What Kirby said. I have no idea how this could possibly construed as cheating. If they EDITED the levels, that'd be seriously cheating (and not accepted by SDA). But it's just a quicker method of finding existing issues, they still have to play the game and exploit them. They already use cheats to help in that.

Just decided to have a go at running level 1 of MotS, and oddly enough got a success on my third try. Then I tried for an hour and a half to improve it and didn't get a single successful attempt.

There are a couple of flaws in the run which cost a few frames (notably, I could get to the switch a little faster at the beginning with some diagonal running, although it makes it harder not to catch on doorframes, and also I should've jumped over the stormtrooper at the end instead of going around him) so I'll try to improve this, but given the difficulty of the trick I'd be content to keep this if necessary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OSQJbT8JOc

Very nice work, Cabbage! One of those tricks that almost seems too easy on video.

I lol'd. Awesome!

I don't know if I could actually do the speed run, I let out giant sighs of relief when I pull stuff like that off and wouldn't possibly be able to keep a pace of any kind, but my obsessive nature could probably figure out little tricks you guys could probably use. After seeing that, I'm installing as we speak.

that is incredible!

I can't wait to get my computer up this weekend and take a few shots at some of the levels

Looking pretty good. I assume you're getting the sequencers because you have time to do so after hitting the switch?

This makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Great trick with the Tie Bomber, Cabbage.

First try? Good timing with the bomber.

Wow, wtf. I was mildly drunk last night when I pulled off that run and posted it. This morning I just got up and thought 'how the hell did that happen'? I was planning on just doing attempts to practice the trick without much hope of getting a successful run, much less of rapidly getting a reasonably good successful run, when suddenly it happened.

Regardless, thanks for the feedback.

Anyway, something that's just occurred to sober me is that I was playing on Easy. Dunno whether with this run we want to run on the fastest difficulty (whichever that may be) or run on Hard to match the DF2 run. If the latter, this will need to be redone. If the former, this may need to be redone.



Yes.

I don't know when or if we'll need them yet. We should probably hold off on reattempting level 1 until we've worked out what difficulty we want to be running on and figured out the route for levels 2-4 (so that we know if the sequencers are worthless so we can skip them, which would make the run slightly easier, and also so that we know if we need to go out of our way to grab any other explosives. The latter seems pretty unlikely since as I recall there's stormtroopers with Rail Detonators everywhere in levels 2-4 who should provide us with all the ammo we need. Also I wonder if it would've been useful at all for me to get a Stormtrooper Rifle?)

Another thing that it's just occurred to me needs to be checked is whether the Tie Bomber's arrival really is on a fixed timer after hitting the switch, as I assumed, or if there's an element of randomness to it or if going outside affects the arrival of the bomber in any way.



As for looking at maps in JED/ZED - this seems like a good idea. I've never used JED/ZED though; how easy is it to figure out? It may be better for some of you guys who are more familiar with the editor to handle that side of things.

In response to Tibby's objections about looking at maps in the editor, I can't put it better than this:

I only play JK and MotS on hard... I can't remember if there are any major differences in speed like JK.. it has been a very long time since I played JK and MotS on easy or medium, but I think there may be in the ship level where pirates attack.

I imagine that level is going to be a pain..

Is the "flinging your dead body across the finish line" bug something that was deliberately put in by the game designers? No.

But is it something that is a part of the game, available to anyone to use in making their own speed runs? Yes.

In that manner, it's no different in finding holes in invisible clipped walls (unpassable adjoins in this case) through which to find a quicker route.

Your new run makes that other run on youtube (from RoyHess666) look like poop.

Yeah, this is something that can be checked via ZED (For reference, ZED is just a newer version of JED).



It's not the easiest editor in the world, but you have the advantage of not actually needing to modify anything, so you wouldn't need to learn 95% of the tools and such. There's a 3D preview window that's easy to walk around in, and 6 rotatable grid views of the level's layout. From there you can see all the objects on the map, etc.

But like above though, I think a lot of members could probably help you with specific questions. If you want to know something, just ask, someone could look up the answer.

