The Soul of Dracula - June 5, 2018

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2018-06-05 05:53:05 am

2018-05-08 11:13:13 am

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

The Soul of Dracula () (pc) [Any %] [Single Segment]

Decision: Reject

Reason: Mostly well played, but the route could be improved. Several common speedrun techniques weren't used.

https://queue.speeddemosarchive.com/verificationfiles/2154/

This run will be available for a month. After that these link(s) will no longer work.

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2018-05-08 11:13:13 am

Run Information

The Soul of Dracula () (pc) [Any %] [Single Segment]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/soulofdracula-20180415/The%20Soul%20Of%20Dracula%20%28Normal%29%20-%20Speedrun%20in%2029min53sec76.mp4

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SDAVerification

2018-05-08 11:15:07 am

The video contains splits and chat log on the side of the gameplay area. Please disregard this for the verification as they will be cropped out for the final encodes.

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2018-05-13 11:34:39 am

LotBlind: 2018-05-13 11:34:22 am

2018-05-11 11:13:42 am

What do you mean about having to use version 1.02? Usually you run whichever version is the fastest, unless it has severe compatibility issues.

Did you use the ResizeEnable program mentioned on the SRC leaderboards? Does it actually increase the game's resolution or just literally enable resizing the window to your liking (as one would think)?

27:00 - seeing as you had two refills coming up in this segment, maybe could have went for another damage boost in the rooms after where you died?

Wonder where the bass went?

No major time losses. There were more than one gold split, and safety strats were used near the end, but I feel this is still good enough to
accept

Lunatix

Edit history:

Lunatix: 2018-05-14 03:53:11 am

2018-05-14 03:52:45 am

About the version this is because you can't find anywhere the old versions there is only the 1.02 available on ther website developer, unless someone had the chance to download an older version and keep on his pc for all this time (2010 old) but i doubt it.

Resizeenable is just to enlarge the windows not the actual resolution of the game who is maxed out at 480p, it doesn't affect gameplay it's just to make it more watchable on HD monitors for the runner.

The death in the castle was voluntary for the first spike passages because it ask a lot of accuracy and i wasn't sure i could make it with half health, considering there is a checkpoint at this place it's worth it.

Lost a few secondes on the centaur boss it's hard to have a perfect fight against him, and also on Dracula first form because it's totally random you never know what he will do and he exposes himself more with some of his attacks.

LotBlind

2018-05-14 11:05:10 am

So the version number thing is a bit of a moot point then.

Gotcha about resizeenable, that's what I though.

Keep submitting runs like this! Wink

ktwo

2018-05-17 02:10:29 pm

Stage 1:
* Would it be possible to position yourself against the first boss so you could throw an axe at the boss when you're about to land?

Stage 2:
* Is it possible to jump over the skeletons that take two hits?
* Wouldn't it be possible to turn around and take a projectile hit so you got damage-boosted forward instead of backward? (e.g. at 4:16 and 4:21, but also in many other places)
* Around 5:18, why not damage-boost through the enemy?
* During the climb around 5:40, why not use more axes to quicker dispatch of the enemies? You were down to 1 heart later in the stage, so at least one more axe could have been used. Maybe there were more hearts along the way as well?
* In the mirror lake area (around 8:00), were the enemies invulnerable to knives? It seems like you otherwise could have gotten through a cycle faster in some areas.

Stage 3:
* At 10:13, what was that kill about? Will that enemy otherwise bother you later on in the room?

Stage 4:
* At 13:55, why not damage-boost? (there was another one earlier as well)

Stage 5:
* At 19:23, wouldn't another jump (to the next cogwheel) be faster than walking against the rotation? Or would you jump too far?
* At around the 20 min mark, wasn't it possible to jump once or twice on the cogs to avoid some of the walking against the rotation?
* At 21:46, is it never possible to get on the pendulum on the first cycle or just very tight?

Stage 6:
* When fighting the big bats early on, why not use the axes as well?
* Were there no more checkpoints between the death abuse and Dracula? It looks like you could have saved a bit more time by doing more damage boosts in the spike rooms and then another death abuse. But maybe there was no other checkpoint?
* Are there no other sub-weapons available before the Dracula fight? The holy cross looked fairly efficient against Dracula's first form, but didn't contribute much on the second form.

