Thomas Was Alone

NiNJa_OwNeD

2014-02-15 09:29:27 am

I've pushed my time down to 1:11:28, can I claim fastest time by using a keyboard Wink

NiNJa_OwNeD

2014-02-15 09:57:44 am

I would use my Xbox controller but it's to sensitive so the blocks will drift to the left when I rest my thumb on the thumb stick, and I asked Mike and he says there isn't a way to change the dead zones so I'm stuck with the keyboard Sad

NiNJa_OwNeD

2014-02-15 02:14:41 pm

Quote from NiNJa_OwNeD:

I could easily get 1:05 to 1:10

I like proving myself right Smiley

I got down to 1:05:44 but I don't think with my strats I could get much lower, that was a flawless run with barely any mistakes. Guess I need to get down to practicing individual worlds Wink

jymotion

2014-02-15 11:39:59 pm

Quote from NiNJa_OwNeD:

... I'm stuck with the keyboard Sad

while I prefer my ps3 controller, I'm pretty certain laquendi's 0:57 was on keyboard. don't limit yourself, get that sub-1:00!

NiNJa_OwNeD

2014-02-16 12:55:31 am

Quote from jymotion:

while I prefer my ps3 controller, I'm pretty certain laquendi's 0:57 was on keyboard. don't limit yourself, get that sub-1:00!

TBH I prefer keyboard as it makes it easier in the later stages to switch between characters.

NiNJa_OwNeD

2014-02-16 03:54:03 am

I was on target for a sub 1:05 and I was on 9.9 then my computer crashed -_- goddamit

NiNJa_OwNeD

2014-02-16 12:43:11 pm

New record: 1:03:26 Pretty happy, I've got World 1 down to sub 2:30 and tomorrow I'm going to work on World 2 and on wards Smiley

Tovargent

2014-03-05 06:47:50 am

Anyone still running this game?

Just got a new WR - 51:28

Made some silly mistakes during the last two segments which cost a lot of time so I can probably push my time closer to 51:00. My sum of best splits at the moment is 50:54 and I have a terrible 7.x segment time which means it can go much lower. I can post the best split times if anyone wants them for comparison. I think I have videos saved of most of them as well.

Oh and I used a controller for the run. Keyboard makes jumps too inaccurate for me and it's not worth using it to save a few seconds at most by switching characters faster.

jymotion

2014-03-05 01:28:46 pm

Quote from Tovargent:

Anyone still running this game?

Just got a new WR - 51:28

Solid run, mate. To answer your question, NiNJa_OwNed (above you) is the only guy I've heard running it in a long time. I stopped doing attempts after I cut 0:52, but I'll probably get back into it now that you've stepped up.

Looks like we use slightly different strats on quite a few levels. Your strat on 3.10 skips a couple cycles, which should be useful. I'll also try to incorporate your 7.5, 7.6, 7.9 and 9.2 strats into my own. You had different strats on 5.9 and 7.3 which I felt were slower than the ones I used, but I haven't timed them and they may have just not gone perfectly in your run.

Anyway, congrats! Maybe we can do some races in the near future.

Tovargent

2014-03-05 03:54:37 pm

Yeah would be great if you got back into it.

3.10 is indeed much faster the way I do it but you have to get the timing just right as to when you press the switch. If you press it too early or too late, Claire will not be able to make it up in time.

5.9 is a level I hate. Can't seem to find a clean strategy for it. But I think the one in this run was quite good, as that gold split was 3 seconds better than my previous pb for that segment, and I think that's where I gained most of that time.

I think you mean 7.2 not 7.3? The one with the moving portals. I played around a lot with that level and had found that the way that I do it was significantly faster for me, but now that I have rewatched your video, I actually think yours is better. If you actually mean 7.3, they seem to be very similar timewise. I'll test it more when I play tomorrow as I like the way you get the last switch since it's much safer. As my PB video demonstrates, throwing Claire in the water sometimes causes issues with the double jump because of the bouncing.

7.5 and 7.6 are fairly simple, though my execution of them was bad in this run. Actually the whole 7 segment wasn't that great. I gained time on my splits because my previous pb had an even worse 7 but an excellent 8 and 9 to make up for it. For 7.5, Chris seems too slow to actually do anything with him. 7.6 is WR strats. High risk for little reward. It's easy to miss those jumps but nailing them does make it faster.

My 7.9 is quite optimized I think. There never really is any downtime and I'm happy with the strat for that level.

I botched 9.2 during this run by having Paul get stuck at the start. But usually I do just throw them all in the water in the beginning. The idea is that they move forward on their own while I'm doing other things.

I'd be up to race, but that can be a bit of a problem with timezones as I'm in Europe and I assume you're American. I'm still going to be playing this game anyway for now, trying for sub 51.

Yeah would be great if you got back into it.

