Yes, sorry, that is what I meant when I had said "it would naturally disallow stims". Perhaps it was poor wording. I meant that, since they would massively count against your time, they are as good as disallowed since nobody would dare to take that time loss anyway.

As mentioned, if we find some crazy hard strategy that we just can't get without them they should be able to be used with no problem.

EDIT: The only thing left now is to figure out exactly which frames we want to start and stop the count. When figuring out the full-game run times I have been ending on the frame where Timor's final objective is completed as that seems to be the moment control is lost. I will need to see if that is always the case in other levels as well. For the start, I have been counting from the first frame where the "start game" button gets blurry which is the moment the click registers. I am unsure if this is actually when the level is starting as you can move before the screen fades in and I have no idea how else to tell.

While I can't say for 100% certain, I am pretty sure to memory I saw them lined up with one moving away when I was running Landing Bay a while ago.

Too bad I don't still have the recording to see that...

Yup, I've been chatting with Onin through this and we have the difficulties taken out now. It was really only there to begin with because they weren't sure if Easy could be faster, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Regardless if it ever were faster, that wouldn't matter anyway. Everybody would just run Easy.

Onin is not interested in running a new RTA category himself, but it certainly seems you are, Tenkei.

I would be interested in creating a new category in place of where Easy was listed that counts the frames for RTA times, which will of course also naturally disallow stims because slowness unless we find some new incredibly difficult strategy that we just can't do without them, in which case they seem fair game since they considerably slow things down (probably will never happen anyway).

Onin said he would consider this new category if we both plan to run it. I think we have a plan?

Hello! I am not familiar with you guys myself although five years ago our team had run more for fun than to be seriously competitive and didn't look much into the scene itself.

Interesting comment about adrenaline breaking the timer. I have yet to try running the exact same path with and without adrenaline, That would be a problem if there were a bug. Under what circumstances does this usually happen? I would be interested in testing it to see what kind of results the timer comes out with.

I had recently mentioned that we are going to have a bunch of tied times soon and 1 second is a pretty massive amount of time to go by, we should really start counting frames I feel. Now, counting frames with adrenaline would be difficult. I wonder if there should be some new adrenalineless category for this purpose that's more like the "main" category of the game. It would let us preserve all of the current runs but keep a more specific time that better shows differences in runs.

I am not sure I agree with co-op mostly because it seems irrelevant with the current setup. Two players are already sufficient apparently for everything but SynTek, which is the only outlier. If there were more varied strategies than there is then maybe, but all more players do for the most part is add dead weight right now.

I do also agree with the difficulty categories. Now that we've refined things quite a bit it does seem clear there is no need for really anything but Brutal to be there. It is probably worthwhile now to just condense it and not bother listing difficulty at all; Full-game runs already work this way.

We actually already tried that and the demos completely break once a death happens. Something about the slow motion is captured really badly when the gameplay is played back, it will return view to the player recording but then everything moves in ridiculously slow motion and might be stopped completely. I even tried using the recording tools to skip to the tick after the death happens figuring if it doesn't play through the death it will be alright but it was still broken. Unfortunate.

We had demo problems five years ago as well but it wasn't as bad since we weren't using death abuse back then. Everything rubberbands when Adrenaline is used but it clears up once the effect wears off. You can see that in most of our old recordings that has any hacking.

Hmm, I may have gotten it wrong again... that is my account name and I think that has not shown in the past as well. I can never remember which they go by when searching for people. I'll just add you now, then.

For the voice, yeah, we definitely couldn't do it without voice communication ourselves, we've been using it for our group for many years now. I actually don't see a way to not record the audio stream of certain applications when recording with OBS so I don't have much choice or I may have considered disabling the voices. But, I don't know, it adds flair to the video anyway? It works alright I think.

To return to the topic of 4-player co-op, now that I have had the chance to play with and talk with mr.deagle about it he's up for trying at least SynTek to see what we can get.

I noticed in your videos that you guys are using text to communicate in-game. Do you or have you used any voice stuff to communicate? We use Mumble frequently and would like to all communicate on our server there.

You can add me on Steam if you want to talk about it more, themaster627.

Huh, interesting. I am pretty sure looking at the new 1:59 that it is not spawned, you can usually see its two glowy bits on its back from the top of the elevator if you look down. It was very obviously spawned in the 2:06, though. I guess I need to work on my technique, I must be falling too low still. At this point I suppose its spawn doesn't actually matter as much because if it does attack you, you were too low and would get a bad time anyway.

So, with that out of the way, now we examine my findings. I can give it a few more tests, but it did indeed look like I was managing to stop it from spawning (as you did accidentally in the current record), which leads me to question... what other spawns may change in other levels by doing this odd difficulty switching bug? You can test if this mortar has spawned by using the scope mode of the sniper rifle, it will already be waiting there even before you get to the pit after the long hallway, you can see it through the floor in the upper-right portion of the screen from around that area.

I almost don't want to find out if other maps are affected because the last thing I want to do is have to double restart every run just to bug out the spawns by loading easy. That sounds like a nightmare!

Guess I'll work on my Cargo OOB more.

So, trying Cargo tonight I lost a few very clean runs frustratingly to the mortar bug that can appear on the exit platform at the bottom of the elevator as it seems the OOB is impossible with it there. What's up with that spawn? After some experimenting I have some findings I think, but I am really hoping there is an easier way to deal with this spawn that I just don't know. The WR video seems to show the mortar not spawned at all.