General:
* A standard Castlevania speed strat is to jump and whip an enemy for the first hit to avoid losing time to the attack animation on at least that hit. Most of the time, you stood and whipped for all hits. You did jump-whip in some places though (especially against 1-hit enemies), so I'm guessing it works similarly in this game?

Stage 1:
* Would it be possible to position yourself against the first boss so you could throw an axe at the boss when you're about to land?

Stage 2:
* Is it possible to jump over the skeletons that take two hits?
* Wouldn't it be possible to turn around and take a projectile hit so you got damage-boosted forward instead of backward? (e.g. at 4:16 and 4:21, but also in many other places)
* Around 5:18, why not damage-boost through the enemy?
* During the climb around 5:40, why not use more axes to quicker dispatch of the enemies? You were down to 1 heart later in the stage, so at least one more axe could have been used. Maybe there were more hearts along the way as well?
* In the mirror lake area (around 8:00), were the enemies invulnerable to knives? It seems like you otherwise could have gotten through a cycle faster in some areas.

Stage 3:
* At 10:13, what was that kill about? Will that enemy otherwise bother you later on in the room?

Stage 4:
* At 13:55, why not damage-boost? (there was another one earlier as well)

Stage 5:
* At 19:23, wouldn't another jump (to the next cogwheel) be faster than walking against the rotation? Or would you jump too far?
* At around the 20 min mark, wasn't it possible to jump once or twice on the cogs to avoid some of the walking against the rotation?
* At 21:46, is it never possible to get on the pendulum on the first cycle or just very tight?

Stage 6:
* When fighting the big bats early on, why not use the axes as well?
* Were there no more checkpoints between the death abuse and Dracula? It looks like you could have saved a bit more time by doing more damage boosts in the spike rooms and then another death abuse. But maybe there was no other checkpoint?
* Are there no other sub-weapons available before the Dracula fight? The holy cross looked fairly efficient against Dracula's first form, but didn't contribute much on the second form.

General:
* A standard Castlevania speed strat is to jump and whip an enemy for the first hit to avoid losing time to the attack animation on at least that hit. Most of the time, you stood and whipped for all hits. You did jump-whip in some places though (especially against 1-hit enemies), so I'm guessing it works similarly in this game?

ktwo

2018-05-30 09:07:47 am

I decided to play through this game and test some of my comments myself.

Quote:

Stage 1:
* Would it be possible to position yourself against the first boss so you could throw an axe at the boss when you're about to land?

Yes, and it's easy to do. It doesn't seem to save much time though because of the attack animation associated with the weapon throw. By using axes combined with the whip, I still finished the fight 0.5-1 second faster.

Quote:

Stage 2:
* Is it possible to jump over the skeletons that take two hits?

Yes, but difficult. At the current level, I can understand if that time saver isn't used for the time being.

Quote:

* Wouldn't it be possible to turn around and take a projectile hit so you got damage-boosted forward instead of backward? (e.g. at 4:16 and 4:21, but also in many other places)

Yes, but maybe not every time. Sometimes you'll end up standing on bad floor tiles when taking the hit and the risk of falling down instead of forward is therefore pretty big. I think with more testing, a bit of time could be saved from taking this into account though.

Quote:

* Around 5:18, why not damage-boost through the enemy?

Comment still stands.

Quote:

* During the climb around 5:40, why not use more axes to quicker dispatch of the enemies? You were down to 1 heart later in the stage, so at least one more axe could have been used. Maybe there were more hearts along the way as well?

Comment still stands, but I'm guessing only a small potential time gain since the weapon throw animation also costs time.

Quote:

* In the mirror lake area (around 8:00), were the enemies invulnerable to knives? It seems like you otherwise could have gotten through a cycle faster in some areas.

This was mainly aimed at the extra wave cycle around 7:29. Having played through this area and now re-watching it, I'm guessing it was an on-the-spot decision to not try to jump over to the next part of the bridge. That seems like a pretty conservative decision in my eyes though. It looks like a "jump-n'-whip" would have done the job in the first cycle, without being particularly risky. The knives are irrelevant though, so that comment can be discarded.

Quote:

Stage 3:
* At 10:13, what was that kill about? Will that enemy otherwise bother you later on in the room?

