United StatesI actually think you aren't that far off on a lot of this. There's really not much known about some of the finer details of mechanics in this one. I'll add some more when I think of it. One of these days I'll get around to writing down the shopping priorities I use as well.
Realizing I can actually speedrun anything at all.
Krayzar is the name of an odd character I used to draw as a kid. The earliest drawing I have of him with the name written down is circa 1993. I was very ill for a good portion of my childhood and used to draw some rather creepy stuff. Presumably because I was pretty delirious... I hope. My wonderful MS Paint avatar is a low-fi version of what that character's face looked like.
I definitely agree on the critting. I can't find any hard info, but it appears that two-handed swords have a better chance to crit from reading the combat logs. It also helps to stack weapons with To Hit and Damage. Honestly, the weapon stacking is a major game changer against Surtur. Having more stacked mods than the game intends works in your favor because unlike stats, they don't overflow.
I once killed Surtur in 3 hits doing this, but unfortunately, it just isn't usually feasible grab that many weapons and still get a decent time.
Ooh, I'll be sure to add my findings to the doc as well!
FYI, while it's perfectly legal to use, you may not want to use a PS3. Supposedly there's only two frames of input lag when going to a CRT according to Capcom, but in my testing to a 1999 Panasonic CT-1386YD over S-Video, it appears to be much more.
I don't have any specific tools to be able to do actual testing, but via very non-scientific work with a digital camera running at 60fps, Fightcade on an LCD with 16ms of input lag beat the PS3 to CRT setup by a noticeable margin when responding to some common movement inputs. If I had to guess, it's about 6-10 frames on average, which is bizarre, and very noticeable.
I can confirm my other systems don't have this problem going to the CRT compared to emulation, and some of my PS1 classics have noticeable but nowhere near as extreme delays on PS3. My CRT + real system combos run much faster than my Desktop monitor in all other situations as one would expect.
I wonder if there's some extra processing the PS3 has to do to output S-Video. Or if it has to do with my specific model, a second gen slot loading PS3. Either way, it's bizarre.
Minor correction, Surtur is immune to sleep monster. Only slow monster works.
Darkstalkers Resurrection is listed as supported format, but it only contains Night Warriors: Darkstalkers Revenge (the second game) and Vampire Savior (the third game).
I realized this after finding my PS1 copy and noticing Hsien-Ko wasn't an available character, and then looking it up.
I had a run up for this that I'm removing, but I just wanted to let you know @AquaBlake.
In case anyone was interested, the AI for the Midboss Character (the one before Phobos, I think) is quite advanced on Hunter. Didn't fall for my usual tricks. It does get confused when pressured and can be "reset" in response to some of your inputs, so it's more a game of not letting up and constantly spamming LPs and LKs if you want to game it.
Certainly a lot slower on average for that one fight, so I guess it's good that these are separated.
That certainly works, there really isn't enough differences to make a separate game page IMHO. They were released in tandem, so it's pretty clear Capcom thought of them as companion pieces at the very least.
I submitted a run of Savior 2 and decided to check out the other run in this Category and noticed it was on Hunter. I know mechanically the game is the same, but I'm not sure about the AI since there's a very different set of characters. One might be on average faster to run than the other.
It might be interesting to test, so I'll try out a few more runs of both and post back if I find anything.
Well, after switching up a few item buying priorities, I got an ~18:30 on part 2 and did Part 1 + 2 in ~35:00.
So both glitches do provide substantial time saves and certainly a lot of consistency. I think Part 2 can get down to sub 15:00 and Part 1 + 2 can probably get down to sub 25:00. Both assuming incredible luck.
Can anyone point me to an example of it?
I think it's impossible due to the Fleet level. There isn't a way for humans to switch positions fast enough in the middle of the level at this speed. Thought maybe the invincibility twiddle would help, but it seems to follow the same rules as the rest of the game at this speed.
Once beyond fleet, it's all very doable, though Brainiac is very close to being impossible. Took me about 10 minutes and a lot of luck.
I'd love to be proven wrong though, maybe theres way I haven't tried.
I'd tend to agree. The only category that I'm very sure using an older version saves time on is Orion%. The changes to the Guardian and the Gyro destabilizer tech being more powerful usually makes for research-less Guardian killing.
Antaran%? I have no damn clue! There's so many ways I can think of to do it with the hotkey optimizations and different tech that it's probably equal if not much faster on later versions! And Any% is almost assuredly faster on 1.40b23 due to hotkey optimizations.
The MoO2 version that's most widely used now from GoG.com/Steam is actually a fan made bug fix patched version, but some of the bugs it fixes are rather useful to speedrunners, and there are pretty significant rule changes in version 1.3 and above.
If you still have the game CD (and the ability to run it), you can get the official patches for the base 1.1 version from Archive.org:
MoO2 v1.2 patch https://archive.org/details/moo2v12
MoO2 v1.3 patch https://archive.org/details/MOO2V13
MoO2 v1.31 patch https://archive.org/details/MOO2V131
Put the installer in the same folder as the game install and double click. Press "y" to run it.
Version 1.2 is probably the most useful. It's more stable on modern OSes than 1.1, and you have access to the 6 point Creative race pick and pre-nerf Gyro Destabilizers, which are useful for fast Guardian kills and Antarian kills. The Guardian and Antarians are both much weaker in this version generally. This version also seem to improve the function of the Auto Battle Hotkey "z". It's faster and doesn't cause as many graphical glitches.
Version 1.3 contains some interesting AI changes. They're much more aggressive than in the fan patch, but they're also a lot stupider. I'd always wondered if it was possible to just get lucky and be elected Emperor in the first few turns, and I'd guess it might be possible on this version. This is also the first version with all modern Hotkeys available.
Version 1.31 is probably not terribly interesting to speedrunners. It does fix the AI bugs from 1.3 however.
Sweet. =P
That would be lame.
...and I don't think it should be.
I think perhaps there needs to be a no multiplayer provision in the rules.
Oh geez, that's what I get for browsing with my phone! I see it now after scrolling down. =P
Thanks!
I'm thinking of trying my hand at a run. I think it would go under arcade since it's an arcade port, and it should probably count as emulation, but just making sure.
Just in case folks are unfamiliar, this is the PSN port for PS3 I'm speaking of.
I had a chance to test out the SNES version last night and it's so slow that I wonder how I tolerated it as a kid.
There are some significant differences as well:
1 ) There's only one speed and it appears to be equivalent to Turtle. I assume this is due to hardware limits. You can pause the game, but I have no idea why you'd want to during a run, considering I can almost finish a city in the span of 2 months.
2 ) Scrolling the screen costs 3 seconds (it pauses the game), likely due to hardware.
3 ) Starting Money in the game's free mode is more than high enough to get to 30k.
4 ) Going into a menu pauses the game for about 10 seconds, so it's not advisable to do in a run. Again, must be hardware.
5 ) One of the starting maps (you can only choose from a few fixed maps) is perfectly flat, and is the most obvious choice for a run.
6 ) The mechanics may be a bit different - looks like you need more housing zoned land than the DOS and PC versions to get to 30k.
7 ) The paper still let's you know when you're at 30k with the capital announcement.
8 ) No the SNES mouse does not work. I have it and I tried.
A Run of the game would probably take around 30 minutes. My video is so long due to me forgetting and walking away for more than an hour. >_<
