California, USAIt depends how you want to interpret it because of the way the game is played in a more casual manner. The only limit in the No Time Manipulation category that makes it so ludicrously long is the prohibition of manipulating your system's internal clock to complete sequences of the game faster than natural. Spider RotSM checks for your location and internal clock to determine whether it should be raining or not in-game (based on your location), whether it should be night or day time (based on your system's time), and what phase of the moon cycle you should be in (based on your system's date). Ordinarily, the only in-game way you can affect this is periodically the game allows you to swap the day/ night time or rain/ clear weather for a while if you wish to complete parts of the game without waiting for it to rain in a particular part of the month. The required starting and ending points for the run I did required I start on a waxing crescent moon and end on a new moon which I planned in advance here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QLVmNRxad6rNdytbOIzbn8KNuumiyGI-qLguNkCuGIE/edit?usp=sharing You can watch parts of the No Time Manipulation run I did and see that it's essentially just isolated speedruns of different parts of the game just limited to the in-game options for altering the day/ night cycles and weather. Because of this it is very fair to say that this category is not THE longest speedrun game & category. The category includes time between play sessions mostly because every category for this game is done as Real Time Attempts and exempting No Time Manipulation would essentially just make for a typical segmented run. On a technical level this still is an extremely long run because of this timing method as you cannot shift the moon cycle forward any faster than normal through in-game means and you must complete certain parts of the game during certain parts of the moon cycle. This is nowhere near as impressive as sitting down and playing a game for several weeks straight as the time alone implies, but is nonetheless the fastest I was able to complete the game given the month and year I ran it during.
After a bit more experimentation it seems that the plasma caster and other explosions deal more damage if you get caught in the blast as well. When shooting from afar I never managed to kill the Praetorian in a single energy bar but when getting right up on it for every charged shot I could consistently kill it without needing to use other weapons. I don't know if the proximity just makes the shot deal more damage or maybe hit it like in the face or some other critical area that makes it deal more damage but results are results. This strategy also pretty regularly drops me to half health or less from self damage alone on easy, but considering any aliens that get near enough to land attacks will also just explode that seems to be a moot point.
https://streamable.com/puo64 This strategy works much more consistently for me when fighting the Praetorian as Predator; it helps minimize exposure to the smaller aliens while making the most out of nearby explosives that one probably can. The specifics go as follows: -Light shot the alien on the wall to knock it down/ possibly kill it so it doesn't interfere with upcoming charged shots (not sure what causes it to die vs just get knocked down) -Light shot the gas canister the Praetorian is walking by (causes large damage to it without knocking it down, causing it to charge at the player) -Charge shot the Praetorian once it gets near (damages it, knocks it down, and blows up the gas can on the ground near the corner of the tower to the right on spawn causing even more damage) -Charge shot the rest of the energy bar into the Praetorian while moving toward the exit (damages it severely and also places it between the player and the aliens coming from behind, likely killing them with the splash damage if they get too close) -If not dead, throw the Smart Disk at it to finish it off (keep track of its health, if still too high stay close enough to follow up with light attacks to quickly finish it off) -Immediately jump up to the exit trying to avoid charge jumps Few notes are I'm not completely sure if hitting the Praetorian in different spots deals different amounts of damage. It may be placebo but I feel like aiming charges shots lower by its legs deals more damage. The Smart Disk seems to deal between barely any to most of its remaining health, and I know that it deals different amounts of damage to marines depending where you hit them so it's probably the same here. Also the Plasma Caster cannot lock onto Xenomorphs when viewing in thermal vision so it makes quickly shooting the gas canister really easy. I'd also suggest the alien vision for swatting away the first alien since it's jumping/ attacking right at the beginning in the dark so I found it pretty hard to track without highlighting it. Also when moving past the Praetorian charge shotting it jumping allows for faster movement that's also way less likely to get interrupted by any aliens that catch up.
