The Quick and the Dead

Just found the SpeedGaming video of
someone beating Half-Life 2 in around two hours, 15 minutes. I swear to
God I think the guy is on cocaine while doing the run through..he can't
stay still for two seconds during some sequences...just has to run and
throw stuff around when the're nothing better to do, heh. Dunno
how
old this is, but here is the link:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/35302

Please note you will need a bittorrent client like Azureus or Shareaza
to download that file. It is a 1.1 gig avi file and uses the divx codec.<span style="color: gray;">

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Next, here is the original Half-Life 'done quick' in 45 minutes:

http://www.archive.org/download/HalfLife_4545/HalfLife_4545.avi

This one is a classic, and much cooler than the Half-Life 2 movie. It is also only about 170 megs.

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Last but not least, the Mario Brothers 3 'Time Attack' video of some
nerd beating it in 11 minutes or something. It is 18 megs in size and
if you loved Super Mario 3 on the NES, you will get a kick out of how
fast this guy hauls:

</span>http://www.jeffwilhelm.com/files/movies/smb3.wmv

<span style="color: gray;">

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As far as I know, distributing these videos
should be perfectly legal, as they arent for purchase anywhere that I know of. If it
is illegal, either delete this thread or I will edit out the links. Enjoy guys!

Edit: None of the links require registration anymore. To get the Half-Life Video, copy/paste the url into your browser.

</span>

Half-Life 1 in 45 minutes? It took me a year to beat that!!!!!1!

there are some super-nifty tricks achieved in the Half-Life video. If
you haven't already seen it, I would HIGHLY reccomend it. It's pretty
awesome. You will see a few trip mine ladders and all sorts of other
kickassery. This guy treats Half-Life like its his bitch. Again, some
parts are jaw-dropping to watch.

Also, dunno if there are better links to these vids without
registering...if anyone finds direct links to the vids, it might help
out some folks out.

I gotta see it to believe it. I have to Log In/Register before I can download though... so I don't want to do that now.

Updated the link. Now no longer needs registration. Just a click :smile:

The mario 3 video is awesome, but, it isn't completley legitimate. He played it slowed down on an emulator and it took about 3 years to complete the video.

Although, he did actually do everything in the video without "cheating" in the old fasioned sense. It would still take a lot of skill.

However, Mario 3 is the orgin of crouch jump.

However, have you guys ever seen some of the tetris videos? They're insane. They're not fake either, since they're showing it played on an arcade.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

It still requires registration, Dark Tree.

http://speeddemosarchive.com/GameList.html

You guys have to watch the Quake Done Quick Speedruns. Talk about making the engine your bitch... The average time to beat a level in those is around 15 seconds whatwith all the insane rocket jumping/bunnyhopping/timing.

I will say that the HL one is pretty cool though.

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http://maze5.net

Actually, French Toast, you don't need to register. It's the wierdest
thing. If you click on the link, it will ask you to register. If you
COPY AND PASTE the link into your browser, you will start DLing without
registration....weird but true.

theres pc games speed runs at the bottom of the page BTW...

lol, i run around in mario bros 1 and megaman 4 like that fast :smile: but i don't use secrete passageways and stuff liek that :smile:

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

My favorite part about the HL1 speedrun is where he skips the whole surface tension dam bit by cliff running.

sweetness.

I liked it where he skipped the whole blast pit section with a few wisely placed tripmines

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http://maze5.net

(hi, i'm back)

And I thought I was Rambo for finishing HL1 in 2 days! At least it's
clear that he wasn't on his first go of the game and that he had some
help.

I downloaded the .dem files, but I can't figure out how to play them from HL1.

Can someone clue me in? Thanks a bunch.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

Hmm...i think you have to type startdemos DEMONAME.dem in the console after placing the .dem file in the valve folder. Not sure tho.

What do you mean by "he had some help"? IIRC, he did it without any bots/hacks/etc.

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http://maze5.net

I'm not talking about hacks. I just think he was like an actor
following a script while receiving hints from other people in the room.
I know a guy who finished hl in about 60 minutes and me and a few other
buddies were constantly telling him things like "watch out for the
airstrikes" or "there's a grunt behind that corner" and so on.

Or he played so many times that he didn't need the help...

