The Cat Lady - December 15, 2014

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2014-12-15 05:00:02 pm

2014-11-11 08:01:36 pm

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

The Cat Lady (Any %) (Single Segment)

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Andrew 'Bigmanjapan' Bondarenko!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2014-11-11 08:01:36 pm

Run Information

The Cat Lady (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/thecatlady/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by Nov. 25, 2014.

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.

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2014-12-01 10:36:57 am

LotBlind: 2014-11-30 10:06:40 am

2014-11-28 02:17:23 pm

Very straighforward speedrun. Basically no mistakes.

accept

Crow!

2014-12-02 09:53:30 am

What's that gemma?

I have zero prior experience with this game.

A/V is fine. Advisory for content - gore is frequent, and nudity shows up at least once.

This game is incredibly simple. Relevant inputs only show up every 15-60 seconds or so, and consist of navigating a menu as fast as possible as soon as it becomes available, or mashing through text.

I don't know the game well enough to judge whether the route is optimal, but given how few options are actually available, I'm going to assume the runner spent a few minutes to determine the optimal choices there. A single wrong routing choice would most likely outweigh most of the game's worth of execution errors.

The inputs in this game seem not to have any limitation on how fast you can select them; every half second or full second that you see options listed or hear voice acting is an error that could have been eliminated via superior notes and better focus. I started out trying to make a thorough list of places that seemed particularly slow in this regard, but I quickly lost patience for doing so; this game does not make for an interesting speedrun, in my opinion. Suffice it to say that there are plenty of errors throughout the game.

Gate opening at ~4:50 looks slow.
Dialogue from 5:30 - 6:30 looks absurdly slow. It was to the point where I was wondering whether the game engine was imposing a 1 second lockout time before every multiple choice menu, but some future conversations made it clear this wasn't the case.
Both of the 2-option dialogue choices at ~12:10 were slow, as was the glove interaction shortly thereafter.
~14:40 has uncharacteristically slow text mashing.
~18:20 "no, sometimes" was slow.
...
The dialogue at around 36 minutes loses more than a second several times.

I want to recommend a rejection of this run, but I'm not sure how much of that is me disliking the game (both as a game and as a speedgame). Watching this run didn't leave me with the impression that it would be difficult to beat his level of execution; there could be hard-to-see sources of difficulty in the game that I'm missing, but it appears that anyone armed with a walkthrough could match this run's time easily.

I have zero prior experience with this game.

A/V is fine.  Advisory for content - gore is frequent, and nudity shows up at least once.

This game is incredibly simple.  Relevant inputs only show up every 15-60 seconds or so, and consist of navigating a menu as fast as possible as soon as it becomes available, or mashing through text.

I don't know the game well enough to judge whether the route is optimal, but given how few options are actually available, I'm going to assume the runner spent a few minutes to determine the optimal choices there.  A single wrong routing choice would most likely outweigh most of the game's worth of execution errors.

The inputs in this game seem not to have any limitation on how fast you can select them; every half second or full second that you see options listed or hear voice acting is an error that could have been eliminated via superior notes and better focus.  I started out trying to make a thorough list of places that seemed particularly slow in this regard, but I quickly lost patience for doing so; this game does not make for an interesting speedrun, in my opinion.  Suffice it to say that there are plenty of errors throughout the game.

[spoiler]
Gate opening at ~4:50 looks slow.
Dialogue from 5:30 - 6:30 looks absurdly slow.  It was to the point where I was wondering whether the game engine was imposing a 1 second lockout time before every multiple choice menu, but some future conversations made it clear this wasn't the case.
Both of the 2-option dialogue choices at ~12:10 were slow, as was the glove interaction shortly thereafter.
~14:40 has uncharacteristically slow text mashing.
~18:20 "no, sometimes" was slow.
...
The dialogue at around 36 minutes loses more than a second several times.[/spoiler]

I want to recommend a rejection of this run, but I'm not sure how much of that is me disliking the game (both as a game and as a speedgame).  Watching this run didn't leave me with the impression that it would be difficult to beat his level of execution; there could be hard-to-see sources of difficulty in the game that I'm missing, but it appears that anyone armed with a walkthrough could match this run's time easily.

LotBlind

2014-12-02 12:22:37 pm

unlike TASVideos, there's no restrictions on SDA about what games you can run [nowadays] so long as there's a clear enough difference between bad execution and good execution. I too had my personal opinions about what kind of game it looked like to me as I was watching but that stuff certainly has no place in here.

The runner might come in and explain that stuff, but most of the things you mention Crow I was ready to place in the game-being-weird bin. Secondly it's closer to 2 hours so I think such mistakes are pretty negligible. It doesn't make it look sloppy IMO.

specifically (and this doesn't really mean much before runner has commented): dialogue 5:30-6:30 - despite not every conversation menu being this slow I never thought it was impossible the game would (for whatever reason) have lag in this spot specifically. When the inputs started coming they were very quick after all. Same for many other things you point out.