Something I found while messing around on stream was a softlock you could do in the Ruins during the Predator campaign. When you've acquired the mask and are leaving the Predator only section and get past the caves, a squad of marines run out from a door ("Door's closing. Watch the roofline for xenos!") that closes shut behind them. If you move just quick enough it's possible to get through the door just before/ as it's closing and get stuck on the other side. Here's the softlock and some of the areas behind it: https://streamable.com/dldf8 Unfortunately not only is it kinda finicky to pull off but nothing past those doors actually spawns except level geometry. I've tested out everything I can think of, and I can't manage to get the game to progress after that part. You can go back up to the door you're expected to come through but since it's locked you can't get back and since the lock is on the other side you can't interact with it. Although you can get into the arena nothing happens when you do. It has very buggy jumping for some reason: when you're inside the arena you can focus jump to platforms at your same elevation or below but not higher. Because of this I haven't tested what happens if you try getting into the observation area you jump to when finishing the level since best I can tell you can't. I'm pretty sure it's just a straight softlock and the only way out is to restart from the nearest checkpoint, which just puts you back in the caves.
Anyway, I noticed at the start of the Ruins level for the Alien that you can see the two archaeologists entering the building and the door locking behind them. It's a serious pain in the ass to pull off right now, but I've gotten it (semi) consistently after enough practice that I feel it's practical enough to attempt in a run. Essentially with optimal movement you can get inside the door before it closes, and unlike the Predator you don't softlock because the generator you need to bite to progress spawns. Here's an example of the skip: https://streamable.com/uia9v Obviously this bypasses needing to jump down the vent, hit the first switch, wait for the gates, hit the other two switches, crawl through the sewer, then finally enter the building to save a ton of time for such a short run. In theory it saves so much time you could try and fail it a couple times before you'd be better off just going for the switches. Thankfully it's right at the start of the level so it's super quick to practice over and over until you grind it down to something consistent. So far the most luck I've had with it has been: 1.) Sprint to the ledge immediately after spawning. 2.) Tip over the ledge and jump down to the ledge just overlooking the water pool. 3.) Look over FAST and jump as far as you can towards the wall of the staircase over the pool to your left. 4.) Sprint should have recharged now, sprint directly towards the door. Once you're near enough to them while going fast you get the prompt to harvest them, but I haven't actually tried doing that yet since the time it'd take seemed pretty counter productive to me. If it helps pull you through the door more consistently it may be worth doing. I also had one instance where the door closed exactly on top of me and I was stuck in place for a while. Spamming jump and sprint while looking around towards the inside eventually got me free and through the door, so there's still a bit of leeway in how precise you need to be, definitely not TAS levels of difficulty or anything. Here's me getting stuck but still making it through: https://streamable.com/jz8th
A bit more of an update on this, I'm still trying at it and I think it's been going pretty well. Overall I can get him to head straight for ground level to jump attack me instead of just jump around, the key to that is to keep line of sight with him since the moment he lands on the first platform. If you have a platform between you and him at the crucial moments when he's first jumping down he usually chooses to just jump to another high platform in the arena and use his plasma caster. If you do maintain line of sight, although the path he can take seems random still, he'll always head down to ground level and he tends to jump to his right which is great since that's the closest platform. Also for reliability this seems to work fine if you play a bit cautiously even when not at full health. Since he always opens on ground level with a jump attack you can pretty reliably set him up to block it and knock him down. Plenty of the Elite Predator or normal Predator's light hits will knock you down even when blocked but for some reason his leap attack never does here. The main thing for ensuring he takes as much damage and you as little is to time the explosion to blow while he's knocked down from your counter attack. Essentially when he's jumping down you want to hit the canister so it blows shortly after you block his jump attack. Here's a clip of a few things in action: https://streamable.com/a6he7
- No matter where you seem to be in the arena you will have time to reach the canister and push it around before he hits ground level. This is nice since the Predators themselves also feel really random to me right now so no matter what they do they won't ruin the setup.
- When he's first landing I stopped pushing the canister around because I'd have broke line of sight with him if I tried to get it in position and he might have jumped off to some high platform and ruined everything. Once he starts jumping to his right I go and push the canister into a better position.
