Total Annihilation

2014-11-10 02:21:03 am

Had been thinking about some strats on a few maps for a while and did some runs this arvo since u mentioned it. cut another 37 minutes game-time off (18 and a half mins real time) off the run, that's enough for today i think, more strat improvements to come later
what i changed :
map 22 : i walk com and just dgun a clearing on each section and build a vehicle plant for defenders and flashes cutting about 6 and a half minutes
map 25 : used wind instead of solar, and just generally did it cleaner cutting about 3 minutes still went for hawks
map 13 : did a more efficient build towards hawks, cutting roughly 3 minutes, used landed hawks for the energy i needed to build more hawks faster (+20 energy while landed)
map 20 : better map awareness cutting about 16 seconds, d gunning things that couldn't be handled by other starting units, otherwise ignoring them and moving com faster
map 21 : building 1 vehicle plant then 1 construction, guard samsons with vehicle while commander dguns everything, samsons basically just kill air and a few straggler units, cuts about 10 minutes
map 16 : cut 11 minutes by just using samsons and radar targeting everything (and scouting the vamps). I dgun the first punisher and most of the ADV military units, the hlts on the hill are taken out by using the focus fire hillside glitch

if i re recorded with these times id be down to about 3 hours 21 minutes. wont be too long before i have strats that are consistent and sub 3, that's when ill do my next upload i guess.

will do some more shortening another day. time for sleep

Had been thinking about some strats on a few maps for a while and did some runs this arvo since u mentioned it. cut another 37 minutes game-time off (18 and a half mins real time) off the run, that's enough for today i think, more strat improvements to come later
what i changed : 
map 22 : i walk com and just dgun a clearing on each section and build a vehicle plant for defenders and flashes cutting about 6 and a half minutes
map 25 : used wind instead of solar, and just generally did it cleaner cutting about 3 minutes still went for hawks
map 13 : did a more efficient build towards hawks, cutting roughly 3 minutes, used landed hawks for the energy i needed to build more hawks faster (+20 energy while landed)
map 20 : better map awareness cutting about 16 seconds, d gunning things that couldn't be handled by other starting units, otherwise ignoring them and moving com faster
map 21 : building 1 vehicle plant then 1 construction, guard samsons with vehicle while commander dguns everything, samsons basically just kill air and a few straggler units, cuts about 10 minutes
map 16 : cut 11 minutes by just using samsons and radar targeting everything (and scouting the vamps). I dgun the first punisher and most of the ADV military units, the hlts on the hill are taken out by using the focus fire hillside glitch

if i re recorded with these times id be down to about 3 hours 21 minutes. wont be too long before i have strats that are consistent and sub 3, that's when ill do my next upload i guess.

will do some more shortening another day. time for sleep

Lupy501

2014-11-10 02:33:34 am

heres my current spread sheet haha

Attachment:

Capture.PNG

Lupy501

2014-11-12 11:56:23 pm

Have some optimized times for the first 3 levels, will upload them as segment videos soon, they are pretty tight.
also caught vid of the dgun glitch in action. no luck replicating it though. i have no idea what triggers it at this point, looks like an overflow in negative health for 1 frame of dgun damage (more than one frame probly causes the dgun to kill it), really not idea how to get it consistent...

Attachments:

Capture.PNG

dgun glitch.png

gammadragon

2014-11-13 12:51:02 am

Might be magic...

I'm really enjoying all the effort that's going into this game. It's definitely one classic that deserves the attention. Keep up the good work!

Lupy501

2014-11-13 01:05:35 am

Thanks man, when my life settles down a bit i might start streaming it and Kerbal Space Program, maybe some other things. Still looking for a job at the moment but once ive got one down i can probly do some afternoons every other day or something.
thanks again for the support. Spent a bit of tonight also experimenting with the fastest way to take on level 4, but it does seem that flashes are still the go.
if only there was more to compete against. or some rules set for how long this run needs to be
100% would be insane, probly close to an 18 hour run, 100% pre expansion will be closer to 7 hours,
any% aka arm or core only will be sub 3 hour however once i get the strats down, and find the best for each level. theres still some that i can cut many minutes off heh.
tell your friends Tongue

Lupy501

2014-11-13 04:00:48 pm

just cut over a minute off mission 4. just flashes, only one construction vehicle. used com explosion to kill the last units, still counts as victory. nom nom nom time savings

Lupy501

Edit history:

Lupy501: 2014-11-16 03:00:50 am

2014-11-16 12:38:28 am

Just a quick update
been lots of improvements coming in only 1 minute and 34 seconds to cut till i'm sub 3 hours....
also youtube playlist of the levels done so far new and improved strats... check em out... few more to come tomorow afternoon after work
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUm8sMOPiVQmtiXCqkqy7wXg12EcWRUK2

Attachment:

Capture.PNG

Lag.Com

2014-11-16 04:53:02 am

sda loyalist

You're doing well, keep at it! Will be watching those vids over the next few days. It's just as well that the AI doesn't respond to radar targeting properly.

