The 3rd birthday (PSP) Speedrun

2014-02-23 05:35:53 pm

I'm currently planning on speedrunning the 3rd birthday for the PSP. I've already found some neat time saving tricks for the game but no glitches yet.

My question is whether anyone has already attempted to run this or have found anything that might help.

if anyone is also considering running this game, please let me know! we can help each other! Cheesy

Thread title:

sshplur

2014-02-23 07:14:23 pm

God speed, my friend.

....yeah that's it from me ;__;

Valryel

2014-02-23 08:25:43 pm

lol welp, i tried xD

Dreamboum

2014-02-24 12:25:57 am

There is no speedrun material about the game yet. I looked a little into it and I found that trying to use the liberation during an action cancels the animation. It especially works for the dodge and is surely going to save minutes overall. It also works for reloading your weapon but the time gain is really small for it (and you can easily fail the reload). Also, for the 4 chapters, your best bet is going to be the sniper, it kills pretty much everything really fast, just customize it to have a lot of ammo on it. You'll also need a weapon that will trigger overdrives faster.

You'll have to route when you need to use the overdrive to get the fastest path with soldier switching. You'll need to know all the real objectives (sometimes the game tells you to kill monsters that you don't have to), what enemies to kill in priority, etc. It is going to be a lot of work, so good luck ! I don't think I'll ever do runs of this game, as a fan of the fist PE, I despise this game but a speedrun should be interesting to see lol

There is no speedrun material about the game yet. I looked a little into it and I found that trying to use the liberation during an action cancels the animation. It especially works for the dodge and is surely going to save minutes overall. It also works for reloading your weapon but the time gain is really small for it (and you can easily fail the reload). Also, for the 4 chapters, your best bet is going to be the sniper, it kills pretty much everything really fast, just customize it to have a lot of ammo on it. You'll also need a weapon that will trigger overdrives faster.

You'll have to route when you need to use the overdrive to get the fastest path with soldier switching. You'll need to know all the real objectives (sometimes the game tells you to kill monsters that you don't have to), what enemies to kill in priority, etc. It is going to be a lot of work, so good luck ! I don't think I'll ever do runs of this game, as a fan of the fist PE, I despise this game but a speedrun should be interesting to see lol

Valryel

2014-02-24 06:36:09 am

thanks! and yeah i understand you completely xD i loved the first one and the second was ok. when i picked this up, i completely skipped the whole story and just went straight to the gameplay which i'm really enjoying.

Valryel

2014-03-01 10:35:18 pm

I'm almost done routing the game. it might take me a couple more playthroughs since i've yet to unlock the last tier of each weapon type, but i've figured out almost everything in terms of overdriving, enemy placement and some potential quick kills. I'm having some trouble trying to kill the second chapter boss before it transforms into mini-versions of itself (it can waste a lot of time trying to find the leader and you have to deal a good amount of damage to make it revert to it's normal state.) I'm also setting up a DNA board that will make everything go more smoothly.

as soon as i'm done, i'll post the my route for 2 potential categories (any% and all feats). they don't differ all that much unless done in harder difficulties (i'll confirm this when i'm done but these 2 potential runs will probably work in easy/normal/hard and there won't be much difference in time). Once i finish routing and start running the game a couple times, i'll start working on deadly and genocide modes.

Verz

Edit history:

Verz: 2014-03-02 01:56:43 am

Verz: 2014-03-02 12:52:19 am

Verz: 2014-03-02 12:42:14 am

Verz: 2014-03-02 12:38:28 am

Verz: 2014-03-02 12:36:05 am

Verz: 2014-03-02 12:34:38 am

Verz: 2014-03-02 12:33:33 am

Verz: 2014-03-02 12:32:55 am

2014-03-02 12:30:29 am

Oh there's a thread for this game now.
This game is something ive been working on and off on since october of last year. I do plan on playing and streaming this more after I get burnt out on Metal Slug(very soon). I do know of one other runner besides me who plays this. Ill pm him this thread on twitch. I also made a small pastebin with notes a while back http://pastebin.com/P51G6vxS