After experimenting, it seems that starting to play the map on easy, calling a restart, and switching difficulty to brutal causes it to not spawn for that one try. This was successful for a few godmode tests in a row. The problem is to reliably reset that I would need to start easy, reset, and switch it to brutal ¤every¤ run, and I really, really do not want to grind that out.

So, is there some trick I am not aware of besides this method? Please tell me there is...

I'm definitely going to give it a try... famous last words.

Or I can try it on Brutal.

Just kidding.

The cargo elevator OOB would actually still be possible if one player ditches to the left when the elevator starts and the other player goes over the railing. The reactor door as well would still be a big time saver because you can hit the button at the end door much faster by getting there using OOB.

Hmm. It would change Cargo, Rydberg, Sewer (probably), and Timor.

Actually, what about an additional proposal, because I am really thinking the one category uses so much abuse a balance would be nice. How about a 100% no abuse, discounting both death abuse and OOB abuse since it really does break some maps pretty badly and I wouldn't mind seeing the lower part of Rydberg again. That would change...

No barrel strats on Landing.

No outside of the elevator on Cargo. Not that the ride is particularly difficult on Easy, but this would be a bigger deal if the category was run on higher difficulties.

Deima remains unchanged, I guess? It's not actually out of the map, only on top of the console is maybe questionable. Might want to consider any part not a walkable "path" not allowed, which may discount the console.

Rydberg obviously changes significantly. Finally have to hack again!

SynTek mostly unchanged, but no shieldbug strats on Brutal, and Insane if it's on that difficulty too.

Sewer unchanged, although a death might be faster with one player using that ledge skip.

Timor changed a bit and the danger is added back to the tech's return trip. Jump to the bridge questionable? But you can definitely argue that is a walkable path, the gate just isn't open yet.

Note that I am thinking of this for a full run. Probably would be too convoluted to also have this for the individual levels so it isn't necessary there.

Thoughts? I wish there were more people to run this game, it would be nice to have more ideas around. If only Valve had created a sequel...

Hmm, alright, I guess I can just keep them in. I was actually thinking it would be incredibly easy, if the loading screens are removed, to cheat by piecing together individual runs, unless something is different in a campaign run starting from Landing Bay that I am not thinking of. Might be something to keep in mind, although this community doesn't seem like it will be big enough anytime soon for this to have a chance of happening anyway.

With loading screens and mouse cursor capture, however, it would probably be impossible to do since I can see my cursor between loads.

Anyway, working on uploading a run now. It's even coming with splits!

Also, instead of making a new thread I may as well ask your opinion on the matter here. Since the category is for Any% without specified difficulty, I take it you are thinking any difficulty potentially goes so long as the time is good? I may try running it on Hard or something instead because of the speed multipliers. It may make a difference, although it is also more dangerous.

Yeah, back then we had never considered using deaths. I guess it didn't really feel like a completion with them, but it makes sense to have a category that utilizes them since it does fulfill the map completion requirements. Even now, I would wonder if there should be a deathless category, which could be the 100% category considering, well, 100% of your teammates are making it out alive. Would make the run far more challenging too. If we ended up getting lucky enough to be accepted into GDQ, a deathless run is our goal.

Not sure on what the ping is from Netherlands to the east coast of the US, but I know somebody in Munich that usually gets very low or just under 100 ping to servers very close to me. Also, this game is very strange in how it handles servers since create game is actually using dedicated servers (even solo!), while using the map command from the menu launches a local server. All of their dedicated servers right now seem awful and very laggy. Figuring out the map command launches a listen server did wonders.

I will probably have a solo to submit soon so I just wanted to confirm the precise points you used to cut frames at to remove loading for a full-game run. From the looks of it, you cut the first loading screen frame after that dot on the map moves to the next area, and to the very first frame as it fades in to the next map's lobby? I will have to re-encode my OBS recording to cut it that closely unfortunately but it should go alright.

I would have to ask my friend about that. I am not sure how interested he is in running outside of practice for a possible GDQ run, though.

On a side note, did you see our four-man run on SynTek a long time ago? The coordination was quite nice, although now that shield bug trick to get to the elevator quickly would blow the time away. Still, for a full, OOB-less run I'm not sure it could get better.

I'm the upper-left "ooh that was nice" guy and the friend I am running with now is upper-right. Notice how the elevator button lights up just as lower-left gets there. Good stuff!

Oh hey, a forum. Look at that. Hi.

Yeah, I was aware of this from five years back when my team was running. I was always the hacking guy and would get so giddy when it happened. Across far too many resets that I don't even want to begin counting it probably only happened to me a few times. It is exceptionally rare for some reason... the hack must not be quite completely randomized, there has to be different chances for numbers to be certain lengths apart otherwise I'd have to imagine this would happen much more often on Landing Bay, at least.

I actually wasn't aware that the E double tap would cause that if it autocompletes but it makes sense. When we were initially running five years ago I had no idea about the E double tap so when I did get an instant hack it saved quite a bit of time, but I guess it isn't reliable anymore. I wonder if it actually wastes time now since that intro screen is so painfully slow? Ah well...

I had run this game five years ago with a team and am now returning to submit new runs and get some times recognized.

I still know one of the guys from that original team and we have watched the GDQ streams for the past couple of years. I keep thinking to myself while watching the runs, "man, it'd be amazing to be there with everybody running something", and then I realized... Alien Swarm! I asked the friend if he would be interested and he agreed. We are now practicing the game again to get times up with the aim to ultimately submit to the coming AGDQ or next summer's SGDQ. It's a crazy thought but I think we can get there.