Going Rambo on D1 level 6 (And other levels)

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 6:27 pm

I was looking at youtube descent videos lately and found myself fixated on level 6. It's such an insane level compared to the first 5 of the game. And all the insane skill videos I've found for it play through it very cautiously and with previous weapons and shields from level 5.

So I decided to go for it cold. Full rescue, no deaths, no saves, EVERYTHING DIES! (at least as long as it started in there).

Also it's my first youtube upload. Yay me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OXy-XEyT1Y

I just wish I could have managed better video quality with the capture. Oh well.

And I hope you find my annotations amusing.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 8:15 pm

Nice, especially that ambush spawn point right at the start. Also handling the yellow key room with no damage is a plus. And it's always a chore handing those few drillers that tend to move more often than not, although it's almost as annoying when they don't move as when they do.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Sun Aug 19, 2012 8:30 pm

Yeah, the drones right at the start caused the majority of the restarts for me. After a while I started to figure out shield thresholds I would need to survive potentially catastrophic ambushes in certain areas. The blue key area was surprisingly an area that usually went very well. On most of my runs I would zip in and nail each of the brown hulks with a conc and a laser right off the bat and that would be it, but on this run somehow I missed my first shot against both of them, which normally means the hulks will be free to return fire and I'd either die outright or suffer catastrophic splash damage, but I guess my lasers were just accurate enough to get them. And I think I may have rammed the first one to death too. That was kind of funny.

The biggest problem room was by far the one containing the energy center. The missile hulk and laser hulk on the upper level would almost never do anything I expected them to do unless I managed to get there with an exceptionally high amount of shields, so I guess the trigger for making robots more aggressive is the less shield you have, the nastier they get. A couple times I got to that room with under 30 shields, and almost every time ALL of the bots in that room would roam out and bum rush me. That room was where at least 80% of all the runs that I didn't restart because of the start point drones ended in violent death.

After finally managing to get through that room mostly intact, the only thing left was the area where all the colored doors are. Those two drillers that start near the grates on either side of the bridge to the red door roam like crazy. It would not be uncommon for me to eventually find out, as my ship was blowing up, that they had both moved over to occupy the same side of the room. Or on occasion they would hide in the lava and wait for me to go after the other two in the tunnel to the yellow door. I only managed to get through this room intact 3 times.

The first time I died in the blue area because I missed a driller, similar to how that last driller almost managed to ambush me after I had wasted everything else. The second time I made it all the way to the red key room but bumped into the ceiling by accident. I had 80 shields and I died instantly, cloaked. The third time was the run I posted.

This was fun. Might be fun to try to get every D1 and D2 level done on insane from a cold start with a no-death, no save, kill everything, get the hostages, go in guns blazing style. Show the bots who's boss.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 10:49 am

Impressive. I'd like to see it with a non-midi version of that level's music. One of the best robot-themed songs in the game purely by composition, but unfortunately the midi mastering sounds awful and hollow.

Impressive gameplay though. Very impressive.
And I have to say the word impressive a fourth time.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 11:57 am

It is also amusing to see that I wasn't the only one that memorized the (default) location of all the drillers in that level and would just lob homers from out of sight to clear out a lot of them.

One way I've fought the drillers by the red door is to fly in, head to one side and drop some proximity mines before clearing the one ahead of you, if you are lucky the one behind you will die on the mines when it comes chasing (if you are unlucky, it'll warp through the mines). It is one of the rare places in D1 SP where proximity mines can actually be useful (other than dropping them on the other side of locked doors at ambush points).

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:08 pm

Alter-Fox wrote:Impressive. I'd like to see it with a non-midi version of that level's music. One of the best robot-themed songs in the game purely by composition, but unfortunately the midi mastering sounds awful and hollow.

Impressive gameplay though. Very impressive.
And I have to say the word impressive a fourth time.

Well if I ever get around to finding a way to capture this in full HD quality at its full framerate, I'll see if I can find a good mix of the level 6 music to have set up in the d1x-rebirth jukebox directory for it.

One of the reasons its so choppy is cause when I play I get 60 frames per second completely steady, but I was only able to manage to capture a video that remained synched if it was this 640x480 30fps thing. This run would look so much more awesome if it was in full HD.

Anyone able to fraps d1x-rebirth at full 1080p with all the graphics effects on (minus transparency, I just don't like how that one looks), at a full 60fps, and then set up an ftp or something so I can grab it and then re-upload it somehow? The .dem file is only 8 megs.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:09 pm

Yeah, prox mines didn't really become useful in Descent singleplayer until D2 (against Theif).

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:11 pm

Krom wrote:It is also amusing to see that I wasn't the only one that memorized the (default) location of all the drillers in that level and would just lob homers from out of sight to clear out a lot of them.

One way I've fought the drillers by the red door is to fly in, head to one side and drop some proximity mines before clearing the one ahead of you, if you are lucky the one behind you will die on the mines when it comes chasing (if you are unlucky, it'll warp through the mines). It is one of the rare places in D1 SP where proximity mines can actually be useful (other than dropping them on the other side of locked doors at ambush points).

That's basically the only real way to deal with drillers at anything closer than medium range. About the only room in the game I can think of off hand where I can actually dodge vulcan consistently is that big dark room in secret level 1.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:21 pm

Last I checked, guncam ( http://www.growlersoftware.com/ ) was wayyyyy faster and smoother than fraps at capturing video from in-game (although its also a 14 day trial, $20 to register/unlock). It may depend on the speed of the disk being captured too and the speed of the CPU being used to compress it as well (laptops probably won't be able to keep up, HD is demanding enough that even an older desktop might struggle).

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:32 pm

Well my current CPU is about three years old. Intel core 2 quad, 8 gigs ram, and two 7200rpm drives in raid-0. Whenever the capture software runs it eats a whole core so I'm guessing that's my bottleneck.

I'll download that software and give it a try tho, see how it does.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 2:57 pm

....About the only room in the game I can think of off hand where I can actually dodge vulcan consistently is that big dark room in secret level 1.

What about level 21? Easy. If that was the level that introduced drillers they wouldn't be nearly as scary.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 3:09 pm

Alter-Fox wrote:
....About the only room in the game I can think of off hand where I can actually dodge vulcan consistently is that big dark room in secret level 1.
What about level 21? Easy. If that was the level that introduced drillers they wouldn't be nearly as scary.

I just homer snipe them as well, and if I decide to exhaust that matcen that spawns them later on I can just exhaust the security bot one first before I start the vulcan one running.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 4:12 pm

Huge waste of homers, though, in places where you can pick them off easily with plasma...

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 4:42 pm

If you have a big group of drillers like at a matcen, chuck a single mega missile instead of burning through all your homers, that way you can dispose of 20+ of them in a single shot. Uncharged fusion also works wonders on them. That is pretty much my method of disposing of large numbers of almost any robot spawned from a matcen, chuck a mega, then mop up with fusion. Although depending on how close together they are and what robot it is, chucking a charged fusion shot alone can be totally devastating because the fusion overlap collision bug was present even in D1, so if a bunch of robots are clustered together from a matcen a charged fusion shot does absurd amounts of damage. Red homing hulks usually can survive even a full charge fusion shot, but if they are clustered together you can kill 6 of them at once so it is extremely effective in the few places where robots spawn like that (I know for a fact because I've done it before and saw the score flash 12,000 points from one shot).

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:26 pm

In level 26 if you get the fusion hulk matcen to go off a few times before you clear it out you can get at least 20,000 points with a fully charged fusion shot.

Trying to do level 8 right now. This level is giving me fits. Unlike level 6 which is ridiculously hard but provides excellent weaponry early, this level does not even have a quad lasers, and it takes a while to get to either of the plasma cannons. Also there are two very dangerous choke points that are very hard to adequately unchoke and clear up. I have not even managed to get to the red door with the red key yet. I've managed to get the red key, but because I'm taking an unorthodox route that seems to better manage the choke points, I end up dead between the red key and red door.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:52 pm

In a level like that no route would be unorthodox...

When I tried an insane run during lunch break at summer-job work (it was a long lunchbreak, long story) that was the level that kept game-over-ing me. The boss room on level 7 was a breeze in comparison...
But I love the lower lifters. They have no concept of stealth.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 11:01 pm

This one took forever and I am not very happy with my time. Think its around 15 minutes, 45 seconds or so. Took several hundred restarts, but god damn that reactor room rush at the end with the invuln felt good.

Shield bonus: 2650
Energy Bonus: 75
Hostage Bonus: 10,000
Skill Bonus: 102,100
Full Rescue Bonus: 20,000

Total Bonus: 134,825

Total Score: 202,925

Holy hell, man.

Will see about a youtube if I ultimately decide not to try to improve on my time.

Also, ★■◆● my rear view control mapping. If I post this run to youtube, you get to see it happen TWICE, one time it almost gets me killed too.

Needless to say, it's time to give that function a new key.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:08 am

Been trying to improve my time and have been using a slightly more optimized route, but I just can not seem to get through either of the two big chokes in this level without being obliterated. This is driving me crazy.

Also my time was more like 13:30 or so. I forgot while I was watching it the first time that I went frame by frame to verify that some drillers were indeed destroyed and did not just vanish into the one part of the level I left intentionally unexplored (matcen in the blue section).

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 3:06 pm

So how fast does anyone think level 22 could be done?

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 7:42 pm

No one? Well whatever.

I've got a demo of this level that needs to be put up on youtube. And it NEEDS to be in High Def.

Anyone want to capture and encode it for me so it can look good on youtube?

Anyhoo:

Level 22 Destroyed!
Shield Bonus: 1800
Energy Bonus: 1500
Hostage Bonus: 10,000
Skill Bonus: 85,200
Full Rescue Bonus: 20,000

Total Bonus: 118,500

Total Score: 175,300

Time: Gonna keep that a secret until I can put it on Youtube.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 10:18 pm

Hi-Def... well if you shoot it in D2X-XL...
I can't do it personally but I'll ask some people.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 10:22 pm

No what I mean is a high def capture of the demo playback at 60fps. I play at 60fps, so the demo records at 60fps, so in order to be smooth any capture needs to be at 60fps as well. One of the reasons my level 6 run looks so choppy is because it was only captured at 30. It looks several times smoother playing back in rebirth than it does in that video.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 10:35 pm

Do you have a problem with using D2X-XL to playback the demo, though? It would certainly look more stunning, especially in hi-def.
I know someone who probably can do it, but he doesn't use Rebirth. And you can't get in contact with him any other way because he isn't on these boards.

Darn it I really need a sly smilie.

is waaay too friendly.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 11:28 pm

To be honest that would be a bit of a problem for me. I'm a bit of a traditionalist. Nothing against D2X-XL, its a fantastic graphical upgrade and all, but I want this to look just like descent did originally... just at an insane resolution

And I have captured my level 22 run with ye olde' crappy capture software and will be putting it on youtube shortly.

vision · Post by **vision** » Thu Aug 23, 2012 12:11 am

Avder wrote:So I decided to go for it cold. Full rescue, no deaths, no saves, EVERYTHING DIES! (at least as long as it started in there).

That was inspirational.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Aug 23, 2012 12:14 am

vision wrote:That was inspirational.

Well, wait till you see what I pull off in level 22.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Aug 23, 2012 12:38 am

And level 22 is up:

I might annotate it tomorrow. For now I need to go to bed.

I considered making another thread for this, but I might just edit this thread to be expressly multi-level or something.

I dunno...tired.... bed.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Aug 23, 2012 8:30 am

Nice, one suggestion though: charge fusion a little more. Especially against the plasma bots and the green platform bots at the end, they can be killed with a single half-charged shot. Also the reactor, fusion almost always 1 shots a reactor even if you don't charge it. You can save a few seconds that way.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Aug 23, 2012 9:53 am

Krom wrote:Nice, one suggestion though: charge fusion a little more. Especially against the plasma bots and the green platform bots at the end, they can be killed with a single half-charged shot. Also the reactor, fusion almost always 1 shots a reactor even if you don't charge it. You can save a few seconds that way.

I thought about charging the fusion in the reactor room, the problem is that charging negates the effects of the cloak and I'm flying pretty close to the walls with platform bots still active. Those concussions get there rather fast, and their splash radius is rather large.

Also the reactor gets more hitpoints the further you get into the game, so even with a fully charged fusion shot it takes a couple to take it out. At least that's how it is on my end. Maybe if I was running uncapped FPS it would be different, depending on if fusion does damage per frame or what have you.

Still those improvements would maybe shave 5-10 seconds off if they worked completely as intended, and I could probably save just as much if I had hit that plasma bot consecutively instead of missing him twice

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Fri Aug 24, 2012 5:25 am

Just improved level 6 by a full minute, with some room left to spare. I completely cut out the energy center run and managed to do a few other things faster as well.

May further improve it before I put a new version on youtube.

I also ran levels 1-4 cold today, but that's not really impressive considering the game doesn't really get hard until level 6 and onward. Will consider posting those as well depending on if I feel I can improve my times.

Glowhyena · Post by **Glowhyena** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 1:54 pm

I hate the drillers... They are so mean.

But one easy way to destroy it is launching a single Homing.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 6:51 pm

Which is what I do...like 15 times in my new run.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 3:22 pm

If anyone has any idea how to properly manage the bots bumrush at the chokepoints entering the blue section (from near start), or the open section that leads to the reactor section on level 8 (from either blue section or the area where you get the blue key), it would be much appreciated, because I die at these points pretty much without fail 100% of the time when attempting to run that god forsaken level.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Wed Aug 29, 2012 6:44 pm

Well good news on several fronts today: I've got my level 8 time down to about 10 minutes now and I have mostly solved the problem of getting through the choke point at the blue doors near the start of the level. As in level 6 the solution was to be more aggressive. Now I just need to solve the area before the reactor area, but good god, there is no maneuvering room there at all.

And I think I've finally found a way to capture at 720p with smooth video. Took a lot of messing with video codecs and tinkering a little bit with d1x rebirths settings, but I'm going to re-capture and re-encode my level 22 run and upload that within the next half a day or so, as soon as I get everything completely ironed out, and then if it looks good I can start posting other runs. And if 720p doesn't work well, I've got 640x480 capture solved completely at least.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 5:07 am

And here is the HD version:

There are still a few minor kinks to work out, represented in that video as occasional frame stuttering, but all in all I think this is a vast, vast improvement in quality compared to my other two videos so far.

Comments very much appreciated as far as video quality goes.

vision · Post by **vision** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 6:21 pm

Looks fantastic.

Do Level 9 now!

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:04 pm

Level 9 looks like it might actually be worse than level 8 in some parts, and that honestly scares the ★■◆● out of me.

Most of the level is one big fat open area, which means that all of those robots floating in the open area can come roaming from wherever to hunt the player down before he can even manage to get a decent weapon.

Looks like the first objective in level 9 will be to obtain the plasma cannon in the hidden cache across from the yellow door, and then the second task will be to secure the energy center further down that hallway, then from there get the spreadfire cannon in the hostage room, the blue key, and then go hunting.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:37 pm

And so far I've been starting to plan routes and bot destruction for the whole of Descent 1. Here's what I have so far as far as potential difficulties from a cold start go:

Level 1 - Easy Route, Easy Bots (Extremely straightforward)
Level 2 - Easy Route, Easy Bots (possibly even more straightforward than level 1 despite being longer)
Level 3 - Medium Route, Easy Bots (Some tunnel management)
Level 4 - Easy Route, Easy Bots (Some energy management needed at the end)
Level 5 - Complex Route, Easy Bots (Lots of tunnel management)
Level 6 - Easy Route, Hard Bots (Drillers EVERYWHERE)
Level 7 - Complex Route, Easy Bots (Good amount of tunnel management and some nasty ambushes)
Level 8 - Medium Route, Very Hard Bots (The choke points near the reactor room are killing me, literally. 500 attempts so far, 2 successful runs)
Level 9 - Complex Route, Hard-Very Hard Bots (extremely open, so potential for an insane amount of roaming)
Level 10 - Easy Route, Medium Bots (straight up route, good cloaks and invulns, fusion right off the bat)
Secret 1 - Easy Route, Very Hard Bots (fusion right off the bat, but missile platforms suck)
Level 11 - Easy Route, Hard Bots (Io is a planet from Hell, and so is this level)
Level 12 - Easy Route, Medium Bots (dont trip the matcens and it should be fine with the powerups)
Level 13 - Easy Route, Hard Bots (very straightforward route, but theres a red hulk around every corner)
Level 14 - Medium Route, Medium Bots (some complex tunnels in yellow section, a few nasty ambushes made easier by cloaks & invulns being where they need to be)
Level 15 - Easy Route, Hard Bots (invulns everywhere, and were gonna need em for all the missile hulks)
Level 16 - Medium Route, Very Hard Bots (fair amount of tunnel management, and the matcens by the exit are BRUTAL)
Level 17 - Easy Route, Medium-Hard Bots (depending on Gopher behavior)
Level 18 - Complex Route - Medium-Hard Bots (More tunnel management, but the bots aren't that hard here)
Level 19 - Medium Route - Very Hard Bots (Its like they couldnt cram enough nasty bots in as many tight places as possible here)
Level 20 - Easy-Complex Route, Easy-BatshitInsane Bots (stupid blue key in a gopher and matcens before an energy center, and platform bots in tunnels...blergh)
Level 21 - Medium Route - Medium-Hard Bots (some branching tunnels to manage, other than that straightforward)
Secret 2 - Very Easy Route - Easy Bots (the hotshot speed run of this level is 9 seconds long, drillers cant hit at range, and theres a quad laser laying out in the open)
Level 22 - Easy Route - Hard Bots (smash the bots, and then smash them harder...I need to talk to Zico about fusion behavior & reactors tho)
Level 23 - Medium Route - Very Hard Bots (the trip to the red keycard in this one can be extremely dangerous, and so can the reactor area)
Level 24 - Complex Route - Insane bots (branching tunnels, drillers, platforms, red hulks and fusions everywhere with lots of roaming...gonna be fun on the bun!)
Secret 3 - Medium Route - Batshit Insane Bots (Pure Evil crammed into every cube, and some extremely nasty matcens)
Level 25 - Easy Route - Very Hard Bots (Plasma and Smarts right off the bat help, but theres platforms everywhere here)
Level 26 - Easy Route - Insane Bots (Cramped tunnels that platforms can shoot right into? God damn)
Level 27 - Medium Route - Very Hard Bots (With powerups this one really should not be all that hard)

vision · Post by **vision** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:55 pm

Avder wrote:Level 9 - Complex Route, Hard-Very Hard Bots (extremely open, so potential for an insane amount of roaming)

This one gave me the hardest time in D1 (cold start, insane) because of all the roam. The bots just wouldn't stay put! Every time I turned a corner, BAM! Dead. Level 11 took me about 2 days to beat. Level 9 took me a week to do it without dying. I had trouble with Level 19 too because I always ran out of energy and ammo before reaching the 2nd level. Every other level was pretty easy comparatively (except for Level 6 as you know).

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 11:21 pm

Compared to level 8 so far, level 6 is a cake walk.