Im an emucheater though who plays on emulator. I had one recorded run on twitch but I deleted cause I lost connection during the run and wanted to redo it. From what I remember, ingame time and real time seemed close. I ran the game New Game Normal. This is the lowest ive gotten
http://imgur.com/tRtf4j3 - In game time
http://imgur.com/FnAAF8s - Real time

I havent tried the Sniper strat mentioned above. I havent messed too much with snipers or new game+ honestly. But for New Game I basically went
Assault Rifle(ASR18B3 c.) into Assault Rifle(YS228 SWAT)
Magnum(t05 7.6cm) into Launcher(ExT420)

Another thing I should probably mention is that I didnt use the DNA board at all. The Energy Chip drops are all random, so you could probably be wasting time checking them and equipping them on. There are definitely some that would very useful in runs though but of course RNG decides everything.

Quote from Valryel:

I'm having some trouble trying to kill the second chapter boss before it transforms into mini-versions of itself (it can waste a lot of time trying to find the leader and you have to deal a good amount of damage to make it revert to it's normal state.)

Closest ive gotten before it splits is down to the final bar. You can make it go back to into full form quickly by using crossfire on the leader, much faster than waiting for the sniper ally.

Oh there's a thread for this game now. 
This game is something ive been working on and off on since october of last year. I do plan on playing and streaming this more after I get burnt out on Metal Slug(very soon). I do know of one other runner besides me who plays this. Ill pm him this thread on twitch. I also made a small pastebin with notes a while back http://pastebin.com/P51G6vxS

Im an emucheater though who plays on emulator. I had one recorded run on twitch but I deleted cause I lost connection during the run and wanted to redo it. From what I remember, ingame time and real time seemed close. I ran the game New Game Normal. This is the lowest ive gotten 
http://imgur.com/tRtf4j3 - In game time
http://imgur.com/FnAAF8s - Real time

I havent tried the Sniper strat mentioned above. I havent messed too much with snipers or new game+ honestly. But for New Game I basically went 
Assault Rifle(ASR18B3 c.) into Assault Rifle(YS228 SWAT) 
Magnum(t05 7.6cm) into Launcher(ExT420)

Another thing I should probably mention is that I didnt use the DNA board at all. The Energy Chip drops are all random, so you could probably be wasting time checking them and equipping them on. There are definitely some that would very useful in runs though but of course RNG decides everything.

[quote="Valryel"]I'm having some trouble trying to kill the second chapter boss before it transforms into mini-versions of itself (it can waste a lot of time trying to find the leader and you have to deal a good amount of damage to make it revert to it's normal state.) [/quote]
Closest ive gotten before it splits is down to the final bar. You can make it go back to into full form quickly by using crossfire on the leader, much faster than waiting for the sniper ally.

Valryel

2014-03-02 04:39:50 pm

cool man, i didn't know about some of these and i'll apply them in my attempts! and yeah, the closest was down to 1/4th of the final bar which means that it is doable, i just probably need better weapons. i did however made the boss go out of bounds in a way (you can knock it out of the sky.) the way i did it was that whenever it's doing the charge attack, i hid behind one of the small pillars on each corner of the map to cover myself from the attack, when it finishes it'll come dashing right to your position, i managed to knock it out just out of the invisible wall and aside from doing clean damage i noticed that it took a bit longer to get back up. I wasn't able to replicate it.

Verz

Edit history:

Verz: 2014-03-02 05:02:58 pm

2014-03-02 05:01:31 pm

Neat. I heard that boss is very odd. I think remember hearing you can go OoB in that fight.

The laser glitch vs the reaper is something I was discussing with a friend a while back. Basically deciding which is faster: Fighting the reaper normally or using the laser glitch.
Something I want to test out.

