One positive about the CDs is that we could theoretically pick them up during the escort activity whuch is dead time but that then in turn increases the risk of failing. Possibly level 1 and 2 of either is where we could do that.

Another thing is CD 48 is on the roof so you need to have a heli so if snatch is to be done in the oppressor that is when that would be taken.

If I had to predict how long this run would take right now I would say 11hours is reasonable and considering 7.5 - 9hours was the any% estimate last year that isn’t that bad.

I was messing about with the activities:

Escort is okish until level 4 onwards then It becomes about hoping for nice RNG but you can get really screwed.

Drug Trafficking isn't as bad as I remembered but having vehicle delivery is a must calling in modded supercars is most likely the way to go but they still will be 20-30mins of pure autoscroller.

Crowd control just sucks, plain and simple, after level 1 and 2 you can just forget about any consistency sometimes it goes nicely others you can get trolled over and over

Snatch didn't do much but it seems oppressor is the way to go

As for tags and CDs this is what I have so far

http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/sellz4/media/SR2%20tag.jpg.html?o=0

http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/sellz4/media/SR2%20cd.jpg.html?o=1

Yer no GOOH, getting a better internet connection in the near future and intend my first stream to be the tetralogy run. 18-20 hours is the target 17:17:14 is sob for all the games but SR1 is so unforgiving and resetting for tornado spawn will be an issue.

I started to look at where all the collectables will generally fit and made decent progress today. Next time off is Sunday I should have them done on Sunday. After that I'll put some thought in where activities will be put in. A few of them chain together reasonably well but it may come down to variable routes for the ones that have random end points such as mayhem.

Just a thought, could you possibly look into how the “random tasks” in escort and fuzz are allocated? Are they just pure RNG or can they be manipulated to get nicer outcomes. That is a few mins in time save in any% and a boatload in 100% if they can be.

Also area selection in mayhems. There are times where I feel doing certain things, such as ending facing certain directions, help get better outcomes not sure if it is just wishful thinking.

Due to my weird way of routing I have 3 or 4 variations of how each section could work out but nothing that I am 100% happy with:

Like I said before most of the collectable are obvious where they will fit

Most of the activities are fine: drug trafficking is slow I can’t find a good way to do it quickly, the later levels of crowd control are inconsistent, escort is a RNG feast which can make the last levels near impossible at time and again with snatch not sure whether to go with car or heli.

I’ll dig out my notes and start adding to them while derusting (doing so as I’m going to be a tetralogy run soon)

If they are not used during the run then it is fine and we will still allow it as no dlc. I’m not sure if there are any that are intrusive enough to make it so that you’ll have to remove them it could be possible but no one else has had to.

Are you on PC or Console?

Good spot thanks for letting us know, I have now fixed it, one was meant to be the 100% co-op category.

Now we have had conformation about what is required I have started to route out this run. Did a quick play through of SR4 100% over the last week or so and finished it in 12:27IGT which would have been about 13:15-30 or so in RT.

I was left with 400 or so clusters to get after the story and a few of the more grindy challenges:

While I accept that it is likely that the clusters will always have to be cleaned up it may be better doing them as soon as you get the collectable finder or rushing to get it and doing it while doing the activities. In short it is the trade off of time for the extra power up.

Time wasted to finish off challenges can be done better while doing mission and activities so a good 1:30 could be trimmed. I decided to do the weapon challenges while doing viruses but have come to the conclusion it is a time sink and it will be better to do them all in the void and grind the one Genki one that has 101 and fail and repeat that one. The power ones will be better to do in super fight club on a defend the spot as the respawn rate there is so high. Also due to the way I did the viruses and activities I got the catch thrown items upgrade too late in the run so that will need to be changed.

All in all it was promising time wise and a 10:30 or even sub 10 could be the target in time.

Thank you very much for the reply it is both helpful and greatly appreciated. We are more than willing to wait for good solid info.

SR2-2: Ok that makes sense we were getting the Tornado in a place in the mission where it loaded a cluster of cars so it was that that was inhibiting the Tornado’s spawning.

SR3-2: An example of the Killbane glitch is in this video, . I always put it down to us pre-empting the button commands de-syncing the choreographed parts of the mission.

SR4-1: The run being long won’t scare us off doing it. Just out of interest what kind of time would you predict? SR3 100% is doable in 6h:40m

SR4-2: There is a way to get into the ship by using a DLC vehicle (Salem) to partially clip though the floor then get off resulting in you being put inside it.

And also not a technical question.

Why was Ben King’s simulation that you rescue him from based off a mission that he wasn’t in or even in the Vice King story Arc of that game? I get that you wanted to use the church as it is iconic to Saints Row story but it did leave me to wonder why it was done this way over using the abandon police station stronghold or what would have been the best fit in my opinion the final mission in the Vice King Arc.

Damn that sucks so much bad luck in one run was that console or PC? On the bright side you know my combined route works well. Sub 4:30 is very much possible I have a run 27secs off 4:30 and I forgot to not talk to the receptionist during Assault on Precinct 31 which is a stupid 30secs lost. When I come back round to running Any%, hopefully we will have the Tornado spawn figured out by then, I should be able to get Sub 4:30 then it is a matter of going back through each mission to find seconds here and there to see how low we can get it.