- He jumps backwards away from me instead of down towards me, so I moved the canister again to be closer to the corner he lands around. That's because although he can initiate a jump attack from there he'll rub against the wall and can cause his position to sort of bug out and he may not land where you want.
- At 18 seconds you can hear my tail missed the canister (somehow), but my intent was to set the canister off a bit sooner than I ended up doing. If I had the canister in a better position (not getting stuck on that corner at the beginning and needing to pause to maintain line of sight) this wouldn't have been an issue since I could have poked it from a range with both of us stationary.
- Also because I was delayed by the canister a few times I barely managed to get the block in for his jump attack just in time. Unfortunately because I wasn't in an ideal position by the canister and was moving my counter attack didn't knock him down right next to the canister like I wanted, but he was still near enough to take decent damage.
- Upon knocking him down I backed off to avoid taking huge damage from the explosion. This is what would allow you to survive this strat at nearly any health since you could sit back and take zero damage if you so chose to. I actually ended up moving back in at the end because I figured we were so far from the explosion that I could survive it which I did.
- Keep track of the Elite Predator's health so you don't throw any extra swipes than needed since you can grab him once he's low enough and his health turns orange. Since the explosion damage he takes has the potential to vary wildly due to a ton of factors you shouldn't just attack a certain number of times or simply mash the key since you'll probably end up throwing and extra light attack or two for no reason.
Here's a clip that's much more in control: https://streamable.com/axnl3 Next step is going to be trying to get average times for left click spam, right click spam, and canister explosions to see if it's really worth anything as the strat develops more.
Normally you focus light attack spam or hard attack stunlock spam him right in his face to whittle the Elite Predator down, but I've been thinking there could be a way to quickly burst him using one of the explosive canisters around the map. Basically I've been trying to find a way to lure him down to one immediately and have it blow up right under his kilt, which CAN do a ton of damage but is also really risky and pretty inconsistent right now. Here's a clip of me pulling it off decently: https://streamable.com/3oq9s The canister in the far right front corner, facing from where he jumps down from, is closer to where he spawns but he seems to take longer to get over there for me right now, it seems like if he doesn't have nearish line of sight with you he'll just start jumping all over the arena randomly or try just using his plasma caster a lot. I've also tested with blowing up the canister without trying to push it out of its spawning location but it doesn't seem to really do damage in that location. My best guess is that the rocks and bricks stacked around the base are somehow blocking it all since they go flying everywhere but you and the Elite Predator standing right next to it won't take any damage or knockback from it. Since it also spawns a little far away from him I find standing and kicking it like a soccer ball serves to both bring it closer and guarantee it'll actually do damage so I just set that up while he's jumping down. Just like the Predalien fight it seems like the direction he chooses to jump at the start is seemingly random, which sucks, and him jumping straight forward seems to be the worst place he can go. If he jumps to his left or his right he'll end up on ground level after just two jumps where he'll immediately run and try hitting me with a long distance leap attack which gives me a pretty consistent set up for when to ignite the canister. If he goes straight forward he'll take at least 3 jumps to reach ground level and may open with something like a hard or light attack instead which can make things a bit trickier. The canister does a LOT more damage to you as an alien than to him so you want him to have his back to it with you facing it so you're the farthest from it you can be and he the closest. Here's the fastest I've managed to get it so far: https://streamable.com/yudaa I'm looking ideally for something more consistent than focus light attack spam since he can try charged attacks that knock himself down and around that can cause attacks to miss and waste time or even block. Not to mention the nature of melee fights while that close to an enemy with the wonky physics the aliens have makes the fight sometimes become needlessly more obnoxious than necessary just because something fucky happens. I had a fight where he blocked nearly 1/3 of all my attacks that took forever that made me say enough is enough and want to blow the ugly motherfucker up.