Valryel

2014-03-02 05:54:28 pm

yeah it happened once lol, could be something worth looking into. If you want we can skype chat and test it out and work together.

I assume the glitch would work faster considering if it works. regardless of what luck you have in that fight, the reaper takes a lot of time to kill.

Verz

2014-03-03 05:49:55 pm

Quote from Valryel:

yeah it happened once lol, could be something worth looking into. If you want we can skype chat and test it out and work together.

Do you recall exactly how it happened? I'll give it a shot.
I dont really want to give out my skype that quick, you can drop my stream when im online and I will be glad to discuss this game any time. Or hit me up on the srl irc.

Speaking of odd stuff, I found this http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/951987-the-3rd-birthday/66167255 (first post, second description)
Dont think it will be useful for running but everything is worth trying out anyway. Would be nice to find these kind of things outside of boss fights lol.

Also when I was talking with another runner he mentioned something very interesting about the beginning of Mission 4. In the beginning you are forced into 1 of 3 tanks, he said its possible to overdive out of the tank and into a soldier-on-foot. I dont recall what he said outside of that though. We discussed it on stream but I cant find it in my past broadcasts.
I messed around with it for an hour and couldnt get anywhere.

[quote="Valryel"]yeah it happened once lol, could be something worth looking into. If you want we can skype chat and test it out and work together.[/quote]
Do you recall exactly how it happened? I'll give it a shot.
I dont really want to give out my skype that quick, you can drop my [url="http://www.twitch.tv/verzviper"]stream[/url] when im online and I will be glad to discuss this game any time. Or hit me up on the srl irc.

Speaking of odd stuff, I found this http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/951987-the-3rd-birthday/66167255 (first post, second description) 
Dont think it will be useful for running but everything is worth trying out anyway. Would be nice to find these kind of things outside of boss fights lol.

Also when I was talking with another runner he mentioned something very interesting about the beginning of Mission 4. In the beginning you are forced into 1 of 3 tanks, he said its possible to overdive out of the tank and into a soldier-on-foot. I dont recall what he said outside of that though. We discussed it on stream but I cant find it in my past broadcasts. 
I messed around with it for an hour and couldnt get anywhere.

Valryel

2014-03-03 07:55:50 pm

well what happened was:

as soon as the boss goes to charge up the homing attacks, i happened to be way far in the back, so i figured it'd be easier to just hide behind the back-right pillar and block it, as soon it was done it went directly to me to start shooting. I happened to knock it down with a few shotgun blasts and ODK into it causing it to actually fall out of the area. for the whole time it was down all it did was try to get close to me to do a lunge attack and i just did my best to waste away it's HP. from the multiple attempts from trying to beat it withouth transforming i saw that it took roughly like 1-2 more seconds than usual to get back up in the air (i was able to shoot 7 shotgun shells when normally i can get 5 and the extra 6 when it's getting up).

i dunno about the OD-ing to a soldier since there are no soldiers on that part. however i found a trick that makes taking out the runts a lot quicker. basically as soon as you start shoot your first bullet and quickly OD into the other tank, if done successfully you will be able to shoot again and OD back into the previous tank and keep the chain going. i still have to try it out some more but one of the visual indicators i got is when the 1st blast knocks both runts down. this saves a a couple seconds and makes it easier to do the unharmed tanks feat.

i may start my first stream for this game soon so look me up! The3rdFool (i might make a new account here soon so that people don't get confused lol).

well what happened was:

as soon as the boss goes to charge up the homing attacks, i happened to be way far in the back, so i figured it'd be easier to just hide behind the back-right pillar and block it, as soon it was done it went directly to me to start shooting. I happened to knock it down with a few shotgun blasts and ODK into it causing it to actually fall out of the area. for the whole time it was down all it did was try to get close to me to do a lunge attack and i just did my best to waste away it's HP. from the multiple attempts from trying to beat it withouth transforming i saw that it took roughly like 1-2 more seconds than usual to get back up in the air (i was able to shoot 7 shotgun shells when normally i can get 5 and the extra 6 when it's getting up).