That enemy will otherwise hit you, so forget about my comment.

Quote:

Stage 4:
* At 13:55, why not damage-boost? (there was another one earlier as well)

I can see now that the health situation can be slightly problematic in the rest of the stage. It seems like you can sometimes get bad patterns in the auto-scroller that make avoiding damage tricky. The hits in this attempt were due to execution mistakes though. There is definitely some time to be saved here, but it's hard for me to comment on how that fits in with the overall risk level of the run.

Quote:

Stage 5:
* At 19:23, wouldn't another jump (to the next cogwheel) be faster than walking against the rotation? Or would you jump too far?

Another jump is possible.

Quote:

* At around the 20 min mark, wasn't it possible to jump once or twice on the cogs to avoid some of the walking against the rotation?

I didn't solve this room exactly like in the run, so the Medusa heads weren't lined up in the same way. However, you can definitely jump another time on the cogs to avoid walking against the rotation. As for the Medusa head, it at least looks like it would have been cleared with some margin.

There were several more of these cogs that were walked and I definitely think that at least some of them could have been cleared by another jump without messing up the Medusa head patterns. E.g. in the room starting at 21:03, I consistently managed to get through it faster than in the run by jumping on the cogs and that was easy even without any sub-weapons.

Quote:

* At 21:46, is it never possible to get on the pendulum on the first cycle or just very tight?

Because I didn't have the same sub-weapon as in the run, I couldn't solve the room in the same way. So difficult for me to answer. The pendulums seem to run on a local timer in the room though, so getting up there slightly faster would have made the earlier cycle possible.

Quote:

Stage 6:
* When fighting the big bats early on, why not use the axes as well?

I couldn't test this, because the axes were not possible to collect when starting from the beginning of stage 6. Since the sub-weapons also have an attack animation, the time gain wouldn't be huge, but I still think it would save time to include the axes (if done correctly).

Quote:

* Were there no more checkpoints between the death abuse and Dracula? It looks like you could have saved a bit more time by doing more damage boosts in the spike rooms and then another death abuse. But maybe there was no other checkpoint?

There is one more checkpoint at 26:30, but it wouldn't have made a difference. However, if that death abuse was already planned in the route (not sure if that's the case though) or so common that it's required pretty much every time reaching that point, the room before should be adjusted to include intentional damage boosts instead of fighting so many of the enemies.

Quote:

* Are there no other sub-weapons available before the Dracula fight? The holy cross looked fairly efficient against Dracula's first form, but didn't contribute much on the second form.

There are no other sub-weapons in stage 6 (unless there is something hidden, but I highly doubt that). I'm not experienced enough with the game to play through from where the axes are found until the end to test the axes in the final fight. However, I'd be interested to know if the second form is possible to hit earlier and how using the axes would pan out time-wise (the first form would of course be quite a bit slower).

Considering the history of holy water in other Castlevania games, it might even be worth to test that against the first form and see if it deals any additional damage.

Quote:

General:
* A standard Castlevania speed strat is to jump and whip an enemy for the first hit to avoid losing time to the attack animation on at least that hit. Most of the time, you stood and whipped for all hits. You did jump-whip in some places though (especially against 1-hit enemies), so I'm guessing it works similarly in this game?

Watching some of those areas again, I'm leaning towards at least some of these being more execution mistakes than strat decisions.

Observations during my playthrough:
* By jumping from the edge of the block at 4:49, you'll grab the rope further down, reducing the climb time.
* At 9:03, you can easily jump and take out the deer head and then land on the stairs. Would have saved an attack animation.
* At 9:09, immediately jump and whip after you land to take out the deer head. It would have saved some waiting and an attack animation.
* At 9:35, it would have been faster to turn around to get damage-boosted forward instead.
* At 10:27, jump-whipping would have been faster.
* Taking out the birds from 11 min and onwards should be looked at more closely. They seem to be predictable, so it should be possible to take more of them out by jump-attacking. At the very least, the ones attacked at 11:28 and 11:31 can consistently be jump-whipped (although not sure if the last one mattered since more enemies spawned right after).
* At 14:22, the big heart didn't look entirely necessary, even though it was only a small detour. There is another small heart at the beginning of the auto-scroller that could have been collected instead.
* In stage 4, it's in many places possible to jump to grab the chain lower than by just walking onto it. Even if you don't get the benefit everywhere, many of them are risk-free.
* At 23:12, you can do a horizontal jump here.
* At 23:19, it didn't look very well planned out when going out of the way to grab the big heart, which led to an execution mistake and in the end having plenty of axes to spare.
* At 26:10, turn around and face left to let the spikes hit you. Then you can run through the rest of the room without stopping.

