Shadow of Destiny - February 2, 2014

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ktwo

Edit history:

ktwo: 2021-06-11 01:02:19 pm

SDAVerification: 2014-02-02 10:34:25 pm

UraniumAnchor: 2014-01-27 10:00:45 pm

UraniumAnchor: 2013-11-13 01:02:05 pm

SDAVerification: 2013-10-29 08:44:19 pm

2013-10-10 11:07:04 am

1-Up!

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Shadow of Destiny (Any %) (Segmented)

Decision: Accept

Reason: With the redone segments this run is good enough to pass.

Congratulations to 'Runa'!

Thread title:

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UraniumAnchor

Edit history:

UraniumAnchor: 2014-01-27 08:29:28 pm

2013-10-10 11:07:06 am

1-Up!

Run Information

Shadow of Destiny (Any %) (Segmented)

Verification Files

~~http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/shadowofdestiny/~~
http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/shadowofdestiny-redone/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by Oct. 24, 2013.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.

ZenicReverie

Edit history:

ZenicReverie: 2013-10-13 05:24:45 am

2013-10-11 11:59:56 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

For those outside the US, the game was title Shadow of Memories.

My vote is for a weak reject. From my memory (which could be wrong), the runner did not use optimal routing:

Chapter 1
You should get the egg from the juggler in this segment. Then you can get an early frying pan to skip Chapter 4. To trigger, you talk to Hugo and say no, then head back to the juggler. The egg will say you need a frying pan. You'll either get it automatically when you travel back in time at Chapter 4 or you can get it from the barkeep (I think maybe in this chapter or 3), can't remember exactly.

Chapter 2
Minor, but the cell phone works just as well as the lighter and only one item up in the inventory instead of two.
The runner took a detour down Rudolfstr instead of cutting straight down Ruckgratstr -- cost about 10 seconds.

Chapter 4
Having the frying pan early makes this chapter only last 1 or 2 seconds. Would cut out two minutes (adding back in however long it takes to get a frying pan previously).

Everything else looks good, but unless I'm mistaken, there's another minute to shave off from the small change above.

For those outside the US, the game was title Shadow of Memories.

My vote is for a weak reject. From my memory (which could be wrong), the runner did not use optimal routing:

Chapter 1
You should get the egg from the juggler in this segment. Then you can get an early frying pan to skip Chapter 4. To trigger, you talk to Hugo and say no, then head back to the juggler. The egg will say you need a frying pan. You'll either get it automatically when you travel back in time at Chapter 4 or you can get it from the barkeep (I think maybe in this chapter or 3), can't remember exactly.

Chapter 2
Minor, but the cell phone works just as well as the lighter and only one item up in the inventory instead of two.
The runner took a detour down Rudolfstr instead of cutting straight down Ruckgratstr -- cost about 10 seconds.

Chapter 4
Having the frying pan early makes this chapter only last 1 or 2 seconds. Would cut out two minutes (adding back in however long it takes to get a frying pan previously).

Everything else looks good, but unless I'm mistaken, there's another minute to shave off from the small change above.

Korzic

2013-10-11 09:38:36 pm

A/V - Seems fine, no cheating detected.

As I haven't played the game, I can't comment on the route (particularly the energy unit choices), but overall this seems like a solid run. I did notice a few movement hiccups in segments 3, 4, and 7, but nothing major (biggest one I saw was initially failing to grab an energy unit in segment 4, but it only seemed to cost a little over a second).

Verdict - Accept

chairbender

2013-10-15 06:26:17 pm

TwitchTV: chairbendr

When you say "I'm going for the A Ending because it's the longest to get", do you mean that routing for the other endings would cause you to complete the game more quickly?

SDAVerification

2013-10-29 08:44:18 pm

Need more discussion on this one before a decision can be posted.

LotBlind

2013-10-30 09:15:04 am

I'm going to join in on this verification. I get an internal server error trying to download the run comments right now but sometimes I get weird errors that others can't see... I'll try again later if everything is okay on the server's end.

UraniumAnchor

2013-10-30 10:20:28 am

Not a walrus

Error should be fixed.

LotBlind

2013-10-31 08:38:29 am

Okay. To me it seems this thread could really use the runner's presence to reply to the "allegations" of sub-optimal routing. If there's a minute to be gained from better routing it seems worthwhile to go back to do that. The categories for this game are going to be a little confusing maybe but there is a thread where skipping the cutscenes because there's a huge length of them was concluded to be wisest, justifying the NG+ that allows that, after which the player chooses to reach the longest ending to show off more of the game I guess, but that shouldn't really be relevant seeing as it's just an arbitrary choice of endings. And "A" seems as logical as any.