i dunno about the OD-ing to a soldier since there are no soldiers on that part. however i found a trick that makes taking out the runts a lot quicker. basically  as soon as you start shoot your first bullet and quickly OD into the other tank, if done successfully you will be able to shoot again and OD back into the previous tank and keep the chain going. i still have to try it out some more but one of the visual indicators i got is when the 1st blast knocks both runts down. this saves a a couple seconds and makes it easier to do the unharmed tanks feat.

i may start my first stream for this game soon so look me up! The3rdFool (i might make a new account here soon so that people don't get confused lol).

Verz

Edit history:

Verz: 2014-03-03 08:48:38 pm

Verz: 2014-03-03 08:48:21 pm

2014-03-03 08:46:41 pm

^Might want to do that asap before it becomes too late.

Quote from Valryel:

as soon as the boss goes to charge up the homing attacks, i happened to be way far in the back, so i figured it'd be easier to just hide behind the back-right pillar and block it, as soon it was done it went directly to me to start shooting. I happened to knock it down with a few shotgun blasts and ODK into it causing it to actually fall out of the area. for the whole time it was down all it did was try to get close to me to do a lunge attack and i just did my best to waste away it's HP. from the multiple attempts from trying to beat it withouth transforming i saw that it took roughly like 1-2 more seconds than usual to get back up in the air (i was able to shoot 7 shotgun shells when normally i can get 5 and the extra 6 when it's getting up).

Interesting. Going to try it later and see what I can get from it.

Quote from Valryel:

i dunno about the OD-ing to a soldier since there are no soldiers on that part. however i found a trick that makes taking out the runts a lot quicker. basically as soon as you start shoot your first bullet and quickly OD into the other tank, if done successfully you will be able to shoot again and OD back into the previous tank and keep the chain going. i still have to try it out some more but one of the visual indicators i got is when the 1st blast knocks both runts down. this saves a a couple seconds and makes it easier to do the unharmed tanks feat.

There seems to be another target that disappears when you fully get in the tank. Its actually the soldier you jump into at the start. We were thinking that it may be possible to jump into that target before he goes away. He seems like a hollow body though or something, I dont think the tank target replaces him like when you OD Human to Human. So he probably just vanishes completely.
He claimed he saw his friend do this on the japanese version. Ive had no luck with it though even with 25% slowdown.

^Might want to do that asap before it becomes too late.

[quote="Valryel"]as soon as the boss goes to charge up the homing attacks, i happened to be way far in the back, so i figured it'd be easier to just hide behind the back-right pillar and block it, as soon it was done it went directly to me to start shooting. I happened to knock it down with a few shotgun blasts and ODK into it causing it to actually fall out of the area. for the whole time it was down all it did was try to get close to me to do a lunge attack and i just did my best to waste away it's HP. from the multiple attempts from trying to beat it withouth transforming i saw that it took roughly like 1-2 more seconds than usual to get back up in the air (i was able to shoot 7 shotgun shells when normally i can get 5 and the extra 6 when it's getting up).[/quote]
Interesting. Going to try it later and see what I can get from it.

[quote="Valryel"]i dunno about the OD-ing to a soldier since there are no soldiers on that part. however i found a trick that makes taking out the runts a lot quicker. basically  as soon as you start shoot your first bullet and quickly OD into the other tank, if done successfully you will be able to shoot again and OD back into the previous tank and keep the chain going. i still have to try it out some more but one of the visual indicators i got is when the 1st blast knocks both runts down. this saves a a couple seconds and makes it easier to do the unharmed tanks feat.[/quote]
[url="http://i.imgur.com/Gxbx7jj.jpg"]There seems to be another target that disappears when you fully get in the tank.[/url] Its actually the soldier you jump into at the start. We were thinking that it may be possible to jump into that target before he goes away. He seems like a hollow body though or something, I dont think the tank target replaces him like when you OD Human to Human. So he probably just vanishes completely.
He claimed he saw his friend do this on the japanese version. Ive had no luck with it though even with 25% slowdown.