3.10 is indeed much faster the way I do it but you have to get the timing just right as to when you press the switch. If you press it too early or too late, Claire will not be able to make it up in time.

5.9 is a level I hate. Can't seem to find a clean strategy for it. But I think the one in this run was quite good, as that gold split was 3 seconds better than my previous pb for that segment, and I think that's where I gained most of that time.

I think you mean 7.2 not 7.3? The one with the moving portals. I played around a lot with that level and had found that the way that I do it was significantly faster for me, but now that I have rewatched your video, I actually think yours is better. If you actually mean 7.3, they seem to be very similar timewise. I'll test it more when I play tomorrow as I like the way you get the last switch since it's much safer. As my PB video demonstrates, throwing Claire in the water sometimes causes issues with the double jump because of the bouncing.

7.5 and 7.6 are fairly simple, though my execution of them was bad in this run. Actually the whole 7 segment wasn't that great. I gained time on my splits because my previous pb had an even worse 7 but an excellent 8 and 9 to make up for it. For 7.5, Chris seems too slow to actually do anything with him. 7.6 is WR strats. High risk for little reward. It's easy to miss those jumps but nailing them does make it faster.

My 7.9 is quite optimized I think. There never really is any downtime and I'm happy with the strat for that level.

I botched 9.2 during this run by having Paul get stuck at the start. But usually I do just throw them all in the water in the beginning. The idea is that they move forward on their own while I'm doing other things.

I'd be up to race, but that can be a bit of a problem with timezones as I'm in Europe and I assume you're American. I'm still going to be playing this game anyway for now, trying for sub 51.

jymotion

Edit history:

jymotion: 2014-05-19 08:54:00 pm

jymotion: 2014-03-05 09:59:57 pm

2014-03-05 09:42:23 pm

Quote from Tovargent:

5.9 is a level I hate. Can't seem to find a clean strategy for it. But I think the one in this run was quite good, as that gold split was 3 seconds better than my previous pb for that segment, and I think that's where I gained most of that time.

Using our two PB's they appear to be even (without your death towards the end).

Quote from Tovargent:

I think you mean 7.2 not 7.3? The one with the moving portals. I played around a lot with that level and had found that the way that I do it was significantly faster for me, but now that I have rewatched your video, I actually think yours is better.

Yes, I meant 7.2. Sorry about that. Have you run into any issues with Claire's portal using your route? If I remember correctly, avoiding her floating portal was the reason I went with the other route.

The rest are just small strats used by you that save time and simply never occurred to me. I'll try to work them in.

And you assumed correctly, I'm American (GMT-5).

[quote="Tovargent"]5.9 is a level I hate. Can't seem to find a clean strategy for it. But I think the one in this run was quite good, as that gold split was 3 seconds better than my previous pb for that segment, and I think that's where I gained most of that time.[/quote]
Using our two PB's they appear to be even (without your death towards the end).

[quote="Tovargent"]I think you mean 7.2 not 7.3? The one with the moving portals. I played around a lot with that level and had found that the way that I do it was significantly faster for me, but now that I have rewatched your video, I actually think yours is better.[/quote]
Yes, I meant 7.2.  Sorry about that.  Have you run into any issues with Claire's portal using your route?  If I remember correctly, avoiding her floating portal was the reason I went with the other route.

The rest are just small strats used by you that save time and simply never occurred to me.  I'll try to work them in.

And you assumed correctly, I'm American (GMT-5).

Tovargent

Edit history:

Tovargent: 2014-03-06 09:23:44 am

Tovargent: 2014-03-06 07:50:00 am

Tovargent: 2014-03-06 07:49:51 am

2014-03-06 04:55:50 am

Usually if everything goes right I can get Claire to the portal with the second bounce. When I was trying to figure out how to do that level, I was able to complete it in 32 seconds that way while the other solution was always 5 seconds slower. Your pb was able to do it in 30 seconds though so maybe I'm just bad at that strat.

New time - 51:23
This was an overall much more solid run. Got too greedy in 5.7 and ended up losing a lot of time there. I also changed my strats for 7.2 and 7.3 after some testing.

I watched some of the practice you did yesterday and noticed something interesting. At the end of 7.10 you tried to reset the level as soon as you finished and it took you to 8.1. That level has a very long ending animation and doing this saves a couple of seconds. This trick should also be useful in some 4.x levels which have the cloud animation at the end. Think we should start doing this or is it better to just have uninterrupted gameplay?

Usually if everything goes right I can get Claire to the portal with the second bounce. When I was trying to figure out how to do that level, I was able to complete it in 32 seconds that way while the other solution was always 5 seconds slower. Your pb was able to do it in 30 seconds though so maybe I'm just bad at that strat.