I just spent some time looking at level 2. I'm going to use RoyHess's video here for reference just because it's pretty hard to describe locations briefly in words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ4iszfA_Fo

Where he does the first sequencer boost, you can quite comfortably just do a ramp jump to get up to the catwalk instead and save yourself some time and shields.

At 17 seconds you're across a chasm from the place roy_hess reaches at 0:43. The only thing stopping you running straight across is that the fall is far enough that you'll get up enough speed to (just) trigger a fade to black reload. The solution is to do a midair rail boost off a wall to slow your descent and let you reach the other side safely, skipping 25 seconds of running and the yellow key.

The main thing I'm stuck on is the best approach to descending from there to the bottom of the chasm. You're meant to press a button to summon the airboat, jump onto it, press the button on there and ride it down to the ground. If need be, we'll summon the airboat and then ride it down and hop off at the last possible moment. It'd be nice, though, to find a way, using rail charges to slow descent, to drop from the secret area just below to force field onto the airboat while it's still rising and from there drop onto the next secret area, which would save a big chunk of time. I'm 80% sure this isn't possible, but maybe someone else could look into it? Alternatively, and this is a real long shot, maybe if you used a huge stack of sequencers to blast your corpse down the chasm at high speed, and fired a rail charge down there before triggering them, you could have your corpse hit the ground and then be boosted into the level exit before the fadeout ended. Does anyone know how the game handles you hitting the level exit during a fade to black? If not, maybe someone who can use ZED can make a test level to find out.

Finally, the big door in the big open space RoyHess is in from about 0:06 to 0:14 leads to later in the level, but initially can only be opened from the other side. Once you've opened it once, it can be opened from either side. Enemies on the outside will open it and wander through it freely once it's been opened, but won't (as far as I can tell) open it prior to you opening it for the first time. As for enemies on the inside, I don't know whether they've spawned yet, whether they can hear me, or whether they can open the door, but at any rate screwing around by the outside of the door making noise and setting off explosives never seemed to lure anyone out. I've pretty much written this off, but if anyone has any ideas on how to get this to open from the outside, go ahead and suggest them.

CoolMatty - okay awesome. I've just downloaded Zed, I'll have a look at it later and see if I can make sense of it.

An interesting thing about the engine:
IIRC, the "fade to black" is actually a sector flag. That is, not all areas will actually cause this to happen. The result with this flag disabled is that you would simply die from impact instead.

So it may be possible to find a sector that doesn't have the trigger, and make sure to fall through that part. (Sectors can be rather small pieces, with invisible "adjoins" combining them)

I'm currently trying to find my MOTS disc to check this out.



IIRC the fade to black will continue no matter what happens, so unless the trigger is instant I don't think it'd work. It's been years though, so

No, pit fading only happens when you fall at a certain speed. With mods that had grappling hooks, people used to descend to the floor of the map in the valley tower MP level by slowly repelling down the side of the tower.

We know that, we're talking about avoiding the sector flag/what happens when the fade is in progress.

Cabbage fantastic tie bomber trick!

Okay, I can now confirm that the TIE Bomber is indeed activated by the switch.

It waits 4.8 seconds after the activation of the switch, and begins the animation.




After looking at the level, unfortunately, that entire sector is very large (takes up almost the whole pit) and is flagged for fading out (pit flag).

If you look ingame, the red striped texture on the wall (where a lift "runs along") ends at the bottom edge of the sector, near the very bottom. That is where the pit flag ends. As long as you don't reach the necessary fall velocity before the bottom edge of that red striped texture, you won't cause a fade out.

Also, the secret area Roy falls into is not marked as a pit, so achieving "pit velocity" won't do anything there either.

Finally, for reference, the start of the sector starts above Roy's head when he enters the pit for the first time at 0:16 (if you look across the pit you should see an edge, that's the start of the sector). The sector above is not flagged as a pit.

I'll look at the door next.


EDIT:


Okay, looked into this too.

