Tasmania, AustraliaSo I was recently messing around with recording software for Dino Run when I noticed a strange occurance. If you choose to stretch the sides of the game while in windowed mode it leads to the screen expanding quite considerably. This gives a much better view of oncoming obstacles that are generating in front of you.
Now this does lead to a couple of interesting results. Firstly, depending on how much you stretch it you can actually see the world being generated as you run. The game only loads a few steps in front of you so there is a limit to this bug. Alongside this the areas outside of the intended view have strange lighting, with a light box being placed around your character where your intended view would end.
I can imagine that playing in such a zoomed out way would be rather disorientating for someone who has played regularly for so long. Still I'd imagine it could bring an advantage if one was able to become skilled while playing like this.
Just saw your guide that you put up and I can confirm that it does work! Saves me from playing the whole game again after my computer died. ;D Thanks folks! Hopefully it'll help make the game more accessible too.
I've considered this topic for a while now, but is it possible to share save files in this game? If so, I think it would be a really good idea to have a dino with max stats available to be downloaded for speedrunning. Outside of any% and short%, all of the catagories require a dino with max stats to compete, which of course can take multiple hours of playing to achieve. If a save file was available then it would be much easier for people to play in those catagories.
Anybody know if it is possible or not?
Thanks Noredia! I will try out that then.
I'm also wondering if there is a recording program that is less intensive that I could use. I currently have only ever used OBS Studio, but maybe there are some better alternatives.
Hello Dino Runners! I haven't run the game in a little while, however I was keen to get back into it and give some more runs another go. Especially eying up that Alien% run after Noredia smashed my time.
What's been holding me back for a while from retrying however is that my game always seems to experience frame drops whenever I play, especially in the later levels during meteor strikes.
Would anyone have any advice on how to fix this issue? Given the game is so old I can't imagine it would be that intensive for a laptop to run. I have no idea why I'm struggling with it.
Hi Toastie! Thanks for the work with those! Just adding onto the Mango Egg volcano I tend to use a shift boost just after leaving it, as I believe there is normally a pack of Para's right outside that can be difficult to get past. I find it can be very helpful, as without it they have the potential to slow you down quite significantly should things go wrong. The only time I could see going over the volcano as being advantagous is if you were able to use a dactyl to fly across it, in which case I'd imagine it would be faster. That is down to luck though of course. :)
Ah! I actually forgot about the two different endings that paradise% and challenge% had. 😅 My paradise% run was actually my faster one, despite using the slower ending.
I still agree with the change though. I think it will form a nice competitive category.
As has already been brought up in previous posts, using seeds in challenge mode doesn't appear to actually have any impact on the levels generation outside of the first level. As such, other than the first level the Challenge% and Paradise% catagories are pretty much identical. Therefore I suggest that the two catagories should be merged together into one.
I would suggest making Paradise% the main catagory that stays, while the Challenge% catagory is removed due to the confusion with seeds that it causes. Alongside this however I think the runs of Toastie, Renusek and Scypher should be moved on to the Paradise% leaderboard as special cases, as it would be unfair to remove their runs outright. If that is possible anyway, I'm not entirely sure how being a mod on this website works :p
Let me know what you think of the idea though! I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
Yeah I thought the Meteor storm idea was great for any% runs! I never really considered it myself before seeing your run. I always assumed that actually jumping off of them would tend to slow you down to an average speed though, which is why I initially thought it wouldn't be useful at all for any runs where the super speed is in play. That video is awesome though! It's a pretty hilarious strategy to look at but it works XD
So this is a skill that I was aware of, however I never really thought to use before in speedrunning. Air Jumping is jumping in mid air using an object. It is detailed a little in this steam post here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=857064483 Meanwhile a short video showcasing the ability is shown here:
Initially I was unsure if this would be of any use at all for speedrunning as the oppertunity to use it is very limited and situational. In Halloween Hellrun speedruns in particular however I think this technique could potentially be used significantly. In the level Boneyard Blitz you can air jump off of the falling bones, alowing you to dodge a lot of obsticals throughout the level given that there are so many of them. Meanwhile in Sundown Slaughter as you are always invincible you can air jump off of the other dinos. Again this could be very helpful at saving time.
I haven't fully explored this yet, but the potential is there so I thought I'd share it :)
Yeah missing that jump hurts a lot. Using the shift boost just beforehand however makes it a bit easier to make. It is also very easy to fall into the bottom route in the beginning as well. I’m also not sure what would happen if there were no birds on the end. And of course the lizards could have changed things. I think it would still be faster, but it could lose its advantage.
I assume you are right about the waterfall too. Jumping over takes a very long time and I highly doubt it is worth it. I also want to test out a few other things on that though, such as checking if jumping to hit the ceiling actually makes you go faster.
Hey everyone! I have recently become curious about looking into what the optimal strategies for particular reoccuring sections are. I'm talking about the sections such as the T-Rex cave, waterfall, Ankylosaurus pit ect. Usually at least some of these sections occur during a run of the standard challenge, so I thought attempting to test them all would be benificial.
As for my first test of this I have been looking at the T-Rex Cave! (The one where the T-Rex super egg is found.) I tested this using the speedrun map Raining Lizards, with the seed 314776 and attempted to compare how long it took to get past using all possible routes. In my test I found that the fastest route was to go through the middle hole, followed by jumping over the top. An example video of what I mean is here:
In my tests this was on average about 1 second faster than all other routes and all of my fastest times used this route too. Although obviously given the choice of speedrun the Lizards had a potential impact. Most of the speedrun levels that contain this section however I believe have some sort of special effect in some way or another so this was unavoidable.
Hey Toastie. I have unfortunately noticed this too, and did bring it up in the other forum briefly. I tried reaching out at one point on the Pixeljam Discord, but unfortunately I got no response back from it. I guess it's just the way it is, although it does kinda make the Challenge% a bit redundant. Unless there is a fix for it that somehow gives the same level that is. Given that it is the case perhaps it would be better for the leaderboards to change such that it has the same structure as the Enter Planet D and Halloween Hellrun playlists. I would like to hear the mods thoughts on this.
This is a good idea and the rules should definately be enforced. As far as I know most people have done included the info in their runs, but making sure of it is important to prevent any potential cheating. As catagories like any% also don't allow seeds to be used it should be enforced on those as well.
As for your suggestion on including more seeds though, I think it is important to point out that seeds don't seem to give the same maps even when the same seed is used. Compare level 3 of both mine and Renusek's Challenge% runs for example, or level 3 of every Short% submission. The same seed produces different results, sometimes drastically so.