I can still almost dream games like Tomb Raider. I've got whole
walkthroughs in my head. It's strange but those are things I can hardly
forget.

Just downing the HL speeddemo now. Sounds interesting. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I actually had a dream the other day that I was walking around in a map. I was amazed at the details of the map, and I was wondering "how come the framerates are so high, even with all these prop_physics?"

This is a sure sign that I've played too much games. In fact, I was driving the other day, and I saw these distant apartment buildings. I thought to myself "that 3D skybox could have been done much better, they're not realistic enough." Then I realized that I am in the real world, and those are real apartment buildings.

Scary huh?

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

I can still almost dream games like Tomb Raider. I've got whole
walkthroughs in my head.

Haha, likewise :biggrin: I remember I read some Tomb Raider level completion
times in a high score section of a magazine years ago so set about
trying to beat them, and after doing so by pretty significant margins
and sending them in, they never got published (probably due to the game
being too old or no longer interesting enough) :sad: Was still a good
challenge, and satisfying as hell when you shave minutes off by
learning a few quicker routes and things.

Satch, I wouldn't worry mate, it's happened to the best of us :wink:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

The first time I played GTA 3, I went out right afterwards and got very paranoid about the status of my locked doors.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Games are just quickly memorable since they're so interactive, I think.

ReNo, at some points you sound just like me. Played TR, mapped for HL,
somewhat bored out of the HL2 content, programming games...

You're sure we're not brothers or such?

Just kidding. :razz:

EDIT: Those speedgame recordings are insane. Just saw the HL one. Crazy. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I actually had a dream the other day that I was walking around in a map. I was amazed at the details of the map, and I was wondering "how come the framerates are so high, even with all these prop_physics?"
This is a sure sign that I've played too much games. In fact, I was driving the other day, and I saw these distant apartment buildings. I thought to myself "that 3D skybox could have been done much better, they're not realistic enough." Then I realized that I am in the real world, and those are real apartment buildings.
Scary huh?

Thats a good topic for a thread... Mapping/Gaming dreams. I've had a few.

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http://maze5.net

No need to start a new thread. We can just allow this one to naturally mutate into another topic.

Hmm, "naturally mutate", is that an oxymoron?

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

I think it's called evolution.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Hah.

Microsoft Works is the top rated oxymoron, by the way.

I remember watching HL1 in 45 minutes, this guy that did it skipped
entire levels! Mainly "We've got Hostiles", and "Power up" with his
trip mine ladder. This guy should be hired by game companys to seek out
design/hack errors in maps.

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Posting And You

It's really a collaborative effort. Some people figured out one trick, and others filled in the gaps.

What I am most amazed about is the manual dexterity of these
speedsters. Hopping from one spot to the next with incredible
ease. They must have played the game hundreds of times.

Most of the monsters don't even have time to react to him before he disappeared to the next corner.

I just saw the .dem files. I decided to download the demos
instead because this file type is much more compact than a full-blown
video file. It just makes more sense.

By the way, if anyone is feeling lethargic or bored, they should just
load up these speed maps. Watching it is equivalent of drinking
some Red Bulls.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

One definite bulls**t aspect of the SMB3 run... you can't walk across the handtraps in level 8 without at least one of them pulling you in. The only way to rush them like he did is to splice your tape...

Actually, I've been able to make it across a few times without being "dragged in". On my NES, if you were wondering. Of course it wasn't the first time that play session that those levels were encountered. But, it is possible.

However, that was probably spliced, just taking the fact that the rest of the video is spliced too.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

This guy should be hired by game companys to seek out
design/hack errors in maps.

No... no perfect maps please... those speeddemo's are a fun aspect of
games too, albeit not really intented by the designers, it's still fun.

For multiplayer maps it makes much more sense, though. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Yeah, I quite like it when you find some exploit or shortcut that
wasn't designed. I don't like ones that are gamestoppingly powerful (my
flatmate "destroys" every game he plays basically by finding exploits
to gain money or experience or whatever; its almost depressing :biggrin: ), but
bits and bobs here and there that make you feel great for finding them
:smile:

Another magazine, I think it was the PS1's official mag, had a
competition to complete the demo of a game called "Moho" in as short a
time as possible. Going by the proper route, my mate and I got pretty
fast times but not exceptional. We did however find two shortcuts - one
that shaved about 10 seconds off your time, the other than cut your
time to under 10 seconds :biggrin: You were only allowed one entry each so one
of us submitted a good time using the minor shortcut, while the
other submitted the insane time. Unfortunately, we never heard
back, either because they were discounted or beaten :sad: Can't recall now
if the winning times were obviously using shortcuts or not. I suppose
anybody could have used the insane shortcut and sat at the finish line
and effectively picked their final time.