Valryel

2014-03-03 09:40:12 pm

Quote from Verz:

^Might want to do that asap before it becomes too late.

true, i'll do it tomorrow.

Quote from Verz:

There seems to be another target that disappears when you fully get in the tank. Its actually the soldier you jump into at the start. We were thinking that it may be possible to jump into that target before he goes away. He seems like a hollow body though or something, I dont think the tank target replaces him like when you OD Human to Human. So he probably just vanishes completely.
He claimed he saw his friend do this on the japanese version. Ive had no luck with it though even with 25% slowdown.

huh, might be worth doing some research but i doubt it would help. maybe it would be faster to take down the runts but not the boss.

The3rdFool

2014-03-04 07:00:04 pm

The Fool has arrived!

all right done lol

anyways, let me know when do you normally stream so that i can pop up and we can talk more about the 3rd birthday

Verz

2014-03-04 09:55:45 pm

Quote from The3rdFool:

anyways, let me know when do you normally stream so that i can pop up and we can talk more about the 3rd birthday

Best way is to check my twitter. I stream whenever, like right now.

The3rdFool

2014-03-05 07:27:34 pm

The Fool has arrived!

I was able to do the raper glitch and i found something interesting.
in my situation, i made sure that th laser beam hit the reaper before doing the glitch. I was unsure that it would work but it did, i tried it a couple more times and i was able to confirm that the glitch works 100% whenever you confirm that the laser indeed is hitting the reaper. if you do the glith before you confirm the hit, it might not work because the laser might not be hitting the reaper at all.

pretty useful glitch, but we would need to do an estimate of how much would it take to take the reaper's health down to 0.

Verz

Edit history:

Verz: 2014-03-05 10:09:24 pm

Verz: 2014-03-05 09:00:28 pm

Verz: 2014-03-05 08:59:11 pm

2014-03-05 08:57:34 pm

Probably, I never really looked into that. I did however notice that after you pause, the enemy still continues moving for a bit.
Thats another factor that screw up the glitch.

btw what difficulty are you playing with?

The3rdFool

2014-03-06 04:14:14 pm

The Fool has arrived!

i noticed that too, but since the reaper goes after you all the time i don't see that much of a problem.

right now i'm doing my 5th playthrough of the game on hard. I'm getting everything unlocked, and it helps memorizing everything.

Verz

Edit history:

Verz: 2014-03-07 02:36:41 am

2014-03-07 02:36:15 am

Alright cool

Ive always played New Game on normal but I think ill give easy a test(even though I dont like easy categories in speedrunning). I assume enemies will be weaker and die faster.
New Game Hard sounds like a really tough challenge. I also want to try that out. I read many times that people have trouble finishing that, so that sounds fun to beat.

Verz

2014-03-08 11:02:00 pm

Did a quick derust run on easy Its definitely quicker for the above reasons.

Went with sniper instead of launcher as mentioned by Dreamboum and this is definitely much better. Its also MUCH easier to one cycle many bosses.

The3rdFool

2014-03-09 03:48:16 pm

The Fool has arrived!

nice and yeah, i'm planning to do all the feats to make it a bit more challenging since you have to do them in a certain way and i believe it makes speedrunning it much more entertaining.

The3rdFool

2014-03-11 06:47:38 pm

The Fool has arrived!

I recently found a reloading trick. If you change to another weapon and change back, it reloads your weapon. although it only saves a couple seconds, it can prove useful when in a tight spot.

Verz

2014-03-12 10:33:05 pm

Did a short test on laser-glitch vs no laser-glitch against the reaper. Timer started when I jumped off the short cliff into the pit and ended when I broke his shell for the first phase. Easy mode.