Did a bit more testing, like 3 or 4 playthroughs of the last level and he seemed to always try jumping up the same ledge by I spawn right below to start the second phase. His pathing following you seems pretty consistent other than at the very beginning so baiting him onto the breakable platform is consistent. His spawn point when he jumps out of the lava still feels totally random though so you'll have anywhere from plenty of time to barely any to get in all the extra damage you need.
In this he went right instead of straight so I had to wait to use the plasma caster and I stuck around too long and he charged a hard attack. It looks like even when he misses you with that he stops and screams for a bit so I'm considering just not punching early on if he doesn't come straight at me. Even if you get hit by the charge attack though if you're in a shift jump then you won't get knocked back and there is no way he'll ever do enough damage to kill you. I've also seen if you can hit him as part of him is exposed in the lava you can get a little extra damage in, but it's pretty inconsistent and hard to do. I missed it here, but since you're not doing anything else I figure it's probably worth at least trying.
I haven't yet, I'll try that sometime later this weekend.
I'm pretty sure this is consistent, I practiced it over and over by just restarting the checkpoint for the boss fight before the end credits sequence begins and can get it easily 9.999/10 times.
https://streamable.com/jtzlr Ignore the audio, I was listening to a friend's stream while practicing
After the predalien takes enough damage, he'll have a little over half health, he will run away and jump up to start the next cycle after romping around a bit. I've seen that two charged plasma caster shots and three light attacks push him over the edge and make him run. Also, if he knocks you down and does a grab attack he seems to just run afterwards. Also also, dipping him into the lava causes him to immediately run when he jumps out. You both always start in the same position and from what I can tell he seems to randomly choose a direction to get to you, on your left on your right or straight towards you. If he goes to either side it's safer to wait until after he jumps again because he lands on breakable flooring. If he jumps straight towards you he lands on an invincible platform so you can immediately start firing. Hit him with two charged plasma caster shots and two light attacks. If you do fewer he's less likely to start a charge attack, after which he'll always roar which will waste a bit of time, but you'll have to get more damage in later to make up for it. I like to go for one now because I feel it helps just enough to make for an easier kill later and is often fast enough to not allow him to charge attack you. Jump onto the nearby breakable section of the platform just to the right of the screen when you spawn in and he'll follow. When you land immediately turn and charge a plasma caster show aiming at the floor where he'll land. If you jump too far forwards he may jump so far onto the platform that he'll be on the invincible flooring and you'll probably need to jump back and forth to reset his position. Shoot at his feet once he lands to hit him with the splash and dip him in the lava for a lot of damage. Where and when he jumps back out feels totally random but he always seems to try to jump up to the ledge right above where you spawn so just go back there and wait. When he comes out burst him down with plasma caster shots, melee, and spears until he dies. You ought to be able to guess good enough where he's going to jump out of the lava at by his screeching audio cues. If you miss his feet with the plasma caster shot when dunking him in the lava it's still doable if you REALLY wail on him after he gets out but it's a lot tighter, maybe not doable if he gets out too close to the starting ledge. I've tried using mines at the base of that ledge to get more damage on him but he doesn't always jump up to the ledge from the same place and is so fast he can usually just run and jump past them without taking damage. I also haven't compared the time of this to the normal two cycle method so I'm not sure what kind of time save potential this has, though it's probably not very much.
host it in San Jose ca please tyty in advance, alternatively somewhere close to an airport is ideal, if brobuzz hadn’t been kind enough to drive me it’d have been like 75USD cab fare one way from YHM to that hotel
when's testing shift -> punch -> recharge -> repeat vs punch -> shift -> recharge -> repeat
a few sequence breaks, walking along ledges you're not supposed to be able to, making jumps you're not supposed to, hitting checkpoints early to skip parts of the game, weapon bugs, getting to places you're not supposed to be, getting past obstacles you're not supposed to be able to, getting through areas without fighting like you're supposed to, and using an object's physics to reach a ledge you're unable to reach normally
the text going off the right side is bothering me more and more 
going to have to unword you for shouting out headcrab, he is a menace to the speedrunning community