General

1. In SR2, 3 & 4 what time is excluded in the In Game Time that is displayed upon saving? There is about a 4min per an hour deferential between the Real Time and In Game Time and it would be helpful to know so we can determine the best way to time the games for the leader boards.

2. When does the IGT start recording time as soon as you hit new game, after opening cut scenes or somewhere else?

3. With games being censored for one reason or another is there anywhere we can find out which versions of the games have had what content removed in comparison to the complete game? We need to know what to note when runs from versions with advantageously less content are submitted. E.g the Australian version of SR4 has 1 less loyalty mission meaning a 7-8min advantage.

4. Is there a Frame Rate difference between the regional console releases?

SR1

1. In SR1 at first the pushbacks seemed random but after I finished routing the game I got them so they are called in at certain points every time. This makes me suspect they are on a timer of some sort once certain conditions are met. If this is the case what are the conditions that need to be met and are they avoidable, delay-able or set in stone to happen?

SR2

1. In SR2 what is the spawn rate of the tornado on the police station heli pad and what affects that spawn?

2. Is there any reason the spawn rate should drop in a mission with a countdown attached to it?

3. Is there any reason the spawn rate should increase after listening to the wiretaps?

4. We have noticed that using the tornado in “Enemy of my Enemy” can lead to the boats not spawning. Though we have found a way to circumnavigate this issue what is the reasoning for this?

5. Why are the 2 “crowd control” activities not included into in the game time displayed upon saving?

6. We have had a couple of instances where we have managed to punch people through the cage in fight club. Do you know why this would happen?

SR3

1. In SR3 I have found a trick that allows us to skip the autoscroller during Ho Boat. On the Xbox 360 it is also possible to use the same trick to skip the second half of Kenzi’s Guardian Angel but it doesn’t work on the PC version of the game is there any reason for this? Was there a patch to address this? ( 1:56:00 is an example of the trick)

2. Killbane has a tendency to fall through the ring in Murderbrawl do you know of any reasons why this would happen and how to prevent it?

3. There seems to be some sort of memory retention where even after reloading another save file some artefacts from the previous game remain. E.g If you play Remote start until the part when you are meant to run down the mascots then you load a new save it will continue to mass spawn mascots in the new game file until a checkpoint or a new auto save is made. The biggest possible exploit of this I have found, which would be viable for a segmented run, is playing Belgium project up to entering the garage results in the new game despawning all traffic on the road.

SR4

1. In SR4 there is conflicting information on what are the requirements for 100% a definitive answer would be helpful before we spend the time routing out the fastest way to do go about it.

2. Using a method of getting stuck in the falling animation we found you can fall through the world holes in the floor of the open waters. Once under them you can call in the void and fly under the map. We have found the hidden room under let’s pretend, the fact that all gateways are above a large box encasing a trigger (that I assume sends you to the ship? or possible the external simulations?) and the ship itself. Is there more to find and if so is it intractable opening wrong warp possibilities.

About the Devs times We can hope but I just don't see how the tornado can be eliminated it is far too versatile and OPed. I mentally went though our route to see where the 30mins would come from.

Travelling wise, I’ve gone through all the possible mechanic and how they could be abused; save warps are used, taxis are used, activity fail warps are too slow, busted warps are too slow, death warps have little use unless we change the activities we do or mission order but then we would lose time doing that and OOB warps don’t work like in 3 and 4 and the one way I did find to manipulate them to work in our favour it was slow, relied on us have satchels and took us to the most useless place on the map.

Mission speed, Again there are not very many mission where we go particularly slow unless they have a way to interrupt autoscroller or timed event.

Mission order, Possible they have a better order but 10mins tops

Activities/ gain respect, if they have a way of getting money quick then that would be a possibility it would skip an 8-9min mission and another 6-7mins in activities and 2 and a half mins in phone taps. The activities we do I would say they are a combination of the most useful and quickest.

The thing I’m worried about is if they start with the respect needed it would be a vastly slower time than ours, if they, as they mentioned, used the in game time and they used the crowd control activities as they are both bugged and don’t count for the IGT or if they used the pre-release codes as they are technically not cheats and got the UFO which is basically a free tornado.

The tornado is 10%? I would have guessed 5% lol but the lower rate of spawn during the countdown is something that I have also felt.

What we can guess about the spawn rate;

1. That listening to the taps seems to increase it (up to about 1 in 3)
2. The mission countdown seems to decrease it (way down)
3. Spinning is enough to rerolling the spawn

With that would you advise going back to tornado before Tee N Aye and give up the 20secish to be able to get a run going? The upsides seem to outweigh the downsides at this point. Which I would be fine with as an issue I have is that by the time I have got a heli after an hour plus of tries my shooting is off and I lose more than that time in the shanties area anyway.

As for the new category “Modded Any% (Practice)” is what I would go for and I would stress it is only a practise category with no WR attached to it and put it in the misc categories. Would that be ok with you?