New time - [url=http://www.twitch.tv/tovargent/c/3837104]51:23[/url]
This was an overall much more solid run. Got too greedy in 5.7 and ended up losing a lot of time there. I also changed my strats for 7.2 and 7.3 after some testing.

I watched some of the practice you did yesterday and noticed something interesting. At the end of 7.10 you tried to reset the level as soon as you finished and it took you to 8.1. That level has a very long ending animation and doing this saves a couple of seconds. This trick should also be useful in some 4.x levels which have the cloud animation at the end. Think we should start doing this or is it better to just have uninterrupted gameplay?

jymotion

2014-03-06 02:05:25 pm

Quote from Tovargent:

New time - 51:23
This was an overall much more solid run. Got too greedy in 5.7 and ended up losing a lot of time there. I also changed my strats for 7.2 and 7.3 after some testing.

I watched some of the practice you did yesterday and noticed something interesting. At the end of 7.10 you tried to reset the level as soon as you finished and it took you to 8.1. That level has a very long ending animation and doing this saves a couple of seconds. This trick should also be useful in some 4.x levels which have the cloud animation at the end. Think we should start doing this or is it better to just have uninterrupted gameplay?

grats. I'll check out the new strats when I get a chance.

As for the resetting to skip cut-scenes: Since this is similar to loading a save, this may or may not change the run from single-segment to RTA, but since it's really just the two of us, I don't think that's a big deal. If it were more like Super Monkey Ball 2, where you quit to the Level Select screen after every level to skip cut-scenes and replays, I'd be more against it. As it is now, I argue we should just do what's fastest, i.e. I'm in favor of working these cut-scene skips into the run.

[quote="Tovargent"]New time - [url=http://www.twitch.tv/tovargent/c/3837104]51:23[/url]
This was an overall much more solid run. Got too greedy in 5.7 and ended up losing a lot of time there. I also changed my strats for 7.2 and 7.3 after some testing.

I watched some of the practice you did yesterday and noticed something interesting. At the end of 7.10 you tried to reset the level as soon as you finished and it took you to 8.1. That level has a very long ending animation and doing this saves a couple of seconds. This trick should also be useful in some 4.x levels which have the cloud animation at the end. Think we should start doing this or is it better to just have uninterrupted gameplay?[/quote]
grats.  I'll check out the new strats when I get a chance.

As for the resetting to skip cut-scenes:  Since this is similar to loading a save, this may or may not change the run from single-segment to RTA, but since it's really just the two of us, I don't think that's a big deal.  If it were more like Super Monkey Ball 2, where you quit to the Level Select screen after every level to skip cut-scenes and replays, I'd be more against it.  As it is now, I argue we should just do what's fastest, i.e. I'm in favor of working these cut-scene skips into the run.

Tovargent

2014-03-06 04:07:55 pm

The strats are mostly similar to what you used on your old wr. 7.3 takes the exact same amount of time to complete, but your method seems much safer.

Yeah I agree with that. We would just be hitting the restart level button and not exiting to the main menu. 7.10 might be the only level in which it actually helps, but I'll test if it's worth doing anywhere else.

Tovargent

Edit history:

Tovargent: 2014-03-07 07:50:12 am

2014-03-07 07:08:33 am

Tested out every level and the results were much better than expected. It saves around 27 seconds over the whole run.

Levels it works on: 4.2, 4.4, 4.6, 4.8, 4.10, 7.10, 9.9

It seems it's possible to bind the restart level to a key in the launcher, but for some reason it doesn't work for me. Would save even more time if it did.

Tovargent

2014-03-09 12:04:35 pm

Got a 51:12 using the cutscene skip. The run wasn't anything special, but the skip helped to lower time anyway.

Tovargent

2014-03-11 11:05:05 am

Big improvement to 50:38. Starting to think sub 50 is possible. My sum of best segments is 49:59 right now, so it won't be easy.

Tovargent

2014-03-17 02:42:37 pm

Another huge improvement and first sub 50 run - 49:44

First two segments weren't that great, and lost a lot of time on 3.10 and 4.8. From 5 onwards this run was extremely good, with some minor mistakes at the end.

Tovargent

2014-03-19 02:30:55 pm

49:40

The only thing worth watching in this run is level 3.8. Found a new, more difficult way to do that level that is 12-13 seconds quicker.

Tovargent

2014-03-23 01:15:39 pm

I've been playing around with the quality settings today and found out that the game runs much faster on some of them. There are 6 quality settings in the Steam version of this game which I will divide in two. The 'good', 'beautiful', and 'fantastic' settings are probably what most people play on, and are what I consider regular settings. The problem is with the other 3 (simple, fast, fastest). When using these, the game unlocks the frame rate which causes some changes. Jump size become much easier to control and falling speed seems to be faster (for example, level 0.2 is a second faster with the lower settings). I haven't noticed any changes in movement speed or bouncing physics.

