Not exactly sure why some people didn't get the compat. mode option to work, but I'll say for people not sure, try compat mode first, and if that doesn't work, THEN go with the display.cfg edit option.

I don't know how I missed this message a year ago but I think I basically found this bug you speak of for my run, but only back when I hadn't realized that I needed vsync enabled for the 2nd to last level, so I was insta-dying each time to the rapidly rising water.

I never did bother figuring it out for the wider run as I didn't think it as being important, but now that I'm thinking about it again upon reading this, maybe if I do come back to this game again I might try figuring that out for the tougher sections like the art museum.

Yeh I finally joined the discord and saw everyone else discussing needing to like squish yourself inside the elevator with objects you take with you. Sounds absurd... I love it.

But del couldn't figure out how. The trigger to load up a later version of the lobby area of the A.X. Corporation (the very start of the game) is somewhere in that one area meant for later on when you revisit that map or a copy of it.

But yeh he couldn't find a way and I remember finding those elevators in the lobby area have solid ceilings and you just get squished up there or something.

But if you were to find a way to get to the later game status trigger, hoo boy...

It's the calm before the storm.

If the winner of this competition DOESN'T go on a trip to Borneo I swear to god...

Also unrelated to the topic but man this leaderboard needs a design. You should give me mod briefly so I can create a design for it, lol. Here's what I'm capable of when I'm on my A game for designs: https://www.speedrun.com/puggsy

I'm putting this here mostly out of posterity (not personally planning on running the game... Not right now anyways but maybe later). I haven't tested it yet myself, but apparently Cybermorph works fine in BigPEmu. Just checking to see if you'll be officiating it for runs.

EVIDENCE:

Year late reply I know but at some point I was thinking it'd be cool to see a run based on the not QS/QL glitch, and at least one other person was humoring the routing with me ages ago.

There's a number of funny exploits throughout the game but like, nothing nearly as fast as the QS/QL glitch so that effort inevitably fizzled out. Also, I can't even remember the strats we found so they'd have to be rediscovered.

This is just an official "on the record" statement of how it'd be cool to see that, really.

So I'm going through as fast as I can to retime everything, and learning some important things. First of all, the best visual indication for selecting a snake that I noticed finally is the "Select Your Snake" logo, which will start to squish upwards when you've selected a snake. Though a little annoying to frame select for if someone has rapid fingers and picks a snake on the earliest frame possible, it is easier than the old method of looking at the snake's "movement".

Secondly, for the new established rule of time ending on the level counter disappearing, I have noticed an odd disparity with runs. Most runs, the level counter bar at the bottom left immediately disappears without a doubt. On a couple runs however, I noticed a glitched state where the timer partially disappears and is replaced with glitchy graphics, or it only partially disappears with no discernible glitches. For instances of those, I say it is the same as the timer disappearing and so it counts as the time end.

Finally, please, if you see this, check your run over and confirm my retimes, and make note of the framerate you recorded with. I just now realized some of you aren't as simple as a 30 or 60 frames per second, and I have to go back and glance over everything. This is what I'm using for time: https://retime.mcbe.wtf/

EDIT: Unless I missed something, only have to finish Park levels later.
https://www.speedrun.com/axysnake/level/Park#Any

https://twitter.com/CuttingRoomWiki/status/1520558940043374592

Yeah this is quite a silly dilemma:

Refer to this guide first: https://www.speedrun.com/gunmetal/guide/qdlf3

Ask any questions about getting the game to work in this thread. I'll delete any new threads that try and duplicate troubleshooting efforts.

I'm not a technical wizard when it comes to this stuff, but I've messed around with old games long enough to possibly be helpful here. Hoping to get more people interested in helping out too, eventually.