Also a shame that the auto-targeting building is only in Core Contingency Tongue

Lupy501

Edit history:

Lupy501: 2014-11-16 08:09:32 pm

Lupy501: 2014-11-16 07:39:51 pm

2014-11-16 11:42:26 am

lol targeting facility is pretty op, too bad it costs so much heh, i dont think itd be viable on many levels haha. Thinking about things that cost thousands of energy per second, i wonder if building tidals and then cloaking will give any advantage to the water maps.... .... nope, AI radar targets you... lol

gammadragon

2014-11-17 12:19:23 am

Might be magic...

Watching the videos now... doing really well so far. Keep it up.

Warepire

2014-12-07 03:41:48 am

Heavy Metal Powered

I have internet issues for ~3 weeks and this thread goes totally silent.
Has there been any progress?

Lupy501

2014-12-14 01:22:37 am

Nothing much at the moment, i've been working 7 days a week so havent had time. when things settle down i might get back into it. feel free to pick up TA and chip away at my times Tongue

kakashi12309

Edit history:

kakashi12309: 2015-09-12 08:22:37 pm

2015-09-07 09:51:28 pm

Hey everyone,

I've been working on speedrunning both Arm and Core campaigns for the past month and I managed to get some fairly good times for a lot of them. I was inspired by Lupy's attempts on his youtube channel and I decided to give it a go, but now I'm stuck on four terrible kill-all missions (ARM 23, 25; CORE 23, 24). I googled total annihilation speedruns to get some insight, and I ended up here...

I uploaded my attempts here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPLmMBt7CnF37qElT6-fnpQ/playlists

Right now, I'm pretty much unmotivated to the the last four because they seem to just require brute force. The ones that I really like to do are those where I don't have to build up a large army because it then feels like i'm just playing the mission normally...

Update: just did M23 for both ARM and CORE... both are long kill-all missions, but managed to do both under 20min

Lag.Com

2015-09-13 03:49:58 am

sda loyalist

I'm sadhappy that you managed to trim off a second on my first two level times Wink

I'll watch them over the next couple of days.

kakashi12309

Edit history:

kakashi12309: 2015-09-18 02:49:25 am

2015-09-16 09:29:59 pm

Just finished last CORE mission - total time for the Core Campaign is 2h57m59s, which is already shorter than what I have with 24 ARM missions.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKHi1z1_QKPWcRfe5HFR1fuvBYsn-5fAU

Personally, I enjoyed the CORE missions more than the ARM. Times were generally more consistent... ARM has some ridiculously short missions, but they have many kill-alls... more than the CORE actually. However, I feel that the ARM missions could still be greatly optimized...

Maybe I'll try to do some Battle Tactics runs... Core Contingency is a big no for me - every single mission for both ARM and CORE are kill-alls...

Update: I've added a few tips and tricks to the SDA Knowledge Base (https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Total_Annihilation).

Warepire

2015-09-19 05:35:23 am

Heavy Metal Powered

Very nice work on the CORE missions, do you think you can re-do the ones using +-commands? Some of the strategies you used very really awesome.
This is definitely submit-worthy after the missions with +-commands are re-done without them, if you want to submit (and have proper recordings of them locally). Would be really cool to see TotalA submitted.

Freezard

2015-09-19 06:55:49 am

I agree. Also it was nice to read about some glitches/tricks in the KB.

kakashi12309

2015-09-19 01:03:48 pm

Quote from Warepire:

Very nice work on the CORE missions, do you think you can re-do the ones using +-commands? Some of the strategies you used very really awesome.
This is definitely submit-worthy after the missions with +-commands are re-done without them, if you want to submit (and have proper recordings of them locally). Would be really cool to see TotalA submitted.

I suppose you mean to do without +shootall, because I technically do have +dither and +clock (and +showranges for a few) enabled for all the missions. +dither is just a personal preference since all it does is make explored terrain outside LOS appear darker instead of gray. +clock is there so you get the timer in the bottom left. +shootall does actually affect gameplay, though I personally don't think it's much of a cheat since it just makes units automatically attack all units (rather than just offensive ones). I could go back to do missions without +shootall if need be. CORE missions are generally fine without +shootall it seems, but the ARM campaign would suffer a lot without it (see ARM 4, 5, 12, 13, 23)

With that said, I also would like to ask whether using the commander explosion (the "com-bomb") to finish a mission should be considered legal. The game registers a mission as victorious as long as the mission objective(s) are completed regardless of whether the commander survives or not. This run of CORE mission 18 is a good example:

[quote="Warepire"]Very nice work on the CORE missions, do you think you can re-do the ones using +-commands? Some of the strategies you used very really awesome.
This is definitely submit-worthy after the missions with +-commands are re-done without them, if you want to submit (and have proper recordings of them locally). Would be really cool to see TotalA submitted.[/quote]

I suppose you mean to do without +shootall, because I technically do have +dither and +clock (and +showranges for a few) enabled for all the missions. +dither is just a personal preference since all it does is make explored terrain outside LOS appear darker instead of gray. +clock is there so you get the timer in the bottom left. +shootall does actually affect gameplay, though I personally don't think it's much of a cheat since it just makes units automatically attack all units (rather than just offensive ones). I could go back to do missions without +shootall if need be. CORE missions are generally fine without +shootall it seems, but the ARM campaign would suffer a lot without it (see ARM 4, 5, 12, 13, 23)

With that said, I also would like to ask whether using the commander explosion (the "com-bomb") to finish a mission should be considered legal. The game registers a mission as victorious as long as the mission objective(s) are completed regardless of whether the commander survives or not. This run of CORE mission 18 is a good example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KohPWHIjyes&index=3&list=PLKHi1z1_QKPWVM6HGDqhGgt6LSO4JYVx6

Warepire

2015-09-19 02:04:10 pm

Heavy Metal Powered

+shootall is surely not allowed.
+showranges I am not sure what you could gain from, but it doesn't look like it would be allowed, you should clear this one with staff.
+clock should make timing easier, so it may actually be preferred on in runs.
+dither I don't know, this should be ok, but if you want to submit, you need to clear this one with staff.

The Com-Bomb is just abusing the game mechanics, that's allowed. There are similar tricks in other published games already, abusing the fact that if the winning conditions are checked before the defeat conditions, and thus dying while completing the final objective(s) to save time.

kakashi12309

2015-09-19 02:53:56 pm

I'll probably redo Core Campaign without any +commands then. However, someone else will have to do the Arm campaign, since I won't be willing to do without +shootall (which is fine because i'm failing miserably on ARM 25).

What I might have to do is replan some strategies if Com-bombing is allowed, mainly for kill-all missions. I would also have to take advantage of the fact that faster times can be completed if the commander dies before the mission is completed, but (in the five seconds between the commander death and when the game would declare "defeat") the mission objectives ARE completed, then the game would register "victory" when "defeat" should've occurred. Of course, com-bombing would be useless on capture missions

Warepire

2015-09-20 03:01:24 am

Heavy Metal Powered

Definitely don't turn off +clock, since the game has multiple game speeds, this will make it easier for judges to time the runs.
Check Age of Mythology for precedence where the in-game clock was required on.

I see absolutely no reason for Com-Bombing to be banned, see The Operative: No One Lives Forever as an example (other games does this too) where a mission is finished despite triggering a "fail" condition. It's just that the victory condition is triggered as well, and thus you progress anyway.

If you prefer to play with +dither, take it up with the mods (green names), it may very well be allowed.

kakashi12309

2015-09-20 01:59:37 pm

Okay nevermind about CORE campaign. I just tried to do mission 4, and it just seems silly for me to have to put up radar towers just so I can queue up attack commands on three buildings that my units would otherwise pass by and attack automatically if I had +shootall on. Also, I still have to get used to timing com-bombs... Even if it doesn't seem silly, I am really pressed for time... school is starting for me really soon (tomorrow), so I will have to put this off for a while unfortunately.

kakashi12309

2015-09-24 07:30:38 pm

Turns out the first week wasn't as busy as I expected, so I redid Core mission 2:

I also did a few Battle Tactics missions, Core Shorts:

Apologies if this post is too big... I'll happily edit it if that's the case

kakashi12309

2015-09-27 06:59:53 pm

Okay, so I redid all the Core missions that had +shootall enabled. I also took the time to improve on a few missions that needed some improvement. Updated playlist is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKHi1z1_QKPWPp0wOOir9_1p6xgYT45lq

Total time now is 2h41m03s

I'm not sure how the submission process works... The files are pretty large (100mb+ per mission)

Warepire

2015-09-30 09:49:14 am

Heavy Metal Powered

For submission, you go to this form and fill it out: https://queue.speeddemosarchive.com/submission/
The fields are pretty self-explanatory. You do not upload the files yet, once the submission is processed you will receive further instructions on how to send the files.

Good luck!

In the submission comments, do explain the usage of +clock and +dither. It would be nice with detailed mission comments as well, but it's not necessary to provide them, considering you're probably rather busy with school now it's a reason to not provide them if they aren't already written.