Descent

[lag]

pocari: I played Hi-Octane a lot when it came out. So yes, I remember it pretty well. Especially the awesome sound it makes when your ship blows up.

avder: It's somewhat of a tradition I've kept over from Quake speedrunning, where you have runs on Easy or Nightmare... because Descent has 5 difficulties instead of 4, I'd say Easy, Medium and Nightmare are runnable, Easy to see the theoretical best time for a level. That translates to Trainee, Hotshot, Insane... I'll knock off the middle difficulties and add 100% columns to the table instead.
As for the single segment runthrough... I'm working on a program to 'glue' demos together that will be used in the QDQ-style project; so if you stop recording your demo, save it, then immediately start recording another one, they can be stuck together later. Not elegant I know, but better than crashing Descent.

[Avder]

I plan on doing something like that.  When I'm ready to start the run, I'll start recording on level one, get all hostages, blow reactor, advance to level 2,  stop demo, save, restart demo.

That way its just like a multisegment run.  If the only place youre allowed to save at is immediately after the level starts.  The exception would be some of the levels where you spawn with enemies shooting at you (levels 6 and 7, for example).  In that case you should either do multiple levels on a segment or possibly clear out a safe area very near the start and save/restart demo there.

Verification in this game should be rather easy as well.  The next segment must start with the player having the same view as when the last segment ended, the score must be the same, number of lives must be the same, energy, shields, and listed ammunition must be the same from segment to segment.

I'm gonna start working on a hotshot 100% run I think to start things off.  I'll probably have to redo every level a bajillion times since I'm so rusty, but whatever.

[lag]

My demo parser is now close to completion; it's run through the demos for levels 1-10 with no problem; I still need mesh numbers etc. for later robots though, so I can't release it yet.
Gluing support is being added right now... however, the 'clearing out' of a room would not work with it currently. I'll try, shouldn't be too difficult to change.

Nice to hear that you're considering starting it.

The demo format also saves amounts of all types of ammunition, so I can automate verification.

[slYnki]

I want to play Hi-octane so badly o_O

[lag]

Agh, due to the way demo files track ammo usage, it's very difficult to track it throughout a demo; it only saves what the UI needs, for example...
You have 1 smart missile, you fire it.
In the DEM file is saved...
   Change secondary weapon to 1 (Homing Missiles)
   Change current secondary ammo to X (how many homers you have)

This might seem a bit obvious that the player has run out of smarts, but no information pertaining to it is in the DEM file... the best I can do is check if a new object is now being rendered with a certain model... or maybe see if the secondary ammo changes by a strange amount. Blah, I'll see what I can do. Of course, it's pretty obvious by viewing for secondary weapons, but it might be important for Vulcan ammo.

[Tub]

what are you trying to "validate"?

if you want to check if any given demo file is possible to create by playing decent (i.e. there was no cheating by demo manipulations) you'll run into much more problems than this. Confirming pickups (easy), checking if player speeds are possible (not trivial), checking if the player flew through a wall (go implement the whole physics engine. have fun!) and even deciding if the monster AI was legit (even more fun!).
I've tried something similar for quake 3, it's just a lot of work to get anywhere near relyable, and it can still be outsmarted if you try.

This can be totally avoided if you decide to trust the players.


If you just wish to create a tool to modify single-level-demos into matching together in a continous run (qdq-style), I don't see any problems with the ammo information contained in the demo.  

[lag]

Second choice, Tub.

And, it's the way in which it's done that messes it up, as it only reports information on the current weapon... I've put in a few fixes to make my program track it better, and should be working fully tomorrow.

[slYnki]

All this still doesn't excuse the fact that Hi-octane is awesome shit.

[Timinator]

i have descent and loved it, although when i got it, was YEARS ago, and back then i played doom etc via keyboard and pretty much didn't even strafe in doom so for the 3d movement it sucked and i did get to level 7 .. to the boss .. and no further espeicially since your trapped in that room.

sigh, descent 2 seemed fun as well, and loved the helper bot to find the keys, reactor etc etc. cuz some levels could be hard to learn.

[slYnki]

Once again, Hi-Octane is awesome shi- Ok I'm done  

[stx-Vile]

I'm having similar problems recording single-segment runs.  D1X 1.43 and 1.42 both crashed after getting close to 20,000K.... so I assume the closest to doing an SS is recording straight to AVI with Fraps, which I'd really rather not do.

Well, one alternative would be stopping and restarting until the whole thing is finished, but I wouldn't be able to prove that it was single-segment anymore... might as well just wait until we're ready to do a chained project.

[slYnki]

I would so do a SS run, but I don't like playing the game once I hit level 4... =\

[lag]

stx-Vile: Because of the way frame counts/gametime is saved into the DEMo files, I probably could verify it, of course... visually is usually enough.

My gluing program is pretty much done, except it does very odd things with vulcan ammo (working on it). It also has a 'quick glue' option which literally sticks the demos together, without updating stats inbetween levels; this mode will make compiling a single player marathon easy. I've managed to play BACK very large demo files (60MB+), so it only seems to be a bug in recording.

[slYnki]

I'd love to do a complete marathon of the game. Of course I would have to actually beat it....

[elbryan42]

Been away for a while. :|

Very nice work on the runs! I haven't had a chance to fiddle with the PSX version, as life is quite insane lately (for the better), but I doubt I could do any better.