UPDATE: I PUT THE CUSTOM .INI FILE IN RESOURCES SO YOU SHOULD STILL READ THE BELOW FOR INFO BUT I AM SAVING YOU A FEW STEPS: https://www.speedrun.com/drbrainar/resources

So for awhile, I had been working with someone to try and fix the dumb issue of the flickering texture that occurs from utilizing the QS/QL trick, but we both got busy/distracted and I feel like any day now someone might try touching this game again (lol, I know, but games of mine nobody ever touched randomly got runs late last year so I'm anxious), so in absence of a proper fix for the QS/QL flicker, I am from this day forward implementing a new, kind of annoying rule based on a weird engine exploit I discovered.

So firstly if you plan on doing Any% with this game, it is required to edit the spore.ini file and add MaxPlayers=0 to the [Engine.GameInfo] section of the .ini file, otherwise the game will actually crash after a number of saves. This has been allowed, in fact required, for runs even prior to [today].

Now the 2nd thing you need to do for a run to be verified, is under the [Engine.Engine] section of the .ini near the top, is you change the Console line, from Console=Spore.SPConsole to Console=Engine.Console. Doing this will change the function of the game a little. For some reason, the Console engine selected for the game changes menu functionality and also the QS/QL screen defaults to that used for Unreal, without a hideous flashing background.

The one downside, and reason I didn't really want to make this a requirement until now, is that now the only way to get into the game is to go into the ingame console (~) and type "start level001". I will, for runs done for this dumb workaround, allow for time to start the moment you leave the console prompt, as it steals all inputs while open. My old run is being grandfathered into this though I plan to eventually try and PB again when I'm feeling up to it.

Sorry for the inconvenience, I hope to eventually have a mod made to remove the hideous QS/QL screen bullcrap (and when that happens I will no longer require this rule, it will instead be that you need to have the mod installed). In the meantime, this is the only way to speedrun the game without it being a seizure warning, or banning the QS/QL exploit which I know is not really an option for a Unreal 1.0 game like this. I merely wanted to get this nonsense out of the way. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask here.

PS: No, there's no discernible difference between any of the player characters beyond their voice lines and walking SFX. If the QS/QL thing could be fixed without the workaround, players who want to would actually be able to select their player. I don't know what the game's intended launch command may be to select your player, or if it was only coded into the menus which become broken from doing that second .ini edit.

With the recent entry into the Sniper speedrun scene of runner DVark09, it has been learned that with an uncapped framerate, Sniper is not only (so far from what we've seen) stable still, but combining this with crouch bound to the mouse wheel makes for an OP form of crouch flying that can even overcome falling, allowing for flying underneath maps and crouch spamming to get close enough to a room to then QS/QL faster than was doable in the past.

Crouch spamming bound to mouse wheel is still pretty OP if your framerate is capped, but the distinction here is mainly in altitude recovery, because when you fall with a capped framerate, it's been found to be basically impossible (or at least extremely hard) to recover your flying crouch even with fast spamming on the scroll wheel.

Anyways, the main takeaway here is that Sniper appears to be the first major Lithtech engine game, pre-Jupiter EX anyways, to be pretty stable with higher framerates. Even when it becomes a bit easier to quickly set up uncapped FPS for others, it seems best to keep the uncapped FPS runs that utilize crouch spamming with an uncapped FPS in mind, separate from traditional any% runs that either didn't utilize fast crouch spamming with uncapped FPS in mind, or were unaware of it... Which is basically the case with every run prior to the recent one by DVark09.

𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐅𝐏𝐒 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝/𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠:
https://www.speedrun.com/sniper_path_of_vengeance/guide/i39j2

In light of how stupid this game has became to run recently for the QS/QL tech, I'm officiating with this post the ability to go into the autoexec.cfg and rebind the QS/QL keys to whatever you wish.

I have two things I've been primarily interested in, and as of me writing this, they have not yet been implemented:

1. Fixing the Messages system so that it functions better. Primarily the fact we can't delete messages and conversations, or how the page seems to refresh every time a new message is posted. In fact, I don't believe we can block having messages either.

2. Support for the WebP image format, static ones at least. I had asked in the past prior to the change in ownership of the website, and I ask again hoping to get more attention on that as a longterm goal for optimizing the website as much as possible.