Bigmanjapan

Edit history:

Bigmanjapan: 2014-12-02 03:09:14 pm

2014-12-02 03:05:16 pm

Quote from Crow!:

Gate opening at ~4:50 looks slow.
Dialogue from 5:30 - 6:30 looks absurdly slow. It was to the point where I was wondering whether the game engine was imposing a 1 second lockout time before every multiple choice menu, but some future conversations made it clear this wasn't the case.
Both of the 2-option dialogue choices at ~12:10 were slow, as was the glove interaction shortly thereafter.
~14:40 has uncharacteristically slow text mashing.
~18:20 "no, sometimes" was slow.
...
The dialogue at around 36 minutes loses more than a second several times.

1). Gate opening delay is scripted;
2). It is slower than other dialogues, yes;
3). 2-option dialogue choices at ~12:10 — there is a tiny delay between switching dialogue options, if it is possible to optimize it would be less than a second improvement; same for gloves;
4). Text is skipped by holding spacebar, not pressing it for each line. Holding is beneficial almost everywhere except some places where you can see subtitles/hear part of a line, I don't think pressing spacebar for each replica individually would be more superior.

In some places game lags, in some places I make those delays.
I realize that this game is not suitable for speedrunning, rejection is fine if thats the end decision. Although I think points listed should be treated as ways of improvement by others who decide to run this game, not every run is perfect on its first submission.

[quote="Crow!"]
Gate opening at ~4:50 looks slow.
Dialogue from 5:30 - 6:30 looks absurdly slow.  It was to the point where I was wondering whether the game engine was imposing a 1 second lockout time before every multiple choice menu, but some future conversations made it clear this wasn't the case.
Both of the 2-option dialogue choices at ~12:10 were slow, as was the glove interaction shortly thereafter.
~14:40 has uncharacteristically slow text mashing.
~18:20 "no, sometimes" was slow.
...
The dialogue at around 36 minutes loses more than a second several times.[/quote]

1). Gate opening delay is scripted;
2). It is slower than other dialogues, yes;
3). 2-option dialogue choices at ~12:10 — there is a tiny delay between switching dialogue options, if it is possible to optimize it would be less than a second improvement; same for gloves; 
4). Text is skipped by holding spacebar, not pressing it for each line. Holding is beneficial almost everywhere except some places where you can see  subtitles/hear part of a line, I don't think pressing spacebar for each replica individually would be more superior.

In some places game lags, in some places I make those delays. 
I realize that this game is not suitable for speedrunning, rejection is fine if thats the end decision. Although I think points listed should be treated as ways of improvement by others who decide to run this game, not every run is perfect on its first submission.

LotBlind

2014-12-03 02:23:11 pm

Someone watch this so we have a clearer decision coming?

Vulajin

2014-12-04 01:35:21 am

If possible, I would like at least one more set of eyes on this, with a particular nod towards whether or not this game should be considered suitable for our site. Remember that the bar for acceptance is that an individual who is simply "good at games" would be expected to not be able to match a speedrunner's time without having done the requisite planning and experimentation that the speedrunner did.

LotBlind

2014-12-04 10:10:14 am

With all respect, I think it's preposterous to consider rejecting this based off a few highly minute mistakes. There is one time when the runner actually goes the wrong direction in chapter 4 at 43:18 wasting 5 seconds. Compared to many other adventure game submissions I have seen this honestly looks really good trivial as the gameplay in these games tends to be. It shows the runner either memorized almost 2 hours of directions and dialogue choices or at least has established a working relationship with his notes. This mistake and everything else that was raised combined make up only 10 seconds of time lost AFAICS. Go figure...

AlecK47

2014-12-08 01:07:05 pm

I'm about halfway through and plan on finishing tomorrow. So far it looks good, but I'm not sure about why it's irrelevant whether the blue or red guage is filled. I'm guessing the neighbor's arrival is on a timer?

As for the game itself, it may not be much of a speedgame but you can clearly complete it (definite end) and save time in doing so, and therefore I believe it should qualify.

Bigmanjapan

Edit history:

Bigmanjapan: 2014-12-08 05:02:32 pm

2014-12-08 05:00:36 pm

If the game procedeed to the next stage when the red gauge is filled up it would save around 1 minute or more. Instead, game forces you to accomplish some of the good events (with red gauge already filled up) that lead to conversation with neighbor. The whole time save becomes irrelevant and even more, if you filled up red gauge Susan will have a mental breakdown which have a longer cutscene.

Again, it could be faster even with the longer cutscene but because you can't skip neighbor it becomes a bad option.

AlecK47

2014-12-09 01:34:43 pm

That's about what I figured.

Anyway, A/V good, no cheating detected

The rest of the run seems solid as well, so I'll give this an accept.

Judgy

2014-12-09 02:24:45 pm

Borderlands 2 Glitch Hunter/ router.

Should have posted my verification of this a while ago but kept forgetting and was also waiting for the previous answer (about the neighbour)

A/V : Good
Cheating : None

Seems like a good run, most the time I had little to no clue what was going on.. but from what I can tell and what I know of BMJ's other runs he tends to pick the best option for any given situation.

Accept

SDAVerification

2014-12-15 05:00:08 pm

Decision posted.