I'm currently working on a routing tool for (generally) open world games, but specifically for Saints Row, and even more specifically for Saints Row 2. I have a github repo that I've been adding to and I've roped one of my friends into helping but progress is slow due to school. I'm wondering if anyone has any CS skills or would like to contribute.

I started off with c++ and I think we'll actually end up with go. This might make things a little more complicated but go is a fun language and that's what I want this project to be.

A little more about the style: My plan is that the user will be able to load in a picture, a map, of their game and it will be clickable in that you can select a position to add either a "mission" or a "collectible." Each one will have different specifics you can associate with it but most notably, missions have a "start" and "end." Collectibles only have a single point. Anything can have pre-requisites associated with it, including other missions or collectibles.

After all this is put in, a "best route" can be calculated, using something like dijkstra's shortest path algorithm.

Of course, this is in a pre-pre-pre-pre alpha stage since I'm just working on thoughts right now but if anyone's interested, you can let me know.

Here's the repo if you want to look at some basic code or my idea in pdf format: https://github.com/dkindel/router

How do you get the chopper with the Factories Insurance Fraud? I thought I saw you mention it but I can't find it now...

My strategy with IF is to keep restarting until in the Factories district. This has 2 advantages. The first is that you're right there. The other is that you can do this:

Basically, you get to the highway super quick and beat everything right there. If going to the airport to get a chopper is going to be quicker overall, even if it makes IF a little longer, I'll totally change my strategy to do that.

Also, thanks for the money hint. That should make respect even a little easier to get. The only drawback is with how many activities I do, I'll have to constantly get near misses and drive in the wrong lane.

EDIT: duh, you explained how right above. I had an issue where the airport didn't always have a heli. I'll have to look a bit closer and start comparing times.

That's what I'm thinking. They seemed to just take so much time, comparatively. I think it'd be more useful to try to get to the prison and do that Fight Club there since that'd only be about 10 mins as well.

The only real useful awards are Snatch and IF so those are top priority, regardless of time, IMO.

Oh, and Chop Shop and Hitman would be good if we can reliably find a route where we'd definitely see targets but...they don't seem to offer enough to make them worth it either.

On another note, do you think getting a chopper is actually often a good thing to do early? You get a fast one as part of the Samedi (assuming it doesn't glitch out) and besides that, save warping and taxis will probably be faster regardless.

I'd like to reiterate my concerns for RTA in SR2 though, or for a PC run in general. The PC port is incredibly broken and can speedup in direct proportion to your processor clock. Not only can this clearly affect comparisons between PC and Xbox and even PC players, but it might encourage players to oc their processors to even dangerous levels. I don't believe that this is a fair way to judge, especially in a run where even a .01 GHz increase can mean saving minutes if RTA is used. And this is also assuming that the PC port IGT will be biased according to actual game speed.

Also, on the same page, the Gentlemen of the Row Mod for PC. I'm assuming that's not accepted as well because that includes DLC, fixes MANY bugs, including the speedup bug noted above, and you can buy some vehicles for $1.

And just a clarification question (for SR2, specifically, I guess). I'm assuming it'll start after that fade-in (not when start is pressed), and end on the last bullet fired, not in the cutscene?

And again, thanks for writing up the rules! I'm SO happy that other people are still caring about running these games, even this late.

Hey guys

I've run SR2 about a week about but don't have a capture cam so I couldn't record it. I got 5:53:20 RTA and that could TOTALLY be optimized. I'm thinking sub 5 for sure.

One thing I definitely want to note is that I only completed 5 activities (with 1 extra level of a mission later). I started out and as soon as you do Appointed Defender, head over to the crowd control right off of the suburbs. I haven't actually timed Septic Avenger but it seems like it'd take so much more time.

In Crowd Control, don't play the rooftop one but do the others. BUT make sure you do level 6 at the ultor dome. This way, you end up right next to Fight Club and can immediately do that. I finished up to here with a time of 33:31. At this point, though, you're right next to the car shop but have 19,700, just 300 shy of buying a car for mucho style points. I've been trying to think of ways to quickly get an extra 300 for that.

Anyway, After Fight Club, I took a taxi to the Insurance Fraud. My strategy was to quickly get up to the highway in the factories district. That made it super easy to finish all 6 rounds. And after that, take a taxi over to the foreign power in the dt (or close to) district. Hit up Snatch after that.

After doing these 4, I have splits that head off with the samedi but then go between the ronin and brotherhood for the most part. At a certain point, I get low on respect and head over to the university where I do that stronghold for the samedi and do the demo derby. Demo derby is SUPER quick, compared to everything else.

At this point, depending on how you've been racking up respect on the side and if you could buy a car after fight club, you should have enough. But if you don't, you can kill yourself somewhere on the southern island, maybe by the hideout, and you'll respawn at the hospital which has a heli assault. The first level there goes by real quick but the others take so much longer.

TL;DR: I've found the the best activities in these orders are

1. Crowd Control (Suburbs) (14:26)
2. Fight Club (Ultor Dome) (9:39)
3. Insurance Fraud (Factories) (13:45)
4. Snatch (Downtown) (25:36 - 2 major hiccups)
5. Demo Derby (University) (6:21)

Anything else seemed to take much longer and the only reason CC is really in this list is it's close to the end of Appointed Defender and lets off at FC.

Awesome! Thanks.

I'm also really glad I'm not the only one who's into speedrunning these games. I haven't found much interest for SR2 so that's gonna be fun glitch hunting but I need a capture device before anything.

That's an valid request. It makes a lot of sense. I'd say that RTA is also applicable to SR2, at least for xbox, because the PC version is pretty screwy from what I heard. I'd even be leery of counting them because someones game could easily just run faster purely because of their processor clock speed. If we have a game running at 1.5x the speed of another, it's clearly a disadvantage. And yes, it's a legit bug but it's also grossly unfair because that's almost the same as saying the load times don't matter purely because of your hardware.

So I guess in short, I'd say that RTA is good for the consoles alone but definitely use in game time for anything on the PC.

I'd also agree about deleting all of the profile data between runs, at least for vanilla runs. It'd reduce a lot of headaches, I'd think.