I think it's a bit taboo to mess with dosbox frames while playing the game. Set it to what gives you optimal performance with no glitches, and keep it that way. I noticed you had your resolution in game reduced, so I assume you've had performance issues playing this game. Not surprising seeing as it's one of the more complex software-rendered 3D games of the time (shame this game didn't get the same 3DFX XnGine treatment as Redguard, a much less interesting but much better performing game thanks to the glide support). As for that OOB you were asking about, here's some footage I got:
It's really one of the easiest OOBs I've seen in a game as you wouldn't think they'd be so foolish as to leave a skybox texture as a non-solid. However, I promise you I managed to explore alot of Level 2's lower floor w/ this glitch (though I haven't beaten level 2 yet and your speedrun was the first time I saw how to beat level 2 :P), and I never really found any use for it. Not to mention it's seemingly impossible to get back in bounds, because as you probably noticed in that video getting stuck on awkward OOB geometry actually killed me.
I don't think you need to get too in depth w/ any commentary on your first run. Just focus on important things regarding what you need to do in each level, any shortcuts you found, etc.
Hey, seems you have found a ton of cool stuff yourself. My progress ages ago kinda fell to the wayside as I got distracted with other games/personal stuff. I am really impressed with what you have so far, and I'm hoping we can perhaps work towards optimizing movement. I've had experience with another XnGine game, Terminator: SkyNET (I developed most of the strats and found most of the glitches for that game), so I figured I'd tackle Battlespire to see if it has similar glitches. For sure, OOB in this game isn't as easy as you've noted, but I'm hoping we'll find a use for it somewhere. Bit dissapointed w/ that very easy rooftop OOB in level 2 that is absolutely useless.
Also, I never did find a way to get back inbounds. It's pretty difficult to do in all the XnGine games it seems, though it's not impossible in the Terminator XnGine games.
I use Windows 7, and it tends to run for me (though it's been months since I last played). If you have a beefy enough computer, I'd consider either VM or, not kidding, Win98 in DOSBox, which is totally doable BTW (at least with software mode and glide, which I doubt this game supports the latter but dunno). Otherwise, I don't really know the cause of this issue, sorry.
still a giant lack of runs. but yeah, routing coop% would be great.
Wondering if any folks have been messing with this game? I've only been slowly going at it casually (miserably clunky as it is), and I already have some advice on strats. Put as much points into speed and jumping as possible, more speed percentage allows for more jumping percentage.
Secondly, though it's rather glitchy, I discovered that the "special moves" key is OP. You can hurt and even kill yourself with this against walls and weird world geometry, but alternately it can be great for killing some enemies if you pass on weapons (heck, given how terrible weapons are in this game, it is often times better, provided you keep your health high). I found that enemies will be hurt by being knocked against walls or cliffs. Definitely useful against the guys holding cogs in level 1.
You just hold the special moves key down and thrust the mouse forward, while pulling back on the mouse crouches you. You can still thrust forward while crouched, and I found this occasionally mitigates damage, but larger enemies can be risky to take out with this trick (some of the bigger enemies will hurt you with their hitbox alone when bumping them with special moves). Need to have open space and a certain wall/cliff to knock them against. However, it's quite useful for knocking that one dude off the teleporter in level 1, provided you jump out of the range of him initiating talking w/ you.
I'm currently messing around in level 2. I don't think it's useful at all, but the beginning room with the open ceiling showing a sky can be jumped through, allowing you to walk/jump around out of bounds. Not much of use here, though I did learn that the interaction field with enemies (to talk with them) extends high above them, which is weird.
I've not quite grasped using magic yet, but apparently none of it except healing (and maybe ethereal) is useful. Besides that, I've not yet tested a glitch that is apparently only available in version 1.3 of the game. You can cheat getting extra skill points somehow (this page explains it: http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Battlespire:Hints#Class_Creation_Cheat ), and that may be useful but I'm not sure yet how we all want to approach the rules of running this game, when it comes to exploiting the character creation system.
One more thing: Not a strat per se, but some folks have found that binding the movement to the arrow keys or numpad arrow keys mitigates that infamous "skewed walking" issue that I'm sure most of you have experienced before. Reducing that issue is ideal because I think running and jumping (as well as run jumping, where you walk forward while holding down the jump key, gives more jump distance) precisely will be a big part of runs for this game. Seeing as we all likely use DOSBox to play this game, I can tell you that after you bind the ingame keys to the arrow keys, you can externally with DOSBox's keymapper rebind the arrow keys to WASD to make it easier on yourself. That's what I did, and it works better than before... Which isn't saying a whole lot as movement still sucks in this game.
If anyone who has beat the game and has been working to route/glitch hunt has any suggestions, share them here or we could join together on discord or something.
Oh right, and one more thing, don't forget to enjoy some: http://vocaroo.com/i/s137GQJtwVxW
anyhow, I've gotten rather busy, but when I get some freetime and I'm not tired, I'm gonna get to getting strats down for every other track besides the arctic one, which I simply need to record that one as it is pretty short and features the same glitch used for the first track.
Admittedly it is my first time using the speedrun.com system, so yeh... Bit of a learning process.
Been busy but I plan on returning to doing PS runs soon. BTW, do you know anything about formatting speedrun game pages? Because I think I messed this one up majorly. It shouldn't look like how I have it, and I'm not sure why it's wrong.
Welp, turns out this game behaves nicely in Dxtory. none of that flickering background/sprite nonsense AND it already scales the video resolution accordingly to 640x480. Guess I'm going to redo that one run then.
Well if you've got the CD then alright: <no>
I'll figure out ripping the CD later if that doesn't work for you.
Technically you can run the game just fine on modern systems (well, about as fine as you'd figure from a game literally farted out by some German guys working out of their parents' basements), but the installer itself is incapable of being ran on 64-bit systems.
So yeah, if you did want to experience it you'd have to use a VM or ask for the game files which I guess I could upload. I'm also hoping to find the other Pantera game that was commercially sold, the scooter one, but it's too expensive for me (in that I'd rather not pay anything for it).
Lol, you're absolutely correct. Nobody but an insane person will attempt to steal the PB. This plan is genius.
actually this meme is turning out to be torture to record, let alone run. It'll take forever to perfect this, just so nobody else has to
