I remember back before I discovered DxWnd and I was doing that. Unfortunately tabbing out of HoD causes it to freeze in the top left corner in Windows 10 which I always forgot about until I went and did it forcing me to go into taskmanager and shut down the process and start all over again.

I actually had a discord that me and MandalOne discussed some strats on a while ago that I linked to. The link doesn't work anymore. Don't know if we can merge the servers but I'll join that one too. Here's the new link https://discord.gg/epxvU3W

If anyone wants a reliable ISO rip just let me know what language you want and I'll get it to you. I'm pretty sure I have all the official PC versions that were released.

First off, congrats on deciding to tackle the elusive PlayStation version. I personally prefer PC because of emulation problems so it's cool to see someone interested in running it anyways.

I agree with Alien. Pausing to switch discs seems fair. Wouldn't want discs getting damaged if we took them in and out too fast. While the tactical speed of physically switching the discs quickly sounds cool, a more accurate gauge of how someone can play the game would be to eliminate that element from run times.

I currently have an unused Heart of Darkness discord server. I can quick make a speedrunning channel in it. Here it is. I'm not perfect but hopefully it's passable and I can improve it over time. https://discord.gg/zR2R25

It is pretty intense lmao. You gotta study every frame of his animations, pick the exact frame and then BAM.

I cannot believe I missed that! There was a possibility I would have seen it before and just forgotten (you'll have to excuse my memory. It is EXTREMELY bad) but I didn't like the tweet so I clearly didn't see it. That is so dang cool. Have you messed around with gmontoir's HoD Decoder? You can get all these sprites out with it. It has some issues currently with some of the prerendered sprites but the spectres for the most part get ripped fine.

OH OHHHHH!!!!?? You've just told me the greatest thing ever! Really a shame you lost interest though. I'd kill to see that. I've been wanting to pull a team together too. It's been such a long time since I've been able to work in 3D I don't know how well I'd fare trying to remake the cinematics all by myself when I finally do get the resources and I realize that's probably a fool's errand without other people to help. I'm opposed to making changes to the original vision, but I'm entirely onboard for like, "DLC sorta additional cinematics and levels" sort of deal. Or just an all out fanmade sequel. Mostly because I've had bad experiences with people who want to change HoD in weird needless ways.

Also love that video you posted on Youtube. No clue why the game likes messing with your computer so much. Never had it mess around with animations like that for me. Kinda jealous honestly. I like recording outlandish HoD stuff like when I manage to find ways to escape invisible walls. THIS ONE will always be my favourite I discovered.

It'll be great to see all the strats done in that video in a run we know is legitimate and uncut. The fact that it's segmented has always made me question its legitimacy. I know all the little strats are possible though, so good luck if you can get them all in one take. You'll likely do it before me at least. Hoping to finally get somewhere in the New Year.

Wait where did he show that you can kill the lizard? I don't remember actually seeing that I just remember using the program he made that rips sprites and seeing that it was animated and still existed in the game's code. I honestly can't wait until we can really mess with the game using his engine. I love just messing with the game already but when you can modify things like checkpoints it really opens the door.

Hopefully you find a solution. Still really confused you're having this issue. Hoping it's not something I'll have to deal with when I finally get my new computer that I'm planning to make 3D animations with.

You can always still practice though! I know it's tough not being able to send in runs because of computer troubles but any practice you can get in will ensure you won't mess up the times you are recording any more than necessary. That's what I've been doing.

Dang. That is really weird. Admittedly I haven't had a higher end computer in a very long time. My old computer was built to be quite memory and CPU intensive for video rendering and never really experienced any speed up with Heart of Darkness, but that was nearly a 10 year old build so things might have changed. It does sound like it might be your CPU specifically. Or directX maybe? Have you run the game with compatibility settings? I tend to chose Windows XP SP3 if the game misbehaves on a newer computer and that gives a better result. It really doesn't explain why nobody else has it. I know my old computer probably wasn't the best, but it was still pretty great for its time and it feels weird that this is only an issue for newer computers as of late, and that it didn't happen sooner. I'm pretty sure that out of the handful of people who install and play the PC version specifically someone would at least have as beefy of a computer as yours. This is really confusing and interesting to me. I hope you manage to find a solution.

@/gmontoir on twitter has been working on a fan-made engine for the game, but it's not currently beatable in its current form and has many glitches. He's made tools to rip audio and bitmaps from the PAF files but I don't know if he could help with this as it's a problem with your specific computer and not the PAF file itself.

I have never encountered this exact problem on any genuine PC version install of Heart of Darkness. Windows 32 bit, 64 bit, virtual machines running Windows. etc. Have you tried installing a different version ISO of the game? What sort of specs do you have? I'm assuming you're using Windows.

I have seen something similar to this when I messed around with the Sega Saturn prototype version, but it pretty much immediately crashed the first time I died and I haven't been able to replicate it.

It appears to be affecting the PAF file which handles all animations outside of the in-game levels. Are you running from an actual CD? if it's an ISO you picked up online they might have done something with the PAF file to make the filesize smaller.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah. DxWnd makes running the game live SO MUCH EASIER. I definitely recommend it for anyone who wants to play it. And I really don't know how you manage to play HoD live without it Alien. I know some people suggest peixoto's patch but that doesn't run it in a window like DxWnd does. Definitely the most convenient option.

Hello! I think soon I'll finally be able to upload some runs but I was wondering if the program DxWnd (used to run Heart of Darkness in a window to make it easier to capture gameplay footage) is allowed? It doesn't impact gameplay as far as I can tell, it's just a compatibility program to make the game easier to record. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

While part of me does question the legitimacy of this run itself due to the cuts in the footage and my unfamiliarity with segmented runs, the pixel perfect evasion and exploitation of the scripted aspects of the game are 100% legit and I've been able to pull many of them off when practicing the game. Not very consistently though. In regards to how random some of these skips are, I think it may have a lot to do with which frames of animation allow Andy to be invulnerable and which frames of spectre animations allow them to register a hit. Right time and place based on how the spectres are moving, which frames of the animation they're in could possibly why sometimes it will succeed and sometimes it doesn't even when otherwise the set up is the same.

Thank you for looking into the data values of the game and making an autosplitter. There's really not the most interest for this game which is a shame.

edit excuse my grammar