The door is as you say, it will only open from one side (you must be standing in a sector on the opposite side of the door, and activate it). Once that happens, the door will open from EITHER side freely.

However, there's nothing in the code to stop enemies from opening it, other than plain AI stupidity (that is, the unlikelyness of them actually walking into the sector and activating the door). The enemies do seem to be spawned on map load (it's actually highly uncommon for enemies to be created afterwards), but I don't think any of them are really close enough for you to make them move. Ironically, the closest one is a mousebot, and I don't think he'll do what you want.

No? There's 1 single orthographic projection view with an orbit camera, and a grid that can be placed at any position or orientation within the world. The camera and the grid are not connected.

Man. I should have had my JK run planning thread on this board.

Yeah, this board is full of people with nothing going on in their lives.

Thanks for the research, Matty.



Good.

Alright, this is useful info. We can rule out avoiding the pit sector as a way of avoiding the fadeout.

My corpse boost idea may be theoretically possible, but if it is it will be so hard as to be totally impractical for a human player. The fadeout is very quick so you would need large amounts of explosives to get enough speed, and you would need near-perfect positioning and timing to get your corpse propelled into the tiny passageway at the end of the level. The thing is, I know from my level 8 run that the boost you get from medium to large numbers of stacked sequencers is random in a significant way (as in, if you stack up five sequencers, quicksave, then repeatedly reload the quicksave and do nothing but fire a rail shot at them to detonate them, you get substantial visible differences in the trajectory your corpse takes each time). I don't think high-precision boosts involving huge numbers of sequencers is an idea worth pursuing.

That leaves one possibility, which is getting down there without ever getting up to a high enough speed to trigger the fadeout. I've gotten very close to doing this by dropping from the first secret to the rising airboat, and from there to the ramp above the second secret, using rail shots on each jump to slow my descent, but I can't quite pull it off. I think perhaps it would be easier if I was being shot at from below so I could drop onto the shots to slow my descent. Perhaps if we try on Hard (where I believe enemies fire faster) we'll have more luck.

Yeah, I guess the enemies on the other side of the door just can't hear me shooting.

Anyway, thanks for the help.



Yeah, this place is awesome.

No one has said that since 2002.

SHUT UP IM AWESOME

Wow - you can jump on the tie bomber! I want to tell my 10 year old self that he was right.

I'd love if people started doing speed-runs on custom levels! LoaM, Imp Seige On Derra, Planet Sith...

But seriously keep up the good work. I can't wait for the MOTS speed-runs. Especially Kappa's palace and Katrassi Spaceport levels. The Sith Temple levels would be HARD without using seq charges (I can't remember if you can use them or not... I know all other weapons are void).

Holy christ, JM, semantics much? The 6 views I was referring to are the presets, get over yourself.

Yeah, these are some pretty exceptional runs.

MB's body mass and level of awesome are a positive correlation

but mb is actually a very skinny guy

Yeah but that's real life. So in real life he must suck. But on the internet he is fat, so he is awesome. I guess?

If I remember correctly I tried to cheat on the temple levels and there are adjoins that get turned on and off to stop you from skipping the circular room with the pit in the middle.

I can confirm that at least some stormtroopers do fire faster on hard mode. (I only looked at one AI file instead of digging through them all, but I expect it to be similar.) Interestingly, there's no fire rate difference between easy and normal, only hard.

There is also an "accuracy" attribute, which increases for each difficulty level as well. Unfortunately, this isn't well documented, as in JK a different method was used to create "error" in gunfire. But for at least this specific AI, the accuracy attribute changed significantly (from 0.10 to 0.45, out of 1) from Easy to Hard..

Coincidentally the last time I was here. Now I come back and people are saying it again.

-I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Haha good stuff

I do find it funny how Force Blind works on Jerec. Seeing that he is already ...blind.

If anything it should work better because he uses the force to see.
:goonsay:

But you can use Force Sight to counter Blindness.

-Right? It's been a while.

I had had so much trouble beating Gork, Pic, and Jerec. WAY TO MAKE A GUY FEEL INADEQUATE D:

Yeah, speed run through that door...