This is not an easy game (in a good way) and the execution in this run is pretty good. There are quite a few on-the-spot decisions that have to be made and you need to react to random events in some areas. I would say overall, this was handled well for the most part and the execution was well done.
The issues I have with this run are mainly related to the strats being used. Many time-savers that seemed fairly obvious to me were left out (things like damage-boosting forwards instead of backwards etc) and this was just things I noticed from watching the run and a casual playthrough. Many of the points are minor, but I'm sure a lot more could be found when doing more than just scratching the surface, like I've done.

With the current knowledge I have about the game, I will have to say that this is a

(weak) Reject

I decided to play through this game and test some of my comments myself.

[quote]Stage 1:
* Would it be possible to position yourself against the first boss so you could throw an axe at the boss when you're about to land?[/quote]
Yes, and it's easy to do. It doesn't seem to save much time though because of the attack animation associated with the weapon throw. By using axes combined with the whip, I still finished the fight 0.5-1 second faster.

[quote]Stage 2:
* Is it possible to jump over the skeletons that take two hits?[/quote]
Yes, but difficult. At the current level, I can understand if that time saver isn't used for the time being.

[quote]* Wouldn't it be possible to turn around and take a projectile hit so you got damage-boosted forward instead of backward? (e.g. at 4:16 and 4:21, but also in many other places)[/quote]
Yes, but maybe not every time. Sometimes you'll end up standing on bad floor tiles when taking the hit and the risk of falling down instead of forward is therefore pretty big. I think with more testing, a bit of time could be saved from taking this into account though.

[quote]* Around 5:18, why not damage-boost through the enemy?[/quote]
Comment still stands.

[quote]* During the climb around 5:40, why not use more axes to quicker dispatch of the enemies? You were down to 1 heart later in the stage, so at least one more axe could have been used. Maybe there were more hearts along the way as well?[/quote]
Comment still stands, but I'm guessing only a small potential time gain since the weapon throw animation also costs time.

[quote]* In the mirror lake area (around 8:00), were the enemies invulnerable to knives? It seems like you otherwise could have gotten through a cycle faster in some areas.[/quote]
This was mainly aimed at the extra wave cycle around 7:29. Having played through this area and now re-watching it, I'm guessing it was an on-the-spot decision to not try to jump over to the next part of the bridge. That seems like a pretty conservative decision in my eyes though. It looks like a "jump-n'-whip" would have done the job in the first cycle, without being particularly risky. The knives are irrelevant though, so that comment can be discarded.

[quote]Stage 3:
* At 10:13, what was that kill about? Will that enemy otherwise bother you later on in the room?[/quote]
That enemy will otherwise hit you, so forget about my comment.

[quote]Stage 4:
* At 13:55, why not damage-boost? (there was another one earlier as well)[/quote]
I can see now that the health situation can be slightly problematic in the rest of the stage. It seems like you can sometimes get bad patterns in the auto-scroller that make avoiding damage tricky. The hits in this attempt were due to execution mistakes though. There is definitely some time to be saved here, but it's hard for me to comment on how that fits in with the overall risk level of the run.

[quote]Stage 5:
* At 19:23, wouldn't another jump (to the next cogwheel) be faster than walking against the rotation? Or would you jump too far?[/quote]
Another jump is possible.

[quote]* At around the 20 min mark, wasn't it possible to jump once or twice on the cogs to avoid some of the walking against the rotation?[/quote]
I didn't solve this room exactly like in the run, so the Medusa heads weren't lined up in the same way. However, you can definitely jump another time on the cogs to avoid walking against the rotation. As for the Medusa head, it at least looks like it would have been cleared with some margin.

There were several more of these cogs that were walked and I definitely think that at least some of them could have been cleared by another jump without messing up the Medusa head patterns. E.g. in the room starting at 21:03, I consistently managed to get through it faster than in the run by jumping on the cogs and that was easy even without any sub-weapons.

