Hi!

As I am reaching the end of my journey, perhaps it is time to consider requesting Magic Carpet II and maybe even adding the Hidden Worlds. If we do so, would anyone submit runs on them? I for one wouldn't mind doing those (even if I'm not nearly as familiar with MC2), but if it were only me, I doubt it'd be worth it.

About the Hidden Worlds, requesting a new board might be redundant. The expansion levels are included in the original game for Saturn & PS1 and simply appended beyond level 50, so maybe just adding the levels as 51-75 may be easier.

As for my level 50 run, that one can wait, lol. That level taught me that programs could bug in ways I would've never thought of. Below 10 minutes seems like a real challenge for now.

We can add boards here for Hidden Worlds as well if you want to run it. It's not a separate game, but rather an expansion.

I could help you moderate MC2 if you wish to request it. One problem with MC2 is that doing IL runs might not be easily comparable, because stuff like spells and spell experience carry over to following levels. Also, as with the first game, doing full game runs would be challenging, because of crashes. So maybe the only reasonable way to make a competitive board and record MC2 runs would be to do a segmented full game run, recording each level separately and sequentially. Anyways, I'd be happy to hear other possible ideas.

I have a playthrough for MC2 on YT, but that wouldn't classify as a segmented run, because I used few cheats to show secret levels. Skipping those would probably be a good idea anyway. I'm probably not going to be playing MC in the near future, but it's always possible other people might get into it at some point.

I think the easiest and safest solution for the second game would be to allow ILs after the endgame? So that all spells with max experience are allowed. Most of the time, the level will be done before any of the better spells are available. Shouldn't be a bigger problem that the uncapped cycles from the first game :)

About the crashing, the first game only had a few levels with crashing issues. Most of that can be avoided by curbing the meteor usage. As for MC2, I believe the same applies? I've had the second game crashing repeatedly on SVGA mode, even on early levels, but on VGA it seemed to do well. I don't mind segmenting though, we can just allow people to restart their level if they crash unexpectedly. Attempting to get the level to crash on purpose after a bad stage might be an issue though, but I'm probably being too pessimistic lol.

That said, as long as no one else is interested, I'll just leave it as it is. I could do the HW levels as there's not much new to learn, but MC2 is a different beast.

If someone is ever interested in running those games, they can use this thread to notify us. I also edited the thread's title as it is more fitting.

I didn't remember you could play MC2 in a NG+ mode, to return to completed levels, but that would definitely be an option for competitive IL runs. Yeah, probably the game is more stable in VGA and without meteor. There have been segmented speedruns in Speed Demos Archive before, where one tries to optimize a game in a semi-TAS manner.

I thought about adding HW ILs as a separate category besides the original levels, but that doesn't look good, because you can't name HW levels separately. So probably the best way to do it is what you suggested, adding them from 51 and onward. It will also be cleaner, if someone wants to run this on PS1 or Saturn. You wont mind adding ILs to the board if you decide to run it? Good luck with the runs! It's nice to see at least someone trying to beat this game fast and figuring out new strats :)

In MC2 you can replay any level you have already completed in the same save file, so that's sorted out! I'm not familiar with TAS-stuff nor Speed Demos Archive so I can't really give any input or feedback on that, Sorry! But I'm guessing you're referring to segmented full-game speedruns.

Adding 51-75 should probably limit confusion, indeed. I'll add them whenever I feel like doing those (or anyone else, for that matter).

And thanks for the support. I'm feeling lonely doing these though :> I'll just take my sweet time, that should keep the board's activity up for a longer time.

Yeah, I was talking about full game segmented runs, where you record a game in segments, replay each segment multiple times and count the full game time in the end. It's been done in the past for several games, but not so often anymore. Loneliness of a retro game runner is real for most games, but sometimes eventually someone gets interested, it just takes time due to low popularity.

btw. you might find this interesting read, even if you're not planning to play MC2 in the near future. https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Magic_Carpet_2/Game_Mechanics_and_Glitches