The little movement mistakes are compensated for by overall solid menu work and navigating most areas quite adroitly.

So reject if there actually is around a minute's worth of routing improvements. It's the sort of thing that you can help avoid by posting on the forums for feedback.

Otherwise, if the routing mistake is found out to be around 10s or so, it's an accept.

Okay. To me it seems this thread could really use the runner's presence to reply to the "allegations" of sub-optimal routing. If there's a minute to be gained from better routing it seems worthwhile to go back to do that. The categories for this game are going to be a little confusing maybe but there is a thread where skipping the cutscenes because there's a huge length of them was concluded to be wisest, justifying the NG+ that allows that, after which the player chooses to reach the longest ending to show off more of the game I guess, but that shouldn't really be relevant seeing as it's just an arbitrary choice of endings. And "A" seems as logical as any.

The little movement mistakes are compensated for by overall solid menu work and navigating most areas quite adroitly.

So reject if there actually is around a minute's worth of routing improvements. It's the sort of thing that you can help avoid by posting on the forums for feedback.

Otherwise, if the routing mistake is found out to be around 10s or so, it's an accept.

UraniumAnchor

2013-10-31 10:24:08 am

Not a walrus

Sent a message to the runner asking them to come read the thread.

Runa

2013-10-31 07:07:22 pm

ZenicReverie, thanks so much for the input. I'll have to re-check my notes; I would not mind re-recording those few chapters you mentioned (I never actually thought about getting the egg/fry pan earlier. I'd like to give it a shot). Quick question though, if I did redo those few levels, do I need to re-record (then re-encode, of course) the entire run or just those few chapters? I want to make sure I get the end timing right before I go straight into it...

Korzic, I'm sorry about the movement hiccups. I tried my best not to run into all the poles around town, haha.

Chairbender, I could actually finish the game quicker if I chose to do another ending. I just chose A because I do think it's the longest, but I feel it better completes the game (not that we get to see it with all the cutscenes I pass up)... But if you all feel it's needed, I can choose another ending, though, for faster timing.

LotBlind, I'll try and perfect that 10-second routing error that ZenicReverie pointed out (how embarrassing...). And I wish there was more I could do to cut out that nasty loading time, yes. I know there's probably nothing that can be done for it (even if just letting the cutscenes run) but if you have any recommendations, let me know.

UraniumAnchor, Thanks for the notification. (I never seem to catch these threads timely enough.) From here, what do you recommend I do? I could train up a bit and experiment for faster time, but I'm not sure how long it'll take to get everything re-recorded for you guys...

ZenicReverie, thanks so much for the input. I'll have to re-check my notes; I would not mind re-recording those few chapters you mentioned (I never actually thought about getting the egg/fry pan earlier. I'd like to give it a shot). Quick question though, if I did redo those few levels, do I need to re-record (then re-encode, of course) the entire run or just those few chapters? I want to make sure I get the end timing right before I go straight into it...

Korzic, I'm sorry about the movement hiccups. I tried my best not to run into all the poles around town, haha.

Chairbender, I could actually finish the game quicker if I chose to do another ending. I just chose A because I do think it's the longest, but I feel it better completes the game (not that we get to see it with all the cutscenes I pass up)... But if you all feel it's needed, I can choose another ending, though, for faster timing.

LotBlind, I'll try and perfect that 10-second routing error that ZenicReverie pointed out (how embarrassing...). And I wish there was more I could do to cut out that nasty loading time, yes. I know there's probably nothing that can be done for it (even if just letting the cutscenes run) but if you have any recommendations, let me know.

UraniumAnchor, Thanks for the notification. (I never seem to catch these threads timely enough.) From here, what do you recommend I do? I could train up a bit and experiment for faster time, but I'm not sure how long it'll take to get everything re-recorded for you guys...

UraniumAnchor

2013-10-31 07:14:10 pm

Not a walrus

How much stuff carries between segments? I'm not familiar with this game at all, but if you can make the segments match up in terms of items or stats or whatever, then you can just rerecord the earlier bits and stitch them together.

Different endings are probably different categories, though we won't accept endings if they aren't distinct enough from the others (if A is the longest, then that's probably fine, though knowing what the difference between longest and shortest would help sway the decision here).

Runa

2013-10-31 07:39:03 pm

Okay great, I'll just stick with the A ending then. Smiley

I'm hoping it's still up-to-par, even though I totally passed up the "A Ending" screen. (Oops.)

