Orange figured out something exceedingly stupid.

The level exit triggers can also be triggered by aliens. Especially on Sewer, where the shield bug always spawns in the exit trigger, this is problematic. The retrigger time for level exits is 1 second, and the time that the shield bug activates isn't predictable. So in short, how quickly you can trigger the end is plain RNG.

However, if an alien triggers the level exit while all marines are dead, the trigger will fire successfully, and you will get a Mission Complete. This gives us a new and completely stupid strategy: Destroy all eggs, get close to the exit, then commit suicide the moment you get 20/20. The death timer takes 0.4 seconds, giving you around a 30-40% chance to achieve the correct timing.

Going OOB too early in landing bay doesn't help, there's an objective to enter the building that needs to be triggered. Sadly.

What is this? A project I'm going to work on, but would welcome any help with. I want to make an Alien Swarm TSA speedrun.

TSA stands for Time-Scale Assisted. It means using the console command "host_timescale" to slow down gameplay, allowing for near perfect inputs. The eventual speedrun will be played in real time. This allows us to do absolutely perfect runs. I want to perform flawless, TAS-like runs of all the levels and tie them together into a full game run.

Need help? While I could do this all by myself, it'd be cool to have it be a community effort as well. So I'm posting this in case anyone wants to join in the effort. I don't want to divide roles or limit people's abilities, I'd prefer to give everyone freedom to help whichever way they want.

How can I help? There's a few ways.

1. Routing TSA removes the need for stimpacks in every level. That means every level has the option to take something else to save time. I'm looking for the most minuscule time saves, as well as the most unthinkably difficult time saves. Anything to shave milliseconds off the run. Try to verify things being possible, though I'll take empty suggestions as well.

2. Running If you want to contribute with a level run of your own, just feel free to attempt. I'll note instructions on how to record below. The only limitation on doing the run is to not use Stimpacks. Stims aren't necessary and mess with demo replaying, just don't bother with them. Other than that, get at it, and post here with any results. Obviously it's all 1 player runs, it'd be a mess to do it multiplayer.

3. Technical I don't expect this, but I'll list it anyway. Currently, any runs with Time-scale Assist will show [CHEATS USED] at the score screen. I don't know of any way to prevent this. It looks ugly, it hides the in-game timer, I'd really like to get rid of it somehow, so if anyone knows a way to do so, much obliged.

How do run a TSA level? Step 1: Activate the console command [sv_cheats 1]. Then activate [host_timescale 0.2]. 0.2 can be changed to any value you want (1 is normal speed. 0.2 is 20% speed, etc). Note that at really low speeds, spamming the off-hand item key stops working. 0.2 seems to be the lowest functional speed, but much lower can be used for specific things (like hacking). Lower than 0.02, however, makes replays lag, so avoid that.

Step 2: Record the run as a demo. [record "title"] will start a recording, [stop] or switching maps will end the recording. Keep the title something recognizable, of course. You can use the same title while grinding attempts, it automatically overrides.

Step 2b: Recording guidelines! Try to wait a few seconds in the lobby to avoid the slow screen fade. Please start the recording without a marine selected. Please give a LOT of time at the end of the map, to allow people to see the end screens properly. Do NOT use the [map] command for resets. This cuts out the menu for traveling to the next level, and I want those in. If the level uses slowdowns (elevator, deima, sewer...), activate [asw_stim_time_scale 1]. This prevents the slowdown from ruining the demo. Yes, this kind of changes how the levels work out, but what can we do.

Step 3: Time your demo file using RTA timing (start when the cursor appears, stop when the cursor disappears). For this you can use the in-game demo menu (press Shift+F2). Upload the demo somewhere and post it along with your end timing.

Anything else? I'll be listing the fastest achieved times in this thread as we progress. Just because it's posted, don't assume it's the final time, if you can improve it further, by all means do so. I'll probably handle the final encoding, or I'll send it over to the SourceRuns guys to do that for us.

Good luck to everyone and myself. :)

Level list: Landing Bay - 0:54.66 Cargo Elevator - 0:53.85 Deima Surface Bridge - 1:59.666 Rydberg Reactor - 0:38.633 SynTek Residential - 1:30.116 Sewer Junction - 1:01.333 Timor Station - 2:17.533

(Click the time to download)

You can manually end the splits you know.

Our end timing is the stock standard final input. It makes no sense to count the little outro scene as well, it's entirely unrelated to the speedrun.

You can't really expect everyone to be using your autosplitter. It may not even work on other OSes or other such situations.

Wow.

I'm going to class this glitch at the same level of the IGT% glitch; the one where you die on Temple while activating the portal so you respawn on the spaceship with a 0:00 timer. That one isn't really banned, just not RTA useful, but equally we don't use it for actual runs.

Also there's some argument for it being software or even hardware tampering, which is banned in general.

Pretty hilarious though.

All artifacts is a category, as is Vanilla%. See under 'Misc categories'.

4 players. That's a main category, not a fringe category, so the same scrutiny doesn't apply.

Done.

Invite refreshed.

Keycards have no effect, just don't USE them.

Everyone is using Discord these days so I made one for Ori runners. Should be a better place to centralize information than this forum or IRC.

https://discord.gg/0eG6jSyc9vgrSQee

or ask me, gyoo, grim, or whoever for an invite link, if this one expires.

mIRC has a basically infinite trial period. There's a bunch more, just google it or something '-'

get an IRC client, connect to irc.speedrunslive.com, then join the channel #ori.

I mentioned this in IRC but I'll just write it up here so all runners can get the benefit.

A much easier and faster method for the save drop at Thornfelt Swamp (returning from getting Stomp):

1. Make a save point at the edge (easier when done before getting the ability cell)
2. Walk over the edge
3. Start a Stomp
4. While the stomp is winding up, access the save and spend an ability point.
5. Reload the game.

When you reload, Ori will automatically start his stomp animation again and break the floor, no input required. Because this requires spending a point, you may not want to use it in Any% or any other Double Jump route. But for any other route, it's an easy time save. (Note that if you spend the point while Ori is in the middle of stomping, i.e. already moving downward, it'll fail. Just press Down and immediately spend the point.)

Oh, I thought I'd changed that already, guess not. Should be good now.

RTA list added to the ILs.

I may move them to Misc categories just depending on how the leaderboard ends up looking, I don't want it to get too chaotic.

That's pretty hilarious. I've only known of that stopwatch bug breaking the game by improperly rendering the level, so you might get stuck or be unable to reach the portal.

No pickups whatsoever. Just your character, and the automatically gathered experience.

I've made the following changes to the leaderboard:

1. Vanilla% is off the main leaderboards.
2. Several Misc. Categories have been added. For now, these are Low%, All Artifacts, and All Characters.
3. Vanilla% is moved to Misc. categories as well.

The idea is to primarily denote the competitive categories on the frontpage, while adding extra room for all the gimmicky categories people (may) want to run. Now the frontpage looks light and neat, and the bloat of categories can be revealed through the Misc Runs toggle.

If there are any other (sensible) categories people are willing to run, feel free to request here. Preferably with an actual run.

Things I'm not ever going to add separate categories for: Older or newer patches, uncommon characters, IGT%.

8PM or later is fine with me.