so the total time is 4:48. There are some minor tweaks, but overall routes are the same, but I use different tactic at the start of the level 2 which saves me 10 seconds. Btw, fov is set to 100 now. Does it look better than if it's set to 110?
This way to video:

Thinkshooter

2010-05-14 03:14:06 pm

Runs: FCP, FC3, XWA, HD1-2, KotOR1-2

This is definitely SDA material.

xsite

2010-05-14 04:43:57 pm

Quote from KhanFusion:

Well, now I'm confident that I can do a sub 40 run (sometime in the future). I've just finished running mission 1 (first 3 levels) and level improvements over my main run are 5, 22 and 10 seconds, so the total time is 4:48. There are some minor tweaks, but overall routes are the same, but I use different tactic at the start of the level 2 which saves me 10 seconds. Btw, fov is set to 100 now. Does it look better than if it's set to 110?
This way to video:

Out of curiosity, how are you segmenting this run? Is it 1 or multiple segments per level/mission?

groobo

2010-05-14 06:23:38 pm

boss

At :25 can't you jump on to the wooden railing from the stairs (doesn't have to be fluid)? From there you could do a strong circle jump, straight to the door. At :38 you accidentally (I think) jumped towards the shelf, which eventually cost you about a full second. Also when bhopping at :41 you should really try pushing your trajectory to the right so you nail that shortcut (you can take out the rifle guy beforehand, on at least two occasions) - it's easy and saves a few seconds. I'll watch and comment the rest later.