As far as items that carry over, I'd have to rethink my energy units needed, if I end up passing up Chapter 4, considering I got a few of them during that chapter... I could make that early-fry-pan trick work to my advantage, but would just take a few extra seconds in later chapters trying to spot and run over to the new energy units to pick them up... which I'm sure won't be too hard an issue; just takes a bit of re-planning/re-recording on my part.

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-01 10:06:08 am

Not a walrus

If you want to redo this run then I should probably cancel this one until you have a new one ready. We can send it right to public next time to make the process faster.

Runa

2013-11-01 11:10:25 am

Okay, sounds good. Like I said before, I'm not sure when I'll have the time to rerun it, but I'll try. Thanks for everything UraniumAnchor, and I'm sorry to trouble you with all this.

Also, another quick question... If I reran it and got a better time, should I make sure the timings on the saving/loading screens match up to the actual timing (if I'm going to be stitching chapters together)? Or does that not matter as much?

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-01 11:12:45 am

Not a walrus

I'm not sure I understand the question, but if you mean the game timer on the saves (is there one?), then you can't reuse later segments unless you want to fall back on realtime timing.

Runa

2013-11-01 11:26:38 am

Right, that's what I thought, I just wanted to make sure. The game timer would of course be different on the chapters afterwards (granted I improve timing), so I'd have to re-do those too... Okay, thank you!

And sorry to keep bugging you with questions, but what's the difference between realtime timing and in-game timing? Like, in comparison to going with the game timer for this run, would I be saving myself a bit of trouble if I went with real-timing...?

UraniumAnchor

Edit history:

UraniumAnchor: 2013-11-01 12:35:28 pm

2013-11-01 12:35:04 pm

Not a walrus

Well, first off, if the game doesn't display the game time at the end (if it offers you a final save for NG+ and displays the final time, then that's suitable) then we can't use it anyway, but not knowing anything about the game timer (does it run during cutscenes/loading times/etc?) I can't tell you how much difference it will make.

Runa

2013-11-01 09:37:39 pm

That makes sense. Well, in Shadow of Destiny, their in-game timer is only really seen during the save/load screens (or at least, in this run it is). So, given there's no ending screen that shows my final timing, I'll just stick with the save NG+ time... Meaning I'll also re-do segments 4-8, then, if I've got it right.

So just to clarify, if I rerecord a new segment 4 and get a better timing than my older run, say 12:00, I save it at 12:00, but then the viewer continues onto the beginning of segment 5 (my first, older run), and they see me load my old chapter 4 save that says 13:00 instead of my newer time, 12:00... is that okay? Or should my save/load screens be on track throughout the entire run? (It's hard to describe, I'm sorry for the confusion...)

Anyways, either way, I'll resubmit this run once I get it all figured out. Thanks again for all your help (and tolerance)!

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-02 12:12:05 am

Not a walrus

If you want to use the game timer for timing, then it's not ok, unfortunately.

LotBlind

2013-11-02 08:32:03 am

Good luck with your new attempts! If you're still at all under any doubt about the best routes etc. you could just open up the old thread and initiate discussions there though you'll have a hard time finding a lot of people familiar with the game realistically thinking. It reached public after all...

Runa

2013-11-02 09:43:06 am

Thank you, I understand now! This real-time/in-game time was confusing me, but I think I got it now. Since this game really isn't all that difficult, I'll just redo the 4th chapter on, I think. Smiley

Thank you so much for putting up with me and my many noobish questions, UraniumAnchor!

And thanks so much for your support, LotBlind! Cheesy

I'd probably be better off restrategizing things using me and Google walkthroughs, then! (And ya, it seems like all the games I speedrun go public, haha! Gotta love those games that no one knows about!)

UraniumAnchor

2013-11-13 01:02:25 pm

Not a walrus

I'm leaving this thread open for now until replacement videos show up.

Runa

2014-01-26 02:51:49 pm

Hello again! Uploaded my new videos via the lovely SDA submission executable back in 11/25 (hoping they got to you safely). Managed to cut out about a minute of the run, thanks to the re-routing that ZenicReverie recommended. Just wondering what my next few steps are to get this baby up-and-running. Thanks for the help, all!

Runa

2014-01-27 07:43:26 am

Oops, just got the notification - the files didn't get to you safely. :< Sounds like there was a server crash in December, yikes. But thanks to SDAVerification, my keys have been renewed, and I just finished re-sending my updated run. NOW we should be good to go. Grin

Sorry about all the trouble, mates!