Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf - October 29, 2013

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SDAVerification

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2013-10-29 08:52:36 pm

2013-10-10 11:06:59 am

1-Up!

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf (Any %) (Individual Level)

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to 'DanE'!

Thread title:

Flip

2013-10-10 11:07:00 am

1-Up!

Run Information

Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf (Any %) (Individual Level)

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/SheepDogNWolf-DanE/

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.

RoboSparkle

2013-10-11 10:46:38 am

Magical. Flying. Bathtub

Well since I volunteered to verify originally I should probably step up, going to go through these and comment on all levels properly. In the meantime, while it probably won't be necessary since the notes are VERY detailed, I'll be happy to answer questions that people have.

RoboSparkle

Edit history:

RoboSparkle: 2013-10-11 01:28:20 pm

RoboSparkle: 2013-10-11 01:27:03 pm

2013-10-11 01:24:46 pm

Magical. Flying. Bathtub

Oops. Sorry about the double post.

A/V fine. AFAIK the PC and PS1 versions are basically equivalent apart from the graphics, load times (there are no loading screens in the IL runs so this doesn't matter) and one or two minor gameplay differences (noted below)

Long notes incoming...

Timing: I've not measured the times since that's not being done by us (happy to go back and do this if you want), but the times on the videos look fine and within expectations - there isn't an ingame timer or anything but I'm fine with how the runner has defined timing for the purposes of an IL table. The times on the videos do add up to 57:10

General Movement notes: Dashing is the fastest way of moving (duh) but it requires a cool-down time afterwards for Ralph to do his skidding animation and you can't sneak while doing it so it's not always appropriate. You can instantly stop by smashing into something, but then there is a stun animation which the runner measured to be longer than the skid. You can't dash while carrying a sheep and you have to sneak when in Ralph's orange area or he'll hear you. Notes on smashing animation vs skidding in the SDA forum topic. You can (and the runner does) cancel the skid animation by sliding on slopes for falling down where possible.

Intro Level: Instant Game Over. REJECT! Just kidding, I've tried and failed to sequence break anything at all so I'm very confident that tutorial skips aren't possible. Nice text-skipping though and the movement is precise. Did not follow Road Runner into the "tunnel". Note: Running in midair is a game mechanic if you are dashing full pelt and will be used later. Because Looney Tunes.

Level 1: Of Lettuce and Sheep. You have a lot of lettuce for luring sheep across the bridge - the bridge will not support the weight of both Ralph and the Sheep - but you only need three. It's debatable whether you could save time by getting a 4th lettuce so the sheep is closer to the wall when you explode it. Nice tree jumping, but it gets better later in the run Smiley

Level 2: Bushtucker Skips. You're supposed to hide in a bush and sneak past Sam. It's quicker to dash across and hope he doesn't catch you (this is not manipulateable AFAIK). You can skip the scent but it's not faster to do so. Nicely executed

Level 3: Outta My Jurisdiction Flying to where the runner does skips an awkward bit of fun with the sheep to acquire the elastic band. Sam has a specific "chase zone" for each level so that he will give up chasing you if you are too far away, but it's pretty funny to see him give up when he was so close to Ralph!

Level 4: The Best Segment. This is why tree jumping is awesome, those jumps are pretty awkward and with a segment this short you expect very tight gameplay, which the Runner delivers in excellent fashion! Runner skips acquiring the magic flute that you are supposed to use to hypnotise Sam into getting smashed by a boulder.

Level 5: Level 5 Nice flute skip (again) although all the flute does is troll you and then make it "possible" to sneak past Sam. Very nice skid cancel as well. However I THINK it's possible to complete this level quicker by collecting the lettuce, launching yourself to the start of the level with the catapult and then using the lettuce to lure the sheep past Sam in the other direction (and it may be possible to just run back past Sam once you have the lettuce). I'm going to double-check to be sure.

Level 6: A Wolf in Sheep's -CENSORED- The mine detector skip is an obvious one since the path across the minefield never changes (it gets better later in the run!). I would love to see if it's possible for a TAS to dash all the way across the minefield though! Also, a big welcome to our old friend, Sliding Block Puzzle, and his friend Misbehaving Camera. Well executed.

Level 7: Freezer Geyser Nice dash at the start. That jump onto the crane and the "one way" blocks, apart from being pretty quick, is an absolute bastard to place. Possibly could dump the sheep in the water a bit quicker and the mailbox was unfortunate but a very small time loss there.

Level 88 MPH: Major difference between PC, PS1, and PS2 version is in the Time Travel bit, the animation does not feature on PC and instead you get a slooooow circle transition that looks crap. PS1 and PS2 are the same but I think PS1 is slower in actually switching maps. Good movement throughout, gets hit by the lava but it doesn't matter in the end. Optimal number of journeys to the past however I'm pretty sure you can get past Sam with only one boulder. Again, I need to check to be sure.

Level 9: Wobot Season! Not a lot to say here, other than a very well executed run.

Level 10: Boss Monster. No tricks here, just execution. FYI the moving cannons shoot Ralph if he is in their line of sight at any point and you are knocked down in a cutscene, hence the great care at times. The boss is so tedious and very unforgiving but the runner dispatches him very efficiently. Very solid level.

Level 11: Fishing Rod + Item = Solution Menuing efficiency here was nothing short of brilliant, it looks slow but that's pretty much as fast as it goes. If you shoot Daffy with the cannon then he will force you to wait for a MINUTE and think about what you have done. For some reason the runner skips this... I think you can save a couple of seconds using a deathwarp - if you jump into the abyss after getting the sheep up to the room with the button in the middle of nowhere, then you'll reappear on that floor and the robot will be back in its starting position too. It would save at most a couple of seconds if that and I haven't tested - this was mentioned in the forum topic but by then the level was already recorded and it was felt the time saved (if any) wouldn't be worth redoing the whole segment.

Level 12: Who you gonna call? DDR-Busters! Very efficient vacuuming at the start, Luigi himself couldn't have done better. Dancing was done as well as it could be, I didn't know that you could lure the sheep off the platform until I saw this so that was pretty cool. Skipping a small amount of the ramping up the prison Runner pointed out a minor mistake but even bearing that in mind this is a very solid segment.

Level 13: Mines? What Mines? Mine Detector skip is nothing short of amazing. One slight deviation in any direction will toast Ralph immediately. Considering the time taken to collect and inflate the blow-up sheep (and further considering it isn't even used for its intended purpose, it might be quicker to use the Fake Sheep (the rock) instead. But then you'd still have to wait for Sam as his movement is based on a level timer IIRC. In this level, Sam's AI causes him to move the sheep between 2 areas every 30 seconds and he will "attack everything" if there are more or less than 2 sheep at any point. The way the runner gets past this is brilliant. It was also nice of the devs to put an extra metal detector at the end of the level in case you didn't pick up the first one (for the mines).

Level 14: Follow Me... Hilarious. I found a similar (but slower) method of getting the sheep to the goal by getting Sam stuck behind a plant. It is possible to race (and beat, if you're cunning) Road Runner in this level. As you may have noticed from the size of the map, you are supposed to win by significantly more elaborate means...

Level 15: IN SPAAAAAACE! Probably the level with the most possible improvements in terms of execution, but that's because it's a level with a lot of tight execution requirements and no real skips other than the (quite excellent) beam jumping to avoid a lot of shrinking/growing. I didn't actually know it was possible to jump the first one the runner did, so that was nice. Overall it looked like a pretty solid level.

Level B1: Magic Rafting Ride I LOVE this glitch. I too played around with it after first coming across it a few months back and can confirm that jumping in the corner like in the YT video doesn't work on Playstation version... shame. I did find a way to skip the bush by pushing the raft up another ramp in Sam's area (once you are at a certain height, Sam gives up chasing and you can grab a lettuce and the Sheep), but I don't know if it's faster because you still need the bungee and lettuce for the raft and getting enough height takes a while. If you have the sheep on the raft ABOVE Sam's area then the Sheep will run back to Sam (unless you have lettuce).

Level B2: The Land that Toon Forgot. This is an annoying level to do quickly as sometimes the lava will flat out murder you. Runner planned it out well and executed that plan effectively. That faceplant at the end was unfortunate but forgivable.

Overall: An excellent IL table for a game that's sorely underrepresented and deserves more love. While there are a few mistakes which ideally you'd like to avoid in an IL situation they are minor in terms of time cost and VERY tough to fix while maintaining the high level of precision in the rest of the runs. I've pointed out a few places where time could possibly be saved with different routing but as of the time of writing these haven't been tested and these are the fastest known strats for each level (B1 notwithstanding). I might even make a cheeky submission myself if they are faster and I can match the high standard of execution shown here but for now I strongly recommend that you ACCEPT this run

Oops.  Sorry about the double post.

A/V fine. AFAIK the PC and PS1 versions are basically equivalent apart from the graphics, load times (there are no loading screens in the IL runs so this doesn't matter) and one or two minor gameplay differences (noted below)

Long notes incoming...

[hidden][b]Timing:[/b] I've not measured the times since that's not being done by us (happy to go back and do this if you want), but the times on the videos look fine and within expectations - there isn't an ingame timer or anything but I'm fine with how the runner has defined timing for the purposes of an IL table.  The times on the videos do add up to 57:10

[b]General Movement notes: [/b]Dashing is the fastest way of moving (duh) but it requires a cool-down time afterwards for Ralph to do his skidding animation and you can't sneak while doing it so it's not always appropriate.  You can instantly stop by smashing into something, but then there is a stun animation which the runner measured to be longer than the skid.  You can't dash while carrying a sheep and you have to sneak when in Ralph's orange area or he'll hear you. Notes on smashing animation vs skidding in the SDA forum topic.  You can (and the runner does) cancel the skid animation by sliding on slopes for falling down where possible.

[b]Intro Level:  Instant Game Over.  REJECT! [/b] Just kidding, I've tried and failed to sequence break anything at all so I'm very confident that tutorial skips aren't possible.  Nice text-skipping though and the movement is precise.  Did not follow Road Runner into the "tunnel".  Note: Running in midair is a game mechanic if you are dashing full pelt and will be used later.  Because Looney Tunes.

[b]Level 1: Of Lettuce and Sheep. [/b]You have a lot of lettuce for luring sheep across the bridge - the bridge will not support the weight of both Ralph and the Sheep - but you only need three.  It's debatable whether you could save time by getting a 4th lettuce so the sheep is closer to the wall when you explode it.  Nice tree jumping, but it gets better later in the run :)

[b]Level 2: Bushtucker Skips.  [/b]You're supposed to hide in a bush and sneak past Sam.  It's quicker to dash across and hope he doesn't catch you (this is not manipulateable AFAIK).  You can skip the scent but it's not faster to do so.  Nicely executed

[b]Level 3: Outta My Jurisdiction[/b] Flying to where the runner does skips an awkward bit of fun with the sheep to acquire the elastic band.  Sam has a specific "chase zone" for each level so that he will give up chasing you if you are too far away, but it's pretty funny to see him give up when he was so close to Ralph!

[b]Level 4: The Best Segment.[/b] This is why tree jumping is awesome, those jumps are pretty awkward and with a segment this short you expect very tight gameplay, which the Runner delivers in excellent fashion!  Runner skips acquiring the magic flute that you are supposed to use to hypnotise Sam into getting smashed by a boulder.

[b]Level 5: Level 5[/b] Nice flute skip (again) although all the flute does is troll you and then make it "possible" to sneak past Sam.  Very nice skid cancel as well.  However I THINK it's possible to complete this level quicker by collecting the lettuce, launching yourself to the start of the level with the catapult and then using the lettuce to lure the sheep past Sam in the other direction (and it may be possible to just run back past Sam once you have the lettuce).  I'm going to double-check to be sure.

[b]Level 6: A Wolf in Sheep's -CENSORED-[/b]  The mine detector skip is an obvious one since the path across the minefield never changes (it gets better later in the run!).  I would love to see if it's possible for a TAS to dash all the way across the minefield though!  Also, a big welcome to our old friend, Sliding Block Puzzle, and his friend Misbehaving Camera.  Well executed.

[b]Level 7: Freezer Geyser[/b]  Nice dash at the start. That jump onto the crane and the "one way" blocks, apart from being pretty quick, is an absolute bastard to place.  Possibly could dump the sheep in the water a bit quicker and the mailbox was unfortunate but a very small time loss there.

[b]Level 88 MPH: [/b]Major difference between PC, PS1, and PS2 version is in the Time Travel bit, the animation does not feature on PC and instead you get a slooooow circle transition that looks crap.  PS1 and PS2 are the same but I think PS1 is slower in actually switching maps.  Good movement throughout, gets hit by the lava but it doesn't matter in the end.  Optimal number of journeys to the past however I'm pretty sure you can get past Sam with only one boulder.  Again, I need to check to be sure.

[b]Level 9: Wobot Season![/b] Not a lot to say here, other than a very well executed run.

[b]Level 10: Boss Monster.  [/b]No tricks here, just execution.  FYI the moving cannons shoot Ralph if he is in their line of sight at any point and you are knocked down in a cutscene, hence the great care at times.  The boss is so tedious and very unforgiving but the runner dispatches him very efficiently.  Very solid level.

[b]Level 11: Fishing Rod + Item = Solution[/b]  Menuing efficiency here was nothing short of brilliant, it looks slow but that's pretty much as fast as it goes.  If you shoot Daffy with the cannon then he will force you to wait for a MINUTE and think about what you have done.  For some reason the runner skips this...   I think you can save a couple of seconds using a deathwarp - if you jump into the abyss after getting the sheep up to the room with the button in the middle of nowhere, then you'll reappear on that floor and the robot will be back in its starting position too.  It would save at most a couple of seconds if that and I haven't tested - this was mentioned in the forum topic but by then the level was already recorded and it was felt the time saved (if any) wouldn't be worth redoing the whole segment.

[b]Level 12: Who you gonna call? DDR-Busters![/b]  Very efficient vacuuming at the start, Luigi himself couldn't have done better.  Dancing was done as well as it could be, I didn't know that you could lure the sheep off the platform until I saw this so that was pretty cool. Skipping a small amount of the ramping up the prison Runner pointed out a minor mistake but even bearing that in mind this is a very solid segment.

[b]Level 13: Mines? What Mines?[/b] Mine Detector skip is nothing short of amazing.  One slight deviation in any direction will toast Ralph immediately.  Considering the time taken to collect and inflate the blow-up sheep (and further considering it isn't even used for its intended purpose, it might be quicker to use the Fake Sheep (the rock) instead. But then you'd still have to wait for Sam as his movement is based on a level timer IIRC.  In this level, Sam's AI causes him to move the sheep between 2 areas every 30 seconds and he will "attack everything" if there are more or less than 2 sheep at any point.  The way the runner gets past this is brilliant.  It was also nice of the devs to put an [i]extra[/i] metal detector at the end of the level in case you didn't pick up the first one (for the mines).

[b]Level 14: Follow Me...[/b] Hilarious.  I found a similar (but slower) method of getting the sheep to the goal by getting Sam stuck behind a plant.  It is possible to race (and beat, if you're cunning) Road Runner in this level.  As you may have noticed from the size of the map, you are supposed to win by significantly more elaborate means...

[b]Level 15: IN SPAAAAAACE![/b] Probably the level with the most possible improvements in terms of execution, but that's because it's a level with a lot of tight execution requirements and no real skips other than the (quite excellent) beam jumping to avoid a lot of shrinking/growing.  I didn't actually know it was possible to jump the first one the runner did, so that was nice.  Overall it looked like a pretty solid level.

[b]Level B1:  Magic Rafting Ride[/b] I LOVE this glitch.  I too played around with it after first coming across it a few months back and can confirm that jumping in the corner like in the YT video doesn't work on Playstation version... shame.  I did find a way to skip the bush by pushing the raft up another ramp in Sam's area (once you are at a certain height, Sam gives up chasing and you can grab a lettuce and the Sheep), but I don't know if it's faster because you still need the bungee and lettuce for the raft and getting enough height takes a while.  If you have the sheep on the raft ABOVE Sam's area then the Sheep will run back to Sam (unless you have lettuce).

[b]Level B2: The Land that Toon Forgot.[/b] This is an annoying level to do quickly as sometimes the lava will flat out murder you.  Runner planned it out well and executed that plan effectively.  That faceplant at the end was unfortunate but forgivable.
[/hidden]
[b]Overall:[/b] An excellent IL table for a game that's sorely underrepresented and deserves more love.  While there are a few mistakes which ideally you'd like to avoid in an IL situation they are minor in terms of time cost and VERY tough to fix while maintaining the high level of precision in the rest of the runs.  I've pointed out a few places where time could possibly be saved with different routing but as of the time of writing these haven't been tested and these are the fastest known strats for each level (B1 notwithstanding).  I might even make a cheeky submission myself if they are faster and I can match the high standard of execution shown here but for now I strongly recommend that you [b]ACCEPT[/b] this run

ZenicReverie

2013-10-14 11:07:11 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

I'll thrown in an accept as well. Looks well executed, although some minor (possible) mistakes are in a few of the levels. The glitches are interesting, and some of the skips are obvious, which are nice to catch.

ktwo

2013-10-15 06:24:43 am

Never played this game (but it looks really cool).

A/V: Good.
Legit: As far as I can tell, yes.

Gameplay: It looks like there are multiple solutions to each level. These runs appear to boil the levels down to the bare essentials to save time, including some nice shortcuts. There are a couple of minor mistakes, but for levels that sometimes take up to five minutes to complete, it's well within what's acceptable. I couldn't help but notice that a lot of the running didn't exactly go in a straight line. I believe that has mostly to do with the game mechanics though. Still, the time could maybe go down a bit by learning how to control this effect?

ACCEPT

Note: This was for the pal-version (on console) and I assume it should then be labelled as such.

A-M

2013-10-21 01:17:46 am

I'm happy to see a run of this cool game !

A/V quality : ok. Good strats and good execution (only some really small mistakes). ACCEPT !

SDAVerification

2013-10-29 08:52:38 pm

Decision posted.

DanE

2013-10-31 05:08:33 pm

Fjölpärsk

Thanks to the verifiers!

RoboSparkle's comments says it all really, so I don't have that much too add. Like one verifier addressed here, the controls aren't the best, especially with dashing. Since the NTSC version of the game is called Sheep Raider, I never thought about putting the pal-label on it at first. If that is needed, it can be fixed though.

UraniumAnchor

2013-10-31 06:02:38 pm

Not a walrus

The way the system works currently, the pal label is there, but since there's only one game in the database with this name, it doesn't display the region/system tags.

DanE

Edit history:

DanE: 2013-11-02 05:07:31 pm

2013-11-02 05:04:39 pm

Fjölpärsk

Ok, so there's no need for a re-submit then?