10 attempts without glitch

4:38
4:40
2:29
2:56
3:36
3:34
2:57
2:54
2:33
2:59

10 attempts with glitch

2:25 2 pauses
3:24 4 pauses
4:05 5 pauses
2:32 1 pause
4:14 5 pauses
2:22 2 pauses
3:37 5 pauses-got hit once
2:33 2 pauses
2:24 3 pauses
2:22 2 pauses

A bit all over the place hehe.

One thing I never realized is that you can ODK the reaper and make him drop the blood barrier. Similar to in chapter 1. Kind of useful for w/o glitch but might be slow. Otherwise, the fight is pretty straight forward. Just hop around and try to make him teleport as little as possible and dont get grabbed of course. I did run into ammo trouble at times and had to either get the ammo pack or wait for a recharge.

With glitch. Hitting certain parts of the Reaper does more or less damage. Hitting the body area seems to do a lot, so you'll want to pause while its hitting that part. I think I found a setup for getting this easily but I'll play around with it more. All the 2:30s and lower had decent success with it. I'll try getting a recording of it soon.

The first unpause in general was around 2:00-2:10.
The 2:32 1 pause was nice, though maybe I could have unpaused a tiny bit earlier judging from the 2:20s I got.

Quote from The3rdFool:

I recently found a reloading trick. If you change to another weapon and change back, it reloads your weapon. although it only saves a couple seconds, it can prove useful when in a tight spot.

Yeah I noticed that out quickly when I first played. Didnt feel the need to add it to the pastebin.

Did a short test on laser-glitch vs no laser-glitch against the reaper. Timer started when I jumped off the short cliff into the pit and ended when I broke his shell for the first phase. Easy mode.

10 attempts without glitch
[hidden]4:38
4:40
2:29
2:56
3:36
3:34
2:57
2:54
2:33
2:59[/hidden]
10 attempts with glitch
[hidden]2:25 2 pauses
3:24 4 pauses
4:05 5 pauses
2:32 1 pause
4:14 5 pauses
2:22 2 pauses
3:37 5 pauses-got hit once
2:33 2 pauses
2:24 3 pauses
2:22 2 pauses[/hidden]

A bit all over the place hehe.

One thing I never realized is that you can ODK the reaper and make him drop the blood barrier. Similar to in chapter 1. Kind of useful for w/o glitch but might be slow. Otherwise, the fight is pretty straight forward. Just hop around and try to make him teleport as little as possible and dont get grabbed of course. I did run into ammo trouble at times and had to either get the ammo pack or wait for a recharge.

With glitch. Hitting certain parts of the Reaper does more or less damage. Hitting the body area seems to do a lot, so you'll want to pause while its hitting that part. I think I found a setup for getting this easily but I'll play around with it more. All the 2:30s and lower had decent success with it. I'll try getting a recording of it soon.

The first unpause in general was around 2:00-2:10.
The 2:32 1 pause was nice, though maybe I could have unpaused a tiny bit earlier judging from the 2:20s I got.

[quote="The3rdFool"]I recently found a reloading trick. If you change to another weapon and change back, it reloads your weapon. although it only saves a couple seconds, it can prove useful when in a tight spot.[/quote]
Yeah I noticed that out quickly when I first played. Didnt feel the need to add it to the pastebin.

The3rdFool

2014-03-12 11:23:29 pm

The Fool has arrived!

that's really cool, i tried it out as well and i found a neat trick which involves the reaper doing the shield move but since it's not common it might not be helpful. basically you need to have both laser guys on opposite sides while it's doing the shield animation and just keep ODing into the back of the reaper and it will only slowly crawl to your direction everytime.

I also did a NG+ test run to check out my desktop recording program (camtasia) and i did a sub 1:30 run (included some feats for the sake of practice and minor screwups). turned out pretty well, i'll try to post it somewhere so you can check it out.

(minor note: i'm using an emulator because my old PSP kicked the bucket and i'm waiting for my next paycheck to get a new one + the PSP capture device.)