[quote]* At 21:46, is it never possible to get on the pendulum on the first cycle or just very tight?[/quote]
Because I didn't have the same sub-weapon as in the run, I couldn't solve the room in the same way. So difficult for me to answer. The pendulums seem to run on a local timer in the room though, so getting up there slightly faster would have made the earlier cycle possible.

[quote]Stage 6:
* When fighting the big bats early on, why not use the axes as well?[/quote]
I couldn't test this, because the axes were not possible to collect when starting from the beginning of stage 6. Since the sub-weapons also have an attack animation, the time gain wouldn't be huge, but I still think it would save time to include the axes (if done correctly).

[quote]* Were there no more checkpoints between the death abuse and Dracula? It looks like you could have saved a bit more time by doing more damage boosts in the spike rooms and then another death abuse. But maybe there was no other checkpoint?[/quote]
There is one more checkpoint at 26:30, but it wouldn't have made a difference. However, if that death abuse was already planned in the route (not sure if that's the case though) or so common that it's required pretty much every time reaching that point, the room before should be adjusted to include intentional damage boosts instead of fighting so many of the enemies.

[quote]* Are there no other sub-weapons available before the Dracula fight? The holy cross looked fairly efficient against Dracula's first form, but didn't contribute much on the second form.[/quote]
There are no other sub-weapons in stage 6 (unless there is something hidden, but I highly doubt that). I'm not experienced enough with the game to play through from where the axes are found until the end to test the axes in the final fight. However, I'd be interested to know if the second form is possible to hit earlier and how using the axes would pan out time-wise (the first form would of course be quite a bit slower).

Considering the history of holy water in other Castlevania games, it might even be worth to test that against the first form and see if it deals any additional damage.

[quote]General:
* A standard Castlevania speed strat is to jump and whip an enemy for the first hit to avoid losing time to the attack animation on at least that hit. Most of the time, you stood and whipped for all hits. You did jump-whip in some places though (especially against 1-hit enemies), so I'm guessing it works similarly in this game?[/quote]
Watching some of those areas again, I'm leaning towards at least some of these being more execution mistakes than strat decisions.

Observations during my playthrough:
* By jumping from the edge of the block at 4:49, you'll grab the rope further down, reducing the climb time.
* At 9:03, you can easily jump and take out the deer head and then land on the stairs. Would have saved an attack animation.
* At 9:09, immediately jump and whip after you land to take out the deer head. It would have saved some waiting and an attack animation.
* At 9:35, it would have been faster to turn around to get damage-boosted forward instead.
* At 10:27, jump-whipping would have been faster.
* Taking out the birds from 11 min and onwards should be looked at more closely. They seem to be predictable, so it should be possible to take more of them out by jump-attacking. At the very least, the ones attacked at 11:28 and 11:31 can consistently be jump-whipped (although not sure if the last one mattered since more enemies spawned right after).
* At 14:22, the big heart didn't look entirely necessary, even though it was only a small detour. There is another small heart at the beginning of the auto-scroller that could have been collected instead.
* In stage 4, it's in many places possible to jump to grab the chain lower than by just walking onto it. Even if you don't get the benefit everywhere, many of them are risk-free.
* At 23:12, you can do a horizontal jump here.
* At 23:19, it didn't look very well planned out when going out of the way to grab the big heart, which led to an execution mistake and in the end having plenty of axes to spare.
* At 26:10, turn around and face left to let the spikes hit you. Then you can run through the rest of the room without stopping.

This is not an easy game (in a good way) and the execution in this run is pretty good. There are quite a few on-the-spot decisions that have to be made and you need to react to random events in some areas. I would say overall, this was handled well for the most part and the execution was well done.
The issues I have with this run are mainly related to the strats being used. Many time-savers that seemed fairly obvious to me were left out (things like damage-boosting forwards instead of backwards etc) and this was just things I noticed from watching the run and a casual playthrough. Many of the points are minor, but I'm sure a lot more could be found when doing more than just scratching the surface, like I've done.

With the current knowledge I have about the game, I will have to say that this is a

(weak) Reject

LotBlind

2018-05-31 10:30:36 am

*thumbs up*

SDAVerification

2018-06-05 05:53:06 am

Decision posted.