Svalbard and Jan MayenI have no idea how this speedhack works, and how to detect its usage outside loading screen, but in this discussion I prefer to re-time runs and subtract loading times from the final result (I checked the only run and loading DLVL1 took 20 seconds which is a real pain).
@Skytis I think you can submit your run until we decide what to do.
@Krzysiek , this means that if it's hidden at the north, you can find pentagram, divide values of X/Y by 2 and detect hidden portal coordinates? Though it could be in the walls so you can't quickly get to the Lazarus. I saw this glitch before, when you run randomly at DLVL 15 and it teleports you to the Lazarus. But didn't know how it works.
Timecodes:
00:00 - re-roll to find Levitation in GM4
00:53 - actual start of the run
01:01-01:29 - distracted by a kid :)
01:31 - make a save, because I wrote down all possible L4 spells and Hero skills combinations, to find out if random seeds are repeating (during two hours I've got the same game only once)
01:47 - checked skill trees of the heroes using Treasure Chest (skill trees don't change within one savefile), to find Water (Ciele), Wisdom (Lord Haart) and Logistics (Mirlanda/Jeddite/Astral)
02:57 - the happiest moment of the run :D
03:12 - dismissed Lord Haart to get more movepoints after re-hire (will repeat this trick for other heroes too). Then transfer items to Kyrre and Ciele to get maxed movepoints.
06:10 - mistake, took items from Lord Haart to boost Mirlanda but forgot that I should leave items on Lord Haart and can't dismiss Mirlanda with items on her
08:35 - mistake, realised that I forgot army to fight Gnolls and decided to dismiss Lord Haart
09:50 - mistake, miscalculated that I visited fountain today and it doesn't boost until next fight. During run I thought that I missed Fountain and re-hired Lord Haart after fight.
12:49 - mistake, sent Ciele south-west instead of south, that's why I should re-hire Mirlanda, because only with straight route you have enough movepoints to reach Blue Hero
15:58 - mistake, realised that I did not capture Griffin Dwelling and because of that was forced to re-play 112 from AUTOSAVE T_T
17:14 - tried to hire Lacus, because he has Sprite and has more movepoints but unsuccessfully; and I haven't enough money to hire Dessa/Gunnar because of bunch of mistakes
17:40 - continued run from AUTOSAVE without mistakes
21:02 - double-check
21:16 - GG! 112! :D
I think at least Uninterrupted speedrun should have priority over Segmented so options order should be swapped @adamdotpng
Should be retimed to 207 days, because at the screen with dragon "207 days" is shown. Apparently in some moment during save/load runner took wrong save.
@adamdotpng , I changed my mind and now I prefer calculating game days for campaigns as a sum of days.
I've found that in the end of campaign this number can be seen on a screen with dragon, so you don't need to calculate anything, you can just take this number and submit it to speedrun.com.
Unfortunately, @Vegard_Kristoffersen New Beginning run took 207 days instead of 160. I rewatched his speedrun and he used a lot of save/loads and apparently in some moment took wrong save.
Reinstalled Complete version. Waterfall, City Hall and Mage Guild animations are really could change before confirmation window. But how grail building animation took 0.48 instead of 1.30 I still have no clue.
Grail building animation took 0.48 instead of 1.30, waterfall, mage guild, city hall animations changed when confirmation box appears. What game version do you use?
Actually mission finished at 144, because blue finished 143 and red started 144 and was defeated
A lot of single scenarios have a goal to find artifact.
Some objects on a map (crypt, treasure chest, wagon, warrior's tomb, utopias, ship, shipwreck, black market, sea chest, shipwreck survivor, skeleton etc.) may give you artifact with some probability, and if you are lucky enough, you can finish mission immediately.
We may call it "Artifact rolling" and I find this a very bad idea that break sense of speedrunning for some missions, and I vote for banning such technique. I encountered this during first LLtQ mission, when you need about 300-400 rolls to get Boots from Shipwreck Surviror and thus I can save about 2 days playing In-Game Days category. I consider this as a glitch (glitch is a thing that changes gameplay significantly) and didn't use it.
HOMM3 is an amazing game which may have a lot of improvements, but if the only improvement you need is to roll artifact 1000 times, it became boring.
Yes, some of you may say the same about Hero rolling (Invite Hero for HD-mod) and Spell rolling. But strong hero do not skip half of mission. And Spell rolling is officially acceptable by community (use of Guild Mage rebuild). So these both are fine for me.
There is no necessity to compare time of campaign with time of levels. I just try to avoid math, because to convert 336 to days you should make equation (3-1) * 28 + (3-1) * 7 + 6 = 76 days, and I don't like this. Btw, in Heroes 3 all months are Februaries of non-leap year :)
I suppose calculating days in campaigns is a point to make mistake. For example, if we look at Vegard_Kristoffersen's New Beginning run, I'd prefer to calculate days simply summarising everything, like this:
124 + 323 + 234 + 347 = 1028 = 0h 0m 01s 028ms
Do we really need 2015 Steam edition as an option?
Does this edition has any differences with Complete or ROE/AB/SOD?
I see that there are only two runs (one without video) in Steam category, and both are in Tutorial, but this option is visible everywhere. So I vote for removing this option and move runs to "No HD-mod".
And rename "HD" / "No HD" to "HD-mod" / "No HD-mod".
@Salat , simple solution that I've already use is to submit runs with days specified as milliseconds.
For example if you finish in 113 (Month 1, Week 1, Day 3), you submit 0h 0m 0s 113ms.
If you run campaign, you can simply add all "heroes" days for all missions: 123 + 324 + 346 + 234 = 1027 = 0h 0m 01s 027ms.
Yes, we can calculate days and also write them to milliseconds, but this is much easier to make mistake. Especially if you calculate days for a whole campaign. And in Heroes community such things as 121 or 133 are understandable for every player.
Or even better to write it as 124 + 323 + 234 + 347 = 1028 = 0h 0m 1s 028ms
Finally finished Act 2 today :D
@OldMateJohn , yes, with Gale nuclear blast ending you get achievement "Hero of the Forgotten Realms", but you do not get achievement "All's weel that ends well" (finish the game). Also we didn't get "Critical hit" (complete the game in Tactician mode). So the game is not finished.
So "Any%" is current "Any% (All acts)" and current Any% is an "alternative ending" category and they should be swapped at SRC to give "All acts" more priority. That's just my opinion.
P.S. I even don't understand why you were assigned as a "Hero of the Forgotten Realms", because narrator told you that army of Mindflayers will be born soon and they will enslave everyone. So it's a bad scenario, some sort of losing.
I agree with a state that definition of "glitch" — is a something that dramatically changes the gameplay. Like this: "Dupe gold -> Roll Adria -> Go". Other things like free casting, double casting as for me are not considered as glitch, because they are very situational.
My teammate asked me recently why low-hp-MS is not considered a glitch, because you can just run through monsters and do not fight, and skip large part of the game. So I even vote for dividing categories to: Any%, No Dupe (allowing low-hp-MS) and Glitchless (a run which allow to use bugs like spell queue and disallow to use low-hp-MS).
Also I have no idea why people play (preferably) HC runs, since it's a speedrunning and save/load is a thing that can decrease your time.
To be honest killing Diablo with Fire Wall also makes game boring, because no matter what class do you play, you are looking for FW and use it in final fight. So "No Fire Wall" category is also have a right to exist :)
So let's decide what to do and I will create categories and rules for all your preferences.