Also I’m thinking of putting up a “Questions for devs” thread in the general Saints row forum area in the hope they see it. I now have 15 questions, over the 4 games I run, in a doc waiting.

http://www.twitch.tv/dsvolition/b/681732828 @1:30:20

Ah, I noticed that happened and that it was consistent but couldn’t work out why and what caused it.

Also in a stream the devs did they mentioned that they recalled finishing the game in around 4 hours so hopefully they show us something we are missing.

They genuinely showed an interest in speedruns hopefully they get on here and can answer some of the questions I have about the games.

I've started looking into routing 100% again the new early Tornado makes it more viable to run, the previous would have meant a 90+% chance of reset after a 1hour so. I’m looking at sub 10 to start with and if in time I can go below 9hours and beyond I’ll be happy. Mission + strongholds are not an issue we do them all in any% so that is 4hours or slightly less, tags and CDs again not much of an issue pretty much all of them fit in during a mission or a stronghold a few are slightly inconvenient but workable they add 30mins. The activities are the main sticking point most of them are long with little to no scope to speed up and a few of the level 6’s are both random and difficult meaning fails are likely. I’m going to spend some time plying the activities working on the best way for them to be done and which order but it will be a while before I see myself doing a full run.

RTA is how the record is decided so it is the deciding factor. IGT is asked for on top of that for comparative reasons and also if there is a compelling reason to switch time methods in the future we can.

Timing for Saints Row games will always be contentious. IGT would be preferable as load time differences can be pretty big as can be seen with the top 2 times in SR3 they are 3mins 30sec different but have the same IGT due to computer differences. The issue with using IGT is that save warps are used in all 4 games which IGT will not keep track of leaving scope for it to be abused with warps that would be inefficient in RT. So in short both timing methods have flaws but RTA is the way it has to be done.

Feel free to pm me the link I have a ton of note on specific events leading to situation strats they rarely come up but are worth being recorded.

The tags are preference there are 5 realist ones you can get any 3-4 of them will do.

On the respect Taunts are very useful it is 35 per a star and you get 2 stars for each taunt per person killed and it works on police kills and ultor kills. So for example when you kill the 4 Misako units outside the church a taunt gets you 280 respect. In a segmented run I reckon you could go with no tags and get all respect needed taunting and I expect in time it will make it to single segment when the game gets optimized even more too where sub 4:20RT is the target.

The only reason I didn’t go crazy resetting was because I remember how bad the old tornado after S3 was. After resetting after 16-17 mins of work the 4-5 mins, with half being an autoscroller, isn’t half bad. That and I mute the game so I don’t have to listen to the wiretaps over and over lol.

How did I miss that you could get that free upgrade. The second upgrade doesn't seem worth it. It is only a handling improvement and by the time it is open the Jefferson Provincial is only better than 4 of the stock cars in the 50s, excluding the trucks and vans, you would be better off just taking a random car and upgrading that.

I was looking at the petrol stamp route as I see it there is 3 viable routes. It is hard to nail down which is the best as timing it will alway be off due to traffic and and other factors but here are the options I came up with on this map.

http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/sellz4/media/Mafia%20Map.jpg.html?o=0

Recently taken to route this game out, I’m one of those weird people who is pedantic enough to take more enjoyment out of routing a game than running it, and thought I would share what I find here. I have been working mostly on the first 3 chapters and the first thing I see is that the early game is going to be more about optimizing driving and driving routes than anything else so that is most likely where the bulk of my efforts will fall.

Something that may be worth looking into is tuning the Jefferson Provincial you get, the way I see it is that ot is in the top 3 cars of the 40s era so it is worth keeping regardless and if you can do it both efficiently and early enough it may be worth it even if you will abandon it for a better car later on. The amount of driving you do in the car to me seems logical it being worth upgrading, the time saved getting to the 6 gas stations alone could be a positive time save. The upgrade takes top speed to 97mph from 91mph (6-7% better) but the main benifit is the increase in the power from 129hp to 158hp (18-19% better).

Normally cash would be an issue but I found that robbing the gun shop near Mike's junkyard seems to get $400-600 (ran it 4 times and each time I got between these figures) more than enough to get the upgrade. It is on route in the end of chapter 2 and takes 20-40secs max to rob the shop, you run in head shot the owner then take the cash from the till and go back to your car, you could even arm up with guns if you want to (may be helpful later haven’t tested that far in yet).

2 options on where and when to get the car upgraded they will need to be timed out to see which is the better option.

1. On the drive to Derek’s in Chapter 3 you go past the garage on route so it is a nice place to upgrade. You can go in; fix the car here instead of at your garage at Joe’s, get the upgrade and change the plates if needed and go on to Derek’s from there.

2. Slightly earlier you will need to get atleast 450 from the gun shop for this one. Straight after you rob the gun shop you go to the garage around the corner; fix your car, upgrade your car and change the plates, if needed and money allows, and finish the mission as normal. It is a bit off route but you get the faster car for the drive to steal the other car and the drive back to Joe’s.