Think I'll look for that game on Ebay sometime actually, I really enjoyed that demo :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I quite like it when you find some exploit or shortcut that
wasn't designed

I agree. It's like the gamers outwitting the designers at Valve. It's really quite a feat.

However, as my wife pointed out last night as I showed her the
Half-Life speed demo, so much effort and energy could have been devoted
to something more useful, as in inventing cold fusion or the cure for
cancer. These people must have spent hundreds of hours perfecting
their runs, as most of it is virtually flawless.

As I was going through Half-Life with the speed demon, I was intrigued
by the fact that he seemed to be able to fall from a tremendous height
without losing any health. How's that possible? I didn't
see him pulling out a grenade or special weapon to create an explosive
force to break the fall or anything.

And for many of the tripmines, he just jumped over them like it's
nothing. I tried jumping over some of the exact same tripmines
myself, but I didn't find it possible. What's up with that?

It is an adrenaline rush to watch, nevertheless.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

Sometimes a little time spend on recreation is good. But hundreds of
hours... yes, it could've been used better. Depends on how long it took
him though. 100 hours over a two-year span isn't too insane, methinks.
But that's probably not the case here.

Anyway, gripping a ladder or falling in water prevents any fall damage.
It's amazing how he could grip some of those ladders... must have taken
him a lot of tries, I'm sure about that.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Now that i've seen the whole film, I have to say that playing a game
the way it wasn't intended to be played is almost equal to using
"noclip", IMHO. The canyon scene for instance and the red tripmines
near the rocket. Still, some of the moves were quite impressive.

When he drops down the elevator shaft in Blast Pit he air strafes onto
the ladder at the last moment. Pretty sweet. I tried it a
couple times and just gibbed.

As for the tripmines Satchmo, are you jumping then crouching in midair?

I guess jumping and crouching could be done, but I have to do it many
times before getting the timing just right to not trip off the bomb.

He did it over and over again like licking lollipops.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

Hahah great simile.

Anyway -- in HL1 I usually had no problem jumping over certain tripmines.

There were a couple tricky sections but nothing a hardcore gamer couldn't get over (ie. the guy who did HL done quick).

It's really a collaborative effort. Some people figured out one trick, and others filled in the gaps.

What I am most amazed about is the manual dexterity of these
speedsters. Hopping from one spot to the next with incredible
ease. They must have played the game hundreds of times.

I think so too.

Some things i loved were (in the level after power up i think) where he
reloads his guns while running down a tunnel, then meeting a group of
enemies and whiping them out lightning fast with a combo of gun gren,
magnum and shotgun. Also where he uses snarks to get over things, or
where he runs on top of those cayons (which got me wondering why valve
didnt have/use null/nodraw textures there).

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

Heh, that weapon switching between 3 weapons was rare, yeah. I usually switch between 2 weapons...

That canyon trick was actually walking through a skybrush. The old
compile tools didn't clip the sky, and a skybrush behaves as water (you
can drown in them, too). That level designer never thought someone
would ever get up there... neither did I... :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I thought it was sweet where you saw him charging up his tau, but you
didn't know why, then he opens the door to the gate, goes around the
corner and Blasts the marine in the face with full power, successfully
eliminating him AND blasting him up to the top of the side of the
cliff, lol. It's like, you wanna have my babies?

:smile:

The HL2 speedrun is quite amazing too. impressive how he practically
skips ravenholm and doesnt use the car to get to nova prospect. seems
to be using a running script though. also weird how alyx glides instead
of walks.

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting BlisTer</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>(which got me wondering why valve didnt have/use null/nodraw textures there).
</DIV></DIV>Null textures were not originally in Halflife. A third-party programmer named zoner (since hired by either Valve or Gearbox) modified the compile tools following the game's release to integrate null textures. Frankly, I don't think Valve had any idea what kind of mapping optimization craze their game would spawn.

