It's a much better way to end this thread anyway, haha.
Because I found them lying around, and because I hope they can help anyone who decides to pursue actually getting a better time on this game (anyone?), I will post my original runner's comments. Needless to say, I can't get him back for another go (especially not now that he's moved on to college), so I suppose it's fair to say we have decided not to pursue an improvement to the time anytime soon. I suppose I can't blame him for his view either, since we DID work really hard on it. In any case, whatever I think about this is a non-issue anyway because my brother didn't take the news as nicely as I did, and took the view of "well then, if it's so easy, why don't they just do it themselves?". Overall, though, I would say can't really say the verifiers made the wrong choice, but I would be curious if things would have changed had they seen my runner comments first, to realize that 6 of the 8 deaths actually caused no loss in total time, and the other two deaths are in levels 17 and 19, which just NEVER go the way one intends. Yes, a more optimal time is possible, but we worked pretty hard for this time, so it's not easy by any means. I suppose in the end I mostly agree - runs on SDA should be considerably polished - but I have seen obviously sub-optimal runs on SDA in my time, so I was a little shocked. Anyway, it essentially boiled down to "the run CAN be much better, so it SHOULD be much better."
Apparently we seem to have submitted the run not too long before the "Speedrun Verification" board came up, so people didn't get to see the news or the verifier comments. In any case, I came to realize that I never "officially" announced what happened to the run (although given the time, I'm sure everyone knows by now): it unfortunately did not get accepted into SDA. I'll explain when I update my post on my Crystalis progress later (yes, that's STILL happening! haha.), but until then, I can just summarize by saying real life really likes to take up all of my time. Man, it has been a while! A year and a month since we finished the run.Īnyway, I realize I kinda disappeared into the abyss there, sorry about that. Now I'm gonna go write up some comments on the run. Who knows, perhaps we may have competition by then! (Good luck to anyone who tries, by the way: it's MUCH harder than it seems! Although I'm sure that's true of ANY game.)Īnyway, I'm sure you're all anxious to see it, so as I said, I'll put it up as soon as I figure out how (which means it should be up SOMETIME tomorrow night.). so, for now we've chosen to take a break from running this, however, until my brother's Thanksgiving Break, where we will have 5-7 days to try yet again to break this time. funny how that happens, ain't it?) I'm thinking sub-5 is indeed quite possible, we just need to play a LOT more to get there. So even though it's nowhere near optimal, it'll definitely be a fun watch, haha.Īfter looking at it again (and given the fact that, on an individual-level basis I KNOW we can do better. insane (the purple tanks REFUSE to die!). But the big places where we lost time are 17 (22.20 seconds) and 19 (25.90) - which seems bad, until you SEE it! I narrowly avoided death no less than 5 times on 17 by shooting down missiles at the last second, and 19 is just. Still, that would only waste anywhere from half a second to a few. Ironically enough, I don't think we hit optimal times on ANY of the levels aside from 1 on the run we're submitting - there's always that one tank that refused to die on pretty much every level. Time to read the SDA Knowledge Base pages.ĮDIT: Just timed it: 5:23. but I can post it somewhere once I figure out how, haha. I just read on the home page that apparently there can't be any submissions until the 25th, so I guess I can't submit the run until then. Optimality in general is very difficult to keep consistent.Īnyway, I'll post the times once I get them (I'm transfering the run to DVD as we speak, so I can time it). 19 is just too random (you CAN'T just barge in or those damn purple tanks just plain outnumber you), and in 17 I seriously think we've never had both players alive more than 2 seconds into the level, haha. but after the first few hours of trying we realized very quickly it was near impossible to do 17 and 19 anywhere near optimally. WE HAVE A RUN! Lots of hard work went into it, but it feels good to finally have something to submit!