While testing, I managed to smash most of my individual segment pbs by a significant amount of time, even in suboptimal runs, and could probably get a sub 48 time if I finished a good run with those settings. Still, I suggest that anyone running the game does so on the regular settings so that everyone is on the same playing field. Any thoughts?

I've been playing around with the quality settings today and found out that the game runs much faster on some of them. There are 6 quality settings in the Steam version of this game which I will divide in two. The 'good', 'beautiful', and 'fantastic' settings are probably what most people play on, and are what I consider regular settings. The problem is with the other 3 (simple, fast, fastest). When using these, the game unlocks the frame rate which causes some changes. Jump size become much easier to control and falling speed seems to be faster (for example, level 0.2 is a second faster with the lower settings). I haven't noticed any changes in movement speed or bouncing physics.

While testing, I managed to smash most of my individual segment pbs by a significant amount of time, even in suboptimal runs, and could probably get a sub 48 time if I finished a good run with those settings. Still, I suggest that anyone running the game does so on the regular settings so that everyone is on the same playing field. Any thoughts?

jymotion

2014-03-23 04:06:32 pm

Quote from Tovargent:

Any thoughts?

sigh. that's inconvenient. I guess I'll make arguments for both and let you decide, since you're the biggest stakeholder atm.

Use Low Settings

Unlike the iQue or 1.0 carts, using this "version" of the game doesn't exclude anyone. If anything, it allows more people to run the game competitively.
"Jump size become much easier to control"
Simply put, it's faster. When we talked about skipping cutscenes, we went with what was faster.

Use Normal/High Settings

Previous runs have used these settings. Switching would make these runs obsolete, despite possibly being better executed (until new settings are optimized).
It's a pretty simply styled game, so it isn't as big of a deal, but higher settings are more enjoyable to watch/look at.

My opinion: it doesn't entirely matter as long as everyone uses the same settings. the reason I'd lean towards using lower settings is because even if we agree to use high settings, someone new could come along, disagree, get a better run with low settings and create an awkward situation. switching to the fastest settings now ensures that doesn't happen.

[quote="Tovargent"]Any thoughts?[/quote]
[i]sigh[/i].  that's inconvenient.  I guess I'll make arguments for both and let you decide, since you're the biggest stakeholder atm.

[u][b]Use Low Settings[/b][/u]
[ul][li]Unlike the iQue or 1.0 carts, using this "version" of the game doesn't exclude anyone.  If anything, it allows more people to run the game competitively.  [/li]
[li]"Jump size become much easier to control"[/li]
[li]Simply put, it's faster.  When we talked about skipping cutscenes, we went with what was faster.[/li][/ul]
[u][b]Use Normal/High Settings[/b][/u]
[ul][li]Previous runs have used these settings.  Switching would make these runs obsolete, despite possibly being better executed (until new settings are optimized).[/li]
[li]It's a pretty simply styled game, so it isn't as big of a deal, but higher settings are more enjoyable to watch/look at.[/li][/ul]
My opinion: it doesn't entirely matter as long as everyone uses the same settings.  the reason I'd lean towards using lower settings is because even if we agree to use high settings, someone new could come along, disagree, get a better run with low settings and create an awkward situation.  switching to the fastest settings now ensures that doesn't happen.

Tovargent

2014-03-24 08:07:57 am

I was originally thinking that it might give different results depending on pc specs and how fast you can run the game, but I just did some testing on an old laptop and it seems to give the same results, as long as the game is running above 60 fps, so that's a good thing. Overheating can be another hardware issue for some people. Playing on high quality barely affects GPU temperature, while low settings increased mine from the usual ~35C to 60+C after a few minutes.

Anyway, what I've decided to do is to try reaching my next goal of 48:30 using the old high settings as I know it's possible, then maybe switch over after that to see by how much it can actually be improved.

Tovargent

2014-04-01 07:42:59 am

48:27 using low settings. This run had some very bad levels (3.7 and 4.10) and execution wasn't that great in some parts. Definite room for improvement.

Tovargent

2014-04-09 05:01:09 pm

Improved WR by quite a bit to 48:37, although it wasn't the sub 48:30 I was looking for. Still a good time, considering I had a very bad start which put me 16 seconds behind.

Tovargent

Edit history:

Tovargent: 2014-04-16 11:28:13 am

2014-04-16 10:10:04 am

Remember that 9.6 early exit that some people had happen and weren't sure how? I just found a consistent strat for it that completely destroys that level. This level is quite long and used to take around 2 minutes to complete. With this strat it takes less than 30 seconds, which is a huge time save, making current times obsolete.

I also improved levels 9.1 and 9.4 based on this skip.

47:11 on the first run since I discovered this. Just watch those 3 levels. Wasn't a very good run apart from those.