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Serious Sam: The First Encounter (Any %) (Single Segment) [Co-Op]

Verifier Responses

Quote:
I did record the demos with Fraps for a better comparison of the times with the current single player SS run on SDA.
Here's the table (timing isn't 100% accurate):

Level - SP - coop - difference
1 - 0:35 - 0:36 - -0:01
2 - 1:33 - 1:54 - -0:21
3 - 1:43 - 1:46 - -0:03
4 - 4:12 - 4:10 - 0:02
5 - 2:27 - 2:29 - -0:02
6 - 1:10 - 1:26 - -0:16
7 - 0:58 - 0:50 - 0:08
8 - 1:38 - 1:33 - 0:05
9 - 8:07 - 7:51 - 0:16
10 - 5:19 - 4:38 - 0:41
11 - 5:55 - 5:52 - 0:03
12 - 4:35 - 3:07 - 1:28
13 - 10:54 - 8:24 - 2:30

I must say that I'm not that impressed of the run. I expected more from a coop speedrun. The biggest improvement are the last two levels because the runners used canonball boosts to skip parts of the levels, which wasn't done on the single-player run. However, even that takes them several retries on one level. The time loss in level 2 is the most annoying. The skip where they jumped over the grid should be very easy on coop but it took them several retries. ShadowWraith was able to jump across there on the first attempt in his SP run. They should have restarted at that point. And I must say the run is overall missing a certain degree of precision and "straightforwardness". At 41:19, what happened there? Did Momfy loose his connection? He was closer to the gate so that's a time loss too.

This run isn't really bad, but it isn't really good either. And I think we can expect more from a Serious Sam speedrun. Therefore my verdict is to reject it. However I hope this doesn't discourage the runners to work on further improvements.


Quote from ShadowWraith:
As the person who did the SS run currently on the site, I'd like to claim that my run is terrible and this run being barely 4 minutes faster than it is bad for a coop run, considering that I wasted ~5 minutes getting the bull boost over the wall on the final level. Coop should be significantly faster on the levels killing is important in. (Oasis, Metropolis, Alley of the Sphinx, Karnak)

They also don't use the oob strats in Sand Canyon and Valley of the Kings. Not sure if that's for a reason or they were unaware of them.

Anyway, I'll go through some points of improvement I noticed in the levels.

- One player doesn't realise that jumping while moving up/down slopes is faster than just running.
- They don't get the jump over the wall on Sand Canyon. The kill room afterwards isn't coordinated at all either.
- It's faster to jump into the water at the end of Valley of the Kings rather than going onto the bridge.
- Dunes was very slow. The Level End Trigger skip really isn't that hard.
- Cutting down on the messing around during the long run parts would save time also. Moving in a straight line is unsurprisingly faster than moving side to side while looking around and also shooting the other guy in the game.
- As before, the kill room on Metropolis isn't coordinated. Spawns aren't that hard to memorise.
- First try cannon boost on Alley is pretty good. Props.
- Three seconds faster than me on Karnak, with two people? What.
- Terrible final boss fight, though I'm not 100% sure what could have been done to alleviate that issue. The disconnect cost them 15 seconds.

My verdict is a reject. A polished cooperative run can take as much as 12 minutes off my time with the most recent strats known, 8 minutes if we're doing non-OoB strats.


Quote:
The runners seem like they have the potential to make a good co-op run, but this submission seems to have been made a bit too hasty.
The large arena fights were not that impressive as it looked like the runners hadn't practiced enough to know the order of the spawns. A lot of times the aiming towards spawns were reactive instead of pre-emptive as they should be. Pre-empting enemy spawnpoints is the main way to save time in these longer fights.

Optimized movement is another thing. On several occasions the runners danced around looking backwards at times they should have been running in straight lines. This might seem like a minor loss each time its made but it all adds up over the course of the run. Also the already mentioned lack of slope jumping from one of the players.

Having respawns on is kinda meh, but nothing I would reject for alone.

Not sure what happened at the end boss fight, but it seemed to take forever. Way longer than it usually should.

In summary the runners seem to have the potential to make a good run but this run is just a bit too much lacking in practice and polish.
My verdict is reject, hoping that the runners will improve it soon.


Decision: Reject

Reason: A co-op run should be quite a bit faster than a single player run, especially given the new strategies that have been discovered since the old SP run

https://queue.speeddemosarchive.com/queue/verificationfiles/767/

This run will be available for a month. After that these link(s) will no longer work. Please note that these are game-specific demo files and will require the original game to play back.
Thread title:  
Waiting hurts my soul...
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/SeriousSamFE.html
thanks for the verdict guys. will try to work on an improvement as soon as both me and my partner gets time.
it could be nice if you could share the strats we missed as i can't seem to find em anywhere :-/
so yea reason we didn't use was cause we didn't know
Edit history:
ShadowWraith: 2013-12-10 06:01:30 am
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You can download some IL demos for Tourist from http://www.ssdq.org. There's no coop for TFE, but you can see some of the strats used in single-player, notably the OoB strats for Valley of the Kings and Sand Canyon.
Exoray
Use of the OoB map swimming is considered a separate category for Serious Sam games though, so the run was not rejected because of not using any of those tricks in particular.

You seem to have most strats down so it's mostly only about execution. As has been noted above, better optimized running and slope jumping, faster enemy killing in arenas and a better final boss will get you a long way.
There's also some odd co-op choices like both persons going for the underwater button in the sewers and such that also makes the run feel a bit too unpolished.
We believe you have the potential to finish a good run so looking forward to your next improvements.
If you have more questions about optimizations and such, feel free to post in the serious sam threads in the PC section and we'll gladly help you out.
if OoB is another category i think we will stay away from that as a start and focus om getting improvements on the others and see how much we can improve.
any estimate on how much time improvement we should get before considering tossing the next one up for verification?
Try practicing the final level... with two players the boss should die really quickly if you just jump into the rings 2x2. I don't think he has enough time to move away from the center then. If quick saves work in co-op you can just practice the final fight until you find a fast pattern. Also I think it takes a bit longer to open the door cause one of you stand so close to him so he doesn't move forward... try just standing at the pyramid and minigun him.
just one more thing in one of the maps we jump out to the right side and skip to the arena is that considered OOB?
Exoray
The category separator is when you go out of the entire level where you can map swim to the exit trigger straight away. You are still walking inbounds with your route.