Actually, it was Merl who added the null texture. That was origionally the whole point of Merl's build :add a "caulk" texture to zoners tools. Of course after Merl did that he went on to do other modifications too.

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http://maze5.net

BlisTer said:
also weird how alyx glides instead
of walks.

Oh yeah I forgot to ask....WTF was that all about? Everywhere she went,
she just twirled like a ballerina......pretty funny if you ask me.

Bug with demo recording.

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http://maze5.net

Just for the record, speedruns like this these two (HL2 in 2:15 and HL1
in 0:45) are done segmented, meaning one section at a time. If they are
done straight in one try, which is hard to prove in a game like this,
it usually says so somewhere in the title and also usually has worse
quality of tricks. The runs are still very difficult segmented though,
and takes lots of time and practice!

We at HL2DQ are actually improving Marshmellow's time by half an hour.
The old team which has mostly faded away (LightningX, Lonerville, Suga,
DaleLewill, lml-mike, Chomp, Downup, Wampa, Fragalishus, etc) brought
the time down to 2 hours in seperate runs of each map. Since then a new
team consisting of me, Bandit5k, o40, nVa, Pincus, DaleLewill, and
Catalyst (with new routes mostly made by me :biggrin: ) are now managing to
pull the time below 1 hour, 45 minutes! That's more than a half an hour
improvement over Marshmellow's run, on Hard difficulty no less!

The site is www.hl2dq.net, and the current times are:

d1_trainstation_01 2:40 Lonerville

d1_trainstation_02 0:26 Lonerville

d1_trainstation_03 0:13 Max]I[muS-X

d1_trainstation_04 1:27 Max]I[muS-X

d1_trainstation_05 7:30 Max]I[muS-X

d1_trainstation_06 0:13 Max]I[muS-X

d1_canals_01 0:54 Max]I[muS-X

d1_canals_01a 1:19 Bandit5k

d1_canals_02 0:12 Bandit5k

d1_canals_03 1:45 Pincus

d1_canals_05 1:18 Bandit5k/DaleLewill

d1_canals_06 0:37 FU3L3D

d1_canals_07 1:34 Max]I[muS-X

d1_canals_08 1:12 Max]I[muS-X

d1_canals_09 1:14 DaleLewill

d1_canals_10 1:45 Catalyst

d1_canals_11 1:28 Max]I[muS-X

d1_canals_12 1:37 Max]I[muS-X

d1_canals_13 0:26 LightningX

d1_eli_01 6:43 Max]I[muS-X

d1_eli_02 5:43 Max]I[muS-X

d1_town_01 0:23 Bandit5k

d1_town_01a 0:13 Bandit5k

d1_town_02 0:15 Bandit5k

d1_town_02a 0:11 Bandit5k

d1_town_03 0:00 Map skipped

d1_town_04 0:35 Bandit5k

d1_town_05 2:30 Bandit5k/Max]I[muS-X

d2_coast_01 0:14 Max]I[muS-X

d2_coast_03 0:44 Bandit5k

d2_coast_04 0:28 nVa

d2_coast_05 0:25 Bandit5k

d2_coast_07 0:31 Bandit5k

d2_coast_08 0:00 Map skipped

d2_coast_09 0:48 Bandit5k

d2_coast_10 0:16 o40

If you're interested, feel free to check on the site once in awhile to
see any progress made. If you just want to wait until the final movie
is out, it's slow going right now, so you might have to wait a little
while ;P

If you want to help the speedrun (some members, such as myself, might
not be available for a long time sometime soon...), register at the
site and don't be afraid to ask questions about how to do tricks, etc.

o40 from HL2DQ took my
Justice - SP map
for a spin. He did it in forty seconds.

I never imagined it would be possible. It's ironic that someone
else beat the map in fifteen minutes before, and everyone thought he
was a liar. No one thought it could be done.

With amazing gaming skills and persistence, the clan at HL2DQ is the Olympic team for fast gaming.

If you are interested, you can check out the recorded demo (four
segments) for Justice by o40
here.
It's about 2 MB zipped.

I am quite impressed by their ability to scale vertical walls with a crowbar and a phys object. Fascinating!

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge