Going Rambo on D1 level 6 (And other levels)

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Thu Nov 15, 2018 7:13 pm

I spent much more time than 2 hours to learn L11. But I was trying to go for yellow key first, then for red key. But after many wasted tries I changed my mind and tried to go for yellow first. And after some attempts I realised I can leave that area before loosing cloak, so this route is way easier and probably also faster. But still, they sometimes decide to roam..

Secret level 3: Finaly got a good run, I was aiming for time under 4 mins. That missed first shot at area with hostages is...hm...embarassing

, but rest went well, mainly 2 heavy drillers + spider close to blue doors were nice to me, they are usually randomly roaming, sometimes close to their starting positions, sometimes totaly lost. Also brown hulks at yellow doors are annoying, all of them are randomly roaming, so you are basicly just praying they are at playable positions.

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Fri Nov 16, 2018 3:26 pm

Yeah you should have courage to continue after going down to 10 shields right in the beginning

I would have aborted the run immediately.
That's interesting to see this level done so quickly without dealing with all matcens including dual matcens in the big room (which I usually did because it is fun). But how you know that you killed everything, a hacked in robot counter on the HUD or smth like this? Because it seems nearly impossible to avoid missing some roaming robot or baby spider. Btw I thought there are 2 red hulks in the reactor room, maybe I forgotten the level a bit or you were lucky to kill both with one mega? The end is PITA, in fact, several times I also ran out of invuln before killing all red hulks and supervisors or some of the robots went to the exit tunnel...

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Nov 17, 2018 2:55 am

Start sometimes goes much better, but usually you lose a lot of shields there, and I knew rest of the level can be done without serious damage, if it goes well, so I kept going anyway.
Well, I always play the level long enough to remember all robots, so I know exactly who is still in the map without even counting. The only level where I wasn't sure was L9. During the run there, I didn't know if I have killed all drones. In case I do some risky shots, where I don't see if the robot is destroyed - in this SL3 for example those smart missile shots to 3 quad laser guys, I quickly check the score to see if I get them all.
I'm always carefull about spiders to make sure there is no baby spider left. If needed, I check it in slow motion in replay before uploading the run. It would be a problem for example if you snipe spider from a bigger distance and then don't explore that place, but these things don't happen in any of my runs. So far the most problematic thing I have faced was matcen area before red key in level 23. I spent a lot of time studying behavior of robots there to be able to do it without wasting time by killing every robot. Anyway, it sometimes happen that I stupidly miss something or I think the robot is killed and actually isn't and I found it out while carefully going through the replay. If that happens I basicly play the level again.
There are 2 red hulks in reactor area. First one is killed by mega, second one is killed by overcharged fusion shot together with reactor.
Yes, that end can be cruel, I lost a run because of extra life in exit tunnel

. Taking it is in rules of "insmax" category.

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Sat Nov 17, 2018 7:22 am

Anyway it would be nice to have a robot counter like you have in DooM. Because I observed those baby spiders sometimes jumping away into a side tunnel immediately as they spawn, so it is almost impossible to notice them. Probably easy to implement (few lines code change) if you use DXX-Rebirth, have Linux and can compile from sources. Another very useful thing would be boss HP counter (like in Serious Sam). Not so important in D1 but for D2 you never know if you hit that "back only" vulnerable boss or not... Wonder whether Rebirth team can implement those...

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Nov 17, 2018 8:45 pm

yes, it would be really cool tool.

By the way, anyone knows what happened to avder? He was always around here and interested about "ins-max" speedrunning, but it looks like he is out for ages..

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Mon Nov 19, 2018 11:36 am

Just found faster route for secret level 2 and improved my time by 8 seconds.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 8:26 am

ok, I improved one more time:), I realised I can save 2 more seconds by shooting red mech behind red doors earlier, Idk why I didn't see that before.. Also I had a better end now and extra life bounced to me immediately, so I saved 4 seconds in total. I don't think I can go any faster, maybe just 1 second if I try really hard, you can't gain anything at first minute of the run, because you have to wait for second and third cloack then. Maybe with skipping the cloak, but that seems to be brutal.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 2:16 pm

Finaly I have a route for level 19. I can go under 5:30 on ace, but so far I didn't even finish it on insane. For sure I have to play it more safety. Something like 6:30 sounds reasonable to me..

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:07 pm

Maybe I will give it up, it is stupidly hard. I did it under 6:30, but it is with one death (in red key maze).

LightWolf · Post by **LightWolf** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 10:12 pm

You could play for a slow score to get something on the leaderboard, then try to improve.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:10 am

That level was already done in 6:43 by someone else, so I'm not interested in slow run:)

vision · Post by **vision** » Fri Nov 23, 2018 11:00 pm

Marvin wrote: ↑Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:07 pm Maybe I will give it up, it is stupidly hard. I did it under 6:30, but it is with one death (in red key maze).

19 is hardest one for me. The layout is just too big and too redundant, plus it's resource scarce. Red key area is just ridiculous.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Nov 24, 2018 1:47 pm

Today I had 70+ hp while entering reactor room, but I just bumped to heavy driller..

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Sat Nov 24, 2018 6:33 pm

Hope you can beat it, Calmarius had to spend several weeks to do certain TEW and especially Apocalyptic Factor D2 levels from cold start - and this level is not nearly as bad as those. Of course, doing it so fast makes things a bit diffeerent... BTW which area caused most failures for you (be it death or spending too much time and going off the time limit)?

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Nov 24, 2018 7:22 pm

Going fast makes it ofc multiple times harder. After so many tries the level now feels really easy if I just go safe. The whole second floor is hell, due to how random it is. Nearly all robots are roaming. All tries ends by death, I'm never slower, I just keep going fast no matter how bad situation is

. And by now I already finished the level twice. Both times are under 6:30, but I refused to go to reactor room without cloak after loosing 3 or 4 tries there. And the faster of these two runs (by 3 or 4 seconds) is with wasted 15 seconds, because I forgot where is my cloak, so I was brainlessly flying to find it. Damn.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Nov 24, 2018 8:48 pm

Did it for the third time. And this time finally without backtracking for cloak for the end. Unfortunately this run was slow, so I saved just six seconds or so to previous run, where I lost cca 30 secs due to backtracking and trying to find "lost" cloak. Pity, but that's it, I'm not going to try further.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:53 am

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Wed Nov 28, 2018 12:47 pm

ok, one more (last?) improvement. My level 25 wasn't very good. Over half a minute faster run now.

vision · Post by **vision** » Thu Nov 29, 2018 10:44 pm

LOL @ taking out those three drillers with one fusion blast around 3min. Also, thanks for reminding me on an invulnerability in the red area I forgot about. I think I forget about most of these because I generally do pretty good without power-ups, like, they aren't necessary to complete a level. Essential in a speed run, but not for a casual like myself.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:06 pm

I usually take two of those drillers by that shot, sometimes it works better:). Yeah, that invuln is big help for speedruning on insane difficulty.

By the way, I had idea of different route for L13, so I tried and... It worked! Improved my time by 34 secs with it. In my previous run I saved invuln for red hulks in reactor room, but that means some backtracking. I avoided that with new route.

vision · Post by **vision** » Wed Dec 12, 2018 9:08 pm

Nice way to maximize those powerups.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 5:42 pm

I managed to do very special run - level 20 under 4 mins. That is actually way harder than level 19, since L20 is way too random! It took me cca 20-25 hours of trying! Unfortunately there is lack of evidence that one of class 2 drones was destroyed. That is so stupid, might be killed by missile platform robot.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Dec 21, 2018 2:52 am

Did even a bit faster run! This time I used kill counter and it helped a lot. In this case there would be even 2 class 2 drones without evidence of dying. I knew I should have 54 kills before going to yellow doors and 73 in total. And that is what kill counter said. So I'm finally done with this level.

The start of the level is frustrating. You can learn how to react to make your chances higher, but it is still very random. Most of tries is just reset, because you loose way to much time (or energy). I had even better starts then in my final run, but you need to be extremely lucky for that. This one is still cca 1/150 tries if not less. Then you have to face another random part. 3 out of 4 green platforms are roaming. If they are badly placed, you just die instantly, no matter if you have 20 or 150 shields.. Also class 2 drones can troll you and those bomb drones can hide somewhere. Chance of good yellow key is quite high, I would say it is 1/3 to get perfect yellow, another 1/3 is ok yellow and 1/3 is a mess. Last green platform is always at same spot, but while going to get him you are often blocked by drones and then smashed by missiles. Red key area is also random, but I was surprised about behaviour of that keybot. What you see in my run happens quite often. It is cca 1/3 chance again. But if that don't happen, then it is big chance of a total mess. Also regular drones can surprise you from everywhere. So it is also tricky area. Red door is usually ok, but it sometimes happen, that drones and green platforms are placed differently (mostly just behind the door), so you are in big trouble. But 2/3 or maybe 3/4 tries are fine. All in all, this is a speedruning hell! Btw I saved 50 second to my old run with this one!

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Sat Dec 22, 2018 6:27 pm

Amazing run, but I still think you can be even faster if you will avoid returning for 2 smart missiles. Ofc you can lose much more than gain due to randomness of the level and increased chance to die in the reactor room, but still looks like a chance to improve time.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Dec 23, 2018 5:43 am

I just checked it and I lost cca 9 seconds by that. I would spend cca 2 more second to kill red hulk with homers instead of smarts and also cca 2 more seconds to kill platforms and drones without fusion (with luck, they can avoid your shots easily). Now we are just on 5 seconds difference at best. Plus you have to save a lot of homers. So the difference is way to small. If the level was easy, I would go for that way, but in this case it wasn't worth for me. But technically you are right, fastest possible route is with skipping those smarts and fusion.

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Thu Dec 27, 2018 9:43 am

Yes, probably does not worth it - you can lose much more time just because of bad luck... BTW at last I did this level myself insane cold start clearing the reactor room matcens 3 times, will upload it soon. It was a hell of a challenge, too! Spent couple of days learning the level itself and how to deal with those matcens.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Mon Dec 31, 2018 4:38 pm

I will check your run.

Improved some of my oldest runs: Level 3, 4 and 22.

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Thu Jan 03, 2019 5:05 pm

Here is my run of L20, clearing the reactor room matcens 3 times on cold start. Nothing interesting happens after 10 min, where I start to hunt remaining Gophers in the starting room.

Level 3 run is great, quite large level to make it so fast, I remember having problems with getting to the energy center, and clearing dual drone matcens (as I never seriously practiced this level), you did it like the boss...

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Jan 05, 2019 1:08 pm

Thank you for posting your level 20 run.

Level 3 is quite easy to speedrun, just the end is a bit problematic. Well, also very beggining, but reset at start is ok.
About that matcen in level 3: Now you can do it for sure without any effort. If you can make matcen at the end of level 20, then level 3 matcen is literaly nothing:).

I have a new run of level 22 (again:D), but this time it is special. 2:53 is hard to reach I believe. I changed my route a bit, execution was fine + RNG was really nice to me. Also I risked the reactor so much. This time is my definitive for sure, I'm not going to try it faster.

vision · Post by **vision** » Sat Jan 05, 2019 4:45 pm

The way you clear the yellow area is majestic.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Wed Feb 20, 2019 4:35 am

Improved level 23. This time I skipped the cloak after getting blue key to save 4 seconds or so. Still missed some shots, but I didn't loose much time by that, these were marginal mistakes. Previous time was 5:06, now I was hoping for time under 5 minutes. Had to laugh when I checked it, because exact time is 4:59.95

.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:06 am

!!! LEVEL 19 !!!

Improved to 5:31!!!

I didn't like my 6:08 run, but this level was so hard that I took it. Until this week. I decided to try it again and it paid off. After many attempts during last 3 days, including frustrating fails like killing myself by my own missile in reactor room, or dying after blowing up reactor (!!!) by last heavy driller, I finally did it. And somehow I managed to do it with nearly lost try. I had 24 shield while recharge, which is really bad. But I survived that upcoming area and was hoping at least for cloak for red maze. Nope. Now I knew I need to be really lucky and I was. The placement of bots was nice too me + that last smart missile shot, haha. I didn't know where is that last heavy driller, but I didn't want waste time and also he would probably kill me if I waited for him, so I went for lottery shot and it worked!:D Then I had to face one more big lottery - entering the red door. You often face heavy driller or red mech before taking cloak. It went fine and fortunatelly I didn't fail it by stupied mistake this time. Really happy that this one is over, now I believe it is worthy run!

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Fri Feb 22, 2019 10:59 am

Very impressive! Catching a homer when cloaked in the beginning is never a good thing, but the rest more than compensated for this!
Similar story with last Vertigo level that I was recording, super bad luck, like boss teleporting right on my head and killing me !while cloaked! in the same spot - for 3 consecutive runs! Or invulnerability elapsed just when last shaker hit and destroyed the boss (and me, too!), or failing to reach the exit because mine shaking turned me almost 90 deg in the last moment... But at least managed to record a good run, not without mistakes, but at least quite fast and over 100 HP finish, clearing the whole level and no luring.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Feb 22, 2019 12:38 pm

Thank you. Props on beating your vertigo challenge!

vision · Post by **vision** » Fri Feb 22, 2019 9:19 pm

Marvin wrote: ↑Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:06 am!!! LEVEL 19 !!!

Incredible. One of the hardest levels and one I play a lot because it's so difficult. That run was hilariously sloppy too, haha. Well done.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Mon Mar 04, 2019 1:34 pm

Thanks

.
Yeah, in term of speedrunning, hardest level is probably level 20, that is just a hell, you are basicly reseting and reseting, until good RNG at start, then reseting again anyway because of some insanity at later parts of the level. Level 19 is second hardest I would say and actualy close to 20. There is so many places where you can die in a second, no matter how much shields do you have and you can't do anything about that. In top 3 was probably level 11 for me. Really hard to speedrun too. Problematic was also 16, because you need many cloaks + red mechs close to energy center are roaming, so you basicly have to take a risk and hope they are at positions you want them. Also level 14 was annoying for cloaks you need (at least you don't need cloak for very end, like at level 24 - that level was actually really frustrating too, maybe close to top 3, when I think about it). And I would also say levels 8 (surprisingly) and 9 are really problematic for speedrunning. 13 Felt really hard too while practicing, but when you learn it, it is not so bad, because there is not that much RNG. End is very scary anyway (I mean those baby spiders).

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:02 pm

New run - Level 10

I knew that my 5:06 run of L10 was actualy weakest from the series, so I decided to improve it. Did 4:34 with same route and was going to upload, but just before that I got some idea, so I thought about it and tried some other options. At the end I changed my tactics a lot, some different routing + completely different route at yellow doors. Improved to 4:11 with that. With lucky RNG and good run, under 4 minutes is possible.

vision · Post by **vision** » Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:02 pm

Watching that, painfully reminds me I never learned to Fusion properly.

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:29 am

So do I, hitting a red hulk at the distance (like this one in the middle hole on the video thumbnail image), for me is lottery with 1/3 chance, dunno how Marvin manages to do it every time.
But at least I've learned to use it at moderate or close range.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:38 am

I also sometimes miss that shot, but rarely, like 9/10 is fine. But the part at red doors is hard for me with fusion, you have to be very precise there, so I rather use plasma there.

Btw I just challenged myself to prove every level can be done under 6 minutes. Already did most of them in past, but a few remaining levels will be really hard to do.