NorwayI've not been able to find a resource where the related enemy behavior and technique is detailed. I spent a few minutes figuring this out and it has been very useful to me so it might be useful to others, as I'm sure I'm not the only one who is struggling with this.
As you might know, multiple enemies in the game will only move when you move and that you can move away from these enemies using stuttersteps. But what is actually the trigger for the movement and how often does it happen. Well, it's fairly simple, and using Bishawk you can see for yourself.
Each enemy has a wide aggro radius, but they will not start to move towards you before ~24 frames has passed since you hit that trigger (lag and spawn frames will increase this). Which is why it feels like they never stop following you after you initially enter that zone, as they didn't start moving before you got deep into their territory.
During your stay in their zone, on the point of the initial trigger after 24 frames and repeatedly every 8 frames, the game will check for a directional input. If there is an input, the enemy will move for 4 frames starting on the frame after the input.
But you might ask, how do the enemies move so smoothly, if it doesn't check for another input for another 3 frames after their movement is done? Well, because the enemy has gotten the smell of you, it will start checking for an input in 4 frames instead, but will return to 8 frames if it finds no input.
So to put this into perspective. If there's an input on the first frame it checks for inputs, the game will do a check on the 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th frame if they all have inputs. If the 5th frame has no input, the next frame will be the 13th frame. If there's no input on the 1st frame, it will check again on the 9th frame, then the 17th frame if there's no input.
What about those other frames? All 7 or 3 frames between each input check are free movement. This means, in a perfect TAS, you would not do any input on the 1st frame, then have 7 frames of movement, one frame of nothing, 7 frames of movement and so on. The enemy will never move, which could make a little fun in a TAS. Too bad we are not all perfect, so how is this useful information in RTA runs?
Because we always have to assume we'll get enemy movement at some point, our movement has to be 4 frames or less, to avoid excessive movement from enemies. With 3-5 frame delay between each input, if the previous input triggered enemy movement, the next input should happen in the safe zone. Doing that we have a tapping frequency of 7-8 movements per second, which has worked wonders for me. If you don't have the ability for that, this information can be used to find other useful ways of doing this. Remember that 4 frames is the largest amount you can safely use without getting caught by enemies much faster, and that you can use the delay between button presses to hit between each trigger.
All of this involves a single enemy on screen, what about multiple? You might've noticed that two enemies with this same behavior might move independent of each other. That is because as I said earlier, their timing starts as you enter their aggro radius. Nothing changes for movement, other than you have multiple enemies that can move on the same frame or 1-3 frames before or after the other enemies.
I hope this can be helpful for runners who are struggling or curious about this technique.
TL;DR, enemies check for your movement every 8 frames, then 4 frames if it returns true, and 8 frames if it returns false.
Can confirm I'm going, as part of a school trip. Will be fun.
I do have a guitar with me to play on my laptop, with a good chunk of the Rock Band 1-3 + DLC library, approx 1100 songs. If no one brought any other guitars or things then there's only that one guitar available. If there's interest, could set my laptop up somewhere. It is a very noisy guitar.
Trials Fusion Bid war: Upside-down vs. Right-side up
This bid war will decide who will play RedLynx Derby and in which way. There's a challenge in the track which flips the image to be up-side down and to save time we do the other two challenges too. Which forces us complete the track up-side down, while on the Roach (the 2nd fastest bike) and needing 5 faults or less. Zzzlol94 will play the track as it is, upside-down. TheBlazeJp will try to negate that challenge by looking at the screen upside-down, which will make it right-side up.
Incentive: "Who is SynDI?" A minute long cutscene which maybe uncovers who she truly is.
The donation goal could be $100.
Paid!
I'll bring my laptop for my own run, which could be used by those who specifically need a powerful PC. It has a GTX 970M (approximately a GTX 680), an i7-4720HQ and an SSD, which got 1xHDMI and 2xminiDP. That's if I get it before the event (if it takes more than 2 weeks to get delivered, what the hell).
If in the rare case I won't have it, I'll bring my midi-tower PC to use for my own run, but won't be lending it to other runners. It has DVI-I/VGA, DVI-D, HDMI and DP.
I would be up for Trackmania. Haven't really played it much the last years, but I don't think I've gotten much worse at it.
I'm most likely going to have a powerful laptop with me at the event, and I'm going to have Phase Shift on it, which is a free Rock Band/Guitar Hero clone that's very well made and supports most controllers natively. I'll bring with me my xplorer PC/360 guitar. I can get almost every single song currently available in Rock Band, making it possible to have over 2000 songs available and thousands of other songs outside of that song library if there's an available internet connection.
Paid via Paypal. Hopefully it went through.
Got a 2:09 in Trials Fusion Challenge%, only 5 minutes off my WR, but unfortunately the game lost me 5-6 minutes at the end. Yes, the game, we have no control over certain game mechanics (some are only used in this category) and glitches, one of the reasons why the estimate has to stay high... As of marathon/no-reset attempts, got a 2:21, 2:25 and a 2:32. Those were pretty much filled with mistakes that are easily fixed with a relay speedrun.
Got a new WR in Trials Fusion Challenge% of 2:04:00, an improvement by almost 12 minutes. It will probably stay like that until ESA, I will only focus on no-reset runs and consistency now, as beating that time will make me go insane. I should have an average run of approximately 2:15, but the estimate have to stay that high until further notice.
Improving the WR slowly but steadily on Trials Fusion Challenge% (aka. All Challenges). Got a 2:15:52 and still possible to get easily below 2:10. The leaderboards on the site should be updated when a new PB/WR comes in. FrankerZ
I'd like the Trials Fusion any% run to be removed, due to Challenge% and 100% being submitted.
I'll be doing some driving (it will happen this year), which I planned to do last year. I'm going to be at the whole event, so from the 26th to the 7th, driving from home on the 25th, leg 2 from Hamar on the 26th. I can pickup two people along, maybe not 3, even though I have a decently roomy car (Subaru Legacy '92 SW, it got AC!), but it could change depending on how much baggage there will be. I'll be driving from Møre og Romsdal and the fastest way onto E6, can do detours to pick people up, probably going via Oslo then to Skövde.
Send me a PM on SDA, on the SRL IRC, or wherever you can find me.
ǝdʎɥ
